“It’s not about that.” Even now, my grandmother held back. I doubt she’d ever broken cover in her life.
But Lauren had proved herself trustworthy. She’d had ample opportunities to tell Detective Crowley about our illegal investigations, but she hadn’t. She’d always stuck by us.
“Then what’s it about? See now, Georgina, I’ve worked here for years. I think I deserve to know why I’m being told to leave. What else am I supposed to do if I’m not coming in here to work? I need this job and you know that.” Lauren welled up.
“Don’t cry, Lauren,” I whispered. “It’s not about you.”
“It’s not?”
“It’s about me.” I glanced at my grandmother, wise and straight-backed, her hair curled perfectly even now when we’d been under such pressure. Gamma nodded to me once. “There’s something you need to know about me. About my grandmother too.”
“Your grandmother?” Lauren frowned.
“Yes. Georgina is my grandmother.”
Lauren’s eyes bugged out of her head like I’d just told her the Hungry Steer had burned down. Boy, if she thought that part was weird, wait until she heard the rest.
And so, I told her, while my grandmother fetched Lauren a soda for sugar to combat the shock. Lauren was gasping by the end, turning her head from me to Georgina and back again. Finally, she rested her head on her forearms and sat there, unmoving, for several minutes.
“Did she pass out?” I asked.
“Not sure. Lauren, can you hear me?”
“Yes, Georgina, I can hear you,” the chef replied meekly. “Why didn’t you tell me about this before?”
“There wasn’t a necessity,” Gamma said, primly. “And I didn’t want to endanger you. But that time has passed. I want you, Tyson, and Jason to leave Gossip tonight. Drive out of the town and go stay with family for the next week. We’ll contact you when it’s all over.”
“You realize how unbelievable this all sounds.” Lauren lifted her head off her arms and stared at us.
We didn’t answer her but met her gaze head-on.
“I always thought you two seemed similar,” she said, after another long silence. “And that danger seemed to follow you. All these murders… I guess it kind of makes sense. But what now? You’re both in trouble and you expect me to run away?”
“You will run away,” Gamma said, then took a breath. “If you don’t do as I’ve asked, I will fire you, Lauren. For real. Because we cannot risk you or your family. Maria hasn’t been here long, so she’ll be sent home for a week’s vacation. But you… the people who are after Charlotte already know who you are. They’ve been watching the inn for some time. They know that you two are good friends.”
Lauren favored me with a nervous smile. “We are good friends.”
“Yeah,” I said. “And that’s why you’ve got to go.”
Our chef, usually so happy, sat quiet and serious for another minute. “All right,” she said. “I’ll do it. I don’t know how I’m going to convince Jason to leave. Maybe I’ll tell him you’re sending me away on a vacation or a baking course and we all have to go. I don’t know. I’ll figure it out.”
“He owes you,” I said.
“Yeah, he does.” Lauren got up, tears shimmering in her eyes again, and came around the table toward us. She drew us both into a hug. “I’ll miss you. And when I come back, y’all had better be alive and healthy and ready to bake cupcakes. Georgina, you’re gonna tell me all about what it was like to be a spy.”
“You mustn’t tell anyway, Lauren,” Gamma whispered, unusually quiet.
“I won’t tell a soul. Your secret is safe with me.” Lauren collected her things, gave us both one last hug a piece, then left.
Hopefully, it wouldn’t be the last time I’d ever see her.
22
“The minute this is over, you’re coming back, and I’ll give you a big cuddle.” I stroked Sunlight, who had curled up in my lap, purring like crazy. It made this even more difficult.
My grandmother had called Jessie Belle-Blue to come fetch the older cats and keep them for the next week—she’d already come by this morning to retrieve the kitties from the incubator. It was a big step, but necessary, even if Belle-Blue was a massive pain in the butt.
We had to keep the kitties safe, and Jessie was the only one who had an incubator and the right equipment and help to look after the youngest kittens while we were occupied. I didn’t want to think about how my grandmother must’ve buried her pride to call Jessie Belle-Blue and ask for help. Without telling her the real reason.
The kitties played, a few of them darting around, others napping, while the smallest kittens were fast asleep in their incubator. I was monitoring them while my grandmother locked up the rooms in the inn.
We still weren’t sure how Kyle had gotten my wedding ring into the incubator room. While the window had been opened a crack, it wasn’t a given that it had been his entry point.
Brian had left to check the greenhouse for entry points, and the area around the fountain. The grounds were large, and the initial sweep by the NSIB hadn’t found anything, but I wasn’t convinced.
Something’s wrong.
I sighed and put Sunlight on the floor, then rose and walked over to the windows flanking the kitten foster center’s back door. The sun shone outside, the leaves on trees shifted gently in the breeze, and the grass was green.
Nothing about this view suggested that my ex-husband might lurk, ready to pounce.
I flicked the curtain closed and turned, heading into the incubator room—empty of kittens.
A folded piece of paper sat atop the incubator, a single word scrawled across the front.
Charlotte.
Nausea beset me.
I’d recognize that handwriting anywhere. It was from Kyle. He’d gotten into the inn again and left me the letter. Of course he had. He was trying to taunt me. Unsettle me and punish me for having outed him to the NSIB.
The window in the incubation room was shut tight and locked, and I had checked the back door was locked earlier as well. He was getting in somehow, and it wasn’t through the traditional entrances and exits.
Then how?
I brought my phone out and shot a text off to my grandmother.
Come to kitten foster center. Bring gloves and particular masks. N95s?
I couldn’t be too careful. It would be just like Kyle to leave a note laced with a biological weapon in here, expecting me to pick it up as I had the wedding ring.
Gamma unlocked the adjoining kitten foster center door and entered, wearing a full hazmat suit. “Where’s the danger?” she asked through the face shield.
“Good heavens,” I laughed, despite the situation. “I had no idea you had one of those.”
“Always be prepared, Charlotte.” My grandmother tried to tap her nose but wound up bonking her finger against the face shield instead. It was the clumsiest move I’d ever seen from her, and consequently hilarious. It helped dissolve some of the tension from having received a note from Kyle.
“He left something.”
“Hold on,” my grandmother said, and stomped out of the room. She returned with a pair of tongs, a bucket, and a bottle of disinfectant. “There’s an N95 out there. Go put it on, Charlotte.”
I did as she’d told me, ensuring a tight fit, then returned to stand nearby.
She lifted the letter off the incubator with the tongs, placed it in the yellow biohazard bucket, then pressed it open. My grandmother cleared her throat. “I’m coming for you,” she said. “That’s all. Not going to win any Pulitzers soon, is he?”
I peeked at the letter over my grandmother’s shoulder. “He was never particularly eloquent,” I said. “But good at manipulating people.”
“Not for much longer, Charlotte. When this is all over, the only thing he’ll be manipulating is his toilet seat in prison.”
I smiled underneath my mask.
My grandmother spritzed the paper with disinfectant—70% alcoh
ol—liberally, then shifted the bucket and tongs aside and headed into the incubator room. “I’ll wipe everything down in here and then we’ll dispose of this hazmat.”
“I doubt he actually laced the note with anything,” I said.
“Me too, Charlotte, but we have to be careful.”
I stood back, my arms folded, and watched as my grandmother carefully cleaned surfaces with the spray.
The door opened again, and Brian strode toward us. “What’s going on?” he asked.
I told him, briefly, and his expression darkened.
“He’s looking for a reaction out of you,” Brian said.
I removed my mask now that the danger had passed and tossed it into the yellow bucket. “I know he is. He wants me to get sloppy. Make a mistake. But I’m not going to be making any mistakes. The only thing that’s bothering me is how he’s getting in and out without being seen. It’s got to be one of the tunnels into the inn, right?”
“You don’t know all of them?”
“No,” Gamma replied, from inside the incubator room. “Unfortunately, not. We have a map of some entrances and exits, but there are others we haven’t yet found. Charlotte and I have been marking the ones we find on the map.”
“Smart move,” Brian said. “Can I get a look at this map?”
“Meet me in the dining room in five minutes. I need to finish up the last of this,” my grandmother said.
I followed Brian out into the hallway, my insides churning. Though I had Gamma and Brian for support, I couldn’t shake the feeling that things were going wrong.
Where was Hannah Greerson? How had Dr. Briggs escaped justice? And why didn’t Kyle stop the games and show his face. What was he waiting for?
In the dining room, I plopped down at an empty table and stared out of the front windows.
“Charlie,” Brian said, taking a seat opposite me.
“Yeah?”
“It’s going to be all right. We’ll catch him.” But even he didn’t sound that sure. Kyle had made me feel out of my depth. We’d solved a little of the puzzle surrounding Jordan’s disappearance, but the fact that Jordan may have been on Kyle’s side all along had me sick with anger.
He had betrayed us, and it was our fault for letting him in. But Jordan had played the part of a homeless man who needed help, perfectly.
If we’d never found him hiding out in the walls in the inn, would he have used that ploy? I doubted it.
“We’ll find him and stop him,” Brian said, once again unsure. Maybe he was saying it to convince himself, too.
I didn’t comment but accepted a quick squeeze of Brian’s hand.
Gamma strode into the dining room ten minutes later. “Everything’s disinfected and disposed of,” she said, and brushed off her cream silk blouse. She swung her purse off her shoulder—must’ve fetched it from her room—and placed it on the floor next to our table. Gamma took her place with us and emptied out the purse’s contents.
A pistol, a box of ammunition for it, then a box of shotgun ammo, followed by cable ties, a short length of tightly coiled rope, duct tape, a bottle of clear liquid that might’ve been poison or nail polish, and finally, a square of brown paper folded neatly.
“Ah, this is the one,” she said, and opened it for us to see. “We’ve marked ten new entrances and exits, but I’m sure there have to be more.”
“Have you closed them off?” Brian asked.
“Yes. Every entrance or exit has been blocked or sealed,” my grandmother replied. “The only ones left open are those that don’t connect to the outside world or those that would take significant renovations. For instance, the section of wall outside Charlie’s room that opens out, and the secret passageway in the library that connects to the attic.” Gamma cleared her throat before continuing. “I’ve also placed cameras in those areas that I couldn’t seal off.”
“How are you monitoring those cameras?” Smulder asked, calm now, confident because he was in his element. We still hadn’t heard from Grant or the NSIB, so it was up to us to deal with the problem head on.
“With this.” My grandmother removed a final item from her purse—her phone, before sweeping the rest of the items back into it. She placed her phone atop the open map and tapped on an app. A screen opened, displaying footage from a connected camera in the inn. It was a view of the bookcase in the library, firmly closed.
Smulder flipped through the different camera views, scratching his forehead. “Where do we think Turner is gaining access from?”
“The kitten foster center,” I said, right away. “Jordan’s basically been living there for months, so he knows that area intimately.”
“Then we should get a camera up there, right?”
“Already done,” my grandmother said, tapping on the screen to show him. “We’ve got surveillance, now we just need to suit up.”
A knock tapped at the front door, and Jessie Belle-Blue’s obnoxious tones drifted down the hall. “Yoo-hoo! Your savior has arrived.”
Gamma’s eyelashes fluttered as she held back her eye-roll. “The things we do for cats and family, eh?”
23
Jessie Belle-Blue strolled into the inn’s foyer like she owned it, a smirk painting her face in colors of smug and self-righteous. “Well, well, well,” she said. “Looks like you need my help again, Georgina. Who would’ve thought?”
“You were here literally an hour ago to fetch kittens from the incubator, Belle-Blue,” my grandmother said, “let’s not perform too much, shall we?”
“Now, now, there’s no need to be sour, dear. I’m always willing to help a… person in need.” Jessie swept her blue-eyed gaze up and down over my grandmother, clearly enjoying every second of this. “You know, you owe me because of this.”
“And you won’t let me forget it, I’m sure,” Gamma replied.
Jessie practically purred at that. “Oh, of course not. I’m sure there’s something you can do for me. I’m just not sure what yet.”
The skin on the back of my neck and head prickled—an anger response thanks to Belle-Blue’s insistence on being insufferable. “You know where the cats are, right?”
“Of course,” Jessie said, rolling her eyes at me. “My husband is getting the cat carriers from the van. He’ll be a moment. You don’t mind seeing my husband, do you, Georgina? I know you’re still single.”
My grandmother didn’t grace her with a reply to that. “I’ll be retrieving them within a week,” she said. “Maybe less depending on how things go.”
“Which things?” Jessie asked. “You’ve called in a favor with me yet haven’t explained what’s going on. Don’t you think I deserve that explanation?”
You deserve a slap. I kept that though to myself, instead enjoying Smulder’s reaction to the ongoing verbal jousting session between the two older women. He swiveled his head back and forth, his eyes widening at the sheer animosity between them. That look of innocent shock drew me to him. It reminded me of how fun our relationship had been a couple of months ago.
Now… well, now things were complicated. I couldn’t help but think we had rushed into this. That I had been vulnerable and stupid to start something so soon after my divorce. Especially when the wolves were clawing at the door.
“An explanation,” Gamma said, breaking the tense silence at last.
“Why, yes, of course. Are you finally closing up the inn? Everyone in town is convinced it’s cursed, though I do not know where they got that idea.” Jessie gave a gleeful laugh—she was the one who’d spread those rumors about the inn, liberally. “I’ve seen quite a few negative reviews on TripAdvisor about this place. You’ll want to do damage control.”
Gamma chewed on air.
“It’s an exorcism,” I said.
Everyone looked at me like I’d grown an extra head.
“We’ve cleared the inn out because it’s haunted by the ghosts of evil,” I continued, doubling down. It was exactly the type of thing that Jessie Belle-Blue would lap up. “That’s w
hy everything’s been going wrong around here. The spirits have cursed the inn and driven people mad.”
Jessie nodded, her smile widening. “Oh, that’s a good idea. An exorcism.”
“Yeah, we’re getting a priest from out of state to do it, and he should arrive this week. He needs his utmost privacy, though, so we had to ensure everyone left.”
Gamma gave a sour nod. “Charlotte’s correct.”
“Cats clog up the works,” I continued with the ridiculous tale. “You know, they’re very in tune with the spirit world so the exorcism wouldn’t work with them around. It might even endanger them.”
Jessie pressed her palms together, clearly on the brink of exploding from sheer excitement.
“We’d appreciate it if you didn’t tell anyone about this,” I said, knowing full well that Jessie had probably mentally connected with whatever coven of gossips she ran and telepathically transmitted the news by now. “We don’t want anyone to be afraid of coming to the inn after the exorcism’s completed.”
“Of course,” Jessie said, then glanced up at the first-floor landing. “You know, between you and me, I’ve always felt this place had an evil vibe. Pity. It’s a nice building, but all the creaking floors and so on? It’s terrifying.”
A tall man, handsome and with silver-gray hair, entered carrying a cat carrier in either hand. He nodded greetings to us. “The rest are in the car,” he said to Jessie, in a low rumble. “Which way are they?”
“Through that door there, honey,” Jessie said, sweetly. “Be careful, though, the inn is possessed.”
If Jessie’s husband thought that statement was weird, he didn’t show it. He sauntered off through to the kitten foster center to collect the cats.
“I’ll expect all the cats back in perfect health,” Gamma said, wringing her hands now. She was never anxious but when there were kitties to be looked after…
Jessie grew serious, the smugness leaving her, if only for a heartbeat. “Of course, Georgina. I’ll protect them with my life.” And then she left us to fetch more cat carriers and help her husband with the transfer.
Chocolate Chills (A Mission Inn-possible Cozy Mystery Book 6) Page 9