by Vicki Delany
Russ must have read my face. “Forget Betty. She’d love to destroy every other business in town, but even she’s smart enough to know that she needs a prosperous town for her own business to succeed.”
I wasn’t so sure.
“I gotta run,” Vicky said. “I’m off to my dad’s office to hear what Simmonds had to say.” The good mood of only a few moments ago had died. “Don’t you dare report that, Russell Durham!”
“Headline news. Well-known Rudolph baker visits loving father.”
Vicky harrumphed.
The morning was quiet. I left Jackie to handle what few customers we had and made my preparations for Midnight Madness weekend. I’d gotten in plenty of stock, but as always I worried that I’d bought the wrong stuff. Should I have passed on the felt Santas and gotten more of the glassware? I studied the box of Santas. Rows of identical embroidered faces smiled up at me. Somehow they’d looked more appealing in the advertising brochure. En masse they put me in mind of a horror movie.
“Merry!” my dad’s voice boomed from the front of the store.
I picked up one of the dolls and carried it out. “I’m glad you’re here, Dad. I’m not sure about these things. What do you think? Oh, hi, Mom. You’re up early. Is something wrong?”
Dad didn’t look much like Santa today. The sparkle was gone from his eyes and his mouth was set into a tight line. My mom had, shockingly, come out without makeup. She probably hadn’t done her hair, either, as she had a wool hat pulled down over her head. My heart almost stopped for a moment. I thought of my three siblings. “What’s happened?”
“Have you heard from Eve today?” Mom asked. Eve was my youngest sister. She was in LA these days, trying to break through as an actress. She was not, we all knew although never said, having much luck.
“No. Not for ages. Why?”
“Look at this.” Dad thrust his phone toward me. It was open to the messages screen.
I read: Dad, Eve here. In ambulance heading for Good Samaritan. Car accident. Two broken legs. Please come.
“That’s terrible,” I said, giving the phone back to him. “When do you leave?”
“I booked the flight immediately,” Mom said. “Out of Syracuse at three o’clock.”
“Give her my love,” I said.
My parents exchanged glances.
“What?” I said.
“We texted that number with the flight information,” Dad said. “It was delivered, but unread, which isn’t strange. She might be in the ER or even in the operating room with the phone switched off.”
“I called Good Samaritan Hospital,” Mom said, “to make inquiries. They have no patient by that name.”
“Could the ambulance have taken her to another hospital?” I asked.
“But which one?” Mom asked. “We called the apartment and left a message.”
“And . . .”
“Lynette called us back a few minutes ago,” Dad said. “She knew nothing about any accident.” Lynette was Eve’s roommate, another struggling actress.
“Maybe Eve was only able to make one call.”
“Maybe,” Dad said, “but Lynette said Eve has gone hiking and camping in the mountains with friends. They left two days ago and aren’t due back until the day after tomorrow.”
“Eve went hiking?” I said, shocked. My sister, for whom spas and luxury hotels had been invented, was hiking? Exercise, to Eve, was what you did in a gym to stay thin, not something for fun.
“A new boyfriend,” Mom said. “The rugged outdoors type, apparently.”
“That’s a relationship doomed,” I said. “I’ll keep trying to get her while you’re in the air.”
“We’ve decided that I should go alone,” Dad said while a grim-faced Mom nodded. “At least until I can figure out what’s going on. This is all very strange. She’s not in the hospital that was in the message. The number the text came from isn’t Eve’s phone. I tried calling it and reached a generic voice mailbox. I left a message, but have received no reply as of yet. Her own phone isn’t answering. And her best friend and roommate knows nothing about this accident and says Eve is out of town.”
“Weird,” Jackie said.
“You think someone’s playing a practical joke on you?” I asked.
“If so,” Mom said, “we are not laughing. I’m worried sick.”
“I’m leaving for the airport now,” Dad said. “Call me immediately if you hear anything.”
“Of course,” I said.
Dad gave Mom a hug. They clung together for a long time, and when they separated, Mom’s eyes were wet.
“I’m sure it will all be okay, Mr. Wilkinson,” Jackie said.
“Thanks,” Dad said. “Merry, why don’t you walk your mother home?”
“Sure,” I said.
“I’m fine,” Mom said. “You have work to do.” She dug in her coat pocket and found a tissue. She blew her nose.
“Store’s not busy,” I said. “As you can see. Jackie doesn’t need me.”
“I never do,” Jackie said.
Dad laughed. He gave my mom another hug and then he left.
“I’ll get my coat,” I said. “Not that I have one. Speaking of coats, want to do some shopping, Mom?”
“What?”
“I need a new coat. You can help me shop.”
“What happened to yours? You bought it at the beginning of the season.”
I wasn’t about to tell her why I didn’t have one, as that would bring us back to Nigel Pearce. I shrugged. “I decided I don’t like it.”
My phone rang. I pulled it out of my pocket and glanced at the display.
Eve.
“Eve!” I shouted. “Are you okay? Where are you?”
“Hi to you, too, Merry,” my sister’s bright and perky voice said. “I’m fine. Although that is an experience I will not be repeating anytime soon. Do you know he actually expected me to sleep in a tent? On the ground? When I said . . .”
“Where are you?”
“Heading back to LA. Soon as I got in cell range, and let me tell you I’ll never leave it again, my phone lit up like some sort of Rudolph Christmas display. I got a whole string of messages. I couldn’t listen to them all, so I called Lynette first. She said Dad’s been trying to get me. I figured I’d check with you. Are Mom and Dad okay?”
My mom was practically jumping up and down. I gave her a thumbs-up. “They’re fine. We’re all fine. Have you been in an accident?”
“No. Why do you think that? Although I might have been in more than an accident if I’d stayed on that stupid trip. We had to hang our food from a tree to keep it away from bears. I told Craig he was to take me back to the city, or we were finished. Can you believe it, he said he’d take me as far as the bus station. A bus! I am, even as we speak, standing in line to get on a bus!”
I handed the phone to my mom, who promptly burst into tears; perhaps as much in sympathy with Eve having to ride on a bus as with relief that her youngest daughter was uninjured.
“Can I use your phone?” I said to Jackie.
She handed it over without a word, and I called Dad to tell him he could come home.
Chapter 9
Vicky Casey drove a sexy red convertible Mazda Miata. One of her cousins was a car mechanic who specialized in foreign and antique automobiles. He’d gotten it for her cheap, because it didn’t run, and fixed it up so it was almost as good as new. She absolutely loved it. She’d put the top down and break land speed records on country roads as the wind ruffled her hair and men whistled as she flew past. Sometimes they were whistling at her, but more often at the car. She loved that, too.
That, however, was in the summer.
In the winter, the Miata, too delicate for snow and ice and whatever the county dumped by the truckload on the roads to keep them clear, was stored in th
e garage at her cousin’s place, covered by a tarp. In the winter, Vicky walked most places, and if she had to drive, she took the white panel van with the big “Victoria’s Bake Shoppe” logo painted on the sides.
Today, she didn’t even have that.
I eyed the Mercury Grand Marquis, the sort of transportation Vicky called a Medicare Sled.
I got into the passenger seat and fastened my belt. “Where on earth did you get this?”
“It’s my great-aunt Matilda’s. She uses it to get to church on Sundays and to bingo the other six days of the week. I borrowed it.”
“Which forces me to ask, why?”
“We’re travelling incognito.”
“So I see,” I said. Vicky wore a blue and yellow knitted hat with a pom-pom on the top, pulled down to her eyebrows and over her ears so not a strand of purple was on display. The Vicky I knew wouldn’t be caught dead in that hat. “Mind if I ask why, again? Your phone call, which woke me up, I might add, was highly cryptic.”
More than cryptic. She hadn’t said anything except, “be ready to rock and roll in half an hour,” and hung up.
We were now rocking and rolling, as the boatlike car jerked into the street.
It was a few minutes after seven, and the residential area of Rudolph was slowly coming to life. Lights shone from most houses, including mine. The lace curtains in the front window twitched as Mrs. D’Angelo clocked my departure. A couple of inches of snow had fallen in the night, and the snowplows were out, scooping it up and stuffing it by the side of the street. People were shoveling or snowblowing their driveways before heading out to work, while others were walking dogs.
“If we’re just going for a drive,” I said, “I should have brought Mattie. He needs to get used to being in a car.”
“Next time,” Vicky said.
In a matter of minutes we were leaving the lights of Rudolph behind and hitting the dark county road running along the shores of Lake Ontario. The beginnings of a soft red glow colored the sky to the east.
“Better take warning,” Vicky said.
“Huh?”
“Red sky in morning. Sailors take warning, right?”
“So they say.”
We’d barely gone a mile before we found ourselves stuck behind a big yellow school bus on its way to pick up country kids. The road was well plowed, but with all the twists and turns and ups and downs, the line in the center of the road was solid yellow. “We could walk faster,” Vicky mumbled. The big car lurched and shuddered. Vicky hunched over the steering wheel. “I don’t know how anyone in their right mind can drive a car like this.”
“Like what?”
“An automatic. When I drive, I like to be the one in control.”
I refrained from saying, “In driving, as in life.”
About a mile before the next intersection, the school bus put on its turn indicators and began to slow. Vicky cursed as she was forced to tap her own brakes. Then she shot ahead, barely clipping the back bumper of the bus as it made its turn. The Mercury’s engine roared. I wondered if it was enjoying the feeling of power for once, or screaming in terror at the unexpected speed.
We passed a sign. “Muddle Harbor, 10 miles.”
“Okay,” I said. “Unless you’re kidnapping me to hold for ransom, in which case you’re going to be sadly disappointed, you have to tell me what’s up. The only place this road leads to is Muddle Harbor.”
“Got it in one,” she said.
“Vicky, you can’t be thinking of going to Muddle Harbor to argue with them about that ad in the Gazette yesterday.” I hadn’t seen the local paper yet this morning. I feared to ask if the café had placed another ad hinting that Victoria’s Bake Shoppe wasn’t safe.
“Me? Argue? Perish the thought. I want to check out the competition, that’s all.”
“This isn’t a good idea.”
“Look, Merry. That blasted Muddite slandered my business, in writing. I intend to tell them they can’t get away with it.”
“They didn’t even mention you, Vicky. That’s not slander. They simply stated that their bakery serves safe baked goods. That’s true. Well, I assume it’s true.”
“And that,” Vicky said triumphantly, “is why we’re going. I want to check this place out, let them know we’re watching them.”
“Why am I being brought into this?”
“Because,” she said, “they might drag me into a dark alley and beat me up if I’m on my own.”
I kept my thoughts on the chances of that happening to myself. “What did Simmonds have to say to your dad when he asked her to let you open?”
“That she’d consider it,” Vicky huffed. “She’d better consider fast. I’ve got to let my casual staff know if I’m not going to be able to use them this weekend. They need the holiday money almost as much as I do. It’s only fair to give them the chance to find something else.”
The glory days of the town of Muddle Harbor were long gone. It boasts a lovely location on the lake, and was close enough to Rochester that people could spend long hot days in lakeside hotels or enjoying their own holiday homes. But in cold New York State, that only means summer business, which isn’t enough to keep a town thriving all year.
The town’s decay was in evidence as we drove down the main street. More than a few shop windows were covered in brown paper or filled with the sort of sparse display that indicates there is no thriving business inside. The few open stores had tried to add some Christmas cheer, but it seemed to my experienced eye that their hearts weren’t truly in it.
A handful of shop owners were scraping snow off the sidewalks in front of their businesses. No one looked up as we drove past.
The Muddle Harbor Café sat in the center of the main block. It, at least, was brightly lit and looked welcoming. We drove slowly past, checking it out, and Vicky pulled into a parking spot on the opposite side of the street, a few doors down. We got out of the car and walked to the café.
The light displays on the shops we passed were unimaginative, many of the bulbs burned out and not replaced. The window presentations were badly lit and covered in a thin layer of dust.
My fingers itched to get in there, scrub the windows until the glass sparkled, add better lighting, and rearrange the displays to their best advantage. A women’s clothing shop had a fake tree in the window. Fake! And not just fake, but so cheap it looked fake. That might not be exactly forbidden in Rudolph, but it certainly would be frowned upon. In a nod to modernity we allowed tastefully decorated trees of silver or pink aluminum. Some stores stocked inexpensive fake trees (and don’t get me started on the lumps of nuclear-green plastic Betty Thatcher sold as wreaths), but we tried to ensure that everything used for decoration was as authentic as possible.
The Muddle Harbor Café was decorated in ’50s-diner style: black-and-white-checkered tiles on the walls, a long counter with red-topped stools, and booth seating. Everything looked well maintained and tidy. But the décor, mostly pictures of old-fashioned soda bottles and advertising for long-since-departed companies, didn’t just look old. It was old. There’s retro, and then there’s seriously out-of-date.
A few customers were in the café: a group of old men filling a booth (as they probably did once a week all year round), two young women with babies in strollers relaxing over coffee and muffins, and an elderly couple who’d long since run out of anything to say to each other, buried behind their newspapers.
Vicky led the way across the room, and I followed. She plopped herself onto a red vinyl–topped stool and whispered to me, “Don’t have anything to eat.”
“Mornin’ hon,” the waitress said. “Coffee?”
“Okay,” Vicky said. She did not remove her hat or coat.
“Sure. Thanks.” I was wearing my new coat. Crisis averted, Eve safely getting on a bus, and Dad on the way home, Mom and I had gone shopping. The word �
��restraint” isn’t in my mother’s vocabulary and without quite knowing what had happened I found myself spending far more than I’d intended on a gorgeous knee-length garment of gray wool with an offset zipper, wide sleeves, and high, face-framing collar. Now I glanced around in search of a hook.
“Just leave it on the stool next to you, hon,” the waitress said, pouring the coffees. “Not like we’re gonna have a full house.”
The coffee smelled rich and delicious. I added a splash of cream and took a sip. Excellent.
I plucked a menu from between the salt and pepper shakers. The breakfast was traditional fare, lots of eggs and hash browns. They also had a selection of muffins, coffee cake, and cinnamon buns that were advertised as “homemade.” They might be home baked, I thought, but a peek into the kitchen told me they were likely from a commercial mix. I turned the menu over. Lunch offerings consisted of hamburgers and retro fare like hot turkey sandwiches.
“Ready to order?” the waitress said, her pad and pencil at the ready.
“Just coffee’s fine,” Vicky said.
“I’ll have two poached eggs, soft, with the hash browns and the country sausage and wheat toast.” I put the menu back. The waitress gave me a strained smile. Barely eight o’clock and she already looked as though her feet hurt.
“Are you trying to give yourself a heart attack?” Vicky whispered when the waitress had gone to put my order in.
“I haven’t had a real old-fashioned American breakfast in years,” I said.
“That’s because it’ll clog your arteries and kill you,” Vicky said.
“Come on,” I said. “Look at this place. It’s no competition to you. And you’re no competition to it. Different as chalk and cheese.”
“I might not fry eggs in grease, but I do make muffins and pastries,” Vicky said. She nodded to the shelf behind the cash register where fresh baking was available for takeout.