by Maddy Hunter
I winced. That had to have hurt. “I’m so sorry, Kathryn.”
“Why are you sorry? My life is much better without him. I don’t even hold a grudge. In fact, when the two lovebirds got hitched, I sent them a wedding gift.”
My eyebrows winged upward in astonishment. “You sent them a gift? That was generous of you. I’m not sure I could be so forgiving.”
“A lovely set of carving knives.” Her lips curved in a malicious grin. “You do realize that it’s considered bad luck to be gifted with something sharp for your wedding?”
“Hadn’t heard that.” I obviously needed to spend some time brushing up on current superstitions.
“And these beauties were the sharpest I could find. I even included a sharpener for good measure.”
I nodded half-hearted approval. “What newlywed household doesn’t need a knife sharpener?”
“Kingsley didn’t need one. He always insisted on having his knives sharpened by professionals. It was a business expense, of course, along with all the high-end appliances and cookware and dinnerware and wait staff and linens and on and on.”
“Your husband worked in a restaurant?”
She let out a harsh guffaw. “He owns the restaurant. King Crabbe’s—on the Jersey shore. I don’t imagine you’ve ever heard of it. You Iowans probably have no need to read the Michelin Guide. Why would you? You don’t find a lot of starred restaurants popping up in the boonies.”
The twinge of sympathy I’d begun to muster faded like an image on an Etch A Sketch. “So, no castle tour, no lunch, no walking, no ibuprofen, and no shopping. Anything else you don’t want to do?”
She spent a moment in quiet reflection. “I don’t want to waste an entire afternoon being bombarded by your inane questions, so I’m releasing you from your bodyguard duties.” She waved me away. “Shoo.”
“You’re sure about that? Because less than ten minutes ago you were demanding protection.”
“I wouldn’t have said it if I hadn’t meant it. I’m going to find an out-of-the-way bench to sit on somewhere on this godforsaken rock, and then I’m going to work on my blog.” She peered down at her capris. “After I treat the bloodstains on my pants.”
“The blood isn’t noticeable, if that’s what you’re worried about.” She’d been fortunate to wear black capris for the trip today, so the stains were invisible to the naked eye.
“When the blood dries, it’s going to leave the material stiff and scratchy. Does that offer you a clue as to why I want to rinse the stains out?”
“You bet.” I swept my hand toward the roofed shelter directly opposite us where visitors could sit on a shaded bench while waiting to use the comfort station. Ladies to the right. Gents to the left. “You’re in the right place then.”
“Ah. Good.” She hobbled toward the facility without another word. I guess she didn’t think saying thank you was very Austenesque. At the ladies’ room door she turned. “Have you read my blogs yet?”
The contents of my stomach began to churn like veggies in a Bullet blender. “I’m afraid I haven’t had the opportunity.”
“Really?” She lifted her brows ever so slightly, her expression hovering somewhere between surprise and disdain. “I would have thought you’d be anxious to read my opinion of your tour thus far.”
Yup. About as anxious as I was to chew carpet tacks. “I’ll play catch-up when I find a little downtime. Some things are just too important to be rushed.”
“Indeed.” She opened the door to the ladies’ room and disappeared inside, leaving me to wrestle with the question of when I should allow the venom in her blog posts to ruin my trip—now or later?
Marshalling my courage, I plucked my cell phone from my shoulder bag, intent on getting it over with, when I noticed a group of women exiting the Courtyard Shop with countless shopping bags dangling from their arms, their laughter echoing off the stone walls, their eyes alight with the kind of giddy excitement that accompanies multiple credit card purchases.
I looked from my cell phone to the door of the shop, then back again. Misery or shopping? Misery or shopping?
Dropping my phone back into my bag, I headed across the cobblestones.
The shop was a treasure trove of items that had been selected with maximum appeal to the hardcore shopper. Beautifully illustrated coffee-table books. Jams and jellies in adorable jars. Italian leather handbags in luscious pastels, displayed on illuminated glass shelving that was meant to dazzle. Sheets of chocolate fudge waiting to be cut. Jewelry set out on velvet trays in sparkling glass cases. Perfumes in bottles shaped like seashells and starfish.
As I wandered around the shop, breathing in the hunger-inducing aroma of fudge, I felt the tension in my muscles start to recede. Ahhh. Full-body massage might help other people relax, but for me, browsing aisles filled with merchandise I could ooh and ahh over had the same effect. And as a bonus, they were offering free samples of the fudge!
Having sampled my way through an array of creamy chunks, I was in the process of making a purchase when I heard a familiar voice at the far end of the shop.
“I feel like a hypocrite for admitting this, but does anyone besides me miss hearing Bernice whine about everything?” asked Lucille.
“I kinda miss her gripin’,” confessed Nana. “It just don’t seem natural startin’ the day without no one callin’ us morons. What’ll we do if she don’t ever come back?”
“She’ll be back,” asserted Helen. “She’s like a bad penny.”
“But what if she don’t?”
As I walked toward them, I could see their expressions grow somber as they contemplated Nana’s question.
“Do you think we should appoint someone to impersonate her?” suggested Alice.
“But what if the appointee isn’t as caustic or mean-spirited as Bernice?” said Grace. “Do any of us have the acting chops to portray her?”
“We could hold auditions,” floated Nana.
I wandered into their midst with my purchase.
“You heard any news about Bernice yet?” Nana asked me.
I shook my head. “But on a more positive note, Wally did give me the police station’s phone number.” I yanked my cell out once again and punched in the number. “Hi, this is Emily Miceli, the tour escort whose guest disappeared from the Stand and Deliver Inn this morning. The missing guest’s name is Bernice Zwerg, and I was wondering if you could tell me if she’s been located yet? Uh-huh…uh-huh…Oh, really? Okay, then. Yes. I’ll look forward to that. Thank you.”
I let out an excited breath. “There’s news. The dispatcher said Constable Tredinnick would be contacting us shortly. It sounds promising, ladies, so keep your fingers crossed. Maybe we can all start breathing a little easier.” Please let her be okay. Please let her be okay. As they exchanged nods and smiles, I regarded them anew.
“How come you’re not touring the castle? Tour now, shop later. You don’t want to be weighted down with packages while you explore the castle, do you?”
“We’re opting out of the castle tour,” Helen spoke up.
I paused a half second to digest her comment. “But why? This is why you’re here—to walk the same paths where Benedictine monks walked over nine hundred years ago. To soak in history. To…to view the seascape from the top of the castle parapets. To post your pictures on Facebook to see who gets the most likes. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity. You’re already here. What’s the problem?”
“We was okay until we seen them stairs,” said Nana.
“They were just a bunch of rocks with handrails attached,” complained Helen.
“And they were all catawampus,” disclosed Alice, elevating her hands up and down to demonstrate their unevenness.
“And had lots of gaps between them,” added Margi.
“And were reeeally steep,” said Grace, sounding winded from the sim
ple act of having seen them.
Considering how fretful I’d been about their walking across the causeway, I couldn’t fault them for declining to climb stairs that were apparently even more of a challenge. But I’d have to brace myself for more derision when Kathryn discovered that the entire tour group, with the exception of our bloggers, had nixed the castle tour. I wondered if she’d make a point of mentioning that in her blog. Although—I eyed the group—we were missing several people besides bloggers. “Where are the boys?” My spirits rose as I imagined telling Kathryn that while the ladies had decided that shopping was more appealing than a castle tour, the guys had been gung-ho to tackle the wonky stairs and cobblestone hill.
Helen pointed toward the courtyard. “They’re eating ice cream cones at the al fresco dining tables on the next level.”
“They said they already had their fill of exercise walking across the beach and causeway, so they weren’t keen on climbing the stairs either,” said Grace.
So much for my argument about my guys not being daunted by stairs or hills or activities geared toward the younger generation. I peeked at my watch. “So what do you plan on doing for the rest of the afternoon? You have a lot of time to kill now. And even though this shop is lovely, it’s one shop, not a strip mall.”
“I think we should discuss our plans over ice cream cones,” proposed Alice.
“We’ll be too full to eat lunch if we have ice cream now,” warned Lucille.
“The guys are eating ice cream,” objected Margi.
“But they won’t get full,” explained Helen. “They’re pretending their cones are appetizers.”
Quiet nods. A frisson of excitement.
“So if we pretend our cones are appetizers, we won’t get full either?” asked Margi.
“That’s genius,” said Lucille.
“I shouldn’t give the boys so much grief,” confided Helen. “They’re obviously smarter than I give them credit for.”
“I’ll run ahead and put dibs on a table,” offered Alice as she rushed toward the door.
They chased after her en masse, all except Nana and Tilly, who continued to linger despite everyone’s rapid exit. “You’re not joining in the footrace?” I teased.
“Don’t matter who arrives first. Them girls still gotta decide what order they’re gonna line up in, so Til and me are just gonna wait ’em out. We already done height once today already, so this time it’ll probably be age, which is gonna take forever on account some of the girls are gettin’ a little testy about tellin’ their age.”
I held out my purchase to Nana. “I bought you a little something.”
She read the label on the box. “Opera cream fudge.” She opened the box, her eyes rounding with delight. “Well, would you lookit that.” She stuffed a chunk into her mouth before offering the box to Tilly.
“Oh, my.” Tilly closed her eyes in ecstasy as she savored a piece. “Vanilla cream infused with maraschino cherries. They must have known you were coming, Marion.”
I smiled as Nana popped another chunk into her mouth. “So how does it taste?”
She let out an orgasmic sigh. “It tastes like one box won’t be enough.” She craned her neck to locate the fudge counter. “You got any idea how much they got left?”
I laughed. “Why? Are you planning to buy them out?”
“You bet. C’mon, Til. I don’t know how many boxes I can carry by myself.”
As I loitered by the perfume display, spraying a variety of tester scents into the air and sniffing, I was surprised to see Margi charge back through the shop door and make a beeline toward me. “What? The ice cream place doesn’t have a flavor you like?”
She responded with an eye roll and a flip of her wrist. “I wanted to line up by age, youngest to oldest, because that puts me first, but Lucille charged elder discrimination and Helen said that disclosing our age might violate privacy laws, so they decided to go with the last four digits of our social security numbers, lowest number first.”
“And?”
“I’m having a senior moment. I can’t remember mine. So…no ice cream for me.”
“Well, we can’t have that, can we? Here’s an idea. How about you wait until they’re done and buy your cone when there’s no line?”
She regarded me as if she were struggling to withstand the seismic shift I’d just created in the ground beneath her. “But that’s cheating.”
“No, it’s not. It’s a loophole.”
Her mouth slid from a skeptical twitch into a slow, satisfied grin. “There’s no downside, is there? I skip the waiting-in-line part and get my ice cream anyway. How come I didn’t think of that?”
“Years of indoctrination?”
With a spurt of newfound enthusiasm, she unzipped the front pocket of her handbag and removed a sheet of paper. “I was hoping you’d still be here, Emily, because I have something for you. Remember when I suggested that the bloggers might be lying about not knowing each other? Well, I accessed their blogs and did a whole lot of cross-checking using keyword searches, and I was right. The evidence is right there in plain sight for anyone who cares to find it.”
“You cross-checked their blogs? But there were thousands of them, and they weren’t even formatted in a way that was cross-check friendly. How did you even know which words to search?”
She offered me an indulgent look, making me feel as if I had rocks for brains. “Pfft. I do stuff like this all the time at the clinic. It’s a piece of cake for anyone with even baseline knowledge of a computer.”
The woman who didn’t realize that standing in line with her fellow Iowans was not a state law had cracked a problem that I couldn’t even begin to wrap my head around. Go figure.
“Spencer Blunt and August Lugar were both in Bayfield, Wisconsin, at the same time four years ago,” she said with breathy excitement. “August wrote a review about the food in that famous Bayfield Inn, and Spencer rated a new tourist rooming house. Quite a coincidence, huh? Two bloggers together in the same tiny town at the same time? What are the chances they didn’t run into each other? And coincidentally, they both mention taking the lighthouse tour of the Apostle Islands, so I’m betting that’s where the original meet and greet took place.”
“A meet and greet that developed into something more sinister,” I theorized, taking the ball and running with it. “Two criminal minds who combined forces to relieve unsuspecting tourists of their cash and whatever valuables they left lying around. They’re a tag team, maybe working together on certain occasions and alone on others. I knew they were in cahoots. They probably began by targeting domestic tours, and I made it possible for them to go international. And they’ve upped the ante from simple grand theft larceny to murder.” I threw my arms around Margi in a huge hug. “You’re brilliant! Would you be willing to take your search a step further to document how many of the same tours they’ve—”
“I’m not done yet.” She shuffled back a few inches to give herself space. “I found another incidence where August was in Burlington, Vermont, for a restaurant review, Mason Chatsworth arrived on the same date to review a new economy motel, and Spencer was in a nearby town rating a popular diner.”
Whoa. All three guys in the same place at the same time? My tag team was turning into a polo team. “How long ago was that?”
“Two years ago.”
Was Mason being used as backup? A substitute player should something go awry? Or was he engaged in an apprenticeship of sorts, observing the pros in action before venturing out on his own? Either way, their clandestine alliance was pretty unsettling.
“And then there’s Heather Holloway.”
“Heather?” I pulled a face at Margi. “You can’t be serious.”
“Mason reviewed a hotel in Heather’s hometown about a year ago. I don’t have any proof that they met when he was there, but I think it’s highly suspicious. He
ather hasn’t traveled around like the guys. She just watches a lot of movies about Jane Austen, reads creepy books where Jane appears with zombie armies and vampires, and then blogs about them from the comfort of her apartment.”
“But if they did meet,” I said with growing excitement, “he might have baited the hook with expectations of travel and reeled her in with promises of an uptick in her monthly cash flow. That might have looked pretty appealing to a hometown girl with limited financial prospects.” Had Heather and Mason formed a team, too? An expansion team that was in direct competition with August and Spencer? Or were they more like a franchise, pooling their ill-gotten gains for the benefit of both teams?
“From what I could tell, no one visited Caroline Goodfriend’s town, so she might be the only blogger with no ties to the others. She doesn’t need to move around to write her blog. I guess she gets all the information she needs from internet websites.”
“She lives in South Carolina, doesn’t she?”
“A tiny little town in the sticks. She doesn’t mention her hometown on her blog, so I had to check the white pages for an address. The place is so small, it doesn’t have a hotel or a restaurant. She probably has to drive forever to get a burger and fries.”
“What about Kathryn?”
“Penelope Pemberley doesn’t reveal a location on her website, but according to the white pages again, Kathryn Crabbe lives in DC, which all the male bloggers have visited at one time or another.”
“Any indication that she met up with them?”
Margi shook her head. “Kathryn and the fellas don’t live on the same planet. She’s all literary, symbolism, figurative language, and historical context. And the fellas are like, show me the cheapest hotel in this or that location and I’ll tell you if the food in the dive next door is any good. DC is so big, it kinda cancels out coincidence.”
“So, in essence, four of our bloggers could be putting on a big act for us.”
“Yup. But they’re honest-to-goodness bloggers because I’ve been reading what they’ve said about our trip so far, and they’ve nailed it.”