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

by Sara M. Barton

  Chapter Five --

  I stood in the front hall with Jenny the next day, waiting for Bur to pull the car up to the front porch. She had a large suitcase, a carry-on bag, and her purse ready to load into the car. Mozzie, her Cavalier King Charles spaniel, was sitting patiently by the luggage, expecting to go with his mistress, blissfully unaware of the coming reality.

  “Do you have everything?” I wondered.

  “I do.”

  “Money, credit card, boarding pass....”

  “I’m fine, Miz Scarlet. Don’t worry about me.”

  “Okay,” I smiled. “You call us if there’s anything you need. And have a wonderful time with your family. I hope this Christmas is everything you dream it will be.”

  “I do, too.” For a brief moment, she seemed to hesitate. “I’m kind of excited, but....”

  “Be patient with yourself. No one expects you to forget your past. It’s okay to miss your mom.”

  “I know, Miz Scarlet.” A single tear splashed down her cheek before she wiped it away. “Oh, I didn’t want to cry!”

  “Come here.” I wrapped her in my arms and held her tight. “You go and have a great time. Give my best to Tony and Maria. And bring me back some almonds.”

  “I will.” Jenny picked up her dog, hugging him tightly. “You be a good boy while I’m gone.”

  “We’ll take very good care of him,” I promised. “We’ll miss you.”

  “I’ll miss you, too. I hope you have fun with Larry and her family.”

  “I’m sure we will.”

  “I still don’t understand why Larry and Mickey don’t stay with you. It seems kind of dumb.”

  “It does, doesn’t it? It would give Mickey the chance to spend more time with her grandparents.”

  Bur honked the horn as he pulled his car up outside. I opened the door and picked up the largest suitcase. Jenny, still clutching her dog, grabbed the other bags. We made our way out to the driveway and loaded the bags into the trunk of Bur’s sedan.

  “If it’s about money, why not put Michaela in my room, Scarlet? I don’t mind if she sleeps in my bed. Put her to work, so you don’t have to charge a guest fee.”

  “What a sweet thing to offer, Jen. She might like that.”

  Three hours later, while I was catching up on my correspondence at the ancient Mac in the library, I sent Larry a quick email, confirming the details of her father’s arrival. I added a note about Jenny’s offer to Michaela. A minute later, my cell phone rang.

  “Did you mean it? Can my kid stay with you?” She sounded a little breathless.

  “Sure, Larry.”

  “Thank God!” I heard her exhale on the other end of the line.

  “Is there something wrong?”

  “All hell has broken loose. This case just got ugly. I can’t tell you about it, but I really need to get Mickey somewhere safe until we sort this out. Can I drop her off after school today?”

  “Absolutely. No problem.”

  “And you’ll pick my dad up at the airport tomorrow?”

  “We’ll be happy to collect him,” I told her, as Huckleberry pawed my leg, wanting to be picked up for a hug. I obliged.

  “Thanks. I’ve got to go.” The call ended abruptly, without any of the normal conversational pleasantries.

  “Well, Huck,” I said, giving him a scratch behind his ear, “Larry’s more than a little stressed. It doesn’t sound like the case is going well at all.”

  I gave this some more consideration as I got back to my innkeeper duties. This was not typical Larry behavior. There must be more to this mess than meets the eye, I decided.

  At quarter after four, Larry’s police sedan pulled into the driveway of the Four Acorns Inn, and fourteen-year-old Mickey got out of the passenger seat. Almost as tall and leggy as her mother, the dark-haired beauty waved to me.

  “Hey, Miz Scarlet. Sorry you got stuck with me,” she told me through a mouthful of metal.

  “Stuck with you? Are you kidding me? We’ve been begging your mother to let you come. It will be nice for your grandparents to spend time with you. And now that you’re here, I’m going to put you to work.” I grabbed Mickey’s suitcase and led the way into the house.

  “You are?”

  “Absolutely. We have to finish decorating the inn for the holidays. Do you mind?”

  “Depends. How much work are we talking about?” The teenager didn’t want to commit until she knew the full extent of her duties.

  “Well, I baked gingerbread cookies to hang on the tree and I have to ice them.”

  “Oh, that I can do,” she laughed. Her smile was contagious. “I thought you were going to ask me to scrub the kitchen floor or something.”

  “It’s Christmas, kiddo. You’re here to have fun, and fun you shall have.”

  “Mickey, why don’t you go see if Bur’s home?” Larry told her daughter. “I want to ask him something.”

  “What do you want to ask him?” Mickey wanted to know.

  “Can you please go see if he’s around?” Larry put on her “mama” voice, adding that warning tone, which Michaela seemed to ignore completely, in typical teenage fashion.

  “He’s going to ask me what you want to talk to him about, so what should I say?” She was pushing that envelope; it wasn’t the smartest move for the daughter of a state trooper. Larry was, after all, used to dealing with some pretty unsavory suspects.

  “You can say that your mother wants to speak with him and you don’t know what the subject matter is. Now, do you have any other questions for me, or can I have a conversation with Scarlet?”

  “Geez, what a grouch!” Mickey headed toward the front door, but not before I saw a sly glance aimed at her mother. Was she just testing the limits or was Michaela aware that her mother wasn’t her usual self? “What if he doesn’t hear me knock?”

  “Ring the doorbell,” I broke in, hoping to prevent Larry from going ballistic. “Trust me, he’ll hear that.”

  When he’s not at the inn, my brother can usually be found working in his office in the carriage house behind the inn, where he has his own quarters. As an expert on the forest industry, Bur is a consultant for big companies looking to engage in sensible reforestation projects and conservation practices. Today, he had plans to work on a new project for a company out in Colorado to find new uses for pulp waste. I thought he might welcome the interruption.

  As soon as the teenager was out the door, Larry grasped my elbow with fierce fingers that dug into my flesh. “That child tests my patience, Miz Scarlet. I swear she does it deliberately.”

  “It’s a tough age, Larry. She’s trying to figure out how to be an adult.” As a tutor to teenagers looking to get into good colleges, I’d had some experience with the soon-to-be-out-of-the-nest crowd.

  “She’s constantly in my business, wanting to know what I’m doing. I don’t have to justify my actions to her,” she scowled. “She’s fourteen!”

  “Maybe she’s worried about you,” was the only thing I could say. Frankly, I understood the feeling. I was starting to worry myself. I’d never seen her so frazzled.

  “Horse hooey!”

  “I saw her watching you. She knows you’re tense. She knows something’s not right. Maybe she’s worried something’s going on in your life that affects her.”

  “She’s a kid! It’s my job to handle the adult stuff! I’m supposed to protect her from all that,” Larry insisted. “Lord, ever since her father remarried and decided to have another kid....”

  “How’s that working out?”

  “What?”

  “Her father’s new marriage, the new baby...does Michaela feel left out? Is she worried that you’ll get remarried, too, and then she’ll be cut loose from the last vestiges of home, sweet home?”

  Those dark brown eyes narrowed as she studied me with suspicion. A moment later, her right hand tapped her forehead and Larry let out a long, slow groan.

  “Oh, damn! How did I miss that?” Larry cringed. “I shou
ld have seen the warning signs. It’s just that I’m so overworked ever since Max retired. We still don’t have a replacement for him. Do you believe it, Miz Scarlet? I’m actually the most seasoned investigator on my team now, working with the newbies. Every mistake they make lands on my shoulders. How did that happen?”

  “It sounds like you have lots of reasons to feel frustrated at work. Maybe your daughter’s noticed the change.”

  “Maybe. I guess it’s a good thing she’s here with you for a few days. If her father hadn’t taken off for Florida, I’d have sent her to his house for a couple of days. At least she’ll get a chance to spend some time with her grandparents. And the Googins girls,” she added. “I’m working so many hours now; she won’t see me until I get a break in the case.”

  “It’s that bad?” I wondered.

  “Oh, Scarlet,” Larry sighed. “It’s really bad. You know that dead body in the woods? The kid is the son of Carmine Tossi.”

  “The indicted city councilman?”

  “One and the same,” Larry nodded. “It looks like someone wanted to prevent Tossi from rolling over on his cohorts.”

  Married to Lucille Genrich, the influential founder of Fund Me, an investment group offering start-up money to web-based non-profits, the thrice-married Hartford politician was caught a couple of months ago handing over a boatload of cash to a state representative. Rumor had it Tossi was trying to influence votes in the state legislature in favor of Fund Me’s pet projects.

  “That can’t be good.”

  “It’s not. It’s making me crazy, Scarlet. This whole case is beginning to reek.” Given my friend’s penchant for proper police protocol, it was likely there would be head-butting if folks tried to contain the political fallout by doing damage control farther up the chain of command, where the decisions about law enforcement funding were made. Larry had a stubborn streak a mile wide and once you engaged it, she dug her heels in to the bitter end. She always said justice was supposed to be blind, not dumb, when it came to investigating the taking of a life. Getting a conviction was about doing right by the dead, even if the killer was connected to powerful people.

  “Why would someone want to murder the boy? Why not just go after Carmine and leave the kid out of it?” I wanted to know. “Or go after Lucille?”

  “That’s what doesn’t make a lot of sense to me, Miz Scarlet. It’s too easy to assume this is about his corruption.” She was playing with her car keys, passing them back and forth from hand to hand. I could see Larry was having trouble wrapping her head around the case.

  “In what way?”

  “It feels too cut and dried, like the ducks were shoved into line for us.” Larry’s long, elegant finger punctuated the air with three dramatic pokes. “Bing, bang, boom.”

  I pointed out what was obvious to me. “Killing the boy is hardly a deterrent. Won’t investigators just dig that much deeper into Fund Me?”

  “Maybe that’s what someone wants.” She rubbed her temple, frustrated.

  I paused a moment, straightening up the pile of mail on the console table in the foyer. Something didn’t seem right. What was it? That’s when I got my “ah ha!” moment.

  “It’s almost like someone doesn’t want you looking elsewhere. Maybe the political spin doctors are already at work, using this murder to affect the next election,” I commented. “Want a cup of coffee? I just made a fresh pot.”

  “I’d love one. Keep talking to me, Scarlet. I won’t necessarily answer you, but punch some holes in this for me.”

  I led the way to the kitchen, motioned for her to have a seat at the kitchen island, and grabbed a couple of mugs from the cabinet shelf, before I went to the refrigerator and found the cream pitcher.

  “How about a muffin with that coffee?”

  “That’d be great. I didn’t have time to eat.”

  “Oh? No lunch? In that case, would you like me to make you a grilled cheese and a cup of soup?”

  “I don’t want to impose.”

  Even as she said that, I was already reaching for the fry pan. I turned on the burner and added some butter to the bottom of the pan, keeping an eye on it as it melted. Opening the bread drawer, I took out a couple of slices of whole grain white, put a generous helping of Vermont cheddar between them, and slid the sandwich onto the hot buttered surface. While that was browning, I ladled out some minestrone from a plastic storage container in the refrigerator, filling the mug to the top, and put the soup into the microwave to heat up.

  “Wow, you’re ready good at this cooking thing, aren’t you?” I could hear the admiration in those words. Maybe Larry wasn’t good in the kitchen, but she sure was good hunting bad guys.

  “I can talk and grill at the same time,” I promised. “So, this case bothers you. Why?”

  As a state homicide investigator, Larry was a big believer in physical evidence and psychological profiling of suspects. She had told me more than once that it wasn’t enough to have a theory. That theory had to have legs that you could walk into the prosecutor’s office.

  “As you well know, I can’t talk about specifics of an investigation, Miz Scarlet. You’re a civilian. It’s not kosher.”

  “Right,” I nodded, humoring her. It was the usual warning I got from her when she wanted to brainstorm in a hypothetical fashion.

  “But if you have anything to say, feel free. I’m always happy to listen to amateurs spout their theories.”

  “Well, my first thought is this -- how do you know this mess wasn’t motivated by the indictment of Carmine Tossi? The guy’s been on the political scene for more than three decades. Isn’t it likely his hands have been dirty for years?”

  “And?” Larry took a sip of soup from her mug. “Mmm....”

  “Maybe someone’s afraid the indictment will stir up bigger fish. Maybe killing the boy was a message to Carmine that there’s more to come unless he keeps his mouth shut.”

  “Someone outside the Fund Me group?” Larry spooned some soup into her mouth as she considered the possibilities.

  “Someone with serious secrets,” I suggested. “If Carmine is pushed into a corner, isn’t he likely to make some kind of deal by offering up information on crimes committed by other people?”

  “Hmm....” The experienced homicide investigator watched me over the rim of her soup mug.

  “Maybe killing the boy was someone’s way of making sure Carmine didn’t cough up the details and get other folks into hot water.”

  “Or maybe that’s what the spin doctors are worried about, and their games are distracting me from finding the real killer,” she replied pensively.

  “You think they’re deliberately muddying the waters to obfuscate the evidence trail?”

  “When is Kenny coming?” asked Larry, suddenly changing the subject. Kenny Tolliver, my heartthrob, the love of my life, was in the process of moving to the Hartford area to start a branch office for Mercer Security. At the moment, he was back in Princeton, New Jersey, finalizing the sale of the home he shared with his late wife.

  “Tomorrow. Why?”

  “I’ll feel better when he’s here.” There was a troubled look in her eyes. She was holding something back, something she was reluctant to share.

  “Should I be worried? Would it be best if Bur stayed with us tonight?” I wanted to know. “I could ask him.”

  “I’m probably just over-thinking this, Scarlet. I’m cranky and stressed out, thanks to my parents’ visit and Michaela’s issues.”

  “But....” I left the sentence dangling, encouraging her to finish it. She gave me a little shrug.

  “But I thought I was being followed a couple of times today, when I was meeting with witnesses.”

  I tried to think of logical reasons why someone would follow her, in my effort to counter her fears. “How do you know it wasn’t some member of the press looking for the scoop or a private investigator working for Carmine’s lawyer?”

  “Or even some politico wanting to knock me off my feet,” sh
e added.

  “More coffee?” I inquired.

  She shook her head as the last few bites of the grilled cheese went into her mouth. When she was done swallowing, she wiped her mouth with her napkin, took a final sip of coffee, and sat back in her counter stool, satisfied.

  “Ah, thank you for being the voice of reason, Miz Scarlet. I’m so tired I can’t see straight. I haven’t slept well for three nights now. You’re probably right. It’s just my overactive imagination giving me the willies.” Larry sighed, stretching her long limbs before climbing down from her seat. “I’m seeing the bogey man behind every corner.”

  “Perhaps.” On second thought, the state homicide investigator certainly had her share of male admirers, but there were also a number of convicted felons, male and female, who probably wanted to harm her. Should I remind her? I weighed my options and decided to err on the side of caution. “Or maybe you really do have a stalker.”