Here Lies a Wicked Man Snippet 11
Roxanna sniffed… something was burning.
She dashed into the kitchen, rescued the last pan of yeast rolls before they turned black and eyed them critically. Only a few corners had burned. A snip, a scrape, a brush of seasoned butter, and they’d taste as scrumptious as ever. Next, she lined up her orders where she could see them all at a glance: roast beef, broiled trout, roast beef, turkey salad—
She’d never managed an inn before opening this one a few weeks ago. Lord, what had she been thinking? Tonight could go down as her best and worst, the night she blew her shot at entrepreneurship.
Scooping tomatoes onto a plate, she splattered her hand then resisted the urge to lick it off. Didn’t need the health inspector on her case. Meat, potato, vegetables, bread…
Booker Krane popped through the door, Emaline close behind.
“John Lindy’s on his way,” Roxanna said, shoving two filled plates into Booker’s hand. “first table left of the door—that is, if you don’t mind doing more of what you’ve been doing.”
When he grinned and headed out, she gave the next three plates on a tray to Emaline. “Couple beside the front window, with a baby.”
She set four plates on the counter then paused to rub her gold locket for luck. A pinch of determination is worth a pound of try, Aunt Jane had engraved on the back of the gold heart. Maybe tonight would work out, after all. True enough, Roxanna had never managed an inn before, but she’d helped out in her great aunt’s tea room all those years ago.
She scooped potatoes onto all four plates.
Good years they’d been, too, except for the first few months after the accident. She was five years old, riding happily between her parents on the big bench seat of their vintage Oldsmobile. Somewhere ahead two cars crashed. A truck driver carrying half a ton of steel pipe stomped his brakes directly in front of the Olds. Her dad was talking, couldn’t stop fast enough on the slick street, and the pipe sticking off the back of the flatbed truck was suddenly coming through the Oldsmobile’s windshield. Roxanna could still hear the screech of metal, the crunch of breaking glass. Could smell the hot, sticky liquid that gushed over her. She remembered screaming and screaming and finally being pulled from the car, drenched in her parents’ blood.
“You wouldn’t talk or smile,” Aunt Jane told her later. “Lord knows, you had little enough to smile about. Then one day I was sorting through some photographs. I came across a snapshot of you and your folks the day we all went to Disneyland.
“Just a slip of a thing you were, thin as a pencil, sitting on my lap. You took the picture from my hand and, with a timid finger, gently touched the faces. ‘Mommy. Daddy,’ you whispered. ‘Gone.’
“The first tears you’d cried since the accident slid down your cheeks. Then came the flood. I rocked you all night while you got the crying done.”
Roxanna slid two filled dinner plates onto another tray. The locket and all its memories she dropped inside the neckline of her dress to keep it out of the pots as she bent over the wide commercial stove. Aunt Jane’s help would sure be welcome right now.
Twenty minutes later, with Booker and Emaline passing plates as fast as Roxanna could dish them up, the crisis was over. Food levels had run dangerously low. A few items disappeared entirely.
“Everyone seems happy,” Booker Krane told her, carrying out the last plate. “Oh, and two new tables are seated.”
Roxanna dampened a rough kitchen towel with a splash of ice water and pressed it to her neck. What would she have done without Booker and Emaline? If this happened again, she’d need to consider hiring someone to help out on Fridays—which meant paying someone.
Smoothing her hair, she stepped into the dining room to take the two new orders. Her smile slipped when she saw Gary Spiner, who owned the sporting goods store. Gary had been showing up more and more often since his wife left, usually timing his visits near closing to be the last person in the dining room when Roxanna locked up, and hinting that he could solve her money problems.
“What money problems?” she’d said once. But bad news travels fast in a small town. Gary was active with the local merchants’ association. He probably knew she had a stack of overdue bills in her office. Judging by the fancy new house he’d built overlooking the town, she supposed he had money to back up his offer.
“Freedom has a price tag,” Aunt Jane was fond of saying. It had cost Roxanna every penny she’d tucked away for the past ten years to become an independent business owner.
Allowing anyone to buy a piece of the inn would put a finish to her freedom. If the price tag for independence was longer hours and harder work, so be it. She’d never been afraid of hard work. And if tonight’s crowd was an indication of business to come, the inn just might make it, providing she could stave off the bill collectors a few more weeks. And providing she stayed focused. No distractions. No diversions. No extravagances. No men.
Feeling hot, tired, yet suddenly happy, she surveyed the dining area. Contented chatter floated around the room. Masonville had finally noticed the new inn in town.
When John Lindy arrived, Roxanna introduced him to Booker Krane then sent him on his flight to Dallas with take-out finger foods and a promise of pie and coffee later.
“Here,” she whispered to Booker, handing him a pair of plates heaped with roast beef and vegetables. “Yours and Emaline’s are on the house. Without your help, a lot of people would’ve walked out hungry.”
Making her rounds to take dessert orders and chat with customers, Roxanna began to relax. This was the easy part. Making friends was one of her strengths, one of the reasons she’d chosen this business when she quit the old life and moved away from the city. She only hoped the folks of Masonville would continue patronizing the inn after they inevitably discovered how she’d earned her living in the past.
CHAPTER 7
Booker’s wrenched knee throbbed from rushing around. Otherwise, he felt as fine as a new puppy, knowing he might’ve salvaged that commission. His 4×5 transparencies on their way to the late pickup in Dallas, he speared the last bite of the best peach pie he’d ever tasted.
“See that fellow Roxanna’s talking to?” Emaline poked him in the ribs.
Booker pried his gaze from Roxanna to study the man sitting alone at a table. His bald head shone under the chandelier like a polished honeydew melon. He wore a tan safari shirt, khaki trousers, scuffed leather boots, a day’s stubble around his jaw, and the expression of a lovesick llama.
Maybe the real term was “lust sick.” The inn’s enchanting owner had a sensuality that could turn the most dignified of men into rutting satyrs. Booker straightened self-consciously and schooled his own features into a semblance of intelligent life.
“That’s Gary Spiner,” Emaline said. “Chuck Fowler’s partner.”
Booker wished she’d lower her voice. The small dining room was already abuzz with speculation about Fowler’s death. “I thought you said Chuck worked as a manufacturer’s rep.”
“He had his fingers in more money pies around this town than you could count, including the local sporting goods store—”
“The Gilded Trout?” On one of his early trips to Masonville, Booker had photographed the sign, a ten-foot fish with golden fins.
“Gary inherited the store from his dad. The way I heard it, Gary’s not much of a businessman—Venus in Pisces spending habits. He had a tough go of it a few years back. Chuck offered to buy in but wouldn’t take less than fifty percent ownership. When Gary came close to losing the whole thing and finally accepted the offer, Chuck put up the money to expand the store’s inventory and start a catalog business.”
Booker hadn’t much faith in partnerships. Like marriages, they often ended rudely. “How’d they get along?”
“Shaky, until the business started making money. Gary manages the retail store and fills mail orders. Chuck stopped in every weekend to run his eagle eye over the accounts.”
“Is Spiner married?”
“His wife left two weeks ago with both kids.”
Partnerships could be tough on the best of marriages. “Any hint of infidelity?”
Emaline squinted at Booker. “You think Gary killed Chuck for fooling around with his wife?”
Half a dozen nearby heads turned.
“Shhhhh! Emaline, would you mind not shouting? I figure it was an accident, somebody out target shooting. Plain and simple.”
“The sheriff doesn’t think so.”
“Maybe that’s because a murder would be more exciting to investigate.”
“Only a simpleminded fool would practice near Turtle Lake, where people could get hurt, when right there at the Caribou Lodge is the best archery range anyone could want.”
“At the Lodge?” Booker had seen the tennis courts and the Texas-shaped swimming pool. He’d supped at the restaurant, bent his elbow in the private club, the only place nearby that served alcohol, but he hadn’t noticed an archery range.
“You probably mistook it for an outdoor theater. That’s what it used to be. Nobody but Jeremy Fowler was interested in keeping a drama company going, so Pete Littlehawk ripped out all the seats and set up the targets.”
Pete Littlehawk, who managed the Lodge, claimed to be half Choctaw and half Blackfoot. Booker wondered if that fact held any significance, considering the instrument used in Fowler’s death.
“I’m surprised archery is such a popular sport,” he muttered.
“The sport’s bow-hunting, Booker. Some hunters think the bigger challenge evens out the odds between them and Bambi’s pa.”
He didn’t like the way this picture was shaping up. He wanted Fowler’s death to be an accident.
“I’ve seen more deer in the brush back of Turtle Lake than anywhere else on the Estates,” he insisted. “Maybe a hunter missed his game shot, and Fowler happened to be in the wrong place.”
“A poacher? Bow season starts in October. Murdering season, though, I guess that’s whenever a killer feels the urge.”
Booker winced, but only a couple of heads turned that time.
Emaline’s stubborn gaze darted toward a table near the front door. “There’s the sheriff and his wife. Wonder if he’s learned anything.”
In a flash she rose from her chair and plopped herself, uninvited, at the Sheriff’s table. After a moment of conversation, Ringhoffer tipped his tea glass at Booker. Cora Lee, a fleshy, dimpled blonde with huge brown eyes, smiled and cocked one eyebrow quizzically at him. Booker wondered why Emaline’s triple-decibel voice had dampened and what she’d told them. On the other hand, what he really wanted was to be excluded from any talk about murder.
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