Top O' the Mournin' (4 page)

“Debutante?”

She made a sound like someone choking on a peach pit. “
I…
was a debutante.”

“Really?” I said, feigning surprise. “Who would have guessed?”

“I was presented at the Augusta Symphony Guild Cotillion.” She swept her hand down the length of her leg in a dramatic flourish. “I wore a white satin gown encrusted with thousands of tiny seed pearls and long white gloves. I was crowned ‘Miss Cotillion.’” She touched her hair with the memory. “I still have my tiara.”

“We have cotillions in Windsor City too. But we call them pig roasts.” Unlike Jackie, I’d been female for a long time, and I was good at it.

Ashley floated back to the present looking too confused to continue our conversation. “Well, I’m getting nothing done standing here talking to y’all. If anyone complains to you about the rooms, have them call me and I’ll set them straight.”

“What’s to complain about?” I had to concede. “The rooms are great. Your company must have negotiated a really good deal at the castle to be able to afford a night here.”

Ashley examined a strand of her long blond hair. “We had some wiggle room. It was simply a matter of turning a sow’s ear into a silk purse.”

We were definitely not on the same wavelength because I didn’t have a clue what she was talking about, and I’d grown up next door to a hog farm. “What do you mean?”

“The
castle,
Emily. It doesn’t have the most…stellar reputation.”

Okay. The picture was getting a little clearer. “You mean, it got only one star in the hotel rating guide?”

“I mean, it’s haunted.”

“It’s haunted, but only if you believe in that kind of supernatural mumbo jumbo.”

My voice rose to a pitch that was inaudible to most humans. “You booked a group of senior citizens with pacemakers…and hypertension…and predementia…into a haunted castle?”

“Not so loud! Do you want the whole floor to hear?”

“Yes!”

“Look, Emily, there’s some cheesy ghost story connected with the castle, but it happened so many centuries ago no one even remembers the details.”

“I hope you don’t expect me to believe that. The Irish have memories like elephants. They forget nothing,
especially
if it’s bad. Why do you think the country is still divided?”

“Oh, and I suppose you’re an authority on all things Irish?”

I’d seen
The Manions of America
miniseries, so I figured that made me something of an authority, even if I did miss one night. “I have my sources.”

Ashley shook her head. “If y’all want to embrace that silliness about the castle, go ahead, but you’re a modern woman, Emily. I’d think you’d know better. Who would have thought a levelheaded Midwesterner like y’all would believe in ghosts?”

She had me there. If I said I didn’t believe in ghosts, I’d be admitting there was no problem. If I said I
did
believe in ghosts, I’d make myself look like a nut case. Damn. “Are you going to warn the guests about the potential for hauntings?”

“Not on your life. We don’t want anyone influenced by the power of suggestion. I’ve been in this business a long time, sugar, and I’ve found that what people really want is a grand hotel at bargain basement prices. That’s exactly what we’re giving them, so do us all a favor and don’t rock the boat.” She thrust a manicured finger at me. “Remind everyone that we leave at seven o’clock tomorrow morning, so they should have their luggage outside the door by five so it can be loaded on the bus.”

I returned to my room feeling as if I’d been slugged in the gut with a baseball bat. I dumped my armload of files onto the bed, then stared at Etienne, who was sitting in one of the room’s four tapestried armchairs with an amused look on his face. “You’ll never believe what that…that
woman
has done,” I sputtered.

“Booked you into a haunted castle.”

“You heard.”

“Emily, darling, I suspect the entire fourth floor heard.”

“Can she do that? You know the legal system. Isn’t there some law against booking people into haunted castles without their knowledge?”

Etienne shrugged. “I suppose it depends on whether the spirits doing the haunting are deemed to be benign or malevolent. But this is Ireland, Emily. I was under the impression that all the castles in Ireland were haunted to some degree. I thought it was part of the country’s charm. Or a splendid marketing ploy.”

Bless his unflappable Swiss logic. I was getting the picture now. “Of course. A castle doesn’t have to be haunted for someone to
claim
it’s haunted. Saying a place
is
simply makes it more intriguing to tourists.” For the first time in five minutes I was able to draw a calm breath, which allowed me time to bristle at how effortlessly Ashley had teased a negative reaction out of me. Boy, had she yanked my chain. Well, from now on, she could tell me the sky was falling and I’d take it in stride. Haunted castle. Right.

“We have castles in Switzerland too,” Etienne continued, “and it’s the haunted ones that cater to the most tourists. For whatever reason, people delight in the prospect of being frightened.”

“Not me.” I loosened the belt of my robe and gave him a suggestive peek of my bare shoulder. “I’m more delighted at the prospect of being ravished. Now, where were we?”

The lusty smile on his face was accompanied by a familiar chirruping in his trousers. I rolled my eyes, then drilled him with a look of pure exasperation.

“Forgive me, Emily. I’ll only be a moment.” He dug his cell phone out of his pocket and flipped it open. “Miceli,” he said in his police inspector’s voice.

Wasn’t this just typical? A handsome man in my bedroom and the only thing he can whip out of his trousers is his cell phone. I plucked his buttons off the rug and placed them in the ashtray on the desk as he made a string of comments like “I see” and “Yes,” ending with a definitive “I’ll need to get back to you.”

“Bad news?” I asked, anticipating the worst.

He stood up, his palms open in apology. “I can leave the job, but apparently I can’t escape the job. There’s been a break in the case I’ve been investigating. I have a raft of phone calls to make, and it will probably take me the rest of the night, which means…”

No sex. Great. This was all my mother’s fault. She maintained that having my marriage annulled returned me to “virgin” status, so she was offering up a monthly novena that I’d remain in that state until I walked down the aisle again. I tried to explain that an annulment altered a woman’s marital status,
not
her anatomy, but she was having none of my argument. “If the marriage never happened, Emily, you never went to bed with Jack. That makes you a virgin. I’m mother to a twenty-nine-year-old virgin. Imagine.” The awe in her voice attested to the fact that, in this day and age, she considered this circumstance to be far more extraordinary than either the Immaculate Conception or the Virgin Birth.

“I’m sorry, Emily. I signed up for this tour of yours and I intend to enjoy it. I promise that, after tonight, I’m all yours.”

Sure, I thought. If my mother will stop praying long enough for it to happen.

Facing the rest of the afternoon on my own, I decided to take care of some necessary escort duties before venturing out to find the nearest ATM. I dried and styled my hair, slipped into a long almond suede skirt and a short-sleeve ivory turtleneck sweater, pulled on short leather boots with decorative front lacings and side zippers, scooped up the file folders Ashley had given me, and began knocking on doors. “Maps, itineraries, and timetables,” I said as I made my deliveries. “The bus leaves at seven o’clock tomorrow morning, so be sure to have your luggage outside your door by five.”

I saved Nana’s room for last. She answered the door on the first knock and stepped into the hall so as not to waken Tilly, who was stretched out on the bed and snoring like a Boeing 747. “I hope she quiets down tonight,” Nana said with some concern. “Your grampa used to snore loud like that until I did somethin’ about it.”

“Did you sign him up for one of those sleep disorder studies?”

“I moved into the guest bedroom. Worked real good. What’s this folder for?”

I explained the contents of the folder and reiterated the information about the luggage and bus departure time for tomorrow morning. “So how are you and Tilly getting along?”

“Would you believe she didn’t realize the man who won all the money on the first
Survivor
program is like your ex-husband?”

I stiffened. The less Nana remembered about Jack, the better. “You mean, he’s an aspiring actor?”

“Nope. I mean, he walked outta a closet too.”

I made an empty gesture with my hand. Okay. So her terminology was a little off. Why quibble over a verb. “Really?”

“Yup. Tilly calls it ‘gender imbalance,’ and she wrote a big anthropology paper once theorizin’ it happens ’cause a body chemistry. Caused a big stir. She says there’s gender imbalance in every culture, which means the root cause is biological ’stead a behavioral. And, listen to this, Emily, in one culture, folks with gender imbalance are given elevated status ’cause they’re recognized as havin’ superior social sensitivity and special knowledge. Isn’t that a nice attitude to have?”

My curiosity was piqued. “Did she say which culture that was?”

“Some ‘Islanders.’”

“‘Long’?” New Yorkers had always elevated gay actors, dress designers, and artists to celebrity status.

“I’m pretty sure it was ‘Trobriand,’ but ‘Long’ was a good guess.” She smiled at me in the same way she used to when we’d share tea and cookies together when I was a little girl. “Tilly and me are goin’ out for a bite to eat after she wakes up. You wanna join us, dear? I don’t want you to think I’m ignorin’ you when you’re all alone.”

“Thanks anyway, but I’ll probably splurge on something from the minibar a little later. And, actually…” I paused for dramatic effect. “I’m not alone. You’ll never guess who signed up for the tour.”

“Inspector Miceli.”

There were times when my grandmother’s mental powers were absolutely scary. “You guessed. How did you guess?”

“He spoke to me in the lobby while I was waitin’ for my key. Such a nice young man. A real hottie. That Ashley person thinks so too, ’cause she was all over him.”

Heat sizzled up my neck and scalded my cheeks. If this was a precursor to hot flashes, I wanted nothing to do with the real thing. “What do you mean,‘all over him’?”

“Well, dear, she wanted to know his name, where he was from, what he did for a livin’, if he was married. Battin’ her eyelashes and attachin’ herself to his arm like static cling. I’d watch out for her if I was you, Emily.”

I returned to my room feeling like a juggler with one too many balls to keep in the air. I composed a mental “To Do” list. One: Keep Nana away from Jack. Even though I could trust Nana with the information about Jack’s operation, there was no telling how a group of conservative Midwesterners would react if word leaked out that their esteemed escort was once married to another “female” on the tour. It wouldn’t exactly be a selling point on my résumé.

Two: Keep Ashley away from Jack. Considering how well their first encounter had gone, they could very well come to blows. It would be a tragedy if they ended up killing each other, especially after all the surgery Jack had recently undergone.

Three: Keep Etienne away from Jack. I wasn’t real sure how this introduction would play out. Jack probably wouldn’t have any problem handling it, but I was less sure about Etienne. I was breaking new ground here. My guess was, this topic hadn’t even been covered in “Dear Abby” yet.

I massaged a sudden throbbing in my temples as I contemplated my three tasks. Was it my imagination, or did most of my problems revolve around Jack? Just like when we were married. Everything
always
revolved around Jack. Maybe I couldn’t juggle all the balls myself. Maybe I needed help. Maybe I should simply break down and talk to Jack.
Hmm.
I liked that idea. Simple. Efficient. It sounded like something Nana would suggest.

I marched into the hall and knocked on Jack’s door. No answer. I knocked again. Still no answer. I returned to my room and downed two ExcedrinPM. Maybe it was jet lag. Maybe it was stress. Whatever the reason, my head suddenly felt as if it had a little man inside who was hacking his way out with a really big hammer. I unzipped my boots, slipped them off, and curled up on the bed, rehearsing how I could ask Jack to pretend not to know me without hurting his feelings. Maybe it was a good thing he wasn’t in his room. This gave me more time to figure out what to say and how to say it.

I scratched an itchy spot at the back of my neck where my turtleneck was irritating my skin. Felt as if the tag was poking into me. I should get up and cut it off, but at the moment, I was too sluggish to even think about it. I heard a door slam in the hall and a faint echo of conversation in the room next to mine. Jack was back. Excellent. But I needed more time. Ten more minutes. Just ten more minutes and I’d have everything all figured out.

Brrrng brrrng! Brrrng brrrng!

I threw a blind hand toward the ringing phone and knocked the handset off the cradle, causing it to bungee-jump to the floor in a raucous clatter that brought me instantly awake. I stretched my neck and blinked several times. My headache had disappeared. Wow, that was a well-spent ten minutes. I reeled in the handset off the floor and spoke into the receiver in a scratchy voice. “Hello?”

“You have five minutes. If you’re not
aboard the bus
in that time, we’ll leave without y’all. You’re an
escort,
Emily. We’re not supposed to have to wait for the escorts! Not only that, our bus driver was in a car accident on his way to work and broke his leg, so they sent us a replacement. A rookie. This will be his first time out. Of all the
freaking
things to happen! Not only that, our local guide has come down with laryngitis, so she won’t be joining us until she has her voice back, which could be four or five days, so the rookie will have to share his knowledge with us in the interim, if he
has
any knowledge. Not only that,
you
being late is just making my day complete!”

I paused. “Ashley?”

“Just get down here!”

I peered at the digital readout on the clock radio. “What do you mean I’m late? It’s only seven oh five. Did you have something planned this evening that I didn’t know about?”

“Evening? It’s seven oh five
A
.
M
.! You have five minutes!”
Click.

A
.
M
.? I pivoted toward the curtained window. Uh-oh. That sure looked like cool morning light rather than warm evening light streaming in.
Uff da.
I’d slept the night away.
Uff da
is a pseudoreligious Norwegian saying commonly used in Iowa. Its most popular translations are, “holy smoke,” “holy cow,” and “holy crap!”