The Butler Didn't Do It (A Maddox Storm Mystery Book 2) (2 page)

“Then it’s perfect!” We shared a wicked smile as I filled our glasses to the brim. “Now can we please talk about anything other than my STB-ex?”

Jenna chortled. “Sure, heard from the divine Detective Nathanial Bishop lately?”

Out of the frying pan and into the fire.

I pushed aside my plate and plucked the dessert menu from the centerpiece holder.

“What do you think?” My mouth watered as I glanced over the picturesque choices. This was one culinary photographer that had taken a slow boat up the river of decadent fantasies for inspiration. “Chocolate brownie cake drowned in hot fudge sauce or double cream apple pie?”

“Hot fudge, of course,” Jenna said, then, “Are we done with the diversion tactics?”

“Dessert is never just a diversion,” I said, giving the blueberry cheesecake serious consideration. “There’s a reason I suffered through chicken salad for my main course.”

Jenna sighed. “I have his cell number, you know.”

My eyes flashed to her. The ‘how’ was easy. Jack Spinner, the Sheriff Department’s latest recruit and Jenna’s latest boyfriend. The ‘why’ was another matter altogether. And yes, my pulse gave a traitorous flutter, but I refused to acknowledge it.

After a long pause, I settled on a flippant, “You should totally call him.”

“I already have a boyfriend.”

“And I have an STB-ex,” I shot back.

“Maddox,” she growled, and it wasn’t the growl, it was the use of my full name that alerted me.

Jenna was thoroughly frustrated. Either at my lack of interest in the Nate affair or my lack of concern over the STB-ex situation. Maybe both. Fortunately both were so far out of my control, I couldn’t give either any proper worry.

“Nate has my number,” I told her flatly. “I told him I’d like us to be friends and he turned his back on me and walked away. That was two weeks ago. Why on earth do you think I’d want to call him?”

“A guy like Nate’s too clever to fall for the platonic friendship routine. Once you’re stuck there, it’s a dead end, no matter how hot for each other you are.” Jenna sipped on her wine, watching me.

Having nothing to say to that, I settled lower in my chair and watched her back.

“He’s waiting for you to get your stuff sorted,” Jenna spelled out. “Trust me, Maddie Mads, the next move is definitely yours.”

My phone vibrated on the table and I made a grab for it. I’d kiss a spam email right now if it got me out of this conversation. I swiped the screen and saw it was indeed an email alert.

“It’s the new email account I set up for the Hollow House domain,” I said, opening the message. My eyes popped as I read. “We have a booking enquiry! A Mr Charles Sitter. He’d love to join our murder mystery weekend and he’d be most disappointed, apparently, if we couldn’t accommodate him.”

Jenna clapped her hands. “Mr Charles Sitter is so not going to be disappointed.”

“Our first fully-fledged guest!”

Jenna laughed. “What’s a fully-fledged guest?”

“Not a psychotic murderer and not a pedantic Blue Rinse Lady who only signed up so she could snoop around the big house,” I said, thinking of Principal Limly and Miss Crawley in short order.

“Don’t let Miss Crawley ever hear you throwing her in with the Blue Rinse Ladies,” Jenna warned. “The result won’t be pretty.”

Another email came through.

“Another booking!” I exclaimed. “Mr and Mrs Parker. Also interested in the murder mystery weekend. Hang on…” And another. “Ms Julie Brown is really hoping we still have place on such short notice,” I read out, then glanced up at Jenna. “What’s going on?”

She pulled her phone from her purse. “Maybe Miss Crawley posted an announcement,” she said, her eyes glued to the screen. “That woman has connections you don’t want to… Oh, there’s nothing on her Facebook timeline, nothing on her blog…”

My phone vibrated in my hand. “Two more booking enquiries. At this rate, we’re going to have a full house before we’ve ordered dessert.”

“Don’t forget the champagne,” Jenna declared. “We’re celebrating!”

“We certainly are.” I was somewhat nonplussed at the sudden viral explosion but, hey, it’s not like I was about to complain. “Hollow House is back on the map.”

TWO

Friday came at me out of nowhere. One moment I was agonizing over the housekeeping details with Burns and scouring menus with my mother, and then
boom
, it was Friday afternoon and our guests were due to begin arriving within the hour.

I gave my appearance some critical study in the mirror. Olive green suede form-fitting pants that had cost a fortune, but the hidden panels that flattened my stomach and smoothed any ungainly bulges at my hips where worth every dollar. Strappy sandals that added a couple of extra inches to my measly five-foot-five. Cashmere top that kept threatening to slide seductively over one shoulder.

Thank goodness Joe hadn’t only arrived on my doorstep with his bags, he’d packed up my belongings from the Manhattan apartment into the second trunk. It would be a while, maybe never, before I could add to the previous extravagance of my wardrobe.

I leaned in to check my makeup, tucked a curly length of fringe behind my ear, telling myself I had to look presentable for our guests. Of course, that didn’t explain every other day of the week. I’d felt compelled to look my best every freaking second of the day since Joe had moved in.

Goodness knew why. After nearly a year of lazy Sundays, he’d seen me at my worst on a weekly basis. Sweatpants, raccoon hair, the occasional outbreak of premenstrual spots.

Maybe it was a pride thing.

He’d broken our marriage, but he hadn’t broken me.

Maybe it was simply an extra coat of armor, and Lord knew, I needed it. Living under the same roof as Joe, seeing his face every day, hearing his voice…well, it hurt.

It hurt everywhere.

Our marriage was beyond repair, I’d accepted that, but the constant reminder of what I’d lost felt like Brutus stabbing me in the back over and over again.

I pasted on a serene smile and swept out of the room. Two doors down, a quick rap of my knuckles, and I stepped into the chaos that was Joe at work. His bed was unmade. Yesterday’s clothes hung over the back of the armchair near the window. The floor around his desk was strewn with crunched up balls of notepaper.

Joe was seated behind his desk, hard at work. He shoved a hand through his hair as he glanced up, the cuff of his lucky sweater unraveled to the elbow. He was going to lose the entire arm soon if he didn’t stop plucking away at the wool.

“One minute,” he said, then went back to his typing.

Clack-Clack-Clack.

My smile almost turned genuine as I studied the fierce concentration on his brow. He’d already forgotten about me, something that had never bothered me before and didn’t now. There was nothing more beautiful than watching art in creation.

But I was on a deadline.

And that warm smile unfolding inside me? Yeah, that was a huge problem. That was the blade sharpening and twisting into what came next. And it always did. The image of Joe and Chintilly half-naked and wrapped in each other.

“I need the scripts, Joe,” I said curtly.

He glanced up at me, blinked, remembered I was here.

“Oh, yes, they’re…” His gaze dropped as he pushed around some papers next to his laptop. “I was just adding some final touches when…” He pinched his brow, looked at me with a goofy smile. “I got this brilliant idea for disposing of the body in a high pressure boiler—”

“Jenna’s body doesn’t need to be disposed of,” I clipped out unnecessarily. We both knew he’d been working on his thriller and not my scripts. “Listen, Joe, I appreciate you’re on a creative roll here and that your book’s important, but so is this. The sooner this inn turns a profit, the sooner Mr Hollow can find another investor to buy us out.”

So we can proceed with the divorce and go our separate ways.
I didn’t need to add that out loud. Joe had the most expressive eyes I’d ever encountered in a human, genuine puppy dog eyes that couldn’t hide an emotion if he tried. And he wasn’t trying now. He wanted me to see the sadness darkening those brown depths.

He sighed heavily. “I’ll get it done.”

“I asked you to be finished before the guests arrived and that’s in…” I held my wrist out and tapped my watch “…less than an hour.”

“You only need the scripts for tomorrow morning,” he said. “Don’t worry, I work better under the hammer of impossible deadlines and I’ve never missed one yet.”

“Well, I don’t,” I muttered. I was an actress. Everything had to be carefully coordinated and rehearsed days before the curtain went up on the opening show.

I left the doorway to walk up to him. “Give me what you have so far and I’ll do the rest. How hard can it be? I just have to keep everyone busy for two hours and move them around like chess pieces on a board.”

“You don’t play chess.” Joe slapped a hand protectively over the disarray of notes on his desk as I reached for them. “You can’t just slap scenes together and pray they’ll stick. There has to be a cohesive flow and the timeline needs to place enough potential witnesses to make it possible to uncover clues without blatantly revealing the murderer.”

Panic fluttered in my stomach.

He made a valid point. I wouldn’t even know where to start.

All I knew was how Jenna died, since I’d had to arrange the props and would need to set up that scene. The
who-dunnit
and
why
were all locked inside Joe’s head. That’s the way we’d planned it. One less thing for me to worry about, letting any pertinent details slip out by mistake.

Now I’d be up the proverbial creek without a paddle if Joe seriously was trying to undermine me and the success of this weekend.

But why would he?

We were both desperate for business to flourish so we could both get on with our lives.

Except…what had Jenna said the other night? That Joe was playing me, that he wanted to stay close to win me back. I’d dismissed the notion as ridiculous, and I was pretty sure I still did, but I’d been wrong before when it came to Joseph McMurphy.

“There is one thing I’m excellent at.” I folded my arms and scowled down at him. “Improvising when things fall apart on-stage. I won’t let you sabotage this weekend.”

His jaw went slack. “I got a little distracted, Maddie, that’s all. I’m not trying to sabotage you.”

I glared at him for a long moment, but dammit, I actually believed him. After all he’d done, I still couldn’t believe he had that kind of mean streak in him.

“Maybe not intentionally,” I blew out on a breath, “but the end result will be the same when I have no murder scripted for my murder mystery party.”

“You’ll have the scripts before you sit down to dinner.” Joe slumped back in his chair. “Trust me, I won’t let you down.”

Fool that I was, I decided to do just that. Then again, what choice did I have?

The sound of gravel crunching pulled me toward the window. I’d moved Joe from his lake view suite to the courtyard side to accommodate our paying guests. The demotion hadn’t seemed to bother him nearly as much as I’d anticipated. Pity.

“Looks like we have early arrivals,” I murmured as I watched a silver BMW draw up beneath a shaded tree.

Joe came to stand beside me, peering down. “Must be the Parkers,” he said when a young couple climbed out.

Mrs Parker pushed her sunglasses into her sleek blonde hair as she breezed around to the rear of the car and waited for her husband to pop the trunk. They were both dressed casually in blue jeans and t-shirts, and seemed very much in love. A lingering kiss before they delved into the trunk, arms looped around each other as they wheeled their bags across the driveway to the wide front steps.

“I imagined them a tottering old pair of nosey bodies,” I said, laughing at myself.

Joe said nothing, just stared at the couple with an intense frown. I couldn’t help wonder—no,
hope
he was thinking how that loving couple could have been us if he hadn’t messed up so horrifically.

It was bitchy of me, I realized that, but it would’ve been nice to share the pain around a bit.

So far I’d gotten nothing from him.

No apology.

No reason why he’d strayed.

Not even a half-botched attempt at some lame excuse.

My laughter fizzled as I spun away from the window to stalk toward the door. “I guess I should go down since I’m the welcoming committee.”

“Maddie?”

I glanced over my shoulder, suddenly tense. Was this it? The half-botched lame excuse?

I swallowed hard. “Yeah, okay.”

He looked at me a moment, so serious, then shrugged and scrubbed his brow. “I’ll get the scripts done, okay?”

THREE

Hollow House slowly filled up over the next hours, the guests settled into their respective suites without much ado thanks to Burns, who could be surprisingly efficient in between his long naps.