A Dead And Stormy Night

  A Dead and Stormy Night in Paradise

  Chapter One

  The sun had almost set that Friday evening, but the Fisher-Loper crew at the Paradise Bed and Breakfast was still hard at work. That morning we’d given the place a good scrub, aired out all the bedrooms, and left trails of cherry and lavender air freshener Danielle deemed the signature scent of the inn.

  Fortunes at the Paradise Bed and Breakfast had finally turned. Not only did we have guests, but we were also fully booked through the weekend.

  After a quick lunch, we’d started on dinner with as much fury as we had during morning chores. Granny took Baby Ben, keeping him occupied by making silly faces and booping his nose. Danielle, my sister and Ben’s mother, took her position at the stove manning a pot of key lime sauce with one hand and a cilantro-lemon-butter reduction with the other. The tangy, rich scent of citrus and parmesan cheese made my stomach rumble.

  “Laura, don’t forget to pull the croutons out of the oven,” Danielle said over her shoulder, keeping an eye on her pots.

  If I lived to be one hundred, I would never understand how Danielle could make two things with such drastically different flavor profiles. My culinary skills were limited to chopping and mixing, so I handled the banana pudding and kale caesar salad. It was hard to scorch pots and burn food while massaging kale.

  “I got it, Laura,” the last member of the crew, Ashley, said, rising from the table and sashaying to the over. “Wouldn’t it be simpler to use pre-made ones?”

  Danielle’s shoulders tensed. She shot a look at me over her shoulder and shook her head. Then she turned back to her sauces.

  “They taste better when we do them ourselves,” I said to Ashley. “And it lets us tailor the herbs to what we’re serving that night.”

  She shrugged and set the tray of steaming croutons on the rack to cool. “That makes sense, I guess. Anyway, tell me more about the lobster guy.”

  “Nicholas Lloyd.” I tried not to gag at memory of the sleazy realtor. “The Paradise is one of the last independently-owned B&Bs on in Paraiso. Nicholas wants to change that.”

  Ashley Hall wasn’t really a member of the Fisher-Loper crew. She was my best friend and occasional roommate back in Seattle. Ash was a social media manager, a job limited only by her ability to convert time zones. She was notorious for using a few extra thousand dollars in her bank account as an excuse to buy a plane ticket.

  For her most recent adventure, Ash decided to moonlight with the rest of us at the Paradise. Danielle wasn’t always fond of the arrangement, but she couldn’t reject an extra set of hands.

  “I’ve known men like him all my life,” Granny spat, shifting a fussing Benjamin to her other hip. “Greedy as the day is long.”

  Danielle turned the burners off and rolled her eyes. “Granny, you didn’t even meet him.”

  “Didn’t have to! Him coming after a decent family business like a shark smelling blood in the water. It’s not right.”

  Granny and I were in agreement there. She might not have met Nicholas Llyod, but I had three run-ins with him, and every one of them had left an impression. Lobster man gave me the creeps. The way he drooled over my sister’s business made me want to bop him in the nose. Except Nicholas Lloyd struck me as the kind of man who would call the cops on a woman forty pounds lighter than him.

  The Paraiso Sheriff's Department and I were already too familiar.

  Danielle swiped Ben from Granny’s arms. She flopped down into the nearest chair. “It doesn’t matter what he wants. Between our reservations, the senator’s wedding, and the prospective couples that will convert we’re just fine. The Paradise isn’t for sale.”

  It gave me a little swell of satisfaction to hear Danielle say that. I walked over the fridge and grabbed a bottle of cranberry juice to pour myself a drink. Watching competent cooks in the kitchen was thirsty work.

  Danielle gasped in horror. “Laura Jane Fisher, you put that back in the fridge right now!”

  I froze. “What? It’s non-alcoholic!”

  “One of the guests is allergic,” she said. “It must be a wicked allergy. They never let us know ahead of time unless it’s serious.”

  Groaning in disappointment, I slid the bottle back into the fridge. “The garden shed is a cranberry enthusiast zone. I’m calling it now.”

  The front door opened before Danielle could respond. Multiple sets of heels clacked on the hardwood floor in the hallway. Andrew’s voice drifted through the crack in the door.

  “My grandparents bought the land in the 30s,” Andrew said. His voice got closer with each step. “My grandmother adored the French Colonial style, and my grandfather adored my grandmother.”

  “How sweet,” one of the guests crooned. The voice was feminine and on the young side.

  I crept to the door and pushed it open just enough to peek through. The group of eight guests stood huddled in the hallway behind Andrew.

  According to the rundown Danielle had given us that morning, our guests were the Jepsen family from Colorado. Specifically the Jepsen brothers, their wives, and the elder brother’s children. They’d booked on a company card and rented the Paradise out for the whole weekend.

  This was my first chance to see what sort of weekend lay in store for us.

  The youngest of the group—two tween girls—stood at the back. Both wore shorts and T-shirts, but the styling suggested one was an athletic free spirit while the other was more of a mopey artist. Having been a mopey artist myself as a teenager, I was sympathetic.

  A young woman with a vague resemblance and the same honey-blonde hair was behind the tweens. Now and then, her eyes darted to the man beside her—who looked to be about her age. Whenever he looked at her directly, she quickly looked away.

  They didn’t look like a couple to me, but there were definitely sparks, even if they mostly seemed to be coming from one direction.

  There was no mistaking the status of the next man and woman in line. Her face was young and smooth in contrast to his gaunt face and the salt and pepper at his temples. But they were walking with their hands clasped and each matched their steps to the other in pace and length—slow and short to accommodate the cane he used on his right side.

  Definitely married, but not for long. I would say five years, ten tops.

  A middle-aged couple in impeccably tailored yet understated designer clothes led the pack. The man walked two steps ahead of the woman, but their movements synced in a way that suggested they were married. Meanwhile, the cold look the woman shot at the back of her husband’s head suggested they had been together far too long.

  “It’s gonna be a bumpy weekend.” I sighed and moved away from the door. “There’s no way we’re pleasing that crowd.”

  Danielle passed Ben to Granny. Ashley and Danielle both moved toward the door. Each reached the frame at the same time, but Ashley paused and pulled her hand back.

  “Mom’s the boss, and the boss goes first,” Ash said with a smile.

  Danielle cracked the door open, peaking through. She frowned and let it close again. “Better switch the dining room to a formal place setting.”

  “Won’t that crowd the table unnecessarily?” I asked. “The same dishes and flatware get used either way. The formal service just puts them all out ahead of time.”

  “Exactly!” Ashley sashayed to the pantry and pulled out the cart we used to transport dishes. “Get out the fancy stuff where they can see it. That’s how you knock the socks off the aristocracy. Conventional or the modern reinterpretation.”

  I rolled my eyes. Since she came back from her trip to Great Britain everything smacked of aristocracy to Ash. Coffee with breakfast? Our aristocratic class’s spin on the astringent tea the Brits preferred.
American wedding culture? A direct result of our obsession with replication society weddings, which were themselves imitating royal weddings. It never ended!

  “Fine, I’ll put on a show for his lordship.” I snapped my heels together and curtseyed to my sister, slipping into my best northern English accent. “That’s two knives, a spoon, and four forks, right, Mrs. Loper?”

  Danielle sighed. “Three of each. Leave off the fish fork. With fish being the main course, it’ll only confuse them.”

  “Wouldn’t want to confuse his lordship,” Ash said, putting on an accent of her own. Being a diehard Anglophile, hers was much better. “Is he an earl or a proper duke? Anybody can earn a title these days, and I wouldn’t want to put out our best if he’s only a viscount.”

  “Wearing a button down and a blazer in Florida? Must be a duke.” I giggled at the silliness of it all. Until I caught sight of my sister’s reddening cheeks.

  I swallowed and glanced at Ash. She was still loading silverware onto the cart. When she looked up at me, I jerked my head toward the dining room and pleaded with my eyes for her to give us a moment alone.

  Granny slid to her feet, shifting Ben in her arms. “Nap time for little pumpkin doodle. Think I might join him. There’s a storm comin’. I can feel it in my shoulder.”

  I wasn’t sure if Granny was being literal or metaphorical until she opened the door to the back porch. The limbs of the royal poinciana trees were swaying wildly in the breeze. Their red buds stuck out against a steel sky. The contrast was so striking I wanted to capture it, but Danielle would slaughter me if I stopped to take pictures with such highbrow guests on the property.

  Right. The other storm.

  I turned to Danielle, smiling apologetically. Her expression was still sour, her frown deathly serious.

  “You know how tight things are, Laura,” Danielle said. “This isn’t the time for jokes.”

  “With the Jepsens, we’re booked for at least a week. We’ve got wedding reservations coming in. If we can’t joke around now, then when?”

  Danielle struggled. I knew her well enough to know she didn’t want to admit the answer was never.

  “Everything’s going to be fine,” I said. “Even if we have a laugh or two.”

  “I’ll believe that when the Jepsens are checked out and their cards have cleared.” My sister heaved a sigh and grabbed the lemon-cilantro reduction. “Help Ashley in the dining room? I need to find fancier dishes for the sauces.”

  Danielle turned her back to me, and as much as I wanted to comfort her, I wouldn’t.

  I knew my baby sister, and there was one thing about her that would never change.

  When it came to the Paradise, Danielle was always waiting for the other shoe to drop.

  Chapter Two

  Once the guests were upstairs in their rooms and out of our way we really started working. We had two hours until the pre-dinner cocktail hour. Normally, we served wine and beer on the grounds, but with the wind still whirling the trees into a frenzy and ugly black clouds overhead, I doubted the Jepsens would go farther than the porches.

  That meant when the guests came down for dinner—even though we wouldn’t be serving dinner for another hour—the dining room had to look picture perfect.

  Perfection takes a lot of sweat. Beads of it were rolling down my temples as Ash and I worked at turbo speed to cram the extra pieces into the place settings. Since Granny was on Ben duty, Danielle and Andrew manned the kitchen while Ash and I served.

  By the time the Jepsens filed into the dining room the table was set, the wine decanted, and I had freshened up and was smiling again.

  As the guests filed into the dining room, my smile faded. They’d changed into slightly dressier resortwear, but not a single one of them from the man that was leading the pack to the black-clad tween at the back looked happy. The adults exchanged a few hollow introductions as I served the alcohol. There was an air of tension around the Jepsens, but their conversation was too light and casual for me to guess at why.

  At dinner, Harold and his wife Catherine sat at the heads of the table. The hem of Catherine Jepsen’s wrap dress was just a little too short. She smoothed it down over her thighs as she took her seat, which drew an icy glare from her husband.

  “Thousand-dollar-a-month clothing budget and she has to dress like a showgirl,” Harold mumbled into his beer. His brother and sister-in-law, Jeremy and Emily respectively, were sitting on either side of him. They had to have heard the snide remark, but neither reacted.

  Catherine was oblivious from her spot at the other end of the table. Flanked by her daughter Tabitha on one side and a young man named Kenneth on the other—the only member of the party that wasn’t a Jepsen—she gave the impression of a countess holding court.

  By the salad course, which came with a glass of sauvignon blanc to replace her empty glass of Riesling, she was downright rhapsodic.

  “The wine selection is amazing,” she said. “Do you consult with a sommelier?”

  “My sister handles the arrangements herself,” I said.

  “It’s just delightful,” Catherine said. “Don’t you think it plays perfectly with the fresh greens, Kenneth?”

  “Uh… sure.” The young man wiped a dollop of dressing from his lip with his napkin. “Sorry, Catherine, I’m not much into wine.”

  “He’s a scotch man, just like I am. Aren’t you, Kenneth?” Harold Jepsen almost beamed with pride.

  “On occasion,” Kenneth nodded. “But mostly I stick to beer.”

  “My compliments to your sister’s refined palate,” Emily said, raising her still full glass. “Catherine and I love wine. We can tell a well-kept stock from a poser from a mile away.”

  “Oh, Danielle takes wine served at the Paradise very seriously. She even had one of the closets converted to a wine cellar.”

  “I love an establishment that keeps an eye on the smaller details,” Catherine said. “Last winter, we went to a vineyard in England, and they served a local organic marmalade with breakfast. It’s when they pay attention to those kinds of things that I know we’re in good hands.”

  Ashley perked up. “Get out of here! I just got back from England, myself. I spent about a month in Northumberland. A good week of it looking around the poison gardens in Alnwick.”

  Catherine shuddered. “I remember reading about that place when I set the itinerary for the trip. It seemed so morbid.”

  “Cath, we spent a whole day at St. George’s Chapel looking at royal graves!” Jeremy hid a smile behind a mouthful of kale.

  “Maybe you spent the day looking at graves,” Emily said. “Cath spent the day looking at the altar where a bunch of royal couples took their vows.”

  I exchanged a glance with Ash. Nix the poison talk, I mouthed to her. After the trouble we’d already had with Charlie Porter, the less talk of poison and death around the Paradise, the better.

  “Mom, you think everything is morbid unless it’s a melodrama about class relations in the Elizabethan era!” Tabitha pushed her untouched plate of kale salad toward the center of the table. “Which is weird, considering the body count.”

  “Edwardian,” Catherine Jepsen corrected, breezing effortlessly into a British accent. “And don’t sniff at British television, dear. I find it terribly amusing.”

  Ashley shrugged and cleared away Tabitha’s plate. “Honestly, if I’d realized there were vineyards nearby, I probably would have gone there. Give me a good book and a glass of wine and I’m a happy girl.”

  This time, Catherine Jepsen raised her glass. “A woman after my own heart.”

  Harold Jepsen threw a deeply disapproving scowl in his wife’s direction, drained his glass of wine, and passed it to me. Catherine Jepsen was too busy laughing with Ashley and her sister-in-law to notice.

  The lack of acknowledgement only made Harold’s frown deepen. He didn’t say anything for the rest of the meal. Not until dinner was over. The rests of the Jepsen family filed out onto the enclosed back porch to
watch the rain. I was balancing a stack of dirty plates in my arms and turned around to find Harold Jepsen sulking near the door. He shocked me so bad I almost dropped the plates.

  “That bar in the parlor, is it open to guests?” he asked. “I’m in the mood for something stronger than beer or rotten grape juice.”

  “It sure is,” I said as if he hadn't just scared the daylights out of me. “The glasses are clean. Can I get you some ice?”

  “No, I prefer it neat.” And he left without another word.

  Since I had a mountain of dishes to do before I could put head to pillow that night, I wasn’t too broken up about it. On a normal night with more casual guests, it took about an hour to clean up and close down after dinner. With the formal dining service for six guests, it took almost two. The whole time we worked, the wind outside got louder and the rain more intense. I wasn’t looking forward to sloshing back to the garden cottage through that.

  Andrew found me and Ashley just as we were finishing putting the last load into the dishwasher.

  “I just checked the weather report,” he said. “This is going to stick around until at least lunchtime tomorrow.”

  “Assuming it doesn’t wash us out first,” I said.

  “Could that really happen?” Ashley asked.

  “Nah, I’m just joking,” I said. But I was only halfway joking.

  The grounds of the Paradise were expansive but half of the land was on a floodplain. Unfortunately, it was the half with the parking lot and the road to the highway.

  Ashley helped Andrew haul lawn furniture into the sheds. I spent the rest of the night inside with Danielle unplugging all the non-essential electronics, closing the storm shutters, and checking for leaks, and anything else that might go wrong.

  It was a small list of things to do, but in a sprawling six room colonial house, it took just long enough to zap what little was left of my energy.

  I dragged myself back downstairs, not envying the drenching I was going to get on the short walk home. An umbrella would never survive those winds. On my way down, I noticed the wine cellar door was cracked. That was definitely a hazard. One of the guests could bump into it and hurt themselves if they wandered around in the dark.