Worst Laid Plans (A Maddox Storm Mystery Book 1)

by Claire Robyns

  And then…

  And then I walked in on Joe and Chintilly in her dressing room after that backstage party last Friday night and Ka-Boom!

  So there it was, more than you ever wanted to know about me.

  And here I was, my life packed up into a lumpy suitcase, my heart a barren wasteland and dry as a bone.

  That wasn’t me being my usual dramatic self.

  I actually hadn’t shed a single tear, not once since Friday night.

  There was obviously something seriously wrong with me, but I wasn’t looking to fix it anytime soon. If I could make it through the rest of my life without crying a single tear over Joseph McMurphy, that would be better than chili corn dogs dipped in vanilla ice cream.

  I spotted my dad as I pulled up beside the curb outside our house. He was kneeled over a bed of churned ground, probably whispering sweet nothings to the bulbs he’d planted last autumn. He didn’t have a green thumb, but you had to give him a big thumb’s up for perseverance.

  He glanced over, saw me stepping onto the sidewalk, and slowly pushed up from his knees. The worry creasing wrinkles around his eyes and his crumpled smile told me he knew exactly how bad my life sucked.

  Without a word, I walked into his wide open arms and pressed my cheek into the comforting hollow of his shoulder.

  He patted my back, his voice gruff, “I’m going to kill that Joe of yours.”

  “Oh, daddy,” I said with a ragged laugh. “And here I thought not even you could make it better this time. But…”

  I stood back to give him a warning look, because one could never be too sure when it came to Dad getting all protective over his baby girl. “You do know you can’t actually kill Joe? And you can’t kill Chintilly Swan either,” I thought it wise to add.

  He tipped his head, scratching his beard. “What’s your co-star got to do with this?”

  “I’m the understudy, Chintilly’s the star,” I explained for about the hundredth time. “I only get to go onstage if she’s run over by a bus.”

  “Sounds like a co-star to me,” he insisted stubbornly.

  I don’t know why I bothered. Besides, that wasn’t the part about Chintilly that needed explaining right now.

  I folded my arms and grimaced. “She’s the one Joe’s having an affair with.”

  “Sweet Mary.” The tan slid off my dad’s leathery face. “Joe’s having…” his voice dropped and I swear he aged a couple of years before my eyes “…an affair?”

  Oh, okay… Crap! This was precisely the problem with small towns. You automatically assumed everyone knew everything and the next moment, everyone did know everything.

  “I don’t understand.” I gnawed my lower lip, my voice growing squeaky as panic set in. “You said you’d kill him. Why would you want to kill Joe if you didn’t know?”

  “He phoned here last night, looking for you,” Dad said. “Your mother talked him in circles until he finally confessed you’d left him. He didn’t say why and it didn’t matter. Whatever he’d done was bad enough to chase you off.”

  “Well, that it certainly was.”

  “Come here.” He wrapped an arm around my shoulder and we walked up the path. “Maybe it would be better if we kept this to ourselves, huh? Your mother doesn’t need all the gory details.”

  I nodded and my spirit lifted for the fraction of a second it took me to remember that this was dad. He meant well, but the last time he’d kept a secret for more than two minutes was, like…never.

  The rest of the evening proceeded pretty much as I’d feared it would.

  Mom was impeccably attired, as always, in a flared daisy-print skirt and chintz blouse, modest two-inch heel pumps and an elegantly coiffed bun.

  She took one look at Dad’s knee-soiled trousers and ordered him upstairs to change for dinner. She looked set to do the same to me, but finally only huffed a small sigh of disappointment and greeted me with a peck on the cheek.

  I glanced down at my over-sized tee, faded jeans and beaded flip-flops as I followed her into the kitchen and kind of saw her point. But my tee hid the multitude of sins I’d indulged in this past week and the jeans were my favorite pair.

  “You know, honey,” Mom said as she took the hotpot out the oven. “Marriage is all about compromise. Give and take.”

  “Hmm…” I rummaged through the drawers for place mats and cutlery.

  “Bless your father, but it’s a woman’s lot in life to give a little more and let men do the taking. It’s in our nature.”

  I thought of how much Chintilly had been giving out and couldn’t disagree, so I bit my tongue and set three places at the pine kitchen table before plonking my butt into my usual seat.

  The landline trilled in the hallway.

  My eyes widened on Mom. “If that’s Joe, I’m not here and you haven’t seen me.”

  “That’s not the way to handle it.” She stripped her oven gloves and started for the door. “You can’t resolve anything until you talk it out.”

  “Mom!”

  The trilling cut off to the sound of Dad’s voice as he answered.

  Mom turned back to me. “The problem with you kids nowadays is you’re too stubborn and proud to just have it out. A good old fashioned fight is like a colon cleanse, unpleasant but it does wonders for unclogging the marriage pipeworks.”

  “Now there’s a picture I’ll never be able to un-see.”

  Mom gave me a nonplussed look that made me wonder what pipeworks she thought she’d been talking about. Curiosity got the better of me and I was about to ask when Dad popped into the kitchen, freshly spruced in a pair of clean brown corduroys and a blue and white checkered shirt.

  “That’s Miss Crawley on the phone, dear,” he told Mom. “She wants to know if you’ll be skipping Bridge Club tonight on account of Maddie’s unexpected visit.”

  “The nosy bat.” Mom’s hands went to her hips. “You can tell Miss Crawley I won’t be coming, but I’ve already made the lemon meringue pie so she may as well stop by to collect it on her way. Not before seven, mind you, it won’t be set till then. And while you’re at it, you tell Miss Crawley she needn’t get any ideas about—” she noticed Dad had zoned out and threw her hands up. “Never mind, I’ll go tell her myself.”

  She arched a brow at me, as if to say See, I give and give and never expect any help in return and marched out into the hallway.

  Dad came over to the table with a wink and a half-fledged smile. “If we hurry, we can make it through to dessert before your mother gets back. Once those two get started on each other, there’s no stopping them.”

  I chuckled at my co-conspirator and dished us each a generous portion of casserole. The tangy aroma of salsa hit my nostrils. My mouth watered and I grinned at Dad as we tucked in. Who said you couldn’t eat your troubles away?

  I was considering the pros and cons of a second-helping versus dessert when Mom returned.

  “That was quick, dear,” Dad mumbled around his final mouthful.

  “I don’t have time to blabber with Miss Crawley when our poor Maddox is falling to pieces,” Mom said primly.

  I pushed my plate aside and opted for a drastic change in subject matter. “What happened to Beatrix Salmer’s bad hip?”

  Mom snorted. “The silly goose only went and got a hip replacement.”

  “That doesn’t sound silly at all,” I said. “Life doesn’t end at the age of seventy.”

  “But it is an indecent age to start new fashion trends.” Mom served herself a bird-like portion of chicken sans any layers of rice. “It won’t be long before they’re all prancing around like spritely teenagers and then where will we be?” She gave a little shudder and raised a dainty forkful of chicken to her lips.

  I didn’t point out that I’d been a teenager not all that long ago and I’d never have been caught dead in a sprightly prance. “Last I heard, hip replacements weren’t contagious.”

  “Don’t be precocious,” Mom chided. “First Beatrix, then Elna and Martha. They
should be ashamed of themselves.”

  Thoroughly confused, I looked to Dad for answers.

  “Jeremy Windsor bought the old Mason Creek place,” Dad supplied unhelpfully.

  Wintry fingers caressed my spine. Probably a stray ghost from Mason Creek. We’d spent many an idle summer afternoon biking over to the crumbling Victorian just other side the valley, but to my knowledge no one had ever won the dare and crossed that threshold. What Mason Creek had to do with the current hip replacement fever, however, was beyond me.

  “Jeremy Windsor?” I scratched my brain, came up empty. “Is he a newcomer?”

  “An old-comer,” Mom informed me. She put her fork down and fetched a copy of the Silver Firs Gazette, dated three months ago, I noticed, as she slapped it down in front of me.

  A grainy black and white photo of a clean-cut handsome blond guy posing in the vintage Met’s button-down jersey splashed the front page.

  I scanned the headline and the first couple of paragraphs.

  HOMEGROWN METS SUPERSTAR RETURNS TO THE ROOST

  Our very own Jeremy Windsor will once again grace our humble streets. He sold his successful sports agency earlier this year and is all set to invest his future in Silver Firs. Renovations are due to begin on Mason Creek in the summer and he hopes to move in before Christmas.

  When asked the pertinent question, Mr Windsor had this to say. “It’s been nearly fifty years and I’ve had a good run. It’s time for me to settle down and I wouldn’t want to do that anywhere else but in Silver Firs.”

  Inside sources confirm Mr Windsor has never been married. When asked if he’d left a sweetheart back home whom he hoped to settle down with, Mr Windsor had no comment.

  I raised my head to look at Mom. “Did you know him?”

  “Apparently he left Silver Firs at the age of twenty-three, long before my time.” She stacked our empty plates and carried them to the sink. “So far I know, he hasn’t been back home since.”

  I did the math, came up with nearly seventy-three years of age plus half a dozen spinster Blue Rinse Ladies. “For goodness sake, are you saying they’ve all spent the last fifty years pining for this guy?”

  Mom turned from the sink. “Speaking of marriage—”

  “We weren’t.”

  “It’s rude to interrupt, honey.”

  “Marge,” Dad warned, “let the girl be. It’s not our place to interfere.”

  “Oh, hush yourself.” Mom crossed her arms and frowned at him. “There’s a fine line between interfering and helping—”

  “And you wouldn’t know what it looked like if it bit you on the—”

  “Henry Jacob!” Mom gasped.

  Dad dropped his shoulders, instantly contrite. “Sorry, dear.”

  “All I’m asking is that you and Joe talk,” Mom said to me. “Before this little misunderstanding grows into a crater.”

  “I know for a fact you made a second lemon meringue pie,” Dad deflected. “Don’t be shy with it, Marge, we could all do with some cheering up.”

  “Maddox is too distraught to eat.”

  My mom didn’t know me, not at all. “I’ve saved some space for pie,” I piped up eagerly.

  Her eyes found mine. “Are you sure, honey? That poor Heather Ottenburgh withered away to almost nothing when her marriage fell apart last year,” she said wistfully, her gaze running down my over-sized tee.

  I’d never be skinny and I’d learned to be okay with that. I tended to fluctuate between a healthy size ten and a slightly healthier size twelve, depending on my self-will power in any given week. I’d squeezed into my size tens this morning and unfortunately that was as much as I’d ever whither.

  “There’s nothing wrong with Maddie’s figure,” Dad said thickly.

  “Of course there isn’t,” Mom told him, then to me, “But even perfection can be improved on, that’s all I’m saying.”

  Suddenly my jeans felt a size too small. I squirmed uncomfortably in my own skin, something I hadn’t done in years. Thanks, Joseph McMurphy, for that knock to my self-confidence. You’re the gift that just keeps on giving.

  “Enough,” Dad barked, shooting up from the table to glare down on Mom. “This is the last thing Maddie needs when her husband has just left her for a younger woman!”

  “Oh, dear.” Mom went white as a sheet and sank back against the counter. “Oh, dear, oh, dear…”

  Dad dropped heavily into his seat and muttered a miserable, “Sorry, pumpkin,” to me.

  “It’s okay, you held out longer than I expected,” I reassured him with a sigh. “For the record, though, Chintilly may be prettier and skinnier than me, but she is not younger.”

  I wasn’t privy to her precise age, but I’d guess she was closer to thirty-four than my own twenty-four.

  With one last, “Oh, dear,” Mom pulled herself together. She opened the fridge and brought out a pie dish topped with creamy peaks of meringue. Maybe she knew me better than I’d thought.

  And if you’re thinking I’ve surely lost my appetite by now, then you’re not and never have been a comfort eater.

  Mom served up the pie, waited until I’d savored my first bite, then she leant in across the table and clasped her hand over mine. “Are you absolutely sure Joe’s left you?”

  I flicked my eyes toward the ceiling. “I’m not making this up, Mom.”

  “I know, but could it just be a…a fling?” she said hopefully.

  “Would that make a difference?” I spluttered. “Are you suggesting I go back to him and pretend nothing happened? I can’t. Even if Joe wants me back, I could never stay with him after this.”

  “I suppose not.” Mom sat back and folded her hands on the table in front of her. “But you’re not considering divorce, are you?”

  “Of course not,” I snapped sarcastically. “If I ever meet someone and fall in love again, we’ll just live in sin happily ever after.”

  “Don’t use that tongue with your mother,” Dad admonished, taking an uncustomary firm stand. “And that’s enough, Marge. This is Maddie’s decision and we’ll support her no matter what she decides.”

  He was right.

  On both counts.

  This was hard on Mom. ‘People’ did not divorce, at least not on her side of the family. “I’m sorry for snapping. You’re not the one I’m mad at.”

  I loved my parents to bits, but they were best taken in small doses and preferably never at the same time as a crisis.

  On that note, I forced out a smile and was about to say my goodbyes when I remembered we hadn’t even touched on the topic of Hollow House yet.

  As much as I wanted to leave this conversation for another day, they were sure to notice when I left via the front door instead of up the stairs to my bedroom. If I couldn’t sneak in half a mile outside Silver Firs, there was no way in hell I’d be able to sneak out right beneath their noses.

  I pushed my plate across to Mom and sighed. “I’m going to need another slice of pie.”

  TWO

  I was up bright and early the next morning.

  It had occurred to me last night, just as I was drifting off to sleep, that I didn’t know what time Hollow House served breakfast, if they even did, and Jenna was expecting to be fed.

  But I wasn’t a guest here.

  I didn’t need to follow all the usual rules.

  There was no reason we couldn’t have breakfast anytime we wanted, anywhere we wanted (like, say, on the terrace), even if I had to make it myself. Even if it was a paltry spread of toast and coffee, since that was as far as my culinary skills stretched.

  I shimmied into jeans and a strappy tee, then sucked in my stomach and gave my profile a cursory glance in the mirror.

  Not too shabby.

  Take that, Joseph McMurphy.

  Self-esteem reclaimed, I averted my eyes before releasing my stomach with the breath that’d sucked it in, and slipped into a pair of platform wedge black boots. A couple extra inches of height shed pounds faster than a cabbage soup di
et.

  Grabbing a lightweight jacket, I stepped out into the passage with a spring in my step.

  The upper landing of the north and south wings converged to sweep down a magnificent stairway into the double-volume front parlor. Except for the landscape oil at the head of the staircase—our lake nestled at the foothills and struck by a full moon—the wall was strung with formal portraits of Hollow family members through the ages.

  The lower halves of the walls were wainscoted and only slightly scratched. The heavy soles of my boots clonked on the carpet that was worn thin in places, practically threadbare in others.

  I hitched my jacket over one shoulder and trailed a hand along the polished mahogany banister as I descended, my eyes lifting to the frescoed ceiling. Hollow House was still a formidable masterpiece. Nothing that new carpets and a lick of paint couldn’t cure.

  At the bottom of the stairs, I paused to get my bearings. I hadn’t been given the grand tour. The lounge fed off to my left; the semi-circular reception desk near the front entrance; two closed doors on my right. I headed down the dimly lit hallway that ran alongside the staircase, figuring the kitchen would be near the back.

  The house creaked and sighed around me, as if stretching beneath the warmth of the morning sun after a chilly night, but there were no other sounds to indicate anyone else was up and about.

  The solid white swing door at the end of the hallway looked promising. I pushed through, then froze and let rip a shriek like my blood was curling.

  Which it was.

  The door bumped me a step deeper into the room on the rebound. I shook my limbs loose and snapped my mouth shut.

  Even if her face hadn’t been turned toward me, I would have recognized that pale pink net covering her stern silver bun anywhere.

  What on earth was my old Home Ed teacher doing here?

  Sitting at the kitchen table, cheek resting on arms folded over the table, fast asleep. Or maybe passed out. A dainty tea cup nestled on a matching saucer at her elbow, but that didn’t necessarily hold tea. She hadn’t stirred, and I’d shrieked loud enough to wake the dead.