Elaine Orr - Jolie Gentil 05 - Trouble on the Doorstep
Read Elaine Orr - Jolie Gentil 05 - Trouble on the Doorstep Online
Authors: Elaine Orr
Tags: #Mystery: Cozy - Real Estate Appraiser - New Jersey
| Elaine Orr - Jolie Gentil 05 - Trouble on the Doorstep | |
| Jolie Gentil [5] | |
| Elaine Orr | |
| Lifelong Dreams (2013) | |
| Tags: | Mystery: Cozy - Real Estate Appraiser - New Jersey |
A shady deal for storm repairs at the Ocean Alley Senior Complex seems to be at the root of a hit-and-run death and missing business partner, Pooki's husband, Eric. When Eric ends up dead at the B&B, Jolie's digging for clues in between burning muffins and appraising houses. But when she doesn't share all that she learns with her sometimes-boyfriend, reporter George Winters, he's grouchy. Jolie is convinced she needs to find the murderer and expose fraudulent repair bids. Not everyone shares her views—not the police, not her friend Scoobie, and certainly not the murderer.
TROUBLE
ON THE
DOORSTOP
Elaine Orr
Cover photo by Judith A. Brown via dreamstimes
Art work by Zavon and Whitney M. Fisher
This electronic edition is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. It may not be reproduced in any form. Thank you for respecting the author’s work.
Copyright © 2013 Elaine L. Orr
All rights reserved.
ISBN-10: 0985115858
ISBN-13: 978-0-9851158-5-2
www.elaineorr.com
www.elaineorr.blogspot.com
DEDICATION
To the people of
New Jersey and their indomitable spirit.
And to the many people who have taken the time to read and review my books.
Your time is a gift, your appreciation a treasure.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
It is amazing how my cold-reader friends can hone in on something that needs to be better explained, or a clue that is clumsy. Any improvements are theirs, any errors are mine.
If you are in the mood for some of Aunt Madge’s cooking, check out the recipes at the end of the book. The tasty muffin recipes are from real-life chef, author Leigh Michaels.
As with a prior book, I use the phrase “All-Anon” as the twelve-step family group in which Jolie participates, rather than naming a particular program. Besides, between her ex-husband, friends, and overbearing mother, if she had to pick
a group she’d have to go to all of them.
CHAPTER
ONE
OCTOBER 29, 2012
I HEARD THE crack of the tree splitting a second before the window glass shattered and spewed into my bedroom. I made it into the hall a few paces behind my cat Jazz and almost fell over Miss Piggy, who was trying to run into the room.
“Out, out,” I yelled, as her fellow retriever, Mister Rogers, came galloping up the stairs.
“Jolie!
Are you okay?” Scoobie was probably shouting from downstairs, but I could barely hear him.
“Okay.
I’m okay!” When crashing and breaking glass noises did not repeat, I walked back a few paces and shut the door that led into my bedroom. No sense having the dogs or Jazz step on glass.
I ran down the dark stairway into Aunt Madge’s great room.
Scoobie had a piece of plywood lying across the oak table and the saw blade was poised to cut the plywood in half. The pale light from a battery lamp we had attached to the back of the tall oak chair gave barely enough light to keep him from sawing off a finger.
A few more hours of Hurricane Sandy and there wouldn’t be an unbroken window in the Cozy Corner B&B.
OCTOBER 30, 2012
MORNING TOLD US that we were lucky. Up and down the New Jersey coast there were horror stories of roller coasters in the ocean and houses gone or totally trashed. Some entire towns were still flooded. Since Ocean Alley is eighty miles north of where Sandy came ashore, parts of the boardwalk were destroyed and a lot of businesses along it heavily damaged, but the carnage was nothing compared to towns like Seaside Heights and Monmouth Beach, or even Hoboken.
Instead, there were many Ocean Alley homes and hotels in the same condition as the Cozy Corner — shingles and gutters gone, trees down, and a lot of broken glass.
All repairable, but it would take time. And no power of course. Maybe not for days.
My cell phone chirped.
“Who would’ve thought we’d be glad to hear that?” Scoobie asked.
I pushed the button to answer it.
If cell service was restored, it was a good sign.
“Jolie?
I’ve been so worried.”
“It’s okay, Aunt Madge.
Anything broken can be fixed,” I said.
“I wasn’t worried about the B&B, just you two.
Thank God Scoobie was able to stay with you.”
Aunt Madge had gone to Maryland to meet more of Harry’s family, and she and he decided it would not be a good idea to be on the road with the storm barreling down on the mid-Atlantic coast. I grinned to myself.
How many other octogenarian engaged couples had a surprise wedding shower during a hurricane?
I had wanted to go to Lakewood, the town about thirty miles inland where my sister and her family live, to ride out the storm.
But both of her daughters have a lot of allergies, and if the dogs and Jazz had to stay, I was staying. I don’t think I’ll make the same decision again, though. We were lucky this time.
Now, if we can just get the B and B put back together in time for the wedding…
WE ACTUALLY DID IT.
Less than one month after Hurricane Sandy removed a bunch of shutters and broke every shutterless window in the B&B, we actually had the place ready for Aunt Madge and Harry’s wedding, the Friday after Thanksgiving. Any room can be transformed if you put forty white folding chairs and ten vases of lilies in it.
“Do you, Madge Richards, take Harry Steele to be your lawfully wedded husband?…” Reverend Jamison kept going. Aunt Madge, dressed in a stunning calf-length, cream-colored dress she had made herself, was staring at him intently.
Harry looked as if he might throw up.
I studied the back of Aunt Madge’s hair, which was her natural soft white, a color most of us have not seen in years.
She washes a different shade of color into her hair at least once every month.
I glanced at my sort-of boyfriend, George, who was leaning against the wall, having given up his seat to my sister Renée’s six-year old.
He met my gaze and wiggled his eyebrows, and I pressed my lips together to keep from laughing.
“You may now kiss the bride.”
Harry and Aunt Madge bumped noses and started to laugh.
“You can do better than that!” Scoobie’s voice came from the back of the room.
I stepped back as applause broke out.
I’d been standing just a few feet behind Aunt Madge. She had deemed me her “attendant” and I’d tried to attend to her every need, not just today, but in the weeks since the storm. She’s tough, but storm recovery is tougher.
There was a loud pop and a champagne cork missed my head by about three inches.
“Damn!
I mean jeez, sorry Madge.” George grabbed a pile of paper napkins from the large oak table and bent down to mop the floor.
“Good one,” said Scoobie, as he walked over to help.
“I think he was aiming for you, Jolie.” Given her self-assigned role as permanent critic of the world around her, my mother had been assessing George since she met him yesterday. So far he does not appear to meet her criteria as someone who should date her daughter. Not that anyone would.
“George is just clumsy, Mom.
Did you kiss Aunt Madge yet?” She moved toward Aunt Madge and Harry. Harry looked relieved. Happy, too. He’s younger than Aunt Madge by more than ten years, and now that the ceremony itself was over, he looked more or less normal.
My father’s booming voice came from near the sliding glass doors.
“Come on boys, out you go.”
“Grandpa, Miss Piggy is a girl.”
“Who made the dogs’ tuxes, as if I didn’t know?” asked my sister Renée.
“Aunt Madge was more concerned about them than her own dress,” I replied.
The dogs still had the bibs in the shape a tux shirt and bowtie resting on their backs. They were tied under their bellies, and I figured Mister Rogers would have his off within five minutes once he found a bush to rub on.
Renée and I watched her five-year old wave her arms so that Miss Piggy would follow Mister Rogers through the sliding glass door.
We both half turned as we heard our mother finish wishing Aunt Madge and Harry “many years of happiness.”
“Your turn,” I hissed in Renée’s ear, and turned toward George and Scoobie, who had finished cleaning up the champagne and were now setting up empty glasses so they could have a pouring assembly line of sorts.
For once Aunt Madge was not the one bustling around her kitchen serving food. My friend Ramona, in her usual hippie-type dress that only she can pull off in the twenty-first century, was pulling out creamer for the coffee and butter for the wide array of Aunt Madge’s muffins, which are well known around town.
“Come on Jolie.”
Scoobie called from where he and George were managing an array of soft drinks and champagne. “You may be all dressed up, but you need to get cracking.”
“LEFTOVERS FOR THE FOOD PANTRY?” Lance Wilson asked an hour later as he stood surveying the emptying great room.
“I checked with the health office,” I said.
“Harvest for All can’t serve prepared food. Father Teehan and Reverend Jamison bought about thirty plastic food thingys, and some of the teens Scoobie works with are going to give them out at the big rooming house on F Street in a few minutes.”
Lance, who is ninety with the spirit of someone half his age, just nodded.
He’s the food pantry treasurer, and it’s been a tough month for him. For everybody, but his tiny house didn’t let him move anything further off the floor than the top of a table, so while there were only a few inches of water in his house, much of what he owned had to be trashed. He’s staying in an apartment for now.
“Okay, ladies.
Time for my personal favorite event of every wedding.” George handed Scoobie a small box and Scoobie pulled out a tiny bridal bouquet.
I raised one hand and managed to turn my single raised finger into a four-fingered wave in their direction.
Aunt Madge hadn’t held a bouquet, so I knew this was all on Scoobie and George. Since I’m divorced, I had no intention of joining my nieces, Ramona, and a couple young women Aunt Madge knows from First Prez.
“Go on, Jolie.”
Renée gave me a gentle push in the small of the back, and Reverend Jamison applauded. I still wouldn’t have moved closer, but my mother looked horrified, so that made it worth it.
Ramona and Aunt Madge were laughing.
“You helped plan this!” I said, hoping I didn’t look as irritated as I felt. George and I have been dating a few weeks, but this followed a year of sometimes intense dislike, on my part anyway, so I’m not as interested in talking about “a future” as he is.
If Scoobie had not swatted Aunt Madge’s bouquet toward me as I was backing away, I never would have caught it.
THE DOORBELL GONGED just as I pulled back the covers to get into bed.
Mister Rogers and Miss Piggy had been supervising this, since Aunt Madge has never been away overnight in their memory and they seem to have little confidence that I can manage the B&B. My little black cat had permitted them to sleep in our bedroom, and I think I can speak for all of us when I say we were beat.
“Who could that be?”
Mister Rogers gave a tiny growl.
All week I had been convincing myself that I didn’t mind being alone in the large B&B. We have a security system now, and tomorrow there would be two guests. Aunt Madge had not accepted any for tonight, and my sister and her family were back home in Lakewood. My parents live in Florida now, thank the heavens and earth and any other planet I can name. They were staying with Renée.
There are night lights along the hall and we keep a light on in the front hall, so I wasn’t nervous.
No burglar rings the doorbell. I pushed the code to turn off the security alarm in the breakfast room as I walked to the front door.
The opaque oval window in the middle of the door in the main foyer let me peer out without opening the door.
A woman dressed only in shorts and a fleece running jacket was shivering violently, and when she saw my face she sobbed and held up her mobile phone.
I flung open the door and she fell into my arms.
A man’s voice came from her phone. “Turn off your cell, don’t use your credit cards or go near anyone we know. Hide! Do exactly…” He said something else I couldn’t hear clearly, and the line went dead.