Cooking Up Trouble (20 page)

Chelsea nodded.

“Okay, here goes. ‘Love Me Tender,’ backward.
La, la, laaa
,” she trilled, so that they could both start off on the same key. More or less.

“
I feel sorry for Reginald
, despite everything,” Angie said as she and Paavo walked into their room.

“It’s hard to believe he thought he could scare people away when money is involved. Money makes people desperate. They’ll risk their lives before they walk away from it,” Paavo said. The room was chilly. He knelt in front of the fireplace and began to stack kindling and logs.

“Reginald had reason, opportunity, and motive.” She sat on the bed. “He confessed to rigging up the house with his electronics. Why do I find I want to believe him when he says he’s innocent of doing anything more?”

“Most murderers can be quite persuasive,” Paavo said. “Especially when they have no reason to confess.”

“We can’t overlook Chelsea, even though she’s my friend.” Angie kicked off her shoes and scooted back against the headboard. “Running Spirit made fun of her, Finley duped her, and who knows how she felt about Miss Greer or Patsy. I guess anyone who claims to be in love with a ghost could be capable of anything.”

Paavo couldn’t help but smile at Angie’s forlorn words.

“Now Bethel,” Angie continued, “I think would be a lot more capable of murdering someone than Chelsea. Especially after the way Finley and Running Spirit didn’t take her seriously and wanted to cut her out of the inn.”

“That’s true.” Paavo stood and watched the kindling burn, waiting to see if the logs would catch. “Martin’s reasons would be the same.”

“And Bethel said Martin had borrowed money to invest here. But why would they want to harm Miss Greer or Patsy? Maybe we’re going about this the wrong way. Instead of thinking about the suspects, we should look at the victims.”

“We don’t know that Patsy is a victim,” Paavo replied. “She’s also a suspect. No one here knows anything about Greer, which makes it tough to figure out who’d want her dead. I don’t think that’s going to work.”

“Hell. There’s only one person who knew them well enough to want them all dead.”

“Who’s that?”

“Moira Tay.”

Paavo came and sat beside her. “Moira once said a lot of people brought their dreams to this inn. I think that’s where the key is.”

“Interesting,” Angie said. “Her words went along with something Bethel said to me earlier today.”

“What was that?”

“That this place, this inn, was supposed to be a dream come true for her and Martin. It was supposed to give her a big comeback.”

“Like Reginald’s foolish dream about returning to his birthright.” Paavo reached for the matches.

“Running Spirit came to find success. He’d lived a life of selling his love to women with money. Isn’t it ironic
that his dream could go no further than to fraudulently sell himself to a larger public? To have lots of people pay for the pleasure of loving him spiritually?”

Paavo took her hand. “Don’t forget Patsy, whose only fault was to love too completely and too thoughtlessly.”

“Yes,” Angie said. Leave it to Paavo to recognize the foolishness of love. “Chelsea, too, seeking in a past life what has eluded her in this one. Pinning her hopes on a ghost, like a heroine in a fantasy novel, only to discover the reason they’re called fantasies.”

As she watched Paavo add more kindling, she realized she too had come to the inn because of a dream—not only Finley’s false promise of an interesting, creative job, but of being here with Paavo and it being a place their love could grow and flourish.

“Then there was Finley,” Angie said, going to his side, “conning everyone just so he could get money to show people his food philosophy. That seems so trivial for all that happened.”

“He had another reason,” Paavo said. “He and Moira weren’t brother and sister. Their parents were briefly married, but soon divorced. Finley, though, fell in love. She thought she still loved Danny’s father—Greg Jeffers—”

“Greg!” Angie exclaimed as she sat down, her initial surprise giving way to understanding as she thought of all she’d seen and heard over these few days. “That explains a lot, doesn’t it? Especially the strange way Moira acted over Finley’s death. I found it hard to believe anyone could be so unmoved by the death of a brother.”

“She hated Finley,” Paavo said, sitting on a chair beside her. “Finley introduced Greg to Patsy, got him out of the way, but it still didn’t cause Moira to love him. He brought Jeffers here so that Moira could see what her dream lover had become. But he didn’t want Jeffers to
know he had a son. That was why he had Danny hide while Jeffers was here.”

“The whole thing is sick.” Angie couldn’t hide her disgust.

“I think Finley’s dream was Moira. To find her love.”

“And what was Moira’s?” Angie asked softly.

“I don’t think she has one,” he said.

Angie had to smile. “The most spiritual one here, and she’s the realist. Wouldn’t you know it?” But her smile faded as she thought of how Moira’s gaze followed Paavo. She knew, then, what Moira’s dream was, even if Paavo didn’t.

“When you met Moira,” she began, her words slow at first, hesitant; then they picked up and soon tumbled out. “I don’t know why, I don’t know how, but that changed you. And you were never the same with me.”

She waited, but he still didn’t answer. She reached for his hand.

“It wasn’t her,” he said finally.

She didn’t speak. It was his turn to talk, to explain.

“It wasn’t Moira. It was someone she reminded me of.” He walked away from her then and went to the window to peer out at the blackness below. After a long while, he spoke again. “You know what first love is like, Angie. The kind that you have when you’re still pretty much a kid. The sun rises and sets on that person. Even their flaws seem perfect. You think you’ll die if they leave you. And if you live to be a hundred, you’ll always remember the special feeling you had with them. A feeling that never comes again, maybe because you learn to never give yourself so completely again.”

“I know.” Her words were quiet. Sometimes it wasn’t only a first love that made you feel that way. “It’s heaven and hell at the same time.”

“Seeing Moira made me remember.” Blue eyes lifted
to her. “I remembered how I’d vowed to never open myself up that way again. Not to anyone.”

Angie shut her eyes at the pain in his voice.

“I remembered how it was to be young and in love, with lots of years, lots of dreams, ahead of me,” Paavo said.

She stared at the floor, unsure she wanted to hear this.

“I walked out on her, Angie.”

Shock coursed through her.

“When the woman I thought I loved needed me, I wasn’t there. I failed her. Moira Tay’s so damn much like her that if I can help her, I will.”

She stared at him.

“Yeah.” He gave a wry laugh. “Here I bet you thought I was perfect.” He walked to the window and looked out, his hands in his pockets again in that ‘do not touch’ pose that had become so familiar to her.

“You’re close enough to perfect for me,” she said.

“All your words about being proud of me looking for Patsy—she’s a stranger. I guess you never thought about how I treat women I supposedly love.”

“Maybe you couldn’t have helped her, and deep down you knew it. Or maybe this time you did fail. It happens, even with people you love. That’s why there’s this thing called forgiveness.”

“Why don’t you go see how Chelsea’s doing, or something.”

She’d never known what it meant to be lonely or to be rejected until she met a cop who didn’t know what it meant to be loved. He was teaching her; she had to do a better job teaching him.

He had turned his back to her, but she went to him and wrapped her arms around his waist, pressing her face between his shoulder blades. “I’m not going anywhere, Paavo.”

“Don’t.” He pried her arms loose and walked toward the door. She followed.

“We talked about dreams,” he said. “This inn did show me the stuff dreams are made of. Things like waking up next to you each morning.” As he opened the door, he bent forward to give her what was only a quick kiss, yet it carried his longing, his loneliness. “Why do you think I never dared to?” he whispered.

“Coward!” she cried.

His features sharpened in response to the word.

“You’re right about this inn,” she said. “It’s no more than a dream. It’s not at all what our lives would be like if we were together, because then we would have to deal with families and jobs and friends and all those day-to-day things that get in the way of two people simply enjoying being with each other. But that’s what life’s all about.”

“I’m just not sure, Angie. I need time.”

“I know.” She touched his face, ran her hand along the side of his hair, his ear. “My handsome, logical, analytical Paavo. I know this doesn’t make sense to you. Maybe not to me either. You’ve got time. I can wait.” She smiled. “A little while, at least.”

Slowly his serious expression broke into a grin and he took her in his arms. “I love you, Angelina. If I can’t be definite about much else, at least believe that.”

He gave the door a light kick and it swung shut.

The next morning, the good news was that the rain had stopped. The bad news was that the fog had come in, as thick and damp as the traditional pea soup.

Angie and Paavo rode with the Baymans, Chelsea, and Vane down to the mud slide in the Bayman’s old station wagon. They were going to try to find a way past it.

Paavo drove slowly and cautiously, visibility rarely more than five feet in front of him. But no one could bear to stay a moment longer than absolutely necessary at Hill Haven. Especially not with Miss Greer’s, Finley’s, and now Running Spirit’s corpses rotting around them, along with the ever-present terror that one of them just might be next. Safety in numbers was their constant slogan. No one, ever, wanted to be alone.

When they reached the last spot in the road wide enough to turn the station wagon around, they stopped and parked. They didn’t want the same thing to happen to it as had happened to Finley’s van the first day it rained.

They walked toward the slide area.

“Now that the rain has let up, why don’t we go down to the beach and simply walk along the coast?” Chelsea asked.

“Because the beach disappears in parts and becomes a straight drop from cliffs onto rocks that are underwater during high tide,” Paavo said.

“Besides,” Martin added, “I don’t think there’s a town or road along the coast for twenty-five miles in either direction.”

“Oh,” Chelsea responded. She glanced at Reginald, but he turned his head.

Angie and the others hadn’t said anything to her about Reginald’s behavior, hoping he’d tell her. It seemed to Angie that he hadn’t—and wasn’t about to.

Finally, they reached the mud slide. They took shovels, buckets, hoes, and spades and worked to fill the buckets with mud and then empty them by tossing the mud off the edge of the road to drop to the ocean. They huddled close, because any one of them who wandered too far could be lost in the fog.

It was slow, tedious work, made even more so because the mud was so soggy that as they dug, more slid down to cover the spots they cleared.

After a couple hours, they saw the fruitlessness of their task. If it didn’t rain again, though, the following day the ground would be a lot drier. Perhaps then they could clear the road, find Sheriff Butz and tell him their horrible story of the madness at Hill Haven, and then, go home.

Seeing that the mud slide was impossible to clear, they used their energy pushing and otherwise coaxing the van backwards up the narrow road until it could be turned around and driven back to the house. At least they achieved something.

Wet, cold, and hungry, the group returned once more to Hill Haven. Angie decided to cook an early dinner, since everyone had missed lunch.

She looked around for Moira, then decided to make a cheese soufflé with braised vegetables, boiled potatoes, and a salad. It would be fast, but filling.

She went out to the root cellar to get a bunch of potatoes. She’d discovered, after her fright with Chelsea, a leather thong to hold the door open while she was down there. On her way back, she heard familiar voices. She couldn’t see anyone through the thick fog, but they were close. She leaned against a tree, listening.

“I’ve never known anyone like you,” Reginald Vane said. “In this day, to find a woman whose heart is so pure, so generous, as to forgive me. You’re a miracle, Chelsea Worthington.”

“I’m not, Reginald. I’m nothing, not even pretty. I’m plain—and fat.”

“Your figure is full, like those of beautiful women throughout history. You have the hips of Venus, the waist of Godiva, the—pardon me—the bosom of Marie
Antoinette. Your hair is the color of a Titian, your eyes the pools of Rome, your lips perfect as a Rembrandt.”

“You’re making me blush, Reggie. You’re so clever. I don’t have any such words.”

“You don’t have to speak, Miss Worthington. To be with you is heaven. I’ll just look.”

“Not…not touch?”

Angie strained to see, but the fog was too thick.

“I wouldn’t presume.”

“I love noble men!”

“Oh! Miss Worthington! Are you sure you want to do this?”

Angie stepped closer, tripped over a tree root, and fell with a splat onto a mud puddle.

“What was that?” Reginald whispered. “Let’s go back to the house. I won’t have your reputation compromised.”

“Anything you say, Reggie.”

Angie sat up. She and the vegetables were covered with brown, sticky mud. And now there was nothing left to see or hear.
Damn
!

Angie changed her clothes and had completed all the dinner preparations except for putting the soufflé in the oven when she began to gather everyone together. She wanted them in the dining room and seated before she served the soufflé.

She found everyone but Moira.

The others quickly grew anxious and worried over Moira’s absence. They were ready to go on a search for her when she burst into the house.

“Paavo!” she cried. “Have you seen Danny? Was he with you?”

“Who’s this Danny person?” Bethel asked.

Moira ignored her and spoke only to Paavo. “I haven’t
seen him all morning. I went to Quint’s house, but he wasn’t there. He was supposed to come for his home study. He’s never late like this!”