Miz Scarlet and the Holiday Houseguests (A Scarlet Wilson Mystery #3)

by Sara M. Barton

  Chapter Two --

  “Or maybe they really do loathe each other,” I countered his argument, pointing out the obvious.

  “Such a pessimist,” he sniffed. I shook my head. Given Bur’s history with women and his two divorces, he was hardly an expert in marital relationships. “I’ve just about cut through the trunk. Grab the tree, Miz Scarlet.”

  “Hold on.” I got my gloved hands on a thick branch and felt the needles poking through the fleece as I fastened my fingers around the wood. “Okay. I’m ready.”

  The tree wobbled briefly in my grasp as the trunk was freed from its earthly stump. Bur laid down his saw on the frozen tundra and got busy. He spread an old blue bed sheet on top of the snow-covered ground.

  “Let’s roll it up and get it back to the inn.” We maneuvered the spruce into place and carefully flipped it gently, until the official Wilson family 2013 Christmas tree was shrouded in cotton. Bur tied it with poly cord, securing the ends, and we began the arduous journey of carrying the holiday bundle down the winding woodsy path and back to the Four Acorns Inn.

  “Ready, Miz Scarlet?”

  “Ready, Colonel.”

  When we were kids, we played our own live version of the game of “Clue”. Bur originally nickname me “Miss Scarlet” in one of his many attempts to ruffle my feathers, but I corrected him. “You may address me as Miz Scarlet!” He soon became known as Colonel Grey Poupon, not only because he loved mustard, but because he was often a real stinker. On those occasions, we just referred to him as “Poup”.

  Twenty minutes later, scratched and bruised, I deposited my end of the tree on the floor of the sun porch. My back muscles screamed for relief. “Boy, that was heavy!”

  “Is that it?” said an interested voice behind me. “How big is it?”

  “Bigger than you, squirt,” Bur told Jenny, our live-in teenage helper.

  “Does that mean I’ll need a ladder to decorate it?”

  “More like a step stool. Miz Scarlet put the kibosh on a huge tree.”

  “I’m sorry I couldn’t be there to help you, but I had my big biology test.”

  “How do you think you did?” I inquired of the nursing student in the process of wrapping up her first semester at the University of Connecticut. I couldn’t help myself. Long before I became an innkeeper, I was a high school teacher, and I still tutor students part-time, in between caring for guests at the inn. But I have another reason for wanting to know. I nearly killed her a few months ago.

  Our accidental meeting was a freakish thing. On a warm summer night in Bay Head, New Jersey, a homicidal maniac chased her into the street, where I nearly hit her with my car. In need of sanctuary, I brought Jenny back to Connecticut, where the gang at the Four Acorns Inn welcomed her with open arms. That’s how we learned of her tragic story, of how her parents, Jaime and Christina, died when she was a baby and she was adopted by an aunt. Jenny was orphaned a second time, just shy of her eighteenth birthday, when Vivian Mulroney, died from cancer earlier this year. Kicked out of her family home by a scheming stepfather determined to steal her inheritance, Jenny and her dog, Mozzie, took to life on the road, but the naive teenager got herself into more trouble than she could handle. When it followed her to the Four Acorns Inn, I called and Larry came to her rescue. That’s part of why I owe the state homicide investigator so big.

  “I think I did okay. It was harder than I expected it would be, but I answered all the questions, like you suggested, even when I had to guess.”

  “Good. Were they multiple choice questions?” I wondered.

  “Except for two essay questions,” she replied, nodding.

  “Essay questions on a biology test?” Bur was surprised. “What kind of beast gives those?”

  “Dr. Shirley does. The first one was, ‘Why is it important to know the origin of the sickle cell anemia trait?’. I talked about the improvements in genetic sequencing when developing treatments. And the second question was, ‘Why is polymorphism important to evolution?’ Ugh!”

  “What did you say to that?” I probed. Essay questions can be tricky. It’s all in the professor’s interpretation of the written answer.

  “I pointed out that diversity within the population helped to keep the gene pool healthy, so that no one single form has an advantage or disadvantage over the others during natural selection.”

  “Nice,” I congratulated her. “Sounds like you hit the mark.”

  Bur gave the teenager an affectionate pat on the head. “Our little angel has grown up, Miz Scarlet. I can tell because I have absolutely no clue what all that means. You sound so smart!”

  “I do, don’t I?” Jenny beamed, raising her hands above her head and wiggling her body in an impromptu victory dance. “Woo, woo!”

  “You’re not just a pretty face anymore,” I added. “Of course, I hope you realize now it will be almost impossible to find a guy to date.”

  “Impossible? What do you mean?” asked the horrified teen. “Why won’t I find a guy?”

  “It’s a joke, Jen. Relax!” I gave her a little poke. “I only meant you won’t be satisfied with dopes.”

  “Oh! Thank heavens. I thought there was something wrong with me!”

  “Goodness, no! You’re fine. It’s the males of the species I worry about,” I laughed. Bur actually made a face at me in response, before challenging my opinion.

  “Don’t listen to Gladys Gump here. She’s a spinster, for heavens sake! What does she know about men? You’re a knockout. How can any guy walk away from you?”

  “I never said she wasn’t adorable, Bur. I said she was smart.”

  “Men like adorable and you fit the bill, squirt.”

  “Smart women can also be adorable, Jenny. You can’t really trust what Bur tells you. What he knows about real women you could fit into a thimble.”

  “Oh, please! Do you really think you’re smarter than the majority of men?” Bur rolled his eyes in disgust before turning his attention back to the teenager. He caught her in the act of trying to hide her amusement, and thus began his lecture. “Let me tell you about real men, Jenny. They’re looking for cute girls who don’t drive them batty. With your looks and personality, you’ve got nothing to worry about. As long as you’re not a smarty-pants know-it-all or a lemon-sucking sourpuss, like Miz Scarlet here, you’ll do just fine.”

  “Are you two bickering again?” My mother appeared in the doorway of the sun porch, her hand manipulating the controls of her motorized wheelchair. She maneuvered it over the threshold ramp and pulled up to inspect the tree. “Here we are at Christmas time and we’ve got to contend with the usual sniping? Can’t you two call a holiday truce?”

  “Sibling rivalry lives,” Jenny announced cheerfully. “Today’s subject is men and women.”

  “You poor dear,” my mother commiserated with the teenager. “How you ever put up with these two is beyond me.”

  “I know. How did you manage all those years when they were growing up?”

  “It wasn’t easy,” my mother feigned exhaustion. “If it weren’t for my other two little angels, Emory and Palmer, I might have been driven mad.”

  “That presumes you started out sane, doesn’t it, Mother? The jury’s still out on that one.” Bur gave her a kiss on the cheek as Scrub Oak, the inn’s resident house cat, arrived to inspect the shrouded tree. With his nose to the cotton wrapping, the inquisitive feline circled the new addition to the sun porch, decided it wasn’t worth losing any sleep over, and padded off to the living room, no doubt to curl up in front of the fireplace for another nap.

  “We were discussing the fact that Jenny’s so smart, she won’t be able to find suitable boys to date,” I informed my mother.

  “Why?” My mother looked up at me expectantly.

  “Because she will be bored with idiots and jerks,” I replied confidently. “They won’t understand what she says to them.”

  “Good heavens, Scarlet Wilson! Have you learned nothing all these years?” my mother
demanded, wagging her index finger at me in warning.

  “What?”

  “You’re not supposed to talk honestly in front of the m-e-n.”

  “Ha! Burn,” said Jenny to my brother, laughing.

  “Very funny, ladies. I’ll remember this. And wait until I sit down for a chat with Santa. Coal for all of you!”

  “If it’s all the same to you, I would much prefer a more environmentally-friendly material in my stocking, Bur.” Jenny’s eyes twinkled.

  “Touché!” he shot back. “And so it begins. The cute girl morphs into the old crone. Don’t say I didn’t warn you, missy! If you’re not careful, you’ll turn absolutely hideous, like Miz Scarlet here.”

  “If only you had the brains to match wits with the rest of the world, instead of being just another pretty boy....” I teased.

  “Pretty is as pretty does,” he announced, pirouetting into the dining room with all the grace of a blind Baryshnikov on steroids, leaving us in stitches.

  “When can we decorate the tree?” Jenny called after him. “I can’t wait!”

  Bur reemerged with the tree stand in hand. “Let me make sure this will fit over the trunk first.”

  “What if it doesn’t?” she wondered.

  “We’ll go dump it in the woods and start again. There are plenty of other trees in the forest. We’ll just keep chopping until we find one that fits.”

  “You can’t do that!” Her shocked face said it all. “That’s just so...wrong!”

  “No? What do you brainy women suggest?” he inquired. That’s when she realized he was yanking her chain. “Ha ha! I’ll have you know I wrote the book on Burn 101, little girl!”

  “Give me strength, Lord,” my mother groaned with great exaggeration. “These children try my patience.”

  “Somebody has to keep you on your toes,” Bur replied. “Okay, we’re good to go. Help me carry the tree into the living room. We have to let it stand a few hours, so the branches rest. Then I’ll put all the lights on and you can hang the ornaments, squirt.”

  “I love Christmas!” She and I grabbed the trunk in tandem while my brother took the top. Together, we waddled our way through the dining room, down the hallway, and over to a corner in the living room, where we unwrapped the covering and managed to set the tree upright. I held it in place while Bur screwed the long bolts into the trunk.

  “Lovely tree. Well done,” Laurel declared as she watched from behind.

  “Look!” the excited teenager pointed. “There’s a little bird’s nest!”

  My mother rolled her wheelchair forward to take a peek. “It looks like a cardinal’s nest.”

  “But how do you know it wasn’t built by a chickadee... or a sparrow?”” the inquisitive teen wondered.

  “It’s twiggy. Cedar waxwings use more grass and leaves when they build theirs. Every bird has a preference for where to build its nest,” my mother explained. “Some do it in the cavities of tree trunks or a bird house. Some prefer the branches of deciduous trees, where they can fly out easily. Others prefer to hide in evergreens like this, or even shrubs.”

  “I just assumed all birds just pick any old tree.”

  “Bite your tongue!” Bur poked her. “There is no such thing as ‘any old tree’, not in this family, anyway.”

  “When you want to identify what type of bird crafted a nest, look at the materials and construction techniques. Is there mud, twigs, grass, or moss? You’ll find the robin’s nest in the fork of a tree. Vireos make nests that look like a cup hanging down from a tree branch, and Baltimore orioles make nests that look like woven bags. Goldfinches build on the ends of the tree branches and line their nests with the dander from the thistle plant,” Laurel told her.

  “Who knew?” Jenny smiled. “I just thought birds were birds. They sing their pretty little songs and eat birdseed.”

  “Oh heavens, no!” my mother laughed. “Their diets and their behaviors are quite diverse. Hummingbirds are territorial fighters. Starlings are absolute pests that take over the nesting areas of woodpeckers and bluebirds. Cowbirds deposit their eggs into the nests of other birds....”

  The sudden sound of dogs barking broke the conversational thread. We all heard the ruckus in the front hall as January, Huck, and Mozzie greeted a new arrival.

  “Well, well!” Lacey, my mother’s cousin and one of the permanent residents of the Four Acorns Inn, waltzed into the living room, her arms laden with packages. She unburdened herself by depositing them on the sofa by the fireplace. “Finally, we have a tree! I was beginning to think you people would never get one. Please tell me it’s not going to take you another two days to decorate it.”

  “It’s four o’clock now,” Bur announced, glancing at the wall clock. “I promise you it shall be festooned with lights by eight this evening. You have my word on that.”

  “And then we get to put the ornaments on?” asked the excited teenager.

  “Yes, then you get to go nuclear on that tree. Make it glow.””

  “Perfect. I shall be your assistant,” Lacey volunteered, pulling off her red wool coat and white angora hat. “I just have one rule; when it comes to Christmas, more is better.”

  “Right,” the teenager grinned. “By the time I’m done, you won’t even see these branches. Bring your sunglasses, because it’s going to be blindingly bright in here!”

  “Just the way I like it,” said the elderly woman in the sequin-encrusted sweater with an enormous reindeer with a pompom nose. Her jingle bell necklace tinkled every time she moved. “Lordy, the mall was a madhouse today. It was wall-to-wall shoppers, all in search of those last minute bargains....”