Miz Scarlet and the Holiday Houseguests (A Scarlet Wilson Mystery #3)

by Barton, Sara M.

  Miz Scarlet and the Holiday Houseguests

  A Scarlet Wilson Mystery

  By Sara M. Barton

  Published by Sara M. Barton at Smashwords

  Copyright Sara M. Barton 2013

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the authorized publisher, Sara M. Barton at Smashwords, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, please return to Smashwords and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Chapter One --

  “You can’t be serious!” The voice behind me was dripping with disgust. “You call that a Christmas tree?”

  “What’s wrong with it?” I demanded, even as I walked around the seven-foot blue spruce, checking it for missing or lopsided branches.

  “It’s going to be dwarfed by the high ceilings of the living room,” my brother, Bur, remarked. “Might as well just drape a coat tree with crepe paper, spray it with pine air freshener, and call it a tree.”

  To most people, a tree is a tree. But with the Wilson family, sap seems to run through our veins. Our maternal grandfather, Randolph Googins, was one of the owners of the Four Oaks Pressboard Company. He named his children after oak trees, hence Darlington, Holly, and my mother, Laurel. Our parents continued the family tradition. I’m named after the Scarlet oak. My brothers are Bur, Emory, and Palmer. We’re the acorns that never fell far from the family tree.

  “What are you suggesting? We choose a ten-footer? How are we supposed to drag it home through the woods? Not to mention the fact that we’ll need to buy a special tree stand for something that tall.”

  “I want bigger. I’ll rig something up for a stand.”

  “I want manageable. And I don’t want a holiday disaster when your makeshift contraption crashes. What about all the ornaments? We spent decades collecting them, Bur. If the tree falls, they go with it.”

  “That puny little thing will hardly deck the halls, Scarlet!”

  “What do you suggest?” I shot back, feeling rather irritated at this brotherly attempt to sabotage the annual Christmas tree excursion. We were near the top of the path, a good hundred yards from the house, knee-deep in snow, when my cell phone buzzed in my pocket. Slipping off my glove, I grabbed it and glanced quickly at the name. “Hold on, Bur. It’s Larry.”

  “Tell her I said hi,” he called over his shoulder, as he continued searching for the perfect blue spruce.

  “Miz Scarlet, you know all those times I had your back when people felt like whacking you?” asked the experienced homicide investigator for the Connecticut State Police. “Well, I’m calling in my chips.”

  “Are you?” I laughed. “What can I do for you, Larry? Invite you for a gourmet dinner? Drag you along for another girls’ night out, so you can cry in your beer about the guy who done you wrong?”

  “Oh, no. Much, much bigger than that,” Laurencia Rivera insisted.

  “What? You want me to take care of your kid for the weekend?” As the single mother of a teenager, Larry often locked heads with Michaela, better known as Mickey, who didn’t always understand or accept that it was necessary for Larry to work long hours, especially when the state trooper was called out to attend to a dead body in the middle of the night. “Or fill in for you at the mother-daughter tea?”

  “Get real!” I heard her snort.

  “Spill the beans,” I commanded her. “What do you want from me?”

  “I need to rent a room for the Christmas holiday.”

  “You want to stay with us?” That was a surprise. As innkeeper for the Four Acorns Inn, I was used to caring for guests, but she lived less than fifteen minutes away. Why did she need a room?

  “Not me. My father, Big Larry. I’ve got my mother coming up from Atlanta to stay at my place, and my father called this morning to tell me that he’s decided to visit for the holidays, too.”

  “How nice. You’ll have the whole family with you for Christmas.”

  “Not really. My Auntie Merlene always says I come from royalty. Big Larry’s a spitball king and Edna’s a drama queen. The two of them mix about as well as oil and water, and since I don’t want to respond to a domestic incident at my own home, I’ve decided to send my father to the Four Acorns Inn, where he’ll feel pampered, especially if the Googins girls make a fuss over him.”

  “I’ll be happy to reserve a room for your dad. When is he arriving?”

  “The twentieth. Mickey wants to spend some time with her grandfather, so he’s promised to take her up to Boston for the day on Saturday and show her his old stomping grounds.”

  “Stomping grounds?”

  “My dad is an assistant baseball coach.”

  “Red Sox?” I inquired, feeling my stomach pitch as I said those ominous words.

  “Indeed. He was a center fielder up there in the eighties, for all of two seasons, before he blew out his shoulder.”

  “Oh dear me.”

  “Excuse me?” Larry sounded less than thrilled with my reaction to the news. “Do you have a problem with the Red Sox?”

  “Not me,” I insisted. “I’m good. It’s....”

  “Oh, spiffy. That brother of yours!” That’s the thing about having a good friend who knows you well. She can finish your sentences for you. “What’s Bur’s objection?”

  “Ever since the Yankees faced off against the Red Sox in....”

  “...October 2004,” Larry cut in gleefully. “I remember the game. The Yankees got trounced on their home field. It was awesome!”

  “Bur’s never gotten over it. In fact, to this day, he still insists the game was winnable, if it wasn’t for dirty tricks by....”

  “Poppycock!” she declared.

  “I’m just warning you that Bur will be...well, a burr in your side. The minute he and your father start talking baseball, it’s going to get ugly. Larry, you know Bur has a big mouth!”

  “Do I ever!” There was a long pause on the other end, followed by a soft laugh. “You know what, Miz Scarlet? My father also has a big mouth.”

  “So, what do we do? Boston just won this year’s World Series Championship and fans are still celebrating. Bur was in a slump for days. He wanted the Cardinals to win.”

  “I say we let them go at it. It should make for an interesting holiday. Besides, maybe it will keep everyone distracted from the Edna and Big Larry hate fest.”

  “Aren’t you brave,” I chuckled. “But I refuse to accept responsibility for the antics of two baseball nuts.”

  “That’s a wise decision, indeed.”

  “Which room do you want to reserve for your dad? We have the White Oak and the Black Oak rooms available.”

  “What do you think? Big Larry snores like a buzz saw. It’s enough to wake the dead.”

  “I could put him in the White Oak. That way, the Googins girls will be spared the noise.”

  “White Oak it is. Now I just have to break the news to my mother that my father will be around for Christmas.”

  “Is it that bad, Larry?”

  “Are you kidding? Wait until you meet my mother! She’s sweeping into town on Sunday. Her broom lands at four.” I heard a heavy sigh on the other end of the phon
e line. “She’s head housekeeper for a major rehab hospital, with a staff of fifteen and her own office. You think she has any patience with folks who don’t tow the line? Edna runs a very tight ship. Things don’t change when she’s on vacation. Of course, without her people to boss around, she needs an outlet and that means I have a target on my behind!”

  “Is she going to do that white glove test on your living room?” I knew Larry was a great homicide investigator, but when it came to housekeeping, her favorite technique was “spit and polish”.

  “Not to worry, Miz Scarlet. I’ve got the ‘Cheerful Cleaning Crew’ coming for a top-to-bottom dust-and-dirt removal mission. It’s going to cost me a small fortune, but I’d say it’s worth every penny.” Larry refused to call the professional cleaning service by its real name, Merry Maids. She said there was nothing merry about being maids who cleaned up after other folks, no matter how you looked at it.

  “Good for you. Leave nothing to chance.”

  “You’ve got that right. The last time my mother blew into town on her broomstick, she beat me with it and then used it to sweep up what she politely termed my disaster area. She claimed it looked like someone had mistaken my home for the local landfill, and that was just the living room she was describing.”

  “Kind of harsh,” I noted. “I’ve been there and it wasn’t that bad. Besides, when do you have time to scrub floors and scoop up dust? Can’t you just tell her that you’re too busy tracking down killers?”

  “I tried that once. She reminded me that I’ve always been this way. According to Edna, I’m a chip off the old blockhead.”

  “Ouch!”

  “Oh, Edna always exaggerates everything. Big Larry’s not that bad. He’s just a guy who eats, sleeps, and breathes baseball. He’s not big on cleaning up unless it’s bases loaded and his guys cross home plate. This time, I’m putting her in my bedroom and I’m sleeping on the sofa bed in the living room, because I don’t want to listen to how lumpy that mattress is.”

  “You should send her to the Four Acorns Inn, Larry, and have your father stay with you.”

  “Are you kidding? Edna will insist that I love him more because I invited him to stay with me, instead of her.”

  “Can’t win for losing? You poor thing! Maybe I should save you a room at the inn.”

  “Make sure it’s got plenty of padding on the walls, because by the time my parents leave town, I’m going to need physical restraints and a boatload of psychotropic drugs to calm me down. Oops, got to go. I’ve got a fresh corpse out in...let’s see,” she paused to check the crime scene location, “...Windsor.”

  “Good luck,” I replied as I ended the call. Tucking the phone back into my pocket, I tromped through the snow, following Bur’s boot prints another forty or so yards, to where he was sawing a lush blue spruce nestled between a couple of maple saplings and a Norway spruce.

  It was a little taller than I expected, but it had a nice shape. It would do the job. “This is an excellent choice.”

  “And by taking this one, I give the other trees the chance to grow up nice and strong,” he pointed out. “I might as well help the forest in the process.”

  My brothers and I were raised to be conservationists in the woods, and those lessons learned as children stayed with us as adults. Lots of critters called White Oak Hill their home, including fisher cats, coyotes, foxes, and deer. Litter was promptly picked up when we came across it, and oriental bittersweet, the invasive menace, was immediately yanked up. Every spring, Bur inspected tree branches for signs of diseases and pests, and removed damaged wood. Some of the majestic species found in this forest had been here for more than a century and we wanted to keep them healthy for another hundred years. This was the Googins legacy and we were determined to preserve it.

  “Why did Larry call?” the nosy tree cutter wanted to know, even as he kept his blade moving.

  “She wanted to book a room.” There was an empty bird’s nest still clinging to an inner branch of the blue spruce. I showed my brother. “Careful. I want to keep that intact. It’s good luck.”

  “Is Larry staying with us for Christmas?” Bur seemed hopeful as he hovered beside me. He and the divorced state police investigator spent a lot of time flirting good-naturedly, but as far as I knew, it had never turned into anything more.

  “No, her dad is. She’s got her hands full with her mother as a houseguest.”

  “We should invite them to join us for Christmas dinner. Palmer and Emory aren’t coming with their families until the twenty-seventh.” My younger siblings made a point of visiting us in Cheswick three or four times a year. They planned to skip Christmas in favor of our big New Year’s Eve party.

  “I don’t know, Bur. Larry says her parents don’t get along.”

  “All the more reason to have them at the Four Acorns Inn for a holiday meal. They’ll have to be on their best behavior.”

  “Well, I’ll ask her, but it sounds like Edna and Big Larry shouldn’t be in the same room together. There’s too much bad blood between them.”

  “You know what they say, Scar. There’s a fine line between love and hate. Who knows? Maybe they still have the hots for each other, and they’ve just never admitted it.”

  Chapter Two --

  “Or maybe they really do loathe each other,” I countered his argument, pointing out the obvious.

  “Such a pessimist,” he sniffed. I shook my head. Given Bur’s history with women and his two divorces, he was hardly an expert in marital relationships. “I’ve just about cut through the trunk. Grab the tree, Miz Scarlet.”

  “Hold on.” I got my gloved hands on a thick branch and felt the needles poking through the fleece as I fastened my fingers around the wood. “Okay. I’m ready.”

  The tree wobbled briefly in my grasp as the trunk was freed from its earthly stump. Bur laid down his saw on the frozen tundra and got busy. He spread an old blue bed sheet on top of the snow-covered ground.

  “Let’s roll it up and get it back to the inn.” We maneuvered the spruce into place and carefully flipped it gently, until the official Wilson family 2013 Christmas tree was shrouded in cotton. Bur tied it with poly cord, securing the ends, and we began the arduous journey of carrying the holiday bundle down the winding woodsy path and back to the Four Acorns Inn.

  “Ready, Miz Scarlet?”

  “Ready, Colonel.”

  When we were kids, we played our own live version of the game of “Clue”. Bur originally nickname me “Miss Scarlet” in one of his many attempts to ruffle my feathers, but I corrected him. “You may address me as Miz Scarlet!” He soon became known as Colonel Grey Poupon, not only because he loved mustard, but because he was often a real stinker. On those occasions, we just referred to him as “Poup”.

  Twenty minutes later, scratched and bruised, I deposited my end of the tree on the floor of the sun porch. My back muscles screamed for relief. “Boy, that was heavy!”

  “Is that it?” said an interested voice behind me. “How big is it?”

  “Bigger than you, squirt,” Bur told Jenny, our live-in teenage helper.

  “Does that mean I’ll need a ladder to decorate it?”

  “More like a step stool. Miz Scarlet put the kibosh on a huge tree.”

  “I’m sorry I couldn’t be there to help you, but I had my big biology test.”

  “How do you think you did?” I inquired of the nursing student in the process of wrapping up her first semester at the University of Connecticut. I couldn’t help myself. Long before I became an innkeeper, I was a high school teacher, and I still tutor students part-time, in between caring for guests at the inn. But I have another reason for wanting to know. I nearly killed her a few months ago.

  Our accidental meeting was a freakish thing. On a warm summer night in Bay Head, New Jersey, a homicidal maniac chased her into the street, where I nearly hit her with my car. In need of sanctuary, I brought Jenny back to Connecticut, where the gang at the Four Acorns Inn welcomed her with open arm
s. That’s how we learned of her tragic story, of how her parents, Jaime and Christina, died when she was a baby and she was adopted by an aunt. Jenny was orphaned a second time, just shy of her eighteenth birthday, when Vivian Mulroney, died from cancer earlier this year. Kicked out of her family home by a scheming stepfather determined to steal her inheritance, Jenny and her dog, Mozzie, took to life on the road, but the naive teenager got herself into more trouble than she could handle. When it followed her to the Four Acorns Inn, I called and Larry came to her rescue. That’s part of why I owe the state homicide investigator so big.

  “I think I did okay. It was harder than I expected it would be, but I answered all the questions, like you suggested, even when I had to guess.”

  “Good. Were they multiple choice questions?” I wondered.

  “Except for two essay questions,” she replied, nodding.

  “Essay questions on a biology test?” Bur was surprised. “What kind of beast gives those?”

  “Dr. Shirley does. The first one was, ‘Why is it important to know the origin of the sickle cell anemia trait?’. I talked about the improvements in genetic sequencing when developing treatments. And the second question was, ‘Why is polymorphism important to evolution?’ Ugh!”

  “What did you say to that?” I probed. Essay questions can be tricky. It’s all in the professor’s interpretation of the written answer.

  “I pointed out that diversity within the population helped to keep the gene pool healthy, so that no one single form has an advantage or disadvantage over the others during natural selection.”

  “Nice,” I congratulated her. “Sounds like you hit the mark.”

  Bur gave the teenager an affectionate pat on the head. “Our little angel has grown up, Miz Scarlet. I can tell because I have absolutely no clue what all that means. You sound so smart!”

  “I do, don’t I?” Jenny beamed, raising her hands above her head and wiggling her body in an impromptu victory dance. “Woo, woo!”