Something Buried, Something Blue

by Wendy Corsi Staub

  “It was seventy-five here yesterday,” her mother-in-law says. “We went for a stroll along the lake.”

  Bella doesn’t have to ask who “we” is. The friend Millicent had mentioned to Bella is indeed a gentleman, a widower named George.

  “I hope the weather will cooperate when you and Max come for Thanksgiving,” her mother-in-law says. “He really wants to ride the Ferris wheel at Navy Pier.”

  Millicent has lots of other plans for next month’s visit: a trip to Shedd Aquarium, baking Christmas cutout cookies, and, of course, finishing Charlotte’s Web. They were only halfway through the book when she flew home two weeks ago.

  “I wish you could stay longer,” Max said sadly, and Bella was surprised to find that she felt the same way.

  But Millicent had to get back to George. They’ve been seeing each other for a few months now, and she missed him.

  “I never expected to date again,” she confided over lunch with Bella and Odelia on her last afternoon in Lily Dale. They were at the Solstice Cafe, where—wisely—no one ordered the soup.

  “Well, everyone deserves a second chance at happiness,” Odelia told Millicent, though Bella felt as though the words were meant for her own ears as well.

  Her—friendship—with Drew Bailey has yet to officially progress to anything more. But on that memorable Sunday when he safely delivered Max back home, Bella impulsively threw her arms around him in gratitude. He held her there for a little longer than was necessary for a proper you’re welcome.

  Who knows what the future will bring?

  Well, Odelia claims to know.

  She’s certain that Johneen, who is out of intensive care at last, is going to make a full recovery.

  “Maybe not emotionally,” she said sadly, “because how do you heal after something like that? But physically, she’ll be okay.”

  She also told Bella that she sees another wedding at the guesthouse.

  Bella shook her head. “No, Grant wants to put that plan on hold, at least until we finish all the work on the place.”

  “I didn’t say I saw a destination wedding or that your role was to plan it,” Odelia said mysteriously. “Your Wedding Bella days aren’t over just yet.”

  Bella stopped her right there. “No offense, Odelia, but I don’t want to hear any more of your premonitions for a while. Yours either,” she added to Calla, who was with them that day.

  She’s been spending a lot of time here in the Dale lately with her grandmother, and with Blue Slayton. Odelia still doesn’t approve of their rekindled romance, but she’s learning to live with it, and she’s pleased that her granddaughter is planning to rent a cottage here for the next couple of months.

  “Why don’t you just move in with me?” she asked when Calla first broached the subject, after breaking the news that she and Jacy had broken up. “You can have your old room back.”

  “Thanks, Gammy, but we might get in each other’s way. I’m working on a new book, so I need some solitude, and there are plenty of places available around here for the winter.”

  Tomorrow—November first—Calla and Li’l Chap are moving into a small place on East Street. Like everything in the Dale, it’s within a few minutes’ walk of Odelia’s cottage but secluded enough to give Calla some privacy.

  “I know Gammy only wants me to be happy,” she told Bella when she came to pick up her new kitten. “But sometimes, she gets a little too . . . involved.”

  Yes, she does. Just not as involved as Bella had suspected. When all was said and done, she was relieved to know that Odelia hadn’t been behind the letter or anything else that had happened surrounding the wedding. Brooke and Levi Joe had written that note, laying the groundwork to deflect suspicion away from Parker.

  “Grifter sleight of hand,” Luther called it.

  The pair had confessed to the rest as well. They had deleted the photo evidence on Bella’s phone. They’d planted the fake police badge—one of many in Virginia’s possession—in the Rose Room after Virginia realized Bella had probably found the gun. And they’d accomplished it all by borrowing and copying Bella’s keys so that they could sneak past locked doors. The police confiscated the duplicate set along with other evidence, but Luther advised her to change the locks again.

  “Better safe than sorry,” he said.

  “That’s true, but Grant has already arranged to install a high-tech alarm system and electronic entry on all the guest room doors.”

  “Sounds expensive.”

  “It is, but he said it was a good investment.”

  Luther nodded. “Potential buyers will like that.”

  “Oh, he’s not selling it. Didn’t I tell you? He’s keeping it.”

  She’d been prepared to beg Grant to let her stay for a while, but it didn’t come to that.

  “Aunt Leona wouldn’t want me to give up so easily,” he’d told Bella. “This place was such a big part of her life. I can’t just hand it over to strangers.”

  “You sort of handed it over to me, and I was a stranger.”

  “You? Nah. You’re the kind of person I feel like I’ve known all my life,” he’d said so casually that he almost seemed like a regular person.

  Maybe the rich aren’t so different after all.

  Luther was happy to hear she’d be sticking around the Dale for good, and not just because he and Max are good pals. “You’re shaping up to be quite the detective, Bella. Maybe you should think about becoming a private investigator in the off-season.”

  “No, thank you,” she said firmly. “I have plenty to keep me busy.”

  She’s been talking to Grant about all the renovations he wants to do on the guesthouse. Overseeing the work will keep her busy in the off-season. So will Max and his enterprising sidekick Jiffy, finding homes for the remaining kittens, and, of course, the Thanksgiving trip to Chicago.

  “Max and I were thinking you might like to come back here for Christmas,” she tells Millicent as she dries the plates she and Max used for dinner and puts them back in the cupboard. “You can bring George too, of course. We’d love to meet him.”

  “You will, at Thanksgiving,” Millicent promises. “And we’ll see about Christmas. George has grandchildren, too, and I’m not sure what our plans are. But thank you for the invitation.”

  Hanging up the phone, Bella glances out the window to see that dusk has given way to darkness. It’s almost six o’clock, meaning that any second now—

  “Mom!” Max hollers from the front hall. “Come on! Are you ready?”

  “I’m ready!” Smiling, she tosses aside the dish towel and grabs a flashlight waiting on the counter.

  In the hall, she finds—

  Hmm. She isn’t sure exactly what Max is supposed to be. Last week, she’d bought him the Halloween costume he’d requested. Today, he’d announced that he no longer wanted to dress as an animated yellow, orange, and brown triangle courtesy of Candy Corn. Apparently, that movie is already old news with the elementary school crowd.

  “Then what do you want to be, Max?”

  “Me and Jiffy have it all figured out. We’re going to be something scary so that we can fight the bad guys.”

  “Which bad guys?” she asked, wondering if he knows more than she thought about what happened here.

  “You know—the kidnappers. Jiffy says they’re coming in the big snowstorm.”

  That gave her pause. But then, Jiffy says a lot of things. She can only hope that he, like Max, has an overactive imagination.

  “Good thing it’s not going to snow again any time soon,” was all she said to Max.

  Now he stands before her dressed all in black. The exaggerated smudges around his eyes tell her that he found her makeup.

  “What are you, Max?”

  “I’m a kidnapper-fighting zombie,” he says as if she should have known.

  “Of course. A kidnapper-fighting zombie,” she says agreeably as the doorbell rings. “Do you want to get that? It must be a trick-or-treater.”

 
; As her son races to the door, Bella reaches for the crystal bowl on the registration desk. Today, it’s filled not with M&Ms but with miniature chocolate bars.

  “Trick or treat,” someone says from the porch. It isn’t a kid’s voice.

  “Doctor Drew!” Max’s zombie eyes are gleeful. “What are you supposed to be?”

  Drew Bailey, wearing jeans, a jacket, and glasses attached to a large nose and fake mustache, looks down at Max, deadpan. “What do you mean, what am I supposed to be? I’m a veterinarian—and your friend,” he adds.

  And yes, a little bit more, Bella acknowledges as Max giggles, pointing at his face.

  “Is that your costume?”

  “I would appreciate it if you didn’t laugh at my new glasses, young man. Now are we ready to go?”

  They are.

  “Careful,” Drew warns Bella as she locks the door behind them and Max dashes ahead. “There’s another kidnapper-fighting zombie lurking out there.”

  “You can’t scare me.” She flicks on the flashlight and holds out a candy bar. “Here you go.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Your treat.”

  He looks at it, shrugs, and tears off the wrapper. “This wasn’t exactly what I had in mind, but I guess it’ll do—for now.”

  Down the walkway, Max shrieks in delight as Jiffy pounces on him from behind a shrub.

  “See? I told you things were lurking out there,” Drew tells Bella.

  “You can’t scare me,” she repeats with a shrug, eyes twinkling.

  “Yeah, something tells me nothing can scare you. And I’m guessing you don’t need me around to protect you from zombies or anything else, do you?”

  “To protect me? Nope.” She adds, boldly sneaking her hand into Drew’s, “I’m glad you’re here anyway, though.”

  Together, they scuff through dead leaves into a Dale that’s teeming with zombies and goblins, clowns and princesses, and—yes—maybe even a couple of ghosts.

  Acknowledgments

  With gratitude to Matt Martz, Dan Weiss, Sarah Poppe, and Heather Boak at Crooked Lane; to publicists Dana Kaye and Julia Borcherts; to my agents, Laura Blake Peterson and Holly Frederick at Curtis Brown; to Dr. Robert Seaver and Cristina Gastesi for their medical and pharmacological assistance; to Marnie Zoldessy; to Carol Fitzgerald and the Bookreporter staff; to the Writerspace gang; to Margery Flax and MWA; to RWA, ITW, and Sisters in Crime; to Anjellicle Cats rescue for helping me save, foster, and adopt an imperiled Russian Blue kitten; to Mandi Shepp at the Marion Skidmore Library; to my many friends in Lily Dale; and to my supportive readers, booksellers, and librarians everywhere.