Cozy (Stanley Hastings Mystery, #14)

by Parnell Hall

  We did. He wore yellow shorts and a white T-shirt with the name Frankie on the pocket. Frankie was standing with his hands in his pockets and his head cocked to one side. He wasn’t winking, but his eyes were bright, and he had a sort of enigmatic smile.

  “Hey,” I said. “I think our frog’s better than their frog.”

  “Don’t start with me,” Alice said.

  “Did you know this when you booked the room?”

  Alice didn’t answer, just opened the door and went in.

  I followed, lugging the suitcase.

  It was a simple room. A double bed. A dresser. A chair. A closet and a small bath. The floor was wood, and there was wallpaper on the walls. A simple floral design. The only hanging picture was a landscape. That was a relief. I’d half expected to see poker-playing frogs. But no, the room was simple and spare and—

  “Hey,” I said. “Where’s the TV?”

  “Stanley, this is not a motel. It’s an inn. They don’t have TV in the rooms.”

  “Sure they do.”

  “No, they don’t. Don’t be silly. Nobody goes to an inn to watch television.”

  “But—”

  “Does the guidebook say this place has TV?”

  “It doesn’t say one way or another.”

  “There you are.”

  “But most of the inns have TV. I can show you.”

  “What’s the big deal?”

  “Bed-and-breakfasts don’t.”

  “Are you going to start that again?”

  “This is listed as a bed-and-breakfast.”

  “Stanley, what’s the big deal about television?”

  The big deal about television was I’m a Red Sox fan, and living in New York City all I get are Yankee and Mets games. For me, getting to see the Sox was one of the main attractions of vacationing in New England. They were playing the Blue Jays this afternoon, and I must confess I’d been looking forward to getting up to the room and switching it on.

  “Well,” I said, “there’s a Red Sox game.”

  “Now?” Alice said.

  “Yeah. It’s on now.”

  “So go watch.”

  “Huh?”

  “They’ll have a TV in the inn. Go watch the game and stop being such a cranky puss.”

  “But—”

  “Go on, go on. I’ll be fine. You go watch the game, and I’ll unpack for us.”

  With Alice being so nice it was hard to point out that a TV in the inn wasn’t nearly the same thing as a TV in the room. I was still horribly disappointed with the whole affair, and couldn’t shake the nagging suspicion that I had been somehow manipulated into a bed-and-breakfast against my will.

  On the ground floor I couldn’t resist checking out the other rooms. Unless they happened to have televisions, their main advantage seemed to be that one could stand upright in the hallway outside ’em.

  Of course, each room had a frog. For my money, Felix, green pants, room nine, looked rather smug, while Fredericka, pink dress, room ten, looked rather coy.

  I let myself out of the front door of East Pond and briefly considered checking out the frogs in the West Pond building opposite.

  Very briefly.

  I headed for the main pond, or building, or whatever, in quest of the TV.

  I figured the most likely place would be the bar. Naturally, I figured wrong. No one actually sat at the bar, it merely dispensed alcohol for people to carry out onto the porch. Not that there were a lot of people out there—in fact, the only ones were the couple that I had observed earlier buying drinks.

  While I stood there looking stupid, halfway between the bar and the porch, Louise suddenly appeared behind me, which was a bit disconcerting—I had not seen her make an entrance, and there did not appear to be any door.

  “Can I help you?” she asked.

  “Is there a television?”

  “Oh, yes, of course.” She pointed. “Through the living room, and it’s the door on the right.”

  “You have cable?”

  “Sure do. Seventy-two channels.”

  That was a relief. I had been envisioning a worthless pair of rabbit ears, or some ancient antenna on the roof I’d have to climb up and try to turn.

  “Do you get NESN?”

  “New England Sports Network? We sure do.”

  “Great,” I said. “Thanks a lot.”

  I went through the living room, which was empty but which featured a number of chairs and couches of which Alice could tell you the period but which I could only classify as old, and into the TV room.

  Which was almost empty.

  There was one occupant. A young girl, maybe five or six. She had blond curls, a pink dress, and a Barbie doll.

  But she wasn’t playing with the Barbie doll.

  She was watching TV.

  Nickelodeon.

  The children’s channel.

  She heard me, turned, looked up. From her expression, I must have impressed her as that man her mother had taken great pains to warn her about.

  I smiled ruefully, beat a hasty retreat back to the room, where Alice was arranging clothes in one of the dresser drawers.

  “What’s the matter?” she said. “No TV?”

  “There’s a TV. It’s being watched by a six-year-old child. I didn’t ask her if she might prefer baseball.”

  “Were her parents there?”

  “Not so you could notice.”

  “Then they can’t have left her long. I’d try back in a little while.”

  “The game’ll be over in a little while.”

  “Don’t be a grouch. Go do something else.”

  “Like what?”

  “There’s a swimming pool and a putting green.”

  “How do you know?”

  “It’s in the guidebook.”

  “What guidebook?”

  “Not the guidebook. The directory. The brochure. The list of services.” Alice pointed. “There. On the table.”

  I picked up what proved to be a two-page booklet, or four-page, if you were counting sides. On page three, or the front of page two, depending on how you figured, was a listing of recreational services. These included a TV room, swimming pool, and putting green.

  “There’s also shuffleboard,” I said.

  “Yes, I know.”

  “Would you care for a game?”

  “I’m not sure we’re old enough.”

  “We could use phony IDs.”

  “I’m still unpacking,” Alice said. “Why don’t you go swim or putt?”

  That seemed better than watching her unpack. I put on my swimsuit, went out to look for the pool. It wasn’t near East Pond, and it wasn’t near West Pond either. But from there I could see a pool where South Pond would have been, just around the far side of the inn. On my way I detoured past the TV room, but, as expected, Nickelodeon was still on. I gave up on the Red Sox as a lost cause, and headed out to the pool.

  It was sunny and warm, and I would have expected the pool to be crowded, but apparently the Blue Frog Ponds didn’t have that many guests. Uncharitably, it occurred to me that was probably due to bad word of mouth.

  The pool was surrounded by a wooden fence. I opened the gate, went inside.

  The pool was not entirely unoccupied. There was one person there. The woman was sunbathing. She was lying on her stomach on one of the lounge chairs.

  She was nude.

  At least, she looked nude. There was no bikini strap across her back. And that certainly was her bare behind. Good lord, she must have thought she had the place to herself. Maybe I should leave.

  Then I saw the string around her waist. She was wearing a thong bikini. At least the bottom of it. And she’d probably just untied the top. So, for all intents and purposes, she was a fully dressed sunbather, and I could just ignore her and enjoy my swim.

  I dropped my towel on a chair, kicked off my flip-flops, and pulled off my shirt. Stepped to the edge of the pool and dove in.

  When I came up, it was only
natural to see if the sunbather had reacted to my presence.

  She had.

  The young woman had raised her head to see who had joined her in the pool enclosure.

  It was her. You know. The young, attractive, Swedish brochure, blond, crying hiker from Champney Falls.

  And she smiled and said, “Hi.”

  I didn’t want to talk to her. When we’d found her crying behind the big rock, Alice couldn’t help whispering, “Looks like you broke her heart.” And here she was, half naked, alone with me in the swimming pool enclosure, not half an hour after we’d checked in, and I could imagine what Alice would make of that.

  But I couldn’t be out and out rude, could I?

  So I smiled and said, “Hi.”

  “You’re new here, aren’t you?”

  “Just checked in.”

  “I thought so. I hadn’t seen you here before.”

  The young woman had craned her neck to talk to me, revealing that she was indeed lying on an untied bikini top.

  I pulled myself out of the pool and sat on the edge. Not to get a better view, merely to allow her a more comfortable position.

  Honest.

  “So, you’ve been here for a while?” I said.

  “Since yesterday. It’s nice, but there’s not much to do.”

  “Except swim.”

  “Yes.” She smiled, then put on a mock pout. “But, you know what? I don’t really like the water. I just want to get a tan.”

  Oh, dear.

  That was my cue, if ever I’d heard one, to compliment her on her body. Which would suddenly, instantly, and irrevocably have transformed the conversation from casual to flirting. Already, I was acutely aware of the fact the young lady had avoided the use of the pronoun we. From her conversation, the young man did not exist, and she was staying there alone.

  I was even more acutely aware of the fact that I had not mentioned Alice. Which I certainly wanted to do. It just seemed so clunky to say, “Yes, I’m here with my wife.”

  On the other hand, it would have been easy for me to say, “Yes, we just checked in.” Only I hadn’t done it. In light of which, it was impossible to deny this girl’s allure.

  She actually seemed quite innocent. Aside from being half naked. There was a warm, puppy-friendly quality about her.

  While avoiding the compliment, I didn’t swim off. Instead, I deflected her remark with a joke. “You’ve been sunbathing since yesterday?”

  She giggled at that, feeble joke though it was. “No, I went hiking. At some waterfall or other. I forget the name.”

  I could have told her. But if she hadn’t recognized me from Champney Falls, I wasn’t about to remind her. Embarrass her with the realization I’d seen her crying behind the rock.

  “Yes,” I said, “I’ll probably be doing some hiking too. Well, enjoy your tan.”

  I slipped into the pool and swam off, aware of the fact I’d, once again, neglected to mention Alice. It occurred to me life was incredibly complicated. At least mine was.

  I swam to the other side of the pool, pulled myself out, and toweled off. I noticed the young woman was no longer watching me, had gone back to working on her tan. She certainly made lying in a deck chair look desirable. I lay back in my deck chair, closed my eyes.

  It was a gorgeous day. The sun was warm, but there was a cooling breeze. Lying there felt great. I was tired after hiking all day. It occurred to me I might fall asleep. I don’t think I actually did, but rather drifted in a sort of blissful, semiconscious state, where there weren’t any responsibilities, or decisions, or cares, or woes, and everything was kind of lazy, carefree, sunny, and bright.

  “Look who’s here.”

  The words snapped me back to reality. I opened my eyes to find Alice standing next to my deck chair.

  Great. Look who’s here, indeed. I know who’s here, Alice. I didn’t invite her, I didn’t know she was coming, I didn’t expect to see her, and I’m not going to take kindly to being blamed for it.

  I was mulling over in my mind just how much of that I wanted to put into words, when Alice was suddenly bumped aside by something floppy and brown, and the next thing I knew I was being licked unmercifully again by the large, sandwich-eating dog.

  6.

  “SHE’S FROM BOSTON,” Alice said.

  “Oh?”

  “Well, just outside it, actually. She has a house with a yard, which is perfect for Prince. She said she wouldn’t want to keep a dog in the city.”

  “Certainly not that dog,” I said.

  “She’s divorced, runs an antique shop on Boylston Avenue. Her husband left her for a younger woman. He’s a doctor, she’s a manicurist.”

  “She runs an antique shop and gives manicures?”

  “Don’t be dumb. The younger woman’s a manicurist. The one her husband left her for.”

  “Uh-huh,” I said. “And how long ago did this happen?”

  “I’m not sure,” Alice said, and looked disappointed at herself at having failed to glean this bit of information in the full fifteen minutes she’d had talking to the woman while I was changing for dinner.

  Alice and I were seated at a booth in the dining room of the Blue Frog Ponds. I had been more than a little reluctant to dine there, figuring the menu would be completely inedible on the one hand, or feature blue frog legs on the other, but Alice had told me not to fear. Whatever else the Blue Frog Ponds might be, its dining room was famous, listed in the guidebook as a four-star restaurant. Or, as Alice explained, it wasn’t just for the guests, it was a place people actually came to eat.

  I couldn’t argue with that. There were two booths and about a dozen tables in the dining room, and almost all were full. We owed our booth to Alice’s foresight in checking out the dining room on her way to the pool and making a reservation. I could see why she had. The booths were semiprivate, partitioned alcoves for two, with plush, cushioned benches, and a table of some dark wood or other of which I’m sure Alice would know the name. All in all, a very pleasant place to dine.

  I looked at my menu. “Any tips on what to eat?”

  “Huh?”

  “Did the guidebook make any recommendations?”

  “It said pay attention to the specials.”

  “I don’t see any specials.”

  “Of course not. The waitress tells you the specials.”

  “So where’s our waitress?”

  “They’re busy. I’m sure she’ll be right over.”

  Our booth, though semiprivate, had a clear view of the dining room. Both the waitresses I could see were indeed busy. One of them was young and somewhat pretty, though not in the blond, Swedish, sunbather, hiker category. The other was middle-aged, and looked rather severe.

  Naturally, that’s the one we got. She strode up, whipped out a pad and pencil, and said, “Would you like to hear the specials?” Her tone implied if we didn’t, we would be taken outside and shot.

  “Yes, please,” Alice said.

  Our waitress had black hair streaked with gray, pulled back into a bun. The expression on her face gave the impression the bun was way too tight. “Very well,” she said. “Our fish today is mako shark, with the chef’s special sauce, mint potatoes, and fresh corn off the cob. We also have prime rib with horseradish. It comes with baked potato and mixed vegetables.”

  “What do you recommend?” Alice asked.

  “The shark is excellent. But if you’re really hungry, the prime rib is thick.”

  “I’ll have that,” I said.

  “And I’ll try the shark,” Alice said.

  “Would you like anything to start?”

  “Are there any specials for appetizers?”

  She shook her head. “There’s a wide variety on the menu. Our barbecued ribs are famous.” She cocked an eye at me. “But it’s a large portion. You won’t want to order it with the prime rib.”

  Damn. I’d been about to, and now I couldn’t. I had half a mind to order it, just to show her. But I wasn’t going to win A
lice’s heart by picking a fight my first night there.

  “Maybe just a house salad,” I said.

  She nodded. “Good choice. Now, you, with the shark, might want something more substantial.”

  “I’ll try the scampi.”

  “Fine. And a house salad?”

  “Sold.”

  “Can I get you anything to drink?”

  Alice ordered a white wine, and I ordered a Diet Coke. From the look on the waitress’ face I might as well have ordered poison, but she wrote it down and went away.

  “Cheerful,” I said.

  “I’m sure she’s perfectly pleasant,” Alice said. “They’re just very busy.”

  “Even so.”

  “I bet she smiles when she brings us the drinks.”

  She didn’t, but I scored no points in the matter, because our drinks were actually brought to the table by a boy who looked too young to be doing it. Whether he was a waiter, or a busboy, or even the bartender, I had no idea, but if he’d shown up in my bar I’d have carded him. Anyway, he brought the drinks to the table, asked which was which, and at least had the decency not to sneer when I claimed the Diet Coke.

  Alice took a sip of wine, said, “So anyway, she seems very nice.”

  “The waitress?”

  “No, not the waitress. The woman with the dog. You know, that dog likes you.”

  “He liked my sandwich.”

  “You never should have given it to him.”

  “I didn’t expect to see him again. What is she doing here?”

  “Hiking in the mountains.”

  “No, I mean here. At this bed-and-breakfast.”

  “It’s an inn.”

  “Fine. What’s she doing at this inn?”

  “What do you mean, what’s she doing here? She’s staying here.”

  “Yeah, but why here? Did she follow us?”

  “Well, of course not. Why would she follow us?”

  “I don’t know. We just wound up in the same place.”

  “Maybe so, but she certainly didn’t follow us. She’s been here since yesterday.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes, of course, really.”

  “Then what was she doing at Champney Falls?”

  “Hiking.”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “But what?”

  “You mean she went there to hike?”