Pumpkin Ridge (Rose Hill Mystery Series Book 10)

by Pamela Grandstaff

  “Evidently, the poison apple didn’t fall far from the arsenic tree,” Hannah said. “We need to keep an eye out for Charlotte. She may try to get in touch with Timmy.”

  “Those poor little souls,” Delia said. “Bonnie and Fitz are in no shape to raise them, and I can’t see Maggie doing it.”

  “Don’t forget Patrick is Olivia’s father.”

  “Some father he’d be,” Delia said. “I love my nephew, but he’s just like his father, who was just like his father.”

  “Do tell.”

  “Oh, you’ve heard the gossip.”

  “And you’ve seen proof?”

  “I’ve seen enough, and I’ve heard enough,” she said. “I don’t think men like that can change.”

  “My dad was not like that.”

  “No, and neither was my husband,” Delia said. “I don’t know what makes one brother like that but not the rest.”

  “Sean could raise them.”

  “I hadn’t thought of Sean,” Deli said.

  “He loves kids, he’s a good person, and he can afford to do it. We could help him.”

  “Well, she has to be arrested and tried first,” Delia said. “Can you imagine growing up in this town after that?”

  “Yes,” Hannah said. “And we’ll raise them to hold their heads up high and be proud to be a Fitzpatrick. Anyone who says otherwise gets an eye full of spit.”

  Delia patted Hannah.

  “You’re right,” she said. “I just get tired thinking about all they’ll have to go through.”

  “We’ve got this,” Hannah said. “Sam and I can help.”

  “I’m so thankful for you girls,” Delia said. “I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

  “Now, about Terese,” Hannah said.

  “Hannah, honey, I made a promise I have to keep. I cannot tell you anything about Terese except to say, anyone she trusts, you should trust. She’s good, and she’s on our side.”

  Melissa came outside.

  “C’mon, you guys,” she said. “Pizza’s here.”

  “Did you order my favorite?” Hannah asked.

  “Yes, and you have one all to yourself,” Melissa said. “But you hafta hurry.”

  Hannah was just finishing her pizza when she received a call from Patrick.

  “Can you cover for me later tonight?”

  “Where’s your waitress?”

  “She called in sick,” he said. “I need to leave for a while; will you tend bar?”

  “Where are you going?”

  “To see a man about a horse,” he said.

  “I remember what that means,” Hannah said. “Who is she?”

  “Do you want the money or not?” Patrick asked.

  “I’ll be there by eight,” Hannah said.

  When Hannah got to the Rose and Thorn, Patrick was leaning over the bar whispering in the ear of a young blonde woman. When he saw Hannah, he stood up straight and began polishing clean highball glasses.

  Hannah looked the blonde over as she passed her. College girl, by the looks of her, and pretty drunk. When she walked around behind the bar, she gestured toward her.

  “She legal?”

  “She has an ID that says she is,” Patrick said.

  Patrick took his jacket off the hook on the wall and slipped his arms in.

  “Can I ask you something?” Hannah said.

  “Can I stop you?” Patrick answered.

  “Do you even want Melissa back?”

  He shrugged.

  “If she’d have me,” he said. “Meanwhile, a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do.”

  “Are you coming back?”

  “Around ten,” he said. “Or I’ll call.”

  Hannah sorted out the mess Patrick always left in the till, cleaned off the bar top, and served customers. Around ten o’clock her husband came in and sat down at the end of the bar, where her Uncle Ian used to sit.

  “What’ll you have?” she asked him.

  “Whatever’s on draft,” he answered.

  Hannah brought him his beer and leaned on the bar.

  “So tell me,” she said. “Why can’t Patrick be faithful?”

  “He is faithful,” Sam said. “In here.”

  He pointed to his heart.

  “But what about south of there?” she asked him. “Why can’t he control himself?”

  “He can,” Sam says. “He chooses not to.”

  “Well, there you have it,” Hannah said. “What about you?”

  “You know me,” Sam said.

  “I do,” Hannah said. “Sometimes I feel like I have to work overtime to keep you faithful.”

  “It’s nice work if you can get it.”

  “What if I ever can’t, though?” Hannah asked him. “Is that all I am to you?”

  “You know better than that.”

  “I wonder,” Hannah said. “Where’s our son?”

  “Beats me,” he said, but then smiled.

  “Safety in numbers, you said.”

  “They’re all staying at Delia’s tonight.”

  “So what you’re saying is, we have the house to ourselves tonight.”

  Sam waggled his eyebrows.

  “What time do you get off?” he asked.

  “As soon as Patrick gets back,” Hannah said. “Although if I remember correctly, he always had a way of being later than he thinks he will be.”

  “College girls are high maintenance,” Sam said. “They like to cuddle afterward.”

  “How do you know it’s a college girl?”

  “It’s a day that ends in y, isn’t it?” he said. “Like shooting fish in a barrel for Patrick.”

  “He’ll eventually be too old for them,” Hannah said. “What then?”

  “There’s always somebody,” Sam said. “You know that.”

  A group of young people entered the bar, and Hannah sighed.

  “You need me to help out?” he asked.

  “You tend bar, and I’ll waitress,” Hannah said.

  “Split your tips?” he asked.

  “I’ll make it worth your while,” Hannah said. “Don’t you worry.”

  Chapter Ten - Monday

  E arlier that morning, when Melissa checked her email, she saw the attorney for the four little girls’ grandparents had responded with an attachment.

  “Sean!” she called out. “It’s here!”

  Sean came up the hall and waited while Melissa opened the attachment and printed it. He went to the printer, picked up the pages as they printed, and scanned each one for notes from their attorney.

  “No notes,” he called out.

  “No way,” Melissa said, as she came down the hallway.

  By the time the last page printed out, the one with the grandparents’ notarized signatures, Sean was shaking his head in disbelief.

  “No changes and they signed it,” he said. “I can’t believe it.”

  “Should I call Claire?”

  “Go ahead,” he said. “They’ll be so relieved.”

  When Melissa told her the news, Claire screamed and then cried.

  “Oh, honey,” Melissa said. “Don’t cry.”

  “I had convinced myself they weren’t going to allow it,” Claire said. “I didn’t want to hope for it to work out.”

  “You call Ed,” Melissa said. “I’ll start on the adoption application.”

  Just after noon, the couple who had purchased the bed and breakfast from Ava came in the office. They didn’t look happy.

  “I need to talk to that lawyer,” the man said, and pointed toward the back.

  The man had a bandage on his forehead and a black eye beneath it.

  Melissa called Sean and then told them they could go back.

  “You go on,” the woman told her husband. “I’ll wait here.”

  Melissa got the woman some coffee and then sat down with her in the waiting area.

  “Are you all right?” she asked her.

  “No,” the woman said. “We’re not a
ll right. We’re quite a long way from all right.”

  “Oh no,” Melissa said. “Why?”

  “We’ve had enough,” the woman said. “We’re not going to stay.”

  “What happened?”

  “We discovered someone has been living in the apartment over the garage,” she said. “We changed the locks yesterday, but last night they broke a window and were in there again.”

  “Did you see who it was?”

  She shook her head.

  “Probably drug addicts,” the woman said. “We heard that was a problem here.”

  “That’s a problem everywhere,” Melissa said, but the woman rolled her eyes and clutched her purse a little tighter to her body as if Melissa might snatch it.

  “Harvey ordered an alarm system and cameras from the hardware store, but they won’t be here until next week sometime. We couldn’t get anyone to come any sooner. I can’t believe the number of things you can’t get done here, no matter how much you’re willing to pay.”

  “I’m sorry for you,” Melissa said. “What was it you wanted Sean to do?”

  “We want out of the deal,” she said. “Before we have any of our stuff moved here we need to find out if we can get the contract canceled.”

  “Have you had anyone make reservations?” Melissa said.

  “Our first guests showed up the night of the closing,” she said. “We told them we weren’t ready for customers, but they seemed like a nice couple, said they were here to visit their son at Eldridge and couldn’t find any accommodations anywhere nearby. They begged us, offered to pay double the rate. So we took pity on them and let them stay.”

  “That was kind of you.”

  “They carried on all night. From ten in the evening until two in the morning they went at it. And the language! I wanted to call the police, but Harvey said we didn’t need that kind of bad publicity right off the bat. He was too afraid to go up there and tell them to keep it down; who knows what they might have done.”

  “That’s scary,” Melissa said.

  “Also there were … other noises,” the woman said. “You know.”

  Melissa thought she did know.

  “Well, it is a hotel,” she said. “You’re gonna get those kinds of noises.”

  “It’s a bed and breakfast, not a brothel!” the woman said. “What if there had been a family with kids staying with us, too?”

  “I guess you can’t pick and choose your customers in business.”

  “When they left the next morning, they didn’t even seem embarrassed.”

  “Maybe they didn’t know you could hear them.”

  “If that was all that happened we could write it off as a fluke,” she said. “But then the other noises started.”

  “More noises?”

  “Moaning,” she said. “With no one in the house but Harvey and me. Moaning like the house was haunted.”

  “Was it on Halloween?” Melissa asked. “Maybe it was a prank?”

  “No, this started Friday night,” she said. “We couldn’t find where it was coming from; it seemed to come through the air vents.”

  “That’s scary.”

  “So no sleep for the first three nights, and then on Halloween night after trick-or-treating was over, Harvey heard noises out back. He found several empty beer bottles under the pine trees out back. He looked up at the tree and could see someone’s feet dangling there. He yelled at them to come out of the tree, and they dropped a beer bottle on him.”

  “Oh my goodness,” Melissa said. “Then what happened?”

  “He came inside with his head bleeding, and his eye swelled up, so I called the police. By the time the deputy got there, the trespasser was gone, and he helped us search the property. That’s when we discovered someone had been living in the apartment over the garage. Whoever it was had left a sleeping bag and food there. The old van which the former owner had left in the driveway is gone, so we think they stole it. The deputy called the man who owns the hardware store …”

  “Sonny Delvecchio.”

  “Yes, Mr. Delvecchio, and he came and changed the locks for us the next morning, on Sunday. So this morning we get up and find the window broken at the top of the apartment stairs, and the sleeping bag and food are gone.”

  “So at least whoever it was has gone.”

  “We don’t care,” she said. “We’ve had enough.”

  “It hasn’t even been a week,” Melissa said. “It’s awful bad luck, but I’m sure it will get better if you give it time.”

  “We’ve made a huge mistake,” she said. “We had this idea of how it would be, and it’s not like that at all. I guess we didn’t know what we were getting into.”

  The phone rang, and Melissa dealt with that call while Sean walked Harvey up to the front.

  “I can ask them,” Sean said. “They have no legal obligation to allow you to back out, but I can ask. I’ll let you know what they say.”

  “We’ll gladly give up the deposit,” Harvey said. “Otherwise, I think we’ll have to sue to get out of the contract. We’ve got to get out of this godforsaken town.”

  “No offense,” his wife said.

  After they left, Melissa and Sean discussed the situation, both agreeing it was unlikely that Will and Ava would allow the buyers to back out of the sales agreement.

  “Those checks are deposited,” Sean said.

  “What about disclosure?” Melissa asked. “Can they say the sellers didn’t disclose the place was haunted?”

  Sean rolled his eyes.

  “I’d love to see that argued in court, but I’d never try it,” he said. “They can’t say Ava should have disclosed that running a B&B is hard and customers can be rude; that’s on them. It was just unrealistic expectations and bad luck, that’s all.”

  “I wonder who was staying in the apartment,” Melissa said.

  “Some homeless person,” Sean said.

  “I wonder,” Melissa said.

  Melissa worked on the adoption application for Claire and Ed, but her mind kept wandering. Early in the morning, she had awakened from a pretty steamy dream; so real, in fact, that if she’d been a smoker, she would have lit up afterward. It had been Patrick, of course, and in the dream, she had been more than a willing participant; she’d been the aggressor. Flashes of this dream kept bubbling up in her mind, making it difficult to think about anything else.

  She was amazed to find that the shock and anger she felt as a result of Patrick’s betrayal was lessening in intensity, and in its place was a physical longing for him so intense she felt like she needed to grip the desk lest her body go running off looking for him.

  Although she fought her emotions, her mind was flooded with memories of the many times they had fooled around. She could remember when their desire for each other was so strong they’d enter the trailer tearing their clothes off and spend the next hour knocking over furniture and crashing into walls while they satisfied that passion.

  It could easily have been Patrick and Melissa shocking the B&B owners.

  Over the years, they had shared tender mornings, stolen afternoons, and hot, sultry nights. They’d broken in the Mustang, front seat and back. They’d done it in every room of the Rose and Thorn, possibly on every surface. Patrick’s body, with its strong, muscular arms, broad shoulders and chest; the way he could actually pick her up and put her where he wanted her; and then his relentless pursuit of her pleasure; it was all like a drug to Melissa, and she was now in withdrawal.

  Melissa craved it, she missed it, and she felt like she might lose her mind over it. Thinking she would never have that again was causing her actual physical pain and mental anguish.

  She wondered if she could sue Ava for alienation of affection. She looked it up online to see if that was still possible in West Virginia. It was! She tried to imagine that court proceeding and pictured the entire town lined up around the block to get in to see it.

  She allowed herself to consider her actual options. She could take Patri
ck back and have all the good sex again, but at what cost? Everyone knew what had happened; she’d look like a fool. She could almost ignore what anyone else thought of her, but what about what Tommy thought of her, and what she thought of herself?

  She considered the idea of having sex with him one more time, just to stave off this piercing loneliness and physical longing, but she knew that would only prolong the suffering. The thought of him and Ava together hurt in her chest, like she was having a heart attack. Her heart had been attacked. Could someone actually die of heartbreak?

  The phone rang, and it was Mayor Templeton.

  “Good news,” Kay said. “The zoning change was approved today, and you even get to pick the new name for your property.”

  “What do you mean, the new name?”

  “It’s on the official town map as Hollyhock Mobile Home Park, and you can keep that, of course, but you could also change it to anything you like.”

  “I don’t know what to change it to,” Melissa said. “Can I think about it?”

  “Of course, dear. The council will have to approve whatever you choose, but that shouldn’t be a problem. You just let me know.”

  Melissa doodled some names on a legal pad. Her mind wandered as she did so.

  Hollyhock Gardens.

  Hollyhock Terrace.

  Hollyhock Circle.

  Heartbreak Tiny Home Park.

  Lyin’ Ass Cheater’s Home for Peckerheads.

  A stray notion, one that had been playing around the edges of her consciousness, ran in front of her train of thought.

  “Sean!” she yelled.

  He came hurrying down the hall.

  “What?” he said. “You scared me to death.”

  “I know who was living in the apartment behind the B&B,” she said.

  She outlined her theory, and Sean seemed to consider it.

  “That would account for the haunting noises as well,” he said. “I’ll call Sam.”

  As Melissa was leaving work, she got a text from Patrick.

  “Left something for you with Delia.”