Worst Laid Plans (A Maddox Storm Mystery Book 1)

by Claire Robyns

  I scowled at Ms Daggon, thinking dark, bitter thoughts as I eyed the full apron tied at her waist and around her neck. I hadn’t met any of the inn staff yet. Actually, I was surprised to find we had full-time, live-in staff. Any person other than the dragon lady, and I’d have been delighted to discover we had a resident cook.

  “One of us has to go,” I muttered beneath my breath. What the devil had Mr Hollow been thinking, stealing her away from Silver Firs High?

  If I’d known my sweet revenge came stocked with Ms Daggon, I would have left Joe’s money in the bank and wished him a carefree divorce.

  My nostrils twitched. Something was burning? My gaze swept over the knotted pine wall cabinets and matching counters to a state-of-the-art stainless steel triple-door oven unit. The top was laid with six electric stove plates and a large gas grill that was rapidly disappearing into a haze.

  Goodness, something was burning. Tendrils of smoke escaped the rubber seals of the middle door.

  “Ms Daggon!” I shouted as I hurried over to the oven. Only one knob wasn’t in the off position and I quickly remedied that, then I yanked open the oven door.

  Big mistake.

  Black smoke billowed out to engulf me, choking my lungs and coating my tongue with an acrid taste.

  I flipped my jacket off my shoulder and flapped madly.

  The smoke wafted upward and I only had time to glimpse a tray of charred buns through the thinning haze before an emergency sprinkler kicked in and showered me with frigid water.

  The smoke alarm went off, bleating an unholy piercing shrill that reverberated between my ears.

  I stopped flapping and swiped the back of my hand over my eyes. Smoke coiled inside the oven, afraid to come out from its nice dry cave. Frigid rain beat down on my head. I swiped water and strands of drenched hair from my eyes. Shivers prickled my skin and my bones had turned to ice, but that wasn’t what bothered me most.

  Peaking one hand at my brow to shield my eyes from the torrential downpour, I spun about to squint at Ms Daggon. She hadn’t budged from her position flopped over the kitchen table.

  She was absolutely comatose.

  I hadn’t known she was a big drinker, but I had to say, it didn’t surprise me.

  “Ms Daggon.” I slip-slid my way across to her, raising my voice to be heard above the wailing beep-beep-beep. “Ms Daggon!”

  I shook her shoulder.

  Nothing.

  Honestly, how much could a woman imbibe before seven am?

  I glanced at the rain-splattered tea cup and rising levels of murky brown liquid, then wiped my eyes and focused on the slumped figure of Ms Daggon.

  She was no featherweight. If I hitched her beneath the armpits, I could attempt to drag her out, but between the slippery floor and my platform wedges, I knew how that would go. Plus, the woman was a nasty creature. If I damaged any part of her in the process, she’d likely sue me.

  But I didn’t want her to drown either.

  Not really.

  I rolled her head so her face was buried in her arms and draped my jacket over her head, puffing out the edges to ensure she had enough air inside there. In the process, I somehow managed to clip the nearby saucer and almost sent it flying. I grabbed both the cup and saucer, was carrying them to the sink when the bleating alarm finally cut off.

  Thank goodness, I could actually hear myself think!

  “What in bejeesus is going on here?”

  My heart jumped a foot. The delicate china clattered from my hands and smashed into the sink. Great.

  I threw a look over my shoulder.

  Mr Hollow stood just inside the doorway, fiddling with a control panel. He wore a brown and cream striped robe belted over matching flannel pajamas. His hair stood up on end, not plastered to his scalp, and I realized the ceiling had stopped pouring down.

  “Ms Daggon put buns in the oven and forgot about them,” I informed him as I picked the larger pieces of broken china out from the sink and dumped them in the trash. “Thank goodness I came down here. The whole house might have gone up in flames.”

  “Ms Daggon caught on fire?”

  My gaze followed his to the sodden jacket I’d thrown over Ms Daggon’s head and upper body.

  “Only from the inside.” I demonstrated chugging from an imaginary bottle. “I think Ms Daggon found the cooking sherry.”

  “Have you checked if she’s okay?”

  “So far as I could tell.” I ran the water to wash away the remaining splinters and then turned to give him my undivided attention. “I’m sure she just needs to sleep it off.”

  He did not look amused.

  I couldn’t say I blamed him.

  “Wait!” I yelped when he started forward. “The floor—”

  The slippered foot he’d put forward kept going. The rest of him teetered backward.

  I skid across the linoleum floor and managed to grab a flailing arm. We both went down. At least Mr Hollow landed on top of me. He wasn’t an overly large man, but the impact whooshed the breath from my lungs and knocked the humor right out of the funny bone at my elbow.

  There was some unintentional groping, never to be mentioned ever again, as we untangled ourselves.

  “Are you okay?” I asked Mr Hollow as I helped him to his feet.

  He nodded, visibly shaken but hopefully not broken.

  “Thank you, Ms Storm.” He inhaled deeply, his habitual scowl settling in. “You saved me from a brutal fall. Did you hurt anything?”

  “Don’t worry about me, I have a lot of padding.” I patted my rump and smiled. “And please, call me Maddie.”

  “What kind of name is that?” he grunted. “Sounds like your parents named you after a bedlam escapee.”

  And just when I thought we were becoming bosom buds.

  “It’s Maddox,” I said primly, as if he didn’t already know.

  “Well, then, why didn’t you say so in the first place? You’d best be getting yourself out of those wet clothes before you catch your death. I’ll take care of Ms Daggon.”

  A task I was only happy to relinquish.

  I made it two steps into the hallway.

  “Mary sweet mother of Jesus,” erupted at my back. “The miserable old badger’s stone-cold dead.”

  “There’s no way the miserable old badger’s stone-cold sober.” I’d whirled about and stomped back into the kitchen before it registered.

  Stone-cold dead, not sober.

  “Are you sure?” I demanded, taking note of the fact that he wasn’t wearing his glasses and therefore was in no position to make snap judgments.

  He’d thrown my jacket off Ms Daggon and extracted one of her arms that had been tucked beneath her head. He lifted her limp wrist higher for me to see, then he released it. Her hand dropped onto the table like a lead weight.

  “Dead as a doormat,” he declared.

  “Oh, dear.” I slapped a palm to my chest, my eyes widening in horror on Ms Daggon.

  Dead? While I’d been fussing at the oven, shaking her shoulder, draping my jacket over her head? Dead?

  “Oh, dear, oh, dear,” I muttered, sounding uncannily like my mother.

  Mr Hollow shuffled toward me. The look in his watery pale blue eyes was almost kind. “You go get out of those wet things,” he said. “I’ll call the chief.”

  “Oh, dear…”

  He flicked his fingers at me. “Shoo.”

  I shooed.

  THREE

  How long does it take to peel wet jeans from your thighs? Forever, that’s how long.

  If this weren’t my favorite pair, I’d have cut them off with the scissors from the Swiss Army Knife my dad had given me for protection in the ‘big city.’ To this day, I wasn’t sure what he expected me to do with it. Slit some beefy mugger’s throat? Wield it like a crazy bag-lady at anyone who looked at me funny?

  By the time I’d stripped to my underwear, I was shivering so hard, my teeth chattered like a B-Grade movie zombie. I decided to keep going and take a hot
shower.

  The bathroom on my bedroom suite was a grand affair. Natural hewn stone floor, claw-foot porcelain tub, double vanity with an earthy-hued marble finish. The claustrophobic plastic-bottomed shower cubicle tacked on into one corner put a big dent into the ambiance, but I had no gripe with modern necessities.

  I crammed myself inside and turned the heat setting as high as I could take it. The cubicle steamed up. My skin turned a shade of boiled lobster, but the scalding heat ran off my skin with the water. The stubborn shivers dug deeper and knitted to bone.

  I conceded defeat and stepped out of the shower.

  Jeez, it was cold.

  What had happened to our unseasonably warm spring?

  I tugged on a pair of black fleece pants that hugged my thighs and a burnt orange cable sweater with a chunky polo neck that cuddled up to my chin.

  Thick socks.

  Fur-lined Uggs.

  Nothing helped. I was shivering so hard, I could barely grasp the hairdryer as I tipped my head upside down to blow my hair.

  As for the corpse downstairs, well, I was trying my best not to think about it.

  “If you can’t have nice thoughts about someone, then don’t think about them at all,” I told myself every time one started to sneak up on me.

  It didn’t work. I took squarely after my Nana Rose and she was more of a ‘If thoughts were actions, we’d all be murderers,’ kind of lady.

  I wasn’t uncharitable by nature, I really wasn’t, but Ms Daggon had always had it in for me. Jenna could laugh all she wanted, tell me I was being silly, that Ms Daggon hated and tormented everyone equally, but here we were again. Ms Daggon could have copped it anywhere, but no, oh no, she just had to go and do it right under my nose. Typical!

  “If you can’t have nice thoughts.” I reminded myself firmly, “then don’t—”

  I started guiltily at the rat-a-tat-a-tat at the door.

  The thought police?

  Ms Daggon’s ghost?

  Don’t judge me, I’d had one heck of a day and it wasn’t even—a quick glance at my watch—a quarter after seven! I laughed at my temporary brand of crazy and hurried across the room to open the door for Jenna.

  It wasn’t Jenna at the door. It was a portly middle-aged man, bald as a coot and dressed in a funeral suit.

  The welcome smile dropped off my face. “Hello?”

  “Ms Storm,” the man greeted in an understated tone, as if he wasn’t sure he wanted to be heard. “Your attendance is required below.”

  “Oh, does Mr Hollow need me for something?”

  “No.” The man stepped back and waved me on to go ahead of him.

  “Is Jenna here, then?” I asked as I pulled the door closed after me. “I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your name.”

  “Burns,” he said.

  “Mr Burns?” I rubbed my arms for warmth as I set off down the passage.

  “Just Burns.”

  Okay. I threw him a look over my shoulder. “Is Jenna here?”

  “Not that I’m aware of, ma’am.”

  Talk about the pot calling the shiny new aluminum pan black. He was twice my age, if not more.

  “Please,” I said with a crispy touch of frost, though that might have been my icicled flesh and shivery bones talking, “call me Maddox.”

  “Very well, Ms Storm.”

  I shot him the evil eye. “Who did you say you were again?”

  “Burns.”

  “And you were asked to fetch me because…?”

  I’d stopped walking and he waved me on again before answering, “It’s part of my duties as the butler.”

  I’d actually wanted to know what I was being fetched for, but this was far more interesting. “We have a butler?”

  He nodded.

  I was officially impressed. And a little wiser as to how Mr Hollow had managed to land himself in such a mess. Who on earth could afford to keep a butler? I shrugged. Not my problem. I wasn’t in this for the long haul.

  “How long have you been at Hollow House?” I asked conversationally.

  Burns smoothed his hands down the jacket that stretched precariously over his rotund belly. “Mr Hollow employed me soon after he returned from the war.”

  My grandfather had gone off with George Hollow to fight in Vietnam long before I was born, and hadn’t returned. The whole thing was very sad. Grandpa had left behind a young wife and baby girl. George Hollow had come home, only to find his sweetheart had died a month before. He’d never married and, people say, he’d never been the same. Sometimes, life just bit you on the ass and that was that.

  At the bottom of the stairs, we were met by a man in policeman blues coming out from the lounge. There was something familiar about his strong face and striking blue eyes…something about those coppery curls.

  “Hi, Maddie,” he said, bringing me to a sudden halt.

  “Jack?” I blinked, then looked again. “Jack Spinner?”

  He grinned his goofy grin at me, the only thing about Jack Spinner that hadn’t totally transformed. He’d been a year behind us at school, a scrawny stick of a boy who’d mostly had his head down and his attention buried in a book. Maybe because the jock squad had made him their primary mission, always sniggering, calling him carrot top, being their usual idiotic selves.

  I glanced over Jack’s pristine uniform, shaking my head, smiling despite the reminder of why he was here. “You’re on the job now?”

  “Got out of the Academy a couple of months back,” he said.

  The Academy had clearly been good to him. Put meat on his scrawny bones, stiffened his spine, knocked his chin into the upright position, that kind of thing.

  “Sorry to send for you,” he went on. “But I’ve orders to contain the area and keep everyone together in one place until reinforcements arrive.”

  “No problem,” I assured him, assuming by reinforcements he meant Chief Matthews and the coroner. “Where do you want me?”

  “Through here,” he said, motioning me past him and into the lounge while he remained stationed in the archway.

  Burns had flopped into a wingback chair upholstered in gold and brown damask. And by flopped, I meant he’d sprawled himself out, legs stretched in front of him and crossed at the ankles, head back, eyes closed. The lounge area was large but cozy, with three separate arrangements of couches and armchairs around stocky center tables.

  I spotted Jenna and Mr Hollow over by the sideboard, which held an industrial coffee maker and a plate of cookies. Jenna saw me, squealed, and wrapped me in a hug as soon as I was within reach.

  “Talk about returning home with a fanfare, huh?” she said lightly. “I’ve missed you, Mads.”

  “Missed you too,” I mumbled. “And I didn’t bring this trouble with me.”

  “What do you think it was? Stroke? Heart attack?” Jenna pulled back, got a good look at me and growled, “You’re pale as a waning moon. Mr H, could you make one of your delicious strong coffees for Maddie here?”

  “Certainly, my dear.” Mr Hollow smiled at her, not a hint of scowl in sight, and turned to take a porcelain mug from the stack next to the machine.

  I rolled my eyes at the two of them. Not only was Jenna a willowy blond with cheekbones that’d make an angel cry, she also had a way with people. The only person she’d never managed to charm was Ms Daggon.

  “How are you holding up?” Jenna asked. “I heard you found her.”

  “I’m fine.” Not a lie. I felt totally okay. The machine hissed and, as the aroma of Arabic coffee hit me, I felt a little more totally okay. “When did you get here?”

  “About ten minutes ago,” Jenna said. “I convinced Jack to let me inside the house, but I couldn’t wheedle my way past him to go upstairs.”

  “Speaking of Jack Spinner, did you see…?” I glanced over my shoulder to the empty archway, back to Jenna, and the message suddenly popped. “Jack is your Jack?”

  Jenna nodded and grinned.

  I slapped her arm with the back of my hand. �
�Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Until you’d seen him in the now with your own eyes?” she scoffed. “Yeah, that would have gone well. You would have jumped into your glow bug and chased up here to save me from myself.”

  “She doesn’t glow,” I defended my beautiful little Beetle. “And you’re wrong, I would have chased up here to save Jack.”

  I had nothing against scrawny stick guys, but Jenna would have gobbled the old Jack up for breakfast and regurgitated him before lunch.

  Jenna laughed. “I’m not nearly as heartless as you seem to think.”

  “Not heartless, just a little careless when it comes to men.”

  “So?” She fluttered thick, long lashes at me. “What’s the verdict? What do you think of Jack?”

  Before I could reply that I was in no position to offer verdicts on other people’s relationships, Mr Hollow pushed a mug toward me.

  “Thanks.” I reached to take it.

  He didn’t let go. “You’re shaking like a leaf.”

  I looked down at the fingers I was attempting to wrap around the mug. Damn, I’d forgotten about that. At least my teeth were no longer chattering.

  “Yeah, it’s turned frigid, hasn’t it?” I said. “What’s up with this arctic weather? Yesterday it was summer.”

  Jenna’s eyes narrowed on my hand. “It’s not that cold.”

  “She’s in shock,” Mr Hollow declared.

  I clasped my hands behind my back. “I told you, I’m fine, just cold.”

  They both ignored me.

  Jenna eyed the built-in bar on the far side of the room.

  Mr Hollow noticed and nodded, agreeing to some secret pact as he entrusted my mug of coffee into Jenna’s keeping.

  “Come on.” Jenna hooked an arm in mine. “Let’s get you a sniff of brandy.”

  I unclasped my hands to grab a chocolate chip cookie before letting her drag me off reluctantly to the bar. “I don’t like brandy.”

  “A figure of speech, Maddie Mads.” She wrinkled her nose at me. “Horrible stuff.”

  We scooted behind the bar. Jenna grabbed a bottle of Jack Daniels from the top shelf and slid down the cabinet to sit her butt on the hardwood floor.