In the Heart of Windy Pines

by Holly Tierney-Bedord

  Also by Holly Tierney-Bedord

  Sweet Hollow Women

  Coached

  Surviving Valencia

  Bellamy’s Redemption

  Run Away Baby

  The Port Elspeth Jewelry Making Club

  The Woman America Loves a Latte

  Little Miss Eyes of Blue

  Sunflowers and Second Chances

  Right Under Your Nose: A Christmas Story

  Ring in the New Year

  The Snowflake Valley Advice Fairy

  Murder at Mistletoe Manor

  Carnage at the Christmas Party

  Wrestling with Romance

  Dogged by Love

  The Worst Couple in the World

  The Miraculous Power of Butter Cookies

  Love, Pinky Bean

  I Will Follow Him

  Souvenirs of Starling Falls

  Becoming a Strassmore

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  No part of this book may be shared, stored, or reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.

  Cover design by Holly Tierney-Bedord, featuring artwork from Adobe Stock.

  In the Heart of Windy Pines: a Mystery Novella

  copyright © 2019 by Holly Tierney-Bedord.

  All rights reserved.

  A note from the author and a spoiler alert:

  I’ve written many books in many genres. Some have taken off and some haven’t, and some have generated lots of questions from readers. It’s always interesting and sometimes surprising to see the path a book takes and the reactions and questions readers have.

  By far, two of the questions I hear most often are “What happens to _________ from The Port Elspeth Jewelry Making Club?” (I won’t say the person’s name here, because to say it would give a lot away about that book) and “How’s everything going at Mistletoe Manor?”

  In the Heart of Windy Pines is the answer to these two frequently asked questions. I hope you enjoy it.

  ~Holly

  Spoiler alert:

  This book has characters you will recognize from Holly’s books Murder at Mistletoe Manor, The Port Elspeth Jewelry Making Club, and Carnage at the Christmas Party. While this book is a standalone read, if you plan to read the others (especially The Port Elspeth Jewelry Making Club) at some point, you’ll want to read them BEFORE reading this, so you don’t ruin any surprises for yourself.

  The Mistletoe Manor floorplan:

  Prologue

  Thursday morning, November 21, 2019

  At first, Klarinda thought she was seeing a toppled-over snowman. She set down the armload of firewood she’d been collecting from the pile by the front door and took a step closer to the side yard of the inn, trying to get a better look in the early morning light.

  “Who would have done that?” she asked herself. Had some kids come all the way up here to Mistletoe Manor just to knock over a snowman? And if they had, why had they only taken out one, when there was such an enticing lineup of them, each decked out in colorful scarves and hats?

  She almost turned and went back inside the inn—after all, she only had on jeans and a sweater; she hadn’t meant to be out here for more than a minute or so—but something about the scene begged her to investigate further.

  She crunched across the snow-covered lawn, until suddenly, she could make out what she’d been seeing.

  It wasn’t a snowman at all. It was a man. An honest-to-goodness human being, and he was lying face-down in the snow. Another inch or so had fallen in the night, but his bright hat and a corner of his sleeve were still exposed.

  “No! Please tell me this hasn’t happened again!” Klarinda cried. She rushed to him and crouched at his side, trying to turn him over, but he wouldn’t budge. He was frozen to the ground. He must have been there all night. She brushed at the snow covering his face and gasped in recognition when she realized who it was. She let out a long wail of despair and then sprang back to her feet and ran to the inn.

  How could this be happening? Another murder at Mistletoe Manor. And this time, it didn’t involve a stranger. It involved the man she was falling in love with.

  Chapter 1

  Two days earlier:

  Tuesday, November 19, 2019

  In all his life, the man in the Mercedes had never had a car break down on him. Plenty of other catastrophes had befallen him, but a failing automobile was a problem he had no experience with. Lately, however, his life had been full of firsts.

  Just as the three-year-old Mercedes-Benz GLS he was driving began slowing and lurching like some old junker, a series of four small, weathered, peeling billboards, each lit up in the failing twilight by a single yellow bulb, came into view.

  You’re just two miles from a good night’s sleep!

  Stay with us at Mistletoe Manor!

  Best dinner in town is at Mistletoe Manor!

  Take your next right to Mistletoe Manor. Closed Mondays.

  “It’s a… Tuesday!” he decided. Funny how the days ran together now that he was retired.

  He put on his blinker and veered off the highway onto Pine Lookout Road. It was a narrow road and only the center of it had been plowed. It swooped down a bit and then rounded a corner, and then went up, up, up. It would have been plenty for any vehicle to take, but his malfunctioning automobile was hardly having it. It sputtered and lurched even more violently. A low guardrail and the chunks of snow and ice on the side of the road were all that separated him from the steeply cascading mountainside on his right. His hands gripped the steering wheel in white-knuckled fear, as he pressed the gas pedal to the floor.

  “Come on, you can make it,” he told his vehicle, just as it shot ahead and began behaving normally again. “Thank you. You’ve got this,” he told it, in the same tone he’d used years ago when his kids were little and they were playing soccer or field hockey. “Good job, good job. Keep it up.”

  It was his ex-wife’s, technically, even if she’d never get to drive it again. And the ex part was only in his head. Legally, they were still married. Divorcing her when she was having so much trouble adjusting to life behind bars seemed cruel. And it wasn’t as if he had anyone or anything to move on to. There were plenty of people who probably thought he was holding out for her. In fact, even though he hadn’t supported her during her trials or spoken to her since her arrest, she probably believed he still loved her. He’d let her and the rest of them believe it. It didn’t matter to him any longer what she or anyone else thought or believed. Since the spring of 2018, nothing had mattered to him except his daughter and getting through each day.

  He made his way down the huge hill, barely keeping his vehicle on the road. “Why doesn’t anybody plow out here?” he said under his breath. This got him thinking about things like taxes and government, systems and structure. The SUV began getting lurchy again as it ascended another big hill. He took his hands off the wheel, one at a time, wiping them on his jeans and returning them to their death grip. A moment later he saw another sign that did even less to boost his confidence. It was a sign from decades ago. Welcome to Windy Pines! it proclaimed in faded letters. It was so old and faint that he’d misread it as Welcome to Candy Canes! and had to blink to decipher the real name of the town.

  The only thing scarier than driving on these icy mountain roads in a malfunctioning vehicle was staying in some creepy little town in the middle of nowhere. He was a city man. He didn’t like
camping, fishing, hunting, or “getting away from it all.” Now and then, he and his family used to go for a hike. That had meant wearing Patagonia jackets, if the kids had their say, or tracksuits if their mother had her say, and taking lots of photos for Instagram and Facebook. They’d go to some state park with waterfalls, if they’d been feeling especially ambitious, or, more likely, a pumpkin patch.

  “Just find a gas station,” he decided aloud to himself. “There’s got to be one of those old-fashioned service stations around here someplace. Get this thing fixed and get back on your way.”

  As he continued up that steep hill—barely—and came to a deserted intersection at the top of it, he got a view of the small town below. He exhaled in relief. Even with the gray, overcast skies, this village looked more cheerful and welcoming than he’d imagined. And a little bigger. Was that a Walgreens drugstore down there? Maybe. From way up here, it was hard to tell for sure. A person always felt safe when there was a Walgreens.

  In the late December afternoon, the streets and shops down below looked warm and lively. In the distance, on the other end of town, an old Victorian inn was perched. An extravagant Christmas display of a sleigh and reindeer twinkled colorfully atop its steep roof. Even from here, he recognized it as the inn that had been pictured on the four billboards.

  “Maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad idea to call it a day,” he decided, as he caught his breath there at the stop sign, shaking out his achy hands. And so he drove through the little town and out the other side of it, and found his way to Mistletoe Manor.

  Chapter 2

  “Welcome!” said the woman at the front desk. She looked like she was in her late fifties or early sixties. Her face was ruddy and friendly, though she carried an undercurrent of weariness and wisdom. She was folding towels. When the owner of the Mercedes walked in the front door of the inn, she set the stack of them on a chair next to her and announced, “Myrtle, at your service. Close that door tight after you, if you wouldn’t mind. It’s blustery up here on the mountain. If you don’t give it a good what-for, it’ll blow right back open.”

  He gave it a firm shove and dusted himself off. It had just begun snowing heavily.

  “Do you have any rooms available for tonight?” he asked her, wiping at his watery eyes and drippy nose. Back in Connecticut, they didn’t often get this kind of bitter cold. It was a little much for him to adjust to.

  “Do we have any rooms?” She laughed. “Yes, we have rooms. What’s your favorite color?”

  “I don’t know,” he said, wondering what this had to do with his need for lodging. “Blue?”

  “Why do men always say blue?” she asked. “Oh, don’t look so taken aback. I’m just joshing you. But really, the blue room is already taken. I’m going to put you in the gray room. What do you say to that?”

  “Gray’s fine with me.”

  “Good, good. It’s a nice room. They’ve all been recently remodeled. Just a couple years ago. That’s recent enough, wouldn’t you say?”

  “Sure,” he said.

  “Just yourself?”

  “Just myself,” he concurred. Oh, the pain of it. He swallowed, forcing the lump of tears in his throat back down his esophagus.

  “Just one night?” asked Myrtle.

  “That’s right.”

  “No pets, no cigarettes. Got that?”

  “No pets with cigarettes,” he repeated glumly. He couldn’t help it. He was a dad. The dad jokes were a part of his DNA.

  “Very funny,” said Myrtle. “I just need you to fill out this paperwork.” She passed him a sheet of paper that had the usual questions that never used to feel invasive, but now were nearly debilitatingly unanswerable. Like naming his address, city, and state, or saying who he would like contacted in the event of an emergency. Could he even be the subject of an emergency, he paused to wonder. After all he’d been through, what more could happen to him that could even constitute being called an emergency? If he were to keel over and die, would that be an emergency? Not really.

  “You okay?” asked Myrtle. “You look a little down.”

  “I’m fine,” he said. He filled in the forms with his daughter’s information. It was the only option he had, and doing so convinced him to keep himself safe and well, because she would be the last person who could help him if he had a so-called emergency.

  “New York!” Myrtle exclaimed, as soon as she turned the form around and took a look at it. “You came all the way from New York City? I thought you looked like a city slicker!”

  “Really?” he asked, glancing down at the jeans he was wearing. Sure, they were one of his newer pairs, but his daughter always called them ‘dad jeans’ and told him they looked unstylish. He normally wore them just for mowing the lawn. He wondered what about them said ‘city slicker.’ Then again, he decided, noticing that Myrtle was wearing a powder blue polyester leisure suit jacket over a snowman sweater, perhaps she wasn’t the best judge of style.

  “You must hear that all the time,” Myrtle guessed.

  “No, I really don’t,” he said.

  “An honest-to-goodness New Yorker. I was in New York once, back when I was about twenty-two.”

  He nodded. She seemed to be waiting for him to ask her about it, so he said, “Did you like it? New York City, I mean. Did you enjoy your trip there?”

  “Oh, I didn’t go to New York City,” she said, sounding rather appalled. “I was in Rochester. That was big enough for me. So, what brought you all the way out here to Windy Pines?”

  “I’m just passing through.”

  “Were you referred by anyone?” she asked.

  “Just those billboards on the side of the road,” he said.

  “Oh! I told Klarinda not to let them take those down. She thinks they look shabby, but I always tell her, ‘An old coat is better than a new blouse if there’s a chill in the air!’ You get it?”

  He shrugged.

  “In other words,” she continued, “functionality beats good looks any day. Alrighty, credit card and ID, please.” Then she wandered off with them and left him standing there, alone.

  He took a good look around the inn. The parking lot had been nearly empty. It appeared that the entire place was deserted. He picked up a menu lying on the front desk and looked it over. It was only four o’clock in the afternoon, but he was starving. He hadn’t eaten anything since he’d started his day at seven that morning, several states away from this rustic, hidden locale in Idaho.

  “Pierre’s the best chef in town,” Myrtle said, returning and giving him back his credit card and driver’s license. She handed him a little card with the WiFi code, breakfast hours, and some other information on it, along with his room key. “He’ll probably open the kitchen around five o’clock tonight. Maybe five thirty. It depends on when Meribeth or Lucas gets here.”

  “Oh?”

  “One or the other is on duty waiting tables tonight. If it’s Meribeth, she’s got cheerleading practice after school and it might go long since they’re working on their dance routine. In that case, you’re going to have to wait a little longer. If Lucas is working tonight, he should be here no later than five. Pierre knows which one’s on the schedule. Do you need me to ask him whose shift it is?”

  “No, that’s okay,” he said. He’d never seen a restaurant run this way. Then again, did it really matter if this was the way they chose to run their business? Getting upset about something so trivial, now, after all he’d been through, seemed silly.

  “Whatever time dinner starts, it’ll be worth the wait,” Myrtle assured him. “Tonight’s specialty is chicken pot pie. You’ll love it. It’ll cheer up anyone. And,” she added under her breath, “we seem to be drawing people in who need some cheering up tonight.”

  “It sounds delicious. Say,” he said, “is there a good mechanic in town? Maybe someone I can reach today still? My car’s making a lot of noise and running bad. I’m shocked it made it all the way up here. I’d be surprised if it even starts in the morning, the
way it was running.”

  “What do you think’s wrong with it?”

  “I’m not sure,” he said. He’d never been a ‘car guy.’

  “Sure, I can come up with a mechanic for you,” Myrtle said. “Ford or Chevy?”

  “Neither. It’s, um, a foreign car.”

  “Oh.” Myrtle nodded sympathetically. “The Honda and Toyota dealers are over in Winter River. With the bridge out, it’s about forty-five minutes from here, because you have to take the old logging highway. No matter, though. Derb Dunlavy can fix just about anything. He’s got his own shop and he’ll work on foreign cars and domestics.”

  “Okay. Could you help put me in touch with him?”

  Myrtle shook her head. “Not until tomorrow. Derb’s visiting Tammy’s family up in Crawford. Tammy’s ma’s knee replacement surgery,” she added as an explanation. Then she lowered her voice, despite that no one else was within earshot, and said, “She’ll be lucky if she doesn’t need the other one replaced next year. They say it’s arthritis, but I think it’s all those extra pounds she’s hauling around. A body’s not meant to carry all that weight.”

  “As for… what did you say his name was?”

  “Derb. As for Derb, I don’t think he and Tammy’ll be back in town until tomorrow morning. That’s what Lenore Kempley said when I saw her at the Pig today.”

  “At the pig?” he asked, rubbing his forehead.

  “The Piggly Wiggly.”

  “Of course.”

  “So,” said Myrtle, “we might as well let them be tonight. I’ll give him a try in the morning. No sense bothering them before then.”

  “Well. Okay... So, if we get a hold of him tomorrow, do you think he’ll be able to help me right away?”