Green with Envy

by N. L. Cameron

  “Thanks, Marty,” I replied. “I’ll make sure there’s plenty to drink for everybody.”

  I hung up and pointed to Eliza. “Beer. Can’t forget the beer.”

  She chuckled and turned back to the boxes of decorations stacked in the corner when my phone went off again. “Sheriff Mills here, little lady. Just want to let you know me and the deputy will be there with bells on.”

  I hadn’t hung up two seconds before another call came in. “Max Nash from the garage. Put me down for party of four.”

  I blinked at my phone. “I guess I should have expected this.”

  “And my family makes ten more,” Eliza added.

  I stared at her. “Ten!”

  “You wanted to invite the whole town. What did you think was going to happen?”

  I put my phone back in my pocket. “I only wish they were coming because they really wanted to celebrate the holiday with me, not because they were curious.”

  “What’s wrong with that?” she asked. “You know what they say. There’s no such thing as bad publicity. If they come because they’re curious, at least they’re coming. Once they get through the door and see what a great job you’ve done to extend them your holiday wishes, they’ll loosen up. They won’t consider you a stranger anymore. Isn’t that what you want?”

  I braced myself. “Yes. That’s exactly what I want. You’re right. This is a good thing. The more people that come, the better. Anything would be better than inviting everybody and nobody coming.”

  “Exactly. Now, where were we?”

  Just then, Mrs. Ornelia Forester swept into the dining hall. She strode up to me. “There you are. I require your services at the front desk.”

  I gulped down my apprehension and followed her back to the entrance. Whatever she wanted, it must be pretty serious. Maybe she had bed bugs in her room. Maybe she heard rats in the attic. Maybe she found an open safety pin in her breakfast cereal—or a cockroach. That would be my worst nightmare.

  I took my place behind the desk to hear my fate. She positioned herself opposite and threw out her enormous chest. “I wish to extend my stay.”

  I gasped out loud. “Why, Mrs. Forester! We would be delighted to have you.”

  She didn’t smile. “I want to see this famous party of yours. From all reports, it will be the social event of the season. I can afford to stay on a few more days to be part of it.”

  I made a note in the ledger. “By all means. Thank you very much.”

  She disappeared upstairs, and I noticed the Townsend family standing behind her. Donovan Townsend approached the desk next. “We want to stay, too. We’ve heard so much about this party. We’ll stay another week. You can charge it to the same credit card we used to pay for this week.”

  Rex rolled his eyes to heaven. “Aw, do we have to?”

  I jotted that down, too. “Is the Internet still not working right?”

  “It’s working just fine,” Donovan replied. “He wants to go home to his friends. That’s all, but after fifteen years wiping his nose, I think he can put up with it a little longer while Sophia and I enjoy ourselves for a change.”

  I smiled at their retreating backs. This was wonderful. This party was going to be the biggest thing to hit these mountains in years. The whole town was coming, and word spread. I better get back to my decorating if I expected to be ready in time.

  I just made it back to the dining hall in time to stop Eliza gluing paper snowflakes to the windows when Nathaniel swished into the room. He came up to me and murmured in an undertone, “Would you mind stepping into the card room for a moment? I need to speak to you in private.”

  What could this be about?

  I followed him into the card room and held my breath while he shut the door. He cast a quick glance right and left down the hall. Then he eased the latch closed until it clicked. He hurried up to me and whispered low, “I think you should know Levi Stokes is acting strangely outside. I had to tell you. I think he must be some kind of escaped criminal or something.”

  My hand flew to my heart. “Oh, no! Not Levi!”

  “He must be the one who put those notes in your room.”

  I froze in my tracks. “How do you know about that?”

  “Everybody knows about it. It’s all over town, not to mention that snake you found in your shower. He must be the one who did it.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  He nodded. “He’s out there right now. I couldn’t show any sign of disturbance while he was watching, but I came to tell you as soon as I could.”

  “What is he doing?”

  Nathaniel shook his head and flapped both hands from the wrists. “You should see him! I swear I never saw anybody act like that before. He’s dangerous! If anybody found out what he was doing, he never would have gotten this job. Now we have to live with him. I really think you should report him to the authorities.”

  “But what did he do, Nathaniel? What would I report him for?”

  Nathaniel moved his mouth to within an inch of my face. “There’s no time for that! We have to act fast. Do you want him coming after all of us with an axe while we’re lying in our beds at night? This is serious business. You have to report him as soon as possible.”

  I looked around. “I can’t leave the inn right now. I’ve got all the preparations for the party to deal with.”

  He pointed into my face and backed away. “See that you do. It’s a matter of life and death.”

  Before I could say anything more, he eased the door back. With one more furtive glance up and down the hall, he vanished. I stared at the spot where he used to be. What if he was right? What if Levi was hiding a disturbing past behind his mild-mannered exterior?

  Levi wouldn’t answer my questions about his past. I didn’t even know who hired him to look after the inn when Beatrice died. He could have just showed up out of nowhere and started telling everybody a tall tale.

  He could have put the snake in my shower, and I usually keep my door open in case any of the staff need to find me. And to think I’d actually started to like him and trust him. I could see I was going to have to watch my step around Levi in the future.

  I made my way back to the dining hall, but I couldn’t seem to concentrate on anything. While I stood there with my mouth open, Camille came in. She extended a metal tape measure to check the dimensions of the fold-out tables set against one wall. She jotted notes on the paper I gave her.

  Eliza sauntered over. “What are you measuring?”

  Camille swept the table with her hands. “I’m checking how much space I’ll have for the platters of food. I’ll put the ice sculpture over here and the champagne fountain over here. This area will be for the candy and gingerbread house. It’s gonna be a big one, so I need at least two square feet for the platter.”

  Eliza’s eyebrows jumped up. “Wow. You’re really going all out for this party, aren’t you? Allie’s really lucky to have a chef like you on board. She would probably have to hire someone from the big city to do all that.”

  Camille made a face. “I’m not doing it for her. I’m doing it for me. I’m doing it to get my name out there where everyone can see it—not to mention a fat bonus.”

  She hurried away. Eliza snuck over to me. “What did you say to her?”

  I chuckled. “I only told her what she most wanted to hear. I made it all about her. After that, I threw a bunch of dollar bills at her and she couldn’t resist.”

  Eliza’s eyes glazed over. “You really know how to work a crowd, don’t you?”

  I flipped open another box of decorations. “Let’s hope so, because if I don’t get this inn set up, this party is going to flop.”

  “So, what do you want me to do? Should we get Levi back in here to hang these from the ceiling?”

  “I don’t want to hear anything more about Levi right now, and I think you’ve seen about enough of him hanging decorations for one year. We can do the job ourselves.”

  She pouted out her lips.
“I’ll never see enough of that guy.”

  “Will you stop goggling about Levi and help me? We don’t have much time.”

  “I’m standing right here. Command me, General!”

  I had to laugh. “Here’s a bag of balloons and a hand pump. Pump all these balloons up and tie off their ends. We’ll string them into one big twisty streamer going across the door.”

  She took the pump out of my hand. “What are you going to do?”

  “I’m going to wire decorations onto these plastic wreaths. We’ll set one over the big fireplace, one over the refreshments table, and this big one can go on the wall over there.”

  I set out my wreaths on the empty refreshment tables, and Eliza got to work blowing up balloons. In spite of my admonishments to Eliza, I couldn’t stop thinking about Levi. What if he wasn’t who he made himself out to be? What if he was the one I should be worried about?

  Chapter 13

  I sat on the couch in my quarters and watched the sun set over Lake Ashfield. A thousand thoughts crowded my mind, and not one of them made sense. The guest list for the party kept exploding. Hundreds of people from outside of town called up wanting to come. How was I going to feed and entertain them all?

  I’d already doubled Camille’s expense account. She couldn’t be happier. The more work it took and the more guests RSVPed, the happier she got. This was her crowning moment, the moment she dreamed of so long. I should have thought of this when I first showed up. She would have been my best friend from day one.

  Then there was the Levi question. Thank goodness I had Nathaniel to warn me about Levi’s strange behavior, though I still couldn’t figure out what it might be. Whatever it was, Nathaniel thought it curious enough to caution me.

  After Eliza and I decorated the dining hall and made it into a glorious classical winter wonderland, I finally found the time to report Levi’s activities to Sheriff Mills. I didn’t do that, though. If I really took Nathaniel’s warning seriously, I would have jumped in my car and motored down to his office.

  Instead, I went into my quarters, made a cup of tea, and sat down on the couch. I’d been sitting there ever since. Why didn’t I go to town? Why didn’t I report Levi? Was it the first inkling of liking someone new after Tim screwed me over? Was that why I didn’t follow through? Was I too enamored with his assets to see the truth staring me in the face?

  He certainly handled that snake with no problem. He got into the bathroom, loaded the snake in his burlap sack, and got out without getting bitten. He could have put the snake there in the first place just as easily.

  If he wanted to kill me, why would he rescue me from the snake he worked so hard to plant there? Why would he urge me to report the incident to the sheriff? Then again, maybe he didn’t want to kill me. Maybe he only wanted to scare me away along with those notes.

  While I sat there stewing, voices drifted to my ear from out in the entry. I drifted to the door, but when I saw Levi standing by the front desk, I ducked behind my door to see what he was doing.

  My breath caught in my throat at what I saw. He talked in low tones to Hector Englefink and Roger Englethorpe. They leaned toward each other and gesticulated with their hands. For all the world, anyone would think those three men knew each other.

  Levi sure broke up their fight with no problem. Did the three of them stage it? Why would they do that? Why would they want to convince me they hated each other?

  Was it possible they designed all these incidents to convince me to trust Levi? Why would they want me to believe he was on my side, helping me at the most crucial moments? What could the three of them stand to gain by that?

  While I cowered around the corner and listened to their whispers, my phone sounded back in the owner’s apartment. Levi’s head whipped around. He saw the open door and hurried away in one direction while the other two scurried off somewhere else.

  The phone jangled again, and I retreated back into my quarters to pick it up. “Hello?”

  “Allie, darling!” Eliza cried. “I just want to let you know there are another thirty Potters coming your way for the party. This thing is big—really big—and I think you better double your beer order.”

  I chuckled and settled down on the couch. “You don’t know how good it is to hear your voice right now. I really needed to talk to you.”

  She cackled with glee. “What is it this time? Did Levi ask you out yet?”

  I turned bright red. Thank goodness she couldn’t see my face. “No, he didn’t, and I’m glad.”

  “Why not? You’d be crazy not to go out with him.”

  “I didn’t want to tell you, but something happened while we were working on the dining room.”

  She sucked in her breath. “What happened? Did he kiss you or something?”

  “No, darling. It was when Nathaniel came and said he wanted to talk to me in private.”

  “What did he say? Did he say something about Levi?”

  “He said Levi was acting suspiciously and that he was dangerous. He said Levi could be an escaped criminal or something like that, and I ought to report him to the sheriff.”

  A long pause echoed down the phone line. “What did he say Levi was doing that made him so dangerous?”

  “That was the weird part. He didn’t say. He said there was no time to waste on details like that, but if I report Levi to the sheriff, what am I supposed to report him for? He’s done nothing but help me since I first walked in the door. I agree his attitude might not be the best at times, and he wouldn’t tell me anything about his past, but we all have secrets we don’t want to talk about.”

  “I haven’t seen Levi doing anything weird. As far as I can see, he’s the most normal person working at the Barrell Inn—apart from you, of course.”

  “Thanks. I agree—about Levi, I mean—although I did just see him talking out front to those two guys who got in a fight. He was whispering to them in the hall like he knew them or something.”

  “What does that prove? Maybe he’s giving them pointers on constructive conflict resolution.”

  I snorted with laughter. “Come on. This is serious.”

  “What’s serious about it? So, he stopped them from fighting and now he’s talking to them. What’s the big deal?”

  “Don’t you find it odd that he’s whispering to them and sneaking around?”

  “He’s not sneaking around if he’s doing it in your front entrance, is he?”

  I sighed. “You’re right about that, but what about the snake? He handled it like a pro. He could have been the one to put it in my shower.”

  “So, what are you going to do?”

  “I’m can’t report Levi to the sheriff. That’s for sure. I would have to see something a lot more suspicious to justify that. I’m going to investigate further. I have to figure out what’s going on around here. This inn is a pressure cooker ready to blow.”

  “Do you want any help? I would love to come out and play Nancy Drew with you.”

  “I’ll tell you what you can do. You can meet me at the diner for a bite to eat later. That way, if anything happens, you can send out a posse to find me.”

  Her voice hardened. “You’re not going to do anything dangerous, I hope.”

  “Nothing like that. I’m just going to do some poking around on my own private property. I want to find out what those guys were talking about when they said they were doing an operation up here. What do you think Levi does with all his free time? He doesn’t do enough handyman work around the inn to occupy him. He’s always wandering off into the woods to do something—nobody knows what.”

  “Maybe he works out in his secret gym. How do you think he stays so buff all the time?”

  “I’m sure he doesn’t work out to make you and the other ladies of Heather’s Forge drool over him. Maybe he’s got a secret zoo where he keeps all kinds of poisonous snakes. Maybe that’s how he killed Beatrice. Maybe he got one of his snakes to bite her while she was drinking tea in the parlor, and then he removed
the snake the same way he removed the rattler from my shower. He could have done it, you know.”

  Eliza gasped. “You are not seriously suggesting Levi Stokes killed your aunt and tried to kill you. Do you know how many times I’ve fantasized about that guy? I won’t stand for you saying anything bad about him.”

  “Well, someone is playing nasty tricks around here, and I’m gonna find out who it is. I’m not waking up to another threatening note by my bed. Even if I don’t find anything on Levi, I have to find out what those guys are up to. They could be running some kind of illegal ring out of my inn. I can’t allow that.”

  “I don’t like the sound of this. You shouldn’t go alone.”

  “I’ll be all right. Just be at the diner at six o’clock tonight. If I’m not there at six on the dot, go get Sheriff Mills and tell him everything that’s happened.”

  “All right, homegirl. If you say so, I’ll do it. Is there anything else I can do for you?”

  “That’s it. I’ll talk to you later tonight.”

  I hung up and put the phone in my pocket. I might need it later where I was going. Just before I left my quarters, I took one last peak in Aunt Beatrice’s journal. There had to be some clue in there I could use to get to the bottom of this.

  I flipped the pages to the section where her handwriting changed. Whatever the missing clue was, it had to be there. There had to be some key to her terror.

  I hate Glenda Garner. I wish I’d never met her, and now I can’t get rid of her. She’s right under my nose, every hour of the day. I’d like to scratch her eyes out.

  That was the section where Beatrice and Glenda fought over the greenhouse. Beatrice wanted to take it back and give Glenda her walking papers. The greenhouse. Of course. Maybe the missing clue would be out there somewhere. Maybe Glenda kept some secret stash of something in the greenhouse that she used to kill Beatrice.

  I slipped on my shoes, took one last turn around the inn just to make sure everything was running the way it should, and stole a peek outside. Hammering noises came from behind the inn. To avoid being seen, I ducked back inside and looked through the dining room windows.