by Nic Saint
“No, he didn’t. Death was instantaneous.”
She looked up, her tear-filled eyes pleading. “Tell me what happened, Virgil.”
He swallowed. “Well, as far as we can tell he was shot at point-blank range. We, um—he was found out on Barrow’s Grove.”
She nodded. “He went out there this morning. Said he wanted to clear his head and think things through.”
Virgil thought he should probably be taking notes, and conduct some sort of interview of some species. His detecting skills were a bit rusty from disuse. But then he figured the chief would probably want to handle this personally so he relaxed and decided that for now comforting Alistair’s widow would suffice.
Mary took a paper tissue from the dispenser beneath the counter. “He liked the peace and quiet. Nobody ever bothered him out there. You know how it is here at the inn, what with customers and phones ringing off the hook and all.”
Virgil nodded gravely. Yes, he did know how it was. As a young man he’d worked summers at the inn and the place was always buzzing, to the extent that he sometimes wondered how Mary and Alistair had managed to keep up all these years. It required a lot of work year-round.
Mary swallowed away her tears. The first wave of grief had swept through her. Now that she was calmer she faced Virgil squarely, anger in her eyes. “Who would do such a thing? Who would murder a nice man like my Alistair? He never hurt a soul in his life!”
Virgil knew that to be the truth. Though gruff and grumpy at times, Alistair Long wouldn’t hurt a fly. He was a stickler for doing the right thing and had gotten into arguments over the years, but he’d never gotten into a fight.
“The investigation is ongoing,” he said. “We’ll have to, um, investigate everything and, um…” Oh, heck. Who was he kidding? He shrugged. “I don’t know, Mary. I’m not the one in charge. Chief Whitehouse sent me along to tell you what happened before you heard it from someone else. You know how quickly news travels in Happy Bays.”
Especially bad news.
“What am I going to do now? What am I going to do without my Alistair?”
Virgil shook his head wearily. Mary and Alistair had been a devoted couple for going on forty years. One of the happiest couples he knew. In fact when he was little he’d once expressed the wish that one day he would find someone who loved him as much as Mary Long loved Gandalf the Grey.
And now the man was gone. Hipster Grandpa was no more. He felt his eyes well up, and even though this was totally unprofessional soon he was sniffling right along with Mary, helping himself to her tissues.
“Such a horrible thing,” he sniveled. “He was such a great guy.”
“He was,” echoed Mary.
They were clutching each other for support when Suzy came upon them. She stared at the twosome for a moment before asking with a tremulous voice, “What’s wrong?”
“Oh, Suzy, it’s Alistair,” cried Mary. “He’s been murdered.”
Suzy clasped a hand to her face, her eyes wide and incredulous. “Noooo.”
Mary nodded. “Yes. Virgil just told me.”
“It’s true,” confirmed Virgil. He did a manful effort to compose himself, failed miserably, and took another tissue to stem the flow of tears.
When Mr. and Mrs. Thomson arrived five minutes later to check in, the smiles on their round faces were instantly wiped away when they witnessed the sad scene at the Happy Bays Inn. An older kind-faced woman, a tall cop and a full-figured black woman stood weeping inconsolably. The two exchanged a puzzled look. The Happy Bays Inn was advertised as the ‘happiest place in the happiest town on Long Island’ but instead of happy cheers and happy faces there was weeping and the gnashing of teeth.
For a moment they thought that perhaps they’d taken a wrong turn somewhere and had landed in a neighboring town, but the sign over the door had clearly stated ‘Welcome to the Happiest Inn.’
“I’m sorry,” Mary spoke, “but there’s been a great tragedy.” She folded her hands. “My husband…he just died.”
Instantly the Thomsons contorted their faces into a look of sympathy. So even in the happiest place on Long Island tragedy still managed to strike from time to time. Well, such is life, their mournful expressions indicated. They remembered the graybeard smiling from the brochure they’d received at the travel agency and their hearts bled. He’d looked like such a kindly old gentleman.
“We’re so sorry,” Mrs. Thomson said.
“Yes, very, very sorry,” echoed her husband. “Accident, was it?”
There was a short pause, in which Mrs. Thomson elbowed her disrespectful husband in the ribs, then the policeman spoke in a voice as if from the tomb. “It was no accident. It was murder.”
Chapter 6
“I don’t care! If I hear that excuse one more time I’m simply going to scream!”
Dorothy stared at the man, eyes blazing with fury. He’d just rejected her a refund and in her world there was no such thing as rejection. No one denied Dorothy Valour anything. No one!
The manager of The Bristol, the well-known department store on Fifth Avenue, gave her his most obsequious smile. “But Mrs. Valour…”
“Miss Valour,” she snapped.
“My apologies, Miss Valour,” he corrected himself. “As a rule we don’t issue a refund on items sold more than ninety days ago. No exception, I’m afraid.”
“This is a stupid and utterly silly little rule,” she huffed.
He inclined his head, the smile never leaving his face. “That may well be, but it is still a rule the management at The Bristol strictly adheres to. So I’m afraid we can’t refund your…” He flicked an eye at the purple bra that lay between them on the counter. “…brassiere.”
“This bra is junk, and I want my money back,” Dorothy fumed. It wasn’t so much that she needed the cash. She could have bought a thousand bras without batting an eye, but the clasp had snapped one hour into her lunch date with Reece, and if there was something she hated more than uncooperative managers, it was paying full price for faulty merchandise. Especially when they led to wardrobe malfunctions when in the public eye.
The manager eyed the item with a certain distaste. He seemed to feel Dorothy was one of a class of people who take advantage of the return policy of The Bristol. He was a fastidious man of smallish posture, a natty dresser, not a single hair out of place on his head, and not about to budge on a point of policy.
“I’m sorry, Miss Valour. It is clear to me the clasp snapped through injudicious handling of the item.”
“That’s nonsense. It just…” She flapped her arms. “…snapped!”
The manager straightened his back. He didn’t tolerate slurs on The Bristol name. “Clasps of bras purchased at The Bristol don’t just snap, Miss Valour. Clasps of bras purchased at The Bristol are made to last. You must have stretched it.”
“I did not.”
“Stretched it.”
“I did—” She sniffed. This was ridiculous. She decided to play her ace. “I will talk to my fiancé about this.”
“That is most gratifying to hear, Miss Valour,” he said, letting a deft finger slide along a pencil mustache.
She sneered. “You wouldn’t be smirking like an ape if you knew who my fiancé was, you horrible person.”
“I’m sure Miss Valour is quite right.”
She tilted her head in an imperious gesture that always did much to make her enemies wilt. It didn’t seem to put a dent in the manager’s armor, though. “I’m marrying Reece Hudson. You might have heard of him?”
The manager lifted a brow. “I have and I’m sorry to hear that, Miss Valour.”
She was gratified to find that, as usual, the mention of her fiancé’s name inspired awe and respect. “You should be sorry. My fiancé will have your job for this.”
The manager lifted the other brow. “I meant to say I’m sorry for the gentleman, Miss Valour.”
The slur didn’t register at first, but when it did, Dorothy’s jaw dropped. This was
something she only allowed under the rarest of circumstances, for she knew that it made her look most unattractive. She quickly hitched it up, therefore, and stared at the man, aghast. Never in her life, she meant to say, had she been insulted like this. She thought about giving the manager her most vitriolic response, but then decided it was beneath her dignity to do so.
“You will hear about this,” she said in a low voice.
“I’m sure I will,” the manager said, entirely too pleased with himself.
She fixed him with a glacial stare, whirled around and swept from the store.
“Oh, Miss Valour!” the manager’s honeyed voice rang out. “I believe you forgot something.”
She glanced over her shoulder, and when she saw that he was clutching her bra, holding it aloft for the entire floor to see, the blush of shame stole over her cheeks, another thing she normally never allowed. Blushing, she had decided when she was fourteen, didn’t become her, so she had vowed never to do it.
She gritted her teeth, ignored the goggling onlookers, stalked over to the desk, snatched the brassiere from the man’s hand and stalked off again. Never again would she set foot in The Bristol, and if she had any say in it, and she did, she would make sure that Reece pulled some strings and had this horrid manager fired.
It didn’t do, she felt, to be insulted like this on the eve of her wedding. Managers were put on this earth to personally see to it that her every wish and command was fulfilled, not to thwart her at every turn. And as she walked down Fifth Avenue she took out her phone and texted a brief missive to her fiancé to this effect. As her nails clicked on the polished glass, she paused. What was the little turd’s name again? Oh, yes. Rufkis.
‘Fire Frank Rufkis,’ she furiously typed, then added a smiley, a heart, another smiley and enough kisses to make Reece realize he better take her command into consideration right speedily, or else there would be trouble for him as well.
Chapter 7
Felicity eyed her mother’s new hairdo critically. “It’s fine. Just…different.”
“It’s blue!” Mom cried. “Blue!”
“Looks like something from a horror movie,” Bancroft muttered.
They were sitting in the Bell living room, where Felicity’s mother had just returned from her weekly visit to the hairdresser. This time Rita had decided to go for something unique. The result was both frizzy and rambunctious, as if Mom’s hair was about to leap from her head and start a rock band.
Mom gave Bancroft a prim glare. “If that’s all you can say you better keep your tongue, young man.”
Bancroft shrugged and returned to his perusal of Kim Kardashian’s latest selfie. Felicity’s cousin was tall, thin and quite unattractive, and had decided at an early age that the world wasn’t good enough for his talents. He’d wanted to become a celebrity stylist but instead had to settle for working at the family bakery. Now, at the age of twenty-three, he still harbored vague dreams of moving east and allowing Hollywood’s elite to take advantage of his skills.
In the meantime he was working a second job as stylist for Revolution Cool, a beauty parlor on Hutton Street, and had made quite a name for himself as one of the snarkiest young men in the business, frequently dropping comments that even Donald Trump would have deemed too crass.
“I think it’s wonderful, Mom,” said Felicity soothingly. “It’s new, it’s bold, it’s fresh, it’s—”
“Are you talking about Coca-Cola or Aunt Bianca’s hair?” Bancroft asked without looking up from his phone.
Bianca gave her daughter an exasperated look. “I knew I should have refused. Every time Rita starts experimenting things go horribly, horribly wrong.” She threw her hands in the air. “Now look at me! I’m like Madonna in the eighties!”
Bancroft snorted. “Try Diana Ross in the seventies.”
Felicity bit her lip. It was true that her mom looked a little funky. “I think you should give it a go.”
“But I can’t!” Mom cried. “What will the customers think?”
It was her eternal cry of anguish. Having stood behind the counter at Bell’s Bakery & Tea Room for thirty years now, the thought foremost in her mind was what the customers would think. In her defense she represented the store—the first and last person the customers saw. “I might as well quit now and apply for a job at Marcel!”
“They wouldn’t take you,” said Bancroft. “They’re not in the market for chemistry experiments gone wrong.”
Felicity wished her cousin would just put a sock in it. “I think the customers will like it just fine. Just give it a try and you’ll see it’s not as bad as all that.”
“You think so?” Uncertainly, Mom stared in the mirror and patted her hair.
“I know so. You just go out there. I’m sure you’ll get tons of compliments.”
“Or requests for My Old Piano,” murmured Bancroft, while liking all the Kim Kardashian updates he’d missed since last checking her profile five minutes before.
“I don’t know,” muttered Mom, looking forlorn.
“You’re a revolutionary, Mom,” Felicity said. “People admire you for the bold choices you make.”
“It’s not my bold choice,” protested Mom. “It’s Rita’s and I don’t see why I have to suffer the consequences.” In spite of her misgivings she finally relented. “Oh, all right. I’ll give it a whirl.”
Bancroft laughed, and when two angry stares hit him squarely in the midriff, he cried, “What? It’s funny. Give it a whirl? With cotton candy hair?” He rolled his eyes. “Am I the only one in this family with a sense of humor?”
“You’re the only one in this family with a lack of heart,” Felicity said critically. “Mom needs our support, not silly little jokes.”
He gave Mom an appraising look. “I guess it’s not that bad.”
Mom raised her chin. “Thanks, Bancroft. I think that’s the nicest thing you’ve said to me all day.”
Bancroft gestured to Felicity. “Don’t blame me. She made me.”
While Mom headed down the stairs to return to the tea room, and Bancroft was once again absorbed by his social media updates, Felicity lingered behind for a moment. She was thinking about Alice and wondering if she hadn’t agreed too quickly to that crazy bet. Reece Hudson was engaged to be married, and she just hoped Alice wouldn’t get it into her head to try and stop the wedding.
“Do you know Dorothy Valour?”
Without looking up from his phone Bancroft muttered, “Who doesn’t?”
“So you know she used to go to Happy Bays High, right?”
Bancroft frowned. “No, she did not.”
“Oh, yes she did,” Felicity said, proud to know a celebrity factoid her cousin didn’t. “Alice and I used to know her back then. She was one grade ahead of us.”
Bancroft’s face betrayed the admiration he felt for the socialite. “And? How was she?”
“Bitchy, even then. She once attacked Alice for wearing the same dress. Said she’d copied her style and she would file charges with the fashion police.”
Bancroft laughed heartily. “That’s hilarious!”
“Alice didn’t think so. She even asked Virgil if there was such a thing as fashion police and if she could be sent to jail for breaking fashion law.”
Bancroft chuckled freely. “That’s a silly thing to ask, even for Alice. I would have thought she had more sense than that.”
“Virgil assured her that the fashion police weren’t real and Alice was so upset she went over to Dorothy and poured her cranberry juice all over her dress.”
Bancroft’s face contorted into a horrified frown. “But those stains wouldn’t have come out!”
Felicity smiled at the recollection. “She told Dorothy that since their dresses were now a different color she didn’t have to bother the fashion police. Dorothy didn’t think it was funny.”
“She must have been royally pissed.”
“Oh, she was.”
“Funny story,” said Bancroft as he returned to th
e perusal of his phone.
Felicity gazed out the window for a spell. She hoped that when Alice hit on Dorothy’s fiancé, she wouldn’t take things too far this time. For one thing, Dorothy had serious clout these days. She could cause a lot of trouble.
Then again there wasn’t a chance in hell Alice would come within two thousand miles of Reece Hudson. The man was a movie star and probably lived in Beverly Hills or some such place. No way would he ever pass through Happy Bays on his way to his latest movie premiere.
She got to her feet and gave her cousin a shove. “Back to work, lazybones.”
“Just a minute,” he muttered.
She headed downstairs. It was time to put in her Sunday afternoon shift. But as she picked up her apron from its peg in the kitchen and started to strap it around her waist, the agitated sounds of some sort of fracas reached her from the tea room.
She pushed through the double doors and saw that a bunch of people had gathered there. They were all standing around Virgil. The policeman appeared upset, as he was gesticulating wildly, his face beet red. What the heck?
“What’s wrong?” she asked her mother, who stood wringing her hands.
“It’s Alistair Long, honey. He’s been murdered.”
Chapter 8
Rob Long was in a bad mood. His wife was getting on his nerves. Not that he himself was a peach to live with, but lately neither was she.
“I don’t know what’s gotten into you, honey,” she was saying. “You’re usually not this tightfisted.”
“It’s a frivolity,” he said, returning his attention to the newspaper. He’d read the article three times already and still didn’t know the gist. If Maggie could just stop talking and let him read already he might find out what those Washington bureaucrats had decided to do about the budget.
“It’s not frivolous,” she lamented.
“It’s a necklace. You don’t need it.”
“It’s important to me, Rob. You know I like to look nice.”
Maggie Long had once been a prom queen and the most beautiful girl in school. Now, fifteen years into their marriage, her good looks had waned and so had her self-esteem. She was still blond, but most of it came from a bottle these days. And the amount of mascara she used would have made a raccoon jealous.