by Nancy Warren
“Do you need directions anywhere?” she asked.
“No thanks,” he said. He was certain she was being the courteous innkeeper, not trying to pry into his business. Still, he ought to go ahead and tell her the good news. She’d love what the Gellmans were planning for the town. But when he swallowed the last bite of omelet and opened his mouth to speak, the words strip mining seemed to catch in his throat. He remained quiet about his plans. He already had a map that the Realtor had faxed his office a week ago. When the property met his approval would be time enough to tell her why he was here.
At nine a.m. sharp he pulled up in his crappy rental car to imposing wrought iron gates. They were shut, and a rusty chain and padlock kept visitors out – even visitors like him who had an appointment. He had to wait ten minutes for the Realtor, which annoyed the hell out of him, especially as his cell phone had no reception out here.
He was getting ready to check the perimeter of the property and see if there was a place where he could scale the fence, when at last a dusty blue Crown Victoria pulled up and a fortyish woman with a lanky body and overprocessed blonde hair got out. She wore a navy pant suit and too much lipstick.
“I’m sorry to keep you waiting. The traffic was snarled something awful,” she said with a big smile.
The padlock opened on her second try and he unwound the rusty chain for her. With a smile of thanks she let him tug open the gates, which screeched menacingly, letting him know they hadn’t been open in a while.
Maybe nobody had come through the front gate, but it was clear when they got onto the property that visitors hadn’t been scarce. Empty beer cans and liquor bottles, the blackened remains of a few fires and assorted litter were scattered around the neglected gardens and scrubby lawn with more dead patches than living ones.
An avenue lined with overgrown oak trees led to a huge marble and brick building that looked more like an antebellum estate than a loony bin.
As gracious as it appeared from the end of the drive, he realized as he got closer that the entire place drooped with neglect. Unfortunately, that included the roof. Dollar signs started to flash in his mental calculator. Following his gaze, Ms. Pearson, the Realtor, said, “You’ll want a building inspection of course, but this was a well-built place. I’m sure it’s salvageable.”
“Maybe.”
Once they got inside, it was better. The marble floors must have cost a fortune, he mused as they walked through an entrance hall that belonged in a castle. Classical columns rose from the floor, between them was a large stone fountain in the shape of an open oyster shell with a white marble pearl at its center.
In the cavernous entry way he imagined the echo of water that hadn’t flowed for years. The double staircase was a gracious sweep of marble, and when he was halfway up he noticed there was something distinctly phallic about the marble columns. A second glance at the fountain and he got it. If Georgia O’Keefe had worked in marble, this is what she’d have created.
“The original owner of the property was a little eccentric,” the Realtor chirped behind him, “but he spared no expense on building this place.”
Eccentric. He seemed to be hearing that word a lot lately. Translation: insane.
There was evidence of some leaking, and a suspicious rustle that suggested nature, which abhorred a vacuum, had sent in rodents to add some life to the place.
It didn’t really matter. A phosphate mine didn’t need marble floors or stone baths. They’d run the numbers, but he suspected pulling down the old sanitarium and building new office headquarters here would be cheaper in the end than trying to refigure this old mausoleum.
There was plenty of good, level land, though. All he had to do was negotiate the right purchase price and nail down the mineral rights. Should be a simple matter.
Easy.
They’d be in business within twelve months.
He drove back to The Shady Lady, figuring he could make a few calls, start the ball rolling from down here but be back in his own office in a couple of days.
As he drove home he blinked, hit the brakes to slow and blinked again.
Unless he’d hit his head on one of the many phallic outcroppings and was hallucinating, ahead of him, at the side of the road and mounted on horseback, was Napoleon.
The long-dead, self-proclaimed emperor of France was in full uniform including a big sideways hat that arched like a bridge. He was deep in conversation with a guy wearing a baseball cap sitting on top of a tractor.
As Joe drove slowly by, feeling as though he were staring at a car wreck, he noticed that Napoleon’s hair was bottle black over a deeply-lined face. When he caught sight of Joe slowing down to crane his neck for a better look, the man nodded with dignity. Joe fought the urge to pull his forelock.
Oh, yeah. He’d be done here in a couple of days, tops. The sooner he was out of Kooksville, the better.
CHAPTER FIVE
“I need to send some emails,” Joe said after a few frustrating attempts to check his cell phone messages in his room. “Mind if I use the office?”
“No. Of course not,” Emily said. “Make yourself at home.”
He tried to pretend that it was business that had brought him into Emily’s kitchen, but really he’d been lured by the irresistible smell of baking.
He shook his head. “I thought New York was full of wackos, but I drove past Napoleon earlier today.”
Emily continued taking cookies off a baking pan and slipping them onto a cooling rack.
As though she heard the saliva pooling in his mouth, she said, “Help yourself.”
“Thanks.” He did and as he sunk his teeth into ginger snaps that were crunchy on the outside and still hot and chewy inside he wondered why he’d ever eaten a cookie out of a box.
“That’s Helmut Scholl,” she said.
“I thought it was a ginger snap,” he answered around another huge bite.
“Napoleon. His real name is Helmut Scholl.”
He swallowed and swiped two more cookies. “He’s German and he’s pretending to be Napoleon? If he’s got to pick a manifestation of his megalomania, why not dress up as Hitler?”
“Well,” she paused and turned to face him, the metal thing she’d used to lift the cookies still in her hand, “Helmut likes horses. You don’t picture Hitler on a horse somehow.”
“You don’t picture Napoleon shouting “Ja wolt,” either.”
The fact that he was even having this conversation made him wonder if there was something in the water of Beaverton that made even supposedly sane people nuts. Him for instance. He hadn’t been released from Dr. Emmet’s bankrupt sanitarium so that couldn’t account for the fact that he’d gone half mad in the thirty or so hours he’d been here. Between lustful thoughts of his landlady, having his sleep stolen by an overweight cat with halitosis, and meeting the eccentric locals, he wasn’t feeling exactly balanced. He’d have the water quietly checked out.
While he was contemplating whether Emily’s good manners would prevent her slapping him if he took another cookie, Aunt Lydia walked in – no, not walked, staggered. Her legs were a good three feet apart and she winced with every step. Not knowing much about old ladies, he kept his mouth shut, but Emily immediately dropped everything and rushed forward. “Aunt Lydia, what is it?”
“Don’t fuss girl. I tried one of them thongs. I hear they’re sexy. Ha! You tell me what’s sexy about getting rope burn up your butt?”
“Where did you get a thong?” Emily asked.
Ignoring Emily, the old woman turned to him and snarled, “You think thongs are sexy?” as though it was his fault she were wearing the thing.
He supposed that his first instinctive response, “depends who’s wearing it” wasn’t the most tactful, so he settled on a noncommittal shrug. Emily now, in nothing but one of those aprons and a thong. Oh, yeah. Sexy as hell.
“And where did you get a thong?” Aunt Olive came into the room, repeating Emily’s question.
After glari
ng at him, clearly unhappy with his shrug response, Lydia wobbled in a circle, her legs stiff and pushed out to the sides, like a woman with two broken legs in casts. “You’re not the only one who’s smart, you know. I got it on eBay. I wanted it for my costume for the play. But maybe not.”
Olive and Emily exchanged glances. “What else did you get?”
A crafty grin met them. Old Lydia looked so pleased with herself, Joe was pretty sure he was the only one who was going to like her answer. “A couple lipsticks. That’s all.”
Emily held out her hand. “Let me see.”
The old woman put a hand in her lime green velour track suit pocket and handed over a tube of lipstick. Emily uncapped it, then turned the screw part at the bottom. He heard a tiny buzzing and as Emily jumped, Lydia laughed so hard tears ran down her face.
“You got a lipstick-vibrator and a thong. What else?”
He’d never seen a vibrator disguised as a lipstick before, so he craned his neck for a closer look.
“Nothing. Fetish gear is big now, you know, after that spanking book everybody went crazy over, but after this thong, I’m not so sure.”
“You had these things mailed here? What if the postal worker dropped the package and it broke open? Do you want people to know you’re buying these things?”
“No one’ll know, honey. I used your name.”
The old clock on the wall ticked loudly in the silence, then, to his surprise, Emily started to laugh and resumed putting cookies onto cooling racks and the old girls showed no more compunction than he had in snitching the treats. It occurred to him that Emily was acting like the grandmother with her aprons and home-baked cookies while the old ladies were the carefree ones, buying thongs and talking trash. She was acting their age, and they were acting hers.
“I love the Internet,” Lydia said having swallowed a bite of cookie. “You can sell things, too.”
Olive made a rude noise. “Honey, what you want to sell nobody’s wanted to buy for years.”
“Well, that’s where you’re wrong. I put myself on one of those online dating sites.”
The metal spatula clattered to the counter. Emily said, “You did what?”
“I’m tired of being single. I’m on the market.”
“But…but…”
“My talents are wasted in this town. All the years of experience and the extra training I got from Dr. Emmett, and all the young men who come here would rather get their therapy from a vestal virgin. So I’m branching out. I’m franchising.”
Emily made a sound like a small animal in pain.
He was caught by the reference to vestal virgins. Interesting. Didn’t Emily date much? She was so amazingly sexy he found it hard to believe. But then, around here, who was she going to date? Napoleon?
“Do you have any takers?” Olive sounded interested in spite of herself.
“Sure do. I’m calling myself Human Viagra.”
“Demented Nymphomaniac would be more accurate,” Olive muttered.
“Go ahead and scoff, you dried up old prune. If I get too many men for me to handle, maybe I’ll send some of them to you.”
“Oh, goodie. What are you going to call me? Human Syrup of Ipecac?”
“You’re still jealous of me, face it. Because I’m younger and I used to get all the best clients.” Lydia wagged her index finger in Olive’s face. The two older women looked like a couple of bantam weights ready to go a few rounds.
“Because the word no is not in your limited vocabulary.”
Thrusting a few handfuls of her freshly baked cookies into a wicker basket with a linen napkin in it, Emily backed stealthily toward him. The two bickering aunts didn’t even notice.
As she came level with him, she grabbed his hand and pulled him gently along. When they were standing by the front door, and he was thinking how nice her hand felt tucked into his, she removed it and whispered, “Sorry, but I had to get out of there. Any minute I would be called on to take sides. I hate that. I have to escape for a while.”
“Okay.”
“I’m going to visit Miss Trevellen and get my stuff back. You want to come?”
He had to check in with the office, review his email and work on two reports to clients while he was down here. On top of the phosphate deal, he had an Internet start-up looking for commercial real estate, a private pharmaceutical company wanting input on whether the time was right to go public, a European spa company looking to branch out to the US market and about a million other things on the go.
Of course he didn’t have time to visit batty old thieves. On the other hand, he needed to get a better handle on this town. And on the third hand, he was crazy about spending time with Emily and more than a little curious as to how she was going to steal her things back.
“I’m in. Should I call my lawyer before we go in case we need bailing out of jail?”
“Don’t be a chicken. Come on.”
After thrusting the basket of cookies at him, she slipped off her apron, ran her fingers through her hair and that was it. As far as he could recall, she was the first low maintenance woman he’d ever seen who looked this good.
He motioned to the basket of cookies. “Are these for Miss T?”
“Yes.”
“You’re going to reward the criminal with treats?” It seemed remarkably foolish to encourage larceny. Besides, he wanted to eat all the cookies himself.
“It will be fine. You’ll see.”
“Your car or mine?” he asked as they emerged into late afternoon sunlight.
“We’ll walk. It’s a gorgeous afternoon.”
It was a gorgeous afternoon but he didn’t have all day to waste. However, it was hard to argue with a woman who was already striding purposefully up the winding path that led to the road. And, in fairness, they arrived at a neat little bungalow painted pale lavender in less than fifteen minutes.
“Emily, my dear. What a lovely surprise,” Miss Trevellen said with her cultured accent. Her makeup was as perfect as it had been yesterday. She wore wide black pants that he suspected she’d bought in the forties and a jacket of similar vintage with padded shoulders. “And you brought your nice young man with you.”
“Pleasure to see you again,” he said, shaking her hand gently so the bones didn’t break.
“I was showing Joe around town and we thought we’d drop in and say hi.”
“How nice. Would you like coffee?”
“Love some. I brought cookies.” And she handed over the basket like Little Red Riding Hood giving gifts to the wolf granny. This town was more cracked than he’d realized.
Miss Trevellen’s eyes lit up when she peeked inside. “Ginger snaps. My favorite.”
“I know. I baked them specially.” If he didn’t know better, he’d have thought they’d come by royal invitation for coffee, not that the old woman had stolen Emily’s property so she was forced to come by here and steal it back.
She ushered them into her small living room and Joe couldn’t believe the place. It was more like an upscale antique shop than anybody’s house – in fact, he’d been to several old houses turned antique stores like this on Cape Cod. Old houses, with display cases and cabinets, shelves, antique furniture all crammed with pretty, dainty, breakable and thoroughly useless things.
He blinked as he glanced from blindingly glittering crystal to china dolls to silver, each piece polished to brilliance. One cabinet held nothing but thimbles, pill boxes and snuff boxes. He walked over for a closer look.
“Ah, you like my collection, I see. I’m a great collector. Quite a pack rat.” Quite a thief, Joe would have put it. “My father was the same.” And if he were still alive, no doubt he was serving ten to twenty in the clink for grand theft.
As he turned to a set of silver cups and goblets he was almost certain he recognized the little filigree dish she’d slipped in her purse yesterday. Of all the brazen, larcenous—
His thoughts were interrupted by Emily’s voice. “Why, what a pretty little di
sh,” she said, reaching past him to pick up the very item the woman had stolen yesterday.
“It is pretty, isn’t it? Note the fine workmanship. Late nineteenth century, I’d say. Probably English.”
And definitely hot.
“I love it,” Emily said. “Don’t you, Joe?”
“Sure do. In fact, I saw one just like it yes—“ Hard to keep talking with that pain in his ankle from where his bed and breakfast hostess had kicked him a good one, so he shut up.
“If you really like it, I want you to have it,” the old dear said, her eyes bright with happiness. “There’s nothing I like more than to give pleasure to my friends.”
He blinked, then limped over to the couch and sat down. Miss T poured him coffee and he watched in fascination as Emily admired two more pieces that were obviously hers and had them graciously bestowed on her. Then they all had coffee and cookies and Joe wondered when he might scramble back up the rabbit hole.
“I wish you could have seen your own face in there.” Emily laughed up at Joe, thinking how nice it was to have someone in town she could laugh with.
“You mean when I was writhing with pain after you kicked me in the ankle?”
“Sorry about that. No. When you realized my things were on display.”
“And she gave them back as soon as you gushed over them.”
“She can’t help herself. She doesn’t mean to steal but she loves pretty things.”
“Then she gets the guilts and this is her way of giving them back?”
“You know, I’m never certain if she really knows she’s giving a person their own property back or whether she truly thinks it’s a genuine gift. I can’t help but adore her, though.”
“She stole your property.” He looked even better than he had yesterday, and now that she’d kissed him her body was reminding her that she’d been without a man for a while. If only he’d stay a while, then maybe…
“She borrowed them for a day. And she polished the silver. She won’t give away her secret, but no one can polish silver the way she does.”