by Jan Fields
“I will,” Alice said. “So, the handyman?”
“Oh, right. Richard’s actually down in the cellar checking out the Christmas decorations to see what still works, and what we’ll need to replace.” She glanced at her watch, and then turned to the young clerk. “Can you show these ladies to the cellar door, Rachel? I’m expecting a couple of people for job interviews. I never get a slow moment.”
“Thanks for your help,” Alice said. Then she passed over the Divine Décor catalog she’d brought. “I wanted to give you the new catalog too.”
“Oh, great. Does it have holiday things yet?”
“Of course.”
The other woman immediately began leafing through the catalog as Annie and Alice followed Rachel. She took them through the dining room, and then the kitchen. The door to the cellar was at the back of the kitchen storeroom.
“Do I need to come down with you?” she asked hesitantly. “The cellar creeps me out.”
“No, we’ll be fine,” Annie answered, patting the girl on the arm. Rachel quickly hurried off as Annie and Alice headed down the narrow wooden stairs to the cellar.
Annie turned to Alice as they walked and asked, “Do you know this fellow?”
Alice nodded. “Richard Bent. He’s a nice guy.”
They reached the bottom and looked around. The cellar was a maze of cement walls and dim lighting. “I can see why this gives that girl the creeps,” Alice said, then she raised her voice. “Richard? Are you down here?”
“Over here,” a man’s voice answered. “Who’s there?”
Alice and Annie followed the voice, coming to a fairly large room lined with deep shelves. Dusty cardboard boxes filled the shelves, except for the few that lay on the floor, their contents partially emptied. In the middle of the disarray, a tall, thin man in jeans and a baggy brown henley shirt was standing over a wire-frame reindeer, plugging in the lights that were strung around the reindeer’s frame.
Like the innkeeper, he smiled brightly at Alice. “Hello! It’s not often I get visited by lovely ladies while I’m in the bowels of the Maplehurst. How can I help you?”
Alice quickly introduced him to Annie. “We wanted to ask you about the person who bumped into you on the stairs when the lights were out at the ball.”
“Oh, I didn’t see the guy,” Richard said. “I was using my cell phone for a flashlight, and it’s pretty dark down here when the lights are on, so you can imagine what it’s like by cell-phone glow.”
“But you know it was a man?” Annie said.
“Oh, yeah, I saw him that well before he knocked the phone out of my hand. Plus, he ran into me pretty hard. I’d have known if it had been a woman.”
“Do you remember any details about him at all?” Annie asked.
Richard paused, thinking a moment. “Well, he had his head ducked, so I couldn’t see his face. His hair looked dark, but that could have been from the poor lighting. Anything less than snow-white hair would look dark, I think. It was hard to judge his height, but I don’t think he was short. And we both could fit on the stairs, so he couldn’t have been fat. Does that help at all? Why do you want to know anyway?”
“Someone stole a hair comb from Annie in the dark,” Alice said. “We’re just wondering if the guy you ran into might have been the one who turned out the lights.”
Richard shrugged. “Hard to say. I figured it was someone trying to turn the lights back on.” He gestured around the cellar. “It’s hard to find anything down here, so if one of the waiters or cooks had come down, wanting to be helpful, he probably couldn’t have found the fuse box.”
“Well, thanks for your time,” Annie said.
“No problem,” Richard said. “It’s nice to have the break. I’m getting really tired of Rudolph here. He’s Linda’s favorite, but I can’t get him to light up.” Then he shrugged. “Oh well, back to making Christmas magic.”
“Good luck,” Alice said.
Annie and Alice walked back through the dusty cellar and headed upstairs. “So did we learn anything useful?” Alice asked.
“We know that whoever took the hair comb is not the person who turned out the lights,” Annie said. “If Richard ran into the man on the steps, that person couldn’t have been upstairs grabbing my hair comb. He’d have to be in two places at once.”
“So that leaves out John again,” Alice said.
Annie nodded. “And it means Sunny could only have done it if Harry was willing to go turn out the lights for her. I really can’t see them pulling off something like this. I know Harry has done some unfortunate things, but that just seems ridiculous.”
“You could argue that for anyone,” Alice responded. “Why go to so much trouble for a piece of jewelry that probably wouldn’t sell for more than a hundred dollars on a good day?”
Annie shook her head. Then she stopped suddenly, causing Alice to bump into her. As she looked across the inn’s lobby, she couldn’t believe her eyes.
16
Coming out of the door behind the front desk, Annie recognized Sunny Day walking beside Linda Hunter. Then Annie remembered her conversation with the young woman at the dark restaurant in Storm Harbor. Apparently Sunny had made good on her plan to try for a better job at Maplehurst Inn.
“What’s the matter?” Alice whispered.
“That young woman,” Annie replied softly. “That’s Sunny Day, Harry’s date for the ball.”
Alice looked over at the younger woman. “Well, she’s not wearing a scarf,” she said. “We could check for cat-scratch scars.”
Just then, Sunny glanced in their direction and spotted Annie. She said some final thing to Linda, and then she hurried over. “Oh, hello! I did it! I got a job here.” She stopped and looked around. “It’s not quite as fancy as it was at that party, but it has to be better than that dump I’ve been working in.”
“It’s definitely better lit,” Annie said mildly.
Sunny giggled. “Yep, which means I won’t have to check the food for wildlife before I carry it to the table.”
That thought made Annie feel queasy, but very glad she hadn’t ordered any food at the dark restaurant. She could see Sunny’s neck plainly with the young woman’s low-cut blouse and though there were some fading red marks, they clearly weren’t from a cat.
“Well, I hope you’ll be happy working here,” Annie said.
Sunny snuck a look at her watch. “Thanks, I’ve got to run. I still have a last shift in that pit.” She giggled. “I’m really looking forward to handing in that resignation.”
Annie and Alice watched her hurry away. “She really doesn’t seem like a criminal mastermind type,” Alice said quietly.
“Not really.”
Linda waved them over to the front desk, and Annie stood quietly as Linda chatted with Alice about some of the things she’d seen in the catalog. Then Annie drifted over to the French doors that lead into the large dining room, the room that had been the ballroom during the party. The alcove where she’d been standing now held a single table, making a nice out-of-the-way nook.
Annie realized that standing in the nook would have made it easier for someone to find her and grab the hair comb. The person could use the wall line to avoid losing direction or running into anyone. That would mean someone standing near the wall already would have an easier time. Annie squinted, trying to picture the people she’d noticed after the theft. Which of them had stood close to the wall?
She was so deep in thought that she jumped and yelped when a hand came down on her shoulder.
“Sorry,” Alice said. “I didn’t mean to scare you. What are you doing?”
“Trying to remember who was standing where when the lights went out.” Annie pointed toward the alcove. “The easiest way to reach me would have been to follow the wall line. If someone ran his hand along the wall, he could easily find the alcove. Then he could just grab the hair comb when I spoke and identified my position.”
“That would work,” Alice said, “but I don’t
really remember where people were standing. I was focused on us.”
Annie sighed. “So was I. By the time I really looked around after the lights came on, people could have shifted positions quite a bit.” She smiled a bit ruefully. “Seems none of our good ideas are really getting us any closer to solving this mystery.”
Alice patted her friend on the arm. “We’ll sort it out. For now, I think we’re done here. You still need to go to the post office?”
Annie nodded, and they turned to walk out of the ballroom. From the lobby, they could see through the long windows that flanked the doubled front doors and showed the front porch. What they saw made them both stop.
John MacFarlane stood on the porch, smiling down at Sunny Day. The young woman leaned toward him with her hand on his arm. The overall effect was flirty and very intimate. “That jerk,” Alice muttered.
They stepped back into the ballroom, not wanting to step out on the porch as long as they’d have to interact with John. “Well, that looked cozy,” Alice said. “Maybe Sunny turned out the lights so John could grab your hair comb.”
“I thought you’d eliminated him as a suspect,” Annie said.
“That’s before I saw him practically bobbing for apples in that young woman’s neckline,” Alice grumbled.
“I don’t think it was quite that bad.”
“Still, they looked pretty friendly,” Alice said. “Why wouldn’t John swipe something if he wanted to give a present to his new girlfriend.”
“But what about Harry Stevens?” Annie asked. “Besides, Richard said he was sure it was a man on the cellar steps.”
“He said it was dark,” Alice reminded her. “Richard could have been wrong.”
Annie looked at her friend skeptically. “Can you imagine any man running straight into Sunny Day and confusing her for a man?”
“OK, I give,” Alice grumbled, holding up her hands in surrender.
They fell silent then as John passed by them, heading across the lobby. Alice stiffened as if she were considering going after him, but then her shoulders slumped and she said, “Let’s go to the post office.”
When they pulled into the parking lot at the post office, Alice turned to Annie, “If you don’t mind, I’m going to wait in the car. I’m feeling grumpy enough without a chat with Norma.”
“No problem.”
Annie carried her project bag into the post office and peered at the spinning rack of padded envelopes and boxes, trying to decide which size she needed. She picked up a small box and held it up beside the bundle of fabric.
“An envelope ought to be plenty big enough,” Norma said from behind the counter. “Unless you’ve got money to throw away.”
“Do any of us have that?” Annie asked as she pulled out a padded envelope and carried it to the counter. She pushed in the fabric and wrote LeeAnn’s address on the outside before handing the package over to Norma.
The older woman took hold of the glasses that hung around her neck on a beaded chain and slipped them on. She peered at the address. “They don’t have fabric shops in Texas?”
Annie smiled, and decided to try a little New England frugality. “Why buy fabric when I can give it to her? Saves money.”
“Good thinking,” Norma said approvingly. She laid the package on the scale as the door to the post office opened. Annie turned, wondering if Alice had gotten tired of waiting in the car. Instead she saw Mary Beth walk in.
“Hi,” Annie said. “Did you see Alice outside?”
“I did and promised to rush you out,” Mary Beth replied, smiling.
Norma cleared her throat, pulling attention back to her. She told Annie the price of the postage and Annie quickly paid, stepping aside so Mary Beth could step up and ask for some stamps.
“So, you and Alice are sleuthing today?” Mary Beth asked, risking the wrath of Norma by turning away from the counter while Norma rooted around for the special stamps Mary Beth wanted.
“Not very effectively,” Annie said.
Norma cleared her throat again, pushing the stamps across the counter and collecting Mary Beth’s money. “The diner’s just down the road,” Norma said gruffly. “It’s a nice place to chat.”
Annie almost laughed at Norma’s grumpy hint that she didn’t like chitchat in the post office. She caught sight of a mischievous sparkle in Mary Beth’s eye. “I heard you saw the young woman from the ball,” Mary Beth said, casually turning away from the counter.
“We did,” Annie said, “but that was not the high point of the investigation for Alice.”
The smile slipped from Mary Beth’s face. “I know this has been tough for Alice. I’m glad to see she’s showing some spirit though. Honestly, Annie, you wouldn’t have known her when she first came home.”
The post office door opened again and both women turned to look as Norma tried another throat clearing to move them along. Harry Stevens stepped through the door, carrying a small stack of packages. He took one look at Annie and Mary Beth, and then glanced back at the door as if considering a strategic retreat.
“May I help you?” Norma called.
“Um, yeah,” Harry carried the boxes to the counter, stepping carefully around Annie and Mary Beth, but not speaking to them. “Got some stuff to mail for my father.” He pushed the pile of packages onto the counter, and Norma began to weigh them.
Annie and Mary Beth moved back toward the door as Harry finished his business. When he finally turned to leave, Mary Beth said, “I heard Sunny Day was getting a job here in Stony Point. That’ll be nice.”
He looked at them in surprise. “At the diner?”
“No, at Maplehurst Inn.”
He frowned slightly. “Linda hired her?”
“That is how someone gets a job at the inn,” Mary Beth said drily.
Harry shrugged. “It’s nothing to me. We just went to that party together. We’re not together.”
“Well, considering that girl is probably less than ten years older than your daughter, that’s good,” Mary Beth said.
Annie looked at her friend in surprise. In many ways, Mary Beth was practically the town mom. She was always so warm and welcoming, but she was going after Harry like a shark in a tuna tank.
Harry shifted uncomfortably. “Look, she dumped me, OK? Is that what you wanted to know? But it didn’t have anything to do with my age! She wanted a guy with more money.” Then he pushed past the two women and stormed out of the post office.
“You two sure add a ray of sunshine to this place,” Norma said drily. “You want me to get you some chairs? You can wait for the next customer to run off.”
Mary Beth turned to smile at Norma. “I’d take you up on that, but I need to get back to the shop. You’ll just have to run people off on your own.”
With that, she took Annie’s arm and they left. Out on the sidewalk, Mary Beth started giggling, and soon she had Annie laughing too. Finally, Alice got out of her car to see what was so funny. Mary Beth admitted to giving Norma a hard time.
“I saw Harry Stevens storm out,” Alice said, grinning. “Did you have anything to do with that as well?”
“Maybe a little,” Mary Beth said. “You’ll have to get Annie to catch you up though, I have to get back to the shop so Kate can go to lunch.” She waved brightly as she hurried away.
Annie told Alice what they’d learned from Harry.
Alice snorted. “Well, that young woman is clearly misled if she thinks John is going to be her big spender.”
“He does look like he has money. I can certainly see how Sunny Day would get that impression,” Annie said as they walked back to Alice’s car. The drive back to Grey Gables was quiet, with each woman lost in her own thoughts. Annie went over the mystery, though she suspected it was something much more personal that kept Alice so quiet.
Annie hopped out at Grey Gables and waved as Alice pulled around and headed back to her own driveway. The day had been full of revelations, but Annie wasn’t sure if any of them actually helped solve the
mystery.
They knew that someone was in the cellar at Maplehurst Inn and intentionally turned out the lights. That someone was probably the man who ran into Richard Bent on the steps. They knew that Harry and Sunny had not been a serious couple and that Sunny had not been scratched by a cat.
Annie had glanced at Harry’s hands in the post office, but they were covered with the normal scratches and scrapes of a fisherman. She couldn’t have said for sure that none might have been from Boots. But she also could see no reason why he would be playing games with the lights at the ball.
Annie stopped beside her burgundy Malibu and patted it absently as she thought about Sunny’s apparent relationship with John MacFarlane. She supposed it was possible the two had known each other before, but neither showed signs of cat scratches. The whole idea felt too much like a conspiracy theory to her.
An odd sense of something being out of place drew Annie’s attention to where her hand rested on the car. That’s when she realized her passenger-side door was open a crack. Certainly she couldn’t have driven the car with the door open, but she’d had no one in the car in over a week.
Annie pulled the door the rest of the way open and looked inside. She opened the glove box and saw her normal items, now in disarray. Someone had definitely been in her car! Since there was nothing of value in the car, she wasn’t surprised to find nothing missing.
As Annie slid back out of the car, she struggled to remember clearly if she’d locked up after she used it last. She’d tried to get into the habit of locking up carefully after someone had broken into her car in the past, but she had to admit she didn’t always remember, especially when her mind was on other things.
She turned nervous eyes toward Grey Gables. If someone had been in her car, were they in her house now? Annie reached into her project bag for her cell phone. Should she call Ian? Alice? Chief Edwards? Who did she least mind taking the risk of looking like a hysterical female in front of?
None. She dropped the phone back into her bag and marched up the steps. The front door was locked as she’d left it, and she gave a small sigh of relief. As she stepped inside, Boots trotted up to her and threaded through her legs.
