The Stubborn Schoolhouse Spirit (The Penelope Pembroke Cozy Mystery Series)

The Stubborn

Schoolhouse Spirit

A Penelope Pembroke Cozy Mystery

Book 2

Judy
Nickles

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales, is entirely coincidental.

[email protected] Judy
Nickles

ISBN-10: 1440093046

ISBN-13: 978-144093046

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

Contact the author at:

[email protected]

Dedication

To all the Penelopes who, as little girls, read Nancy Drew and Trixie Beldon and dreamed of growing up to solve mysteries.

Special thanks to:

Donna Alice Patton, who was not only the catalyst for Penelope but who vetted all things Catholic, understanding my research was d
one in a Protestant sort of way.

Meet Penelope Pembroke

Owner of the best (only) B&B in Amaryllis, Arkansas (pop. 5492), who’s

Flirting with fifty (You’re as young as you feel.)

Divorced (Travis Pembroke, cotton entrepreneur, had a wandering eye.)

Mother of Detective Bradley Pembroke of the Amaryllis PD (She wishes he understood her as well as she understands him.)

Apple of her father Jake Kelley’s eye (She wouldn’t trade him for two spotted pups.)

Best friend of Mary Lynn Hargrove, the mayor’s wife. (T
hey’ve known each other since high school and know each other inside out.)

And the only human creature tolerated by Abijah, the 18-lb. orange tabby who stalks the family home-turned B&B.

Penelope keeps her ear to the ground, her eyes open, and her battered heart in solitary confinement. Then one night, while having a beer and a Reuben at the seedy-through-popular Sit-n-Swill, she meets Tiny
aka
Sam, who’s about as much of a biker as she is a belly dancer.

She insists on dabbling in danger and disaster despite Sam’s best efforts to discourage her. The fireworks begin in Book 1, light up the skies in Books 2,3,4, and 5, and end in one spectacularly explosive display in Book 6.

Now, Book 2:

The Stubborn Schoolhouse Spirit

CHAPTER ONE

“The mac and cheese stinks tonight, Nellie” Jake Kelley’s shaggy silver brows came together as he watched for a reaction from his daughter.

“Thanks, Daddy. I’m glad you like it.”

Jake guffawed, causing Penelope’s head to snap back. “What’s so funny?”

“You didn’t hear what I said. In fact, you haven’t heard a word I’ve said since we sat down to supper.”

“You want to drive out to the old folks home after we eat?” She regarded her father with a mixture of affection and impatience.

“Sure, sure, whatever you want to do,
darlin’. So what’s up?”

“What’s up?”

He raked the ceiling with his eyes. “Ah, and she finally heard me.”

“Stop it, Daddy.”

“You’re thinking about Sam, aren’t you?”

Penelope grabbed up her mostly
uneaten dinner and flounced toward the sink where she scraped the food into the garbage disposal.

“Shouldn’t waste good food, Nellie.”

“I paid for it.”

Jake
sucked air through his teeth.

“Sorry, Daddy.”
She turned to face him, leaning against the granite countertop she’d had specially installed

a
few years ago when she opened the bed and breakfast in the family home.

“What’s for dessert?”

“I don’t know. Ice cream, I guess.”

“Any apple crisp to go with it?”

“Maybe.” She stuck her head inside the refrigerator and scanned the shelves. “Here it is.” She loosened the plastic wrap on the bowl and shoved it inside the microwave. When she’d set the dish in front of her father, she sat down across from him and said, “I just can’t get it together, Daddy.”

“I
know, darlin’. You had a bad time of it, running around like you did. Seeing Travis shot. Almost getting killed yourself.”

“I’m sorry he’s dead—that he died like that—but I’m not grieving for him.”

“Ex-wives can grieve for what might’ve been.”

“Not even that.”

“So it’s Sam after all.”

Penelope leaned her chin in her hand and thought of the man who, as a biker, ha
d hit on her at the Sit-n-Swill and then enlisted her against her will to take care of her ex-husband’s current mistress who happened to be too interesting to a small-time drug cartel—or something. The truth never really came out, and she’d just had to live with it.

Last seen, he was driving away from the B&B after leaving her at the back door following a night of pure terror at Pembroke Point. A night in which Penelope felt sure she’d killed a man before he could kill her. She still struggled to live with the possibility.

In the months since Travis Pembroke was laid to rest beside his parents in the family cemetery at Pembroke Point, Penelope had thought of him often but without affection. Even his being the father of her only son, whom she adored, couldn’t wipe clean the soiled slate of their failed marriage.

But she’d thought of Sam, too, every day and every night
, with a desire she’d never felt for her husband or any other man. The guilt her feelings engendered couldn’t be lessened in the confessional. Though she was sure Fr. Loeffler had heard it all, the private yearnings of a forty-

seven-year-old
salt-and-peppered pillar of the small community just might make things uncomfortable for both of them.

“Nellie?”

She jumped. “What, Daddy?”

“Supper was good. Dessert was better.” He took his dishes to the sink and came back to kiss the top of her head. “And you’re the best.” He glanced out the kitchen window. “Here comes Brad.”

Penelope couldn’t look at her son without seeing his father: six feet of handsome with curly black hair and dark eyes that crinkled at the corners the way Travis’s had done, melting her resolve to be a virginal bride.  Sometimes she wondered about Brad. He’d dated a lot of girls, even Shana Bayliss who’d taken up with Travis not long before the fire at Pembroke Point.

Now he was seeing Abigail Talbot, the librarian hired to replace Shana. Even her name sounded prim to Penelope. As far as she knew, her son’s bachelor pad in the new Primrose Apartments on
Magnolia Street was just that, and she couldn’t help but hope nothing in skirts had ever seen inside of it.

Brad, still sporting his badge, cuffs, and nine-millimeter
Glock on his belt, stepped through the door. “Hey, Pawpaw. Hello, Mother.”

“Hey, Brad.” Jake slapped his grandson’s muscular shoulder inside the tan suede sport coat. “Nice threads.”

“You should get one yourself,” the younger man said. “Forty-nine-ninety-five on sale at Blass’s.”

“Maybe I’ll just do that.”

“Don’t go in and blessed ask for
threads
, Daddy,” Penelope said. “You just don’t look like a hipster.”

Jake’s bottom lip came out briefly. Then he grinned. “Guess you think I’d be more at home singing
Young at Heart
with Jimmy Durante.”

“He’s dead, Pawpaw.”

Jake pouted again. “I know that, Brad.”

Brad winked at his grandfather. “What’s to eat around here?”

Penelope pushed back from the table. “I’ll warm up the macaroni and cheese and smoked sausage, but Daddy finished up the apple crisp.”

Brad shrugged out of his jacket and dropped it over the back of a chair. “Sounds good.”

“So what’s new in town?” Jake asked and sat down again.

“You should know. I saw you having coffee at the Daisy Café with the Toney Twins this afternoon.”

“I mean underground. Picked up anybody recently?”

“Only Mrs. Lawson’s cat
Chester. Charged him with loitering in front of the Garden Market and released him the custody of his owner.”

“That cat is going to get blessed run over if he doesn’t stop wandering around town,” Penelope said, setting a plate in front of her son. The word ‘cat’ brought
Abijah, the massive orange tabby, down from his perch in the bay window. He curled around against Bradley’s ankles.

“Don’t do that.” Brad toed the cat away. “
Chester’s got a few lives left, I guess, but I’ve warned Mrs. Lawson half a dozen times about getting a city license for him. It smells good, Mother.”

“It
is
good. Don’t let it get cold.” She went to the pantry and dug out a box of graham crackers and a bag of marshmallows. “I’ll make you some smores for dessert. You want one, Daddy?”

Jake shook his head. “It’s almost time for
Law and Order
. If Brad doesn’t have anything more interesting to talk about that Lucille Lawson’s cat, I’m going on.”

Brad held his napkin in front of his half-f mouth. “I was teasing, Pawpaw. I have something you’ll get a big kick out of. The Sit-n-Swill is going to reopen.”

“Hot dog!” Jake swung back his chair and plopped himself down. “The Sitton boy finally sold it, did he?”

“The
Sitton boy is older than your grandson, Daddy,” Penelope said. “So who bought it, Bradley?”

Brad drained his glass of milk and held it out for a refill. “A couple from Fayetteville. Marion and Millie Dancer.”

“What kind of name is that—Dancer?” Jake asked.

“Marion and Millie?” Penelope asked without finishing her thought.

Brad scowled. “They’re a married couple about your age.”

“From Fayetteville, you say? Why’d they come here?” Jake leaned toward his grandson.

“Not sure,” Brad said, digging into the generous helping of macaroni and cheese. “But I did hear he used to design women’s clothes, and his specialty was lingerie.”

Penelope’s fingers tightened on a graham cracker, shattering it. “Lingerie? That’s the funniest thing I ever heard in my life.”

Jake smirked. “Where do you think yours comes from, Nellie?”

“From
Walmart, and you have no business talking about a lady’s unmentionables, Daddy. So what does his wife do, Bradley?”

“She coached girls’ basketball in high school.”

“How’d you find out all this?” Penelope topped two graham crackers with a marshmallow and a square of chocolate and set the microwave for ten seconds.

“Parnell noticed the d
oor open while he was on patrol and went to see if it was another break-in.”

“So he got it out of them.” She sat down and scooped
Abijah into her lap.

“He didn’t get it out of them, Mother. They volunteered the information.”

“So when are they opening? I could go for a Reuben.” Jake smacked his lips. “And a beer.”

“They’ve got a lot of cleaning up and remodeling to do, but Parnell says they want to open by the first of the year.”

“Good luck to them.” The microwave beeped. Penelope took out the smores with one hand, balancing Abijah against her with the other. “Ready for these?”

“Not yet.”

“Somehow I can’t wrap my mind around somebody named Dancer running a bar.” Penelope let go of the laugh she’d been holding in. “Marion and Millie! Women’s lingerie!”

“Mother, it’s not that funny.”

She used a paper napkin to dab at the cheese under her son’s bottom lip. “It’s a blessed hoot. Wait’ll I tell Mary Lynn.”

****

When she went upstairs later, Penelope thought of all the things she hadn’t asked Bradley. He probably wouldn’t have told her anyway. Getting information from Detective Bradley Pembroke was like prying the rusted lid off years-old pickles. She wanted to know what he was thinking about doing with Pembroke Point. As Travis’s only son, he’d inherited everything—not a stingy amount.

Her mind fastened on the thought ‘only son’ which Bradley could no longer claim to be. There had been the other one, roasted in the fire that destroyed the gin. Travis said all he felt was relief since the young man had been trying to shake him down. And, he added, he was determined to hold onto everything for Bradley or die in the attempt. Maybe he
had
died in the attempt. He’d died, anyway.

There could be half a dozen of Travis Pembroke’s offspring running around out there somewhere. She’d always known it but refused to think about it. Now she tried to imagine them floating away as she added more bath salts to the tub and stripped off her jeans and sweater. 
Lowering  herself into the warm water, she thought of that confused,

terror-filled night at Pembroke Point when Sam’s arms had  been as warm and comforting as the bath.

Darn you, Sam or Eldred Mooney
Frish or whoever you are. Double darn you for getting me mixed up in that stupid mess. Sending me on the run with Shana, although it wasn’t really her fault either. I could’ve told her not to get mixed up with Travis, that it was bound to turn out badly. And it did. It sure did, for everybody, even me.

I can’t stop thinking about you, and for all I know, you’re going to be sent up the river for life. You probably deserve it. I kept thinking maybe you were one of the good guys. You almost had me convinced. And then you show up and haul me out to Pembroke Point and try to get me into my ex-husband’s bed, and I end up committing murder—at least I think I did. 
She crossed herself hastily.
I think too blessed much. I need to stop. But how do I stop thinking about you and about what I did?

Thank goodness the story of that night never made the
Bugle.
Maybe nobody knew, not even Bradley. Sam as much as said there would be no bodies for anyone to find. The bayou’s proximity probably guaranteed that.

Later, she tried to read, but the words of John Grisham’s latest thriller ran together. She put it aside
, turned out the lamp, and lay there listening, knowing she was straining for the sound of gravel against her window. For Sam.

Darn, darn, darn. I have too much time on my hands with nothing going on again until the Christmas Carousel Tour in December. After that, I won’t catch my breath again until June. It’s a good thing the Town Council voted to let the town have a break a few times a year. Or maybe Harry just couldn’t come up with more ideas.

She smiled into the darkness. Ever since Tobin Textiles pulled out of Amaryllis four years ago, Mayor Harry Hargrove and the Town Council had kept the town alive on tourist trade. Craft fairs, antique malls, sidewalk cafes, and festivals of every name and description. Corny

maybe
, but it worked. Amaryllis, Arkansas, population 5,492, had survived. She was the only B&B in town, and the nearest motel was on I-30 just outside Little Rock. So she’d survived, too.

Actually, she’d have survived no matter what. Travis Pembroke gave her a good settlement when the divorce was final, and a firm in
Little Rock had it well-invested. She got a nice check the fifth of every month. Her father’s pension from the Garden Market Corporation and his Social Security check weren’t shabby either. He owned the house outright and paid the taxes and insurance without feeling a pinch.

They didn’t depend on Tobin Textiles for a living, but because Amaryllis was her home, when the pull-out threatened the entire economy, she pitched in with everyone else to make sure the safe, friendly place she’d grown up in survived for another generation. And it had—at least until the night of the fire which hadn’t quite managed to burn up everyone’s dirty little secrets. Hal Greene hadn’t played up the story in the
Bugle
, and tourists kept coming. But Penelope felt different now. Not so safe. Not so friendly. Not so content with her lot in life. Not since Sam.