Secrets of Harmony Grove (17 page)

I began by looking in drawers and cabinets, trying not to be jealous of the color-coded folders as I did so. I had my eye out for anything related to my grandfather, but all I could find were documents and forms and other supplies related to the running of the inn.

When I hired Floyd two years ago, his only sticking point was that he be allowed to run the bed-and-breakfast his way, which I quickly realized was another word for the precomputer stone age way. He wouldn’t take the job, he had told me, if it meant he had to learn computer systems and software programs. I was reluctant to agree, but in considering his request I asked him to show me the systems he would be using, and they seemed so simple and accessible that in the end I met his demand. Just in case he changed his mind down the road a bit, I had supplied him with an inexpensive PC,
and it was still sitting on the center of the desk where I had put it the day I brought it here. Booting it up now, I was curious to see if the man had, indeed, learned to automate, even just a little bit. I had had to teach him how to use a basic spreadsheet, if only so that my financial statements could come to me via e-mail, something that was necessary for my digital lifestyle. Otherwise, I had no idea if he used the computer for anything else or not.

Sitting in his chair, I clicked around a bit, not surprised to see that Floyd had hardly been using it at all. Of course, he had gone in once a month to do the spreadsheets for my sake, but otherwise the hard drive was nearly as empty now as it had been when I set it up. It didn’t take long to figure out that Floyd kept no guest information on the computer at all. But I needed to find the correct phone numbers for the people I had tried calling earlier, so I crossed to the file cabinets and did things the old-fashioned way, digging through a bunch of receipts before finding the guest registration forms.

Setting them on the desk, I retrieved the registration ledger and brought it back to the office, using the names written there to search for their corresponding file cards. My hope was that Floyd had accidentally transposed something in the ledger, and I could get the correct numbers this way. Floyd’s files were so neat that I quickly found cards for all three guests. But when I compared them with the ledger, I saw that the phone numbers had been written out exactly the same on both.

That meant I would probably have to go online and hunt down phone numbers for these people that way. I wasn’t in the mood to go through all of that right now, but I planned on looking into it in the morning. For now, I simply started looking up the names of all the people who had reservations coming in the next seven days, pulling their guest information cards, and setting them in a neat pile on the desk. Tomorrow I would go through the pile one by one, calling each one of them to say that we had had a problem at the inn and would need to cancel their reservation. I would also offer to help them find some other place to stay, though that might not be such an easy task this time of year. Early October in Lancaster County was prime fall foliage season. I would do the best I could and hope that most of them wouldn’t take me up on my offer of help.

Suddenly I realized what a blessing Floyd had been. He had handled
things so fully that I had been able to collect my checks and not give the B and B another thought. That wasn’t the best way to run a business, I knew, but with my crazy schedule in the city, there weren’t enough hours in the day as it was. I could only hope that Troy had been lying or wrong or confused when he made it sound as though Floyd was up to something that had led to my investigation by the attorney general. If that were true, and even if I were able to clear my own name from the matter, I would still be facing the huge problem of finding someone to replace Floyd.

Closing down the computer, I decided that the old cliché was true: You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone. With Floyd gone, at least temporarily, I was the de facto manager here, a job I sure didn’t want for long.

As I tucked Floyd’s chair under his desk, turned off the light, and closed the office door, it occurred to me that perhaps the only way I was going to find out what Troy had meant about Floyd getting me in trouble with the government was from Floyd himself. I hoped he would have a speedy recovery because I had plenty of questions that couldn’t wait.

Before I went toward the stairs and up to bed, I turned the other way and went down the hall and through the dining room to Troy’s room. I would have liked to go inside and search every nook and cranny for the mysterious papers of my grandfather, but I had been told to keep out for the time being, and the strip of yellow police tape stretched across the doorway emphasized that point. It probably wouldn’t have done any good anyway, I decided, because the police had already searched the room thoroughly earlier. Even more important, the officers had taken away Troy’s suitcase and his belongings, so already they had reduced the number of potential places I could have searched.

Instead, I just stood there in the doorway for a moment, one hand resting on the reassuring bulge of my gun, and thought about the fact that Troy was dead. He was really, actually dead. Why did that seem so surreal?

I wish I could have comforted myself in the knowledge that he had gone quickly, but as almost two hours passed between his call with me and my finding his dead body by the pool, that left a two-hour time span during which he very likely had suffered, first from whatever had cut him, and then from whatever had drowned him.

The best-case scenario in this rotten situation was that everything that had happened was all an accident, or more accurately a series of accidents. At least if there had been no malice involved, things could settle down sooner, and life could get back to normal.

Well, not exactly normal. Not for Troy or for the people in his life. Floyd and even Nina might be okay in the end, but all that was left for Troy was for his body to be buried and mourned. Just thinking about that now, I was surprised to find myself overwhelmed with sudden grief.

I thought about my relationship with him way back when, about the good times, the laughter, the excitement. Troy was nothing if not exciting—not to mention handsome and adventurous, with vivid green eyes that crackled with intensity. He gave off such an air of competence that it was no wonder I had allowed myself to trust him too much. If I could forgive him for all the bad that had come near the end, for all the fallout from what our relationship had cost me, literally cost me, I might find more peace about his death.

Once I climbed into bed it didn’t take long for me to fall asleep, despite the clicking of the heater as it kicked in, a clock down the hall that sounded a faint bong every hour on the hour, and the occasional crackle of the police radios of the men standing guard outside.

I’m sure I would have stayed asleep till morning if only there hadn’t been one exceptionally loud radio crackle when one of the policemen was passing under my window below. That noisy squawk popped me straight out of a dream, the kind that leaves your heart pounding and your body shaking. I opened my eyes and looked up at the ceiling, trying to figure out what had awakened me, where I was, and if I should be scared. But then just a second later another squawk and some chatter followed, and I realized that’s all it was, the comforting sound of the lawmen outside.

Turning my head toward the clock, the pounding and shaking subsiding, I saw that it was 4:42 a.m. Lovely. I hadn’t even turned out my light until nearly 3:00. Even if I slept until nine or ten in the morning, I knew that still wasn’t going to be enough, especially not now.

Flipping over on my other side and trying to get comfortable again, I closed my eyes and waited for sleep to return. My body was sore from the earlier fall, and in that strange way that the mind and body have of working together, I realized I had been dreaming that a shark had hold of my wrist and kept biting and wouldn’t let go. At some point during the dream, my
mind had changed the shark into a sea turtle, and by the time I was awakened, the turtle was a scuba diver, twisting my wrist and fighting me as he tried to stab my thigh with his knife.

It was a silly dream, yes, but thinking about it now, my pulse began to quicken. The water. The struggle. The pain.

Lying there in the bed, I could feel sweat beginning to bead along my forehead. My hands grew clammy, my breathing shallow. Helpless to stop it, I felt the old, familiar anxiety rise up inside of me, gripping my lungs and squeezing out all room for air. Sitting up, trying to ignore the frenzied roiling of my stomach, I rubbed my wrist and arm and told the bad feelings to go away.

It had been a while, but now those feelings were back, the last vestiges of emotional holdover not born of tonight’s events but certainly stirred up by them.

Water. My dreams always came back to water.

Recognizing the panic that now threatened to overwhelm me, I closed my eyes, trying to remember the most important thing my counselor had taught me ten years ago:
Move through the discomfort, not around it, so you can move on
. She had shown me how to let yucky feelings happen without avoidance, without denial, and without any substances to numb the pain. Just let them happen, let myself feel them, and then let them go, handing them over to God.

If only that weren’t so hard to do! How much simpler it would have been to mask the pain with the anesthesia of alcohol or drugs or whatever—or my personal anesthetic of choice, activity—rather than allow myself to
feel
. The busier I stayed, the more I ran, the more I achieved, the longer those uncomfortable feelings were held at bay. But now that the old memories had risen up and were combining with a new trauma, I knew I was walking into the danger zone. A new job and a major new campaign contributed to the problem. If I weren’t careful, I might find myself filling my outer world so completely that not only did it smother the inner pain but everything else inside of me as well.

I touched the floor with the tips of my toes and tried deep breathing. In. Hold. Out. In. Hold. Out.

Move through the discomfort, not around it, so you can move on
.

Rising, I stepped to the window and pulled the white lace curtain aside. Looking out at the night sky, I couldn’t believe how many stars were visible to the naked eye. Hundreds. Thousands. Far, far more than I could ever see from my windows in the city.

“‘Praise him, all you shining stars,’” I whispered out loud, not even sure which psalm I was echoing. I tried another, desperate for comfort. “‘He made the moon and stars to govern the night. His love endures forever.’” That wasn’t quite right, but close enough. Either way, it didn’t help.

If you can’t pray in your own words, pray in Scriptures.

Move through the discomfort, not around it, so you can move on
.

Breathe in. Hold it. Breathe out. In. Hold. Out.

Give it over to God. He’s big enough to handle it for you. He made the moon and the stars.

The night sky.

The night.

That
night.

Spring break, senior year in college, one whole week in a Virginia coastal town.

Seven days of sun and sand and relaxing with three of my best friends.

Six nights of having our tiny little hotel room all to myself, blessedly quiet for studying while my friends were out painting the town.

They knew I didn’t like the bar scene, that I preferred a good book to an evening of drinking and dancing. I was the overachiever even then, driven to succeed, the one who always chose work over play. All week they had tried to get me to come along, and each night I had declined, saying I wasn’t interested and I needed to study. Knowing I was a Christian—a pastor’s kid, no less—didn’t stop them from pressuring me.