Secrets of Harmony Grove (21 page)

The first year, I had gone through the tax return Floyd had prepared before he sent it in. It had looked great, so this year, when I was busy with other things, I hadn’t even bothered checking it. Wondering if the government’s investigation had to do with the IRS, I dug through more drawers until I found two big, fat expanding folders labeled “Taxes,” one for each year. Twisting open their metal clasps, I looked inside at the many slips of paper there. At least there were tons of receipts included—Office Outlet, Jonah and Liesl Coblentz, SuperBrand Foods, and more—clipped together by month. Each one I pulled out to check showed the form of
payment listed as cash. I would have to go through these receipts carefully later, perhaps with the help of an accountant, but from what I could see things seemed to be in order.

Putting the folders aside for now, I once again tried to think the situation through.

Floyd was a cash-based guy. I could at least understand that somewhat. But how could all of these customers also be cash based?
No one
was cash based these days. Even when I had cash on me, I still used my credit and debit cards whenever possible, just to earn the free points the cards gave me. I wasn’t unique in that, not at all.

So why all the cash? Could Floyd have insisted on it from our customers, telling them we didn’t take credit cards? That didn’t seem likely, and it certainly wasn’t true. What was I missing here? What dots was I not connecting?

The guests had fake names and nonexistent phone numbers and addresses
.

These same guests always paid in cash
.

Judging by the lack of Internet activity, it was almost as if no one had ever stayed here at all—at least no one with an opinion who had posted a review
.

The place was scruffy and untended outside
.

When my parents came in the spring, they had been the inn’s only guests, their morning meal less than impressive
.

My room upstairs had dust on the lampshades and a cobweb in the corner, despite the fact that Liesl had been paid for cleaning just last week, according to the financial records
.

Taking all of the above into account, I began to realize that of the two options I had considered regarding the fake names, the most likely possibility was that there were no guests at all. If that was the case, then where was all the money coming from? How could there be so much cash flowing in and out if not from paying guests at the inn and from sales in our gift shop? We sold a ton of quilts and wooden toys here. If there were no guests, then who was buying all of that stuff?

Sick to my stomach, I realized that Harmony Grove Bed & Breakfast
could be involved in something highly illegal, though I couldn’t begin to fathom what. No wonder the U.S. attorney general’s office was investigating me. No wonder Troy said that such an investigation would have been Floyd’s fault. Certainly, something very fishy was going on.

At this point, what I needed to do was to verify the amount of traffic this place was actually getting on a regular basis. The neighbors across the street certainly seemed to keep tabs. I could ask them directly about the traffic flow and the inn’s comings and goings. I could also look into the room-cleaning situation as well. Though Floyd did the daily cleaning, Liesl was the inn’s more thorough once-a-week housekeeper. When she came each time, was she washing sheets from the beds and scrubbing out the bathrooms? Surely a cleaner would be able to tell if a room had actually been used, even after the tidiest of guests.

I called Liesl first, leaving a message on her family’s voice mail. I knew she probably wouldn’t get that message any time soon, so if I didn’t hear back from her shortly I would pay a visit in person instead. First, though, I would call up a neighbor or two.

Using the computer to look up the numbers of the people across the street, I started with Mrs. Finster, an older woman who lived alone in the smaller gray house on the corner. The least verbose of them all, my hope was that our call could be short and sweet. When she answered, I was momentarily tongue-tied, but then I blurted out that I was following up on some reservation issues in Floyd’s absence and hoped she could help me out. What I learned from our ensuing conversation was very disturbing.

According to her, almost no one ever came and went from Harmony Grove Bed & Breakfast other than Floyd himself. About once a month a “dashing young man with dark hair and a fancy car” would come and stay a few nights. Occasionally there was another car or two, though not often and not for long.

“Did you ever wonder why a bed-and-breakfast seemed to have no guests?” I asked, knowing that the dashing young man had been Troy.

“Frankly, dear, I didn’t even realize the place was still open for business. To be honest, I was glad things were so quiet. When it first opened and looked so beautiful, I was afraid that traffic on this street would increase
terribly. When it turned out that almost no one ever came at all, more than anything I was just relieved.”

I thanked her for the information and ended our call when movement out of the front window caught my eye and I saw several cars turn into the driveway. Most were police cars, and for a moment I was terrified they had come here to arrest me. But when I opened the back door and stepped outside, I realized they were simply here to follow up with last night’s investigation.

Mike’s greeting was pleasant enough but all business, and from the deliberate, energetic nature of his body language, I had a feeling there had been some sort of break in the case. I was hoping he would tell me what they had found, but all he did was inform me that his people had some things to do both inside and out and he hoped they would be finished here soon so the crime scene could be released.

“Do you know yet what happened last night?” I asked.

“We’ve made some progress,” he replied, reaching for the radio on his belt. “I’ll explain in a bit. Right now I have to get out back with the rest of the team.”

With that he walked away toward the pool, talking into the radio as he went. Unsure of what to do, I kept out of the way and watched and listened as cops and technicians went into Floyd’s and Troy’s rooms and into the kitchen and began searching them even more thoroughly than they had last night. Hovering in the background, I tried to figure out what was going on. It sounded to me that they were searching for drugs, drug-related paraphernalia, and poison.

So poison really had been involved. Suddenly, I was quite glad I had eaten my own protein bar this morning for breakfast, and that I hadn’t had a thing from the kitchen, not even a glass of juice.

“Sienna?” Georgia called from Troy’s bedroom. “Could you come here a minute, please?”

I hurried into the busy room, finding Georgia and a technician standing at the small door in the back corner, one that wasn’t even visible from the main doorway thanks to the massive dresser that nearly hid it from view.

“What’s in here?” Georgia asked me, pointing toward the door. “We
checked it out yesterday, but I just wanted to make sure we weren’t missing anything.”

“Missing anything?”

“Yeah. It’s such an odd little room down there. Is there more to it than this?”

The door she was referring to was the key selling point to this room, the main reason why it cost more to stay in here than in any of the three rooms upstairs, even though they were bigger and had better views.

“It’s a private wine cellar,” I explained, adding that we had created it during the renovation, under Troy’s guidance, and that one bottle of wine of the customer’s choice was always included for free with every three-day rental of this room. “The old basement under the house had two entrances, one here and one off of the kitchen. The basement isn’t huge, but since we weren’t really using it for anything, we decided to wall off this back corner and create the illusion of an old European wine cellar. I even faux painted the walls. As you’ve seen, there’s nothing down there except the big wine rack full of bottles and a little bit of room to stand and study them and make your choice.”

Georgia told the technician to go on down, and then she squinted at me and asked if I had a liquor license.

“Of course. Why, is that surprising?”

She shrugged.

“I dunno. I guess it’s just not that common for a bed-and-breakfast to deal in alcohol. ’Cept maybe for the ones that serve mimosas with Sunday brunch or something.

My cheeks flushing with heat, I didn’t admit that as a Protestant I had always felt somewhat conflicted about serving alcohol. Instead, I simply explained that it had been Troy’s idea. He had said customers would jump at the chance to have access to an entire wine cellar all by themselves. He predicted that the complimentary bottle of wine that came with the room would frequently be followed by the purchase of more bottles as well. He had been right. From what I could recall, Floyd had reported that the average guest in this room seemed to purchase two or three bottles
per night
in addition to the free one. Given the vast markup on alcohol, the proceeds had been impressive indeed, at least on paper.

Of course, at the moment I wasn’t sure what was true and what wasn’t, nor even if this room had ever had any guests in it other than Troy. But I didn’t bring that up now. Instead, I explained the thinking behind his plan, that most folks who liked wine fancied themselves as connoisseurs and enjoyed playing sommelier. To encourage sales, I had covered the walls down there with pretty, artfully-framed signs that described various vintages and their salient characteristics. I had also placed the most expensive bottles right at eye level, with the complimentary ones at the bottom of the rack.

“So you’re a wine connoisseur too?” Georgia asked as we listened to the clink of wine bottles from the technician below.

I shook my head.

“No, I don’t drink. I got the information from the liquor salesman who helped us choose the stock.”

I didn’t add that the whole thing had been a major bone of contention between my parents and me, the only real argument we’d had throughout the entire renovation process. As a pastor, my father didn’t want anything to do with the sales or promotion of liquor. Looking back now, I understood his position completely, and I felt a surge of guilt as I remembered how dazzled I had been by Troy’s financial projections, and how strongly I had argued to my father that this one simple little wine cellar could be one of the biggest cash cows of the entire business.

I couldn’t recall the details of our argument now, but it had been quite heated, I remembered that. In the end, my dad had given me an ultimatum, saying that if the bed-and-breakfast was going to sell or serve wine that he wanted no part in it. I had acquiesced begrudgingly, frustrated that the little cellar had already been built and prepared and only needed the wine bottles to be ready to roll.

For me, obviously, I had allowed the dollar signs to outweigh my principles.

A few months later, after I bought out my parents’ share and the inn became fully mine, I had suppressed those principles even further, faxed over the original purchase order Troy and I had worked out with the liquor salesman, and told Floyd to stock the cellar as directed and up the price of the room accordingly.

Now the technician was emerging from the stairwell with a bottle of wine in each hand, and it struck me that the poison they were seeking might have been hidden in one of those bottles. Nearly a hundred bottles of wine were down there, some of them extremely expensive. Was it possible they would have to open and test each one? I sure hoped not.

Given the current precarious state of my finances, my job situation, and my inn, that wine collection was one of the few tangible assets I owned outright.

On the other hand, perhaps God was simply allowing me now to reap what I had sown.

Maybe Troy had paid that price as well.

As it turned out, the police weren’t planning to open the wine at all—at least not yet. For the time being, the tech just wanted to get a better look at some of the bottles by the window in order to check the seals and study their clarity. I listened as he and Georgia discussed getting some lighting down there, and I had just come back from retrieving an extension cord for them when I ran into Mike.