by Duffy Brown
“He just needed a vacation?”
Fiona took another bite of ice cream, leaving a white mustache over her top lip. “Vacation for Peepster was Vegas, the craps tables and a bottle of Johnnie Walker.” Fiona licked the mustache. “But he did look bad last night, with sunken eyes and pasty skin. And he was jumpy, and he’s never jumpy. Peep gets off on making everyone else jumpy.”
Fiona stopped dead, her eyes slowly widening as she turned to me, ice cream dripping over her hand. “Jeez Louise, Peep was on the run. That’s got to be it. He was hiding out here. Nothing else makes sense as to why the guy shows up on my doorstep in the middle of nowhere. Someone’s after the rat for a change instead of the rat chasing the cheese. He knew that Idle and I were both here, and he could hit us up for money and not use his credit cards so whoever’s after him couldn’t track him that way.”
“Any idea who’s chasing the rat?”
“Half of Hollywood.”
“You need to tell all this to Sutter. Give him someone else to focus on besides you. Right now you’ve got top billing, my friend.”
Fiona shook her head. “Well, I’m not giving up Idle.”
“And I hope she comes to visit you in the slammer, ’cause that’s where you’re headed.” I handed Fiona a paper towel from the workbench. “You can’t hide forever on this chunk of rock, and if you leave the island and run away, it will look worse.”
Fiona reached for her hat, and I took her hand and held it tight. “Idle’s your friend, I get that, but she’s desperate and not lily pure; you said she has a checkered past. Did you consider that she might have done in Peep on her own?”
“She wouldn’t let me take the blame like this. She might go after Zo or Madonna and let them hang, but not me. I’m going to keep a low profile and nose around a little.”
“Tall, blonde hair, green eyes, loved by one and all—the low profile isn’t happening. Hold down the bike shop and let me see what I can find out.”
Fiona spread her arms wide. “Like people won’t recognize me in here?”
“Patience, grasshopper.” I batted my eyes and looked smug. “I’ve got a plan, a really good one that will help you out and me too.” And fifteen minutes later I was pedaling the New York Yankees bike toward the Butterfly Conservatory with Fiona tucked away safe at the bike shop dressed in my Betsy Ross outfit. Hey, if it can work for Rudy to be Twain, it can work for Fiona to be Betsy, and with a pillow under her apron, a gray wig and white bonnet that covered a lot of her face, no one would know her. She fit right in with the island inhabitants: a real blacksmith who always looked like a blacksmith; the soldiers up at the fort in uniform, their cannon blasting off every day at ten and six; and horses and buggies everywhere. Betsy Ross was in her natural habitat.
Huffing and puffing, my lungs on fire and sweating, I headed up Cadotte. Instead of turning off toward the Grand Hotel to the left with most of the two-wheeled and four-legged traffic, I went straight toward Surrey Hill. The neat white clapboard framed by an array of blooming lilacs was just ahead with the glass conservatory to the back and the adorable green ceramic turtle painted up in white daisies out front. A big Quarantine sign in black forbidding letters was posted for all to see, and a British Redcoat soldier circa 1800s—did I know my Mackinac Island history or what—complete with musket on shoulder kept watch. If George Washington suddenly rounded the bend galloping on his horse, smote the ground and brought forth the Declaration of Independence, I wouldn’t have been one bit surprised.
But George didn’t materialize and neither did anyone else. Fact is, the soldier and I were the only two, and usually the place was buzzing with tourists this time of year. “Hey, Cal, what are you doing here?” I called out as I slid off the bike. “The fort’s over that way.” I pointed in the other direction.
Cal Sandman was early thirties and an islander. He’d lived here all his life and had no desire to live anywhere else. Last year he won the Great Chili Cook-off trophy from one of the old guys, and he built a special case in his house to show it off. He was captain of the spudding team, an island sport consisting of brave derring-do snowmobilers who ventured out onto the lake when it froze to check the depth of the ice for us sissies sitting on the shore. He and the others like Sutter marked the safe path to the mainland with the Christmas trees we all stockpiled just for this occasion. The fact that Cal used a wheelchair didn’t slow him down one bit.
“Mayor Doud called out the soldiers,” Cal told me. “Around here it’s us reenactment soldiers from Mackinac Fort. I’m guarding the butterflies till the ladybugs get here.”
Anywhere else on the planet, a crack like that would have you on a psychiatrist’s couch.
“Good to see you, Evie,” he went on. “All I’ve dealt with today is cranky tourists who are none too happy when I won’t let them in to see the butterflies. There was even a group from the Grand in orange T-shirts called the Body Baggers trying to solve some kind of mystery game and find a killer. They just knew the Butterfly Conservatory being closed had to be involved. Took me a half hour to convince them aphids do not kill people, and sometimes butterflies are just butterflies. One gal with red hair tried to call the governor and complain, and when her cell phone wouldn’t work she actually sat and cried. Said she didn’t know how to live without her phone.”
“Did she use like every other word?”
Cal gave me a toothy grin. “That’s the one. Hey, if you need part-time help at the bike shop, let me know. I could sure use the cash, and now that you got that ramp for getting bikes in and out, I can roll right in. I got my eye on a Newfoundland.”
“Dog? Vacation?”
“1812 musket with bayonet. It’s a humdinger.”
Friend or foe, anyone who talked firepower with bayonets and held the fort against Zo and the Body Baggers probably wasn’t into breaking the rules for Irma’s wedding. I told Cal I’d keep him in mind for working at the shop and climbed back on Yankee. The Grand was a ten-minute bike ride away that would probably take me twenty minutes at best in my present physical state. I needed to drop off the rental and maybe find a place for Irma’s wedding while there. She had her heart set on butterflies fluttering as the string quartet played Pachelbel, but the front porch of the Grand Hotel would work. Enough champagne and all of us would forget someone had just taken a header into the bushes and gotten whacked by olive oil, and that Fiona was the prime suspect.
Midday traffic at the Grand was heavy, and in an hour when the dinner crowd arrived it would be horse-to-horse around here. I parked Yankee in front of the yellow awning over the ice cream parlor named after Sadie the dog, gone but not forgotten. I reminded myself I’d already had ice cream once today and that two times and the bazillion calories that went with it was not an option, no matter how cute the shop was, or I’d never be able to pedal these hills.
I asked one of the employees directing traffic to keep an eye on Yankee till the renter picked it up. Deep in thought over the wedding, losing the blasted dress, letting Irma down and the Fiona mess, I started up the crowded sidewalk toward the hotel. How was I going to fix any of this, I wondered as I headed for the main stairway. I stepped around a herd of tourists on a lilac walk, avoided two kids with drippy chocolate cones and was jostled right off the sidewalk and smack into the path of four fast-trotting horses pulling a wagon taxi rounding the corner and coming right at me.
Freaking hell! I jumped back; the driver veered right, saving my bacon, and yelled, “Watch where you’re going, lady!”
He was right! I needed to pay attention! Except I thought I was paying attention. Hey, I missed the drippy cones, didn’t I? I was on the sidewalk, and then somehow I wasn’t on the sidewalk. How did that happen? I was out of shape but I could still walk in a straight line.
Still shaking from my near-death-by-horse experience, I spotted Sutter up ahead. He stood in the middle of the crime scene, which was still surrounded by
yellow tape. Gabi and the Corpse Crusaders looked on, scribbling furiously in their notebooks.
A part of me wanted to go over to Sutter and tell him my great plan of getting Irma and Rudy married at the Grand. Truth be told, I wanted to go over to Sutter to feel safe for a moment. Sutter and I had our moments, but when push came to shove—like right now—Sutter was the guy to have around. He knew stuff like how to survive, get the bad guys and keep cool. I was an emotional billboard, I knew how to paint bikes and survival was sometimes hit-or-miss, but I knew how to make kick-ass spaghetti sauce. The secret was a double dose of oregano and a half bottle of Chianti. After that much alcohol, no one cared what the sauce tasted like.
But right now I had other things to take care of besides my jangled nerves. While I was here, I needed to talk with Idle Summers, or maybe I could even poke around in her room if I could sweet-talk Penelope again. Fiona had complete confidence that Idle would not set her up to take the fall for doing in the Peepster, but I wasn’t so sure. Idle was a performer, an actor; she had baggage and she had something to hide.
How could Peep do this, I wondered. What kind of a life was it when you made money off the trials of others? I’d met some slimy people in my time—my ex being top of the list—but the Peepster even had him beat.
Slouching down to keep out of sight, I ducked behind one of the big Grand Hotel carriages. I walked along beside it as it moved, then kept to the far side of the wide stairway and darted up to the big porch. I scurried across, losing myself in the gaggle of milling guests, and sidled up to the long mahogany front desk with massive vases of lilacs scenting the air. Using the vintage house phone straight out of The Great Gatsby, I called the guest who’d rented the Yankee bike to let them know where I’d parked it.
Penelope was on duty and chatted with a family of four as she arranged pink and purple lilacs in a vase. She handed them a Lilac Festival flyer from the stack on the counter, sitting on top of the yellow I the Town Crier bag. Holy cow, someone had found the missing bag! Who? Where? Maybe the killer? Someone had taken the olive oil bottle out and whacked Peepster.
Penelope looked more kempt this time with her hair in a perfect bun, understated neat makeup and a pressed blazer, but she still had a deer-in-the-headlights look about her. Madonna and Zo had that effect on everyone.
“No way can I help you again,” she whispered to me after the family left. She took out a white lilac sprig and added it to the purple ones already in the vase. “I can’t let you in another guest’s room.” She pointed over her shoulder to a short forty-something guy with sandy hair, brown eyes and Hotel Manager scripted on his name badge. “My boss said no way could the room thing happen again, and he doesn’t care what the excuse. That policeman guy had a holy fit when he found out. All of us here at the Grand want to get this over with as much as you do, probably more, but we can’t lose our jobs. We need the money.”
I tapped the yellow stack of flyers. “Where’d these come from?”
“The gardener was cutting these for bouquets.” She nodded to the flowers heaped in front of her. “He found the yellow bag this morning right by where the crime scene tape is. I was so happy I kissed him right there in front of everyone. Now I can give the guests the information and they won’t be driving me nuts with all their questions of what time are the tours, where do they go, how long does the tour last, can I take my toddler, can I pack drinks, can I take my dog and my personal favorite, what’s a lilac!”
Penelope added a pink sprig to the vase, making it beyond obvious that she should stick to running a hotel and not be a florist. “So, how about I call Miss Zo for you,” Penelope continued. “That’s what she wants to be called, Miss Zo, do you believe it? She just went up to her room with one of the maids to let her in because she forgot her key. I think she’s really excited about her Betsy Ross outfit, and—”
“Betsy Ross?”
Penelope leaned over the counter and whispered, “She just bought the costume today. Seems she wants to march in the Lilac Parade on Saturday, and she’s wearing the outfit to get in the mood and think of happy things. She said she needed to do something fun ’cause she was so down in the dumps with her guy being toes-up over there at the medical center. I can understand that, can’t you? I mean, losing someone you care about like that would just be terrible, and—”
“What costume?”
“All red, white and blue with a gray curly wig, bonnet and padding, and she’s even carrying around a flag and sewing basket to fit the part. She looks real authentic, not like herself at all. I didn’t even recognize her. I’ll make the call and get her down here and—”
I yanked the phone from Penelope’s hand and dropped it back in the brass cradle. “Let’s not bother Miss Zo, and I know who this yellow bag belongs to, so I can take it to her, what do you say?” I reached for the yellow bag, and a big hand reached for mine and held it tight.
“I say not so fast,” came Sutter’s voice from behind me.
7
“So we now have the bag that held the murder weapon?” Sutter said as he snagged the bag in one hand and my arm in the other. “You wouldn’t be trying to take it, would you?”
“Hey, I’m just dropping off a rental bike and thought maybe I could fix our wedding problem while I was here. And when I got to the desk, lo and behold, do you believe it, there was Fiona’s bag.”
“Lo and behold?”
“You caught me off guard.” My heart settled back into my chest after Sutter surprised the bejeebers out of me. My guess was that Fiona was right upstairs over our heads posing as Miss Zo and searching for an incriminating cell phone while I was here with our resident cop in the lobby.
“But . . . but think about this,” I offered, trying to keep Sutter’s attention on me and not the stairs if Fiona/Betsy Ross chose this particular moment to appear. “Fiona says she lost this bag. Anyone could have swiped the olive oil out of it to do in Peep and frame her. Sounds pretty good, huh?”
“Sounds like Fiona’s lying through her teeth and hid the bag to back up her story.”
I swiped a pink lilac sprig out of Penelope’s hand and smacked Sutter on the arm. “How did you get to be such a skeptic?”
“Comes with the badge.”
“Fine, but now that you’re here I’ll tell you my great idea.”
Sutter let out a long-suffering sigh, and I lilac-smacked him again. “What about having the wedding on the front porch of the Grand? We can use the round area at the far end that overlooks Lake Michigan and the gardens. It’ll be adorable, just look at this place.”
I swept my hand over the lobby, all posh and beautiful and serving up high tea. I turned to Penelope. “Aren’t weddings at the Grand fantastic?”
Penelope fumbled the two lilacs she tried to stuff in the vase. She bit her bottom lip and started wringing her hands. For some reason Penelope didn’t like having Sutter around any more than I did.
“Wedding? Right. Yeah, they’re amazing. Let me see what I can do.” Penelope pulled out a big long black book with Events stenciled in gold across the front. “Now what month are you two considering for your wedding?”
I froze. “You . . . two?” Was that high squeaky voice really mine? “No, no, no, you got this all wrong,” I said, holding up my hands as if warding off a charging bull. Sutter’s mouth opened and closed a few times, but nothing came out. I jabbed him in the chest with my pointy finger. “It’s his mother’s wedding, and it’s in three days. We’re the best man and maid of honor, and we’re here to set things up and that is all.”
Penelope closed the book and perched her hand on her hip. “Let me get this straight. You want to have a wedding here, at the Grand Hotel, in three days?”
She blinked a few times as if hit with a bucket of cold water, then burst into laughter. It wasn’t just a polite tee-hee laugh but the kind that draws attention because someone’s crazy as a loon.
I shoved the card in my jeans pocket. “We’ll figure out something.” I grabbed Sutter’s arm and hustled him toward the porch.
“Good luck with that figuring,” Penelope called. “Every place is as jammed as we are.”
And that was a shame, but it wasn’t all bad. At present Sutter was in where to have the wedding mode and not where is Fiona. I just had to get him out of there before he switched modes.
“We’ll find someplace to have the wedding,” I said to Sutter, guiding him toward the steps, keeping him distracted with wedding plans, trying to keep the angst out of my voice. “There’s got to be a room or an annex or—”
“Betsy Ross?” Sutter stopped dead by the little stand of Town Crier newspapers; two people collided into him, but he didn’t budge one bit. He glared down at me. “Betsy Ross is your costume.”
“Don’t be silly.” My eye started to twitch. “There’s more than one Betsy Ross costume in existence.”
“Here on the island?”
“That Betsy girl really gets around?”
Sutter hauled me back into the hotel. He stopped at the desk, yanked the pink lilacs from the vase in front of Penelope, added two purples and three whites and fluffed the tall spikes to the middle; the bouquet was done to perfection in thirty seconds flat, and then he headed up the main stairway.