Sealed with a Kill (3 page)

“Yeah, we already had lunch and got her a latte from Stan,” Ella agreed.

“If you need anything else,” Marybeth said. She looked as if it physically pained her to leave a table where there was the potential for so much good dirt.

“Thank you,” Tenley said.

Marie and Ella both glared at Marybeth’s retreating figure. She was their main competition for the title of Morse Point’s gossip queen. Marybeth was married to Officer DeFalco, one of the town’s three police officers, and had access to information that they did not. It chafed.

“He actually asked me to cancel a date with Matt so that I could go out to dinner with him and Mother and some young hotshot executive of his named Brian Steele.”

“Really?” Brenna asked. “Why?”

“He didn’t say as much, but I got the feeling it’s a setup,” Tenley said. “Probably I’m the bonus he plans to offer to the young mogul.”

“How rude,” Ella said, and Marie nodded. “I’ve known your father since he was in short pants, and I can tell you he’s always working an angle.”

“And he’s cheap,” Marie added. “He can squeeze a nickel so tight the buffalo poops.”

Tenley burst out laughing, and Marie leaned across the table and patted her hand. “You don’t pick your relatives.”

“No kidding,” Ella agreed, with a sidelong glance at her sister.

“No, but I do get to pick my friends,” Tenley said. “And I’m glad I have all of you.”

“And you get to pick your boyfriend,” Brenna said. “Speaking of which, here he comes.”

Tenley sat up straight and smoothed her hair. Her blue eyes shone at the sight of the broad and blond Matt Collins as he shouldered his way into the diner.

“Hello, ladies,” Matt said. “Mind if I borrow Tenley?”

The twins jammed themselves back in the window as Tenley and Matt stood outside the diner talking. Brenna turned her attention back to her sketch pad.

The brilliant fall leaves on the two-hundred-year-old maples that surrounded the town green inspired her. She could paint her dresser a moss-colored green and then decoupage autumn-colored paper leaves all over it. Maybe she could even work a dark twisty vine across the drawers from one corner to the other.

“My, isn’t he just the handsomest man?” Ella asked.

“He’s no John Henry,” Marie sniffed. “But he is quite good-looking.”

“Humph. What do you know about John Henry?” Ella grumped. “You only had one date with him, and that was over fifty years ago.”

“I know that he loved me,” Marie said.

“He thought you were me,” Ella argued.

“We danced under the stars at the Governor’s Ball,” Marie sighed. “It was a magical evening.”

“It was my magical evening that you stole,” Ella fumed.

Brenna had heard the twins squabble over the mysterious John Henry for the past two years. She didn’t know whom to believe or which of the two he might have been in love with, but she knew they both thought they were the love of his life. She wondered.

“Whatever happened to John Henry?” she asked.

The sisters exchanged a startled glance and then frowned.

“So, how about those Red Sox?” Ella asked.

They weren’t going to tell. Brenna was shocked. Surely they weren’t going to withhold this little gem of gossip, were they?

“I heard they’ve got the Series sewn up,” Marie said.

Apparently, they were.

“I can’t believe this!” Tenley burst back into the diner. “Matt just canceled our date. He has a meeting at the restaurant that he can’t get rescheduled.”

Brenna and the twins stared at her.

“Don’t you see?” she asked. “Now I have to have dinner with my parents.”

“No, you don’t,” Brenna said. “Just because they asked doesn’t mean you have to go.”

All three of them gave her a flat stare.

“Okay, I’m assuming I’m wrong,” she said. “But I’m not sure why.”

Marie patted her hand. “That’s all right, dear. It’s all that city living you did during your formative years. You forget how small Morse Point is. Believe me, if Tenley doesn’t have a date that night, her parents will know.”

“Oh, right,” Brenna said. “Well, you could always tell them you don’t want to.”

Again the flat stares.

“You’ve met my mother, right?” Tenley asked.

“Hmm, sorry,” Brenna said.

Tenley shrugged. “It’s just dinner.”

But it wasn’t. They all knew that. It was Tenley being sucked back into the Morse family vacuum like an errant hair ball. It was about being what her parents expected of her and not disappointing them.

“Maybe you can feign an injury,” Ella suggested.

“A sprained ankle,” Marie offered.

“Emergency appendicitis,” Brenna said. “How can they argue with that?”

“And when they come to see me at the hospital . . .” Tenley said.

“Problematic, but not impossible,” Brenna said.

“Maybe you could offer up someone in your place,” Ella said. “Like Brenna’s new neighbor. That would kill two birds with one stone.”

“What two birds?” Brenna asked.

“Well, it would get her away from your Nate, and it would get Tenley out of the dinner.”

Brenna felt her face grow warm. “He’s not my Nate.”

Ella narrowed her eyes and said, “But you’d like him to be.”

“I . . .” Brenna started to protest, but Ella waved her hand and said, “Don’t bother denying it.”

Brenna gave Tenley an exasperated look, and she smiled. The Porter sisters could be maddening, especially when they were right.

“Drink up,” Marie ordered as she lifted her own mug. “If Stan’s latte can’t pick you up, nothing can.”

The four ladies clinked mugs.

“Brenna!” Preston Kelly, part owner of the Morse Point Inn, pushed through the front doors of the diner and strode toward their booth. “I need you. It’s a matter of life and death!”

Brenna blinked at him. Preston was tall and thin, with a shiny dome on top and a short gray fringe around the sides. Over the past few months, he had grown a matching neatly trimmed goatee, which would have given him a hippy sort of casual look except that he always wore stiffly pressed dress shirts with equally starched khakis. So while the top of him looked like a cool cat, the rest of him was as buttoned down as a banker. Right now, however, he looked frazzled.

“Hi, Preston,” she said. “Where’s the fire?”

“Fire? What? Oh, you,” he said. He waved his hand at her attempt at humor. “This is serious. I need a tour guide for my leaf peepers for tomorrow. Gary has a colonoscopy appointment, and I promised I’d take him. You know how he is about doctors. If I don’t take him, he’ll ditch.”

“Can’t say as I blame him,” Ella said.

“No kidding. Tell him to leave his dignity at the door on that one,” Marie agreed.

“How can I help you?” Brenna asked, trying to get the subject back on track.

Preston and his life partner, Gary Carlisle, had owned the inn for more than a decade and were the driving force behind the town’s arts council. Brenna appreciated that they always promoted her decoupage work to their guests and had become good friends with them over the past two years.

“Could you take my group on a tour?” Preston asked. He clasped his hands together in a pleading pose. “I was thinking we could include a class at Vintage Papers later in the week to help promote the shop. You could decoupage a project using the leaves you gather.”

“I’m not really prepared,” Brenna said. “I don’t have anything planned.”

“You’ll come up with something,” Tenley interrupted. “This would be a great draw for the shop.”

The businesswoman glint was in her eye, and Brenna had a feeling the thought of dinner with her parents was spurring her to put some effort into the shop.

“I suppose we could decoupage some breakfast trays,” Brenna said. “We’d have to press the leaves to get the moisture out, but that would make a perfect leafy souvenir.”

“I knew I could count on you,” Preston said. “I’ll bring them up in the shuttle bus and drop them off at your cabin at ten in the morning. There are seven of them.”

“But . . .” Brenna started to protest.

“Oh, don’t worry,” Preston said as he strode away, quickly, as if afraid she’d change her mind. “I already cleared it with Nate.”

The door banged shut behind him.

“Why do I feel like I just got shanghaied?” Brenna asked.

“Welcome to the club,” Tenley said, and toasted her with her mug.

 

A small shuttle bus, which looked like it had once been a stubby school bus but was now painted white, bounced up the drive to the communal parking lot that Brenna shared with all of her neighbors.

There were ten cabins in all. Nate rented them out to a mishmash of artists. In addition to Brenna, there were currently three other long-term renters. Paul and Portia Cherry, marrieds who lived in separate cabins because of Paul’s snoring, and Twyla, an older woman known to skip in her broomstick skirts across the grass-covered hills.

Brenna enjoyed her neighbors. In the summer they had spent much of their time standing in the cool water of the lake and barbecuing. Twyla was a vegan and she had even gotten Brenna eating soy burgers.

Brenna wondered if the others had met Siobhan yet and, if so, what they thought of her. Her personal jury was still out on the girl.

With a belch of blue smoke, the bus stopped. Preston stepped out of the open door and assisted the leaf peepers down one at a time. From where Brenna was standing, it was a mixed bag of people—young and old, male and female, mostly female. Preston then handed Brenna a very heavy picnic basket.

“Did I mention lunch is included?” he asked.

“No,” she said, straining under the weight of the basket.

“Oh, well now you know. Everyone, this is Brenna Miller, your tour guide. See you in four hours.”

With another belch of smoke, the bus tore off toward town. Brenna watched it go, feeling that Preston was going to owe her one after this, a big one.

“Well, I’ll just put this basket in my cabin, and we’ll begin,” Brenna said. “Is everyone wearing walking shoes?”

“Duh,” an adolescent boy, who looked about thirteen, muttered.

Brenna frowned. He was skinny and freckled, with locks of carrot red hair poking out from under the knit skullcap he wore plastered to his head. The woman beside him had medium-length red hair of the same beta-carotene shade, so Brenna figured she had to be Mom. The woman smiled apologetically at her, which confirmed it.

Aside from these two, there was an older, gray-haired couple decked out in matching Norwegian sweaters and another young couple who appeared to be on a romantic getaway; at least, Brenna assumed as much, as they seemed to be attached at the lip. Another young woman, who appeared to be traveling solo, rounded out their party. She appeared to be in her early twenties, with ash blond hair and wide blue eyes that were just visible behind a pair of large thick glasses. When Brenna met her gaze, she glanced away quickly as if she was too shy to maintain eye contact.

Brenna ducked into her cabin, put the basket on her kitchen counter, and locked the door behind her. The group of seven was milling about the water’s edge, admiring the way the lake water reflected the trees’ fabulous foliage. Well, the Norwegian sweaters were. The mother and son were deep in a hissed conversation, while the young lovers were busy staring into each other’s eyes. Brenna wondered if she’d have to hose them down once they reached the shelter of the trees.

“Perhaps we should introduce ourselves,” Brenna said. Aside from being good manners, she figured this would be important if someone fell in the lake; she’d want to call them by name and not just yell, “Hey, you in the sweater, swim over here.”

“This is my son, Tommy,” the mother said, and the sullen teen interrupted in a voice laden with attitude and said, “I go by Suede now.”

The mother heaved a sigh that sounded like the last of her patience being expelled. “Fine, this is Suede, and I’m Leather.”

“Mom!” the teen whined. His face darkened five shades deeper than his hair and he snapped, “Her name is Julie.”

“Nice to meet you, Julie, Suede,” Brenna said. She gave herself big points for saying it and not laughing.

“I’m Jan, and this is my husband, Dan,” the female in the Norwegian sweater said.

Brenna smiled at them. Rhyming names, matching sweaters, and short haircuts for their silver heads—even though it was a bit over the top, they were quite cute in their coupledom.

“I’m Lily, and this is Zach,” the female half of the liplock gushed, never taking her eyes off of her mate.

Brenna guessed them to be in their midtwenties. They looked like something out of an Abercrombie & Fitch ad; both were skinny with long hair that draped about them like a curtain when they kissed, which was frequently.

“I’m Paula,” the lone woman said to no one in particular as she stared at the tips of her plain, brown walking shoes.