by Nic Saint
The wattage of his smile dimmed somewhat, for he knew she wasn’t entirely honest. She’d told him a couple of times she was looking forward to meeting his father, but reading between the lines it was obvious that she wasn’t. She hailed from Happy Bays herself, and somehow had made it out of that rustic little hamlet with no intention of ever going back.
No matter, he thought. She would join him when she could. And when she finally did meet his father, she would see what a nice and charming man he was. He might not be Hollywood royalty, but he was rich where it counted: in the heart.
“All right, honey,” he said. “I’ll tell him.”
Her phone softly dinged, and she glanced down. “Tell him what, darling?”
He merely smiled. If he could ever get between her and her iPhone, he would know that he truly was her great love. As it was, her phone usually won by a large margin. It was the first thing she laid eyes on in the morning and the last at night. He sometimes wondered what would happen on their wedding night. She’d probably take a selfie of the two of them in bed, and share it with her millions of rabid fans across the globe.
Dorothy Valour was one of the world’s most famous socialites, and if asked what she did for a living she always had her answer ready: spreading a little sweetness and light. In other words, updating her Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter, and Facebook feeds with so many snaps of herself the media had dubbed her the queen of selfies. She’d even recently dethroned Kim and Beyoncé.
He took a sip from his champagne and sat back. This could take a while, he knew. He watched the ritual with an indulgent eye. First she took a few shots of the room, focusing on any celebrities she recognized—and she knew them all—then she took one of herself, pulling her face in the same pout that worked so well on him, and finally a few snaps of the dish they were about to devour. Posing for the snaps only took seconds and then she beamed up at him, placed her napkin on her lap and said, “Bon appétit, darling.”
He nodded and dug in. He was starving. For a few moments, silence reigned at the table, as they both enjoyed their meal, then her phone emitted its soft chime, and she glanced at the message. It seemed to amuse her, for she smiled. She picked up the trinket and started furiously texting, her long nails clicking.
He simply ate on. Coming between Dorothy and her phone was impossible. As she’d explained on their first date, that phone was her life, her job, and her not insubstantial livelihood.
So he enjoyed his grilled halibut and thought about his father.
Dad had been thrilled when he’d announced he would finally meet his future daughter-in-law and now he would have to disappoint him again.
He hoped he wouldn’t mind too much. After all, Dad was used to being disappointed. Reece himself had had to forsake more than one family function, often canceling at the last minute. Now, though, he was determined to make time. Dad had had a health scare not so long ago, and Reece had realized with sudden clarity that his old man wouldn’t be around forever.
He wanted his father to see him exchange vows with Dorothy and be there when they christened their first child. In fact he wanted his father to be present at all those occasions, as he was starting to find family more and more important now that he was getting hitched.
He’d worked his ass off trying to break into the movie business, and now that he’d finally made it—his last blockbuster Crunch Time 3 had grossed 300 million at the global box office—it was time to start paying attention to the people who really mattered—his family.
He gave Dorothy three days. If she still hadn’t shown up in Happy Bays by then, he would drive Dad out to New York and set up a meeting at the condo.
When he looked up he found his fiancée staring at him. She smiled sweetly. “Penny for your thoughts?”
He displayed the crooked grin that had made Reece Hudson a household name. “Just thinking about Dad.”
She leaned in. “I promise I’ll make it, darling. I know how important this is to you.”
He nodded. It hadn’t escaped his attention that her tone was the same she used when about to break a promise to one of her friends.
He was starting to know his future bride very well indeed.
Chapter 4
“Since you didn’t hear me the first time, or the second, or the third, let me repeat that for you one last time—THE LAND IS NOT FOR SALE!”
Mary slammed the phone down on the irritating rep and shook her head. These people. Really! She placed both hands on the reception desk and fumed in silence for a few beats, before heaving a loud, frustrated groan.
Suzy, fluffing up a pillow in the lobby, made a sympathetic sound. “Another one, huh? Persistent buggers, aren’t they?”
“And getting more so every day. Can’t they get it into their thick skulls that no means no?”
“That piece of land must be worth a lot if they keep bugging you like that,” Suzy said. From any other person Mary would have considered the remark inappropriate, but Suzy had been with her for so long she knew there was no guile behind the words.
“Heaps. This one offered twenty million.”
Suzy’s eyebrows shot up into her brown fringe. “Phew! That’s a whole lot of dough.”
Mary, a diminutive woman in her late fifties, smiled at Suzy’s response. If only others were so easy about money. Her own son and daughter had been pushing them to sell the inn and the plot of land Alistair owned for so long now that she’d started to suspect everyone of hidden motives.
“You know what?” asked Suzy, planting her hands on her hips. “Why don’t I buy the land and the inn. That way you and Alistair can retire and spend your twilight years on Aruba or someplace.”
Mary eyed her maître d’hôtel affectionately. She would have sold the inn to her in a heartbeat, knowing she would take good care of it. “Going price for the inn is twelve million, hon. You got that much?”
“Sure thing! Let me get my checkbook.”
“It’s a deal.”
“Sweet. I’ll tell my lawyer to get in touch with your lawyer so they can work out the details. How’s that sound?”
“Sounds great.”
The two women shared a chuckle, and Mary slipped on her reading glasses and opened the reservations program on the computer. Even though Alistair still preferred the old-fashioned written registry, Mary had convinced him to finally invest in some software. She checked the bookings.
Mh, everyone had checked in, except the Thomsons, but then they’d called before lunch, letting them know they were running a little late.
She blinked when a familiar figure stepped in through the double glass doors. Half expecting Alistair she was surprised to see Virgil Scattering instead. The lanky police officer usually dropped by only when there was trouble with one of the guests. Speeding, or parking in a no-parking zone.
But judging from the pained expression on the policeman’s face it appeared he had more serious news to impart this time.
When he approached the desk his gamboling Adam’s apple bobbed up and down even more feverishly than usual, and suddenly a fear settled in the pit of Mary’s stomach. “What’s wrong, Virgil?” she asked when he didn’t speak but merely stood and stared, eyes wide and glassy.
“It’s…Alistair,” he finally said.
She clutched a hand to her heart. “Alistair? Has there been an accident? Is he hurt?”
The anguished look Virgil gave her was enough to chill the blood in her veins, and she suddenly felt weak and dizzy. Clutching the desk, she stared at the policeman, wide-eyed.
Virgil gulped one more time. “He’s—Alistair’s been—he’s been…”
“What?!”
He gave her a pleading look. “Alistair’s been murdered, Mary. He—he’s dead.”
Chapter 5
Virgil didn’t like to be the bearer of bad tidings, and fortunately for him it rarely happened that he was. Quite the opposite. Members of the Happy Bays Police Department usually brought good news to the citizens of that small commun
ity.
A stolen bicycle found, a puppy returned, or an infant wandering the beach reunited with a distraught family. And even when there was trouble it usually didn’t amount to much. Such was the cloistral peace of Happy Bays that his task was often limited to ordering a couple of boisterous kids to clean up the graffiti they’d sprayed on the school wall. Or handing out speeding tickets or towing wrongly parked cars.
But this? This was something else entirely. He couldn’t even remember the last time a murder had taken place in his small town, let alone know how to handle it. The Happy Bays police force was a small one—one chief of police and twenty officers, only two amongst them doubling as detectives. Or at least having taken the training. Once upon a long ago. And he was one of them.
As he stared at Mary, it was clear to him this piece of bad news had affected her strongly. He stole out a hand and patted her shoulder, then realized this was hardly adequate, so he rounded the desk, stepped behind it and awkwardly placed his arms around her. Instantly she turned into him and started sobbing against the nice clean shirt his mother had ironed just that morning.
“Did he suffer?” she asked between sobs.
“No, he didn’t. Death was instantaneous.”
She looked up, her tear-filled eyes pleading. “Tell me what happened, Virgil.”
He swallowed. “Well, as far as we can tell he was shot at point-blank range. We, um—he was found out on Barrow’s Grove.”
She nodded. “He went out there this morning. Said he wanted to clear his head and think things through.”
Virgil thought he should probably be taking notes, and conduct some sort of interview of some species. His detecting skills were a bit rusty from disuse. But then he figured the chief would probably want to handle this personally so he relaxed and decided that for now comforting Alistair’s widow would suffice.
Mary took a paper tissue from the dispenser beneath the counter. “He liked the peace and quiet. Nobody ever bothered him out there. You know how it is here at the inn, what with customers and phones ringing off the hook and all.”
Virgil nodded gravely. Yes, he did know how it was. As a young man he’d worked summers at the inn and the place was always buzzing, to the extent that he sometimes wondered how Mary and Alistair had managed to keep up all these years. It required a lot of work year-round.
Mary swallowed away her tears. The first wave of grief had swept through her. Now that she was calmer she faced Virgil squarely, anger in her eyes. “Who would do such a thing? Who would murder a nice man like my Alistair? He never hurt a soul in his life!”
Virgil knew that to be the truth. Though gruff and grumpy at times, Alistair Long wouldn’t hurt a fly. He was a stickler for doing the right thing and had gotten into arguments over the years, but he’d never gotten into a fight.
“The investigation is ongoing,” he said. “We’ll have to, um, investigate everything and, um…” Oh, heck. Who was he kidding? He shrugged. “I don’t know, Mary. I’m not the one in charge. Chief Whitehouse sent me along to tell you what happened before you heard it from someone else. You know how quickly news travels in Happy Bays.”
Especially bad news.
“What am I going to do now? What am I going to do without my Alistair?”
Virgil shook his head wearily. Mary and Alistair had been a devoted couple for going on forty years. One of the happiest couples he knew. In fact when he was little he’d once expressed the wish that one day he would find someone who loved him as much as Mary Long loved Gandalf the Grey.
And now the man was gone. Hipster Grandpa was no more. He felt his eyes well up, and even though this was totally unprofessional soon he was sniffling right along with Mary, helping himself to her tissues.
“Such a horrible thing,” he sniveled. “He was such a great guy.”
“He was,” echoed Mary.
They were clutching each other for support when Suzy came upon them. She stared at the twosome for a moment before asking with a tremulous voice, “What’s wrong?”
“Oh, Suzy, it’s Alistair,” cried Mary. “He’s been murdered.”
Suzy clasped a hand to her face, her eyes wide and incredulous. “Noooo.”
Mary nodded. “Yes. Virgil just told me.”
“It’s true,” confirmed Virgil. He did a manful effort to compose himself, failed miserably, and took another tissue to stem the flow of tears.
When Mr. and Mrs. Thomson arrived five minutes later to check in, the smiles on their round faces were instantly wiped away when they witnessed the sad scene at the Happy Bays Inn. An older kind-faced woman, a tall cop and a full-figured black woman stood weeping inconsolably. The two exchanged a puzzled look. The Happy Bays Inn was advertised as the ‘happiest place in the happiest town on Long Island’ but instead of happy cheers and happy faces there was weeping and the gnashing of teeth.
For a moment they thought that perhaps they’d taken a wrong turn somewhere and had landed in a neighboring town, but the sign over the door had clearly stated ‘Welcome to the Happiest Inn.’
“I’m sorry,” Mary spoke, “but there’s been a great tragedy.” She folded her hands. “My husband…he just died.”
Instantly the Thomsons contorted their faces into a look of sympathy. So even in the happiest place on Long Island tragedy still managed to strike from time to time. Well, such is life, their mournful expressions indicated. They remembered the graybeard smiling from the brochure they’d received at the travel agency and their hearts bled. He’d looked like such a kindly old gentleman.
“We’re so sorry,” Mrs. Thomson said.
“Yes, very, very sorry,” echoed her husband. “Accident, was it?”
There was a short pause, in which Mrs. Thomson elbowed her disrespectful husband in the ribs, then the policeman spoke in a voice as if from the tomb. “It was no accident. It was murder.”
Chapter 6
“I don’t care! If I hear that excuse one more time I’m simply going to scream!”
Dorothy stared at the man, eyes blazing with fury. He’d just rejected her a refund and in her world there was no such thing as rejection. No one denied Dorothy Valour anything. No one!
The manager of The Bristol, the well-known department store on Fifth Avenue, gave her his most obsequious smile. “But Mrs. Valour…”
“Miss Valour,” she snapped.
“My apologies, Miss Valour,” he corrected himself. “As a rule we don’t issue a refund on items sold more than ninety days ago. No exception, I’m afraid.”
“This is a stupid and utterly silly little rule,” she huffed.
He inclined his head, the smile never leaving his face. “That may well be, but it is still a rule the management at The Bristol strictly adheres to. So I’m afraid we can’t refund your…” He flicked an eye at the purple bra that lay between them on the counter. “…brassiere.”
“This bra is junk, and I want my money back,” Dorothy fumed. It wasn’t so much that she needed the cash. She could have bought a thousand bras without batting an eye, but the clasp had snapped one hour into her lunch date with Reece, and if there was something she hated more than uncooperative managers, it was paying full price for faulty merchandise. Especially when they led to wardrobe malfunctions when in the public eye.
The manager eyed the item with a certain distaste. He seemed to feel Dorothy was one of a class of people who take advantage of the return policy of The Bristol. He was a fastidious man of smallish posture, a natty dresser, not a single hair out of place on his head, and not about to budge on a point of policy.
“I’m sorry, Miss Valour. It is clear to me the clasp snapped through injudicious handling of the item.”
“That’s nonsense. It just…” She flapped her arms. “…snapped!”
The manager straightened his back. He didn’t tolerate slurs on The Bristol name. “Clasps of bras purchased at The Bristol don’t just snap, Miss Valour. Clasps of bras purchased at The Bristol are made to last. You must have stretched it
.”
“I did not.”
“Stretched it.”
“I did—” She sniffed. This was ridiculous. She decided to play her ace. “I will talk to my fiancé about this.”
“That is most gratifying to hear, Miss Valour,” he said, letting a deft finger slide along a pencil mustache.
She sneered. “You wouldn’t be smirking like an ape if you knew who my fiancé was, you horrible person.”
“I’m sure Miss Valour is quite right.”
She tilted her head in an imperious gesture that always did much to make her enemies wilt. It didn’t seem to put a dent in the manager’s armor, though. “I’m marrying Reece Hudson. You might have heard of him?”
The manager lifted a brow. “I have and I’m sorry to hear that, Miss Valour.”
She was gratified to find that, as usual, the mention of her fiancé’s name inspired awe and respect. “You should be sorry. My fiancé will have your job for this.”
The manager lifted the other brow. “I meant to say I’m sorry for the gentleman, Miss Valour.”
The slur didn’t register at first, but when it did, Dorothy’s jaw dropped. This was something she only allowed under the rarest of circumstances, for she knew that it made her look most unattractive. She quickly hitched it up, therefore, and stared at the man, aghast. Never in her life, she meant to say, had she been insulted like this. She thought about giving the manager her most vitriolic response, but then decided it was beneath her dignity to do so.
“You will hear about this,” she said in a low voice.
“I’m sure I will,” the manager said, entirely too pleased with himself.
She fixed him with a glacial stare, whirled around and swept from the store.