Miz Scarlet and the Holiday Houseguests (A Scarlet Wilson Mystery #3) (2 page)

“Is Larry staying with us for
Christmas?” Bur seemed hopeful as he hovered beside me. He and the
divorced state police investigator spent a lot of time flirting
good-naturedly, but as far as I knew, it had never turned into
anything more.

“No, her dad is. She’s got her hands
full with her mother as a houseguest.”

“We should invite them to join us for
Christmas dinner. Palmer and Emory aren’t coming with their
families until the twenty-seventh.” My younger siblings made a
point of visiting us in Cheswick three or four times a year. They
planned to skip Christmas in favor of our big New Year’s Eve
party.

“I don’t know, Bur. Larry says her
parents don’t get along.”

“All the more reason to have them at
the Four Acorns Inn for a holiday meal. They’ll have to be on their
best behavior.”

“Well, I’ll ask her, but it sounds like
Edna and Big Larry shouldn’t be in the same room together. There’s
too much bad blood between them.”

“You know what they say, Scar. There’s
a fine line between love and hate. Who knows? Maybe they still have
the hots for each other, and they’ve just never admitted
it.”

Chapter Two --

“Or maybe they really do loathe each
other,” I countered his argument, pointing out the
obvious.

“Such a pessimist,” he sniffed. I shook
my head. Given Bur’s history with women and his two divorces, he
was hardly an expert in marital relationships. “I’ve just about cut
through the trunk. Grab the tree, Miz Scarlet.”

“Hold on.” I got my gloved hands on a
thick branch and felt the needles poking through the fleece as I
fastened my fingers around the wood. “Okay. I’m ready.”

The tree wobbled briefly in my grasp as
the trunk was freed from its earthly stump. Bur laid down his saw
on the frozen tundra and got busy. He spread an old blue bed sheet
on top of the snow-covered ground.

“Let’s roll it up and get it back to
the inn.” We maneuvered the spruce into place and carefully flipped
it gently, until the official Wilson family 2013 Christmas tree was
shrouded in cotton. Bur tied it with poly cord, securing the ends,
and we began the arduous journey of carrying the holiday bundle
down the winding woodsy path and back to the Four Acorns
Inn.

“Ready, Miz Scarlet?”

“Ready, Colonel.”

When we were kids, we played
our own live version of the game of “Clue”. Bur originally nickname
me “Miss Scarlet” in one of his many attempts to ruffle my
feathers, but I corrected him. “You may address me as
Miz
Scarlet!”
He soon became known as Colonel Grey Poupon, not
only because he loved mustard, but because he was often a real
stinker. On those occasions, we just referred to him as
“Poup”.

Twenty minutes later, scratched and
bruised, I deposited my end of the tree on the floor of the sun
porch. My back muscles screamed for relief. “Boy, that was
heavy!”

“Is that it?” said an interested voice
behind me. “How big is it?”

“Bigger than you, squirt,” Bur told
Jenny, our live-in teenage helper.

“Does that mean I’ll need a ladder to
decorate it?”

“More like a step stool. Miz Scarlet
put the kibosh on a huge tree.”

“I’m sorry I couldn’t be there to help
you, but I had my big biology test.”

“How do you think you did?” I inquired
of the nursing student in the process of wrapping up her first
semester at the University of Connecticut. I couldn’t help myself.
Long before I became an innkeeper, I was a high school teacher, and
I still tutor students part-time, in between caring for guests at
the inn. But I have another reason for wanting to know. I nearly
killed her a few months ago.

Our accidental meeting was a freakish
thing. On a warm summer night in Bay Head, New Jersey, a homicidal
maniac chased her into the street, where I nearly hit her with my
car. In need of sanctuary, I brought Jenny back to Connecticut,
where the gang at the Four Acorns Inn welcomed her with open arms.
That’s how we learned of her tragic story, of how her parents,
Jaime and Christina, died when she was a baby and she was adopted
by an aunt. Jenny was orphaned a second time, just shy of her
eighteenth birthday, when Vivian Mulroney, died from cancer earlier
this year. Kicked out of her family home by a scheming stepfather
determined to steal her inheritance, Jenny and her dog, Mozzie,
took to life on the road, but the naive teenager got herself into
more trouble than she could handle. When it followed her to the
Four Acorns Inn, I called and Larry came to her rescue. That’s part
of why I owe the state homicide investigator so big.

“
I think I did okay. It was
harder than I expected it would be, but I answered all the
questions, like you suggested, even when I had to
guess.”

“Good. Were they multiple choice
questions?” I wondered.

“Except for two essay questions,” she
replied, nodding.

“Essay questions on a biology test?”
Bur was surprised. “What kind of beast gives those?”

“Dr. Shirley does. The first one was,
‘Why is it important to know the origin of the sickle cell anemia
trait?’. I talked about the improvements in genetic sequencing when
developing treatments. And the second question was, ‘Why is
polymorphism important to evolution?’ Ugh!”

“What did you say to that?” I probed.
Essay questions can be tricky. It’s all in the professor’s
interpretation of the written answer.

“I pointed out that diversity within
the population helped to keep the gene pool healthy, so that no one
single form has an advantage or disadvantage over the others during
natural selection.”

“Nice,” I congratulated her. “Sounds
like you hit the mark.”

Bur gave the teenager an affectionate
pat on the head. “Our little angel has grown up, Miz Scarlet. I can
tell because I have absolutely no clue what all that means. You
sound so smart!”

“I do, don’t I?” Jenny beamed, raising
her hands above her head and wiggling her body in an impromptu
victory dance. “Woo, woo!”

“You’re not just a pretty face
anymore,” I added. “Of course, I hope you realize now it will be
almost impossible to find a guy to date.”

“Impossible? What do you mean?” asked
the horrified teen. “Why won’t I find a guy?”

“It’s a joke, Jen. Relax!” I gave her a
little poke. “I only meant you won’t be satisfied with
dopes.”

“Oh! Thank heavens. I thought there was
something wrong with me!”

“Goodness, no! You’re fine. It’s the
males of the species I worry about,” I laughed. Bur actually made a
face at me in response, before challenging my opinion.

“Don’t listen to Gladys Gump here.
She’s a spinster, for heavens sake! What does she know about men?
You’re a knockout. How can any guy walk away from you?”

“I never said she wasn’t adorable, Bur.
I said she was smart.”

“Men like adorable and you fit the
bill, squirt.”

“Smart women can also be adorable,
Jenny. You can’t really trust what Bur tells you. What he knows
about real women you could fit into a thimble.”

“Oh, please! Do you really
think
you’re
smarter than the majority of men?” Bur rolled his eyes in
disgust before turning his attention back to the teenager. He
caught her in the act of trying to hide her amusement, and thus
began his lecture. “Let me tell you about real men, Jenny. They’re
looking for cute girls who don’t drive them batty. With your looks
and personality, you’ve got nothing to worry about. As long as
you’re not a smarty-pants know-it-all or a lemon-sucking sourpuss,
like Miz Scarlet here, you’ll do just fine.”

“Are you two bickering again?” My
mother appeared in the doorway of the sun porch, her hand
manipulating the controls of her motorized wheelchair. She
maneuvered it over the threshold ramp and pulled up to inspect the
tree. “Here we are at Christmas time and we’ve got to contend with
the usual sniping? Can’t you two call a holiday truce?”

“Sibling rivalry lives,” Jenny
announced cheerfully. “Today’s subject is men and
women.”

“You poor dear,” my mother commiserated
with the teenager. “How you ever put up with these two is beyond
me.”

“I know. How did you manage all those
years when they were growing up?”

“It wasn’t easy,” my mother feigned
exhaustion. “If it weren’t for my other two little angels, Emory
and Palmer, I might have been driven mad.”

“That presumes you started out sane,
doesn’t it, Mother? The jury’s still out on that one.” Bur gave her
a kiss on the cheek as Scrub Oak, the inn’s resident house cat,
arrived to inspect the shrouded tree. With his nose to the cotton
tree shroud, the inquisitive feline circled the new addition to the
sun porch, decided it wasn’t worth losing any sleep over, and
padded off to the living room, no doubt to curl up in front of the
fireplace for another nap.

“We were discussing the fact that
Jenny’s so smart, she won’t be able to find suitable boys to date,”
I informed my mother.

“Why?” My mother looked up at me
expectantly.

“Because she will be bored with idiots
and jerks,” I replied confidently. “They won’t understand what she
says to them.”

“Good heavens, Scarlet Wilson! Have you
learned nothing all these years?” my mother demanded, wagging her
index finger at me in warning.

“What?”

“You’re not supposed to talk honestly
in front of the m-e-n.”

“Ha! Burn,” said Jenny to my brother,
laughing.

“Very funny, ladies. I’ll remember
this. And wait until I sit down for a chat with Santa. Coal for all
of you!”

“If it’s all the same to you, I would
much prefer a more environmentally-friendly material in my
stocking, Bur.” Jenny’s eyes twinkled.

“Touch
é!” he shot back. “And so it begins. The cute girl morphs into
the old crone. Don’t say I didn’t warn you, missy! If you’re not
careful, you’ll turn absolutely hideous, like Miz Scarlet
here.”

“If only you had the brains to match
wits with the rest of the world, instead of being just another
pretty boy....” I teased.

“Pretty is as pretty does,” he
announced, pirouetting into the dining room with all the grace of a
blind Baryshnikov on steroids, leaving us in stitches.

“When can we decorate the tree?” Jenny
called after him. “I can’t wait!”

Bur reemerged with the tree stand in
hand. “Let me make sure this will fit over the trunk
first.”

“What if it doesn’t?” she
wondered.

“We’ll go dump it in the woods and
start again. There are plenty of other trees in the forest. We’ll
just keep chopping until we find one that fits.”

“You can’t do that!” Her shocked face
said it all. “That’s just so...wrong!”

“No? What do you brainy
women suggest?” he inquired. That’s when she realized he was
yanking her chain. “Ha ha! I’ll have you know I wrote the book
on
Burn 101
, little
girl!”

“Give me strength, Lord,” my mother
groaned with great exaggeration. “These children try my
patience.”

“Somebody has to keep you on your
toes,” Bur replied. “Okay, we’re good to go. Help me carry the tree
into the living room. We have to let it stand a few hours, so the
branches rest. Then I’ll put all the lights on and you can hang the
ornaments, squirt.”

“I love Christmas!” She and I grabbed
the trunk in tandem while my brother took the top. Together, we
waddled our way through the dining room, down the hallway, and over
to a corner in the living room, where we unwrapped the covering and
managed to set the tree upright. I held it in place while Bur
screwed the long bolts into the trunk.

“Lovely tree. Well done,” Laurel
declared as she watched from behind.

“Look!” the excited teenager pointed.
“There’s a little bird’s nest!”

My mother rolled her wheelchair forward
to take a peek. “It looks like a cardinal’s nest.”

“But how do you know it wasn’t built by
a chickadee... or a sparrow?”” the inquisitive teen
wondered.

“It’s twiggy. Cedar waxwings use more
grass and leaves when they build theirs. Every bird has a
preference for where to build its nest,” my mother explained. “Some
do it in the cavities of tree trunks or a bird house. Some prefer
the branches of deciduous trees, where they can fly out easily.
Others prefer to hide in evergreens like this, or even
shrubs.”

“I just assumed all birds just pick any
old tree.”

“Bite your tongue!” Bur poked her.
“There is no such thing as ‘any old tree’, not in this family,
anyway.”

“When you want to identify what type of
bird crafted a nest, look at the materials and construction
techniques. Is there mud, twigs, grass, or moss? You’ll find the
robin’s nest in the fork of a tree. Vireos make nests that look
like a cup hanging down from a tree branch, and Baltimore orioles
make nests that look like woven bags. Goldfinches build on the ends
of the tree branches and line their nests with the dander from the
thistle plant,” Laurel told her.