Bed & Breakfast Bedlam (A Logan Dickerson Cozy Mystery Book 1)

by Abby L. Vandiver

  “Oh look who just came in?” I said.

  “Who?” Miss Vivee tried to turn around and look.

  “The man with the cane and the dog.”

  “Lord have mercy,” she said and again tried to make herself invisible by sliding down in her seat. “What is he doing here?”

  “Getting something to eat I would guess,” I said and leaned over to her. “Now who’s showing a lack of understanding?”

  “Shush!” she said.

  “Here he comes,” I said.

  “What! No!”

  I watched as he walked past our table. He’d left his cane at home and was doing all he could to walk tall without it. He had a slight limp. I was thinking he probably should have brought his cane along. He looked as old as Miss Vivee and hidden under the lap of skin over his eyes, he had the brightest blue eyes that seemed to sparkle when they landed on her. As he passed us, he slowed and nodded his greeting to me and spoke to Miss Vivee.

  “Vivienne,” he said.

  “Mac,” she countered back not even looking up.

  He walked to the end of the counter and took a seat on the very last stool.

  Miss Vivee could hardly catch her breath. She put her hand over her forehead. “Driving down Magnolia might not’ve been such a good idea,” she muttered. “Could we please leave now?” She put the notebook and pencils in her purse.

  “Who is he? Your boyfriend?” I leaned in and asked with a big grin on my face.

  “Don’t be silly. I’m too old to have a boyfriend.”

  “Well, he must be somebody.” I said looking over my shoulder at him and then back at Miss Vivee. “Got you upset.”

  “I’m not upset. And,” she said scooting to the edge of her seat ready to go. “We have too much to do to dilly-dally around here all day.”

  “I’m not leaving until you tell me who he is. What’s his name? Is it Mac?”

  She huffed and fiddled with her purse. “Macomber Whitson,” she said giving in. “But everyone calls him Mac. Now can we go?”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Saturday Afternoon, AGD

  Miss Vivee sat down in the car seat with a huff. Seeing Mac had seemed to really upset her. Even Cat crawling up front and plopping down on Miss Vivee’s lap didn’t get a rise from her. Her face was twisted, her wrinkles sagged more than I’d ever seen them, and she seemed to have drifted off, staring out of the windshield.

  I thought maybe I shouldn’t have given her such a hard time about that guy. He evidently meant something to her, or had meant something to her. I noticed that Miss Vivee always called people by two names. If they didn’t have two first names (even if it was one name that sounded like two, or a title and last name), Miss Vivee would call them by their first and last name. She did that to everyone but family – Renmar, Brie and Bay (she didn’t usually call me by name, she’d just sort of talked at me, and when she did use a name it was Missy). And now this man was just “Mac.” Mac must be like family to her.

  I looked over at her sitting there, and it seemed almost like she was sad. Cat had placed her paws on Miss Vivee’s chest and put her wet nose right in her face, trying to get her attention. But Miss Vivee didn’t seem to pay her any notice. I remembered what Renmar said, it doesn’t matter how old you are, you still have the same wants and desires. You always feel the same inside, she had said.

  I guess that went for Miss Vivee and Mac.

  Cat gave up, climbed into the backseat, and I reached over Miss Vivee and grabbed her seatbelt. I buckled her in and decided I was going to be more sensitive to her. Maybe getting back to the Maypop would make her feel better.

  “You’ve got to get me a newspaper.” She said suddenly.

  “What?” I asked in surprise. “Why do you need me to get you a newspaper? There’s one at the Maypop, isn’t there?” I remembered one was delivered every morning.

  “Home?” she turned to me and tilted her head. “Why in the world would I be ready to go home?” She shook her head and closed her eyes as if tolerating me was such a chore. “Look,” she said opening her eyes. “We got some staking out to do, but first I want to go and find the crime scene.” She reached in her purse and pulled out her sunglasses.

  “I thought we did that when we went over to talk to Viola Rose at the diner.”

  “We just learned about the crime scene. We didn’t actually go to it, now did we?” She turned around and smiled at her dog. “What’cha doing back there, girl? Come here and give me a kiss.”

  Cat jumped up front and I rolled my eyes.

  I hopped out of the car and went back to Hadley’s where I’d bought her notebook and got her a newspaper.

  “Where to?” I asked when I got back in the car. I turned the ignition.

  “Mims Point Park. Over by the beach.”

  I drove around the square and headed over to the coastline of the Savannah River.

  “This is where she would have gone down to the run along the shoreline,” Miss Vivee said.

  Once we reached the park Miss Vivee directed me to pull over near a set of sandstone steps that lead from the park down to the beach. I shut off the engine and we sat for ten minutes or so and watched as people walked and played. At least that’s what I did. Miss Vivee seemed lost in thought, either that or she was having one of her senior moments when she would seem to fix her gaze on something far off and not know what was going on around her.

  “Yasamee isn’t that big,” she said.

  Yep, must’ve been a senior moment. I didn’t know what she was talking about.

  I tilted my head and looked at her sideways. “You okay, Miss Vivee?”

  “Why wouldn’t I be okay?” She broke her trance-like stare and furrowed her brow. “You know. If you don’t straighten up, I’m going to have to demote you from partner to just driver.”

  I laughed. Pointing out the window I said, “So this is the crime scene.”

  “Possibly,” she said and surveyed the area. “Wherever it was, there has to be something hard. Those steps would be just about right.”

  I followed her gaze. Miss Vivee hadn’t told me how Gemma died, and I hadn’t bought into the idea that she’d been murdered yet, but Miss Vivee seemed to know exactly what she was looking for.

  “Viola Rose said that Gemma Burke ran past the Jellybean around 11:30 am.”

  “Yep. She said she remembered exactly because one of her customers that came in at the same time she saw her and he always comes for lunch at 11:30.”

  Miss Vivee nodded. “Junior Appletree. He works over at the library, doing cleaning and odd jobs. He eats there every day, breakfast, lunch and dinner. Viola Rose always bragging about how he can’t get enough of her good cooking and the only thing that keeps him away is the Lord.” Miss Vivee smiled. “What she don’t know is that he eats all of his desserts and Sunday meals at the Maypop.”

  “So what time did Gemma get to the Maypop?” I asked.

  “About one o’clock.”

  “Sooo, it was an hour and a half from the time she was seen running past the diner until the time she went to get some of Renmar’s bouillabaisse.”

  “Yes,” Miss Vivee said. “And she wasn’t coughing when she passed by the diner. So I wonder . . .” she looked at me curiously. “How long does it take to run from the Jellybean Café to here and back to the Maypop?” Then she didn’t say anything else. She just smiled at me and stared.

  I didn’t say anything either.

  “I wonder . . .” she said again.

  “Oh no!” I realized what she wanted. “I’m not jogging around Yasamee so you can work out your timeline of death. No.”

  “Why not? All the young people do it I hear. It’ll help you stay in shape.”

  “I have a better idea. What’s her address?” I punched the button to bring my GPS on screen. “I can find out how many miles it is on here. Then I can divide the average number of minutes it takes to jog a mile, and that’ll give me how many minutes it takes to get here from the diner.” I
waited for her answer.

  “I don’t know her address,” she said. “What is that thing?” She wiggled her finger at the GPS.

  “Never mind.” I turned the ignition. “Do you know how to get there? We’ll use the odometer. We can just do it the old fashioned way.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  “There’s Gemma Burke’s house.” Miss Vivee pointed. “The yellow and white one. There. Slow down, now,” Miss Vivee instructed. “Don’t get too close.”

  I turned off the ignition and checked the odometer. “Okay,” I said. “So it was four miles from the entrance to the beach to Gemma’s house. There and back would be eight miles.” I looked at Miss Vivee. “I don’t think she’d run eight miles.”

  “Why?”

  “That’s just a lot of running. And if she went down those steps, the ones you say lead to the river, then that would add even more distance if she jogged along the beach. And sand is taxing to jog on.”

  “Okay. Maybe you’re right. Viola Rose didn’t mention that she’d ever seen her come back. Maybe she didn’t run back. She ran that far and walked home.”

  “No,” I said. “I didn’t mean that. “I think that she may have not run as far as the beach.”

  “Mmm hmmm,” she said lost in thought. She took her sunglasses off, dug in her purse and pulled out her prescription glasses and put them on. Then she put her sunglasses on top of them.

  “Need both?”

  “I can’t see details as far as the house without my prescription glasses and the sun bothers my eyes. I need to get a look at those steps.”

  “They do make prescription sunglasses, you know.”

  “Sometimes you’re not as smart as you try to let on,” Miss Vivee said with a grimace. “Why would I pay good money for another pair when I already have a pair of both?”

  I didn’t understand most of Miss Vivee’s logic. And I figured most people wouldn’t either. It was so hard to get her to see any other way but her own, and I just wasn’t raised to argue and disrespect old people.

  “Here,” Miss Vivee said and handed me part of the newspaper she had me buy. “We can use this for cover.”

  I took the newspaper from her. “Do what now?”

  She opened up the newspaper and flapped it, holding it in front of her face. “You don’t know much about surveillance do you?”

  Ooooh. We’re supposed to hide behind it.

  “I do know that this girl doesn’t know us from Adam,” I said defiantly, not raising the paper. “Or that we’re here watching for her.”

  “You don’t know what she knows,” Miss Vivee said. “And as soon as we find out her name she’s going on the suspect list. That means she’s dangerous. So unless you want to be the next one falling into a bowl of stew, you’d better be careful.” She rattled the newspaper. “C’mon now. Get with it.” She hit me on my elbow.

  I reluctantly put the paper up. It was the obituary section.

  “Now what?”

  “We wait.”

  “Do we know what time she might leave out for the Jellybean Cafe?” I asked. I really didn’t want to sit for hours looking at the faces of dead people.

  “Nope. But Viola Rose says she doesn’t miss and she hadn’t come in yet. I’m guessing since we didn’t see her on the way over she’s still in the house.”

  “We were at the park for a long time,” I offered.

  “We wait,” she said.

  “We don’t even know what she looks like.” My voice was leaning toward pouty.

  “I do,” Miss Vivee said.

  “How? You’ve never seen her.”

  “That’s right, Missy, but I’ve seen every other person in this town so she’ll be the only one in Yasamee that’ll be a stranger to me.”

  Even without Miss Vivee leaving the house in the past twenty years, I was positive that she would know Gemma Burke’s roommate. Renmar had told me on my first day that everyone in Yasamee comes to the Maypop to eat.

  So we sat, with the car running, windows rolled up, air conditioner on, and our faces hidden behind newspapers. Cat sat on her hind paws, most of the wait, staring out of the window, evidently not in need of a disguise.

  “There she is!” Miss Vivee whispered, a big grin crawling across her face. She started rattling her paper. “It’s her. You see? It’s her!”

  “Why are you whispering?” I asked. “She can’t hear you.”

  “Hush!” was her reply.

  We watched as Gemma’s houseguest came out of the house, pulled the door closed behind her and headed toward the town square. Presumably to the Jellybean Cafe.

  “Now what are we going to do?” I asked.

  “I’m going to get into that house and see what I can find.” She stuffed both pairs of glasses in her purse and nodded at me.

  “It’s locked. How are you getting in?”

  “Did you see her lock that door? No! You didn’t. She just pulled it shut. Pay attention. Us being investigators means we have to be observant.”

  “Wait,” I said and grabbed her arm. “Maybe I should go.”

  “What? Why?” She frowned making the wrinkles on her face come closer together. “You wouldn’t know what to look for.”

  “You can tell me what to look for,” I replied. “Although, I don’t think it would be that hard to figure out.”

  “I’m going,” she said with a determined grunt and grabbed the door handle. “We don’t have time to dilly-dally. She’ll be back soon enough. I’ll be out faster than two shakes of a lamb’s tail.”

  She grabbled with the door handle, trying to push open the door. It was too heavy for her. “I’ll just slide in there quick like and have a look around.” She got the door opened, but then turned and looked at me. “Well are you going to help me get out of this contraption?”

  “I thought maybe you were just gonna ‘slide’ out of it.”

  Miss Vivee snorted and I knew that was my cue not to give her any more lip about it. I climbed out the car and went around to her side. I held out a hand. “C’mon. I’ve got you.”

  Miss Vivee got out and straightened her clothes. Cat hopped from the back across the front seat and out of the car door. “You wait here. If you see her coming back, you whistle,” she said. “You know how to whistle, don’t you?”

  “Now you’re quoting famous movies?”

  “Can you whistle?” she asked again somewhat annoyed.

  “Yes I can. I whistle and then what?”

  “Then I come running out that house like a bat outta hell, hop in the car and you put the pedal to the metal, that’s what.”

  “Gotcha,” I said and closed her car door. I was trying to picture Miss Vivee, at ninety-something and five-foot-nothing, running out of the house quick enough for someone walking up not to see her. Then I tried to picture her running, period.

  I just couldn’t process that thought.

  I went back around the car and sat behind the steering wheel and watched as Miss Vivee crossed the lawn and took the steps, one at a time, with her dog right beside her. When she got on the porch, it appeared that she had an epiphany and she turned around and headed back down the steps.

  One at a time.

  What is she doing?

  Cat seemed just as confused as I was. “Are we going in or not?” the terrier seemed to say. She went up to the door, sniffed at it and turned to look at Miss Vivee, her tail wagging. Miss Vivee was still making her way down the steps.

  I put my hand on the door handle. Maybe I should get out and see about the two of them. Perhaps she’d thought better of going in Gemma Burke’s house and was coming back to the car.

  But instead of coming back down the sidewalk, she went around back.

  And stayed back there for a while.

  Long enough that I started to get nervous.

  I checked my rearview mirror. The girl could have eaten a seven course meal in the time that Miss Vivee had been gone.

  I craned my neck to look down the long drive. No sign of
her or that dog.

  She said faster than two shakes of a lamb’s tail?

  She must’ve been talking about a dead lamb.

  With each minute that slowly ticked by, the knot in my stomach cinched tighter and tighter. It was affecting my breathing and I could feel little beads of sweat forming on my forehead.

  I gripped the steering wheel and laid my head on it. Maybe I should go and check on her.

  How could I be so stupid to let her go in there?

  If that FBI guy knew what I was doing with his grandmother . . .

  Oh. My. God.

  Bay Colquett would make sure that when I finished my federal time for trespassing at Track Rock Gap and lying to a federal officer, I’d do jail time in Yasamee County. I could hear the judge – “Guilty,” he’d say as his gavel struck the top of his bench. “Breaking and entering, trespassing on private property, aiding and abetting . . . Guilty. Guilty. Guilty.”

  Crap.

  Chapter Seventeen

  I just couldn’t wait any longer. I had counted the number of window panes on the front and side of Gemma’s house, the number of yellow roses climbing up the trellis on her front porch, the number of houses from hers to the corner, both ways, and all the ones on the other side of the street. Twice. I calculated how long it would take an average jogger to run from Gemma’s house to Mims Point Park, Maypop B & B, and the Jellybean Café. Then I had made a mental list of all of the four and five-letter words I could make by rearranging the letters in Gemma Burke’s name. I was working on six-letter words – gemmae, that was an easy one – embark, meager, eureka, bummer, rebuke, umbrae, umbrage, rummage . . .

  Wait. Those last two are seven letters.

  I slammed my palms on the steering wheel.

  This is ridiculous.

  I pulled on the door handle and jumped out of the car. I broke into a trot when I rounded the front of the car and headed down the driveway. I didn’t get ten feet down it when Miss Vivee and Cat appeared from around back of the house.

  She was smiling and waving a paper in the air.

  Oh Lord. Now they’re going to add theft to the charges against me.