Miz Scarlet and the Bewildered Bridegroom (7 page)

“Each of us has some
small part to play in the lives of those around us. We can choose
to be casual in our affairs, taking the easy path, or we can
deliberately put our foot forward in a positive direction,
providing influence to raise the human heart to a higher level.
Before you act, ask yourself what you would want someone to do for
you, if those were your shoes....” Pausing momentarily, Reverend
Hoskins adjusted his glasses on the bridge of his nose. “It’s not
always the easy choice that is the best one. If we only do what
comes easy to us, we often make life harder for those people around
us.”

My mind started to
wander as the steady, soothing voice of the minister rumbled on,
becoming white noise. What did I know about Florence Vinson? Not
much. She was visiting the Four Acorns Inn from Minneapolis. She
had come to visit an old school friend who lived in the next town
over. That was it. That wasn’t much to go on, was
it?

When the service was
over, Dr. Van Zandt and Laurel waited until the crowd cleared out.
I could see Florence chomping at the bit to get back in the race,
but Lacey made a point of joining her, so I
followed.

“Nice sermon, wasn’t
it?” Lacey touched the other woman’s elbow, gently trying to steer
her attention away from the object of her desire and the woman who
was her chief rival for the prize.

“Indeed,” Florence
replied brusquely, straining to catch Thaddeus’s attention. He was
sharing a story with my mother, who looked lovely when she tossed
her head back and laughed. Glowering, Florence tried to break free
of the constraints of social etiquette, ignoring all attempts at
conversation. When it became abundantly clear that there was no
dissuading the determined Ms. Vinson, Lacey did the one thing she
knew would put those granny pants in a bunch.

“Reverend Hoskins, what
a wonderful sermon! Let me introduce you to one of our guests. This
is Florence Vinson.”

That did the trick. The
woman didn’t dare dismiss one of God’s messengers. She took the
hand offered to her before trying to resume the chase.
Unfortunately for her, Reverend Hoskins is a man who likes to chat
with parishioners. The longer we stood beside the kindly minister
in the gray robes, conversing, the thinner Ms. Vinson’s patience
became, until finally it shattered in one very obvious shrug of the
shoulders.

“I have to go! Excuse
me!” Panic seemed to overcome her -- the woman was on a mission and
no one was going to stop her from completing it.

“My word,” said the
reverend as he watched Florence crabwalk her way out of the pew in
pursuit of my mother and Dr. Van Zandt. “What an unusual woman. Is
she okay?”

“The jury’s still out
on that,” Lacey sighed. “Thank you again, Jim. You certainly gave
me plenty to think about.”

“Indeed,” I concurred,
sticking out my hand to shake his. “Thank you.”

“It was my pleasure,
ladies. Enjoy the day.”

Out in the parking lot,
a passing crowd of rubberneckers began to gather around a silver
sedan. Lacey and I headed to the scene as voices became louder and
more animated.

“I’m more than happy to
sit in the back seat,” said a huffy Ms. Vinson.

“I’m afraid that’s just
not possible. Mrs. Wilson and I have plans,” the doctor replied
firmly. “Now, if you’ll excuse us, we’ve got to be
going.”

“But, we haven’t had a
chance to catch up, Thaddeus!” Ms. Vinson grabbed his arm and held
fast to it, even as the doctor recoiled from her touch. “It’s been
fifteen years!”

“Yes, it has. But now
you must excuse us.”

I turned to Lacey at
the same moment she whirled around to face me. “They know each
other?”

“Apparently they
do.”

A moment later,
Thaddeus got into the driver’s seat, started the engine, and drove
off, leaving a very agitated Florence in his wake.

“I don’t understand.
How can he treat me that way, after all we’ve been through
together?”

“You’ve known Dr. Van
Zandt a long time?” Lacey delicately probed, even as she urged Ms.
Vinson towards my Ford Focus.

“We worked together in
the hospital. I was head nurse on the unit.”

Ah, that explained a
lot -- the pushiness, the determination, the anguish. Ms. Vinson
must have had a crush on Thaddeus, even though he was married. Now
that he was widowed, she probably thought she had a clear path to
her goal. At the moment, though, my mother was standing in her way,
and I wanted to make sure she didn’t steamroll right over
Laurel.

“I could be good for
him,” Florence said, more to herself than to us. “I can take care
of him, especially if he is going to need more surgery. Why would
he want to saddle himself with a woman in a wheelchair when there’s
so much I can do?”

“Excuse me,” I cut in,
offended by her callous dismissal of my mother’s worthiness. “I’ll
have you know, Ms. Vinson, that woman you’re so cavalierly
discussing is my mother. She may not have your mobility, but she
certainly is a very decent, intelligent, and interesting
woman.”

“What?” The look on her
face was one of shock. For a split second, I considered I had
crossed a line of social propriety, but then I remembered
Thaddeus’s reaction to the woman. He wasn’t interested in pursuing
their old connections.

“Dr. Van Zandt told
you....” I started to sputter, but Lacey put a hand on my arm, her
fingers squeezing me into silent mode.

“Scarlet, I think I
dropped my compact in the church. Will you be a dear and go look
for it?”

“But....”

“Please?”

With a heavy sigh, I
handed her my car keys before I turned on my heel and headed back
inside. I wasted five minutes on my hands and knees between pews
before I realized there was no compact. When I got back to the
parking lot, I found the two women had climbed into the back seat,
where Florence was now weeping loudly on Lacey’s shoulder, tissues
in hand. That left me little choice but to chauffeur them back to
the inn. This time around, I took the most direct route. By the
time we arrived at the front steps, Florence had dried her tears
and was already talking about booking an earlier flight back
home.

“I think it’s for the
best, dear,” Lacey agreed. “After all, there’s no shame in loving a
man, but you want to be able to hold your head high. You gave it a
good shot, but it just wasn’t meant to be. Would you like me to
drive you to the airport?”

“Do you
mind?”

“Not at all. You let me
know what time your flight is, Florence. I’ll run you out
to...ah....” Lacey suddenly stopped talking. “Scarlet, what are the
dogs doing outside on their own?”

“Excuse me?” Sure
enough, Huckleberry and January were sitting side by side on the
front porch, with no one around. Given the fact that the Four
Acorns Inn sat at the edge of some prime wilderness, complete with
bears, fisher cats, coyotes, and even foxes large enough to view
tiny dogs as appetizers, this was not good news. That’s why we had
signs posted throughout the inn to warn guests that our pets were
not to be let out, not even Scrub Oak.

“Is Jenny
there?”

“I don’t see her,”
Lacey told me.

“Could you make sure
the dogs get inside, while I park the car?”

“Sure.”

Two minutes later, I
shut the automatic garage door and headed toward the brick walkway,
intending to enter through the sun porch. Instead, I found myself
greeted by a pair of tail-wagging pups, who rushed out of the open
door, sprinting towards me. “Ah ha! So, that’s how you rascals got
out!”

I climbed up the steps,
shooing them back, and as I stepped inside, I heard a crunch under
my sandaled foot. Shards of broken glass were strewn across the
painted wood floor.

“What the....” I
glanced down at the sight and then back at the door I had just
shut. There was a pane missing just above the doorknob. “Son of
a....”

My first move was to
call Bur and tell him to get his fanny down to the inn pronto. My
second was to call Kenny. After all, what’s the point of having a
boyfriend who had recently retired as assistant director for public
safety at Princeton University if I couldn’t ask him what I should
do? As the new regional chief of Mercer Security, he could advise
me.

“Are you alone,
Scarlet?” he wanted to know.

“No, I just dropped off
Lacey and a guest. I called Bur,” I told Kenny. “I can see him
now.”

“Round up the guests in
the living room and wait there. I’ll be with you in five minutes.
In the meantime, I want you to call the cops.”

Right after I called
911, I put the dogs in the powder room, just to keep them from
getting underfoot while the cops searched the
house.

Looking out the window,
I noticed the only car in the inn’s parking lot was the Wilkies’
sedan. The Johnsons must have left for their college reunion
luncheon, I decided. They had settled their bill before breakfast.
Where was Jenny? A moment later, I heard sirens screaming up the
street. A marked cruiser pulled up to the front door, followed by
Kenny’s SUV.

Chapter Six --

“What’s going on?”
Jenny appeared at the top of the stairs, a worried expression on
her face.

“It looks like someone
tried to break in through the porch. The dogs were outside when we
got back.”

“What?” Her nimble feet
flew down the steps, with Mozzie on her heels.

Bur ushered Lacey and
Florence into the living room, just as I opened the front door to a
pair of uniformed officers. I led them through the dining room and
onto the sun porch, where I showed them the damage.

“Okay. Let’s just take
a look around,” said Officer Burnley, as Kenny joined us. They
walked through the inn room by room, checking closets and under
beds, to make sure the intruder wasn’t lurking.

Twenty minutes later,
with nothing apparently stolen, the officers were ready to leave.
“If you find anything missing when you do an inventory, we’ll
update the incident report. Your insurance company will want a copy
in the event you make a claim, so have their rep call
us.”

“Thanks.” I saw the
pair to the door, even as Kenny, prince that he is, got busy
replacing the glass. He grabbed a tape measure and jotted down the
information before he made a trip to the hardware store for caulk
and a new window pane, cut to size. Bur hung around, just in case
there was more trouble. He settled himself down with the Sunday
papers in the living room, keeping Lacey and Florence
company.

Poor Jenny, home alone
at the time of the attempted break-in, was rattled. I couldn’t
really blame her for feeling that way, especially if our return
from church was the only thing that scared off the
perpetrator.

“I don’t understand.
Why didn’t Huck and January bark, Miz Scarlet?”

“There was no
barking?”

“I swear I didn’t hear
a peep from the pooches.”

“Hmm....Maybe the
culprit was careful not to raise the alarm. Maybe he knew we had
dogs.”

“I was here all alone,”
she reminded me again, a note of disbelief in her voice. Of all the
scary thoughts running through her head, that was the one that most
frightened her. I understood her concern. Should we worry that she
was the intended victim?
Think,
Scarlet. What does she need to hear?

“Well, you weren’t
totally alone. Bur was in the carriage house. He came the second I
called him.”

“Still....”

“Don’t worry, Jen.
Kenny’s taking care of the broken glass. We’ll ask him what to do
about security when he gets back from Moriarty’s Hardware
Store.”

“It’s just creepy that
someone tried to break in.”

“He didn’t just try,
sweetie. He succeeded. That’s how the dogs got
out.”

“But Mozzie was with me
and he didn’t bark either,” she pointed out.

“Maybe the burglar
didn’t make any noise,” I suggested, trying to make sense of this
baffling episode. “Or you were out of earshot when the glass was
broken.”

“Come to think about
it, I only went up to my room about fifteen minutes before you got
home.” She considered the possibilities. “I put the food away,
loaded the dishwasher, and scrubbed the pans. I tidied up the
butler’s pantry and put some bottled juices and waters in the guest
fridge. And then, even though I thought it looked okay, I did a
quick wipe and swipe in the powder room, to make sure it was
presentable for guests.”