“You mean Tania? I haven’t seen her all day,” Lottie replied, exaggerating the truth a little. “Why? Didn’t she show up for work? I thought this was her day off?”
“As far as I’m concerned, she can have the rest of the century off! She’s fired!” snapped Rachel.
Lottie blinked in surprise. “That’s a bit harsh. I know Tania’s a bit slip-shot, but she’s a hard worker and I thought she did a good job for you folks. Surely whatever the problem is can be resolved. What did she do that was so wrong?”
“Don’t pretend you don’t know,” Rachel sneered. “I bet you two have been having a right good laugh behind my back! Well, I won’t stand for it! You hear me! I won’t stand for it!” Rachel bellowed, her voice shaking the rafters.
Doris put her gnarled hands to her mouth and looked ready to pass out. “Please,” she moaned from behind her spindly fingers, “you’ll wake the Ambassador!”
It was time to put this madness to an end. “I think they can hear you in the next state, Rachel,” Lottie said in a glacially cool voice, “but I still have no idea what you’re talking about, and if you don’t stop distressing Miss. Lefebvre, I’m going to have to call the Sheriff’s department. Now, can you please just tell me what Tania’s supposed to have done, and speak a bit more quietly if you don’t mind?”
Rachel pursed her lips together and scowled. “Okay, okay,” she said, in a relenting voice. “I shouldn’t have yelled like that. Sorry, Doris.”
“So you should be,” Doris said sternly. “Make sure you apologise to the Ambassador as well.”
Rachel gave her a withering look but nodded. “I’ll do that.” She looked at Lottie and sighed heavily, the anger leeching out of her.
“I’m sorry for yelling at you too, Lottie. I know you’re too nice to laugh at me behind my back.” Her red face went a shade darker as she added; “You’re not like her!”
“I’ll make us all some coffee and we can sit down and talk about this,” Lottie said in a conciliatory voice. “I’m sure we can sort this out.”
Rachel shook her head. “Not this time. Your diplomatic skills might be the stuff of legend in Lincolne Bay but you’re not shielding Tania from my fury this time. If you do know where she is you better tell me. She has a lot of explaining to do.”
“I genuinely don’t,” Lottie said. “I’ve been trying to get hold of her all day. To be honest, she landed me with babysitting duty before tearing off somewhere without saying where she was going. It’s very irresponsible and I’m a bit mad at her too.”
“Being a bit mad is an understatement,” Rachel said coldly. “Look, if you see her before I do, tell her not to bother coming into work again and to leave my husband alone.”
Lottie raised her eyebrows. “Your husband?”
“I found his phone, the secret one he kept to stay in touch with her,” Rachel went on. “They’ve been seeing each for weeks now. Right under my nose!”
Lottie knew she should have been shocked, but after what Pacey had told her about his mom, she had a sneaky feeling Trevor was one of Tania’s chumps.
“Oh, Rachel I’m so sorry,” she said with genuine sympathy. Lottie knew only too well what it felt like to be the cheated on by her spouse. “Please believe me I really had no idea of what was going on. Tania is very secretive when it comes to her romantic life.”
“Okay, okay, it doesn’t matter anyway. It’s all over town by now. I’ll go now but I’m going to come back later to have it out with her. She’s going to pay for this,” Rachel said darkly and stormed out of the lobby.
“Oh my goodness, how frightfully ghastly!” Doris exclaimed from behind the counter. “Such a scandal! The Ambassador will be most distressed!”
Lottie smiled wearily. When she came back to Lincolne Bay to take over the running of the Sleepy Fox after her dad had died, Lottie had intended to move into the old family home.
Unfortunately in the latter part of dad’s life, the business had run into money troubles and Lottie had decided to sell the house rather than take out another mortgage or a loan, as it would mean generating more debt.
The house had been snapped up pretty quickly and Lottie moved into the Joseph Bonaparte as a temporary measure. Doris was a friend of the family and had been extremely kind to her mother when she lost the baby before having Lottie, and she had grown up very much thinking of Doris as an aunt.
As a child, Lottie had spent many hours exploring the ancient hotel and playing in the expansive gardens. Even back then, the Bonaparte was in decline and Doris had always been something of an eccentric, to say the least. She had barely changed a bit when Lottie met her again and booked in to stay, but the hotel was in a mess and she had no one to help her.
Lottie started doing little chores around the place when she could fit them in with working at the bakery, and tried to organise some staff to help Doris before she got herself fixed up with some more permanent accommodation. Unfortunately, nobody stayed around long enough and Lottie didn’t have the heart to leave her to it. As a consequence, Lottie had ended up living and helping out at the hotel permanently.
She just thanked her lucky stars that she had support in the rotund form of the capable and indispensable Betsy Cromer, who worked part-time at the bakery, to help her juggle her many commitments.
“Let’s not worry about him for the time being,” Lottie said coming behind the counter. “You go sit down out back and take some time to calm down. I’ll make you a nice cup of tea and put together some dinner for us. It looks like I’ll be cooking for Pacey as well.”
“Thank you,” Doris said, patting Lottie on the hand. “You’re a good girl Shelia.”
“It’s Lottie.”
Doris nodded her head vigorously. “I know, you’re right, it is quite potty. I don’t know what the world’s coming to.”
Deciding not to press the point any further, Lottie ushered Doris into the private office behind the reception desk and made her a cup of tea. While the older woman sipped contentedly on her hot beverage, she went to check on Pacey.
He had finished his chess game and was now watching cartoons on the TV in the sitting room. First though, he had managed to take down the drapes down from the window and had wrapped them round himself to make a toga.
“I’m a Roman Emperor,” he announced grandly to an exasperated Lottie.
After coaxing him out of his new outfit and hanging up the drapes again as best as she could, Lottie left him to his cartoons and went into the kitchen to find them all something to eat.
She tried calling Tania again while she put together a makeshift dinner of spaghetti meatballs with grated cheese. There was still no response, and Lottie was becoming more anxious.
Even by Tania’s standards, this was grossly irresponsible. She thought about Rachel and her threat of retribution and began to worry that the disgruntled wife would come back and cause more upset for Doris. She also didn’t want Pacey getting caught up in the fall out of all this mess either.
She had a growing suspicion that Tania’s gallivanting was fuelling his strange behaviour and if things weren’t rectified soon, there would be some serious consequences for the both of them.
“Hi, Tania, this is like the nine billionth message I’ve left for you now,” she said wearily when her phone went through to voicemail again. “Can you call me as soon as you get this, something really bad has happened. Rachel knows about you and Trevor and she’s on the warpath. I don’t want Pacey getting caught up in this. You better sort it out if you know what’s good for you.”
Lottie sounded a lot harsher than she meant to be, but it couldn’t be helped. Her patience was severely frayed by now. It had been a long day and she was nearly past the point of exhaustion. Tania would have to do some serious making up to her when she finally showed her face again.
The meal rallied her spirits though and as they ate together in the once grand dining room, Pacey demanded more stories from Doris about the Bonaparte’s heyday.
Despite telling them over and over again, Pacey loved to hear them and Doris loved talking about the central mainstay of her life. She came to life during these retellings and was no longer the nervous and eccentric old woman that Lottie grew up with. It made Lottie feel good to see Doris so happy, but you could never quite be sure what was actual fact and what was the product of Doris’ imagination as she related her sometimes bizarre and outrageous tales.
According to the old lady, the hotel was founded by her great, great, great, great grandfather, Emile Lefebvre, who was employed by Joseph Bonaparte, the older brother of Napoleon, when he lived at Point Breeze in New Jersey during the early years of the nineteenth century.
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Donuts And Dead (Sleepy Fox Cafe Cozy Mystery Book 2) Page 12
