Harrowing Hats (31 page)

I wasn’t halfway across before Rita Martinez saw me. She was the head of the kitchen staff. Her dark curls were damp on her sweaty forehead. Her eyes narrowed. “Jessie! Good to see you. What are you doing in the middle of my dinner?”

Rita was a very nice person, but she was also no-nonsense when it came to serving meals. I worked for her when I first started at the Village. I’d been working for her when I first saw Chase. He was galloping across the arena as the Queen’s Champion. Even in a suit of shiny silver armor, he caught my attention. His helm was up and he was getting ready to address the queen and receive her favor before the joust.

I looked up at him and he smiled down at me. It was a moment out of time.

And suddenly, I knew when my magic moment happened. I realized when I looked up at him that night that I loved him—his kind eyes and sweet smile. That was my time out of time that I realized we were meant to be together.

“Jessie? You haven’t answered my question.” Rita’s irritated voice totally interrupted the hearts and flowers circling in my brain.

It was hard coming back from that flashback—like a bad made-for-TV movie—but I had to focus. “Just trying to get across the arena fast.” I smiled and waved but didn’t wait for her permission. I kept on walking. “Good to see you, Rita. Love what you’ve done with your hair.”

“Jessie!” she yelled back. “You better not try this again unless you want to peel a whole bag of onions by yourself!”

I really didn’t want to peel a bag of onions or anything else. My kitchen wench days were over. But I needed to reach Andre faster than I could going downstairs and trying to get through everything happening down there.

When I got across the walkway, Andre was still there, looking for a spot to sit with his ladies. That’s what mattered.

“I need to talk to you,” I said when I reached him.

“Not now,” he refused me. “I’m
very
busy.”

“I know. But I need to talk to you
now
. It’s about this hat.”

He looked at the blue and gold carriage driver’s hat in my hand and frowned. “It can wait until tomorrow. Or at least until after the feast.”

The ladies giggled at his word play (least and feast—some people are easily amused), and he was still rogue enough to blush.

“No, Andre. It can’t wait.”

He huffed and shot me terrible glances that could have mortally wounded me if I wasn’t supercharged with curious intention. “Fine.”

“We’ll save you a seat, Andre,” one of the purple ladies said. “Right here between us.”

His eyes were bright with anticipation of his return—and who knew what else. He was a man on the rebound. Anything was possible.

Reluctantly he let me drag him into a dark corner of the kitchen that was relatively quiet. “This better be good, Jessie.”

“I don’t know about good, but it’s important.” I explained about Neal, the pink hat pin, and what I’d learned from the not-so-evil twins.

“And?” he asked, darting impatient glances out at the crowd in the arena.

“And I think something is wrong. How did Neal know about the hat pin?”

“Reporters know things other people don’t. Ask him.”

“Andre—”

“Jessie—”

“Am I interrupting anything?” Neal’s voice came over my shoulder. “Oh. There’s my hat. I was hoping I’d find it with you, Andre.”

Andre’s eyes got wide. He looked like he’d seen a ghost. “Swayne? Is that you?”

“
O
f course. Don’t be so dramatic. That was always your worst quality.”

“What are you doing here?” Andre asked. “Why are you dressed like that?”

“I’m returning the favor, old friend. You had me investigated—I thought I’d come here and see what you were up to.”

“Wait a minute. You know each other?” I interrupted the reunion.

“Shut up, Jessie. Anyone ever tell you that you talk too much?” Swayne (Neal) muttered. “Both of you, step into that storage area over there.”

Swayne had a gun. I couldn’t believe it—and after I got him a job!

Andre held up his hands like they always do in the old movies. “Don’t shoot. There’s no reason for violence. I just wanted to know where my money had gone. I got a new accountant this year, and he found discrepancies. I wanted to find out what happened. You were my business manager for twenty years. Of course he’d start with you.”

Swayne closed and locked the storage room door behind him and stood against it. “I’ll tell you what happened, you self-indulgent moron—I spent all of it. At least all I could get my hands on. When you started investigating me, I pretended to be that arrogant reporter, Neal Stevenson from the
Times
. I didn’t want you to know I was here until I was ready.”

“I trusted you,” Andre charged. “You were sleeping with Kathleen and I never even told the police. But I
knew
.”

Swayne laughed. “And a sweet little morsel she was. Too good for you. She found out about the money I was taking and threatened to tell you. But I made a big mistake that day—I should’ve killed you instead of her. Kathleen and I could’ve run off together with
all
of your money.”

“No!” Andre passionately launched himself against Swayne’s large, beefy body. It was like watching a flea attack an elephant. Andre kind of bounced off him and fell to the floor.

“You guessed about me, didn’t you, Jessie?” Swayne waved the gun at me—presumably because I was the only one left standing.

“It was the hat pin,” I explained. “No one else knew but you.”

“Too bad, honey. You and I could’ve had some good times instead of them finding the two of you here dead in the morning.”

I wanted to say that he couldn’t shoot us here without drawing attention and getting caught. But the crowd was stomping their feet and yelling
“Huzzah!”
every other minute. There were trumpeters announcing the start of the joust and galloping horses. He was right. They wouldn’t find us until tomorrow, and by then he’d be long gone.

I looked around—in a stealthy way, I hoped—for something to use as a weapon. I had my tiny pocketknife but I doubted that would make any difference to him. There were fifty-pound bags of flour that I couldn’t lift without a major effort (too slow to avoid a bullet), smaller bags of beans, and a few potatoes. Not much by way of life-saving equipment. Not really even enough to make soup.

Andre got slowly to his feet and wiped some blood from the corner of his mouth. “You bastard,” he snarled, hands curled into fists. “You cheating, lying, murdering bastard.”

“You’re a fool,” Swayne said. “It was easy cheating with your wife and stealing your money. Stupid old fool.”

Andre was motivated to attack again. This time, I jumped in—what did I have to lose?

I took the pocketknife and opened one of the flour sacks while Andre pummeled Swayne. I managed to cover all of us in flour. Swayne swore and lashed out at me. I hit him in the head with a bag of beans and tried to get close enough to kick him where it would matter.

Lucky for us, Swayne didn’t have a chance to recover from our attack. Someone kicked in the pantry door, breaking it off the hinges. Andre and I got out of the way, but Swayne took the full brunt of the door crashing on him.

After the flour had cleared, Joe Bradley stood there. He had a gun, too. It seemed to me that security at the Main Gate was wasting their time making sure swords and arrows were peace-tied. If people were going to wander around the Village with guns, what chance did swords and arrows have?

Chase was right behind Joe with two security guards. But Joe had already taken care of the situation. Swayne lay still on the floor under the heavy door. Andre stood on top of the door for good measure.

“Jessie!” Chase rushed in and put his arms around me. “Are you all right?”

“Fine now.” I snuggled in close to him. “At least we solved
one
murder.”

“Maybe three,” Joe corrected. “I think the police will find Swayne killed your chocolate friend, too. He wanted to draw attention to Andre’s past. I think he was hoping the twins would be blamed for his death.”

“That doesn’t make much sense to me,” I disagreed.

“And he killed my brother, who Andre hired to investigate him,” Joe continued. “I followed him here after that. He would’ve killed the two of you if I hadn’t been following him around the Village. He thought I bought his phony Neal Stevenson act. He doesn’t look anything like the real Neal Stevenson.”

Detective Almond and a few of his officers arrived through a loud chorus of
huzzahs
from the arena—and probably countless little chicken bones raining down on the jousters.

Andre and I were covered with flour as we explained (again) what had happened. I smiled, watching Chase talk to Detective Almond after that. The front side of his tunic was also covered in flour where he had pressed against me, but the back part was clean.

I didn’t want to think what all of us must have looked like when the police arrived. The important part was that everyone arrived in time. No permanent damage done—except maybe to Swayne, who was limping when the police led him away.

Chase filled me in on what he knew as we walked back to the Dungeon through the quiet Village, showered, and ate dinner. No castle food for us that night, only the finest microwave cuisine and some warm ale.

“So Bradley wanted to prove Swayne killed his brother for investigating him in Hollywood and followed him here.” I was amazed by the whole story.

“Exactly. I’m sure Detective Almond is going to try to charge him with Cesar’s murder, too.” Chase explained the police theory, which sounded remarkably like Bradley’s theory.

“I don’t know. It wouldn’t make sense for Swayne to draw attention to Andre like that when he was planning to kill him. The whole Village was alerted by Cesar’s death—you doubled security at night. Either Swayne had a bad plan or he didn’t kill Cesar.”

“Let’s leave that to the police, at least for now.” He took my plate and glass and we lay close to each other for a long time.

“I remember when I first knew I loved you,” I whispered, touching his hair and face. “I remember how you looked when you smiled at me that night and I thought my heart would burst out of my chest.”

He smiled and kissed me. “That’s very romantic—except for the heart-bursting thing.”

“You can tell you’ve never read romance novels. You don’t know the language.”

“The important thing is that you remembered,” he said. “Nothing else matters.”

I
don’t know what it was that woke me up a few hours later. Chase was gone and someone was throwing pebbles at the window next to the bed. Maybe that was it. I looked at the clock—it was almost midnight. I’d totally forgotten about meeting Lord Robert by the tree swing.

I changed into the black Templar outfit and ran downstairs. Lord Robert met me there, tossing down the rest of the pebbles when he saw me.

“I almost gave up on you.” His voice was muffled behind the headgear.

“Thanks for waking me up. I’m sorry I’m late.”

“Are you sure you want to go through with this? It’s late—everything will be underway before we get there. I don’t know how that will help you find Stewart’s weakness, if he has one.”

“I’m sure. Let’s get going.” I pulled the headpiece over my face and we followed the trail into the woods. The Knights Templar Encampment sign seemed to be the last outpost as I looked at it. After this, the rules of the Village didn’t really apply. I had to remember that while I was there.

I wasn’t really worried about surviving the ordeal. No matter what, this wasn’t real. The knights might not play by the same rules, but they were still just ordinary people in costumes. How bad could that be?

The encampment was ablaze with torches and campfires lit around the enormous black tents. It looked like hundreds of people were out here, but I knew better. There were some hangers-on who liked being out here with the knights, but it couldn’t be more than two dozen or so. Everyone was just so busy that it made it look like more.