Miz Scarlet and the Vanishing Visitor (A Scarlet Wilson Mystery) Page 2

  “Pelham, New Hampshire.”

  “Mother’s name,” he demanded tersely.

  “Vivian Lorraine Mulroney.”

  “I’m going to check on that, so if there’s anything you need to correct, this is the time to do it.” There was a long silence, so I glanced over at Jenny. She was shaking her head, a detail I quickly shared with Kenny.

  “She says no.”

  “You two come and meet me in Princeton. I mean it, Scar. We do this by the book.”

  “I don’t know that we can.”

  “I don’t know that we can’t,” was his reply.

  “But, Kenny, you should have seen that guy before I lost him on Johnson. He was a complete maniac!”

  “Do tell.”

  By the time I recounted the narrow escape, Kenny, sensible man that he was, wanted to take a chunk out of my hide. Even I had to admit to myself that running the red light and zipping through the traffic was out of character for me. I was bold, but I wasn’t bananas. But striking the man with my car? That was madness. Kenny sounded like he was having serious doubts about me. Not good for such a tenuous point in our relationship. This weekend was supposed to be a chance for me to finally meet his kids, so we could move forward, to the next level -- monogamous dating.

  “Do you have a screw loose in that head of yours? You could have been killed. Or killed someone else!”

  “I didn’t have a lot of options,” I insisted. Open moon roof and a maniac with a knife? Not good odds, but Kenny didn’t care. This was a side I hadn’t seen before, the professional law enforcement guy. Despite all the jokes about him being a campus cop, he was a serious advocate of public safety, and therefore, my bad behavior earned me his scorn. I would have to work hard to get back into his good graces.

  “Get here and we’ll sort it out. Let me give you my address, Scarlet, so you can Tom-Tom it.”

  “But....” I started to protest, thinking about the fact that the inn had three guests arriving tomorrow. As innkeeper, it was my responsibility to prepare for them. My brother, Bur, was currently holding down the fort at The Four Acorns Inn, our family bed and breakfast.

  “I’ll call the colonel and warn him that you won’t be home tonight. You be careful on the road. Drive safely. And if you notice anything, anything at all, you call the New Jersey State Police first, and then me. Got it?”

  “Got it.” The moment I agreed, the call ended. Kenny’s way of letting me know he was royally ripped with me.

  “Boy, he was pretty mad,” Jenny stated the obvious. “Is your brother really a colonel?”

  “Bur? Oh, heavens,” I shook my head and snickered. “That’s his nickname. Colonel Grey Poupon, like the snooty mustard. Oh, you’re too young to know about that.”

  “I thought you were going to tell me he was a soldier. Or a cop.”

  “My brother, the troublemaker? Let me put it this way. Bur is the guy who was always pulling pranks in high school. He was a regular wise guy who always seemed to manage to sweet talk his fanny out of hot water.”

  “Kenny sounds mean. And mad.”

  “Kenny takes the law seriously. He’s a straight arrow, expects people to behave.”

  “He’s going to hate me.” That little plaintive voice suddenly seemed to care what the former campus cop thought of her. Was it daddy issues or a good kid who fell off the beaten path when her stepfather gave her too big a shove? I contemplated this as we got back on the road.

  “You mentioned college. What do you plan to study?”

  “I can’t go now. There’s no way Steve will pay my tuition.” Sadness. Jenny was pushed out the door and into adulthood a little too soon.

  “Oh, that can’t be right,” I told her. “If your mom made arrangements for you to be cared for by your stepfather, she must have set up a college fund for you. That would mean he’s just got control of it, but it’s your money.”

  Even as I said that, a terrible thought occurred to me. What if Steve had a motive for being a bastard to his ward?

  “How long was your mom married to him?”

  “Eight months.”

  “Oh. That’s not very long.” I calculated the chances that Steve was a cunning creep, taking care of a dying woman, not because he was a nice guy, but because he was a predator, and from where I sat, the odds were good. What if Jenny’s mother named him as executor and the teenager just assumed the money went to Steve? Maybe the wicked stepfather did what he did to chase the child away and keep all the money for himself. “Did your mom work before she got cancer?”

  “Yeah, she was a human resources specialist at a rehab center.” Probably made a decent living, I decided. If she raised Jenny by herself all those years, it was likely she put some money away for her daughter. That’s what I would have done.

  “What does Steve do?”

  “He fixes computers. He’s a real tech geek.”

  “Does he have a shop?”

  “No. People come to the house.” I absorbed that information and then changed the subject.

  “What makes you think your mom didn’t leave you anything in her will?” Might as well poke the bear while I had the opportunity.

  “Steve said so. He told me that all her money went to pay for her cancer treatments.”

  Even I had to admit it was possible. And yet, if Jenny’s mother worked in health care, she probably had pretty good insurance.

  “You know what, kiddo? I think you need to talk to a lawyer, someone who will look after your interests, someone who will check to make sure Steve’s telling the truth.”

  “I don’t understand. They were married. I thought married people had to share their money.”

  “Good heavens, no. That’s not always how it works, especially for a parent who has a dependent child. For example, if your mother owned her home before her marriage....”

  “How did you know that? Are you sure you’re not psychic?” Hardly. More skeptical than mystical. I was beginning to feel like I wanted to dig all the way through this ugly little set-up. “Steve moved in with us about a year ago, just after my mother met him.”

  Steve apparently moved fast. And no doubt, he got power of attorney when her mom got sicker. Talk about convenient.

  “What’s Pelham like?” We spent the rest of the trip talking about her life before Steve and cancer.

  By the time I pulled into Kenny’s driveway, there was a New Jersey State Police sedan and an unmarked SUV parked on the street. Not good.

  “Are they going to arrest me?” Jenny wanted to know.

  “For all we know, they’re here for me.”

  “Because you ran that red light?”

  “Yeah, something like that. Come on, kiddo. Let’s take our lumps and get it over with, once and for all.”

  “Maybe we can share a jail cell,” she suggested. I glanced over at the teenager in the seat next to me. A little smile played across her face. The unexpected sense of humor surfaced, a sure sign of a lifetime of mother-daughter moments. I could imagine Jenny confiding in the woman who raised her alone, sharing a joke or a gripe. Confidants. Conspirators. Chums. As we exchanged glances, our eyes locked for only a few seconds. As reluctant as I was to look away, it pained me to see what Jenny unintentionally revealed about herself. Those eyes were still tinged with sadness. She had lost her mother only two months ago. I was a poor substitute, I decided, a fill-in for the real deal. For the first time since I passed my thirtieth birthday so long ago, I regretted not having kids. I could have had a daughter like Jenny, someone who counted on me through the tough times. And then I remembered her mother had died. Was the girl angry about that, or did she know it wasn’t her mother’s choice to leave her?

  “What?” One word uttered by an eighteen-year-old brought me back to reality. I turned away, busying myself with my pocketbook.

  “We should go in,” I admitted lamely, not willing to acknowledge my sense of powerlessness to comfort Jenny. Whatever she was feeling now, I had no doubt it would only grow worse wit
h time. She was on the run, cut off from whatever family she had left in this world. There’s only so far we mortals can run before our legs give way and we crash to the ground.

  Chapter Three --

  “Let’s have it,” said the gruff, middle-aged billy goat with the chin whiskers and the blue eyes below a tuft of graying hair. Kenny introduced him as Sarge. Jenny looked at me for direction, so I nodded affirmatively, encouraging her to hand over the evidence. In his enormous fist, Sarge held a magnifier, and used it on the opaque soap.

  “Lookie-here,” he said to his three colleagues. They all leaned in over his shoulder as he sat at Kenny’s kitchen counter under a very bright pot light. The former assistant director of Princeton University public safety leaned against the refrigerator, arms crossed, glaring at me. I felt my face burn. Had it really only been four hours ago he was kissing my lips and telling me how much he would miss me when I was back in Connecticut? I flashed back to the early morning, when all was right with the world. Kenny’s daughter, Kendra, and her fiancé, Duff, went off for a run just after sunrise. Kenny and his youngest, Jake, went fishing. Knowing everyone was due back at the rented cottage by eight, I had read the New York Times front to back, swept the sand from the front porch, collected shells on the beach, and then wandered into town for a trip to the bakery. I should have known that glorious feeling would have to end.

  “What are those?” said the youngest of the troopers. The name on the tag was Duggan. “They look like crystals of some kind.”

  “Maybe bath salts,” another suggested.

  “Or crystal meth, Rollo,” said the third. Lonnie seemed like Sarge’s senior man.

  “Or not,” replied Sarge, an odd note in his voice. “Ken, you got a knife I can use?”

  “Steak, butcher, or paring?”

  “Paring,” was the answer, “and a cutting board. A camera and a ruler would be helpful, too.”

  Sarge laid down the bar of soap on the wooden surface, still studying it. He photographed it from several angles, the ruler next to it. Then carefully, with the precision of a surgeon, he began to cut away a corner of the bar of soap.

  By now, Jenny was showing signs of curiosity. The blood had dried on her arms and face, leaving her looking stained. I thought about the poor dog who sacrificed his life. Where was the monster that had cut short the canine’s life? Had the cops gotten him? No one from the state police was spilling the beans. Instead, they were all focused on the purple bar of soap.

  A single cube of soap fell away from the bar, no more than an inch and a half by an inch and a half. The lawman moved in to examine it more closely. He skewered it with the tip of the paring knife, held it up to the light, brought it to his nose and sniffed, and then plopped it down on the board once more.

  “Let’s nuke this puppy,” he decided. “If the crystals are drugs, I expect they’ll melt.”

  “Might as well find out,” said Duggan, the second trooper. He looked all of about twenty-six.

  “Here,” said Kenny, handing his friend a microwave-safe cup. The little purple cube went in and Kenny turned to pop it in the microwave above the range.

  “Aren’t you going to cover it with plastic wrap?” I wondered.

  “You think it’s necessary, Miz Scarlet?” He still sounded annoyed with me.

  “I would. And I’d vent it, too. If it does melt, it could splatter all over the place. And if those crystals don’t, they could pop up and damage the inside of your oven.” I actually caught Kenny rolling his eyes at his buddies as they all tittered at the thought of an outsider like me offering a professional opinion. Birds of a feather.

  “Right.” He reached into a drawer by the refrigerator, pulled out some plastic wrap, and encased the little Pyrex cup tightly. As he started to put it into the oven, I stopped him.

  “Poke a hole in the top,” I said.

  “You want to do the honors, Miz Scarlet?”

  “Sure.” With that, I took the cup from him and the paring knife from Sarge. One tiny prick on the clear surface big enough to let the heat escape was all that was necessary. Into the oven it went. I figured I’d start with just thirty seconds of cooking time and go from there.

  We all gathered around the window and watched the purple cube melt. It took a couple more rounds before it was a puddle of soap base and doodads. I grabbed a pot holder and pulled it out, setting it on the cutting board for Sarge.

  “The crystal didn’t melt,” Rollo announced. The young trooper seemed rather surprised. We all watched Sarge’s adept hands lift out a rough crystal about the size of blueberry. He carefully washed it in the sink and dropped it back onto the board. Poking it here and there with the blade of the knife, the man grunted and mumbled a few times before looking up at Jenny.

  “Where did you get this soap?”

  “Paolo gave it to me.”

  “Just this one bar?”

  “No, there were boxes of them in a back pack.”

  “Talk to me,” he commanded. Twenty minutes later, we learned that Jenny had met Paolo at the New Dawn Meditation Center in Dover after she left the campground. She was passing through on her way to Pennsylvania, where her mother’s best friend, Paula, lived with two cats and her husband, the oral surgeon. The center was offering a free aura cleansing to the first fifty people who walked through the doors.

  “Paolo bought me a bus ticket to Philadelphia and promised me that Richie would give me a hundred bucks. But Richie tried to kiss me, so I slapped him. And then, when I told him I wanted my money, he told me I’d have to...you know...if I wanted it.” She went red from the neck up and we adults all got the gist of the exchange.

  “When did he kill your dog?” Rollo asked. “And how?”

  “Mozzie was barking at him, because he grabbed me, and he just took out his knife and sliced open his...thro-o-at!” It hit her then, that lonely memory. Her only companion, her best friend from home, the last connection to her childhood, had died trying to protect her.

  “Bastard,” mumbled Lonnie, the third trooper.

  “How did you get away?” I noticed that Duggan kept silent as Rollo continued to question the girl.

  “I kicked him in the nuts and ran into the street.”

  “What were you doing in Bay Head, if you were supposed to deliver the soap to Richie in Point Pleasant?”

  “Richie picked me up at the bus station and took me to a house on the bay. He said he had to make a delivery to some guy before he could give me my money, so we’d just wait till the guy got home.”

  “How did you get your dog on the bus?” demanded Sarge. “I know for a fact that there are no dogs allowed, unless they’re service animals.”

  “Okay, well, I hitched!” she snapped, defiant. “Save the lecture!”

  All eyes were on the miserable, blood-soaked runaway. She couldn’t leave her dog behind, could she? That stepfather probably would have taken Mozzie to the pound.

  “Where was the house? You think you could find it again?” That was Sarge.

  “I don’t need to find it. I know exactly where it is.”

  “You do?”

  “Yeah, because Richie creeped me out. I put the address in my Smartphone address book, in case I had to find directions out of Bay Head on my own.”

  Already winning points for being bright, Jenny triumphantly handed her Smartphone to Sarge, who jotted down the address, and then she hit another winner. “The house was under construction. All the rooms were torn up. Richie called some guy named Hinson and told him he wanted his money for the merchandise. Hinson told him he’d be back by nine and to stay put. That’s when Richie decided he was going to make me...you know!”

  A house under construction. I took that information and tried to match it to the homes I had seen on my walk around Bay Head. On the bay side, Jenny had said. Funny, most homes were normally not under construction during the summer season, but with Hurricane Sandy, a lot of folks were still waiting on repairs.

  “Kenny, I need a glass, one
that you don’t really care about,” Sarge informed him. I watched my lanky love interest reach into a cupboard and pull out a glass mixing bowl.

  “Will this do?”

  “Yeah.” The seasoned New Jersey state trooper turned the bowl over, and with the crystal in his right hand, made a scratch on the bottom.

  “Is that...” Rollo started to ask. Sarge answered, nodding.

  “A diamond? Yeah, definitely.”

  “No way!” I couldn’t help myself. Why would there be a diamond tucked into a bar of soap?

  “I’m afraid so,” was the confident reply. No way he was afraid in any way, shape, or form. Sarge was already holding up the remainder of the lavender-scented bar. “Let’s get this to the lab. Duggan, call the DA and get a warrant for the property.”

  “You think there are more diamonds?” That was Jenny. She sounded thrilled.

  “Possibly. We won’t know until we do a search. Kenny, you’ll keep an eye on the ladies?”

  “Sounds like you two will be using my guest room tonight.” I noticed the reference to the sleeping arrangements and suddenly felt a big pang of rejection. Was Kenny kicking me to the curb, all because I had stopped to help the girl? Twenty minutes after Sarge and his boys left, I had my answer.

  “Make sure she doesn’t vanish in the middle of the night, Scar,” Kenny whispered in my ear as he bade me sweet dreams.

  “How am I supposed to do that?” I answered him, my lips pressed close to his cheek.

  “She won’t go if she thinks we’ll look after her,” he promised me. “Mother the girl. Make her feel safe.”

  Pulling out sheets, Kenny and I made up the twin beds in what once was Kendra’s bedroom. Apricot walls, floral drapes, and a handful of stuffed animals were the remnants of her college years. White furniture kept the room feeling young and fresh, but not childish. Kendra’s marriage plans had been put on hold after her mother’s death, but she and Duff still planned to marry later this year. Would she be staying here in the days before the ceremony?

  “I think I have something for you to wear, Jenny.” He opened up the dresser and pulled out an oversized blue night shirt with an owl on the front.