Bed & Breakfast Bedlam (A Logan Dickerson Cozy Mystery Book 1) (8 page)

Chapter Sixteen

“There’s Gemma Burke’s house.” Miss Vivee
pointed. “The yellow and white one. There. Slow down, now,” Miss Vivee
instructed. “Don’t get too close.”

I turned off the ignition and checked the
odometer. “Okay,” I said. “So it was four miles from the entrance to the beach
to Gemma’s house. There and back would be eight miles.” I looked at Miss Vivee.
“I don’t think she’d run eight miles.”

“Why?”

“That’s just a lot of running. And if she
went down those steps, the ones you say lead to the river, then that would add even
more distance if she jogged along the beach. And sand is taxing to jog on.”

“Okay. Maybe you’re right. Viola Rose
didn’t mention that she’d ever seen her come back. Maybe she didn’t run back.
She ran that far and walked home.”

“No,” I said. “I didn’t mean that. “I
think that she may have not run as far as the beach.”

“Mmm hmmm,” she said lost in thought. She
took her sunglasses off, dug in her purse and pulled out her prescription
glasses and put them on. Then she put her sunglasses on top of them.

“Need both?”

“I can’t see details as far as the house
without my prescription glasses and the sun bothers my eyes. I need to get a look
at those steps.”

“They do make prescription sunglasses, you
know.”

“Sometimes you’re not as smart as you try
to let on,” Miss Vivee said with a grimace. “Why would I pay good money for
another pair when I already have a pair of both?”

I didn’t understand most of Miss Vivee’s
logic. And I figured most people wouldn’t either. It was so hard to get her to
see any other way but her own, and I just wasn’t raised to argue and disrespect
old people.

 “Here,” Miss Vivee said and handed me
part of the newspaper she had me buy. “We can use this for cover.”

I took the newspaper from her. “Do what
now?”

She opened up the newspaper and flapped it,
holding it in front of her face. “You don’t know much about surveillance do
you?”

Ooooh. We’re supposed to hide behind it.

“I do know that this girl doesn’t know us
from Adam,” I said defiantly, not raising the paper. “Or that we’re here watching
for her.”

“You don’t know what she knows,” Miss
Vivee said. “And as soon as we find out her name she’s going on the suspect
list. That means she’s dangerous. So unless you want to be the next one falling
into a bowl of stew, you’d better be careful.” She rattled the newspaper.
“C’mon now. Get with it.” She hit me on my elbow.

I reluctantly put the paper up. It was the
obituary section.

“Now what?”

“We wait.”

“Do we know what time she might leave out
for the Jellybean Cafe?” I asked. I really didn’t want to sit for hours looking
at the faces of dead people.

“Nope. But Viola Rose says she doesn’t
miss and she hadn’t come in yet. I’m guessing since we didn’t see her on the
way over she’s still in the house.”

“We were at the park for a long time,” I
offered.

“We wait,” she said.

“We don’t even know what she looks like.”
My voice was leaning toward pouty.

“I do,” Miss Vivee said.

“How? You’ve never seen her.”

“That’s right, Missy, but I’ve seen every
other person in this town so she’ll be the only one in Yasamee that’ll be a
stranger to me.”

Even without Miss Vivee leaving the house
in the past twenty years, I was positive that she would know Gemma Burke’s
roommate. Renmar had told me on my first day that everyone in Yasamee comes to
the Maypop to eat.

So we sat, with the car running, windows
rolled up, air conditioner on, and our faces hidden behind newspapers. Cat sat
on her hind paws, most of the wait, staring out of the window, evidently not in
need of a disguise.

“There she is!” Miss Vivee whispered, a
big grin crawling across her face. She started rattling her paper. “It’s her. You
see? It’s her!”

“Why are you whispering?” I asked. “She
can’t hear you.”

“Hush!” was her reply.

We watched as Gemma’s houseguest came out
of the house, pulled the door closed behind her and headed toward the town
square. Presumably to the Jellybean Cafe.

“Now what are we going to do?” I asked.

“I’m going to get into that house and see
what I can find.” She stuffed both pairs of glasses in her purse and nodded at
me.

“It’s locked. How are you getting in?”

“Did you see her lock that door? No! You
didn’t. She just pulled it shut. Pay attention. Us being investigators means we
have to be observant.”

“Wait,” I said and grabbed her arm. 
“Maybe I should go.”

 “What? Why?” She frowned making the
wrinkles on her face come closer together. “You wouldn’t know what to look
for.”

“You can tell me what to look for,” I
replied. “Although, I don’t think it would be that hard to figure out.”

“I’m going,” she said with a determined
grunt and grabbed the door handle. “We don’t have time to dilly-dally. She’ll
be back soon enough. I’ll be out faster than two shakes of a lamb’s tail.”

She grabbled with the door handle, trying
to push open the door. It was too heavy for her. “I’ll just slide in there
quick like and have a look around.” She got the door opened, but then turned
and looked at me. “Well are you going to help me get out of this contraption?”

“I thought maybe you were just gonna
‘slide’ out of it.”

Miss Vivee snorted and I knew that was my
cue not to give her any more lip about it. I climbed out the car and went
around to her side. I held out a hand. “C’mon. I’ve got you.”

Miss Vivee got out and straightened her
clothes. Cat hopped from the back across the front seat and out of the car door.
“You wait here. If you see her coming back, you whistle,” she said. “You know
how to whistle, don’t you?”

“Now you’re quoting famous movies?”

“Can you whistle?” she asked again
somewhat annoyed.

“Yes I can. I whistle and then what?”

“Then I come running out that house like a
bat outta hell, hop in the car and you put the pedal to the metal, that’s
what.”

“Gotcha,” I said and closed her car door.
I was trying to picture Miss Vivee, at ninety-something and five-foot-nothing,
running out of the house quick enough for someone walking up not to see her.
Then I tried to picture her running, period.

I just couldn’t process that thought.

I went back around the car and sat behind
the steering wheel and watched as Miss Vivee crossed the lawn and took the
steps, one at a time, with her dog right beside her. When she got on the porch,
it appeared that she had an epiphany and she turned around and headed back down
the steps.

One at a time.

What is she doing?

Cat seemed just as confused as I was. “Are
we going in or not?” the terrier seemed to say. She went up to the door,
sniffed at it and turned to look at Miss Vivee, her tail wagging. Miss Vivee
was still making her way down the steps.

I put my hand on the door handle. Maybe I
should get out and see about the two of them. Perhaps she’d thought better of
going in Gemma Burke’s house and was coming back to the car.

But instead of coming back down the
sidewalk, she went around back.

And stayed back there for a while.

Long enough that I started to get nervous.

I checked my rearview mirror. The girl
could have eaten a seven course meal in the time that Miss Vivee had been gone.

I craned my neck to look down the long
drive. No sign of her or that dog.

She said faster than two shakes of a
lamb’s tail?

She must’ve been talking about a dead
lamb.

With each minute that slowly ticked by, the
knot in my stomach cinched tighter and tighter. It was affecting my breathing
and I could feel little beads of sweat forming on my forehead.

I gripped the steering wheel and laid my
head on it. Maybe I should go and check on her.

How could I be so stupid to let her go in
there?

If that FBI guy knew what I was doing with
his grandmother . . .

Oh. My. God.

Bay Colquett would make sure that when I
finished my federal time for trespassing at Track Rock Gap and lying to a
federal officer, I’d do jail time in Yasamee County. I could hear the judge –
“Guilty,” he’d say as his gavel struck the top of his bench. “Breaking and
entering, trespassing on private property, aiding and abetting . . . Guilty.
Guilty. Guilty.”

Crap.

Chapter Seventeen

I just couldn’t wait any longer. I had
counted the number of window panes on the front and side of Gemma’s house, the
number of yellow roses climbing up the trellis on her front porch, the number
of houses from hers to the corner, both ways, and all the ones on the other
side of the street. Twice. I calculated how long it would take an average
jogger to run from Gemma’s house to Mims Point Park, Maypop B & B, and the
Jellybean Café. Then I had made a mental list of all of the four and
five-letter words I could make by rearranging the letters in Gemma Burke’s
name. I was working on six-letter words –
gemmae
, that was an easy one –
embark, meager, eureka, bummer, rebuke, umbrae, umbrage, rummage
. . .

Wait. Those last two are seven letters.

I slammed my palms on the steering wheel.

This is ridiculous.

I pulled on the door handle and jumped out
of the car. I broke into a trot when I rounded the front of the car and headed
down the driveway. I didn’t get ten feet down it when Miss Vivee and Cat
appeared from around back of the house.

She was smiling and waving a paper in the
air.

Oh Lord. Now they’re going to add theft to
the charges against me.

“What do you have?” my voice a low, raspy
whisper.

“What? I can’t hear you,” she said. Then
she held up her index finger telling me to wait a minute.

“Yoo-hoo,” She yelled toward the house
next to Gemma’s.

“What are you doing?” I was about to freak
out. Was she letting the neighbors know we’d just committed a whole slew of felonies?

Up went that finger again.

“Yoo-hoo. MayBelle. You home?” she said in
a sweet, sing-songy voice.

By this time she was standing to the side
of – MayBelle’s – I guessed, porch, but still in Gemma’s driveway. I jerked my
head around to check and make sure The Roommate hadn’t made her way back from
the diner. And jerked it back to look at Miss Vivee. She seemed oblivious to
the fact we might get caught and was concentrating on getting “MayBelle” out of
the house.

I heard a screen door swing open. I just
wanted to dive behind the azalea bushes and hide.

What was she doing?

“Well, I say. If it ain’t Vivienne
Pennywell,” the rotund woman clad in a flowered peach duster exclaimed as she
pushed herself out the door and came to the edge of the porch. “What are you up
to?”

Now we had witnesses
.

“And who is that you have with you?”

“That’s Cat. My dog.” Cat let out a yelp.

“No I mean the young woman.” She looked
down the driveway at me.

“That’s Logan Dickerson. She’s an
archaeologist from Ohio,” Miss Vivee said stuffing the paper she’d purloined
from the house into her purse. “She’s down here to do some work on Stallings
Island.”

They won’t even have to put me in a line
up. Miss Vivee just gave that woman all my vital statistics.

“Logan Dickerson, huh?” MayBelle,
committing my name to memory, eyed me suspiciously. “That’s a nice jeep she’s
got,” she said pointing to my car. “My Jimbo’s got one just like it. Only it’s
black.” She looked at me. “White’s a nice color, though.”

May as well just take down the license
plate number.

“And how is your boy, MayBelle? He got
himself a wife yet?” Miss Vivee seemed to let her comment out with a snicker.

“Oh no.” she said smiling. “He’s still
here with me.”

“Figures,” Miss Vivee mumbled. “MayBelle,”
Miss Vivee spoke louder. “I was trying to pay my respect to Gemma’s houseguest.”
She wagged a thumb back toward Gemma’s house. “But it seems like no one’s
home.”

“She goes up to Jellybean’s on Saturdays
for Viola Rose’s Shepard’s Pie,” MayBelle said.

“Dang it,” Miss Vivee said and snapped her
fingers. “I so wanted to tell her how bad I felt about Gemma’s passing. I
understand that’s her cousin from up north.”

How does she come up with this stuff?

“Wherever did you hear that from?” MayBelle
said. She leaned on the porch’s banister and did what she thought was
whispering, but I could hear her clearly from where I stood.

“They ain’t no relation, not by blood
anyway.” She leaned in further. “I think they may be partners.” She almost
mouthed the last word.

“Partners?”

“Yes. You know.” She cocked her head and
winked. “C’mon Miss Vivee, you aren’t that behind the times, are you?”

“Oh,” Miss Vivee said and nodded her head.
“Well to each its own, I always say. What’s her name, MayBelle? Gemma Burke’s
partner
?”

“I can’t say that I know.”

“Well. I guess I’ll see her at the
funeral.” Miss Vivee feigned disappointment.

“You going?” Maybelle asked.

“Of course I am. I delivered that girl.
Brought her into this world. I couldn’t miss her home going services.” She
started walking down the driveway, Cat at her heels and threw her hand up in a
wave without looking back. “See you around, MayBelle.”

I opened the passenger car and Cat
scrambled into the car without any help. Miss Vivee required a push.

“We might have to get another car,” she said
after I got into the car. She gave me a sideways glance. “This one is too high
for me.”

“Did you really deliver Gemma Burke?” I
asked, ignoring her comment.

“No! Goodness no.” Miss Vivee frowned. “I
couldn’t stand her momma. I would have thrown up if I had had to see that
women’s innards during childbirth.”

“So why did you say that?”

“In case MayBelle’s starts mouthing off to
Gemma Burke’s houseguest. She’ll think I really had a reason to come over and
won’t think I was just snooping.”

I let my eyes roll upward.

“So, this is an interesting twist, huh?” I
said. “Gemma and the girl.”

“Oh. Phooey,” Miss Vivee said. “They
weren’t partners. That girl was straight as an arrow.”

“You knew what she meant?” I said starting
up the car and putting on my seatbelt.

“Of course I knew what she meant. You
think they just made gay people yesterday?” She pulled her seatbelt across her
and I took it and buckled her in. “Gemma Burke didn’t swing that way,” she said
and pursed her lips. “Gemma dated plenty
men
before she left town. And Colin
Prichard was sweet on her since the both of them were knee high to a
grasshopper.”

Ah, the cute deputy.

I guessed he probably wouldn’t chase after
a girl he didn’t have a chance with. But I didn’t know him that well. Yet.

“People can change,” I said.

“She didn’t.” She dug down in her purse. “I
found this.” She whipped out a folded piece of paper with a flourish and a
smile.

“What is that?”

“A love letter.”

“Let me see.” I took the letter from her
and gave a sideway glance. Who would have guessed she was such a criminal.

What she’d found was a letter, addressed
to “Gemma Bear” from a Jeffrey Beck. He was pouring his heart out in the letter
saying he couldn’t live without her and he’d do whatever it took to win her
back, including he wrote, leaving his wife, Miranda.

“This isn’t a love letter, Miss Vivee.”

“It’s about love and it’s a letter.
Ipso
facto
, it’s a love letter. That gives us two more suspects,” she said
pulling out her notebook and a pencil giving the tip of it a lick.

“Who?”

“Jeffrey and Miranda Beck.”

“A love triangle?” I nodded my head. “It
makes sense.” I don’t think I’ve met them,” I said.

Five hundred eighty three residents
weren’t a lot, but I didn’t see how I’d ever meet all of them. Soon, I was
sure, the thrill for Miss Vivee of being Miss Marple would fade, and I’d be on
Stallings Island. Or going home.

Either one was fine with me.

“The Becks don’t live in Yasamee.”

“Oh,” I said. “Where do they live?”

“Don’t know. Found the letter tucked
inside her drawer. Her
panty
drawer.” She wiggled her eyebrows at me.
“That means she still had feelings for him.”

“It does?”

“Sure it does. Women only keep things men gave
them in their underwear drawer if they like them.” She looked at me. “There or
a box that you keep all of your special memories of him in.” She nodded. “If
you didn’t like a man and he gave you something, what would you do with it?”

I hunched my shoulders. “I’d throw it
away.”

“Exactly,” she said with a nod.

Her eyes fixed, she let her hand hover
over her notebook. “But what I want to know is why the two of them were so
secretive about this girl’s name. She eats at Viola Rose’s every week, and
lives next door to MayBelle Hutchinson, the two biggest gossips in Yasamee.
Heck in Augusta County. And neither one of them knows her name.”

“We could just ask her her name,” I
suggested.

“Don’t be silly. We’ll ask Mae Lynn to
find out for us.”

“Who is Mae Lynn?”

“She’s the dispatcher over at the
Sheriff’s office.”

“How will she find out her name?”

“We’re going to file a complaint. Say we saw
some suspicious happenings at the house. The Sheriff will go and check it out.
She’ll have to tell him her name.”

“Uhm . . .” I squinted my eyes. I wasn’t
exactly following her line of reasoning. “Wouldn’t the Sheriff go and question
her anyway? She was Gemma’s roommate, it stands to reason that she might know
something about her death.”

“The Sheriff might not know she had a
roommate. And he hasn’t determined yet that Gemma Burke was murdered, and if
he’s beginning to lean toward that conclusion he thinking it was Renmar’s
bouillabaisse that killed her. He’s got no reason to go looking for clues at
her house. Not yet anyway.”

“And we do?”

She let out a groan. “Of course we do,”
she said with some agitation. “Because her house could be where the crime occurred.”
She ran her hand over Cat’s head and let her gaze drift out the front window of
the car. “Even though I didn’t see anything that could be the murder weapon.
Still. This girl might have something to do with it.”

“Is she going on the suspect list?”

“How can I put her on the list when I
don’t know her name?” She shook her head, threw Cat toward the back seat, pushed
the notebook down into her purse, and sucked her teeth. “Home, please,” she
said and put on her sunglasses.