Miz Scarlet and the Bewildered Bridegroom (2 page)

Lacey had lived alone
in her inherited homestead after her son, Boynton, departed for the
Sunshine State with his wife. Rattling around in a big house all by
herself wasn’t exactly ideal for the senior citizen with the busy
social life and a shrinking wallet. Once she rented it out and
moved into her own suite at the Four Acorns Inn, she was glad of
the sizable income she received, but I knew she still had some
regrets in giving up her childhood home. Was this just her way of
trying to reclaim it for herself?

The current tenant of
Wallace’s home, Karin Frenlind, arrived with big plans for the
place, expecting to draw the movers and shakers from the Hartford
area for special occasions, corporate meetings, and the occasional
wedding. She had managed to get her face on the social page of
almost every issue of the weekly
Cheswick Crier
in the months
since she moved in, usually with her arm around this local
politician or that sports figure.

Rumor had it that
Karin’s ambitions were getting the better of her. Back in April,
she got caught doing the horizontal mambo with Seth Von Bethen, the
Mediquick Air Ambulance CEO, during a corporate cocktail party.
Amber Von Bethen went in search of an available powder room and
stumbled into the library, where she found her husband writhing on
the floor with the unashamed thirty-something social maven. The
next morning, Amber hired Marty Lehman, the local divorce guru, and
filed suit to end her marriage of seventeen years.

Over the last couple of
months, the neighbors took notice of the antics at the mansion. I’d
heard from more than one person that the partying went on until the
wee small hours of the night. Mrs. Olin complained to me about the
dangerous driving, saying that she and her poodle, Sadie, were
nearly run over when they were crossing the street as the sun came
up. I wondered if my mother had heard the gossip. The senior
citizen grapevine was usually quick to circulate the news. “Why are
we even discussing this?”

“Scarlet, when Lacey
rented out her family home to Karin, those functions became the
talk of Cheswick.” Laurel folded her hands primly in her lap, shook
her head, and heaved a disapproving sigh. “And not in a good
way.”

“Your point being....”
I probed gingerly, still not really sure what any of this had to do
with me taking on Wallace’s place.

“Lacey wants to
terminate Karin’s lease. She’s convinced there’s funny business
going on up there.”

“What kind of funny
business?” Jenny wanted to know, suddenly curious.

My mother turned and
looked expectantly in my direction. “You know...too many people
coming and going at odd hours. Lacey says she’s got grounds for
kicking Karin out. There’s a village ordinance -- no one is
supposed to park overnight on White Oak Hill Road, but Myrtle said
there’s been a lot of that lately. And an inebriated man knocked
over her mailbox when he backed into it last week. He never
bothered to stop.”

I could understand the
concern about the bad driving. At the moment, however, there was
only one thing on my mind. What would possess my mother to think I
could add wedding planner to my résum
é
? I made the mistake of
asking.

“Wallace’s mansion is a
perfect place to celebrate special occasions,” she
replied.

“I agree, but that
doesn’t mean the Four Acorns Inn should take it on,” I announced.
“What did Boynton say about it?”

“Boynton doesn’t know
yet. We’re still in the discussion stage, Scarlet. Once we have
things worked out, we’ll talk to him.”

“I don’t think it’s as
easy as you ladies think, Mom. For one thing, it takes money to
operate a wedding venue. There’s the heating in winter, the cooling
in summer, insurance, the general upkeep of the building. And when
it comes to functions, you have to pay the caterer, the florist,
the wait staff, the bartenders, the musicians....”

“But it’s not the same
as running an inn, is it?” Jenny piped in. “If you only did one or
two weddings a month, you wouldn’t have to worry so much about
filling guest rooms. It would actually work hand in hand with the
Four Acorns, wouldn’t it?”

I looked at that sweet
face and knew instantly that my mother and her cousin had given my
assistant a script for Act One of
Weddings by Miz Scarlet
. I
glanced over at the woman in the wheelchair, bent over as she
extended a hand to January, our Jack Russell terrier-in-residence.
Was this my mother’s revenge for the fact I never
married?

“Have you no shame?” I
shook my head in mock dismay, wagging a finger at Laurel. “Using
this poor, innocent teenager in furtherance of your devious scheme?
I’m shocked, absolutely shocked.”

Chapter Two --

“Well, you shouldn’t
be!” my mother shot back. “For one thing, it’s time you thought
about hiring help for the inn. You’ve managed to successfully book
more rooms in the last six months than in all of last year. And if
we used Lacey’s house as an event venue, we could control the kinds
of parties that are held there and make sensible rules about the
number of guests. Did you know the fire department recently was
called there because there were too many people in the house at one
time? It’s a violation of the fire code to have more than fifty
people in there.”

“How many were there?”
I teased. “Fifty one? Let me guess, one of Lacey’s friends called
to complain, all in anticipation of kicking Karin
out?”

“There were more than
seventy people, Scarlet, and some of them were smoking. You know
that there’s a no-smoking rule!” It took me a moment to realize how
upset Laurel was about the situation.

“So, why doesn’t Lacey
just kick Karin out and rent the house to some nice
family?”

“Like the last time?”
Leave it to Laurel to remind me of the Jordan family’s terrifying
ordeal at the hands of a couple of creeps. “And have you forgotten
how close
you
came to being killed, Scarlet
Wilson?”

I winced at the
reminder, knowing how frightened she had been while I was among the
missing.
Not that it was a day in
the park for me...far from it.

“We could have Kenny do
a thorough background check on any new tenants,
Mom.”

“You’re impossible!” my
mother sniffed haughtily, whirling her wheelchair around and
rolling away, on her way back to the house. As we watched her
disappear, my assistant shook her head.

“Oh, Miz Scarlet,
you’ve done it now,” Jenny warned me ominously. “Your mother is not
happy with you!”

“It’s hardly the first
time I’ve disappointed Laurel,” I assured the young college
student. “I doubt it will be the last.”

“But you don’t
understand. They really have their hearts set on this wedding
business. The Googins girls have been talking about it for
weeks.”

“For weeks and you
didn’t warn me?” I pretended to glower at her. “That’s the thanks I
get for all the many wonderful things I’ve done for you, you rotten
little twit?”

“I know,” she grinned
sheepishly. “I should have told you, but they swore me to secrecy.
That’s because Edna....”

“Edna Rivera is mixed
up in all this?” Those words were the equivalent of mental alarm
bells ringing off the wall. My best friend’s mother, better known
as the Queen of Clean, had stayed at the inn over the Christmas
holiday and the only person more relieved than me when she left was
her daughter, Laurencia, better known as Larry.

“Well, she said
Wallace’s house had so much potential as a wedding venue, but it
needs better management. Lacey and your mother agreed that you
should take over.”

That was just what I
didn’t need -- three determined ladies giving me business advice.
Sure, Edna had been head of the housekeeping staff for a small
nursing facility in Atlanta for years, but that’s hardly the same
thing as running an inn, is it? And as for Laurel and Lacey, the
closest they ever got to being innkeepers was to mix the cocktails
in the living room for guests and handle the odd task now and then.
I was the one who did all the heavy lifting and
schlepping.

“Does Larry know about
this?” I demanded, turning my disapproving gaze on the
co-conspirator next to me. Jenny gave a quick, embarrassed shrug of
those tiny shoulders of hers. I was pretty sure that Edna had kept
it a secret from her daughter. That’s because Larry would have put
the kibosh on it right away.

“I only found out about
it by accident,” she admitted, “when I overheard them
talking.”

“I’m missing
something,” I said. Obviously, the ladies had been at this for some
time. The plan had evolved beyond the speculative stage, especially
if they were talking about expanding the Four Acorns Inn staff and
bringing Edna onboard. “Spill the beans.”

“Well, don’t tell them
I told you, but Edna still wants to get back together with Big
Larry.”

“That’s hardly a
secret,” I replied, still trying to make sense of it all. “What
does this have to do with the Four Acorns Inn?”

“Edna got laid off last
month, so she decided to move to Fort Meyers, Florida, where the
Red Sox do their spring training, and rent a small place while she
looks for work. But it gets really hot there in the
summer....”

“Whoa!” I held up my
hands in protest. “Wait, wait, wait!”

“What?”

“Edna is selling her
place in Atlanta?” I suddenly understood my friend’s concern when
her mother recently announced she would be coming up for a
month-long summer visit. Larry wasn’t used to the Queen of Clean
staying at her condo, especially with teenage daughter, Michaela,
in residence. It was a recipe for disaster. “What does Edna plan to
do when the Red Sox are in Boston?”

“She wants to find a
new job up here.”

“Oh, no. Don’t tell
me!”

“Well, that’s why the
Googins girls thought we could open up Wallace’s house for the
wedding season. You know, Miz Scarlet -- May, June, July, August,
and September.”

“Edna wants a job at
the Four Acorns Inn?” Suddenly, stunningly, the pieces of the
puzzle all fell into place. This wasn’t so much about creating an
annex to the Four Acorns Inn as it was about getting Edna remarried
to the assistant coach for the Boston Red Sox, and the three
escapees from a regency romance novel were willing to create all
this subterfuge to get the job done.

“You have got to be
freaking kidding me,” I growled through clenched
teeth.

“Don’t tell your mother
I told you all this,” the teenager begged me. “I don’t want her to
be mad at me.”

“Kiddo, that’s the
least of my worries at the moment. Do you have any idea what Larry
will do when she finds out Edna is selling her place in Atlanta and
following Big Larry around on the baseball
circuit?”

“She’ll be
upset.”

“There’s an
understatement.”

“Are you going to tell
her?” Jenny studied me, nervously fiddling with her fingers. I
understood her anxiety. Larry didn’t like surprises, especially the
unpleasant ones involving her mother. Decades after Edna divorced
Big Larry, the couple had the chance to reconnect over the recent
Christmas holiday. While improving their relationship, the
unexpected reunion didn’t solve the major problem between the
couple. Edna is an opinionated, demanding steamroller of a woman,
crushing everything in her path -- even the man she loves. I
sighed, resigned to my fate.

“What choice do I have?
Larry’s my friend; I owe her that much.”

“Boy, what a mess this
is,” the teen remarked.

“It is indeed. And so
ironic, considering Edna is the Queen of Clean.” I rolled my eyes,
gazing up at the heavens. “I wish she’d spend less time on her
cockamamie intrigues and more time on tidying up her love
life.”

“What happens now?”
Jenny wanted to know.

“I honestly don’t know,
but if the Googins girls already have a plan, maybe we need to find
out whether it’s viable, Jen. If we let them get any farther with
this and Larry finds out we didn’t tell her, she’s going to lay
someone out in lavender and I’d prefer it not be me. Maybe it’s
time to talk to Bur. Want to join me?”

“It depends. Is your
brother going to yell at me?”

“Bur? The guy who’s
spent more time in the naughty corner as a child than anyone else?
I doubt it. But I’ll tell you what. We’ll approach it from a purely
business standpoint. We won’t mention Larry, Big Larry, or Edna
just yet. All Bur has to know is that Laurel informed us that Lacey
wants to get rid of her tenant. I’ll act like the wedding business
is an idea I’m considering if and when Wallace’s house is
available.”