Secrets of Harmony Grove

by Mindy Starns Clark

  So why all the cash? Could Floyd have insisted on it from our customers, telling them we didn’t take credit cards? That didn’t seem likely, and it certainly wasn’t true. What was I missing here? What dots was I not connecting?

  The guests had fake names and nonexistent phone numbers and addresses.

  These same guests always paid in cash.

  Judging by the lack of Internet activity, it was almost as if no one had ever stayed here at all—at least no one with an opinion who had posted a review.

  The place was scruffy and untended outside.

  When my parents came in the spring, they had been the inn’s only guests, their morning meal less than impressive.

  My room upstairs had dust on the lampshades and a cobweb in the corner, despite the fact that Liesl had been paid for cleaning just last week, according to the financial records.

  Taking all of the above into account, I began to realize that of the two options I had considered regarding the fake names, the most likely possibility was that there were no guests at all. If that was the case, then where was all the money coming from? How could there be so much cash flowing in and out if not from paying guests at the inn and from sales in our gift shop? We sold a ton of quilts and wooden toys here. If there were no guests, then who was buying all of that stuff?

  Sick to my stomach, I realized that Harmony Grove Bed & Breakfast could be involved in something highly illegal, though I couldn’t begin to fathom what. No wonder the U.S. attorney general’s office was investigating me. No wonder Troy said that such an investigation would have been Floyd’s fault. Certainly, something very fishy was going on.

  At this point, what I needed to do was to verify the amount of traffic this place was actually getting on a regular basis. The neighbors across the street certainly seemed to keep tabs. I could ask them directly about the traffic flow and the inn’s comings and goings. I could also look into the room-cleaning situation as well. Though Floyd did the daily cleaning, Liesl was the inn’s more thorough once-a-week housekeeper. When she came each time, was she washing sheets from the beds and scrubbing out the bathrooms? Surely a cleaner would be able to tell if a room had actually been used, even after the tidiest of guests.

  I called Liesl first, leaving a message on her family’s voice mail. I knew she probably wouldn’t get that message any time soon, so if I didn’t hear back from her shortly I would pay a visit in person instead. First, though, I would call up a neighbor or two.

  Using the computer to look up the numbers of the people across the street, I started with Mrs. Finster, an older woman who lived alone in the smaller gray house on the corner. The least verbose of them all, my hope was that our call could be short and sweet. When she answered, I was momentarily tongue-tied, but then I blurted out that I was following up on some reservation issues in Floyd’s absence and hoped she could help me out. What I learned from our ensuing conversation was very disturbing.

  According to her, almost no one ever came and went from Harmony Grove Bed & Breakfast other than Floyd himself. About once a month a “dashing young man with dark hair and a fancy car” would come and stay a few nights. Occasionally there was another car or two, though not often and not for long.

  “Did you ever wonder why a bed-and-breakfast seemed to have no guests?” I asked, knowing that the dashing young man had been Troy.

  “Frankly, dear, I didn’t even realize the place was still open for business. To be honest, I was glad things were so quiet. When it first opened and looked so beautiful, I was afraid that traffic on this street would increase terribly. When it turned out that almost no one ever came at all, more than anything I was just relieved.”

  I thanked her for the information and ended our call when movement out of the front window caught my eye and I saw several cars turn into the driveway. Most were police cars, and for a moment I was terrified they had come here to arrest me. But when I opened the back door and stepped outside, I realized they were simply here to follow up with last night’s investigation.

  Mike’s greeting was pleasant enough but all business, and from the deliberate, energetic nature of his body language, I had a feeling there had been some sort of break in the case. I was hoping he would tell me what they had found, but all he did was inform me that his people had some things to do both inside and out and he hoped they would be finished here soon so the crime scene could be released.

  “Do you know yet what happened last night?” I asked.

  “We’ve made some progress,” he replied, reaching for the radio on his belt. “I’ll explain in a bit. Right now I have to get out back with the rest of the team.”

  With that he walked away toward the pool, talking into the radio as he went. Unsure of what to do, I kept out of the way and watched and listened as cops and technicians went into Floyd’s and Troy’s rooms and into the kitchen and began searching them even more thoroughly than they had last night. Hovering in the background, I tried to figure out what was going on. It sounded to me that they were searching for drugs, drug-related paraphernalia, and poison.

  So poison really had been involved. Suddenly, I was quite glad I had eaten my own protein bar this morning for breakfast, and that I hadn’t had a thing from the kitchen, not even a glass of juice.

  “Sienna?” Georgia called from Troy’s bedroom. “Could you come here a minute, please?”

  I hurried into the busy room, finding Georgia and a technician standing at the small door in the back corner, one that wasn’t even visible from the main doorway thanks to the massive dresser that nearly hid it from view.

  “What’s in here?” Georgia asked me, pointing toward the door. “We checked it out yesterday, but I just wanted to make sure we weren’t missing anything.”

  “Missing anything?”

  “Yeah. It’s such an odd little room down there. Is there more to it than this?”

  The door she was referring to was the key selling point to this room, the main reason why it cost more to stay in here than in any of the three rooms upstairs, even though they were bigger and had better views.

  “It’s a private wine cellar,” I explained, adding that we had created it during the renovation, under Troy’s guidance, and that one bottle of wine of the customer’s choice was always included for free with every three-day rental of this room. “The old basement under the house had two entrances, one here and one off of the kitchen. The basement isn’t huge, but since we weren’t really using it for anything, we decided to wall off this back corner and create the illusion of an old European wine cellar. I even faux painted the walls. As you’ve seen, there’s nothing down there except the big wine rack full of bottles and a little bit of room to stand and study them and make your choice.”

  Georgia told the technician to go on down, and then she squinted at me and asked if I had a liquor license.

  “Of course. Why, is that surprising?”

  She shrugged.

  “I dunno. I guess it’s just not that common for a bed-and-breakfast to deal in alcohol. ’Cept maybe for the ones that serve mimosas with Sunday brunch or something.

  My cheeks flushing with heat, I didn’t admit that as a Protestant I had always felt somewhat conflicted about serving alcohol. Instead, I simply explained that it had been Troy’s idea. He had said customers would jump at the chance to have access to an entire wine cellar all by themselves. He predicted that the complimentary bottle of wine that came with the room would frequently be followed by the purchase of more bottles as well. He had been right. From what I could recall, Floyd had reported that the average guest in this room seemed to purchase two or three bottles per night in addition to the free one. Given the vast markup on alcohol, the proceeds had been impressive indeed, at least on paper.

  Of course, at the moment I wasn’t sure what was true and what wasn’t, nor even if this room had ever had any guests in it other than Troy. But I didn’t bring that up now. Instead, I explained the thinking behind his plan, that most folks who liked wine fancied
themselves as connoisseurs and enjoyed playing sommelier. To encourage sales, I had covered the walls down there with pretty, artfully-framed signs that described various vintages and their salient characteristics. I had also placed the most expensive bottles right at eye level, with the complimentary ones at the bottom of the rack.

  “So you’re a wine connoisseur too?” Georgia asked as we listened to the clink of wine bottles from the technician below.

  I shook my head.

  “No, I don’t drink. I got the information from the liquor salesman who helped us choose the stock.”

  I didn’t add that the whole thing had been a major bone of contention between my parents and me, the only real argument we’d had throughout the entire renovation process. As a pastor, my father didn’t want anything to do with the sales or promotion of liquor. Looking back now, I understood his position completely, and I felt a surge of guilt as I remembered how dazzled I had been by Troy’s financial projections, and how strongly I had argued to my father that this one simple little wine cellar could be one of the biggest cash cows of the entire business.

  I couldn’t recall the details of our argument now, but it had been quite heated, I remembered that. In the end, my dad had given me an ultimatum, saying that if the bed-and-breakfast was going to sell or serve wine that he wanted no part in it. I had acquiesced begrudgingly, frustrated that the little cellar had already been built and prepared and only needed the wine bottles to be ready to roll.

  For me, obviously, I had allowed the dollar signs to outweigh my principles.

  A few months later, after I bought out my parents’ share and the inn became fully mine, I had suppressed those principles even further, faxed over the original purchase order Troy and I had worked out with the liquor salesman, and told Floyd to stock the cellar as directed and up the price of the room accordingly.

  Now the technician was emerging from the stairwell with a bottle of wine in each hand, and it struck me that the poison they were seeking might have been hidden in one of those bottles. Nearly a hundred bottles of wine were down there, some of them extremely expensive. Was it possible they would have to open and test each one? I sure hoped not.

  Given the current precarious state of my finances, my job situation, and my inn, that wine collection was one of the few tangible assets I owned outright.

  On the other hand, perhaps God was simply allowing me now to reap what I had sown.

  Maybe Troy had paid that price as well.

  SEVENTEEN

  As it turned out, the police weren’t planning to open the wine at all—at least not yet. For the time being, the tech just wanted to get a better look at some of the bottles by the window in order to check the seals and study their clarity. I listened as he and Georgia discussed getting some lighting down there, and I had just come back from retrieving an extension cord for them when I ran into Mike.

  “There you are, Sienna. Got a sec?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “I have a question for you about the property.” Pulling from his pocket the sketch I had drawn last night, he said he needed to know about all of my outbuildings. “Your picture shows a large shed out back and an outdoor storage closet here, next to the pool. Is there any other outdoor storage at all?”

  “No, that’s it.”

  “How about inside the house? Where do you keep pesticides, tools, things like that?”

  I explained that the tools were kept in the basement and that the bug sprays and ant bait were on a rack just inside the basement door, at the landing. “At least that’s where they used to be, though I suppose Floyd could have moved them at some point.”

  “Okay, thanks,” Mike replied, folding the paper and sliding it back into his pocket. “That’s all I need for now.”

  He turned to go, but I reached out and put a hand on his wrist.

  “Look, I know you’re busy, but can you bring me up to speed at all? At least tell me how Floyd and Nina are doing?”

  Mike glanced at his watch and said he had a few minutes, but we should get out of everyone’s way. There was activity all around us, so I suggested we move out to the side porch.

  “Nina’s not doing too well. She’s still unconscious,” he told me as we walked across the dining room.

  “How about Floyd?”

  “He’s much better. Awake and talking.”

  Mike pushed open the door and we stepped out into the cool morning air of the screened-in porch.

  “What does he say about last night? Has he been able to explain what happened?”

  Mike rolled his eyes and said that Floyd had an explanation, yes, but because of his present condition it wasn’t fully reliable. “According to Floyd, he was in the kitchen making himself a sandwich when he heard a woman outside screaming.”

  “Nina?”

  “Yep. He says he heard the scream and grabbed his gun. He found Nina at the pool, where she had just pulled Troy’s body out the water. She was trying to do CPR on him, but Floyd had to convince her it was no use because Troy was already quite dead.”

  Picturing Troy’s open eyes, I knew exactly what he meant.

  “Floyd says he and Nina were arguing about it when they heard a strange noise coming from the other side of the fence. They turned to look, and that’s when a big black creature rose up out of the brush and emitted a burst of fire. Floyd doesn’t remember anything after that.”

  “He still says it was big and black?” I asked. “Yeah, with hollow eyes.”

  Trying to picture it, I couldn’t help but shudder.

  “Don’t get too worked up just yet, Sienna. Floyd tested positive for drugs. I’ve seen people on hallucinogens who thought their vacuum cleaner was a giraffe, so I’m not putting much stock in his story. Floyd may think that’s what he saw, but the information isn’t very reliable, given that he was quite high at the time.”

  “Which drug? Was it Ativan, like you suspected?”

  “The info isn’t that specific yet. So far, tests show some sort of tranquilizer, so it could be. It’ll be a few days before we know for sure.”

  “What does Floyd say? Does his doctor have him on tranquilizers? Nerve medication? Something like that?”

  “No, Floyd swears he’s never taken anything stronger than aspirin his whole life.”

  “So he was drugged by someone else,” I said, knowing all too well how easily that could happen.

  “Possibly.”

  “How about Nina? Same drug?”

  “Nina did test positive for the same drug, plus one other.”

  I looked at Mike, waiting. He hesitated a moment, as if he had already divulged more than he should have. Then he spoke.

  “She also had some sort of toxin in her system, the same toxin found in the victim.”

  “Toxin? Do you mean poison? Nina and Troy were definitely poisoned?”

  Mike nodded. “Nina had such a small amount we’re thinking she probably was contaminated when she gave Troy mouth-to-mouth, or possibly from the water in the pool as she pulled him out. In any event, it doesn’t look like she was exposed to enough of the toxin herself for it to be fatal. But between that and the tranquilizer, she’s still unconscious and may be for a while yet.”

  I turned and looked out at the sweeping lawn, the autumn leaves, the pastoral scene that surrounded us. Poisoned. Amid this paradise, people had been poisoned.

  “So that’s Troy’s official cause of death,” I said, just wanting to understand clearly. “He was poisoned.”

  “Technically, no, but causally, yes.”

  “In English, please?” I asked, turning back toward him.

  Mike explained that Troy’s official cause of death was drowning, but that he had been poisoned first by a central nervous system toxin that caused convulsions, which then caused the drowning.

  “Though why he was in the pool when the convulsions began is anyone’s guess,” he added.

  As I pictured the scene Mike was describing, I suddenly felt faint and had to sit down.
I reached for the nearest chair and lowered myself into it, causing the wicker to squawk and crunch as I did. I exhaled slowly.

  “How did it happen? Where? Who did this to him?”

  Mike sat on the chair across from me and tried to explain what they knew thus far.

  “The ME says it wasn’t cumulative, like someone putting arsenic in his coffee every day. That would point more toward intention, premeditation. This was likely a single acute exposure.”

  “Exposure, how? Through food?” I asked, thinking of the technicians in the kitchen.

  “Probably not. The ME doesn’t think the poison was ingested, but at this point it’s still a possibility. We’re rounding up all open containers on the premises to have them analyzed, just in case.”

  Not wanting to end up like Troy—or Floyd or Nina—myself, I was glad to see all of the food go.

  “The ME says that overexposure to certain pesticides can cause convulsions,” Mike continued. “She thinks Troy was contaminated through direct contact with the skin. He must have received a sudden, lethal exposure to some toxin yesterday afternoon, probably through his hands. The skin there is blistered front and back, plus there are slight trace elements of a chemical powder under his fingernails. Of course, any other residue on his hands would have been washed away in the pool. It’s probably too diluted to show up, but we’re testing the water anyway.”

  “I don’t understand. How did this happen? Was it an accident?”

  “That’s one theory. Judging by the physical evidence and what we’ve been able to figure out about Troy’s day yesterday, it could have had something to do with the tools he was using for his treasure hunt in the grove. Depending on how and where those tools were stored, there’s a good chance he accidentally did it to himself. Maybe he was rooting around in the shed for a shovel and accidentally stuck his hands in a container of concentrated pesticide. Or maybe the shovel itself had inadvertently become coated with a toxic substance while in storage, and then as Troy used it and his palms began to sweat, the moisture helped speed that toxin into his bloodstream. However it happened, our hope is that by taking a thorough look in and around all of the structures on the property, we’ll find the shovel and other digging tools he was using, along with whatever pesticide or hazardous chemical was involved. A team is also searching the grove for pesticide concentrates right now. If we can find the substance that killed him, we might be able piece this puzzle together and rule it an accident.”