Her Husband-To-Be. Leigh Michaels
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for the evening hours. Only a few scattered tables were still occupied; one of them was the corner where Deke and Norah sat.
Their waitress was frantic. “I took the check to the table twenty minutes ago, but they’re still just sitting there,” she told Danielle. “And I can’t wait any longer because I’ve got an appointment with my doctor. You know how hard it is—”
“To plan anything in this business. I know. Go on, Sally I’ll be here anyway.”
One by one the scattered tables emptied, and eventually Deke and Norah emerged from the dining room. “I had no idea of the time,” Norah was saying. She smiled up at Deke and patted his tie. “You just made me forget everything else, you charming man.”
Only the self-discipline born of her years of dealing with customers kept Danielle from rolling her eyes heavenward. She focused on Deke’s credit card instead, punching in the numbers and codes, wishing that he’d paid cash. Then she wouldn’t have to wait even thirty seconds for the computer to issue the necessary authorization; she could just give him his change and he’d be gone.
He leaned on the counter, eyeing the book she’d pushed aside. Danielle told herself it was silly to be sensitive about her choice of reading matter; if she wanted to read applied statistical methodology in her spare time, it was no one’s business but her own. A correspondence course wasn’t her first choice, but it was better than making no progress toward her degree. And someday, when her father’s health was enough better that she could go back to school, she’d be happy to have statistics out of the way.
Norah peered over the cash register at the book and shuddered. “Danielle here was always the brainy one. I never could understand things like that.” She slid her hand through the crook of Deke’s elbow. “I’m so lucky to have found you to help me with my investments.”
He signed the credit slip and pushed it back across the counter to Danielle. “I’ll certainly do my best to take good care of your money, Norah.”
Danielle wanted to laugh at the expression of blank surprise that flitted across Norah’s face. But a split second later, the blonde had recovered and looked as if she’d never been startled in her life.
They were the last customers to leave. Danielle tucked Sally’s tip into an envelope and wrote her name on it, then made a quick inspection of the dining rooms, almost entirely ready for the evening trade. She paused in the kitchen, where the cooks were already starting preparations for the dinner hour, to snatch a hard roll and a chunk of cheese, then locked the main door with a sigh of relief. In a little more than two hours, she’d have to be back, ready to take on the dinner crowd. But at least the next two hours were hers.
And there was no doubt about the first thing she wanted to do. The fact that Pam hadn’t called back to the Willows to report on the Merry Widow’s new sign had only increased Danielle’s curiosity.
The Willows lay on the outskirts of Elmwood, in the newer section, while the Merry Widow was only a stroll away from the restored Victorian square that had once been the main business district at the center of town. Now the square featured specialty shops and antique stores, popular draws with the sort of customer who liked staying in an elegant old Queen Anne bed-and-breakfast. The square and the house complemented each other like bagels and cream cheese; Danielle had thought so ever since the Jablonskis had first proposed the idea of a bed-and-breakfast.
Her little red car climbed an easy grade on which the Merry Widow sat as if holding her skirts up to keep from being contaminated by the surrounding commercial district. From the street, Danielle couldn’t see any new signs, just the one the Jablonskis had hung from the front porch when they opened for business.
But she could also see no life around the place. No Joe Jablonski puttering around the grounds doing maintenance chores. No guests, though the usual check-in time was approaching. Of course, it was the slowest part of the week. The weekend travelers wouldn’t start appearing till tomorrow, and most of the businessmen were already heading home for the holiday.
Danielle parked her car on the street and climbed the slope toward the front steps, pausing on the lawn to look up at the house towering above her. A classic Queen Anne, it displayed all the riotous imagination and Victorian excess of its kind—the architect hadn’t missed a trick. There were pillared porches on three sides and balconies in the most unexpected places. Arches and finials and curlicues had been splashed across the walls with a lavish hand. Even the chimneys were fantastic; each showed off a different, intricate brick pattern. The house had not only a round shingled tower but for good measure a shorter square one with a pointed roof, topped with a weather vane in the shape of a bell-skirted lady.
That, Danielle had once been told, was the tower that had given the house its name, when the first owner had tumbled off a ladder while inspecting the unfinished work and left his wife—so the story went—not only financially secure but much happier without him. There was even a variation of the tale that said the abused wife had given the ladder a push so she could marry her lover, and that the doomed home owner had flung curses as he fell, swearing that his house would never shelter a happy marriage.
Danielle had always dismissed the whole story as a romantic froth, one of those too-clever-to-be-believed urban legends. But it was certainly true that the Merry Widow had seen its share of marital discord, broken hearts, failed engagements and early deaths...
As if any hundred-year-old house hadn’t, Danielle reminded herself. This was no time to start feeling superstitious. And in any event, if the supposed curse on the Merry Widow had been what broke up her relationship with Deke, then the long-dead home owner had done her a major favor.
Not until she was actually on the porch did Danielle see the sign, and she wasted an instant wondering how on earth Mrs. Goodwin had spotted it. With binoculars, perhaps?
She forced herself to concentrate on the sign, a single sheet of paper taped to the frosted-glass panel in the front door. Compared to the neatly lettered announcement of check-in times that was posted just next to it, the sign looked crude. Each letter wavered, and the line of words had a decided downward slant.
Closed Till Further Notice
That was no help at all, Danielle thought. Nothing about where to reach the owners in case of emergency, nothing about why they’d gone. And there was something about the slapdash presentation of the sign that worried her. They’d obviously left in a hurry. And yet...
Mrs. Goodwin had been right—Kate’s ceramic figurines were gone from the wide, gingerbread-trimmed porch that extended across the whole front of the house, around the corners and well back on the sides. All around Danielle were faint reminders of the statues that had stood there, rings against the soft gray paint where dust had collected under their edges. There must have been twenty of them—and that many figurines would not have been quickly or easily moved.
So if the Jablonskis hadn’t left in a hurry, why hadn’t they made arrangements for someone to look after the bed-and-breakfast? Danielle didn’t think they had any family close by, but surely they had a friend who could step in for a few days....
“Not that it’s any of my affair,” she reminded herself. The Merry Widow is not my problem. Perhaps, she thought wryly, she should chart that sentence out on needlepoint canvas and turn it into a pillow, just as a reminder.
So why, since the house was not her concern, was she feeling the tingle of discomfort?
Slowly, she walked around the perimeter of the house, moving from porch to sidewalk and then to the porte cochere where she had always parked her car when she’d come to visit Miss Fischer. This was the door she’d always used, leading into the side hall of the house rather than the grand foyer....
A confusing mixture of emotions clutched at her heart. There was grief, of course; though it had been a year since Miss Fischer had died, Danielle still missed her fiercely. And sadness for the proud old woman who had been the last representative of one of Elmwood’s founding families. A touch of guilt that Miss Fischer’s well-meaning plans for the house she had so loved had come to nothing. A lingering trace of resentment that the woman