Say No Moor

by Maddy Hunter

  “No!” Lance’s nostrils flared like oversized tailpipes as he glanced toward the lounge that opened directly onto the dining room in open-concept style. “The west of them are eating it wong, too, aren’t they? That’s it. Game over. I’m not making any more scones if youse goombas are gonna eat them all wong.”

  “He doesn’t mean that,” countered Enyon in an apologetic tone.

  “Yes I do,” snarled Lance as he stormed into the lounge. He snatched Osmond Chelsvig’s unprotected plate off his lap, then bare-handed the remains of Alice Tjarks’s scone onto Osmond’s plate.

  “But…but I wasn’t finished eating that yet,” complained ninety- something-year-old Osmond.

  “Yes youse were,” announced Lance as he put a bead on George Farkas, who, as Lance approached, shoved the remaining portion of his pastry into his mouth and smiled defiantly, his cheeks bulging like overinflated balloons.

  “You’ll be sorwy youse did that,” warned Lance, poking an angry finger at George’s nose.

  Without warning, George began spewing pastry flakes like Sylvester spewing Tweetie bird feathers. His face turned slightly purple.

  “Is George still breathing?” I called out in alarm. “Somebody pound him on the back. Right now!”

  “Enough, Lance!” Enyon clapped his hands to restore order. “Private meeting in the kitchen straightaway.”

  Lance swooped Lucille Rasmussen’s scone off her plate and onto his growing stack, then strode toward Bernice, who raised her fork as if it were a Bowie knife. “Back off, cupcake,” she threatened, “unless you’d like to participate in my free body-piercing clinic.”

  “Lance!” Enyon persisted.

  “All wight!” he roared before stalking back toward the dining room and catching his toe on a scatter rug that sent him skating wildly off-balance. “I told youse to get wid of these damn wugs,” he shouted when he’d righted himself.

  “And I told you to pick up your feet. You have no qualms about lifting your silly barbells. Why is lifting your feet such a problem?”

  “The wugs are a nuisance.”

  “The rugs are the decorative accent that tie the entire color scheme together. Carry on, my pets,” Enyon called back to us as he pushed Lance into the kitchen. “We shan’t be long.”

  The door closed.

  The shouting began.

  I shot a nervous glance at Margi; she shot a nervous glance back. With a nod from me we tiptoed into the lounge as the shouting in the kitchen increased in volume. “I got ear plugs,” offered my grandmother, whose name was Marion Sippel. “But they might not do no good in this situation. What them two fellas need is good soundproofin’ material.”

  Despite Nana’s eighth-grade education and regular use of split infinitives and double negatives, she was the smartest and most resourceful person I knew. Not to mention the richest, thanks to a winning lottery ticket. She and George Farkas has been sweet on each other for years but they’d yet to do anything about it, not because they were skeptical about the longevity of a mixed-faith marriage, but because if the announcement appeared in the newspaper, my mom would probably find out.

  Nana and Mom had a kind of complicated relationship.

  I winced as a volley of colorful epithets floated out from the kitchen, punctuated by the sound of dishware crashing to the floor.

  Tilly Hovick raised her walking stick. “According to our itinerary, we’re due to eat dinner here tonight. Is that correct?” Tilly was a retired Iowa State anthropology professor whose IQ was probably higher than the combined ages of all our tour guests.

  “Yup,” I said with more confidence than I felt. “Dinner here tonight.”

  Another item of dishware crashed and shattered.

  “Save your plates, everyone,” wisecracked Dick Stolee. “At the rate the china is shattering, we might need ’em later.”

  “So is this a bed-and-breakfast or an inn?” asked Tilly. “A B&B doesn’t normally serve dinner, does it?”

  I forced a tentative smile. “I think it’s a hybrid. A bed-and-breakfast that also includes dinner. So, would this be a good time to conduct our meet and greet?”

  “We’re missin’ some folks,” Nana spoke up.

  Which reminded me. “By the way, I haven’t had a chance to mention this yet, but I received word from the office a short time ago that Marianne Malec, our garden blogger, won’t be joining us at all. She was involved in an auto accident on the way to Newark Airport and broke her pelvis.”

  “Smart,” said Bernice. “She probably looked up the guest reviews on this place and decided a holiday in a Newark city hospital ward would be more relaxing.” She cringed as another dish shattered. “Wish I’d thought of it.”

  “I couldn’t find any reviews online,” puzzled Grace Stolee. “I thought that was a little odd, but I figured Emily and Etienne knew what they were doing. I’m sure I searched the right name.”

  “I didn’t find any reviews either,” I admitted, “but their website stood head and shoulders above the rest. There’s a music video of the surf crashing against the rocks at the bottom of the cliff. And photos of the newly refurbished suites. And sample breakfast and dinner menus. And a detailed map. Plus, they have the best location of any bed-and-breakfast in the area. They’re centrally located to all the good attractions.”

  “And they have their very own food nazi,” sniped Bernice. “Lucky us.”

  I inhaled a deep breath. “We’ve probably just caught the guys on a bad day.”

  The antique picture frames on the dining room wall tilted precariously as another round of dishes exploded against the shared kitchen wall. A nervous hush fell over the room.

  “I’m thinkin’ paper plates might be on tap for supper,” warned Nana.

  “Show of hands,” announced Osmond, Windsor City’s longest serving election official and self-appointed opinion pollster. “How many people think we’ll be—”

  “Is every person in this room deaf?” cried a latecomer who dashed breathlessly into our midst. “I’ve spent the last ten minutes pounding on the powder room door for someone to let me out.” The woman threw her hand toward the interior corridor that housed the Stand and Deliver office, the public loo, and the guest suites. “The door must have swelled because it was stuck tight. Do you have any idea of the trauma a mildly claustrophobic person can suffer from being trapped in a two-piece washroom the size of a gym locker?”

  She was stunningly gorgeous, with a flawless complexion, glossy hair, and hourglass figure. Tall as an NBA point guard but infinitely more stylish, she was clothed in black from her sunglasses to her off-the-shoulder tunic to her leggings to her designer boots. Black was the color theme she had chosen for the tour because, sadly, she was in mourning.

  Her married name was Jackie Thum and she was a frequent guest on our trips, but in the years before her life-altering gender reassignment surgery and elopement with a high-end hair stylist, she’d been an off-Broadway stage actor named Jack Potter—and I’d been married to him.

  two

  “How come you didn’t text no one to come let you out?” asked Nana.

  She could have texted any one of the gang because their addiction to their smartphones was so extreme, they were prime candidates for the kind of rehab recommended on A&E’s Intervention series.

  Jackie whipped her oversized celebrity sunglasses off their perch on her head and stuck the bow in her mouth, nibbling the tip. “I didn’t think of texting. Obviously I was too traumatized to think clearly.” She sighed with exasperation. “Not one of you heard me pounding?”

  Heads shook. Shoulders shrugged. Palms lifted skyward.

  “Guess we know which room them fellas decided to soundproof,” observed Nana. “That’s a real thoughtful touch. ’Specially if the toilet makes a real racket when it flushes.”

  “You couldn’t have been pounding very loudl
y,” challenged one of our male bloggers, “or else I would have heard. I have perfect hearing.”

  Ignoring the blogger, Jackie fisted her hand on her shapely hip and arched a meticulously waxed eyebrow at Nana. “Well, the fellas need to be informed of their malfunctioning door immediately, before someone with fewer coping skills and higher blood pressure gets locked inside. Where are they?”

  A chorus of angry male voices rose from the confines of the kitchen, followed by a succession of BOOMS! Chinks! And tinkles.

  “Oh.” She snorted daintily as she glanced in that direction, pausing to reassess. “I suppose I can afford to wait until they exhaust their supply of whatever it is they’re breaking. Are those scones? And clotted cream and jam?”

  “Eat at your own risk,” Margi Swanson cautioned her.

  “Or all in one bite,” advised George Farkas as he dusted pastry flakes off his shirt.

  I pulled a face at Jackie. “Could you hold off on the food until we do a quick meet and greet?”

  Jackie pursed her highly glossed lips and heaved a long-suffering sigh. “I suppose.” When Nana indicated an available space beside her, she flipped her hair over her shoulders and strutted to the loveseat, lowering herself onto the cushion. “Has anyone noticed that I’m dressed completely in black?”

  “Nope,” said Dick Teig.

  “So”—I settled into an occasional chair near the raised hearth and ranged a look around the room—“welcome, one and all, to Destination Travel’s Cornish holiday. And a special welcome to our bloggers, who’ll be sending out daily reports of our travel adventure to social media forums around the world.”

  “Who thought of that idea?” asked Alice Tjarks.

  “Actually, I did,” I said proudly. “It seemed a great way to promote our—”

  “Are the bloggers offering you all this free advertising for nothing?” asked Dick Teig.

  “We’re not that stupid,” snorted the man who boasted perfect hearing—a wiry Gen Xer whose thick lips and bulging eyes took up most of his face. Were he the glitterati type, I’d guess he was the victim of cosmetic surgery gone wrong. But he was Spencer Blunt from Pringle Town, South Dakota, population 112, so I suspected his facial peculiarities were genetic hand-me-downs rather than surgical mistakes. “We’re getting a huge discount for our efforts. Heck, I couldn’t afford not to come, even if it means hanging out with duffers twice my age for a couple of weeks.”

  Frowns. Confused stares. Harrumphs.

  Bernice fired a peevish look at me. “How come you didn’t offer discounts to the rest of us?”

  “Because you’re not bloggers.”

  “Depending on the size of the discount, we could learn to be,” said Dick Stolee.

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Are any of you familiar with my blog?” Spencer asked the room at large. “It’s called Spencer Blunt’s Ten-Dollar-a-Day Traveler. I have over a hundred thousand followers.”

  “Spencer has agreed to blog about the financial issues involved in travel,” I explained. “He’s going to let his followers know if we’re getting the biggest bang for our buck.”

  “Of course he can afford to blog about financial issues,” groused Bernice. “He’s getting a discount.”

  Oh, God.

  I forged ahead. “Articles referencing where amateur genealogical enthusiasts might locate bits of family history in the towns we’ll be visiting will be posted by Caroline Goodfriend on her blog, Yours, Mine, Ours, and Theirs. Where are you hiding, Caroline?”

  “Over here.” She offered a friendly wave from a floral armchair in the corner.

  Caroline Goodfriend seemed an island of calm amid our often riotous clientele, boasting a serene disposition, cheerful attitude, and a default setting that began and ended with a smile. Midforties, with short, frosted blond hair, she was a genealogist by trade, which made me wonder if her pleasant nature was due in part to the satisfaction she derived from spending so many years helping people connect the dots to generations of relatives they never knew.

  Caroline sat up straighter in her chair. “Could I take a moment to recognize Emily? I’ve always wanted to travel, even though I have a terrible fear of flying. To come on this trip I actually had to get a prescription for what I’ve dubbed my ‘fear of flying’ pill. But maybe it’s good that I’ve been afraid to board a plane because I’ve never been able to afford it—until now. So thank you for offering your wonderful discount, Emily. I’m thrilled at the opportunity to join all of you, and I promise that my blogs won’t disappoint.”

  “How wonderful a discount was it?” pressed Dick Stolee.

  “Fifty percent off the final cost,” said Caroline.

  “Yeah,” interrupted Spencer. “We’re probably paying a pittance of what the rest of you are paying.”

  Yup. That was helpful.

  Twelve pairs of unblinking eyes bore into me, demanding an explanation. “In the world of business one must invest money to make money,” I defended gently. “The agency probably won’t make any money on this trip, but we’re hoping that our advertising investment with the bloggers will allow us to make more money in the future. Does that make sense?”

  Thoughtful stares. Twitching lips.

  “So if you’re satisfied that nothing underhanded is going on, could I introduce our next blogger?”

  Jackie perked up on the loveseat, letting out the kind of long, agonized sigh that typically signaled how antsy she was getting with the lack of attention she was receiving. “Osmond?” She fluttered her hand. “Would you like to conduct a poll to see how many people have given a fleeting thought as to why I’m dressed in black?”

  “Nope,” said Osmond.

  I flashed her “the look,” which caused her to tuck in her lips and flump back into the cushions. “Okay, then,” I continued. “Mr. August Lugar is the guest who’ll be blogging about our anticipated love affair with British cuisine, and perhaps with his assistance we’ll be able to master the art of applying jam and clotted cream to our scones in proper English fashion. His blog is called Knife and Fork, Will Travel.”

  As I gestured to him by way of introduction, he smiled thinly and bowed his head with a curt nod. He was dead-center of average looking with pale lashless eyes, a complexion that begged for more direct sunlight, ginger-colored hair that was shot through with a premature streak of white, and a chin that was split with a deep Dudley Do-Right cleft. His most noteworthy feature was his Ivy League clothing, which would be way too preppy for the Windsor City set, but he looked as comfortable in his navy blazer and khakis as Nana was in her pantyhose without the tummy control.

  “Would you care to take the floor to impart any words of epicurean wisdom?” I inquired good-naturedly.

  “No.” He aimed a finger toward the dining area. “If you’ll excuse me, I’d like to sample another scone while the coast is clear.” Boosting himself to his feet, he made an abrupt departure that felt a little like a snub, but I didn’t take offense. He was probably a dyed-in-the-wool introvert who needed a little breathing space away from the crowd to recharge his social batteries.

  “I’d like to say a few words.” A young man with a scarf draped around his neck popped out of his chair. His hairline was already starting to recede, so he combatted the inevitable by slathering his hair with a vibrantly tinted gel that caused it to stand straight on end like a bed of nails for his skull. “I’ll spare Emily the job of introducing me. I’m blogger number four, Mason Chatsworth, and my specialty is hotels and lodging. I’ve critiqued the best and worst places to stay in the United States, and this trip marks my debut into the European market, so if I look excited to you, it’s no illusion. I am. My blog is called Standard Suite, Please, and I just reached eighty thousand followers.”

  “What do you think of this place so far?” Grace Stolee threw out, a sour note in her voice.

  “I’ll
withhold my opinion until I see our accommodations, but I give the place high marks for interior design and ambiance. Even the storm adds to the atmosphere. It must have cost someone a small fortune to give this place such a posh facelift.”

  “The hall bathroom still needs work,” sniffed Jackie.

  Margi stared at him with curiosity. “Why is your hair green?”

  “This?” He laughed as he smoothed his hand across the spiked ends. “I’m a millennial. We like to change things up on a regular basis to avoid boredom. And I ask you, isn’t green hair a lot less boring than dull brown?”

  “My wife had green eyebrows a couple of times,” recounted Dick Teig.

  Helen crossed her arms over her chest and scowled. “Someone in the cosmetic industry decided that my stubby black eyebrow pencil should look and feel exactly like my green eye shadow crayon. That’s fine…until you lose your lights in an electrical storm.”

  Dick nodded. “No goof-ups since she switched to a more foolproof product. Pressed powder eye shadow has taken all the anxiety out of power outages.”

  “All right,” bawled Jackie. “I know it’s killing you, so I won’t keep you in suspense any longer. I caught my husband in flagrante delicto with a model he hired for a hairstyling event. So I’m divorcing the miserable, no good, two-timing, cradle-robbing cheat.” She blinked away tears as she fanned air toward her face. “There. No need to thank me. I knew you were just being polite with your seeming lack of interest.”

  “What’s fluh-gran-tee di-lik-toh?” asked Nana.

  “I think it’s a department store in Canada,” said Margi.

  Tilly cleared her throat. “In flagrante delicto is a term used to describe a situation in which a person is caught in the act of committing an egregious deed. In other words, the person is caught red-handed.”

  Margi gasped. “So you caught your husband in the act of shopping with another woman?”

  “I caught them in bed together,” cried Jackie.