Miz Scarlet and the Acrimonious Attorney

by Sara M. Barton

  “Aren’t you going to open it?”

  “I guess so.” I slipped my finger under the flap. With trembling hands, I retrieved the two pages of paper that were carefully stapled together on the upper left corner. My eyes tried to focus, but all I saw was my name and something about damages. “Oh, hell’s bells!”

  “Well?” Her face wore that usual look of motherly apprehension as she studied me. “What have you done this time?”

  “This time?” I took note of the slightly accusatory tone and lodged my protest. “Why is it that you always assume I’ve done something wrong, Mother? Did it ever occur to you that I might be the victim, not the perpetrator?”

  Lacking a gracious response to that, she did an about-face and focused on the mysterious communication that dangled just out of her reach. Reaching up, she gripped my arm with her long, graceful fingers and gave it a yank, trying to get a glimpse of the letter. In the process, I nearly lost my hold on the five-pound bag of King Arthur flour.

  “Whoa!” I clutched it tightly.

  “What does it say?” she wanted to know.

  “It says that I’m being sued for....”

  “Sued?”

  “Yes, sued! Of all the low-down, dirty, rotten, scandalous lies, this takes the cake!” I dumped the heavy sack unceremoniously into the cart, letting loose a swirling cloud of white powder, and reread the letter. It was a pity that King Arthur’s Knights of the Round Table weren’t available to do some keister-kicking of the less-than-gallant Worthington and Howitzer, attorneys at law. From what I’d seen so far, they deserved it.

  “Are you going to tell me or not?” my anxious mother impatiently implored me.

  “I have been accused of maintaining an unsafe hostelry.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “You’re not the only one,” I growled. “You remember that couple, Mimi and Sam Kitanen?”

  “You mean the weird couple from Schenectady who stayed with us a month ago?”

  “Yes. Mimi claims that she slipped and fell in the bathroom at the Four Acorns Inn, tearing her rotator cuff.”

  “I don’t remember that,” my mother replied, nonplussed.

  “That’s because it never happened!”

  “What’s up?” My mother’s cousin joined us. As she set her gaze upon us, her cheerful countenance quickly changed. “What’s wrong?”

  “Scarlet is being sued, Lacey.”

  The sixty-something social maven did a double-take. “For what?”

  “A fall in the bathroom that never happened,” I moaned. “I can’t believe this nonsense!”

  “Do we know for sure that it didn’t happen?” my mother inquired, insistent on playing the role of devil’s advocate. “Perhaps she was afraid to mention it to us.”

  “What guest would tear her rotator cuff and not mention it?” I demanded. Lacey agreed with me.

  “That’s a pretty painful injury, Laurel. I was in agony when I tore mine.”

  “Well, maybe she thought she should wait until she got home.”

  “Nonsense!” Lacey’s concern rapidly escalated. “How could Mimi Kitanen not need to see a doctor? Isn’t that the first thing you do when you’re injured in a fall?”

  “Of course it is.” My mother finally came to her senses and let go of the notion that this was all just a big misunderstanding.

  “Thad was staying with us when the Kitanens visited,” I reminded her.

  “And they knew he was a doctor,” Lacey added. “So, if Mimi was really as seriously injured as she claims, why not ask him to have a look at her or at least advise her as to whether or not she should go to the emergency room?”

  “Because it’s a scam!” The high-pitched, woman-on-the-edge-of-despair wail that came out of my mouth surprised even me. I sounded like I was ready to come unglued. “They’re trying to shake us down for cash. It says here that they’re willing to negotiate a settlement out of court if we agree to leave the insurance company out of the conversation. Why would we want to do that? It would cost us an arm and a leg.”

  “They’re probably counting on you trying to avoid all those fees by making a cash offer. Does it say anything else?” Lacey leaned over my shoulder to see.

  “Yes,” I grimaced. “It says that the Kitanens are sure that it is in the best interests of the Four Acorns Inn to avoid unnecessary publicity, since we have our professional reputation as innkeepers to protect.”

  “Is that a veiled threat?” asked Laurel, now very concerned. “Are they saying that if we don’t give them what they want, they’ll ruin us?”

  For a few seconds, I actually considered the value of making the problem go away by pulling out my wallet. But that sudden brain freeze came to a quick end and I was furious once more.

  “It sure sounds like that to me, Mother.”

  “Where I come from, we call it blackmail, Scarlet,” Cousin Lacey announced. “I’ll bet this is a real money-maker for them.”

  “I’ll bet they’ve done this before,” Laurel remarked. “Or their lawyers have.”

  I had to admit the Googins girls had a point. The plaintiffs and their lawyer were a little too good at this game to be amateurs in the art of the con.

  “I wonder if they’ve ever been caught at it.”

  “There was definitely something fishy about those two, if you ask me.” Lacey shook her head. “You could tell when they didn’t want to join the rest of the crowd for cocktails and canapés.”

  “They really kept to themselves,” Laurel agreed. “What’s the point of staying at a bed-and-breakfast if you’re not going to schmooze over meals?”

  It was true. Half the fun of coming to the Four Acorns Inn was socializing with the gang.

  “I wonder if they were casing the inn,” I remarked, “to see if we’d be the perfect pigeons for their con.”

  “Do you think they were snooping on us, trying to figure out what would make us vulnerable?” Lacey’s eyes grew wide at the thought.

  “Maybe they were checking to see if it would be worth it to sue us,” my mother sighed. “How disappointing!”

  “I think they made a fatal mistake.”

  “Which is?” Laurel wanted to know.

  “Remember that AAA inspection we had a week before the Kitanens stayed with us? Gloria Leo sent me a copy of her report the other day. She mentions that our bathrooms were well-designed and she liked the no-slip floor tile and handicapped features.”

  “She put that in writing? That’s helpful,” Lacey decided. “It will probably work in your favor, Scarlet.”

  “Oh, I think it will do more than probably work in our favor. At least we’ll be able to prove that there was nothing dangerous about the White Oak bathroom when the Kitanens stayed with us. If necessary, we could subpoena the AAA inspector to appear court and have her testify about her inspection of our rooms.”

  As an innkeeper, I belong to a few professional innkeeping organizations. One of the benefits of membership in each is that their representatives insure we meet their specific standards for quality accommodations. In return, we count on their recommendations to prospective guests.

  This was especially important now that our renovations had commenced. We sank a small fortune into the effort to expand the Four Acorns Inn. Not only would we soon have a dedicated venue for hosting weddings and other elegant functions up in the old Wallace Googins mansion, we would add another two guest rooms and the oh-so-private carriage house to our current roster of three official guest rooms and the occasional use of the library for extra guests.

  “You’re thinking of taking this to court?” Lacey and my mother asked in unison.

  “Absolutely.”

  “But....” I could tell Laurel was apprehensive.

  “They have no business telling me I can’t have my insurance company handle this matter. That’s why I pay those expensive premiums in the first place, in case guests are injured. If she had really fallen in the shower, we would have encouraged her to get medical
treatment, and we would have let the insurance company handle her subsequent claim.”

  “But what if she has a reasonable explanation, Scarlet?”

  “Like what, she thought it was just a minor injury and found out it wasn’t when she got home? She should have contacted us immediately if she had been hurt at the inn.”

  “Maybe she was afraid we wouldn’t believe her.”

  “We don’t, but that’s because she’s a big, fat liar.”

  “But....”

  “But nothing, Mother. If Mimi Kitanen really tore her rotator cuff, she’s going to have to prove she did it at the Four Acorns Inn.”

  “I hope you’re right.” She didn’t sound convinced.

  “If the Kitanens have done this before, they may have gotten caught doing it. It’s just a matter of finding the proof.”

  “Oh, Scarlet!” my mother groaned. “Please tell me you’re not thinking of investigating this yourself!”

  Chapter Five

  “Me? No. Of course I’m not!” I folded the letter from Worthington and Howitzer, shoved it back into the envelope, and grabbed my purse from the cart. “Do you two think you can finish the shopping while I talk to Kenny?”

  “Now that’s a sensible thing to do, dear,” was my mother’s relieved reply. “Of course we can.”

  “Who’s in for dinner tonight?” Lacey wondered.

  “The Boxers and Ms. Larson are. The Francos are off to their meeting.”

  “What are we having?”

  “Butternut squash soup, spinach salad, seafood lasagna with béchamel sauce, and my triple chocolate bombe.”

  “Oh, that sounds lovely,” my mother nodded enthusiastically. She turned to Lacey for inspiration. “What shall we do for cocktail hour? It should probably be on the lighter side.”

  “How about Prosecco served with savory apple and goat cheese turnovers?”

  “Not if we’re having béchamel sauce. That’s so much cheese.”

  “Right you are. What about apple and prosciutto rounds with warm walnut butter?” her cousin suggested.

  “That sounds tasty! Shall we do apple martinis for tonight’s cocktail?”

  “Perfect. There’s a sale on Granny Smiths in the produce department.”

  I left them to their apple shopping and sought out a quiet corner of the store, tucking myself into a narrow space between a rack of Italian bread and the bagel bins in the bakery section. Kenny answered my call on the third ring.

  “What’s up, lovely lady?” he greeted me cheerfully.

  “I’m being sued.”

  “Come again?”

  “I’m being sued.”

  There was a long pause on the other end of the conversation. I waited for Kenny to say something, but he remained oddly silent.

  “Did you hear me?”

  “Yes, but I thought you were pulling my leg. Who is suing you?”

  “That odd couple from Schenectady,” I told him. “Mimi Kitanen claims she tore her rotator cuff when she fell in the bathroom of the White Oak Room. I was just served with a notice of intent to sue while I was in the grocery store. This is un-freaking-believable.”

  “Read me the letter.”

  I obliged him, and by the time I got done with the final salutation, the emotional shock of the lawsuit letter had begun to wear off and my mind was returning to rational thought. “How could she check out of the inn without indicating that she was hurt? Why didn’t her husband say something? They didn’t even ask me for Advil or an ice pack. As I recall, they left in good spirits, promising to someday return.”

  “Well, I guess you could say they’ve returned in a big way. It sounds like a con, Miz Scarlet.”

  “Of course it’s a con. What else can it be?”

  “The Kitanens and their lawyer probably think you’re a soft touch and you’ll hand them a couple of thousand dollars, just to make them go away. I’ll look into the possibility that they have a history making false claims. They could be professional slip-and-fall artists. Let me just get an afternoon run in first and I’ll handle it. Of course I’m going to need sustenance.”

  “There’s a surprise,” I chuckled, feeling my apprehension fade away. If Kenny was on the case, I was in good hands. “Why don’t I pack up some dinner and join you at seven?

  “It sounds good,” he said. “Let yourself in, love, if I’m in the shower.”

  “I will. See you then,” I promised.

  An hour later, with the groceries unloaded, the dinner table set, and my assistant, Jenny, cheerfully working on the butternut squash, I tossed a salad and mixed up some Champagne vinaigrette. I pulled the seafood lasagna from the refrigerator and put it into the oven. A glance at the clock alerted me to the fact that the Googins girls would soon be arriving to prepare their appetizers. It was time to vacate the kitchen.

  “How are you coming on the soup, Jen? Do you think you can handle it?”

  “Sure. It seems simple enough. I just scoop out the squash and puree it.”

  “That’s it. Just be careful not to burn yourself. And check your seasonings. Don’t forget the nutmeg.”

  I felt something brush against my left leg. Looking down, I spotted Huckleberry. The Yorkshire terrier’s tail swayed back and forth in a silent plea.

  “Okay, little guy. Let’s go for a quick walk before dinner.”

  Grabbing two harnesses and the double leash, I buckled up Huck and whistled for January. She came barreling around the corner, her enthusiasm unbridled. The little Jack Russell twirled with all the grace of a ballerina on steroids.

  “First we walk and then you eat, my dear. Come along.”

  Twenty minutes later, after a brisk loop through the neighborhood, my canine companions and I returned to the inn. Huck and January joined Jenny’s Cavalier King Charles spaniel at the food bowls.

  “Yes, Mozzie, it’s chow time,” I told her. I poured kibble for each of them and topped it with some shredded chicken breast. “Bon appétit.”

  “Can you taste the soup?” My hopeful assistant handed me a spoon. I dipped it into the pot, blew a few cooling breaths over the thick, creamy concoction, sniffed the aroma, and opened my mouth. I let my tongue linger, savoring the flavor. For a first effort, it was quite good and I told her so.

  “It’s good for my first time or it’s good because it’s delicious?” The expression on that adorable face was so sincere, I didn’t dare deceive her.

  “It’s delicious for your first time. The only thing I would do differently is to cut back slightly on the nutmeg. It’s a very strong spice, so less is more.”

  “Oh, I didn’t think it mattered.” Her disappointment was obvious.

  “Not to worry, Jen. It’s part of the learning curve as a cook.”

  “Can we fix it?”

  “It doesn’t really need fixing. It will be fine.”

  “Please?”

  “Well, let’s see.” I went to the refrigerator, opened the door, and took inventory of the contents. I had leftover honey-glazed carrots and half and half. “Take these carrots and puree them with about a cup of the half and half. We’ll throw it into the pot and that should take the edge off the nutmeg.”

  “But won’t it change the taste of the soup?”

  “If anything, it will make it richer. Give it a try.”

  Five minutes later, my assistant had bounced back from her culinary faux pas and was delighted with the result. “I actually think it tastes better this way!”

  I grabbed a clean spoon, dipped it into the pot, and sampled the soup. “You may be right. Why don’t we jot down our new ingredients and from now on, this will be known as ‘Jenny’s Butternut Squash Soup’.”

  “Well, first we should make sure people like it,” she pointed out. “They might like the original version better.”

  “Oh, I don’t know about that. Just tell the Googins girls that we’re trying a new recipe. You know how they love to give advice. If they think it needs tweaking, they’ll tell you.”

 
; “We’ll tell you what?” My mother rolled into the kitchen.

  “Jenny wants to know what you think of the soup she made.” I grabbed a tablespoon and dipped it into the pot. My mother let the aroma waft up to her nose before she tasted the soup.

  “Hmm....”

  “Hmm?” I couldn’t fathom Laurel’s reaction. Did she like it or not?

  “This isn’t Grandma Googins’ Butternut Squash Soup.”

  “No, Mom, it’s a little different.”

  “It’s a little more...elegant,” my mother announced. “What’s the difference?”

  “What’s the difference with what?” Lacey wanted to know. She joined us at the kitchen island.

  “Taste this soup,” Laurel instructed her.

  Jenny and I watched nervously as Lacey dipped a spoon into the pot. Her eyes widened slightly as the flavor hit her.

  “This isn’t Grandma Googins’ recipe. Did you get this from the Food Channel?” It sounded almost like an accusation. My assistant blanched beside me.

  “No,” Jenny admitted readily.

  “What did you do to it?”

  “Well, I put too much....”

  I cut off the chef-in-training before she could confess to her error. “I added a couple of things. What do you think? Will it do for dinner tonight or should we scrap it?”

  “Oh, I definitely would serve it. I just wish I knew what you did to it, because I’ve been making this soup for forty years and it never tasted this good!”

  “Pureed glazed carrots and half and half,” Jenny told her.

  “Of course!” Laurel tapped her forehead. “The glazed carrots add that little bit of sweetness and the half and half makes it richer.”

  “I wish I’d thought of that,” Lacey said. “You know, Scarlet, when you finally get around to publishing The Four Acorns Cookbook, you should include this version.”

  “I might just do that,” I smiled, giving Jenny a quick wink. In return, I got a big grin out of the twenty-year-old.

  “I’ve got to finish setting the table,” she announced, her face flushed, as she turned towards the dining room.

  “I have an ice bucket to fill,” I added. “I’ll leave you ladies to your apples.”

  They were still discussing the soup as I left the room. I poked Jen with my elbow when I caught up to her in the butler’s pantry, as she rummaged through the silverware drawer in search of a butter knife.