Miz Scarlet and the Bewildered Bridegroom
A Scarlet Wilson Mystery #4
By Sara M. Barton
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2015 Sara M. Barton
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What Makes This a Cozy Mystery?
Cozy mysteries are a subgenre of crime fiction. Sex and violence are not usually important parts of the story; if they do occur, the reader is not normally privy to the action. Good-natured humor may be found in some cozies, like this one, but even when there may be murder most foul, there is not foul language -- only the mildest of profanity ever graces the pages of a cozy mystery.
The term “cozy mystery” first emerged in the late 20th century, as modern authors sought a return to the Golden Age of Detective Fiction, in the tradition of Agatha Christie, Arthur Conan Doyle, Dorothy L. Sayers, Josephine Tey, Frances Iles, Georges Simenon, Margery Allingham, Ngaio Marsh, and other masters of that era.
The crimes in cozy mysteries usually take place within a close-knit community and the detectives are almost always amateurs, who just happen to have good contacts in law enforcement. This story does not stray from that format. It is both people- and pet-friendly.
Acknowledgments --
Thanks go to my editorial team, who serve me well: “Gull”, Dino, and Penny, story lovers all. Thanks also to Fiona Wallner at Angloscand HB.
Scarlet Wilson Mystery Series Cast of Main Characters:
Scarlet Wilson, former high school teacher-turned-innkeeper, AKA Miz Scarlet
Jenny Mulroney, her teenage assistant
Bur Wilson, Scarlet’s brother and part owner of the Four Acorns Inn, AKA Colonel Grey Poupon
Laurel Wilson, Scarlet and Bur’s mother, AKA one of the Googins girls
Cousin Lacey, AKA one of the Googins girls
Kenny Tolliver, Scarlet’s heartthrob, retired public safety officer and regional head of Mercer Security, AKA Captain Peacock
Laurencia Rivera, current Connecticut State Police Major Crimes investigator, AKA Larry
Max Weingarten, Larry’s former Major Crimes partner and now investigator for Mercer Security
Huckleberry, Scarlet Wilson’s Yorkshire terrier, AKA Huck
January, Jack Russell terrier adopted by the Wilson family
Mozzie, Jenny’s Cavalier King Charles spaniel
Scrub Oak, the Four Oaks Inn resident house cat
Chapter One --
“Of course Annalee’s been kidnapped! What other explanation can there be?” demanded the frantic bridegroom, hands waving wildly in the air. “You must call the police! We’ve got to get her back. I’ve got some money saved if they ask for a ransom, but the bank is closed today. Oh, God! What am I going to do? My bride is missing!”
I stood there, my heart sinking. All this hard work, all the efforts we’d made for the past two weeks to get Annalee Pinault and Gunnar Magnusdotter married on this first Saturday in June were for naught. There would be no wedding today without a bride. Where could she be?
“I’ll call my friend, who’s with the Connecticut State Police. She’ll know what to do.” I didn’t have the heart to tell him Laurencia Rivera is a state homicide investigator who works the big cases. If anyone would know what to do, she would. I just hoped she could help me find the missing bride in time...and alive.
How did all this happen? You might well wonder. Maybe if we hadn’t decided that the Four Acorns Inn would make the perfect wedding venue, we could have avoided all this trouble. The truth is always easier to see after the fact, when the damage has been done and everything is out in the open. But when you’re in the middle of the action, you don’t always see the danger awaiting you at every turn.
It all started two weeks earlier, when I got a call from a couple wanting to rent the inn for their wedding. No sooner had I hung up than my young assistant began to pepper me with questions.
“Who’s getting married?” Jenny’s eyes lit on me like I was filet mignon and she was a starving carnivore who hadn’t eaten in three weeks.
“Not me!” I laughed. “Nice try.”
“Who then?”
“No one you know.” I looked down at the reservation in my hand and read off the names. “Ms. Annalee Pinault and Mr. Gunnar Magnusdotter.”
“When?” My eager assistant was brimming with the enthusiasm of Seabiscuit, chomping at the bit.
“We have two weeks to pull everything together.”
“Two weeks? How can we possibly pull off a wedding in two weeks?”
“Relax, Jen. There will only be twelve for dinner; eight guests on her side, two on his, plus the bride and groom. I’ve got to get a justice of the peace to do the ceremony.”
“We’re not going to fuss?” The teenager sounded disappointed.
“I never said that. Of course we’re going to fuss. It’s a wedding, for heaven’s sake.”
“It’ll be great practice for when you and Kenny tie the knot.”
“What will be great practice?” said a voice behind us. My mother came down the garden path in her motorized wheelchair.
“I just took a reservation for a small wedding party for Saturday, the seventh of June. The bride and groom want a simple ceremony in the garden and a sit-down dinner. I was just thinking this would be a nice spot for it.” I gestured with my hand as I stood in front of our blueberry bushes, with thick, verdant foliage that was beginning to come into season. It would be a little early for most of the roses, but the irises and pansies would still be in bloom. I started rattling off the details of my game plan and when I finished, my mother had one question.
“What can I do to help?”
“Ah,” I smiled. “I thought you’d never ask. Annalee and Gunnar are coming in from Boston; their families will be coming in from Springfield, Philadelphia, and Oyster Bay. They all want to stay with us. We have the Black Oak, White Oak, and Red Oak Rooms, the library, and if Jenny and I give up our rooms for the weekend, the three-room suite up in the attic. I was wondering if....”
“You want Lacey to give up her room for you two? I don’t mind her staying with me, but I’ll want something in return, Scarlet.”
“What might that be?” I felt a bad case of dread coming on. If Laurel was trying to make a deal with me, I had little doubt that I would be paying through the nose. Maybe I’d be better off making a deal with my brother to sleep at his place.
“You have to promise me that you will do this wedding up right.”
“Define ‘right’, Mom.”
“I want you to knock yourself out.”
“But....”
“No ifs, ands, or buts, Scarlet. That’s the deal. Take it or leave it.” My mother glanced down at the ground, waiting for me to make up my mind. “This wedding must be so memorable that people will talk about it for years to come.”
“No pressure,” I laughed, thinking she was pulling my leg.
“Au contraire, my darling daughter. I expect you to knock the baseball out of the park on this one.”
“I don’t unde
rstand,” I confessed. “Why do you care whether or not this wedding is amazing? What’s in it for you?”
“I want the Four Acorns Inn to become the place for weddings.”
“Mom, we’re a bed and breakfast inn. We only have three rooms, four when we use the library as guest quarters. How much more can I do?”
“Think about it, Scarlet, for just a moment. Why can’t we expand the Four Acorns Inn?”
“Do what?”
“We could take over Wallace’s house,” she continued, “as an annex.”
“Have you been tippling at the sherry? Gobbling up goofy pills? What in heaven’s name would possess you to think we can expand the inn? I’m already overworked and underpaid, dearest mother!” I sat down on the garden bench, stunned.
“What a great idea, Miz Scarlet! Think of what we could do with two mansions!” Jenny’s words echoed in my ears as I hung my head, groaning in dismay.
When you, dear reader, hear the word ‘mansion’, you might imagine we Wilsons are flush with cash, kicking up our heels while we pop bonbons into our eager, overfed mouths all day long. As for career choices that guarantee a life of luxury, innkeeping is not one of them. I suppose I could write a book about the toilets I’ve scrubbed, the floors I’ve mopped, and the pillows I’ve plumped, but it’s not likely to become a New York Times bestseller. I’d be better off writing about the wild things that have happened here, but who would believe the tales?
Someone once scoffed that we could not make any money with just a handful of rooms to rent out. The Four Acorns Inn, operating as a bed and breakfast establishment, manages to pay me an almost decent living wage. On any given day, I usually look after three to six guests. My days start early and end late. Breakfast is included in our basic fee, but we often have folks join us for lunch and dinner, too. My brother, Bur, handles the financial aspects of inn upkeep and income, filling in as groundskeeper on the weekends. I have one assistant, who helps out when she’s not taking classes at the University of Connecticut. In reality, our overhead is low, our room fees are stable, and our real strength comes from pampering our guests with personalized attention.
The original Googins fortune was made two generations ago, with the Four Oaks Pressboard Company, back in the day when accounting ledgers were kept in neat, hardcover notebooks. My grandfather, Randolph, and his brother, Wallace, worked their way up in the business, busily reinventing the manufacturing process, until they became junior partners. Eventually, the bottom dropped out of the pressboard market and the company closed. Now all that’s left of the Googins legacy are the two family homes, three including Cousin Myrtle’s, and the land that goes with them.
The thought of expanding the Four Acorns Inn was enough to give me nightmares for a month. How long had my mother and her cousin, Lacey, been concocting this plan to use Wallace’s home? Better known as the Googins girls, the pair had a knack for springing surprises on me. It sounded like it was a done deal, another case of Miz Scarlet being roped in without a clue.
Don’t get me wrong. My great-uncle’s brown cedar-shingled home is lovely, with its three-story turret and stained glass windows. If I was flush with money, I’d probably leap at the chance to turn it into a wedding venue. But as an experienced innkeeper, I harbor no illusions about how much is involved in running a business like that.
Lacey had lived alone in her inherited homestead after her son, Boynton, departed for the Sunshine State with his wife. Rattling around in a big house all by herself wasn’t exactly ideal for the senior citizen with the busy social life and a shrinking wallet. Once she rented it out and moved into her own suite at the Four Acorns Inn, she was glad of the sizable income she received, but I knew she still had some regrets in giving up her childhood home. Was this just her way of trying to reclaim it for herself?
The current tenant of Wallace’s home, Karin Frenlind, arrived with big plans for the place, expecting to draw the movers and shakers from the Hartford area for special occasions, corporate meetings, and the occasional wedding. She had managed to get her face on the social page of almost every issue of the weekly Cheswick Crier in the months since she moved in, usually with her arm around this local politician or that sports figure.
Rumor had it that Karin’s ambitions were getting the better of her. Back in April, she got caught doing the horizontal mambo with Seth Von Bethen, the Mediquick Air Ambulance CEO, during a corporate cocktail party. Amber Von Bethen went in search of an available powder room and stumbled into the library, where she found her husband writhing on the floor with the unashamed thirty-something social maven. The next morning, Amber hired Marty Lehman, the local divorce guru, and filed suit to end her marriage of seventeen years.
Over the last couple of months, the neighbors took notice of the antics at the mansion. I’d heard from more than one person that the partying went on until the wee small hours of the night. Mrs. Olin complained to me about the dangerous driving, saying that she and her poodle, Sadie, were nearly run over when they were crossing the street as the sun came up. I wondered if my mother had heard the gossip. The senior citizen grapevine was usually quick to circulate the news. “Why are we even discussing this?”
“Scarlet, when Lacey rented out her family home to Karin, those functions became the talk of Cheswick.” Laurel folded her hands primly in her lap, shook her head, and heaved a disapproving sigh. “And not in a good way.”
“Your point being....” I probed gingerly, still not really sure what any of this had to do with me taking on Wallace’s place.
“Lacey wants to terminate Karin’s lease. She’s convinced there’s funny business going on up there.”
“What kind of funny business?” Jenny wanted to know, suddenly curious.
My mother turned and looked expectantly in my direction. “You know...too many people coming and going at odd hours. Lacey says she’s got grounds for kicking Karin out. There’s a village ordinance -- no one is supposed to park overnight on White Oak Hill Road, but Myrtle said there’s been a lot of that lately. And an inebriated man knocked over her mailbox when he backed into it last week. He never bothered to stop.”
I could understand the concern about the bad driving. At the moment, however, there was only one thing on my mind. What would possess my mother to think I could add wedding planner to my résumé? I made the mistake of asking.
“Wallace’s mansion is a perfect place to celebrate special occasions,” she replied.
“I agree, but that doesn’t mean the Four Acorns Inn should take it on,” I announced. “What did Boynton say about it?”
“Boynton doesn’t know yet. We’re still in the discussion stage, Scarlet. Once we have things worked out, we’ll talk to him.”
“I don’t think it’s as easy as you ladies think, Mom. For one thing, it takes money to operate a wedding venue. There’s the heating in winter, the cooling in summer, insurance, the general upkeep of the building. And when it comes to functions, you have to pay the caterer, the florist, the wait staff, the bartenders, the musicians....”
“But it’s not the same as running an inn, is it?” Jenny piped in. “If you only did one or two weddings a month, you wouldn’t have to worry so much about filling guest rooms. It would actually work hand in hand with the Four Acorns, wouldn’t it?”
I looked at that sweet face and knew instantly that my mother and her cousin had given my assistant a script for Act One of Weddings by Miz Scarlet. I glanced over at the woman in the wheelchair, bent over as she extended a hand to January, our Jack Russell terrier-in-residence. Was this my mother’s revenge for the fact I never married?
“Have you no shame?” I shook my head in mock dismay, wagging a finger at Laurel. “Using this poor, innocent teenager in furtherance of your devious scheme? I’m shocked, absolutely shocked.”
Chapter Two --
“Well, you shouldn’t be!” my mother shot back. “For one thing, it’s time you thought about hiring help for the inn. You’ve managed to successfully book more
rooms in the last six months than in all of last year. And if we used Lacey’s house as an event venue, we could control the kinds of parties that are held there and make sensible rules about the number of guests. Did you know the fire department recently was called there because there were too many people in the house at one time? It’s a violation of the fire code to have more than fifty people in there.”
“How many were there?” I teased. “Fifty one? Let me guess, one of Lacey’s friends called to complain, all in anticipation of kicking Karin out?”
“There were more than seventy people, Scarlet, and some of them were smoking. You know that there’s a no-smoking rule!” It took me a moment to realize how upset Laurel was about the situation.
“So, why doesn’t Lacey just kick Karin out and rent the house to some nice family?”
“Like the last time?” Leave it to Laurel to remind me of the Jordan family’s terrifying ordeal at the hands of a couple of creeps. “And have you forgotten how close you came to being killed, Scarlet Wilson?”
I winced at the reminder, knowing how frightened she had been while I was among the missing. Not that it was a day in the park for me...far from it.
“We could have Kenny do a thorough background check on any new tenants, Mom.”
“You’re impossible!” my mother sniffed haughtily, whirling her wheelchair around and rolling away, on her way back to the house. As we watched her disappear, my assistant shook her head.
“Oh, Miz Scarlet, you’ve done it now,” Jenny warned me ominously. “Your mother is not happy with you!”
“It’s hardly the first time I’ve disappointed Laurel,” I assured the young college student. “I doubt it will be the last.”
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