Miz Scarlet and the Bewildered Bridegroom

by Barton, Sara M.

  “Way to go, Miz Scarlet!” the teenager grinned. “Should I take Lacey with me?”

  “No, I need the Googins girls to get that living room in shape for the dessert reception tonight. I’m putting them to work right now.”

  Chapter Twenty Three --

  It turned out that I underestimated the party skills the ladies brought to the table. Laurel and Lacey gathered every container they could find in the house and set up their makeshift flower workshop in Bur’s bar tent. They helped Jenny fill vase after vase with roses, irises, carnations, and alomestria. By the time they were done, every room sported blossoms of one kind or another.

  Jenny had also filled her shopping bag at Munson’s with an assortment of decadent little treats. Lacey distributed them around the living room in crystal bowls beside the dressed-up chocolate truffles. There was no denying the festive mood.

  Kenny and I kissed and made up in the kitchen, while I was putting the final touches on the hors d’oeuvres. He came up behind me, slipped his arms around my waist, and whispered in my ear.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t give you a heads up when you were up on the mountain.”

  “I’m sorry you didn’t too.”

  “Pretty sore at me, huh?”

  “No,” I shook my head. Most of my anger had dissipated by now. “I’m just pretty sore.”

  I showed him my collection of bruises, starting with the black-and-blue marks on my arms and ending with the ones on my legs. Karin might not weigh more than a hundred and ten pounds, but she was a really mean street fighter.

  “I had no idea, Scarlet. How long before you forgive me?”

  “I’ll think about it after you tell me what I missed, Captain Peacock.” At the use of his nickname, he seemed to hold me just a little bit closer. That was fine by me.

  “We were just so focused on trapping her before tonight, so when Max followed her to the grocery store, it was too good an opportunity to pass up. He was able to park next to her car and hold the spot until I could get there in your car. I barely had a moment to spare before she wheeled her shopping cart out and loaded her bags into her car. She did a double take when she realized that, not only was she parked next to your car, it was unlocked. By the time she grabbed the cake and dumped it in the trash, she was positively gleeful.”

  “Probably not so much now, huh?”

  “No bail till Monday,” Kenny informed me. “She’ll be cooling her heels in jail for a while.”

  “Good.”

  The next two hours flew by. When the happy bride and groom stepped into the vestibule of the Four Acorns Inn, their faces seemed to glow with happy anticipation. I showed Annalee to the Red Oak Room, which would later serve as the honeymoon suite. Gunnar got the library for his final night as a bachelor. Once they settled in, I gave them a tour of the inn before the rest of the Pinault and Magnusdotter families showed up.

  “It’s even prettier than your brochure, Scarlet,” Annalee gushed. Gunnar agreed.

  “This was a wonderful choice for our nuptials.”

  “Speaking of nuptials,” I smiled, “why don’t we step out into the garden and I’ll show you the spot we set up for the outdoor ceremony.”

  By the time they passed through the dining room and onto the sun porch, they were speechless. The wicker arch, now draped with boxwood, myrtle, and roses tied with white ribbons, was positioned to maximize the view of the shade garden, away from the late afternoon sun.

  “Perfect,” Annalee nodded. “I can’t believe the attention to detail.”

  “You certainly did a crackerjack job here. I’m very impressed,” said the groom.

  So were the rest of the guests when they arrived. Annalee’s oldest son, Vic, and his wife, Jackie, who took the ferry from Port Jefferson to avoid the usual Friday night traffic jam, were thrilled to be on the third floor with their two sons, especially after the boys discovered the TV in the sitting room. Annalee’s younger son, Van, and his wife, Ranie, arrived later, frazzled after the bumper-to-bumper traffic from Philadelphia. They were happy to settle into the White Oak Room with their two young daughters, Melanie and Lisa. Gunnar’s daughter came down from Springfield with her fiancé. I put them in the Black Oak Room.

  “How lovely!” Ellie Magnusdotter declared. Taking hold of the hand of the man beside her, she said, “Bobby, this is exactly the kind of place I was thinking of for our wedding.”

  “Too bad it’s in Connecticut,” Zak replied. “Otherwise, I’d say it’s a great choice for us.”

  “If only we could pick this place up and put it in Springfield.”

  You might think I was dismayed by the conversation, but I was actually fired up by those words. It told me that we were on the right track. Maybe the Googins girls and Edna weren’t completely off their rockers. I gave it some thought while I waited for the pair by the staircase. If we went slowly and built the business up without overextending the Four Acorns budget....

  “Scarlet?” Ellie’s voice broke through my daydreaming fog.

  “Excuse me,” I quickly apologized. “We’ve been talking about expanding the inn and your comments got me thinking about what we could do.”

  “Are you serious about expanding?” Suddenly Zak was interested. I gazed up at the tall, rangy young man with a fidgety sort of energy and smiled. Here was my chance to test out the idea on potential clients. I jumped in with both feet, telling them about some of our ideas. “We’re still discussing it, of course.”

  Five minutes later, Ellie and Zak made me promise to let them know within the month if we were going to host weddings at Wallace’s house. I led them to the garden, where the rest of the wedding party was assembled for cocktails.

  The evening turned out to be a great success. By the time the two families adjourned to their respective rooms, it was nearly eleven.

  “See you in the morning,” Gunnar called over his shoulder as he walked his future bride up to her room.

  “Pleasant dreams,” I replied, on my way to shut off inn lights, check doors, and clear the last of the glasses from the living room.

  Jen was already asleep in Lacey’s bed when I finally crawled into the cot by the window. Huckleberry hopped up and snuggled next to me. Within a few minutes, I nodded off.

  Sunlight crept into my temporary quarters as the dawn broke, spreading a golden glow over Lacey’s suite. I lay there for a few minutes, glad of the weather’s cooperation. This was an auspicious start for our new venture. I was already imagining the future guests flocking to Wallace’s mansion.

  “It’s the big day,” I heard Jenny say from across the room. “I’m so excited.”

  “Me too,” I admitted. “Let’s get going.”

  Lacey and Laurel were the first ones down for breakfast. Jenny set them up in the dining room. They were starting on their coffee when Gunnar joined them. Ten minutes later, Annalee made it a foursome.

  Over pancakes and sausage, the happy couple shared their romantic tale with the Googins girls. They had met on a cruise to the Caribbean, two single people in search of companionship. He’d been widowed for three years; she was in the middle of an amicable divorce from her husband of thirty years.

  “This dashing man had the cabin next to mine,” Annalee told them. “I kept bumping into him everywhere I went. When I found out he was assigned to my table in the dining room, I admit my heart fluttered at the thought of getting to know him better.”

  Half an hour later, Lacey felt comfortable enough to spill the beans on the events of the last couple of weeks. In her typical dramatic fashion, she gave an exciting blow-by-blow account of Karin’s dastardly effort to ruin the Four Acorns Inn. By the time she was done, Gunnar and Annalee were mesmerized by our plight and so grateful that we had managed to rescue the inn from such an evil plan. And that’s when the subject of Edna Rivera came up.

  “Oh lordy!” I groaned, hearing the ensuing conversation as I stood in the butler’s pantry pouring hot coffee into the thermal carafe. Jenny, passing through with
dirty dishes in hand, snickered.

  “You know how Lacey loves an audience,” she reminded me. “But I wouldn’t worry too much, Miz Scarlet.”

  “No?”

  “They’re still laughing about Edna’s reason for divorcing Big Larry.”

  It was true. I heard my mother explaining about the little lie that sent Edna to divorce court.

  “And because she lied on the application for the license, they weren’t legally married. Once she realized that, Edna broke up with Big Larry, figuring that once the divorce was final, they could reunite and remarry. It never occurred to her that her husband was every bit as stubborn as she was. By the time he got around to agreeing to marry her again, he made the mistake of saying it was for his baby daughter’s sake. That just got Edna all riled up because she wanted him to want to marry her because he loved her.”

  “And now?” Gunnar laughed. “Did they ever manage to work it out?”

  That was Lacey’s chance to tell about the Christmas reunion and how Edna and Big Larry finally saw the light when she confessed her bad behavior. “At the moment, Edna’s in Boston. We’ve got our fingers crossed that they’ll make it a permanent thing.”

  “That has to be the most convoluted love story I ever heard,” the groom admitted. “I’m so glad I don’t have to go through that kind of craziness.”

  The rest of the wedding party came down in dribs and drabs. By the time everyone had finished eating breakfast, it was after ten. Annalee’s two sons and her grandsons, Kyle and Kevin, invited Gunnar along for a hike up to White Oak Hill. Bur gave them a map and showed them the way to the trail head. Ellie and Zak wanted to take a walking tour of Cheswick. I suspected they wanted to see what Wallace’s mansion was like from the street. Ranie and Jackie offered to help Annalee with wedding preparations, but the bride waved them off.

  “No, I’m fine. I think I’ll just sit in my room and read for a while. Why don’t you take the girls to the Lutz Museum?”

  I gave Annalee’s daughters-in-law a brochure about the local children’s museum, promising them it was a fun place for kids. “And it’s only a mile or so down the road from here.”

  The house was quiet after the guests scattered. Jenny, Laurel, Lacey, and I sat down at the dining room table to go over our checklist one more time.

  “Music, justice of the peace, cocktail hour, photographs....” Item by item, we confirmed our plans, making sure we were ready.

  Just before noon, I was in the kitchen when Gunnar burst into the room. “Have you seen Annalee?”

  “She said she was going to sit in her room and read a book.”

  “She’s not there!” he cried, alarm in his voice. “She’s not answering her phone!”

  “Maybe she’s taking a bath,” I suggested, thinking this was a case of wedding jitters. “Why don’t you give her a few minutes and try again?”

  “Something terrible has happened to her! I just know it.”

  “I’m sure....”

  “Check her room. Maybe she’s had a heart attack!”

  I studied the man with the wild look in his eye. From what I had already observed, Gunnar Magnusdotter wasn’t the type to get hysterical. Maybe he was right. Maybe something had happened to Annalee.

  I knocked several times on her door as the distraught groom waited impatiently. He tried to open it, but it was locked. After waiting a minute, I took out my master key and entered the Red Oak Room. No sooner had I taken a step forward than Gunnar burst past me, heading straight for the bathroom.

  “She’s not here!” He emerged a moment later. “Where could she be?”

  “Can you try her cell phone again?”

  A moment later, I heard the faint strains of Mendelssohn’s Wedding March wafting through the air. It seemed to rise from the seat of the arm chair by the window.

  “Her cell phone is here! I knew something terrible had happened. Annalee never goes anywhere without it!”

  “Let me call Kenny. He’s a retired public safety officer and the local head of Mercer Security,” I offered, trying to calm Gunnar down, but the man was insistent that I call the police.

  “If you won’t make the call, I’ll just have to do it myself!”

  “Wait just a second,” I cajoled him. “I have a friend who’s a state trooper. Let me call her and see what she recommends.”

  What I didn’t tell him was that Larry and Max were spending the weekend together at his place. The second she picked up, he would be out the door and on his way to the inn, even before I finished explaining the situation. That’s the benefit of killing two birds with one stone.

  “Put the guy on speaker phone, Miz Scarlet,” Larry instructed me. A moment later, she was peppering him with questions, wanting to know how well he really knew the woman he was supposed to marry. I stood there while she directed him to check Annalee’s incoming and outgoing phone calls. As I listened to the conversation, I realized Larry was actually treating this like a real case. There was no mistaking the concern in her voice.

  “I’m here,” Max announced from the doorway. “Where are we at, Larry?”

  “I’m about to run a check,” she told her former police partner. “You want to handle that end of things?”

  “Happy to do that. Kenny’s on his way. We’ll set up a command center here. Are you sending some help?”

  “We don’t have anything solid to go on yet, Maxie. Can you scrounge up some kind of probable cause for me, so I can get the ball rolling? Anything look out of place, any signs of violence?”

  “Her suitcase is still here. So is her purse. Does she take medication, Gunnar?”

  “What?” The groom was still reeling from the emotional blow of discovering his bride was missing. “Um, pills? I think it’s something for her thyroid.”

  Max found the prescription bottle in Annalee’s travel case perched on the bathroom counter. “She didn’t take it with her, but maybe it’s because she already took her daily dose.”

  “It’s possible,” Larry agreed. “Any note on the scene?”

  “I don’t see one.”

  “She said she was going to read,” I remembered. “Maybe she took her book down to the garden or to the park.”

  “Not without her cell phone. That always goes everywhere with her!” Gunnar insisted. “Besides, there’s her book!”

  He pointed to the paperback on the side table. I picked it up to examine it. It was a copy of Reluctant Witness, a tale about a wedding planner on the run. Obviously Annalee was in wedding mode, right down to her choice of story.

  “Maybe she finished the book and decided to go for a walk,” I suggested gently. “She just wanted to get some fresh air and forgot that she didn’t have her cell phone with her.”

  “I’m telling you that woman never goes anywhere without that damn phone! Something’s happened to her!”

  Chapter Twenty Four --

  By this time, Kenny and Bur were organizing a search party downstairs in the vestibule. They were already dividing up the search area.

  “I’m going with them,” Gunnar informed Max. “I can’t just sit around and wait while she’s in danger!”

  Vic and Van insisted on participating in the hunt for the missing bride. The young boys would stay behind with my mother, despite their protests.

  “Scarlet, you stay here. Larry’s on her way now. I’ll keep you updated as we work the grid. If you hear anything, anything at all, you call me.”

  “I will,” I promised.

  I heard the sounds of footsteps hurrying down the stairs. Voices raised in worried conversation floated up from the hallway below. How could this have happened? How could Annalee Pinault have just vanished like that? It didn’t make any sense. One moment she was the happy bride and the next she was gone. Was the Four Acorns Inn cursed by some malevolent hand?

  “I don’t believe it,” I sighed, sinking down on the unmade bed. “I just don’t believe it.”

  “Neither do I,” Jenny agreed, joining me in the Red Oak R
oom. “Do you really think she was kidnapped?”

  “Yes, Miz Scarlet,” said another female voice out in the hallway. “Do tell.”

  “Larry!” I had to admit I was relieved to see her. Dressed in a pair of pink jeans and a white tank top, she had chosen a pair of white running shoes in place of the stylish heels she usually wore. Her long black hair was pulled back in a pony tail, her face unadorned, save for a little lip gloss. That told me all I needed to know. Larry was worried that the bride might actually be the victim of a crime. Had we been too quick to assume Karin was the sole mastermind of the plot to ruin the Four Acorns Inn? Did she have an accomplice?

  “Do you think Karin’s boyfriend did this?” I asked. Maybe it was time to consider Seth Von Bethen a suspect.

  “I doubt it,” Larry replied, even as she was busy taking notes on her Smartphone. “Is that spelled B-e-t-h-e-n?”

  “Yes.” I picked up the paperback from the arm chair, so Larry could sit down and make her phone calls in relative comfort. As I did, a thin sheet of white paper escaped from between the pages and floated across the floor. Bending down to pick it up, I notice the Four Acorns Inn logo at the top of the page.

  “What’s that?” the homicide cop inquired. She held out her hand expectantly. I pretended not to notice, engrossed in the printed message in my hand.

  “It’s a note from Gunnar. He wants her to know how happy he is that she’s marrying him today.”

  “That’s so romantic!” Jenny leaned over my shoulder to read it with me. “He’s glad she’s not like...ut-oh.”

  “Ut-oh what?” Larry wanted to know. Those dark eyes flashed and then narrowed as Larry studied my assistant.

  “Um....” The girl gulped, giving herself away.

  “Scarlet, spill the beans!” Now I was in the spotlight as the detective glared in my direction.

  “Well, ah...Lacey told Annalee and Gunnar about how your parents split up and, um...how they divorced because Edna wasn’t legally old enough to marry.”

  “So?”