Holly and Homicide (29 page)

On
that
point, we were in agreement. Ben, meanwhile, got Henry a glass of water and set it on the table in front of him. Henry took a couple of gulps without acknowledging Ben’s kindness. “Sounds paranoid, I know, but trust me,” Henry declared. “Underneath that blond-bimbo bubbly exterior, Chiffon is vindictive as hell.”

“Seriously?” Ben asked.

“Yeah. Turns out, last year, she filled her ex-boyfriend’s convertible with manure.”

“I’ll bet she didn’t shovel the manure herself,” Ben remarked. “She probably hired a day laborer for the job. Yet I can’t even hire a drywall installer willing to work on the Goodwin property.”

Henry popped a couple of Tic Tacs into his mouth. He looked at me. “Do you know where Audrey and Wendell are?”

“Audrey’s at the TV station. I haven’t seen Wendell
since she and I ran into him in the village yesterday afternoon.”

He crunched his breath mints as if they were peanuts. “We’re going to have to round them up. Considering the potential for disaster with Chiffon, I need to call an emergency board meeting. We need to discuss how we’re going to proceed.”

Steve rubbed his forehead. “This really doesn’t concern Erin and me.”

In spite of myself, I was getting deeply annoyed with Henry. “Chiffon’s a board member, too,” I pointed out. “Maybe if you treat her like an adult, she’ll act like one. Maybe this story of the manure in the convertible isn’t accurate. Or maybe her ex-boyfriend damaged her car first, and she was retaliating.”

“Or
, maybe I sold thirty percent of my family’s house to a crazy young chick,” Henry fired back. “And a two-time murderer.”

“Yeah, that’s possible,” Ben said, and I detected a bit of a hopeful lilt to his voice that struck me as inappropriate. Henry glared at him, and he added quickly, “I got some good news for you, though. The access ramp passed. We’re good to go—no future inspections.”

Henry sat up. His natural rate of breathing had returned and he seemed to have recuperated from his overexertion. “That’s great, Ben. Thank God
you
, at least, have been on my side all along. I don’t know what I’d’ve done without you.”

“No problem.” Ben averted his eyes. “I just have some last little things to take care of in the garage. For one thing, I wanted to fix that busted lock on the door.”

“Great,” Henry said, rising. “’Preciate it.” Shifting his attention to me, he said, “So, anyway, Erin, could you call Audrey for me and mention that I need to talk to her privately? I don’t want to spring this trouble with me and Chiffon on Wendell till I know where Audrey’s coming from.”

“Audrey already knows you dumped Chiffon,” I said. “She came into the kitchen just after you’d left, when Chiffon was still in tears. The way gossip spreads in this town, everyone will know by nightfall.”

“Yeah, probably,” Henry acknowledged. “The thing is, though, Chiffon’s turning out to be such a nut job really put a monkey wrench in my plans. Wendell’s now got the controlling vote. But there’s no way in hell I’m going to let him get sole control of my property. He and I both know the land this house is occupying is worth much more than the house itself.”

“Actually,” Steve interjected, “it looks like it was Cameron Baker, not Wendell, who had plans to raze this house in favor of a batch of condos.”

Henry paled. “What are you talking about?”

Steve hesitated and looked at me. I said, “Steve and I found a set of plans and papers, partially in Cameron’s handwriting, that outlined his personal plan to build a second ski resort in competition with Wendell’s. In the blueprints, he’d built condos right where the inn is located.”

“Cripes! I knew that guy was a sleazebag from the minute I saw him,” Henry grumbled. He glanced at me. “No offense, Erin.”

“The man’s dead. It hardly matters now what people’s
first impressions of him were.” Unless that’s what led to his being
murdered
, I added silently, wondering if Henry was only acting—pretending to be hearing all of this for the first time.

Henry jumped at a noise in the mudroom. Without looking back, he sprang to his feet. “Damn it!” he said in a half whisper. “That’s bound to be Chiffon! She’s hunting me down!” He snatched up his coat from the counter where he’d tossed it.

“Are you sure it isn’t just Audrey?” I asked. “She should be finishing up at the studio right about now.”

“I’m not taking the risk to wait and find out. Don’t tell her I was here.” He started to head toward the front door.

“No! I haven’t been asked to lie like this since I was in high school! You’re mayor of this town, and you can’t stand up to a twenty-two-year-old you broke up with after all of two weeks?”

He stopped in the double doors to the main hall, his coat unfastened. He turned toward me. “When you put it that way, I sound ridiculous.”

“How
else
would you have me phrase this?” I retorted.

“That I’m trying to avoid a chick who’s completely off her rocker.”

He winced as someone approached the window in the back door, then he sagged with relief. “Mikara,” he said as she entered the kitchen. “I was afraid you were Chiffon.”

Mikara winced at Henry’s words, and an instant later, Chiffon walked up behind her.

“Trying to avoid me, Henry?” she asked, her arms akimbo.

“We arrived at the same time,” Mikara explained, setting down two bags of groceries.

“Are there more groceries I can bring in?” Steve asked.

“No, that’s everything,” Mikara replied. “Thanks, though.”

“I asked you a question,” Chiffon said to Henry. “You’ve got your coat on. Where’s your truck?”

“I left it at a friend’s house. I had visions of you filling its bed with manure.”

“Because
you’re
such a chickenshit, you mean?” Chiffon asked matter-of-factly.

Henry scanned our faces, as if hoping one of us would jump in and take his side. Apparently he didn’t know about the sisterhood that forms instinctively when a woman’s been unfairly dumped; Mikara and I weren’t
about
to defend him. Steve, meanwhile, had managed to affect a glassy-eyed, lost-in-thought-and-not-really-listening facial expression.

Henry shrugged. “I just heard a rumor, is all.”

“Straight from a gossip magazine, no doubt. Get a grip! You’re really not important enough to me to go through that kind of effort. Hard as I’m sure that is for you and your enormous ego to believe.” She snorted. “I’d be happier if we never saw each other again.”

“So why are you here?” he asked.

“I left some of my stuff in your bedroom.” She pulled an empty plastic grocery bag out of her coat pocket to show him that she’d planned ahead. “Is that all right? Do you want to send Erin along to play watchdog to make sure I don’t rip those awesome flannel shirts of yours to shreds?”

“No, Chiffon,” he said sheepishly. “That’s fine. We’ll wait here.”

She sneered at him. “Thank you. That’s really courageous of you.”

She brushed past him and pushed through the saloonlike double doors. Nobody spoke. I rose and wordlessly helped Mikara put away the groceries. After the sound of Chiffon’s high heels had faded, Mikara said, “Honestly, Henry. That was an embarrassment just to
witness
. She’s half your age, and yet
you’re
the one who’s acting completely immature.”

“You haven’t experienced her mood swings like I have,” Henry retorted in an angry whisper. “I’m telling you, that girl is schizophrenic. She can turn on a dime!”

“If you say so,” Mikara muttered, filling the teakettle and putting it on the burner. She grabbed the cast-iron skillet and carried it over to the sink, muttering, “You’re lucky she didn’t crack you over the head with this thing.”

“I’m going to go see if I can help Ben with that lock in the garage door,” Henry said.

I felt a pang for poor Ben. He was going to feel tortured by Henry’s proximity and would never, I was sure, admit his feelings.

Henry started to head through the mudroom, then said, “Oh, good. Audrey’s back. I need to ask her opinion about the board meeting tonight.”

Mikara glanced at me as Henry headed outside to talk to Audrey. “What board meeting?”

“He’s scheduling an emergency meeting to discuss how his breaking up with Chiffon might affect ownership at the inn.”

“He should have thought of that before, for heaven’s sake. He does this all the time. He breaks up with a woman, hides, assumes all hell’s going to break loose, and creates even more problems for himself.”

“I think he regrets his lack of foresight now.”

“Erin?” Steve said, finally emerging from his conversational coma, “we need to hang those shelves of yours in the master bedroom. Once Chiffon’s gone, that is.”

“Right. In any case, I haven’t gotten much of anything done this morning.”

“You deserve to take a break now and then,” Mikara said.

“We’re pretty much done anyway,” Steve said. “In fact, Erin and I might want to head back to Crestview this evening, then come back early Friday to finish up for the party.”

“Party?” I asked.

Mikara gave Steve a sharp look. “Did you forget to tell your partner about the second housewarming party?”

Steve winced. “Henry and Chiffon decided on that back when you and Audrey were out shopping the other day. We decided on the date for the party to show off Audrey’s Twelve Days theme. It’s this Friday. Mikara told Audrey, so
she
knows.”

I heard Chiffon’s footfalls descending the stairs just as Audrey came inside. “There’s a housewarming party here on Friday?” I asked Audrey immediately.

“You didn’t tell Erin?” Audrey said to Steve.

“Neither did you.”

“Now we’ll
have
to stay for the meeting tonight,” I said
a bit testily to Steve. “We should finish up everything before we leave town, in any case.”

“Or we can finish everything Friday afternoon, before the party,” Steve countered. “We’ll have to come back up then anyway.”

He had a point, but so did I, and I had already won this particular argument by virtue of his having forgotten to tell me that the party had been scheduled.

Chiffon returned to the kitchen, her eyes puffy once more. She’d obviously started crying again once she was alone and had probably been trying to gather herself. Her grocery bag was now partially full.

“I’m going to get back to work,” Steve said, brushing past Chiffon as he made a hasty exit.

“Where’s Henry?” Chiffon asked.

“Ben’s giving him a ride to get his truck,” Audrey replied. “He seems to think your breakup is going to cause severe problems as far as your being a co-owner of the inn. He’s wrong about that, isn’t he?”

“Of course he’s wrong! That’s ridiculous! He isn’t even a co-owner—you and Wendell are, and I’ve got nothing against either of you. We all share the goal of making Snowcap Inn a successful venture. What the hell is Henry’s problem?”

“He does seem to have some strange ideas about women,” Audrey remarked.

“He thinks we should all be as unemotional as
he
is,” Mikara said. “As if emotions equal craziness.”

“So he acted like this to you, too?” Chiffon asked her, perking up a little.

“Absolutely. Been there, done that. Of course …in
my
case, we were engaged to be married, so I had a lot of cause to be emotional.
You’ve
been together for all of two weeks.”

“They were important weeks, though.” Chiffon sniffed. “Two people were murdered. And somebody tried to tamper with my skis and kill me. You get extra close to a person when you’re facing life and death together.”

“I haven’t forgotten about Angie and Cameron,” Mikara snapped, “considering the first victim was my only
sister.”
She dried the now clean skillet and put it away, banging the cabinet door shut. “One of these days you need to figure out that
everyone’s
the star of their own story, Chiffon.”

“Meaning what?” Chiffon asked, jutting her lip out defiantly.

“Meaning you’re not half as important as you think you are.”

“Oh, yeah? Well …neither are you! And neither is Henry …
Bad
win. Or Henry Bad
loss
, more like it.”

“Go home, Chiffon,” Mikara said, shaking her head.

“You
can’t tell
me
what to do!” Nevertheless, Chiffon turned and stomped through the door.

“That was harsh,” Audrey said to Mikara. “She’s just a kid. And she’s been treated unfairly by the man she was dating.”

“I realize that, Audrey. But I’m sick and tired of indulging in her egotistical fantasies, including naming a pie after her.”

“She plunked down a lot of money to own a part of this inn,” Audrey interposed. “The place hasn’t even opened yet. With the power struggle between Henry and Wendell,
and now this breakup nonsense between Henry and Chiffon, the friction among management is going to sink us before we’re even off the ground.”

Mikara sighed. “You’re right, Audrey,” she said grudgingly. “When I accepted this job, I promised Henry I’d help him out. Next time I see Chiffon, which sounds like it’s going to be at tonight’s meeting, I’ll apologize.”

“Thank you,” Audrey said, touching Mikara’s arm. “That’s big of you, and it will make a difference to her. And, you know, Chiffon truly is a draw for the inn. She makes it cool for the young professionals with all kinds of discretionary spending to stay at a B-and-B. That’s an important demographic. If only Henry hadn’t been so damned stupid as to date her as a means to manipulate her vote, things would be nicely balanced.”

Audrey started cleaning the kitchen, and I helped her. Mikara, meanwhile, started reading a copy of yesterday’s
Denver Post
that someone must have bought downtown. I ran through my to-do list and realized that Sullivan and I were down to just three bedrooms to decorate for our Twelve Days. After that, we needed to do a final inspection of all the rooms for any last-minute details, then we were done. If we could both work efficiently, we might be able to finish today, head home, and return on Friday like Steve had suggested.
No sense in cutting my nose off to spite my lover
.

Audrey stood transfixed, staring out the window above the sink. “That’s odd,” she muttered. “Now, why would Chiffon be carrying a stepladder toward the shed?”