Cooking the Books

by Chelsea Thomas

  See-Saw turned away and chewed at her right flank. She had an itch, and she had no patience for this kind of self-indulgence.

  “I know. I’m talking about myself too much. What’s new with you?

  See-Saw turned back, presumably to open up about her own internal struggles. But Miss May burst into the barn and interrupted.

  “There you are, Chelsea! C’mon. Teeny’s rush finally died down. It’s go-time!”

  I laughed. “Go-time?”

  “I was trying a thing. Get over it.”

  Miss May hurried away. I lingered for a moment. Gave See-Saw a nice firm pat on the side of her neck.

  “Wish me luck, See-Saw. I’m about to return to the scene of the crime.”

  See-Saw whinnied, then pooped. I decided it was another gesture of support. Or maybe it was “go-time” for her, too.

  19

  Reservation Rumination

  BY THE TIME MISS MAY, Teeny, and I walked up to the inn, it was almost four-thirty, and the whole place had a creepy vibe that made me feel unsettled and scared.

  The still, gray day had become a windy, gray dusk. Hundred-foot trees rattled. Branches snapped and fell into the pond. Snowdrifts blew off the yard and swirled around us. A forgotten swatch of police tape snagged on a fence post and flapped in the wind.

  Miss May stopped and looked around before we climbed the porch. “Spooky out here.”

  Teeny nodded. “No cars in the lot, either.”

  “Dead bodies aren’t great for business. I know that all too well.” Miss May trudged up the steps and opened the door.

  I hurried inside, looking forward to the warm, cozy atmosphere that Peach was so good at crafting. But the lobby was even more depressing than the parking lot.

  All the lights were off. A sheet hung over the baby grand piano. A half-drunk cup of tea sat forgotten on an end table, lip-stick stain still visible on the rim.

  Teeny crossed to the check-in area. Looked around. Poked her head in the dining room. Came back out to the lobby. “What the heck is going on in here? Why is it so empty?”

  Teeny stood on the first step of the staircase and called up. “Peach? Hello?”

  “Teeny? What are you doing here?” Peach plodded into the living room, wearing a long floral night gown and eating Chinese food straight out of the container. A move I knew all too well.

  Teeny jumped off the stair and hurried to Peach. “Peach! What’s going on here? You closed for the winter or something?”

  Peach took a big, somber bite of lo mein. Chewed. Swallowed. “Everyone checked out the day the dead body showed up. Said the dead guy was haunting the place.”

  Teeny scoffed. “That’s ridiculous! He didn’t even die inside.”

  “That’s what I said.” Peach let out a little burp. “People didn’t seem to care about the semantics.” Peach plopped down in one of her floral armchairs. “I didn’t invest with that Fitz kid, so I thought I’d get out of this unscathed. Turns out I was wrong.”

  I ran my hand across the covered piano. “You haven’t had any new bookings?”

  Peach shook her head. “Someone posted about the body in an online review. I got on there. Issued a forceful reply. Had words. Turns out the more your type ‘No one is haunting my inn!’ in all caps, the more people think you’ve got a haunted inn.”

  “Oh no,” I said.

  “Oh yes.” Peach picked up the receiver on the phone and slammed it down. “Might as well disconnect this damn thing.”

  “People don’t like hanging around a crime scene,” Miss May said. “Same thing happened at the orchard. We were slow for almost a month after the murder. But once we solved it, and the Gazette reported it wasn’t our fault, people came back.”

  Peach looked at the eerie scene out the window. “So you've got to solve this one too, then. For the sake of my business.”

  “That’s why we’re here.” Teeny pulled Peach out of the chair. “Come on. We need to see your records.”

  WHEN PEACH OPENED THE door to her office, three boxes, a toaster, and a tea kettle spilled into the hall.

  Peach kicked the boxes away and stepped inside. “Pardon the mess.”

  “Mess” was a generous word for what most people would categorize as a FEMA-level disaster. I could not see a single square inch of Peach’s office floor. Nor could I see a single square inch of the surface of Peach’s desk. Nor could I spot her computer, her keyboard, or anywhere she might have had records that could have been useful to our investigation.

  Papers, folders, binders and notepads blocked the floor. Enormous sleeves of plastic cups leaned against the window like so many towers of Pisa. Cookie sheets and baking supplies blocked the entrance to the closet. Cute stuffed cows topped every surface, like somehow Peach thought adding a few Holsteins hid the clutter.

  Teeny moved a broken old fax machine onto the floor, which revealed a sliver of a puffy, floral couch. She sat down and took everything in. “Peach. If your guests saw this—”

  “One of them did,” Peach said. “Wrote about it on several stupid Internet review sites.”

  Miss May stayed focused on the task at hand. “Do you think the records might be on a computer or something?”

  “I do, May. Thank you for the brilliant idea. Too bad I have no clue where that damn machine is.” Peach shuffled papers around on her desk. “I hate that damn laptop! The desktop was impossible to lose. It was always on top of the desk!”

  Peach got down on her hands and knees, moved what appeared to be a badminton set, and looked under the couch. “Not under here.”

  “What about print-outs?” I asked. “Or a guest book? Do you have your guests sign in? Anything like that?”

  “Nope,” Peach said. “We’re going to need to find that computer if I’m going to help you at all.”

  OK, not to honk my own horn, but I happened to be the best person at finding lost things on the face of the planet. I first realized I had the skill in elementary school, when I found Judd Anderson’s missing retainer all the way at the bottom of the dumpster. After that, I became the go-to girl whenever anyone lost anything. Yes, usually it was retainers, and that was gross. But I had also located several missing cats, and even a pet turtle. As an adult, I once stayed at a bar until four in the morning to help a stranger find her keys. When I finally found them, she had already called a locksmith. But I didn’t care. I had solved the case of the missing keys, and it had felt good.

  As Peach crawled around her office looking for her laptop, I wanted to help. But I also didn’t want to make her feel bad about the mess. Any other day, my fear of stepping on Peach’s toes would have won out. But I had just talked to See-Saw about being less of a people-pleaser. So I got on the floor and crawled around right beside Peach.

  “I can find it,” I said. “I’m great at finding missing stuff.”

  “She certainly is.” Miss May cleared another spot on the couch and plopped down. “Found at least four hundred retainers in elementary school.”

  Most people think that the secret to finding lost things is “re-tracing your steps.” That helps. But it’s not too helpful in situations like the one we were in, where you’re looking for something on someone else’s behalf. So instead, I liked to focus on the minute details of the search, just like I would with my interior design.

  Finding something required a sharp eye, but not just for the object itself. Any lamp out of place, any crooked photo on the wall, any couch cushion slightly askew could be a clue. When I really hunkered down to find a lost item, I treated the whole room as a puzzle and the item as the missing piece.

  This strategy was harder in Peach’s office. I’d scoured dumpsters that were more organized.

  My big breakthrough came when I realized we shouldn’t be looking on the floor. Even Peach wouldn’t leave something as valuable as a laptop lying around waiting to be stepped on. Also, Peach needed to access the computer too often to cover it up with papers on the desk. So I took to the high ground and climbed
onto a chair to get a bird's-eye view.

  Et voila! The laptop rested atop the bookshelf, which was the only clear surface in the room.

  “I found it!” I smiled. “On top of the bookshelf!”

  Peach reached up — she’d gotten the tall genes in Teeny’s family — and grabbed the laptop. “I always put it there, and I never remember! Thank you, Chelsea.”

  I grabbed Miss May’s shoulder to steady myself and climbed off the chair. “It’s what I do.” It was hard not to sound too self-satisfied, so I let it ride. “They didn’t call me the ‘Patron Saint of Lost Retainers’ for nothing.”

  “That’s a weird nickname.” Peach opened the laptop. “Did the other kids really call you that?”

  “Some of them did.” I flushed. “But mostly, it was just me. In my head.”

  Peach scoffed, then started up the computer. The device took a few minutes to boot up, and when it finally turned on, I gasped.

  The virtual desktop was even more cluttered than Peach’s real desktop. There were a thousand little icons and files, stacked every which way. And there didn't seem to be rhyme or reason to any of it.

  Teeny groaned. “Peach! What’s with the files?”

  “I know it looks bad.” Peach clicked around. “But I have a system.”

  Teeny straightened the books on Peach’s shelf. “Hope it’s not the same system you use to keep track of your things.”

  “It’s not.” Peach click-clicked, and a few seconds later, a document popped up on screen. “Here are all my reservations for the past six months.” Peach stood and slogged towards the room’s exit. “If you need me, I’ll be in my chair, eating my noodles.”

  Miss May called after Peach. “Thank you, Peach!”

  Peach grunted and shuffled out.

  Then Miss May cleared a little space and sat down at the computer. “Now let’s take a look at this reservation file.” She scrolled through Peach’s spreadsheet. “Wow. It’s...meticulous. She’s got names, addresses, room numbers. She even has a little section with notes on each guest. ‘Loves the color blue.’ ‘Puts cinnamon in coffee.’ No wonder people love this place.”

  Teeny smiled, proud. “Hospitality runs in the family, I guess.” She scooted to the edge of the couch. “Any notes on our guy? Vlad?”

  Miss May kept scrolling. “Getting there, getting there... Ah! Here he is. But... what the heck?”

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  “Peach has a full write-up on every customer who’s been in here since summer. But for this guy, it only says ‘Vlad.’ No last name. No credit card number. No cinnamon in his coffee.”

  “That can’t be right.” I circled behind Miss May, commandeered the mouse and clicked around. Miss May was not mistaken. The only information on Vlad was his first name. Not even a last initial. “Wow. That’s really it,” I conceded.

  “Well, that’s a dead end then. Maybe we should go ask Peach if she remembers anything else,” Teeny stood and turned to leave, but Miss May remained fixated on the computer.

  “Hold on a sec,” Miss May said. “Let’s see who else was staying here around that time.” She scrolled one line at a time. “Don’t know them. Don’t know them. Don’t know them. Wait!” Miss May bolt upright, then turned to me and Teeny, eyes wide. “Florence Fitz booked a room here last month.”

  Teeny rushed up to look at the laptop. There it was, in black and white. Florence Fitz. “That’s weird. Who stays at a BnB in their own town?” Teeny frowned.

  “That’s a thing now,” I said. “It’s called a stay-cation.”

  “But why would I want to stay in Pine Grove when I could go to Barbuda?” Teeny held up her hands in confusion.

  “Will you two hush up? I’m investigating here.” Miss May moved from column to column, looking for more information on Florence Fitz. “It says here she requested two cups of coffee.”

  “Maybe Charles was with her.”

  “That’s true.” Miss May looked up at me. “Or...”

  I inspected the file. “Or she was with another guy?”

  “Not sure.” Miss May snapped the laptop closed and stood up. “But we're going to find out.”

  20

  Noodles of Clues

  ONCE WE EXTRICATED ourselves from the back office, we asked Peach about Florence’s summer visit to the inn. Peach answered without looking up from her cup of noodles.

  “When she checked in, she was by herself.”

  Miss May sat on the chair beside Peach. “So she stayed here alone all weekend?”

  Peach looked up with half-chewed noodle in her mouth. “I said she checked in alone.” Peach slurped down the noodle and got to work selecting her next bite. “I thought I heard her talking to someone in her room that night. I assumed it was Charles.”

  “Makes sense.” Miss May looked out the window. “Did she stay here often over the years?”

  “You mean like for a stay-cation?” Peach cracked open a soda and took a sip. “Nope. Last month was the first time she booked a room here. Ever.”

  “And you can’t say for certain who she was with?”

  “I’d rather not repeat myself, May. If you haven't noticed, I’ve got noodles to eat!”

  “And they look delicious,” Miss May said. “It’s just... If Flo were with Charles, it could be normal. And if she was with another man...well, that's more suspicious.”

  Peach slammed her cup of noodles down on the table. “Are you done here? Good. I’d like to stop discussing murder at my inn.”

  Miss May pressed on. “Actually, I was also wondering if you had any more information on the dead guy. Your file only has his first name, ‘Vlad,’ but every other guest has a ton of information.”

  “Do you think it's possible that his first name is the only information he shared, May? Could that perhaps have something to do with the fact that he was a rotten crook? Have you considered that the man who turned up dead in my rose bush didn't pull me into the sitting room for a fireside chat?”

  Teeny glared at her sister. “Peach. Be nice!”

  “No, Teeny,” Miss May said. “She’s right. I’m asking stupid questions.” Miss May half-bowed to Peach in apology. “We'll see ourselves out.”

  “See yourself over to the trash first.” Peach handed Miss May the now-empty cup of noodles. “I’m done here.”

  BY THE TIME WE LEFT the inn, night had fallen. Hard. There was a new moon that night, so Pine Grove was pitch black, and the spooky vibes I had gotten earlier had turned full-on creepy.

  The sounds of the night were like a “Greatest Hits” album of ominous ambient noise.

  Howling wind? Check. Random whistling sound? Check. Branches snapping? Check. Sirens in the distance? Check. The sound of a crying baby, abandoned somewhere in its bassinet? I swear I heard that too.

  My chest got all squishy with fear, but Miss May didn't seem to notice the creepy noises at all. Even if she did, she and Teeny were way too deep in problem-solving mode to bother with nerves.

  “We need more clues.” Miss May kicked a pinecone as she walked.

  Teeny kicked the pinecone a little further ahead. “Hey. Peach tried!”

  Miss May scoffed, and Teeny glared at her. I tried to keep the conversation on track. “At least we gained a little information,” I said. “Florence Fitz stayed at the Dragonfly a month ago.”

  “I guess,” Miss May said. “But I'm frustrated. Tom Gigley hired me for a job, and I’m not getting it done.”

  “It’s not my sister’s fault!” Teeny pouted.

  “Will you stop, Teeny? I never said it was Peach's fault.”

  “Stop yelling at me!”

  “I'm not yelling! You are!”

  Truth is, they were both yelling. So I tried to smooth things over with an idea.

  “Maybe we should sleep on it,” I said. “A theory might pop into one of our heads tomorrow. How about we reconvene at Grandma’s in the morning to talk it over?”

  “Grandma’s is closed tomorrow morning f
or Charles Fitz's wake,” Teeny said. “We’ll open after, so everyone can come by and talk about the guy like he was some kind of saint.”

  “Teeny!” Miss May said.

  “Sorry. May he rest in peace. I’m just annoyed.”

  “What if we use the wake as a fact-finding mission?” I asked. “If we go, we can suss out whether Charles was with Florence at the hotel that weekend. And if he wasn’t, perhaps we can figure out who was?”

  Miss May stopped walking. “Actually...that's a great idea.”

  Teeny and I replied in unison. “It is?”

  “I’m not saying it’s the most respectful plan. But everyone in town will be at that wake. All we have to do is find the right person and get them talking.”

  Teeny scrunched up her face. “I don't know. It’s the man’s funeral. Even if he wasn’t a saint...”

  “I hear you, Teeny,” Miss May said. “And under normal circumstances, I would agree. But if we don’t sort this out, someone else might turn up dead. Soon. So investigating at the wake, in some ways, is the most considerate thing we can do.”

  “That's a good point,” Teeny kicked another pinecone. “The killer is still out there. Someone else could die at any moment.”

  “So,” Miss May said. “What do you think?”

  “I think Chelsea needs a nice black dress for tomorrow,” Teeny said. “Do you have one, or do you want to borrow one of mine?”

  WHEN WE ARRIVED AT the wake, I expected attendance to be sparse. But as we walked up to the funeral home, I realized I had been wrong. The entire town was in attendance. Whether or not Fitz owed them money, they were all there. And it seemed like they all wanted to pay genuine respects.

  I straightened the too-tight dress I had borrowed from Teeny. “Look at all these people. It’s like the death of a rockstar or something.”

  Miss May took my elbow as we walked. “You haven’t been to a funeral in Pine Grove in too long.” Miss May let out a deep sigh. “I doubt you remember. But when your parents...”