Mary Ellen Hughes - Maggie Olenski 01 - Resort to Murder

by Mary Ellen Hughes

  “Sure. Come on in. I’ll be leaving in a minute.” Maggie held the door for her, then walked to the phone. She punched in Dyna’s number and was glad to hear a lively hello.

  “Dyna, it’s me. Feeling better? Want to meet for breakfast?”

  “Yeah, great. I was just going to call you. How about the terrace in five minutes?”

  “Sounds good.”

  “Any plans for later?” Dyna asked.

  “Yes, I have to go somewhere, but I’ll tell you about it downstairs. See you.” Maggie hung up the phone and turned to see Burnelle waiting patiently by the bed. Lori’s book as well as Maggie’s purse were on it. “Oh,” Maggie said, “let me get these out of your way.” Maggie felt stupid for having left the book in plain sight. She was starting to feel nervous about still having it, and the fewer people that were aware of that the better.

  “Take your time, dear,” Burnelle said. “You keep a diary?” she asked, nodding toward the black book. She began pulling off the bed clothes.

  “No,” Maggie said, evading an explanation. It was possible Holly could get in trouble for having given it to her. “But I do jot things down now and then so I don’t forget them.”

  “Lots of people do that. Lots of famous people kept diaries.” She shook a pillow out of its case. “John Brown for one. You heard of him?”

  Maggie nodded. She was checking her purse for car keys and other essentials. She would go to the sheriff’s right after breakfast.

  “I guess everyone’s heard of him. A lot’s been written about him. A lot of mistaken things. But he kept his own diary. It’s there in the museum in my home town. It explains what he was trying to do. I took my son to that museum many a time when he was little.”

  Maggie turned. “Eric?”

  “Yes.” Burnelle looked up, pleased. “You’ve met my son?”

  “Yes, I ran into him yesterday afternoon. Near the tennis courts.” Maggie tried her best to smile as she said it.

  Burnelle beamed. “Working hard, I’m sure. I’m so proud of him. He had his problems growing up, like most boys do, but he’s settled down so nicely now. He’s anxious to do well here. And he will. He’s a very bright boy, and he tries hard. But I sometimes worry that he might overdo it. I try to keep an eye on him, watch out for him, without, you know, letting him know.” She walked back to her cart in the hall and came back with an armful of clean linen.

  Maggie wondered at the degree of self-delusion that maternal love could bring about. She had seen it in certain parents at school. Johnny was going to be the next president of the United States, despite the fact that he was flunking nearly all his classes, and oh, yes, that little arrest for drug use. But never mind all that. Burnelle seemed to be that kind of mother, and Maggie could only feel sorry for her.

  Maggie slid the strap of her purse onto her shoulder, then tucked the journal under her arm. “Well, I’ll be on my way.”

  Burnelle nodded, and gazed at Maggie with a faraway look, still thinking, perhaps, of her beloved son. “Enjoy your breakfast,” she said, then turned and flapped a clean white sheet over the bed.

  Maggie pushed through the glass doors of the lobby and stepped onto the terrace. Warm, humid air hit her face, forecasting another hot day, but the patio, facing west, was still comfortably shaded. Umbrella-topped tables dotted the slate patio, and the pleasant aroma of fresh coffee wafted through the air. Maggie looked around, then saw Dyna sipping orange juice at an isolated table next to tall green hedges.

  Dyna saw her and waved, and Maggie walked over, pulling out a chair to sit across from her. “Well, you look like you slept well.”

  “Mmmm,” Dyna nodded, “like a rock. Everything’s back in balance again.”

  “I’m glad. Did you order yet?”

  “Just juice and coffee.” Dyna indicated the two carafes on their table. Maggie reached for the coffee and poured out a steaming cupful for herself. She knew by now that Dyna would stick with juice alone, spurning the less healthy caffeine.

  After the waiter took their orders, Maggie sat back in her chair and took a long sip from her cup. Dyna glanced over at the nearby pool, its blue water now empty and calm.

  “This makes me think of a vacation I went on with my folks once - to Jamaica.”

  “Really? What about the Highview reminds you of Jamaica?”

  “Well, there’s a mountain area there - I forget what it’s called. Port Something-or-other. Anyway, the other side of the island from Montego Bay. We stayed at this place that had tables out like this, and mountains around us. It was really pretty. More flowers than here, though. Big, bright ones.”

  “Sounds nice.”

  “Mmm, it was.” Dyna stretched her arms above her head, then ran her fingers through her hair, apparently unconcerned with how she rearranged it. She wore yellow and white today in the shape of an oversized shirt and snug shorts, with a few chains of colored beads draped from her neck.

  “I was eighteen then, and I remember Dad was trying to convince me to try college. `Just for a year,’ I remember him saying. I guess he hoped once I started I’d be hooked or something. He almost had me convinced, too. I mean, I didn’t know what else to do with myself at that time.”

  At that time? Maggie was tempted to tease, but held her tongue.

  “But then we went down to Kingston to look around the shops and stuff. That’s where I found this most amazing woman. She not only could tell me all about myself - things she couldn’t have ever known - she told me about my past lives too. It was like she could look right into my soul, you know?”

  Maggie didn’t know, but she nodded, thinking that her friend certainly made interesting early morning conversation.

  Dyna leaned back in her chair. “Well, after an experience like that, there was no way I was going to sit in class to study the usual earth-bound, mundane things. That’s when I knew I wanted to find out all about witchcraft - the good kind - and paranormal things. There’s a place up in New Hampshire, a school you can go to, did you know that?”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  Dyna exhaled heavily, blowing wispy bangs up off her forehead. “I went there, and I tried, I really did. But sometimes you have to admit you just don’t have a talent for something, no matter how badly you want to do it.”

  Maggie wasn’t sure if she should offer sympathy or congratulations. But since their food arrived at that time, she simply offered a bagel. Dyna brightened immediately and reached for it, her career woes quickly forgotten.

  Maggie glanced down at the plate in front of her and called the waiter back. “I’m afraid you brought me the wrong order. I asked for the eggs well-done, not sunny side up.” Maggie looked at the two soft, yellow yolks jiggling on top of the eggs and stifled a shudder.

  “Oh, gosh, I’m sorry!” The young waiter looked embarrassed and apologized as he took Maggie’s plate away, rushing back to the kitchen.

  “He’s new, isn’t he?” Dyna asked as she watched him go. “Maybe they hired him to replace, Lori, ‘cause I don’t think I’ve seen him before.”

  The waiter, whose name tag Maggie noticed said “Chuck”, brought the correct order to the table and apologized again for the mistake. He was tall and broad-shouldered, with sandy hair that fell over his forehead. She also noticed his hands were shaking as he set the plate down, and she smiled at him reassuringly. It was tough, she knew, breaking in on a new job.

  She put her fork into her new eggs and nodded with satisfaction as it hit solid yolk. Old habits die hard, she thought, aware that the only reason she couldn’t bear soft eggs was because her brother Joe had once compared them to something jellyfish back at the age of seven, turning her off them forever.

  “You know,” Maggie said, “it’s funny that you said your folks were eager for you to go to college. Mine, I think, would have been delighted if I’d stayed home after high school and just worked in the bakery with them.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Mom, especially. I think it was fear of the unk
nown. She’d been kept close to home by my grandparents, who were immigrants, and college must have been a strange, scary world to her, a place she didn’t want to put her daughter into. If it weren’t for the partial scholarship I won, and my high school counselor urging them to send me, I might not have gone, or at least would have had a much harder time of it. Even then, they insisted I live at home and commute.”

  “That’s funny. It’s like we were both born into the wrong set of parents. Maybe we were switched at birth, or should have been.”

  Maggie wondered how her conservative parents would have enjoyed having a daughter interested in witchcraft, and her lips twitched at the thought. She turned back to her food, scooping up the last of her eggs and chewing quietly at her bagel. When she reached the point of her second cup of coffee, Maggie held up Lori’s journal to show Dyna. She explained what it was and how she got it.

  “You’ve read it?” Dyna asked.

  “Yes. Unfortunately Lori’s privacy doesn’t exist anymore, and if I gave it to the sheriff unread, who knows how long it might languish in a drawer before anyone did anything about it.”

  “Yeah. So what did you find out from it?”

  Maggie let out a sigh. “Not a whole lot, I’m afraid. She writes about things that happened here, but after a while she goes into a kind of shorthand using initials instead of names. And she doesn’t give full details of an incident. But then, she wasn’t writing for anyone but herself, and she knew what she was writing about.”

  “Bummer.” Dyna took a final bite of bagel.

  Maggie nodded. “It’s frustrating.”

  “So it’s not any help?”

  “Well, some.” Maggie told Dyna about the entry mentioning

  “R.”

  “R,” Dyna said, her brow wrinkling. “Do you think she means Rob?”

  “I don’t know. She could.” Maggie frowned. She realized she didn’t want it to mean Rob, but hated to admit it. She looked at Dyna. “I had dinner with him last night.”

  “With Rob?”

  Maggie nodded.

  “Did you find out anything more?”

  “Well, I found out he has a low opinion of Eric Semple, the guy who came up to me on the path yesterday. He was the one we heard Rob shouting at.” Maggie paused, then added with a smile. “I also found out he likes kids a lot. He’d like to have his own tennis camp someday.”

  Dyna looked at her friend for a moment, tilting her head. “Hey, are you falling for this guy?”

  “No!” Maggie answered too quickly, then repeated again a more controlled, “No. It just happens that there’s a rather nice side to him. If it turns out he killed Lori, of course, that wouldn’t matter. That would cancel everything out. But I’m just trying to keep an open mind. Innocent until proven, you know. I’m trying to be logical.”

  “Right, ‘cause that’s what you’re good at - logic. I mean, with your math and all.”

  Maggie nodded, but her mind wandered to the image of Rob sitting across from her at the table last night, his blue shirt picking up the blue in his eyes. It lingered there for just a moment, until she brought it back to the present. Logic, yes, logic.

  Chuck came back to their table, and they waited in silence as he began to clear the dishes. Suddenly though, while reaching for something, he knocked a water glass over and Maggie quickly grabbed at Lori’s journal to keep it from getting soaked.

  “I’m sorry! I’m really sorry!” he apologized. He was at least getting good at that. His ears reddened and he looked flustered. “Did I get your book wet?”

  Maggie shook her head. “No, it’s OK.”

  He mopped up the water with more stammerings, then escaped a final time to the kitchen.

  “I think you’re right,” Maggie said with a smile after he had gone. “He must be new.” She gathered up her things and stood up. “I’d better get this over to the sheriff’s. Want to come?”

  Dyna wrinkled her nose. “No thanks. I think I’ll hang around here. I might join the aerobics class at ten.”

  “OK. I’ll see you later then.” Maggie stood up, gathering her things, and caught sight of their young waiter at the back of the patio. He was saying something to Kathryn Crawford who looked her usual grim self, and whose gaze was aimed over his shoulder directly at Maggie. Had she seen his accident, Maggie wondered, and was she chewing him out about it? He, however, seemed to be doing all the talking.

  Maggie turned to leave, but before she could take a step a small-sized head and shoulder suddenly bumped her sharply from behind. She nearly lost her balance and grabbed onto the table.

  “Oh, sorry!” Tyler, one of the twins from the tennis lesson, stood before her gasping, but the look on his face showed he assumed she would think it was just as much fun as he did. He picked up Lori’s book for her, which had fallen to the slate, then ran on his way. His laughing twin brother soon followed, and Maggie quickly stepped out of the way.

  Before she had time to catch her breath, Rob Clayton appeared from behind the hedge. “Where did those two devils go?” he asked her. He tried to look severe, but he obviously was enjoying himself as much as the boys.

  “They went that-a-way,” Maggie said, pointing to the other corner of the hedge leading to the parking lot.

  “Thanks. I’ll let them think they got away, then I’ll pounce on them,” he said with a wink, then disappeared around the hedge, hot on their trail.

  Maggie looked at Dyna, laughed and shrugged. “Well, I’m off. Again.”

  “Maggie,” Dyna called to her after a moment. When Maggie turned she said, “I just thought I should remind you. Kids and animals almost always are crazy about the town drunk.”

  Maggie laughed, and nodded, but Dyna’s face, for once, was serious.

  As Maggie climbed into her Dodge Shadow, Dyna’s words echoed through her mind. It was true, she admitted, putting the car in gear and backing out of the parking spot. Everyone tends to think you’re wonderful if kids like you, but kids - and animals - can’t and don’t look too deeply.

  She pulled onto the white gravel driveway and reached for a sourball from the bag in the console. She drove the twisting roadway, winding her way through the trees, and finally came to the end where the white clapboard sign hung. However, she argued with herself, kids do have instincts. Often quite good ones.

  Maggie unwrapped the cellophane from her candy, then turned onto the mountain road, popping the sourball into her mouth at the same time. Tangy orange. The road was as empty as it had been the other times she drove on it. Maggie took the sharp turns at a leisurely pace, keeping several feet between her car and the guard rail on the right. The sun dappled soft patterns through the trees, and her thoughts soon returned to Rob Clayton. She reran their conversation of the previous night.

  She had just come to the part she liked best, their discussion of teaching methods and kids, when something caught her eye in the rear view mirror. A large blue van had suddenly appeared on the road behind her. Her eyes turned back to the road as she tried to pick up her thoughts, but in a moment her gaze returned to the mirror. The van had gained on her. Too quickly.

  She glanced back and forth several times from the twisting road in front of her to the van reflected in the mirror. It was now close behind her. Uncomfortably close. Maggie pressed down on the accelerator and felt herself taking curves at a speed that made her pulse quicken. Another car shot toward her from around a curve in the opposite lane, edging over the center line, and Maggie jerked her car away from it. The van kept pace.

  She tried to see who was driving, but the sun reflected off the dusty windshield, hiding whoever was behind it. Slow down, she muttered, anger building. Back off! Maggie’s tires squealed as she rounded a tight curve. She instinctively put her foot on the brake, and as she slowed the van pulled even with her.

  She couldn’t believe it! Were they crazy, trying to pass her on this twisty road? Maggie imagined a tanker truck coming towards them, just around the bend, and broke into a sweat. Her
hands gripped the wheel tightly.

  Much of the light was blocked off from her window as the van moved closer to her, looming only inches away. Suddenly Maggie felt a bone-jarring thud. My God, what are they doing!

  She grabbed at the wheel as it slipped through her hands. Another sickening thud. The steering wheel spun, and Maggie saw a blur of trees as her car aimed straight for the guard rail and the steep slope beyond.

  ***

  CHAPTER 14

  The silence was near-perfect, until slowly, tentatively, a single bird began to peep somewhere high in a tree. Maggie’s head lay against the steering wheel, unmoving, as the lone bird’s chirping was joined by others. Hot sunlight beat through the windshield, and one hand moved up to wipe a drop of sweat trickling toward her eye. She became aware of a lump in her left cheek and touched it with her tongue. Tangy orange - the sour ball she had popped in her mouth just minutes ago. She waited until her heartbeat slowed closer to normal, taking long, deep breaths, listening to the birds, feeling but not thinking, then eased upright and blinked, looking around.

  Her car rested tightly against the guard rail, beyond which was the long, steep, wooded slope, the slope she would have plunged down if she hadn’t somehow regained control of her steering and speed. It was all a blur of fast-action now as she thought back on it, but somehow, miraculously, she had managed through braking, skidding and frantic steering to avoid a head-on crash into and through the guard rail.

  Maggie waited until she felt steady enough, then unbuckled her seatbelt and eased out of the car. There was no sign of the blue van, which didn’t surprise her. It had deliberately tried to run her off the road - and down the mountain. She was certain of that. But whoever was driving didn’t hang around to watch the final results.

  Walking to the rear of the car she saw the deep skid marks her tires had made in the gravel. She reached the guard rail and saw some of her car’s paint and a series of large dents in it. Then, holding onto the rail to steady her rubbery legs she peered at the side of her car. It was scraped badly and dented, but on the whole, especially considering what might have happened, not too bad. Still… Maggie winced, feeling the pain of an injury to her cherished, yet-unpaid-for car.