Bed & Breakfast Bedlam Copyright © 2015 Shondra C. Longino
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This eBook is intended for personal use only, and may not be reproduced, transmitted, or redistributed in any way without the express written consent of the author.
Bed & Breakfast Bedlam is a work of fiction. Any references or similarities to actual events, organizations, real people - living, or dead, or to real locales are intended to give the novel a sense of reality. All other events and characters portrayed are a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
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Cover Design by Shondra C. Longino
Chapter One
Yasamee, Georgia
It stopped me at the door and sent chills up my spine.
It was a cacophony of screaming, weeping and wailing that was almost blood curdling. I stood still in the foyer of the Maypop Bed & Breakfast, right at the front door I’d just come through. Brie Pennywell sat behind the oak registration desk - her loosely fitted crocheted sweater draped around her shoulders reminiscent of a librarian, her glasses perched on the end of her nose. With one hand, she was drumming her fingers lightly on the counter, seemingly not registering the shouting match going on in the next room. With her other hand, she flipped through the pages of a magazine.
How could she not hear that?
There was a wall between me and the dining room where the voices emanated. I couldn’t decide if I should venture on to the archway that separated the rooms and see what all the commotion was about. Or, turn around and head back out of the door, and like Brie, ignore the whole thing.
Then a slow, nasty growl sprung from deep inside someone’s throat, “I. Will. Kill. You.” And then boom! Something crashed. Hit a wall, I assumed. A communal shudder echoed through the room.
Brie jerked her head up and swung it toward the dining room then turned to me, our eyes, large as saucers, locked.
“I will kill him, too,” the woman hissed. “No one does this to me.” She snarled. She barked. The distraught voice continued her murderous rant. “Nobody!”
That got us both moving. Brie came from behind the counter and I took enough steps to get past the wall and look into the dining area.
Three woman were circled around Renmar as she tried to play referee. Pushing. Shoving. Arms flailing, bodies bumping up against each other. I just knew at any moment fists were going to start flying. All of their faces tinged with a bright crimson coloring, they had anger in their eyes.
Other diners in the room acted as if they were ancient Roman spectators at the Coliseum – encouraging, and shouting and yelling right along with the blonde combatants.
“You won’t be able to kill him,” the white-blonde haired woman yelled. “Because I’ll kill him first.”
I looked over at Brie, my mouth opened. “What is going on?”
“Oliver,” she whispered. “I think he’s told all three of them he’d marry them.”
“Oliver” was Oliver Gibbons, resident Casanova of Yasamee, a little coastal city in Central Georgia. Population five-hundred and eighty three. Why he thought he could date as many women as he wanted in such a small town had always been a mystery to me.
We watched as Renmar Colquett, proprietor of the Maypop, got pushed and shoved. Her short, bobbed hair bounced up and down every time one of the woman pushed into her. Renmar, the Southern belle that she was, looked as if she’d burst. Her usual white, porcelain-like face was blotched with patches of red and dotted with beads of sweat. Her cheeks puffed, she was using her body as a shield to keep the woman from tearing their claws into each other. And into her.
Hazel Cobb, the only black resident in Yasamee besides me, and best friend and cousin by marriage to Renmar, was circling around the woman trying to pull them apart. Her dyed reddish brown hair was standing on end, her huffing and puffing matching Renmar’s whose name she kept saying in between her pleads for peace. “Renmar,” she’d say, then, “Please. Calm down. Can’t we just calm down?” She’d beg the women. Then again with “Renmar!”
She couldn’t control them either.
And then I saw Miss Vivee. She walked out from the back of the house and appeared in the archway at the other end of the room. Standing in her knee high rubber boots, a thin cornflower blue coat, her long silver gray braid hanging over her shoulder. Her wheaten Scottish terrier, Cat, stood next to her, ears on high alert and tail wagging. Both Miss Vivee and her dog, heads tilted, had a look of surprise etched in their faces and seemed unsure what to do – stay or turn and flee.
“Logan,” Brie said to me. “Maybe you should get Momma and her dog. She shouldn’t be in the middle of this.” Then she nodded toward her sister, Renmar. “And, I’ll try to help Renmar and Hazel. All we need is another murder around here.”
Another murder.
Oh. My. Gosh.
Nope. No need for another one of those. I hadn’t been in Yasamee one day when Gemma Burke keeled over dead in her bowl of bouillabaisse. Correction: A bowl of Renmar’s world famous (so I’m told) bouillabaisse. And that had only been a month ago.
Miss Vivee stared at the melee mesmerized. Cat gave out a yelp or two and Miss Vivee, without looking down, arm lowered at her side, gave Cat a couple waves of her hand to quiet her down. Too bad that wouldn’t work on the cat fight going on in the middle of the dining room.
I took in a breath. Glancing over at the fight, I flinched. One blonde had poised her hands ready to scratch, tear into someone it seemed with her acrylic inch long nails. And another was howling at her saying, “Come on. I will take you down.”
Miss Vivee was feisty, but Brie was right, the way things were going Miss Vivee might just get hurt.
“Okay,” I said to Brie and headed over to Miss Vivee. “Whatever you do, don’t let anyone get murdered,” I said over my shoulder. At my words, the entire room stilled. The yelling stopped and everyone looked at me.
“Murdered?” I heard someone’s strained voice eke out.
Someone else plopped down in their chair and held their head in their hand. “Not another murder.”
“Missy,” Miss Vivee said pointing a shaky finger at me – her white skin so thin you could see the green veins. “Come here,” she instructed. She often called me Missy. Don’t know why. It isn’t because she didn’t know my name. “You’re not helping anything,” she said to me then called out to Renmar. “I’ll make tea.”
Remar nodded and all eyes followed me as I left the dining room.
Hadn’t everyone just heard Miss Jilted White-Blondie say she was going to kill people? How was what I said bad?
“Come and help me,” Miss Vivee said as she turned around and headed down the hallway toward the kitchen with Cat in tow.
I followed behind her thinking that it was me that was supposed to be rescuing her.
“They are going crazy in there,” I said and sat down on one of the breakfast stools that surrounded the large, butcher block topped island.
“I know. You’d think it was a full moon out,” Miss Vivee said.
As it was, it was the middle of the day. A hot June day. I’d come to the Maypop to grab a bite to eat. It was where I was staying while I worked at Stallings Island, an archaeological site located across a small shoal at the edge of the Savannah River. I would have been better off if I’d gone to the Jellybean Café. Never run into anything over there other than gossip. But Renmar was, to me, the best
cook in the Western Hemisphere. Although I’d never let my mother or grandmother hear me say that. So, I’d come home, as it were, to eat.
“I’m going to make some Passionflower tea,” Miss Vivee said. She stood at the sink and filled up the silver teapot with water. “I don’t seem to have any lemon balm tea,” she said absently. “I thought I did.” She searched through bottles lined up in a spice rack. “It’s better for anger and rage.”
“You want me to help you?” I asked.
“No. I got it.” She opened a cabinet and started fussing around with hand marked bottles of herbs and extracts she’d brought in from her greenhouse. “I’ll just add a few extra drops of Passionflower extract,” she said. “Make it more powerful. Then, I’ll mix in a little chamomile,” she grunted as she stood on her tippy toes to grab another bottle. “It’s good for temper tantrums.”
“That is exactly what that one woman was having,” I said. “The one with the white-blonde colored hair. Threatening to kill people. Why does Oliver try to date more than one woman in a city this size? Does he not understand the meaning of the word ‘discretion?’”
“Oliver thinks he’s a lady killer,” Miss Vivee said. “That they’ll all bow down to him and let him have his way.”
“He’s too old to even try to keep up with that many women,” I said. “If you know what I mean.”
“They don’t care about that so much as they care about his money,” Miss Vivee said. “A lot of money will replace a lack of libido any day. His money makes them all want him.”
“Apparently they want him bad enough to kill each other to get him.”
Then as if on cue, the rumble of his disgruntled paramours began to build to a crescendo, drowning out even the whistle of the tea kettle. Miss Vivee readied the tea and had me carry it in. Initially hurrying, I slowed as I reached the doorway of the dining room.
White-blondie had her finger in strawberry-blondie’s face. And frosted-highlighted blondie was yelling at Renmar.
It seemed Oliver liked blondes as much as he did those e-cigarettes he was always puffing on.
“He doesn’t want you, you liver-lipped hussy,” said the white-blonde to the strawberry haired one.
“If he doesn’t want me, why was he at my house last night?” Strawberry blonde queried.
“He was not!” White blonde screamed. She was visibly upset by the comment.
“And the night before. And the night before that. And the night before that!” Strawberry taunted.
“I don’t know what for,” Frosted-highlights yelled. “Being with you,” she spat her words at Strawberry. “Is like throwing a hotdog down a hallway, you whore!”
“Who are you calling a whore?” Strawberry-blonde shouted.
Both White and Frosted said, “You!”
The Strawberry-blonde haired hussy grabbed a butter knife from the table and wielded it like she was holding a machete. “I will cut you six ways from Sunday,” she screeched. “Both of you. You’ll get Oliver over my dead body.”
“That can be arranged,” Frosted said. With that she jumped past Renmar and lunged at the knife brandishing, fruity-colored blonde.
And then came a scream from the foyer that would silence a banshee. It certainly quietened everyone in the room.
We all stopped and looked toward the foyer.
There was no one there.
We looked at each other.
I walked into the foyer and swinging from my waist did a one-eighty and surveyed the rest of the room. No one. Then I remembered the closet Miss Vivee hid with me in to give updates when solving Gemma’s murder.
I walked over and opened the door and there was Koryn Razner. Her hands over her ears. Tears streaming down her face.
“Koryn. Are you okay?” I asked.
“I just can’t take it anymore. All the noise. All the screaming. I just can’t take it anymore.”
I turned around and looked at the crowd that had made their way to the archway that separated the two rooms. Everyone staring with their mouths open.
“Bring her in here,” Miss Vivee instructed.
I reached my arm in and guided Koryn out of the closet. I walked with her to the dining room, and pulling out a chair I helped her sit in it.
“Are you okay?” Strawberry put down her knife and came over and rubbed Koryn’s back.
“See what you’ve done?” White-blonde hissed at Strawberry while rubbing Koryn’s opposite shoulder.
“Don’t cry,” Frosted voiced soothingly. “And please don’t scream like that anymore.”
“Give her some tea.” Renmar picked up a mug from the wait station. “Everyone. Just have some tea.”
Chapter Two
“Logan Dickerson.” Brie called my name and waved an envelope at me. “You’ve got mail,” she said and giggled. She was so corny.
I’d been staying in Yasamee for almost a month and for it to be such a small place, there had been a lot of disorder going on, the day’s events included. But the one constant – the calm in the storm – was a handwritten note from my mother that I got each week I’d been there. Blue Mountain or Hallmark, the card came faithfully filled with the goings on at home. She said that emails were too impersonal for us to stay in touch.
Jury wasn’t in on how I felt about her bombarding me with cheerful, humorous tidbits of sentiment. One of the many tribulations (perks?) of being the youngest child even though my twenty-ninth birthday was fast approaching, my mother was always close.
Sometimes I felt like the light of fame didn’t . . . couldn’t shine on me because I existed in my mother’s shadow. I guess I’d put myself there going into the same occupation as she. Still I just wanted to do as much as she had.
Maybe more . . .
My mother of course didn’t see it that way. She couldn’t understand why I thought I needed to best her.
And that’s how I’d landed in Yasamee – trying to make a name for myself, and I’d gotten in over my head. In running from the FBI (yeah that much over-my-head kind of trouble), I ran right smack dab into Yasamee, Miss Vivee and a murder.
I took the letter from Brie and glanced into the now quiet dining room. Although the fighting blondes had summarily departed – none partaking of Miss Vivee’s calming tea – there still was an air of discontent that lingered.
Yep, hiding out. On the run. A fugitive. That had been me.
Well maybe it wasn’t as dramatic as that. I just thank goodness it had turned out okay. I got a permit to dig on Stallings Island. And that FBI guy that that conducted a “Terry stop” on me in Itza, a little town just outside of where I committed my crime of trespassing on federally protected property, ended up being my guy.
A nice twist.
My criminal proclivities wasn’t because I hadn’t been raised right. My parents, back in Cleveland were fine, upstanding citizens. Well, at least my father was. My mother, a pretty famous biblical archaeologist had a somewhat shaky vitae. Still it wasn’t like me. Especially since I’d work so hard to get double Ph.Ds. and spend every waking moment I could find in hot dusty deserts or tropical humid jungles to make my mark in the world of archaeology.
And not only did I end up with the FBI guy, he ended up being the son of the owner of the exact bed and breakfast I sought refuge in.
Coincidence?
Maybe. But he thought it was fate.
Bay Colquett, son of Renmar and Louis Colquett. Bay’s father, a creole from New Orleans, had been the one who taught his maternal grandmother, Miss Vivee all about Voodoo herbalism. A field she now professed to being a master in.
I don’t know about master, but she was, I had to admit, pretty smart about it.
Vivienne Pennywell was unquestionably the matriarch of the small town, and according to her, she was one hundred years old. No one believed that though. Her daughters, Renmar and Brie, thought she was about ninety.
Who doesn’t know how old their mother is?
But that was their story. Who was I to argue? I wa
s only a guest in their humble establishment while I did excavations on the Island.
Plus, Brie had told me that it wasn’t polite to ask a woman’s age (took me a while to get used to all the southern mannerism that went on in Yasamee). Yet, Miss Vivee freely told everyone about her meeting the century mark (Brie also said that women lie about their age). I had come to learn that when it came to lying, Miss Vivee was the Empress Prevaricator. She had a talent for it that out surpassed every politician ever known to man.
And, however old she was, she still had her wits about her. It was Miss Vivee who had solved the whole matter of Gemma Burke’s death with me as her trusty, most time reluctant, sidekick. In a week, no less. Dry drowning had killed her and thankfully not Renmar’s bouillabaisse.
But it just seemed to me, at ninety she’d have other things to do besides trying to solve murders. Plenty of things came to my mind. Bingo, for instance.
I read the card from my mother, then shook the envelope to make sure she hadn’t included any money.
Yeah, I know I’m twenty-nine but is anyone really ever too old to get help from their mom?
I sighed and looked around the room. Taking in a breath I could smell some kind of sweet goodness coming from the kitchen.
Probably Renmar and Koryn, I thought. They both had settled down from the earlier ruckus. Renmar, chef extraordinaire, had been teaching Koryn a few tricks of the trade since she’d moved in. I think the reason she’d taken Koryn in as an apprentice was because Koryn had been working at the Jellybean Café, and its cook, Gus, was a rival of Renmar’s. I’m sure she gave lessons to Koryn to show she couldn’t be bested.
I agreed with Renmar. Her food was the best.
Still everyone had become fond of Koryn. We were more concerned about her reaction to everything than to the blondies.
I decided not go back to the Island the rest of the day. I figured I’d spend a little time texting my new man. And then take a long bath in one of Miss Vivee herb concoctions to try to shake all of the murderous auras that were swirling around in the air.
Coastal Cottage Calamity (A Logan Dickerson Cozy Mystery Book 2) Page 1