Worst Laid Plans (A Maddox Storm Mystery Book 1) (3 page)

“Don’t be precocious,” Mom chided. “First Beatrix, then Elna and Martha. They should be ashamed of themselves.”

Thoroughly confused, I looked to Dad for answers.

“Jeremy Windsor bought the old Mason Creek place,” Dad supplied unhelpfully.

Wintry fingers caressed my spine. Probably a stray ghost from Mason Creek. We’d spent many an idle summer afternoon biking over to the crumbling Victorian just other side the valley, but to my knowledge no one had ever won the dare and crossed that threshold. What Mason Creek had to do with the current hip replacement fever, however, was beyond me.

“Jeremy Windsor?” I scratched my brain, came up empty. “Is he a newcomer?”

“An old-comer,” Mom informed me. She put her fork down and fetched a copy of the Silver Firs Gazette, dated three months ago, I noticed, as she slapped it down in front of me.

A grainy black and white photo of a clean-cut handsome blond guy posing in the vintage Met’s button-down jersey splashed the front page.

I scanned the headline and the first couple of paragraphs.

HOMEGROWN METS SUPERSTAR RETURNS TO THE ROOST

Our very own Jeremy Windsor will once again grace our humble streets. He sold his successful sports agency earlier this year and is all set to invest his future in Silver Firs. Renovations are due to begin on Mason Creek in the summer and he hopes to move in before Christmas.

When asked the pertinent question, Mr Windsor had this to say. “It’s been nearly fifty years and I’ve had a good run. It’s time for me to settle down and I wouldn’t want to do that anywhere else but in Silver Firs.”

Inside sources confirm Mr Windsor has never been married. When asked if he’d left a sweetheart back home whom he hoped to settle down with, Mr Windsor had no comment.

I raised my head to look at Mom. “Did you know him?”

“Apparently he left Silver Firs at the age of twenty-three, long before my time.” She stacked our empty plates and carried them to the sink. “So far I know, he hasn’t been back home since.”

I did the math, came up with nearly seventy-three years of age plus half a dozen spinster Blue Rinse Ladies. “For goodness sake, are you saying they’ve all spent the last fifty years pining for this guy?”

Mom turned from the sink. “Speaking of marriage—”

“We weren’t.”

“It’s rude to interrupt, honey.”

“Marge,” Dad warned, “let the girl be. It’s not our place to interfere.”

“Oh, hush yourself.” Mom crossed her arms and frowned at him. “There’s a fine line between interfering and helping—”

“And you wouldn’t know what it looked like if it bit you on the—”

“Henry Jacob!” Mom gasped.

Dad dropped his shoulders, instantly contrite. “Sorry, dear.”

“All I’m asking is that you and Joe talk,” Mom said to me. “Before this little misunderstanding grows into a crater.”

“I know for a fact you made a second lemon meringue pie,” Dad deflected. “Don’t be shy with it, Marge, we could all do with some cheering up.”

“Maddox is too distraught to eat.”

My mom didn’t know me, not at all. “I’ve saved some space for pie,” I piped up eagerly.

Her eyes found mine. “Are you sure, honey? That poor Heather Ottenburgh withered away to almost nothing when her marriage fell apart last year,” she said wistfully, her gaze running down my over-sized tee.

I’d never be skinny and I’d learned to be okay with that. I tended to fluctuate between a healthy size ten and a slightly healthier size twelve, depending on my self-will power in any given week. I’d squeezed into my size tens this morning and unfortunately that was as much as I’d ever whither.

“There’s nothing wrong with Maddie’s figure,” Dad said thickly.

“Of course there isn’t,” Mom told him, then to me, “But even perfection can be improved on, that’s all I’m saying.”

Suddenly my jeans felt a size too small. I squirmed uncomfortably in my own skin, something I hadn’t done in years.
Thanks, Joseph McMurphy, for that knock to my self-confidence. You’re the gift that just keeps on giving.

“Enough,” Dad barked, shooting up from the table to glare down on Mom. “This is the last thing Maddie needs when her husband has just left her for a younger woman!”

“Oh, dear.” Mom went white as a sheet and sank back against the counter. “Oh, dear, oh, dear…”

Dad dropped heavily into his seat and muttered a miserable, “Sorry, pumpkin,” to me.

“It’s okay, you held out longer than I expected,” I reassured him with a sigh. “For the record, though, Chintilly may be prettier and skinnier than me, but she is
not
younger.”

I wasn’t privy to her precise age, but I’d guess she was closer to thirty-four than my own twenty-four.

With one last, “Oh, dear,” Mom pulled herself together. She opened the fridge and brought out a pie dish topped with creamy peaks of meringue. Maybe she knew me better than I’d thought.

And if you’re thinking I’ve surely lost my appetite by now, then you’re not and never have been a comfort eater.

Mom served up the pie, waited until I’d savored my first bite, then she leant in across the table and clasped her hand over mine. “Are you absolutely sure Joe’s left you?”

I flicked my eyes toward the ceiling. “I’m not making this up, Mom.”

“I know, but could it just be a…a fling?” she said hopefully.

“Would that make a difference?” I spluttered. “Are you suggesting I go back to him and pretend nothing happened? I can’t. Even if Joe wants me back, I could never stay with him after this.”

“I suppose not.” Mom sat back and folded her hands on the table in front of her. “But you’re not considering divorce, are you?”

“Of course not,” I snapped sarcastically. “If I ever meet someone and fall in love again, we’ll just live in sin happily ever after.”

“Don’t use that tongue with your mother,” Dad admonished, taking an uncustomary firm stand. “And that’s enough, Marge. This is Maddie’s decision and we’ll support her no matter what she decides.”

He was right.

On both counts.

This was hard on Mom. ‘People’ did not divorce, at least not on her side of the family. “I’m sorry for snapping. You’re not the one I’m mad at.”

I loved my parents to bits, but they were best taken in small doses and preferably never at the same time as a crisis.

On that note, I forced out a smile and was about to say my goodbyes when I remembered we hadn’t even touched on the topic of Hollow House yet.

As much as I wanted to leave this conversation for another day, they were sure to notice when I left via the front door instead of up the stairs to my bedroom. If I couldn’t sneak in half a mile outside Silver Firs, there was no way in hell I’d be able to sneak out right beneath their noses.

I pushed my plate across to Mom and sighed. “I’m going to need another slice of pie.”

TWO

I was up bright and early the next morning.

It had occurred to me last night, just as I was drifting off to sleep, that I didn’t know what time Hollow House served breakfast, if they even did, and Jenna was expecting to be fed.

But I wasn’t a guest here.

I didn’t need to follow all the usual rules.

There was no reason we couldn’t have breakfast anytime we wanted, anywhere we wanted (like, say, on the terrace), even if I had to make it myself. Even if it was a paltry spread of toast and coffee, since that was as far as my culinary skills stretched.

I shimmied into jeans and a strappy tee, then sucked in my stomach and gave my profile a cursory glance in the mirror.

Not too shabby.

Take that, Joseph McMurphy.

Self-esteem reclaimed, I averted my eyes before releasing my stomach with the breath that’d sucked it in, and slipped into a pair of platform wedge black boots. A couple extra inches of height shed pounds faster than a cabbage soup diet.

Grabbing a lightweight jacket, I stepped out into the passage with a spring in my step.

The upper landing of the north and south wings converged to sweep down a magnificent stairway into the double-volume front parlor. Except for the landscape oil at the head of the staircase—our lake nestled at the foothills and struck by a full moon—the wall was strung with formal portraits of Hollow family members through the ages.

The lower halves of the walls were wainscoted and only slightly scratched. The heavy soles of my boots clonked on the carpet that was worn thin in places, practically threadbare in others.

I hitched my jacket over one shoulder and trailed a hand along the polished mahogany banister as I descended, my eyes lifting to the frescoed ceiling. Hollow House was still a formidable masterpiece. Nothing that new carpets and a lick of paint couldn’t cure.

At the bottom of the stairs, I paused to get my bearings. I hadn’t been given the grand tour. The lounge fed off to my left; the semi-circular reception desk near the front entrance; two closed doors on my right. I headed down the dimly lit hallway that ran alongside the staircase, figuring the kitchen would be near the back.

The house creaked and sighed around me, as if stretching beneath the warmth of the morning sun after a chilly night, but there were no other sounds to indicate anyone else was up and about.

The solid white swing door at the end of the hallway looked promising. I pushed through, then froze and let rip a shriek like my blood was curling.

Which it was.

The door bumped me a step deeper into the room on the rebound. I shook my limbs loose and snapped my mouth shut.

Even if her face hadn’t been turned toward me, I would have recognized that pale pink net covering her stern silver bun anywhere.

What on earth was my old Home Ed teacher doing here?

Sitting at the kitchen table, cheek resting on arms folded over the table, fast asleep. Or maybe passed out. A dainty tea cup nestled on a matching saucer at her elbow, but that didn’t necessarily hold tea. She hadn’t stirred, and I’d shrieked loud enough to wake the dead.

I scowled at Ms Daggon, thinking dark, bitter thoughts as I eyed the full apron tied at her waist and around her neck. I hadn’t met any of the inn staff yet. Actually, I was surprised to find we had full-time, live-in staff. Any person other than the dragon lady, and I’d have been delighted to discover we had a resident cook.

“One of us has to go,” I muttered beneath my breath. What the devil had Mr Hollow been thinking, stealing her away from Silver Firs High?

If I’d known my sweet revenge came stocked with Ms Daggon, I would have left Joe’s money in the bank and wished him a carefree divorce.

My nostrils twitched. Something was burning? My gaze swept over the knotted pine wall cabinets and matching counters to a state-of-the-art stainless steel triple-door oven unit. The top was laid with six electric stove plates and a large gas grill that was rapidly disappearing into a haze.

Goodness, something
was
burning. Tendrils of smoke escaped the rubber seals of the middle door.

“Ms Daggon!” I shouted as I hurried over to the oven. Only one knob wasn’t in the off position and I quickly remedied that, then I yanked open the oven door.

Big mistake.

Black smoke billowed out to engulf me, choking my lungs and coating my tongue with an acrid taste.

I flipped my jacket off my shoulder and flapped madly.

The smoke wafted upward and I only had time to glimpse a tray of charred buns through the thinning haze before an emergency sprinkler kicked in and showered me with frigid water.

The smoke alarm went off, bleating an unholy piercing shrill that reverberated between my ears.

I stopped flapping and swiped the back of my hand over my eyes. Smoke coiled inside the oven, afraid to come out from its nice dry cave. Frigid rain beat down on my head. I swiped water and strands of drenched hair from my eyes. Shivers prickled my skin and my bones had turned to ice, but that wasn’t what bothered me most.

Peaking one hand at my brow to shield my eyes from the torrential downpour, I spun about to squint at Ms Daggon. She hadn’t budged from her position flopped over the kitchen table.

She was absolutely comatose.

I hadn’t known she was a big drinker, but I had to say, it didn’t surprise me.

“Ms Daggon.” I slip-slid my way across to her, raising my voice to be heard above the wailing beep-beep-beep. “Ms Daggon!”

I shook her shoulder.

Nothing.

Honestly, how much could a woman imbibe before seven am?

I glanced at the rain-splattered tea cup and rising levels of murky brown liquid, then wiped my eyes and focused on the slumped figure of Ms Daggon.

She was no featherweight. If I hitched her beneath the armpits, I could attempt to drag her out, but between the slippery floor and my platform wedges, I knew how that would go. Plus, the woman was a nasty creature. If I damaged any part of her in the process, she’d likely sue me.