Inside Out: A Heather's Forge Cozy Mystery, Book 5

by N. L. Cameron

  One of these days, I would make a match between these sketches and a map of town. Then I would understand a lot more about what these tunnels were supposed to be used for. I suspected it wasn’t anything good.

  I headed for the inn and locked the door behind me. I climbed up the ladder and dropped the trapdoor into place. I passed through the door into the wine cellar and collided head first with Eliza coming the other way. “Holy smokes, girl!” she exclaimed. “You scared the bejeezus out of me.”

  My hand flew to my heart. “Eliza! What are you doing here?”

  “I came to see what you’re up to. I asked Camille where you were. No one could find you. She said you’ve been spending a lot of time down here in the basement—cleaning or something. What are you doing down here? The place looks clean enough to me.”

  “I wasn’t doing anything. Come on. Let’s get out of here.”

  “What’s that?” She indicated my notebook.

  “It’s nothing. I was just taking inventory of the stores and stuff. Come on. I’ll give you dinner upstairs.”

  I hurried out of the basement. To my relief, Eliza followed and asked no more questions. In a few minutes, I had her sitting in a chair in my apartment with a glass of expensive wine in front of her.

  I worked around my kitchen to make her a meal, now that Camille was finished for the day. I hadn’t cooked in a while. I didn’t have time these days, but now that I set to work to distract Eliza with food, I got into it the way I used to. I wasn’t the chef Camille was, but I could still hold my own.

  I regaled Eliza with chit-chat while I worked. “You should have seen the junk I found down in the basement. That root cellar was a sight. It looks like a couple generations of inn owners just shoved anything back there they didn’t want to bother taking to the dump. I need a backhoe and a dump truck to get rid of it all.”

  “Is that what you’ve been doing down there these last few days?”

  “I’ve had my eye on it ever since I first moved to Heather’s Forge. I never had time to do the job before—not that I really have time for it now. I just dash down there any time I have a few seconds to spare. I wouldn’t be surprised if I spend a few months getting it cleaned up.”

  “What is a root cellar, anyway?” she asked. “Nobody talks about root cellars anymore.”

  “That’s because we’ve all got refrigerators and supermarkets and freezers. We don’t need root cellars to store food the whole year. This one definitely hasn’t been used in a long time.”

  “Can’t you get Levi or Lexi or one of your staff to clean it out?” she asked. “Why do you have to do that job? You’re the boss around here. You should delegate.”

  “I want to clean it. I like getting my hands dirty and getting after it sometimes. I don’t want the staff to have all the fun.”

  “That’s not what I call fun,” Eliza grumbled. “Now planning and executing one of your parties—that’s what I call fun.”

  I turned around from the counter and put the food on the table. “You want to know what I call fun? Some of my guests want me to come up with a scavenger hunt attraction where they go around town in search of all the clues to the murder mysteries I solved. That sounds like a lot of fun.”

  Eliza’s eyes flew open. “No way! You have to do it! You have to let me help you plan it and organize it.”

  I grinned at her and sat down. “How did I know you would be into this? I’ve got four enthusiastic guests running a trial on it right now. There’s some legwork to do before we can roll it out, but I think it’s gonna be great. The main thing is to make it an independent activity. I made the mistake of taking them on a major tour of the sites. It took all day. I don’t want to do that again. I want to be able to hand them a booklet at the front desk and they go off alone to entertain themselves all day long. That’s my idea of fun.”

  “You could charge for that, too. You could make it into a money-spinner.”

  “I would have clues planted for them to find. I would have fake Egyptian stuff down by the stream. I would have a map through the museum to find the real things and maybe some other stuff. What do you think?”

  “I think you’re brilliant.”

  “Well, I might be brilliant, but you don’t have to say I’m a brilliant chef. You just have to eat the food I put in front of you.”

  She willingly took up her fork, and a moment later, we both fell silent stuffing the food into our mouths. After we both satisfied our hunger, conversation started up again. I sat on my notebook so she wouldn’t see it and start asking awkward questions about the basement again.

  “How are you doing?” I asked. “How are things at the store? Are your parents okay with Smitty getting arrested and everything?”

  “Oh, they’re not happy about it,” she returned. “They’ll get over it, though. It’s about time somebody took him down a peg. He always was full of himself, and if he did anything wrong, he should go away for a long time.”

  “Wow!” I exclaimed. “You’re doing a lot better with all this than you were this afternoon.”

  “I’m not gonna lose any sleep over him,” she replied. “He should go away for a long time just for causing Mom and Dad the worry. That’s what I say.”

  “Well, I don’t see him going away for a long time over this. All he did was cut a few keys and pass them on to Freddy. Freddy would have found a way into the museum without those keys. We still don’t know who hired him, and murder suspects keep popping up all over the place.”

  “They do?” Eliza asked. “Who?”

  “It seems the Heather’s Forge jail isn’t as secure as it ought to be. There are a few people who knew that and could have broken into Freddy’s cell to kill him. That’s all we know, and I don’t think Sheriff Mills would thank me for discussing it with you.”

  She narrowed her eyes at me. “Don’t tell me you’re putting Sheriff Mills’ feelings before mine. I thought I was your accomplice.”

  “I think the word you’re looking for is ‘sidekick.’ An accomplice is someone who helps you commit a crime, kinda like Smitty helping Freddy break into the museum. You’re not my accomplice. You’re my sidekick—although I don’t think you’re even that.”

  “What am I, then?”

  “You’re my best friend, and that’s all I really want you to be.”

  She hunched her head between her shoulders. “Levi is your sidekick. That’s who’s your real sidekick.”

  “I don’t have a sidekick, sweetie,” I replied. “If anything, I’m Levi’s sidekick. He’s the real detective around here. Even Sheriff Mills said so. I’m just a wannabe.”

  “Levi keeps saying you’re the detective,” Eliza countered. “Which is it?”

  I had to laugh. “Neither of us are detectives. We’re just nosey. That’s all.”

  Chapter 6

  Levi opened his truck door for me, and we got out in front of Cooker’s Shack in town. He offered me his arm, and we walked in together. Cooker’s Shack wasn’t a fancy place to go for a dinner date, but it was always nice to be wined and dined by Levi. He held the door open for me, and Carrie Cooker led us to a table in the back, away from the noise and commotion.

  Levi held out my chair until I sat down. He smiled at me over the wine glasses. “So, what is it tonight? Side of murder with a main dish of tunnel fever?”

  I laughed at him. “Touché.”

  “Come on. Isn’t there any way I can take your mind off the case or those tunnels? A less secure guy than me might start to get jealous. You think more about those tunnels than you do about me.”

  I blushed. “That’s because you’re not a mystery for me to solve.”

  “Oh. I’m not?” He frowned in such a comic way I had to laugh again. “Well, I’ll have to try harder, won’t I?”

  “Don’t do that,” I told him. “Just keep being the same as you are now. I don’t want you to be any different.”

  “That’s good, because I don’t have any more damning secrets to keep you in
terested.”

  I slipped my hand across the table to take his. “You’re interesting enough as it is, and I didn’t like finding out your secret. I would have been happier if you never had one, so if you have any more, tell me now and we’ll get it out in the open.”

  He cocked his head to one side. “What about you? Do you have any secrets to get out in the open?”

  I looked away. I couldn’t stop thinking about Beatrice. She’d sure had a secret. She was related to the Calliwells somehow. If she wasn’t related to them by marriage, she almost had been.

  None of this made sense. Everything I knew about my aunt and her time in Heather’s Forge was wrong. She’d had a romance with Sheriff Mills in her younger days. I found out about that while investigating her murder. That relationship ended, and he got involved with her best friend, Glenda Garner.

  As far as I knew, Beatrice never had another romantic relationship in her life. She always came across as a spinster. That Bible threw a major wrench in my whole idea of my aunt. Who was she really? What was she really? What if I found out more secrets about her, like she had children or something? What if I wasn’t the legal heir to the Barrell Inn?

  I shook that notion out of my head. It was impossible. My name was right there in her will. The lawyers and everybody proved it before I came up here to take possession.

  Levi squeezed my hand and snapped me out of my reverie. I found him staring at me. How long had I been sitting there in silence without even noticing him in front of me? My cheeks burned. “Sorry.”

  He put his head on one side. “You don’t look all that great. Have you been sleeping well?”

  I couldn’t look at him. How could I tell him I hadn’t been sleeping at all? I spent all my time down in the tunnels, even the time I should have been sleeping. He would flip if he found out. He already thought I wasn’t taking care of myself and I shouldn’t be down there in the first place. What if I collapsed from exhaustion or something and couldn’t run the inn? Still, I never thought twice about giving up on the tunnels.

  I swam up from another preoccupation to notice him regarding me with his usual calm. I stared down at the tablecloth. I was really losing it. Here I was on a candlelit dinner date with the most perfect guy on the planet, and I couldn’t even pay attention to him. I couldn’t focus on anything but the tunnels.

  This had to stop. I fought my way back and did my best to smile at him. It didn’t work out too well, though.

  “Do you want to talk about it?” he asked.

  Boy, did I ever want to talk about it, but I couldn’t. What could I say? Where would I begin—at the part where I flouted his wishes by going into the tunnels when I should have been resting? I couldn’t tell him that. I couldn’t tell him any of it.

  The food came, and he set to work with fork and knife while I pushed my food around on my plate. I’d let him down big time. I knew that, but I still couldn’t snap out of it.

  Out of nowhere, he started talking. “I was thinking you might like to take a trip to the big city next month, just the two of us. Neither of us has been there in over a year. We could do all the nightlife and everything. We could paint the town red, so to speak, before we come back up here to hibernate for another year. What do you say?”

  I stared at him. “Do you really mean it?”

  “Why not? We both lived there for a long time. We both know how to do it right and enjoy ourselves. I’m sure the inn would be fine without both of us for a few weeks. We could go and let our hair down and come back refreshed. How does that sound?”

  “It sounds great. I never really thought about going back, but now that you mention it, it sounds great. I thought you wanted to stay away from all that.”

  “I wanted to stay away from police work,” he replied, “and I won’t be doing that. I’ll be going to have a good time with you. Besides, it would do you good to get away from all your concerns around the inn. You need some downtime—as long as you don’t have an event planned. If you do, we can arrange to take the trip after your event so you don’t have anything distracting you or preoccupying you.”

  I blushed again. So, that’s what this was all about. He wanted to get me away from the tunnels and the murder cases and the inn and events and all the things that weighed me down. He wanted me to relax and forget.

  I would give anything to do that. I really would. What I wouldn’t give to turn my back on all this, just for a little while. I squeezed his hand and rubbed my thumb over his knuckles. What did I ever do to deserve a guy like this? He really cared. At every turn, he concerned himself with my best interest. Even when he did things I didn’t like, he did them out of concern for me.

  “I would love to go on a trip to the city with you. I would really love it.”

  “Great. As soon as you finish planning your next event and you’ve got the date locked in, you let me know. We’ll arrange to leave town as soon as it’s over. I’m sure Camille can run things while we’re gone. She’s got enough staff now, and she ran the inn for months after your aunt died.”

  “I’m sure she can,” I agreed. “She’s been telling me the same thing for weeks.”

  He pointed his fork at my plate. “Are you gonna eat that?”

  I pushed the plate away. “I’m sorry. I just don’t have much appetite these days.”

  “Well, if you change your mind and decide you want to talk about it, I’m always here and ready to listen. Things might make better sense if you talked them over with someone.”

  I was certain they would, but somehow, I just couldn’t bring myself to confide in him. He’d kept his past from me, so maybe this wasn’t much different.

  He waved Carrie Cooker over to our table and handed her his credit card. “Hey!” I exclaimed. “What are you doing?”

  “I’m paying,” he replied. “You’re not eating and I’m finished. That means we’re done here.”

  My face fell. “I don’t want our date to be over yet.”

  “Oh, our date isn’t over by a mile. We’re finished with Cooker’s Shack, but you’ll have to get up pretty early in the morning to be finished with me, young lady.”

  I had to smile at that. “Don’t you start calling me young lady. Only Sheriff Mills calls me that, and I don’t need you calling me that, too.”

  He laughed. “I know. That’s why I said it. I thought if I talked like him, I could get you to smile, and it worked. Come on. Let’s take a walk on the green. That should cheer you up.”

  We walked out into the chilly moonlight. Ghost shadows hung around the town. Dim clouds of mist hung around the streetlights and gave the town green an eerie glow. Knowing what I did about the tunnels under the town lent the whole place a mysterious atmosphere. This town harbored more secrets than I knew what to do with.

  At first, I thought the town’s history made it interesting and quirky. Now it struck me as ominous and foreboding. Murderers and conspirators roamed these streets. Who would they target next? I drew closer to Levi and took his hand. His bulky presence gave me a warm sensation of protection from whatever might be out there.

  He pulled me in close. He would always protect me from anything that came along. I’d never trusted anybody the way I trusted him. He understood the danger better than anyone.

  He guided my footsteps across the street toward the green. An inky shape emerged from the mist, crossed the lawn in front of us, and vanished once again into the trees outside of town. I stopped in my tracks. “Was that Pixie?”

  “Crazy cat,” Levi muttered. “Leave it to her to show up now, of all times.”

  We walked on. Pixie, the inn cat, always showed up at the best of times and the worst of times. Knowing she was at large in this town only added to the mystique. She could be up to anything. She could be saving lost children from life-threatening danger. She could be digging up evidence in this town’s many criminal cases. She could be up to anything imaginable.

  Levi directed my steps away from Pixie. Whatever she was up to, it could wait unti
l morning, at least. He headed for the gazebo hovering in a veil of mist. The nearest streetlight cast an unearthly glow over it. It created a bubble of magical whiteness separate from the rest of the town.

  He stepped up into the gazebo and pulled me in after him. It enveloped us in a surreal envelope of dreamy cloud. We might as well have been the only people in the world. We couldn’t see Heather’s Forge, or the Cooker’s Shack parking lot, or any other part of the town. We were alone.

  Levi moved nearer, and his arm slipped around my shoulders. I snuggled into his big soft halo. His chest and back warmed my arms under his jacket. I fell into his aura and let the rest of the world slip away. This moment was all I needed to be content and happy.

  He didn’t have to take me to the city to get my mind off my many distractions. He only had to bring me here where I couldn’t see them.

  He wrapped his powerful arms around my shoulders. “You’re cold. We should get you home.”

  “I don’t want to go yet,” I told him. “Just a little longer.”

  “I’ll make you a deal,” he replied. “You get into my truck with the heater on, and I’ll kiss you.”

  I jumped back in mock surprise. “Kiss me! Are you nuts? What kind of girl do you think I am? You’re trying to take advantage of me.”

  “All right,” he chuckled. “You get into my truck with the heater on, and I’ll drive you home without trying to kiss you.”

  I hugged around his ribs. “You better kiss me in your truck, or I’ll have no choice but to declare this date null and void. You’ll have to keep doing it until you get it right.”

  He jumped back and gave a flourishing bow. He swept one arm across his stomach and the other brushed the gazebo floor. “I would be honored to do it again and again until it meets your standards of excellence.”

  “Great. Now, where’s this truck of yours?”

  I already knew, but I let him break the spell by leading us out into the crisp still night. A moment later, we sat in the cozy dark of his pickup. The dashboard lights illuminated his face, and the heater pumped toasty warm air all over me.