Heather Horrocks - Who-Dun-Him Inn 01 - Snowed Inn (2 page)

“I’m pretty sure I don’t want to hear this.” Liz’s stiletto heels tapped across the hardwood floor toward the fireplace, her hands headed toward her ears.

“Good gravy, George has been dead for more than a decade. My mourning’s done. And I’ve still got some kick in these old legs.” Staying seated on the loveseat beside me, she kicked up an old leg to prove it.

“Running out of money, are you?” I asked.

“Oh, Grandpa George left me plenty of dough. This time, I’m going for a young, good-looking one. You know, one of those boy toys.” She smiled. “Like Demi has.”

Liz shook her head. “Boy toys aren’t looking for seventy-eight-year-old great-grandmothers.”

“Sixty-nine,” Grandma huffed.

She could easily pass for the sixty-nine she wasn’t. But dating was one thing and pistol-packing another. I had guests coming in less than two hours, and was determined not to let my grandmother ruin the grand opening of my newly remodeled Who-Dun-Him Inn. “You can be twenty-one if you want, but
you cannot carry a gun here
.”

“I most certainly can. I told you— I’m street legal.” She sat up chair-back straight. “I have a permit for carrying a concealed weapon.”

“Then conceal it,” snapped Liz. Although admittedly, she and Grandma both make me insane, they drive each other even crazier. Probably because they’re so much alike.

“What are you going to do? Take away my gun? I can read the headline now.” Grandma put one hand melodramatically to her heart. “
Ungrateful Brats Abuse Poor, Defenseless Grandmother
.”

“Grandma, please,” I begged. “My first guests will be here soon for the grand opening.”

I sucked in a breath to calm myself, and paused. It didn’t calm me, but I continued anyway. “Look, I appreciate you both visiting, but Liz, I need you to take Grandma home now. I have a lot of things still to do and you can probably tell I’m a little stressed right now.”

Liz raised an eyebrow. “That’s why we came to help.”

“That’s right.” Grandma patted my hand. “Let’s quit our talking and you girls carry my suitcases down to my room.”

“Suitcases?” Oh, no, no, no. Not on my grand opening weekend. “You can’t…”

“I gave up my Friday luncheon with my friends so I could come up to support you on your weekend party, and I had to bring some clothes with me. Don’t you worry. I’m not senile. I’ll keep Grandpa’s gun in my purse. The guests will never even know it’s there. Unless they cause trouble, of course.”

“
Grandma!
” barked Liz in a tone I’ve always admired, but never quite mastered, and which Grandma could elicit from Liz fairly easily. It was the same tone Liz used when I dared touch her Pound Puppy on our seventh birthday. “Hand over the gun.”

Grandma set her jaw and stuffed the gun in her purse. “No.”

“Fine.” Liz took a step closer to the couch and reached out her hand. “But give me the bullets.”

Grandma frowned and appealed to me with a glance.

I nodded. “Give ‘em to Liz.”

With a heavy sigh, Grandma shook her head. “And to think I was considering moving in with you, Vicki Butler, instead of staying with your parents.” Grandma said it as though hearing that tidbit would devastate me.
Ha!
I looked at it more like I just dodged one of her bullets.

“You can’t move in with Vicki. She doesn’t have time to entertain you.” Liz winked at me. And she was right. I didn’t. Grandma was loveable, but definitely high maintenance.

Grandma harrumphed. “Like your mother ever entertains me. She leaves me at all hours of the day and night to go gallivanting.”

She was staying with my parents for two months while her fancy home was remodeled, and referring to her daughter-in-law, my mother, former PTA President and current Relief Society president, married thirty-five years to my father. Liz and I may have shared identical red hair, brown eyes, and freckles, but our personalities definitely were forked on the family tree. Liz roosted partway out on the feisty branch where Grandma (who regularly dyed her hair red and proclaimed herself our triplet) perched, while I nested with my mother on a more sedate limb.

I frowned. “You make it sound like Mom’s out bar-hopping.”

“Well, she’s doing good while she’s gallivanting, but she’s still never home to
entertain
me. Besides, she and your father left me all alone to fend for myself.”

Life has an annoying way of presenting two important events at the same time which we mere mortals are forced to choose between. I deliberately planned my grand opening for one month after my twenty-one-year-old brother was scheduled to return home from his mission. After I set my plans in motion, my brother extended for— you guessed it— one month. So my parents struggled with the decision, but finally traveled to Spain for a week to bring him home. Otherwise, they would never have missed my grand opening. They told me repeatedly how sorry they were.

Liz eyed Grandma sternly. “Grandma, you’re changing the subject. Hand over those bullets.”

“You girls never want me to have any fun.” Grandma sighed and pulled the gun back out. Liz took it, dropped six huge bullets into her palm, smiled sweetly, and handed it back to Grandma. Our grandfather taught us gun safety when we were teenagers.

Relief flooded me. Grandma with an unloaded gun might prove to be an irritation, but at least, no one could get shot.

Liz said, “The gun has to stay in your purse or we will take it away from you. I’m not kidding around.”

“You’ll talk differently when I save your fanny from some molester.” Grandma stuffed her bullet-less gun into her purse, stood, and spoke, the iciness chilling her voice. “You are both naughty girls. I am going downstairs. Unless you brats have a problem with that.”

“And you are a naughty Grandma,” Liz said with a grin. “I think we ought to wash out your mouth with soap for saying fanny.”

Grandma huffed and headed for the hall.

Liz called out, “Grandma, you shouldn’t be going down any stairs at your age. And especially not those steep steps into the dungeon.”

“It’s not a dungeon anymore,” I protested, thinking of how nice I’d made our family quarters downstairs.

“I lived in this house decades before you were even a twinkle in anybody’s eye.” Grandma’s testy voice cut through the air. “I think I know if I can handle the same flight of stairs I’ve used thousands of times.”

“Use the elevator,” I called out, glad to have her at least going to the family living space.

Grandma didn’t take the elevator, but instead veered toward the kitchen, calling back, “I’m hungry, if that’s all right with you two dictators.”

I looked at Liz. “You’ve got to take her home. There is no way she can stay this weekend, with or without the gun.”

Liz shrugged. “Short of renting a tranquilizer gun from a zoo, I’m not sure how to accomplish that.”

I sighed. “Me, either.”

The phone rang and I answered with my new slogan. “Laugh yourself to death at the Who-Dun-Him Inn. This is Vicki.”

There was static on the line. “Vicki? This is Grant.”

Grant was Sharon’s husband, and Sharon was the cook who failed to show up at the appointed time, over an hour ago. “Oh, I’m so glad to hear from you, Grant.”

“Sharon’s been in a car accident.”

My breath caught and my head grew light as I instantly flashed back to Robert’s accident. Clutching the phone, I whispered, “Is she all right?”

“Who?” asked Liz from behind me. I motioned her for silence.

“She broke her leg, but otherwise, she’ll be fine,” he reassured me.

Relief swept through me. “What happened?”

“The road up to your place is slick as a snail’s bottom. She slid off across from Horse Feathers.” That was the dude ranch five properties below us on Porter Mountain.

Dismayed, I replied, “I was sure the weatherman said it was only going to drop an inch of snow and move on.”

“Not the first time Henley’s been wrong, now, is it?”

Crossing to the front door, I touched the original Tiffany-style stained glass pane, and the cold on my fingertips made me shiver. Gray clouds hovered over the mountains on the far side of the fertile valley and a few inches of new snow frosted the ground, but it wasn’t snowing now. Apparently, it lasted just long enough to take my cook out of commission. I hoped it wouldn’t keep the guests holed up in a Park City hotel.

“She wanted you to know she’s really sorry. The doctor’s still setting her leg. I’ll be working in Wyoming next month, so she’ll stay with her parents in Salt Lake.”

The panic that subsided at “she’ll be fine” resurged at the realization I now had no cook at all.

“Tell her I hope she gets better quickly. She’ll be in my prayers.”

As I hung up, Liz raised an eyebrow. “What’s up?”

Turning to her, my stomach in knots, I explained Sharon’s accident. “If I have to cook, I’m in trouble.”

“Yeah, no kidding. I saw your failed cooking experiments in Mrs. Hughes’s class. Your blackened brownies were my favorite.” She grinned at me. “Maybe we could buy some Hamburger Helper.”

“Liz, this is serious. Who can I possibly get to cook for me at this late hour? Cielo doesn’t do big meals. I can’t and neither can you. That leaves Zach, his imaginary dog or…”

“Grandma. Perhaps you should rethink sending her away.”

“The guests will be here in two hours and my only options are my cooking or Grandma’s?” Panic nipped at my edgy nerves. “Do you know how long it’s been since she cooked for a large group?”

“Well, you
never
have. At least she has experience. Besides, how hard could it be? You’re just like Mom, which means you already have all the meals planned, and that’s the hardest part.”

I glanced toward the kitchen. “I don’t know. She seemed pretty ticked off.”

“That’s just for show; you know that. I’m sure you can sweet talk her into it.” She motioned toward the kitchen. “I’ll go with you.”

Okay. I could do this. I could convince Grandma to cook for me. Liz was right. Grandma was the least senile person I’d ever met. So, of course she could cook for me. If she just would.

If she was in one of her persnickety moods and said no, I’d beg her.
Grovel
. On my knees, if need be.

How my perspective had changed since they first arrived and I decided to oh-so-generously give them five minutes. Now I was thankful that Grandma knew how to cook while Liz could help me serve. Between the three of us, I didn’t feel so alone anymore. “Thanks for being here.”

“Do you honestly think I’d miss your grand opening weekend? What kind of older sister do you think I am?”

“Seven minutes older is all.” I sighed. “And if I can’t talk Grandma into cooking, seven minutes is as long as my grand opening might last.”

Chapter Two

“Come on, Charlie. Here, boy.” My seven-year-old son, Zachary, skittered down the main staircase, calling to his invisible dog. When he saw Liz, he whooped in delight. “Aunt Liz!”

Liz hugged him tightly. “Who’s my favorite nephew?”

“Me!” His eyes sparkled. Out of our fifteen nieces and nephews, Zach had a special place in Liz’s heart, maybe because, as my twin, her own child might look just like him.

He was the one difference between our seemingly identical bodies. It took me a year to get pregnant during my marriage, but Liz hadn’t managed it in three years of trying with her hubby, Gene. We were definitely falling down in the big, Mormon family department, but our parents did their part, and four of our other five siblings followed suit. In addition to the fifteen nieces and nephews, Paul’s wife was expecting their third any moment. My sister, Georgia, didn’t have children, which was probably a good thing, given the wildest of her ways: nurse by day, party animal by night.

“Hi, squirt. Is Charlie behaving himself in the house?”

“Yup, Mom. He’s sitting by the parlor door.”

Tamping down the agitation over my problems and the approaching arrivals of my guests, I glanced over at the invisible pet— the best kind, in my opinion— that followed Zach home the day after his father’s funeral. Now my son used Charlie in his attempt to talk me into getting him a real dog. “Good.”

“Hey, Mom. Do you know where my trading cards are? I can’t find ‘em.”

“Nope. Haven’t seen ‘em.” I ran a hand through my son’s slightly shaggy hair—
I really needed to give him a haircut
— and my eyes swept the freckles sprinkled across his cheeks and nose. I couldn’t help smiling. “Cute freckles.”

“Aw, Mom, I hate freckles.”

“Yeah, well, girls think freckles are cute,” I teased.

“I hate girls, too,” he said, though some of his best friends were cute, little girls. “Remember?”

In that instant, although Zach got his freckles and brown eyes from me, he looked like a miniature seven-year-old version of his father, sporting Robert’s determined chin and narrowed gaze. My heart skipped a beat. I forced my thoughts in another direction. I couldn’t go there. Especially not today, when I needed to make sure everything went well.