Fiona Fleming Cozy Mysteries

Chapter 2: Friendly Neighbor

I left the bathroom window wide open to the warmth of the July morning, already heating up despite the earliness of the hour. Air conditioning or not, the place needed some fresh breezes and a good smudging. I attempted a brave smile at the embarrassed older gentleman and his irritated wife, the current residents of the Carriage House's Blue Suite. Mr. and Mrs. Sprindle didn't comment much, though Mrs. Sprindle did take a minute to huff her robust self in half so she could pat Petunia on the head.

"Adorable," she said, pink in the cheeks with one hand clutching the front of her matching colored robe shut, rollers protruding from under her kerchief. Who wore rollers anymore? "I love pugs."

I didn't offer to send Petunia home with them. Barely. Instead, I left them to their morning, stepping out into the fresh air, exhaling in relief while I peeled away the stinky humidity of the yellow gloves. The sun rose over the mountains, beaming down on the extensive garden that separated the Carriage House (Blue Suite and Yellow Suite) from the main house (six more rooms of varying hues that were appropriately toned to match their names). The restored Colonial took up a double width lot compared to the rest of the street, camped on the end like a white-with-black-trim cap to the picturesque, tree lined small town residential neighborhood. Only a block from the boundaries deemed downtown and the quaint shops and tea rooms that popped up since local mayor, Olivia Walker, began her incessant drive to bring Reading into the present (using tourism to accomplish her implacable mission), Petunia's Bed and Breakfast was perfectly placed for a quiet and relaxing getaway at the foot of the Green Mountains.

Or had been. I paused in the early morning breeze, letting it blow the stink from my hair-yeah, I chose to believe it was working-and drew a breath while the three giant koi in the carefully manicured pond in the middle of the garden rose to the surface of the still water to take turns touching their large, gaping lips to the pug's sniffing nose. Fat Benny, the biggest of the bunch, took the most time, but Pudgy Polly and Rotund Rudy had their turns, too.

Not my names, inherited from the old lady with a sense of humor. The best part? Petunia's. Yes, my grandmother, darling woman that she was, named her B&B after her dog. And not just this one. Oh, no. This particular incarnation of pugliness was the fourth.

Just sit with that for a second. Petunia the Fourth.

I shook my head and carried on, skirting the pond and the creepy orange fish Mary claimed my grandmother loved as much as her chubby canine. At least while the housekeeper and her sister, Betty, my cook, didn't seem to trust me just yet, Petunia herself had welcomed me with a charming and disconcerting attention that meant she followed me incessantly. Everywhere. All the time. Never, ever leaving me alone at all.

Teeth grind.

If only my ex had been so attentive I'd still be in New York. Then again, would I? I looked up at the towering mountains that felt enough like distant skyscrapers I wasn't uncomfortable, at the bright, blue sky and the trees with their spreading branches and mingling of oak and maple leaves and sighed. If I was going to be honest with myself, not something I'd been much in the past, I'd have to admit I hadn't been happy for a long time.

Petunia woofed softly, startling me, just as a piercing voice called my name. I knew before I even turned to look who stood at the fence between our properties, one skinny arm raised, hand flapping in greeting, beaming smile on her wrinkled face. Today, my neighbor Peggy Munroe wore a red bow in her hair, matching one holding the topknot of her creepily silent little dog in an upright flag of caramel fur that made her look like some kind of misshapen alien.

"Good morning, Fiona!" No matter how many times I told her to call me Fee, Peggy insisted on my full name. Because my grandmother did. Sigh. "Trouble in paradise, dear?"

I waved back, not in the mood to stop and chat endlessly with the nosy old woman. Who, I suspected, let her little dog skirt my fence and poop in my bushes. The soft piles of turds I'd uncovered were nowhere the size of Petunia's big deposits, but I didn't have proof so I left it alone. For now. "Busy busy as always, Peggy."

She shook her head, her bow bobbing as her little dog, Cookie, sneezed softly, delicately. "I have no idea what Olivia was thinking," she said, the same old song and dance conversation starting and exactly what I hoped to avoid. "Luring those developers to our little town, building that big resort and all." Yes, I'd heard this a million times before already, from her and from Mary and anyone else over the age of sixty-five who lived in Reading their whole lives. I could almost repeat what she was going to say next by rote, lips twitching in the need to mimic her as she went on. "Turned our dear little Reading into a cesspool of criminals and vagabonds."

"Tourists, you mean," I said softly, smiling.

She swatted the air in front of her, aimed at me, thin lips a tight line, faded blue eyes a match for her faintly tinted gray hair. "We were doing just fine before all her newfangled ideas." Did anyone actually talk like that anymore? Clearly Peggy Munroe did. And half the population of this town. Living in a valley surrounded by mountains had an effect on mental development, I guess. Amused, I let her go on, if only to grant me a bit of entertainment after the morning I'd had already and it wasn't even 8:30. "If it weren't for that Skip Anderson and the floozy he married..."

"I'm sure Willow Pink would be delighted to be called a floozy." Though Hollywood had called her worse. Still, she was an A-lister and her husband, said Skip, a famous football star. So I doubted they cared much through their veil of millions and hordes of fans what aging townsfolk naysayers-or the movie reviewers-thought of them.

Peggy snorted, not at all ladylike and reminding me of Petunia. "Well, if those two had the sense to keep our town out of the news like good Reading kids, we wouldn't be in this predicament."

True enough, at least. When Olivia asked Reading's most famous natives to join the tourism promotion team, they stepped up. And had they. Thanks to the new White Valley Ski Resort and Golf Club, Reading was suddenly a hub for tourists flocking to see the homestead of their favorite stars.

"Too late now." I grimaced at my watch. "Sorry, Peggy. I have to run."

"Ta-ta then, dear," she said, all cheerful again while Cookie watched me with what I always imagined to be a plea for mercy and rescue. "Come for tea soon, why don't you?"

I watched her blue-gray head of curls disappear behind the fence and not for the first time wondered what she found on her side to stand on so she could spy on my garden. Nosy neighbors. It took getting used to again.

Betty made her slow motion way around the kitchen as I entered through the back employee's door and crossed the tile floor. Head down, tight steely curls in a net that made her look like the crankiest cafeteria lady ever, the rounded bow to her wide back giving the Notre Dame lurker a run for his money, the other half of the Jones sisters ignored me as I intruded on her domain.

"Hi, Betty." I waved and smiled despite knowing she either didn't hear me or didn't care enough to acknowledge my presence. I'd never, in the fourteen days since arriving home and taking over Petunia's, heard the woman utter a single word. But she had heavy sighing down pat.

The portly pug at my side trotted over to her, abandoning me in favor of the bits of some kind of meat Betty was preparing, delivered from elevation into her gaping mouth. The whites of the pugs eyes showed as she scuttled her butt from side to side, barely able to contain herself.

"Bye, Betty." I left the faithless dog to her snack, knowing she'd likely get sick later from the excess and that I'd be the one forced to clean it up. But it freed me from her constant plodding attention for the time being.

Kind of insulting, really, she chose food over me every single time.

I really should have taken the effort to scoot downstairs to my apartment and clean up, but as I considered the prospect of meeting whoever waited for me without a skim of fecal matter between us I spotted trouble at the end of the hallway, right at the tall, bright front entry.

Her chatter reached me first, though not the words themselves. It was the tone, the sparkling and overly cheerful, if genuine, rapid fire energy expelling itself from the flapping mouth of my old bestie that drove me down the hall at a clip, past Mary who muttered under her breath about the dirt on my sneakers. Well, she could just do her job and vacuum once in a while. Not my fault the B&B went from sedate one or two bookings a week to over packed and bursting at the seams since the shining lights of Reading sang their siren call to all the good people of the world to come visit now, you hear?

Daisy Bruce, eternal teenage optimist despite our matching chronological ages, turned as I joined her, beaming at me so brightly I longed for a pair of sunglasses to cut the brilliance. Okay, so poor Day. I was, admittedly, a bit grumpy this morning, but could anyone blame me, really? And the towering, broad figure who loomed over my old friend's slim blondeness wasn't making me feel like my fortunes had turned.

If anything, the red faced man who might have been a football linebacker in a former decade but had gone too far to beer and burgers for his own good had that kind of expression on his thick lipped face that made me want to back up a step and reassess the situation. His beady blue eyes, so pale they were almost transparent, squinted out of folds, his faintly reddish hair, what was left of it, combed over the shining top of his head. And he had that bully stance, the kind that big men with little care for women seemed to think would make me back down if they just waited long enough.

I lived in New York for five years. We'd just see who backed down first.

"Oh, Fee," Daisy gushed, grasping my upper arm with both hands as if she had no idea she was transferring unmentionable fluids from myself to her. Her pale gray eyes gleamed with charm and not a whole lot else while she grinned first at me then up at the large man in the jeans and shining silver belt buckle, whose plaid shirt stretched over the round of his protruding belly. Cowboy boots crushed the deep blue carpet beneath him, pointed toes decorated with chrome. "You're here, at last." Daisy rolled her eyes and giggled. "I told you she'd be right here, silly." She released me long enough to playfully slap the man's forearm, coyness not an act.

"Fiona Fleming?" He smiled, too, but my stomach turned when he did, an oily tone to his deep voice.

I nodded. "Can I help you? Mr...?"

Instead of gracing me with his own name, he extended one big hand toward me. How had I missed the large envelope he held pressed to one leg? I took it out of reflex, confused as I looked down at my name printed on an official looking label in the center. I glanced up to find him turning to leave without even so much as a hint of explanation.

"Excuse me," I said, the envelope outstretched toward him as if doing so would grant me some kind of insight. "What is this?"

"Deed papers," he said, grinning now. "Thanks to your grandmother's dying signature, Petunia's belongs to me."

I gaped at him, frozen in place, and watched in growing horror while the big, white door slammed shut behind him.

***