Miz Scarlet and the Holiday Houseguests (A Scarlet Wilson Mystery #3)

Miz Scarlet and the Holiday
Houseguests

A Scarlet Wilson
Mystery

By Sara M. Barton

Published by Sara M.
Barton at Smashwords

Copyright Sara M. Barton
2013

All rights reserved.
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Chapter One --

“You can’t be serious!” The voice
behind me was dripping with disgust. “You call that a Christmas
tree?”

“What’s wrong with it?” I demanded,
even as I walked around the seven-foot blue spruce, checking it for
missing or lopsided branches.

“It’s going to be dwarfed by the high
ceilings of the living room,” my brother, Bur, remarked. “Might as
well just drape a coat tree with crepe paper, spray it with pine
air freshener, and call it a tree.”

To most people, a tree is a tree. But
with the Wilson family, sap seems to run through our veins. Our
maternal grandfather, Randolph Googins, was one of the owners of
the Four Oaks Pressboard Company. He named his children after oak
trees, hence Darlington, Holly, and my mother, Laurel. Our parents
continued the family tradition. I’m named after the Scarlet oak. My
brothers are Bur, Emory, and Palmer. We’re the acorns that never
fell far from the family tree.

“What are you suggesting? We choose a
ten-footer? How are we supposed to drag it home through the woods?
Not to mention the fact that we’ll need to buy a special tree stand
for something that tall.”

“I want bigger. I’ll rig something up
for a stand.”

“I want manageable. And I don’t want a
holiday disaster when your makeshift contraption crashes. What
about all the ornaments? We spent decades collecting them, Bur. If
the tree falls, they go with it.”

“That puny little thing will hardly
deck the halls, Scarlet!”

“What do you suggest?” I shot back,
feeling rather irritated at this brotherly attempt to sabotage the
annual Christmas tree excursion. We were near the top of the path,
a good hundred yards from the house, knee-deep in snow, when my
cell phone buzzed in my pocket. Slipping off my glove, I grabbed it
and glanced quickly at the name. “Hold on, Bur. It’s
Larry.”

“Tell her I said hi,” he called over
his shoulder, as he continued searching for the perfect blue
spruce.

“Miz Scarlet, you know all those times
I had your back when people felt like whacking you?” asked the
experienced homicide investigator for the Connecticut State Police.
“Well, I’m calling in my chips.”

“Are you?” I laughed. “What can I do
for you, Larry? Invite you for a gourmet dinner? Drag you along for
another girls’ night out, so you can cry in your beer about the guy
who done you wrong?”

“Oh, no. Much, much bigger than that,”
Laurencia Rivera insisted.

“What? You want me to take care of your
kid for the weekend?” As the single mother of a teenager, Larry
often locked heads with Michaela, better known as Mickey, who
didn’t always understand or accept that it was necessary for Larry
to work long hours, especially when the state trooper was called
out to attend to a dead body in the middle of the night. “Or fill
in for you at the mother-daughter tea?”

“Get real!” I heard her
snort.

“Spill the beans,” I commanded her.
“What do you want from me?”

“I need to rent a room for the
Christmas holiday.”

“You want to stay with us?” That was a
surprise. As innkeeper for the Four Acorns Inn, I was used to
caring for guests, but she lived less than fifteen minutes away.
Why did she need a room?

“Not me. My father, Big Larry. I’ve got
my mother coming up from Atlanta to stay at my place, and my father
called this morning to tell me that he’s decided to visit for the
holidays, too.”

“How nice. You’ll have the whole family
with you for Christmas.”

“Not really. My Auntie Merlene always
says I come from royalty. Big Larry’s a spitball king and Edna’s a
drama queen. The two of them mix about as well as oil and water,
and since I don’t want to respond to a domestic incident at my own
home, I’ve decided to send my father to the Four Acorns Inn, where
he’ll feel pampered, especially if the Googins girls make a fuss
over him.”

“I’ll be happy to reserve a room for
your dad. When is he arriving?”

“The twentieth. Mickey wants to spend
some time with her grandfather, so he’s promised to take her up to
Boston for the day on Saturday and show her his old stomping
grounds.”

“Stomping grounds?”

“My dad is an assistant baseball
coach.”

“Red Sox?” I inquired, feeling my
stomach pitch as I said those ominous words.

“Indeed. He was a center fielder up
there in the eighties, for all of two seasons, before he blew out
his shoulder.”

“Oh dear me.”

“Excuse me?” Larry sounded less than
thrilled with my reaction to the news. “Do you have a problem with
the Red Sox?”

“Not me,” I insisted. “I’m good.
It’s....”

“Oh, spiffy. That brother of yours!”
That’s the thing about having a good friend who knows you well. She
can finish your sentences for you. “What’s Bur’s
objection?”

“Ever since the Yankees faced off
against the Red Sox in....”

“...October 2004,” Larry cut in
gleefully. “I remember the game. The Yankees got trounced on their
home field. It was awesome!”

“Bur’s never gotten over it. In fact,
to this day, he still insists the game was winnable, if it wasn’t
for dirty tricks by....”

“Poppycock!” she declared.

“I’m just warning you that
Bur will be...well, a burr in your side. The minute he and your
father start talking baseball, it’s going to get ugly. Larry,
you
know
Bur has a
big mouth!”

“Do I ever!” There was a long pause on
the other end, followed by a soft laugh. “You know what, Miz
Scarlet? My father also has a big mouth.”

“So, what do we do? Boston just won
this year’s World Series Championship and fans are still
celebrating. Bur was in a slump for days. He wanted the Cardinals
to win.”

“I say we let them go at it. It should
make for an interesting holiday. Besides, maybe it will keep
everyone distracted from the Edna and Big Larry hate
fest.”

“Aren’t you brave,” I chuckled. “But I
refuse to accept responsibility for the antics of two baseball
nuts.”

“That’s a wise decision,
indeed.”

“Which room do you want to reserve for
your dad? We have the White Oak and the Black Oak rooms
available.”

“What do you think? Big Larry snores
like a buzz saw. It’s enough to wake the dead.”

“I could put him in the White Oak. That
way, the Googins girls will be spared the noise.”

“White Oak it is. Now I just have to
break the news to my mother that my father will be around for
Christmas.”

“Is it that bad, Larry?”

“Are you kidding? Wait until you meet
my mother! She’s sweeping into town on Sunday. Her broom lands at
four.” I heard a heavy sigh on the other end of the phone line.
“She’s head housekeeper for a major rehab hospital, with a staff of
fifteen and her own office. You think she has any patience with
folks who don’t tow the line? Edna runs a very tight ship. Things
don’t change when she’s on vacation. Of course, without her people
to boss around, she needs an outlet and that means I have a target
on my behind!”

“Is she going to do that white glove
test on your living room?” I knew Larry was a great homicide
investigator, but when it came to housekeeping, her favorite
technique was “spit and polish”.

“Not to worry, Miz Scarlet. I’ve got
the ‘Cheerful Cleaning Crew’ coming for a top-to-bottom
dust-and-dirt removal mission. It’s going to cost me a small
fortune, but I’d say it’s worth every penny.” Larry refused to call
the professional cleaning service by its real name, Merry Maids.
She said there was nothing merry about being maids who cleaned up
after other folks, no matter how you looked at it.

“Good for you. Leave nothing to
chance.”

“You’ve got that right. The last time
my mother blew into town on her broomstick, she beat me with it and
then used it to sweep up what she politely termed my disaster area.
She claimed it looked like someone had mistaken my home for the
local landfill, and that was just the living room she was
describing.”

“Kind of harsh,” I noted.
“I’ve been there and it wasn’t
that
bad. Besides, when do you have time to scrub
floors and scoop up dust? Can’t you just tell her that you’re too
busy tracking down killers?”

“I tried that once. She reminded me
that I’ve always been this way. According to Edna, I’m a chip off
the old blockhead.”

“Ouch!”

“Oh, Edna always exaggerates
everything. Big Larry’s not that bad. He’s just a guy who eats,
sleeps, and breathes baseball. He’s not big on cleaning up unless
it’s bases loaded and his guys cross home plate. This time, I’m
putting her in my bedroom and I’m sleeping on the sofa bed in the
living room, because I don’t want to listen to how lumpy that
mattress is.”

“You should send her to the Four Acorns
Inn, Larry, and have your father stay with you.”

“Are you kidding? Edna will
insist that I love him more because I invited
him
to stay with me, instead of
her
.”

“Can’t win for losing? You poor thing!
Maybe I should save you a room at the inn.”

“Make sure it’s got plenty of padding
on the walls, because by the time my parents leave town, I’m going
to need physical restraints and a boatload of psychotropic drugs to
calm me down. Oops, got to go. I’ve got a fresh corpse out
in...let’s see,” she paused to check the crime scene location,
“...Windsor.”

“Good luck,” I replied as I ended the
call. Tucking the phone back into my pocket, I tromped through the
snow, following Bur’s boot prints another forty or so yards, to
where he was sawing a lush blue spruce nestled between a couple of
maple saplings and a Norway spruce.

It was a little taller than I expected,
but it had a nice shape. It would do the job. “This is an excellent
choice.”

“And by taking this one, I give the
other trees the chance to grow up nice and strong,” he pointed out.
“I might as well help the forest in the process.”

My brothers and I were raised to be
conservationists in the woods, and those lessons learned as
children stayed with us as adults. Lots of critters called White
Oak Hill their home, including fisher cats, coyotes, foxes, and
deer. Litter was promptly picked up when we came across it, and
oriental bittersweet, the invasive menace, was immediately yanked
up. Every spring, Bur inspected tree branches for signs of diseases
and pests, and removed damaged wood. Some of the majestic species
found in this forest had been here for more than a century and we
wanted to keep them healthy for another hundred years. This was the
Googins legacy and we were determined to preserve it.

“Why did Larry call?” the nosy tree
cutter wanted to know, even as he kept his blade moving.

“She wanted to book a room.” There was
an empty bird’s nest still clinging to an inner branch of the blue
spruce. I showed my brother. “Careful. I want to keep that intact.
It’s good luck.”