Miz Scarlet and the Bewildered Bridegroom (3 page)

“You’re going to trump
the Googins girls and Edna?” Jenny’s shocked expression was
priceless.

“I guess I am,” I
laughed. “That ought to put a crimp in their
bonnets!”

“Wow, Miz Scarlet. I
never knew you were so sneaky!”

“I beg your
pardon!”

“Aren’t you stealing
their thunder right out from under them? They’re the ones who want
to start a wedding business.”

“Hold on there!” I held
up my hands in protest, interrupting her. “Let’s review the facts.
You don’t want the ladies to know you told me about their
‘dum-dum-da-dum’ idea, anymore than you want Larry to find out you
kept her mother’s humdinger of a secret, correct?”

“I sure don’t,” the
teenager agreed readily.

“Then work with me. If
I withhold some non-essential information that could get you into
extremely hot water, I am hardly concealing the crime of the
century. What I’m doing is preventing your proverbial goose from
being cooked in that boiling water bath.”

“I guess that’s
true.”

“You guess? Wow,
there’s a big vote of confidence.”

“Um,” she gulped,
scrambling to cover her verbal fumble. “What are you going to do
about it?”

“Me? No, no, kiddo. The
right question is: ‘What are
we
going to do about
it?’
We
have to pull the carpet out from under the
ladies and get control over their whack-a-doodle wedding plan. This
is the best I can do on short notice,” I told her. “Unless you’d
prefer to confess your role in this debacle to
Larry....”

“No
way!”

Laughing, I grabbed her
by the shoulders, twirled her around, and gave her a gentle nudge
in the direction of the carriage house. “In that case, we’d better
hurry, because if she finds out what her mother is up to, the
Connecticut State Police Major Crimes squad will be arresting one
of their own on homicide charges.”

In less than a minute,
the two of us climbed the stairs to the carriage house residence
and stood in front of Bur’s door. I took a deep breath and rapped
on it with far more confidence than I felt.
Knock, knock, knock.

A moment later, the
knob turned and the door opened. My brother stood there in his gym
shorts and his favorite Yankees tee shirt. As he stepped aside to
let us in, I noticed there were papers strewn all over the coffee
table, a few books stacked up on the sofa, and his laptop was open
-- evidence that suggested Bur was working on a report, something
he usually dreaded. That was a good sign. He might welcome the
distraction we offered. This was confirmed by his jovial greeting.
“To what do I owe the pleasure of this visit? You’ve come to rescue
me?”

Twenty minutes later, I
had actually managed to sell my brother on a prospective plan to
rent out Wallace’s house as an event venue and money-maker with one
caveat. He wanted in on the business end of things.

“I’m sorry. Did I hear
you correctly, Bur? You actually want to participate in this
wedding enterprise?”

“What we’re really
talking about is renting out the house a few times a month for a
chunk of change that will help pay for the upkeep. I think it’s got
some potential. The property is self-contained and we can control
the number of guests. We’ll probably need a permit to serve
alcohol.”

“And?” Knowing him, I
figured there had to be a catch.

“Well, if you must
know, I’ve been thinking lately that the Four Acorns should expand.
If we reconfigured the carriage house, we
could....”

“You want to give up
the carriage house?”

“Someone has to live in
Wallace’s house. Security-wise it makes sense. I can play the role
of groundskeeper there too. I’m rather crowded in here,” he
announced, waving his arms at the mess awaiting him. “I could use
the extra space for a proper office.”

“Score one for Colonel
Grey Poupon,” Jenny grinned, using my brother’s childhood nickname.
“It looks like the Wilsons are about to go into the wedding
business.”

I looked from my overly
confident brother to my smug assistant and gave an amused snort. If
my brother was willing to consider the idea, it meant he already
envisioned himself living in that mansion of
Lacey’s.

“What’s so funny?” Bur
wanted to know, suddenly suspicious.

“Nothing. I’m just
relieved. I thought I’d have to work harder to convince you this
was a good idea,” I replied, smiling. Now that I was no longer in
the line of fire, I was beginning to enjoy myself.

“It’s only a good idea
if it makes money, Miz Scarlet.”

“Touché.”

With my brother in
charge of the financial aspects, things were definitely looking up.
As stubborn a foe as the day was long, Bur was a stickler for the
bottom line. The Queen of Clean, assisted by sidekicks Laurel and
Lacey, no longer had any Four Acorns Inn rope to use on the
unsuspecting spitball king. No lasso of love would grab Big Larry,
drag him down the aisle, and tie him to the altar while he kicked
and screamed. No,
if
we launched a wedding business, it would be a
profitable venture, one that was responsibly managed by
professionals. And if Edna and Big Larry decided to remarry, it
would be -- unlike the last time -- by choice, not by deceit. How
could Larry possibly object to that?

Bur continued talking
as the plans took shape in his head. “I’ll talk to Boynton and get
his thoughts on the subject. There’s no reason we should get the
ladies all worked up if we’re not going to get him on
board.”

“Fine, but just out of
curiosity, you do realize I can’t run the wedding business all by
myself, don’t you? We’ll need to hire some help.”

“Count me in,” said my
teenage assistant.

“You’re already working
at the inn and you’ve got to keep up with your college studies,” I
pointed out. “That’s a full load, Jen.

“Yes, but I’m taking
the summer off. No classes, Miz Scarlet.”

“Aren’t you visiting
your grandparents in California?”

“I’m going for three
weeks in August. That leaves the rest of the
summer.”

“You might as well say
yes,” my brother advised me. “The fact is she’d be an
asset.”

“Thanks, Bur.” Jenny
gave him a wide grin.

“Anything for you,
kid,” he told her. “Now, if you two will excuse me, I’ll give
Boynton a call.”

“Let us know what he
says,” I called over my shoulder as I opened the door and shooed
Jenny through it.

She and I walked back
to the inn, arm in arm, plotting our next move. I could tell she
was excited.

“Just remember, it’s
not a done deal yet,” I warned her. “Like Bur said, if we’re going
to do it, we actually have to turn a profit.”

“I know, but I was just
thinking, Miz Scarlet,” she confided, that charming gamin face
brimming with excitement, “about how much fun it will be to host
weddings.”

“Will it?” I wasn’t so
sure. “You know how irrational and high-strung some brides can
be.”

“But why would those
kinds of brides come to the Four Acorns Inn?” Her question caught
me off-guard. I turned to face her.

“What do you
mean?”

“The only people who
would come here to get married are those who really care about each
other.”

“You believe
that?”

“Absolutely. The Four
Acorns Inn is all about the love.”

“My heavens! You’re a
romantic!”

“Of course I am. Aren’t
you?”

“Ah....”

“This is why your
mother worries about you,” Jen chided me. “You’re rather cynical
when it comes to love, Miz Scarlet.”

“Am I?” I asked the
earnest teenager, humoring her. “Maybe I’ve been an old maid a
little too long.”

“Way too long,” she
agreed impishly. “Way, way,
w-a-y
too
long.

Chapter Three --

“Explain yourself!” I
instructed my assistant as I opened the door to the sun porch and
stepped inside.

“Well, it’s not your
fault you’re stuck in your ways. You haven’t been able to spend all
that much time with Captain Peacock.”

“True,” I nodded. Kenny
Tolliver, the high school heartthrob who moved to New Jersey in his
senior year, when his dad was transferred, left me to grieve what
might have been between us. He was now widowed and had recently
moved back to Cheswick. It was no secret the family expected us to
get married. But at the moment, we were having fun getting
reacquainted.

Back when we were
teenagers in Cheswick, we spent our summers playing cards,
dominoes, and even board games like Clue. Our love for the classic
“whodunit” inspired silly nicknames that stuck.

It all started when
Kenny caught Bur cheating at Monopoly, slipping an extra house on
Park Place by slight of hand during a heated
competition.

“Hold it right there,
Wilson! I saw what you did,” he exclaimed, “There were only two
houses on Park Place and three on Broadway. You switched them when
the dice were rolled!”

“I did no such thing!”
my brother had insisted huffily. That was a sure sign of his guilt.
We all knew the louder the denial, the bigger the
whopper.

“Balderdash!” Kenny
sputtered, appalled that anyone would cheat. “You most certainly
did!”

“Balderdash?” Bur
howled with laughter.
“Balderdash?
What are you,
Tolliver, ninety years old?”

That’s when Bur claimed
Kenny was like the stiff, proper floorwalker on the British
sitcom,
Are You Being
Served?
, always keeping track of
what everyone was doing. Kenny denied it to no
avail.

“Says you,
Captain Peacock
!” the cheater snickered.

“Bluster
on,
Colonel Grey
Poupon
! You’re still busted, you
pompous twit!”

“He’s got you there,
Bur, you busted blusterer,” I chortled. Turning to the others, I
posed an important question. “What should the penalty be for
cheating? Should he have to surrender his little green bungalow to
the bank?”

There were several
murmurs of agreement on that front. Kenny reached over and removed
the plastic house from the board, which just irritated the
miscreant further.

“You’re such a
prissy-puss, Scarlet!” replied my brother. “We should have a ban on
females playing the game. You think you’re so smart. What do you
know?”

“I’m smart enough to
know cheating when I see it, Colonel Poupon!”

“Shut up,
Miss
Scarlet! Everybody knows
you’re just making a play for Captain Peacock!”

Caught in the act, my
secret publicly exposed, I was mortified. My fifteen-year-old
cheeks burned hot and red as everyone turned to stare at me. I did
the only thing I could think to do under the circumstances. I
blundered on blindly, trying to deflect attention from my passion
for Kenny.

“Did you just address
me as ‘Miss’? Why do the male characters have impressive job
titles, like Colonel, Reverend and Professor, and the women are
identified by marital status or spinsterhood?” I exclaimed.
“
Mrs.
White?
Mrs.
Peacock?
Miss
Scarlett? In this day and age, it’s
ridiculous!”

“Says you,
Miss
Scarlett!” my brother needled me, a smirk plastered on his
face. So relieved was I that we were off the topic of my secret
love, I took the proverbial ball and ran with it.

“If you insist on using
my first name, I will remind all of you it’s spelled with one t,
like the Scarlet oak for which I was named. But I shall not be
saddled with old maid status. You may call me
Miz
Scarlet,” I informed the gang. “From now on, I shall answer to
no other name!”

I never expected that
moniker to stick like glue, but it had. Here I was, so many years
later, still Miz Scarlet. Better still, I was back with Kenny,
enjoying a rekindled romance as a late bloomer in the game of love.
It was hard to imagine my life without him now. What would make it
better? If I were honest with myself, I’d have to admit I did fancy
the idea of marrying him. Maybe I was tired of my spinsterhood
after all.