There's Always Plan B (12 page)

She moved on to the rosemary and cut off a few stalks. “If this is just a hobby, what do you do in your regular life?”

“I develop solid fuels for boosters that send satellites into space.”

She tilted her head. “Which means what?”

“I'm a rocket scientist.”

Of course he was, she thought glumly. Couldn't they have gotten a ghostbuster existing on the dull-normal side of the IQ chart? But no. They had to get a rocket scientist.

“Tell me there isn't any solid fuel sitting in your bedroom,” she said. “We're interested in staying right where we are.”

“Not to worry. Although I do have a great thermal imaging system.”

“What's that?”

“It takes pictures of my room at regular intervals, but instead of using regular film, it measures changes in temperature. So if something cold or hot passes through, I'll have a record. The room is set at sixty-eight degrees. Your body temperature should be about ninety-eight. So if you went into my room and moved the furniture around, you'd show up on the thermal imaging, even in the dark.”

Interesting. That meant they would have to modify their plan. “I would never do that,” she said primly as she cut a little more rosemary, then stood and collected her basket. “Mary is going to do all the work of convincing you.”

“I hope so. I would like to be wrong once.”

“Somehow I doubt that. Have you ever been wrong?”

His dark gaze seemed to linger on her face. “Dozens of times.”

She felt a definite pull, as if he was willing her to step into his embrace where he could grab her and kiss her senseless. But as she was reasonably confident the only thing senseless was her, she restrained herself.

“It's about time for breakfast,” she said brightly. “Let me take you inside and show you the dining room.”

She led the way into the house. “Just through there,” she said as she paused in the doorway.

None of the other guests was down yet. Her mother and Tiffany were already seated at a table in the corner. When Rhonda saw Adam, she waved him over.

“Mr. Covell, do join us. You're up early this beautiful morning.”

“Mrs. Washington. A pleasure.”

Her mother beamed. “Oh, you can call me Rhonda. And you met Tiffany yesterday, didn't you?”

“Yes. Of course. Hi.”

“You can sit here,” Tiffany said, pulling out the chair next to her.

Her grandmother beat her to it by standing and ushering Adam to the seat beside her. “You'll have a better view from here, Adam.”

Carly sighed and turned away. The man was nothing but trouble.

Back in the kitchen she found Maribel slipping a quiche into the oven. Fresh muffins and scones sat cooling on a rack.

“I heard there's a new guy,” her friend said as she straightened.

“Oh, yeah. He's here to prove our ghost isn't real and create trouble all at the same time. Even as we speak, my mother and my daughter are fighting for his attention.”

“That good-looking, huh?”

“You bet. And charming. And here to destroy us. So I'm going to do my best not to get friendly.”

Maribel leaned against the counter. “But you're tempted?”

Carly grinned. “More than a little. There's something really appealing about him. But he's too young and I'm not in the market.”

“How young?”

“Early thirties.”

“You've just turned forty. That's doable. Guys do it all the time.”

“Oh, and you're saying that makes it right?”

“Sure.” Maribel waggled her eyebrows. “Think of it as standing up for women everywhere. Being strong. Giving men a taste of their own medicine.”

“Thanks, but I don't think so. Besides, I don't even know what I'd do with the guy. Date him? I haven't been on a date in nearly twenty years. I wouldn't know what to do. And if we're talking about sex, forget it. He's far too pretty. I'm sure his last bed partner was twenty-two and perfect.”

“Guys have a thing about older women. They believe we can teach them the secrets of being a good lover.”

“In this case, he's sadly mistaken.”

“You should think about it.”

Carly shook her head. “I don't have time. Besides, I'm guessing all the attraction is one-sided. Adam would no more consider dating me than he would ask out my mother.”

“I think you're wrong.”

“I really appreciate the support. You're a sweetie for saying all this.”

“Well, one of us has to be having a thrilling life,” Maribel said as she straightened and headed to the counter. “I'm just getting bigger by the second.”

“But soon you'll have a baby.”

Her friend's expression softened. “I know. Isn't it a miracle?”

“Absolutely.”

Carly could think of a lot of words to describe getting pregnant the year she turned forty, and
miracle
wasn't one of them. As she had thought the first time she realized her friend was “with child”—no way, no how. She was happy to have Tiffany, but she wasn't interested in starting over with a newborn.

Not that it was an issue. Even if there was an interested guy, who was to say her eggs were still functioning? No doubt they'd long since turned to raisins and were just living out their lives in semiretirement.

She crossed to the small linen closet by the pantry and pulled out several dish towels. After wetting them down, she put them in the freezer.

“Don't ask,” she said when Maribel looked at her. “I have a plan.”

“Okay. Are you going to tell me what it is?”

“Not until I'm sure it works.”

Carly didn't know if her friend knew about the ghost scam, but she didn't want to talk about it. She figured the fewer people who knew what was going on, the better.

After putting the still steaming muffins into several baskets, she carried them into the dining room.

It was midweek, so the B and B wasn't all that full. There was one management off-site for a company that made some type of hoses. She hadn't been able to figure out if these were for the garden, cars or other things. She left a basket of muffins on their table, then crossed to the older couple in the corner.

“Morning, Mr. and Mrs. Abelson,” she said brightly. “How are you enjoying your stay?”

“It's all wonderful,” Mrs. Abelson told her as she patted her husband's hand. “Frank and I think this place is simply charming.”

“Thank you.”

The Abelsons were celebrating their forty-seventh wedding anniversary. Carly envied the obvious affection between them and the way they still held hands. Good to know that some marriages lasted.

She headed for the last table, where her mother leaned so close to Adam that she was practically in his lap. He seemed to be handling it all with an easy confidence that convinced her there was no point in feeling badly for him.

“Fresh muffins,” she said as she set the basket on the table. “How is everything?”

Adam looked at her. “Great. Are you joining us?”

“No. I have some work I need to get to. But you seem well occupied.”

Rhonda patted his arm. “We're keeping Adam entertained, aren't we, Tiffany?”

The teen giggled.

Rhonda glanced at Carly. “Adam was telling us he's not married. Isn't that interesting?”

As the older woman seemed to want him for herself, Carly wasn't sure whether the information was supposed to inspire or impress.

“It's great,” she said, going for cheerful and not sure if she got there. “Huh, maybe I should look at a singles' event for the B and B. Something to think about.”

She smiled and headed out of the dining room. After pouring herself a mug of coffee from the carafe by the registration desk, she walked toward her office, all the while trying to figure out plans to defeat Adam Covell. There had to be a way to convince him there was still a ghost in residence.

When she entered her office, she carefully closed and locked her door behind her. She didn't want Adam strolling in as she went over the papers and notes on how other eager ghostbusters had been fooled. Of course not many of them had come equipped with thermal imaging systems.

There were the misters, she reminded herself. After the towels she'd tossed in the freezer froze, she would take them into the crawl space and wrap them around the misters. The sudden burst of supercold air would give the imagers or whatever they were called, something to photograph.

Rearranging the furniture was a must, of course, but how to get around the system?

She glanced at her watch and then reached for the phone. With luck Jack wouldn't have left for school yet.

He picked up on the first ring. “Hello?”

“Jack? It's Carly Spencer, Tiffany's mom. Do you have a second?”

“Sure. What's up?”

She told him about Adam's background and all the equipment.

“Man, I hope he lets me see it,” he said.

Carly smiled wryly. “I'm guessing all you'll have to do is ask. He's very approachable. But try to remember you're on our side.”

“I know. Sorry.”

“So how do we get around this stupid thermal imaging system? I want to rearrange the furniture without being caught. But if he can measure body temperature, we're in trouble.”

Jack chuckled. “Not necessarily. Did you ever see a movie called
The Thomas Crown Affair?
”

“The first one or the second one?”

“There were two?”

“Yeah. The first one was before my time, too. You're talking about the one with Pierce Brosnan.”

“Yeah. In it he uses a heater to raise the temperature in a room until it reaches body temperature. That way anyone moving around would be invisible.”

“I love it!” she told him. Talk about clever. “I'll get to work on that right away.” With the separate heating and cooling system for that room, she wouldn't even have to have a maid put in a heater.

“Well, could you wait to heat up his room when I can help?”

“Sure. I appreciate it, Jack. You're brilliant.”

“Thanks, Mrs. Spencer.”

She hung up and smiled. They were going to win this one, she told herself. High-tech equipment or not, they would have Adam Covell on the run.

Carly
pressed along the molding by the last door on the third-floor hallway. She heard a click, then felt something release. A concealed door swung open, showing her a narrow staircase leading up about six stairs.

“Okay, this is creepy,” she muttered to herself.

“Go on,” her mother said from her position behind her. “You'll be fine.”

Easy for her to say, Carly thought. She wasn't the one climbing into total darkness. Still, it had to be done.

She clutched her flashlight in one hand and the plastic bag filled with frozen dish towels in the other and started up the stairs. At the top she turned and looked back at the open door. Some of her tension eased when she saw a release mechanism. At least she didn't have to worry about getting trapped in between floors. While she didn't think she had a problem with claustrophobia, this was not how she wanted to find out.

At the top of the stairs, the ceiling closed in. She crouched down and started crawling between joists. Up ahead light spilled in from a series of small windows. It was dusty and quiet up here, but she didn't smell anything icky, or hear rustling. Thank God. Seeing a mouse—or worse, a rat—would send her over the edge.

A narrow pipe snaked along beside her. Carly followed it until it stopped by a simple lever. When she bent closer to the pipe, she saw little nozzles at the end and a crack that allowed her to peer down into Adam's room.

“Found it,” she called back to her mother, careful to keep her voice low even though Adam had left to go into town less than twenty minutes ago.

“Do you need any help?”

Carly glanced around at the cramped quarters. “I'm fine.”

She pulled the still-frozen towels out of the bag and wrapped them around the pipe. Once that was done, she sat there staring at her handiwork. Okay, so how long would it take the frozen towels to chill the pipe?

“What do you think?” she asked. “Ten minutes?”

“That should do it.”

Carly made her way back to the hallway where she and her mother paced until the appropriate time had passed, then Carly returned to the secret passage and the hopefully chilled pipes. She pressed down once on the lever.

A definite
hiss
filled the silence. So some sort of mist had drifted into Adam's room. About five seconds later she heard a faint beeping coming from equipment below.

Not knowing if the sound was good or bad, she quickly unwrapped the pipes, then scurried back to the hallway.

“Something happened,” she said. “He's got beeping machines.”

“Good. They probably picked up the sudden drop in temperature.”

Carly hoped that was the case. But with Adam being so into the whole science thing, she wasn't sure the mist trick would fool him.

“We're going to have to find a way to get him out of the house for longer,” Carly said. “Heating the room up to body temperature has to be done slowly. Jack thinks we need at least two hours to heat it and two hours to cool it off. I wish I knew of some event he wanted to attend. But he hasn't mentioned anything.”

“I invited him to join us for dinner tonight,” her mother said. “We can talk about it then.”

Carly shoved the still-frozen towels into the plastic bag. “Why did you invite him to dinner?”

“He seems like a nice man. He's alone. I was being polite.”

“He's trying to ruin us. If he's successful, there's no way I can make the B and B pay. We'll have to sell.”

Her mother shrugged. “I'm sure that won't happen. My point is during dinner we can find out if he has any interests and then suggest things in the area he might like.”

Carly didn't actually object to Adam joining them for dinner; she just thought it was strange for her mother to ask. Still, he was pretty enough to look at that she would enjoy the distraction.

“If we can't get him to go bird watching or something, maybe we can convince him to go to San Francisco,” Carly said. “His home address is in Virginia. Maybe he's never been to this coast before.”

“We'll have to ask that, too,” Rhonda said. “Now you go freshen up for dinner. You'll want to look your best.”

Carly glanced at her watch. It was barely one in the afternoon. Even
she
didn't need that much time.

She closed the hidden door and made sure it latched in place, then excused herself to go to her office.

“I'm going to work for a while before I tackle the ‘freshening up,'” she said.

“If you think that's wise.” Her mother waved her fingers and headed toward the stairs.

It wasn't enough that Adam threatened their livelihood. Apparently he also threatened their sanity, something already in short supply around here.

 

Despite her best intentions to ignore the impending meal with Adam, Carly found herself in her bedroom a half hour before dinner. With her mother in charge of the cooking, there was little for Carly to do but show up. Or in this case, stare at herself in a mirror and wonder where the lines around her eyes had come from.

She needed a facial, she thought, as she leaned close and pressed her fingertip against the skin over her cheekbones and around her jaw. Or maybe just a new face. Her complexion looked dull and blotchy. Honestly, in the past few weeks, she'd reduced her morning and night beauty routine to face washing, some eye cream and a moisturizer with a built-in sunscreen.

“What's up with my eyelashes?” she asked as she studied the thin, pale hairs. Didn't she used to have more of them?

Her eyebrows were okay, she thought as she picked up tweezers and pulled out a few stray hairs.

She glanced down at the faded T-shirt she wore over jeans and decided she didn't want to deal with her body right now. Better to just be depressed about her face and let it go.

After she'd showered and washed her hair, she returned to her room, where she passed over her jeans for a pair of black slacks and a nice blouse. After blow-drying her hair—using a round brush to give it a little volume—she opened her makeup bag and pulled out a bottle of base.

“Let's see if I remember how to do this,” she murmured.

Ten minutes later, she'd applied base, blush and powder and done her eyes. Three coats of mascara seemed to plump up her skimpy lashes. She slipped on the two-tone hoops she'd always liked and grabbed her watch. A pair of casual sandals completed the look.

Telling herself she
hadn't
gone to all this trouble for Adam wasn't something she could actually make herself believe. Okay, maybe she had, but it was more for the practice than anything else. Looking at Adam was like looking at those huge, expensive Lladró pieces. The ones that took up an entire table. Sure they were stunningly beautiful and everyone had a fantasy about owning one, but they weren't something everyone could afford.

But she could window-shop.

She took the front stairs down and walked into the main foyer. Jack was already there, his arm around Tiffany. Adam stood by the bottle of wine her mother had left on a tray. He saw her and smiled in a way that made her bare toes curl ever so slightly. She moved toward him, but before she could actually get there, the front door opened and Steve Everwood walked in.

Several things occurred to Carly at once. First, she didn't care if it was against the law and that she would go to prison—she was going to kill her mother for this. Second, that she was more disappointed than was reasonable, and third, talk about the makings for an uncomfortable evening.

“Carly,” Steve said warmly as he moved toward her. “Thanks for asking me over to dinner.”

As she hadn't issued the invitation, she could only smile at him, even when he took her hand in his, leaned close and kissed her cheek.

Tiffany made a choking sound, which pretty much summed up what Carly felt.

“Mr. Everwood just kissed my mother,” Tiffany said in a not-so-low voice. “I'm going to die.”

Steve grinned at her daughter. “That's as far as it's going, kid. You can relax.”

Tiffany wrinkled her nose. “It's still gross. So if I don't tell anyone what I saw, can I skip the next exam?”

“Sure. If you want to get an F.” He winked at Tiffany. “Kissing moms isn't against the law.”

“It should be.”

Steve chuckled, then turned to Adam. “Hi. We haven't met. I'm Steve Everwood.”

Adam glanced from him to her. Carly didn't know what to say or why she felt compelled to explain anything.

“Mr. Everwood, ah, Steve, is a math teacher at the high school,” she told Adam. “In fact he was my math teacher when I went there.”

As the words spilled out of her mouth, she desperately tried to call them back. Tiffany shrieked.

“He was your
teacher?
We have the same teacher? And you're going out with him? Mo-om, you can't. It's all too weird.”

Jack touched his finger to the tip of her nose. “Tiff, it's fine. They're both adults. They can have a mature relationship if they want.”

“Says who?”

“Just go with it.”

While Carly appreciated the
intent
behind the rescue, she wasn't sure she appreciated the actual rescue itself. She and Steve weren't dating. Sure he'd asked, but she'd always said no. Currently the only one issuing invitations seemed to be her mother.

Rhonda walked in from the kitchen. She, too, had spent some time primping. She wore a silk blouse over black slacks and had curled her hair. Talk about twisted, Carly thought, when you figured they were both interested in the same guy.

“Oh, good,” Rhonda said. “You're all here. Carly, don't make our guests stand. Everyone should go into the parlor. Or, since dinner's almost ready, let's move into the dining room.”

She bypassed the large dining room used by their guests and led the way into the private, more formal room just next to the kitchen.

Carly took in the good china, the fine linens and the salads waiting on each plate and had the sudden suspicion that the reason she hadn't been asked to help with the cooking was that the meal had come from one of the restaurants in town.

Rhonda directed them to specific chairs. She claimed the one at the head of the table, with Adam on her right and Steve on her left. Jack sat opposite her, Tiffany sat next to Adam and Carly sat next to Steve.

Rhonda passed Adam a bottle of chilled chardonnay. “If you wouldn't mind opening this for me. I'm not very good at these kinds of things. My late husband used to take care of things like that.” She sighed softly, as if the pain of the moment nearly overshadowed any possible pleasure.

“I think I can manage it,” he said as he took the corkscrew and went to work.

Steve turned to Carly. “Your mother sets a beautiful table.”

“Yes, she does.”

He glanced at the salad. “And she's a great cook.”

“You bet. Wish I'd inherited that ability from her, but I'm into simple cooking.”

“You do okay, Mom,” Tiffany said. “Except that one time you tried to feed us duck. It was horrible.”

“The duck or the thought of eating it?” Adam asked with a smile as he pulled the cork free and poured the wine.

“I never tasted it. How could I eat something I'd have as a pet?”

Carly agreed, but Neil had insisted she work on perfecting a recipe. He'd wanted fancy dishes served whenever he brought people from work home for dinner.

“You married?” Steve asked Adam.

“Divorced,” he said easily.

Carly was surprised. She hadn't known that. Plus, he was hardly old enough to have had that many life experiences.

“Really,” she said. “Me, too.”

“Steve's a widower,” Rhonda said pointedly.

Carly got the momspeak message instantly. Death wasn't anyone's fault. Unlike divorce, which was a clear mark of failure.

“Guess we'll have to wear a scarlet
D
on our chest,” Adam said with a wink.

“I'll have sweatshirts made up,” she told him.

“What's with the
D?
” Tiffany asked.

“Like an
A,
in
The Scarlet Letter,
” Rhonda said.

“It's a book,” Adam added, leaning toward the teen. “We had to read it back in high school. It's old and…well, boring.”

Carly grinned. She hadn't enjoyed the story, either. “But serious literature. You had to give them that.”

“English wasn't my thing,” he admitted. “Now give me a couple of hours on the football field and I was happy.”

She could imagine him playing. “I thought you were the science guy.”