by Mary Maxwell
“What about Betsy?” I asked.
“Didn’t you hear?” Alma moved closer, lowering her voice even more and glancing anxiously over one shoulder. “She and Mr. Shipp had quite the fling until her husband found out. Bernice and Delia told me about it at book club right after it began, but I figured it was nothing more than spurious gossip. I mean, I’m here everyday; I never saw any evidence of hanky-panky. At least, not until I caught Mr. Shipp and Betsy nuzzled up on the sofa one morning when I got here earlier than usual.”
“That must’ve been quite a surprise for you.”
Alma scowled and shook her head. “I just didn’t want to believe that all the gossip about him was true,” she said. “All the talk lately seems to be about some sort of sour business scheme. Of course, I knew that he could be quite a flirt. But I didn’t think he was foolish enough to trick anyone in a town as small as Crescent Creek.” She heaved an aggravated sigh. “And now he’s gone even farther off the rails! He’s been entertaining someone who really is young enough to be his granddaughter! She’s been here three or four times since late last week.”
Although I’d heard a few rumors about Walter’s recent investment troubles, I was unaware he had a new girlfriend. I listened with rapt attention as Alma quickly divulged a few details.
“She’s really young,” the housekeeper whispered. “Maybe around twenty or so, with skin as white as milk and clothes as dark as night. I actually jumped the first time the bell rang and she was at the door. I mean, she looked exactly like someone from a zombie movie, Kate.”
As Alma shared more about her first encounter with Walter’s young visitor, I recalled Ivy’s description of the stranger she saw in the library the previous afternoon: snow white skin, heavy black eyeliner, deep purple lipstick, eye shadow the color of burnt toast. It almost certainly had to be the same person. In a place like Crescent Creek, someone with such a dramatic appearance would be impossible to overlook.
“…and her mouth is always slathered in purple lipstick!” Alma was saying when I blinked away the brief daydream. “It’s the color of eggplant, deep and dark, just a dreadful shade. It’s not only really unattractive and creepy, but it leaves a horrible mess on wine glasses and tea cups.”
“Maybe it’s Walter’s ex-wife,” I suggested. “Wasn’t she quite a bit younger?”
“Yes, but I’ve seen pictures of Martha; the girl in the dark makeup is someone else. And she’s definitely not from around here.”
“What’s her name?”
Alma shrugged. “Not a clue. She didn’t offer and I didn’t ask.”
“Where do you think she’s from?”
“I’d guess Mars,” Alma joked as the sparkling smile returned to her face. “Or maybe Transylvania.”
We shared a lighthearted laugh and I was getting ready to ask a few more questions about the woman in the purple lipstick when Walter suddenly reappeared in the doorway.
“Miss Reed?”
I glanced up. “Yes, Mr. Shipp?”
He slipped the phone back into his pocket before slowly trundling into the room toward the wingback chair.
“I do apologize for the interruption,” he said, lowering his bulk slowly onto the seat. “My sister’s got some strange notions in her head about a very complicated family matter.”
I nodded solemnly, deciding that silence was the best reply.
“And my language was a bit more colorful than you ladies are probably comfortable with,” he added, smiling at Alma and then looking back at me. “I’m sorry about such uncouth behavior. I’ll do my best to see that it doesn’t happen again.”
“You’re fine, Mr. Shipp,” I said. “Family matters can create some pretty strong emotions.”
He laughed. “You can say that again! And strong emotions can make normally logical people become very irrational.”
Alma waited until Walter finished. Then she reminded him that she was leaving in a few minutes and wouldn’t return until the morning.
“I know that!” he said, a slight edge darkening his tone. “I may be older than you, but my memory’s sharp as a tack, Miss Cassidy!”
Alma forced a smile. “Yes, sir,” she said. “And don’t forget; the meatloaf I made earlier is in the refrigerator under the foil. Just put it in the oven for thirty minutes on—”
“I’m not an infant!” Walter snapped. “I can take care of myself.”
With a silent nod, Alma left the room.
“Now then,” Walter said, pressing against the back of his chair. “What did you want to speak with me about?”
I leaned forward on the sofa. “I don’t quite know how to say this, Mr. Shipp. But someone found a letter that appears to threaten your life.”
“What was that?” His gaze flicked briefly to the stack of correspondence on the coffee table. “I don’t think I heard you correctly.”
“Someone found a letter,” I said. “And it appears to be a death threat against you.”
“A death threat?”
I nodded. “It would seem so.”
He smirked and chuckled softly. “Do I look dead to you, Miss Reed?”
“No, but I—”
“Is this some sort of fantasy for you?” he asked.
I didn’t know how to reply, but I could tell there was more to his question.
“I’ve heard all about your previous career in Chicago,” he continued. “The private detective in the big city. The girl with the gun. The hard-charging female sleuth out to trounce the—”
“Sorry to interrupt,” I said. “But this isn’t about me, Mr. Shipp. This is about you; the letter threatens you because of something in your past.”
He chuckled darkly. “My past?
“According to the letter.”
The ominous laugh fizzled into a throaty rasp. “Well, according to me,” he announced confidently, “there’s nothing in my past that would warrant such a thing. I worked in accounting, Miss Reed. For forty-two years, while other men and women stood proudly in the spotlight, I labored in the shadows, balancing the books and running cost analyses and doing my utmost to keep Henning Calhoun & Caldecott afloat and all of our clients in good standing with the Internal Revenue Service.”
I made a mental note of the company name and asked him what they did.
He laughed again. “I can assure you that Wall Street was never as much fun as running a popular bake shop like Sky High Pies,” he said. “Nor was it as exhilarating as your work as a private investigator in Boston.”
“Chicago,” I said, correcting the minor inaccuracy. “I worked in Chicago before moving back home to Crescent Creek.”
He acknowledged the remark with a small grunt. Then he shifted in his chair and glanced at his watch. “I do apologize, but I’m expecting a guest at any minute, Miss Reed. As much as I would enjoy a long and winding conversation with you about my alleged demise, I need to get some papers in order before she arrives.”
I got to my feet and grabbed my purse. “That’s no problem at all, Mr. Shipp. I appreciate your time.”
“Well, I’d really love to chat more, but I’m already running behind schedule. I hadn’t expected my guest to stop by. And I’m also working as a volunteer for the book fair. Our final training session is this afternoon, and if I arrive even one minute late, Ivy Minkler will tan my hide!”
After slowly pushing up from the chair, Walter walked me to the entryway.
“You take good care of yourself, Miss Reed,” he said, opening the door. “I’ll be in soon to see you! No matter how hard I try, I find it impossible to go a week or two without one of your those cupcakes, a delicious sticky toffee cinnamon rolls or a piece of that red velvet cake!”
When I stepped outside and climbed into my car, a dark blue sedan with a white TAXI sign on the roof turned into the driveway. As it eased up beside me, Dalton Ross waved and smiled. He and his wife owned Crescent Creek Cab, a four-car fleet that served the area with prompt service and reasonable fares.
I was gett
ing ready to roll down my window and greet Dalton, but he’d already turned to speak to the passenger in the backseat. I shifted my gaze slightly to see if it was anyone I knew. I was surprised to discover that it was the infamous young woman with the purple lipstick that both Ivy and Alma had encountered in the past few days.
“Well, hello there, infamous Goth girl,” I said under my breath. “You seem to be turning up everywhere, now don’t you?”
CHAPTER 11
Earl Dodd was snoring loudly on one of the threadbare green loveseats when I walked into the registration office at the Moonlight Motel. A laptop was balanced on his thighs and an open bag of Chile Limón Funyuns sat beside him on the cushion.
I waited just inside the door for a brief moment, amused by the vision of my old friend sitting perfectly upright while he slept. Earl and I met when we were classmates at Crescent Creek High. We’d developed a friendship in Blanche Speltzer’s history class during freshman year. I would tease him about the never-ending supply of salty snacks that he kept squirreled away in his locker. He would make fun of my nonstop chatter about the after school shifts that I worked at Sky High Pies. Since I’d returned to my beloved hometown a few months earlier, I’d run into Earl now and then at The Wagon Wheel, the post office or the potato chip aisle at Benton’s General Store. “Still eating salty snacks,” I’d joke. To which he would inevitably reply, “And you’re still baking up a storm!”
As I stood in the doorway, smiling silently at my slumbering friend, Earl’s eyes suddenly popped open.
“Oh, holy cow!” he sputtered. “Katie! Jeez, I’m sorry about that! How long have you been standing there?”
I shrugged silently.
“I just sat down to catch up on some bookkeeping,” Earl sputtered. He quickly moved the laptop to the empty seat beside him, scooped up the snacks and lurched to his feet. “Guess I dozed off there for a sec, huh?” He held out the bag of crunchy nibbles. “Care for a Funyun?”
I shook my head. “I’m good, thanks. And I hate to disturb your beauty rest, but I stopped by for a sec to ask you about something.”
“Fire away!” He grinned widely and brushed crumbs from the front of his flannel shirt. “I beat the pants off my dad in Trivial Pursuit last night, so my brain’s all tuned up and raring to go!”
“How’d your dad take the defeat?”
“He threatened to ground me for a week,” Earl said.
We both laughed. “He does know that you’re thirty, right?”
“Yeah, but since my mother passed away, dad’s been kind of regressing back in time.” Earl’s face sagged with the painful memory. “I think he’s dealing with the grief by pretending that I’m a kid who needs him more than he needs me.”
A deep sadness drifted between us. Earl’s mother was always kind to me when we were younger. She’d been a counselor at the local middle school, a devoted volunteer at a nonprofit literacy agency in Boulder and a merciless pool shark on weekend nights at The Wagon Wheel. When my mother called me a couple of years ago to tell me about Mrs. Dodd’s death, I felt a profound sorrow for Earl and his father. It was yet another reminder about the fragility of life and the need to live each day to its fullest.
“You should bring your father to the book fair tomorrow,” I suggested. “It might be a good thing for him to get out and mingle.”
Earl tilted his head toward the door marked OFFICE behind the front desk. “Dad still spends most of his days back there,” he said. “But thanks for the suggestion. Hollis Kean is working here now as the night manager. Maybe when he comes in tomorrow I’ll ask dad if he’s up for going out and about.”
“I hope he’ll want to,” I said. “It’ll be nice to see him again.”
Earl smiled. “Well, anyway,” he said. “You didn’t come here to discuss my father, Katie? What’s up? What can I help you with?”
“I wanted to ask you about someone that may be staying with you.”
“What’s the last name?”
“I don’t actually know it,” I answered. “But I can tell you what she looks like.”
I quickly described the girl in the purple lipstick. When I finished, Earl confirmed that she had only stayed one night at the Moonlight.
“She left here and booked a suite at the Crescent Creek Lodge,” Earl continued, sounding relieved. “But that was fine by me. That chick was a nightmare! Even worse than the heavy metal polka band that stayed for a week and trashed three rooms!”
“What did she do?”
“What didn’t she do?” He rolled his eyes. “She demanded fresh towels every five minutes and then ruined a bunch of them taking off her makeup. I also think she went through about two hundred sheets of our stationery, most of which she left torn into teeny, tiny pieces in the wastebasket.”
“Do you have any of those scraps?” I asked.
He frowned. “Afraid not. Viva keeps the rooms squeaky clean, so the Goth girl’s confetti ended up in the trash.”
“What else did she do to be such a pain?”
“She complained about the thread count in the sheets,” Earl said. “And the lack of bottled water in her mini-fridge. And the fact that we don’t offer in-room spa treatments.” He chuckled and put the bag of Funyuns on the front desk. “I mean, c’mon! One look at this place and you know it’s not the Four Seasons. When she and her boyfriend got into a shouting match in the parking lot, I thought about calling 911. But then she stomped in here, threw her room key on the counter and told me she was checking out.”
“Boyfriend?”
“I just assumed that’s who he was.” Earl frowned. “Although, come to think of it, they had separate rooms, so maybe it wasn’t her boyfriend.”
“Did he move to the Crescent Creek Lodge, too?”
“Nope. He’s still here at the Moonlight. I put him in the last room on the left before the ice machine.”
“Is he as much trouble?”
Earl shook his head. “Not at all. He’s a fairly chill dude. I’m pretty sure he’s in town for the book fair. You could go and see for yourself if he was in his room, but I saw his SUV leave about an hour ago.”
“Okay, maybe I’ll come back another time.”
Earl reached into the Funyuns bag and popped one in his mouth. “Why are you asking about them?”
“Just curious,” I said. “No big deal.”
He suddenly crept over and stood right beside me. “Is this one of your ultra sneaky private detective things again?”
“It’s not ultra sneaky,” I said. “Someone in town asked me to help with something.”
“And that something is connected to the creepy Goth girl with the bad attitude?”
I pressed one finger to my lips. “I can’t talk about it quite yet,” I said. “But you’ve been a big help, Earl. I should let you get back to your Funyuns and shuteye.”
He smirked. “Okay, Katie,” he said. “I get the whole secrecy thing.” He raised one hand and covered his heart with the other. “I swear not to mention a word of this to anyone, no matter now much they may torture me.”
His lighthearted comment made me laugh. “Nobody’s going to torture you, Earl. But see what you can do tomorrow about getting your dad to the book fair, okay?”
I gave him a quick hug and walked outside. When I noticed that the housekeeping cart was parked in front of the last room before the ice machine, I made a beeline for the open door and knocked lightly.
“Who come now?” called a gentle voice with a lilting Jamaican accent from somewhere inside.
“It’s Kate Reed,” I answered. “Is that you, Viva?”
I peered into the room.
“Just one second, Miss Kate,” the housekeeper answered. “Be right with you!”
While I waited, I inched closer for a better look into the room. It was neat and tidy, with a black hoodie draped over the desk chair and a leather briefcase tucked beneath the television cabinet. The desk itself was immaculate; a small stack of magazines, two leather-bound notebook
s and a small photograph in a polished wood frame.
“Won’t take but a minute!” Viva called over the sound of running water. “I’m just finishing up a good scrub of the tub, don’t you know.”
“No rush,” I said, stepping forward and studying the picture on the desk. “I’ll just wait right out here.”
I felt a chill as my eyes focused on the black-and-white image in the lustrous wood frame. It was the same picture that Ivy had found in the envelope behind the copy machine at the library: two small boys dressed in raincoats and rubber boots.
When I heard the faucet in the bathroom go silent, I moved back toward the door. I stood with one foot outside on the concrete walkway, doing my best to appear nonchalant and relaxed.
In less than a minute, a tall, slender middle-aged woman came toward me. She had flawless cocoa skin and dark braids coiled on the top of her head. Her pastel blue uniform was spotless, and the smile on her face was as radiant and warm as the day we met.
“Ah, ‘tis you, Miss Kate,” said the motel housekeeper. “How you be on this fine day?”
“I’m good, Viva. How about yourself?”
“No complaints comin’ from me,” she said. “I got my health. Got my family. And I got my job.”
Viva had recently moved to Crescent Creek from Florida when her husband landed a position with the maintenance department at a ski resort near Winter Park. She’d stopped at Sky High one afternoon to buy goodies for her three children. While I was ringing up the cupcakes and slices of pie, she’d asked if I knew of any job openings in the area. I’d immediately thought of the Moonlight Motel because I’d run into Earl a few days before and he griped that their longtime housekeeper was retiring.
“That’s so good to hear,” I said. “Please tell your husband and children that I said hello.”
She nodded silently.
“I hate to bother you, Viva. But have you seen the gentleman that’s staying in this room?”
“Mr. Summerfield?” She smoothed the front of her apron with one slender hand. “That who you’re looking for?”