Miz Scarlet and the Bewildered Bridegroom (23 page)

Jenny and I both looked
at each other as Mark Pritchard uttered those words. His sudden
curiosity captured our attention. I stuck with a non-committal
response, hoping to distract him.

“Good heavens! I
haven’t even done one wedding yet, Mark. We’ll have to see if I
survive this experience,” I chuckled heartily. He wasn’t buying
it.

“Once you get your
first one under your belt, it’s just a matter of booking the next.
Is that what you plan to do, Scarlet?”

Why did he seem to care
so much? I felt my suspicions growing. I tried again to deflect his
questions.

“I’m an innkeeper. I
make beds, scrub toilets, and feed people. I’m not sure I have time
for anything else.”

“Maybe you’re
interested in getting out of that business,” he replied
jovially.
Interested in getting
out of that business....
How was I
supposed to take that?

“Oh, I don’t think so.
I’m really quite good at it, Mark.”

“Then again, it could
be more trouble than it’s worth.”

What did that mean? A
cold, dark shadow passed through me and I shivered. When I glanced
at Jenny, her eyes wore that worried look.

“How
so?”

“I’m just saying that
innkeeping is a tough business.” His voice was even, but his words
almost sounded menacing to me.

“And you know this
because....” I left the question unanswered, hoping he would fill
in the blanks. The short pause began to drag on as the conversation
halted. He had no intention on clarifying his point. Instead, he
begged off.

“I have to go, Scarlet.
I have another call coming in about a wedding I’m doing on Friday
night. I’ll see you at two next Saturday.”
Click.
That
was the end of our conversation.

“Is it just me, Jen, or
is that guy....” I was going to say pushy, but she filled in the
blank herself.

“Creepy? Yes, he is.
Why was he so nosy?”

“Maybe he wants to be
hired if we start doing weddings,” I suggested. I wasn’t really
sure how to take his interest in the Four Acorns Inn. Why did he
care if we were thinking of offering wedding services to our
guests?

“Why did you pick him
to do the ceremony?”

“Good question.” How
had I come to choose him as the wedding officiant? Mercy Dohan, a
clerk at Cheswick Town Hall, answered my inquiry when Annalee and
Gunnar wanted to know what they had to do to obtain a marriage
license in Connecticut. Once Mercy had explained the requirements,
I had asked if she knew someone who could perform the ceremony.
Mercy had recommended a couple of people, whose names I wrote
down.

“One of the most
popular wedding officiants in the area is Justice of the Peace Mark
Pritchard,” she informed me. “He’ll do the service just about
anywhere. Some of the others are reluctant to traipse up White Oak
Hill at sunset or let family pets serve as attendants. Not Mark.
He’s pretty laid back, Scarlet. And his prices are
reasonable.”

Mark was the first one
I called and since he was available, I hired him. Now I was
definitely having second thoughts.

“Maybe I should
consider alternatives,” I said aloud, trying on the idea for size.
It seemed to fit. Jenny let out a deep breath, her relief
apparent.

“You should.” There was
no mistaking her concern. “I would. I don’t trust
him.”

“Really?”

It was obvious that she
had taken an instant dislike to the man. Every word she spoke
painted Mark Pritchard as a devil. Were we giving him horns and a
pitchfork he didn’t deserve?
Maybe we are just overreacting.
Who knows what goes on in the wedding business? If there’s a
lot of competition between wedding officiants, would that explain
Mark’s behavior?

“What if he’s involved
in some kind of wedding scheme?” Jenny pressed on, unwilling to let
it go.

“Wedding scheme? Don’t
you mean scam?” I teased, leaning back in my chair.

“People scheme, Miz
Scarlet. They plot and plan. They do bad things, like pop tires,
cut up curtains, and threaten to throw people over the banister.”
There was no denying the teen was bothered by the recent
happenings. Was her emotional response a delayed reaction to the
psychological trauma?

“So they do. And you
think that’s what’s happening here with Mark
Pritchard?”

“It could be,” she
insisted. “He could be Karin Frenlind’s partner in
crime.”

If my assistant was
convinced there was a conspiracy afoot, it wouldn’t be easy to
dispel her fears on that front. Hard logic is the only real tonic
for what ails us.
Focus on the
bottom line. Think like a cop. What would Larry
say?

I paused to imagine the
homicide investigator at the table with us, listening to us jabber
on about Mark Pritchard. How would she handle this? She’d shake her
head in disgust.
“You two are
giving yourselves the creepy crawlies. Where are the facts here?
How do you know he’s involved? You can’t go accusing some guy just
because you’re scared!”

The truth was we didn’t
have an abundance of evidence to support the conspiracy theory, at
least as far as the justice of the peace was concerned. The fear
that seemed to pervade the Four Acorns Inn was getting out of hand.
It was time for some perspective.

“What would this
alleged scheme entail exactly? We have a party planner who ropes
unsuspecting people into getting married against their will, and a
justice of the peace who cons naive couples into going down to town
hall to apply for marriage licenses and then forces them to take
vows?”

“Well....”

“Are there any little
chubby cherubs involved in the wedding scheme, Jenny? Are they
nailing folks in the fanny with their arrows, forcing them to fall
in love?”

“Now you’re just being
silly!” she told me churlishly. “You know that’s not what I
mean!”

“What do you mean?” I
softened my tone, playing good cop.

“Well, maybe they’re
manipulating people into
wanting
to get
married.”

“In that case, I’m
surprised the Googins girls and Edna are still single. Heaven knows
the three of them would probably kill to walk down the aisle again.
In fact, I think the Queen of Clean would pay a small fortune to
anyone who can get Big Larry to pop the question, especially during
baseball season.”

She gave me an ‘if
looks could kill’ glare, so I gave her a moment to process her own
conversation.

“Well, when you put it
that way, it does sound kind of ridiculous,” she admitted
sheepishly.

“The modern day version
of a shotgun wedding,” I teased.

“Only without the gun.
Maybe they use fairy dust and magic potions,” she giggled, her
sense of humor returning. We burst out laughing at the same
time.

“We’ve been under such
a strain, Jenny, that we’re imagining things that go bump in the
night. It would be foolish for anyone to try anything now,
especially with the police taking such an interest in the case. The
logical explanation is that Mark Pritchard is probably just looking
to steer prospective brides and grooms Karin’s way. Maybe he’s got
a contract with her or he gets a commission for each couple he
brings to her. Or maybe he’s hoping we’ll start doing weddings and
he’ll pick up some more business.”

“When you put it that
way, I guess there might be a logical explanation for his
pushiness.” Those narrow shoulders twitched briefly, conceding the
point. “I still don’t like him.”

“Nor do I,” I had to
admit. “But we can’t string him up just because we think he’s
pushy.”

“Maybe we could hire a
couple of those cherubs to do it.”

“Given the fact that
Mark’s well over six feet and at least two hundred and fifty
pounds, we’d need more than two,” I kidded.

“Ten might do it,” she
decided, “especially if they bring their bows and
arrows.”

“And on that note, it’s
‘back to reality’ time. We’re burning the few brain cells we have
left on nonsense,” I informed her, my confidence renewed. “We’re
seeing beasts in the shadows and conjuring up trolls with every odd
noise. We need to come to our senses and force ourselves to think
rationally.”

“Okay, so what’s the
rational explanation for what’s going on?” she wanted to know. I
gave it some serious consideration. If someone else had been the
victim on the receiving end of this cruel taunting, what would I
have concluded?

“Someone doesn’t want
us to go into the wedding business, probably because we’re
competition. The harassment seems to suggest that if we continue to
do weddings, we’ll be punished for our efforts, with more
sabotage.”

“Does this mean the
Pinault-Magnusdotter wedding is the first and last for the Four
Acorns Inn?”

Those beautiful eyes
seemed to fill with disappointment as she stared at me. What was I
going to tell her?

“It’s just a matter of
solving the mystery. Our biggest obstacle at the moment is the fact
that we don’t know who is behind the effort. Once we nab the
culprit, I see no reason why we can’t do weddings.”

“Sounds like a plan.”
She gave me a thumbs-up.

“Good.” I leaned over
to pat her knee and then turned my attention back to my laptop,
ready to tackle the next issue for the Pinault-Magnusdotter
wedding. “Until there’s actual evidence that Mark Pritchard is
directly involved, we’ll just carry on.”

“You’ll tell Kenny any
way, won’t you...just to be on the safe side?” I saw that little
flicker of doubt in her eyes. Maybe it wouldn’t hurt to tell him we
had concerns. I was confident he’d at least consider the
possibility that Mark and Karin were in cahoots.

What was bothering me
most? It was the bizarre nature of the case. The break-in and the
punctured tires were scary enough on their own, but the homemade
bomb at the front door made absolutely no sense to me. Were the
quarter-sticks put there for the sheer pleasure of watching us
squirm? Wouldn’t that seem to suggest that whoever was behind these
attacks had a bird’s eye view of what went on inside the Four
Acorns Inn? A bird’s eye view...did that include some way to
monitor our movements, our conversations, our
activities?

Or had someone done
some research on the Four Acorns Inn? Did they know about my
unfortunate romance with Ned Sorkin and his hidden history as an
environmental saboteur? Long before I had learned about Ned’s true
motive in seducing me, we Wilsons had been targeted in an ugly plot
to ruin us. Were we supposed to believe this new violence was some
kind of revenge for putting Ned and his half-brother, Jere, in
prison? Had they hired Karin to finish the job? The moment that
thought crossed my mind, I banished it. I was just being silly,
worrying about nothing, I told myself. After all, Ned hadn’t just
gone after the Wilsons; we weren’t his only victims. He’d kidnapped
the entire Jordan family in order to get his hands on Jim Jordan’s
computer hacking expertise, so that he could carry out his evil
plot.

There was another
possibility, though, one that made a little more sense to me. Karin
might be using Ned’s violent history to camouflage her campaign of
harassment to knock the Four Acorns Inn out of the wedding game.
Was she vicious enough to do that? I’d met her just a handful of
times. Sure, she’d been involved with Seth Von Bethen, the
Mediquick Air Ambulance CEO, and that involvement had resulted in
divorce proceedings when his wife caught them up at Wallace’s
mansion. No doubt Seth was facing a significant financial hit,
given Amber was leaving their marriage of seventeen years with half
the community property. But what did that have to do with the party
planner harassing us?

“Maybe Karin wants to
buy Wallace’s mansion, but she doesn’t want to pay the current fair
market value,” I said aloud, more to myself than to Jenny. “Maybe
she’s hoping that if we’re all scared that we’re being threatened
again, we’ll put both houses on the market, flee Cheswick, and she
can snap them up for a song.”

Had she counted on Seth
to invest in her company and back her efforts to buy Wallace’s
mansion? What if that divorce had actually ruined her plans,
because Seth no longer had as much disposable
income?

“Now it sounds like
you’re the one who’s letting your imagination run away with you,”
the teenager remarked, as she watched me with concern. Maybe she
was right. Maybe we were making a mountain out of a mole hill by
assuming that someone wanted to cause us real harm.