Scarlet Nights: An Edilean Novel Read online

  As the investigation went forward, fortunately, it was backed by a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling that said the gullibility of a person didn’t eliminate the fact that a crime had been committed. People who did what Mitzi had done were as guilty as bank robbers.

  State criminal law and federal law work in opposite ways. Criminals arrested by state law enforcement are incarcerated, then evidence is found. But the Feds will spend years gathering information before arrests are made. Unfortunately, the first time around, when they were ready to indict Mitzi and twenty-eight of her family members, she’d been told what was coming. She and her son had disappeared where no one could find them.

  As Mike straightened the papers, he agreed with the captain that the only reason Stefan and his mother would come to a two-bit town like Edilean, Virginia, would be for something really big. And it looked like during the time Mitzi was missing, she’d found another way to extort money, and this time, it involved Miss Sara Shaw.

  Mike put the papers in his bedside table drawer, making a mental note to take them out in the morning. He couldn’t risk Sara finding them when she snooped through his room.

  As he closed the drawer, he couldn’t help but think of the irony of the evening. This afternoon, while he’d spent a couple of hours at Williamsburg’s outlet mall buying new clothes, he’d envisioned a nice, domestic evening with Sara. They’d have good food and the wine that was never opened. He imagined that after dinner he’d get his new clothes out of his car, and he and Sara would go through them. Since she was in the business, he’d ask her advice about what he should wear. And every scenario that he came up with ended with Sara telling him what it was that the Vandlos wanted. But, somehow, everything had fallen through.

  As he turned off the light, Mike thought, Strippers. From now on, he was going to deal only with strippers. No more good girls who made no sense whatsoever.

  5

  THE NEXT MORNING, Sara awoke with what she knew was a hangover. Two margaritas wouldn’t be enough to make most people drunk, but Sara’d never been able to tolerate much alcohol.

  As she splashed cold water on her face, she began to remember what she’d said to Mike the night before. Her excuse was that he’d asked too many questions about Greg, made too many insinuations, and added to all the other things going on now, it had been more than she could take.

  She would, of course, have to apologize to him. Last night, it had seemed clear that … well, it was almost as though people were plotting against her—but that couldn’t be true. However, the idea stayed with her and began to grow.

  As the day wore on and she worked constantly on the pile of sewing, she told herself that it couldn’t be possible that Tess had worked with the whole town to bring in Mike to get Sara away from Greg.

  But there was an old murder mystery on TV, and as she sewed and listened, she seemed to see conspiracy in every second of the last few days. Greg abruptly called away; Luke taking over her apartment; Sara having to move into Tess’s place where the trapdoor was. Then Tess’s mysterious brother just “happens” to show up—and now he was living in the small apartment with her.

  At one, Sara went to the kitchen to get lunch and saw that the refrigerator was full of the food Mike had cooked. What had he been planning last night with that delicious meal? She vaguely remembered accusing him of trying to seduce her.

  Maybe she’d watched too many black-and-white movies, but she had an image of herself drunk and winding up in bed with Mike. Then two men with cameras with huge round flashbulb holders would burst in and take their photo.

  Would they give the lurid pictures to Greg? For a sickening moment Sara imagined Greg’s rage if he saw photos of her in bed with another man. He went ballistic when she so much as laughed at a salesman’s joke. “It’s just because I love you so very much,” Greg’d said many times.

  She got a plate from Tess’s cabinet, filled it with the food Mike had cooked, put a paper towel over the top, and microwaved it. She poured herself a big glass of iced tea and sat down to a feast.

  As Mike left the title office with the fat portfolio in his hand, the closing complete, he was still shaking his head about Sara. He hadn’t been able to figure out what he’d done to make her so angry. Sure, maybe his arrival through her bedroom floor was a bit crude, but he still saw no other way to get close to her as fast as he did. If he’d knocked on the door and introduced himself, she would have been polite, but he would have been sent to a hotel and he wouldn’t have seen her again.

  Truthfully, he thought the way the townspeople were ganging up on her against the man she wanted to marry was too much. While it was true that he knew Vandlo was a criminal, they didn’t. Where was all this “support” that women talked about all the time? TV from four until six was what Mike called the “Support Hours.” One time when Tess was staying with him—he was recovering from a bullet wound (his fourth)—and he was bored with being still, and sick of pain, he took his frustration out on the TV. He tossed a pillow at it and said, “If I hear the word support one more time, I’m throwing the thing out the window. No matter how stupid a person is, how bad a decision, all you women care about is that you ‘support’ each other.”

  “So now I’m one of ‘you women’?” Tess asked calmly, not even looking up from her magazine. “I can assure you that never in my life have I supported a woman when she made a decision so stupid that she got shot.”

  In an instant, Mike’s bad temper left him and he managed to get off the couch and cook a decent dinner for Tess. Two days later, she went home to Edilean.

  As Mike drove away from Williamsburg, he wondered if he should bother cooking. He was bending over backward to impress Sara, but no matter what he did, he made her furious. Never before had he had trouble with women. In fact, one of his big problems in life had been that women liked him too much. They flirted with him and teased him. In fact, he’d never had to do any work to get a woman he wanted.

  But that wasn’t the case with Miss Sara Shaw. She had disliked him from the moment she saw him, and her animosity toward him had increased rapidly since then. But then, as he’d told the captain, women like Sara were a complete and total mystery to him.

  When he got back to Edilean Manor, he almost expected the door to the apartment to be bolted, but it was unlocked. The detective in him came to the fore. Maybe he’d conduct classes on home safety in Edilean and talk to them about the importance of keeping their doors locked. He saw Luke at Sara’s apartment, carrying out what looked to be the kitchen sink, and again Mike felt sorry for her. The entire town was against her, and he thought that if he were in her shoes, he might marry a person just to spite them.

  Inside Tess’s apartment, he glanced down the hall to the bedroom Sara was using, but it was empty. As he put the folio from the title company on the table, he thought that maybe later he would talk to her about what the town was doing to her. Maybe that would loosen things up between them. Or he could talk to her about becoming the owner of a farm. She might help him relax about taking on such a heavy responsibility.

  When he looked out the window, he saw Sara outside, sitting under a big tree, her cell in her hand, with her never-ending sewing on the table beside her. This morning the captain had sent him information through Tess. Just as they’d hoped would happen, Stefan’s temper had erupted when he’d talked to the police about his wife’s arrest. Within minutes, he was handcuffed and put in a holding cell. The captain had gleefully told Tess of the accusations and threats that Vandlo had shouted at the police as he was put into jail. And Stefan kept saying that he “had to get back,” which was taken to mean that he had to return to Sara and the scam he had going with her.

  When he’d been taken into custody, his phone had been confiscated, so they saw all the e-mails and text messages that Sara had sent Stefan Vandlo since he’d left Edilean in such a hurry.

  Sara’s messages to him were a mixture of anger and pleading. She kept asking him where he was and when he’d be back. She�
�d only alluded to Mike by saying that she’d had some “problems” at home that she needed Greg’s help with.

  Mike was told that Vandlo had never answered her, even when he’d had his phone returned to him.

  After he’d made some iced tea, Mike took it outside to Sara. He was prepared for more anger, but when she smiled at him, he was relieved.

  “About last night …” she began, but Mike cut her off.

  “I didn’t mean to upset you and you’re right that I ask too many questions. Another hazard of my job. Did anybody tell you that I did good deeds today?”

  “Not one,” Sara said, smiling and sipping her tea. “Did you put your crusader cape in mothballs?”

  “It’s not the cape I want to get rid of. Did your mother tell you she ordered me a couple of skirts?” When Sara laughed, he liked the sound and wanted to hear more of it. “No, really. I saw Luke and asked where the best place in town to buy organic food was and he—”

  “Sent you to my mother. I know. She told me.”

  “I thought she wouldn’t want customers at that time of morning, but she was there, unloading boxes of cauliflower.”

  “My father says the best time of day is the two hours after Mother leaves the house and before he has to get up.” She looked at Mike in speculation. “So what did she say to get you to agree to participate in the games?”

  “You mean I had a choice? As far as I could tell, she’d already decided before I got there. Tess has always told me how fast news flies around this town, but I was shocked that she already knew so much.”

  Sara nodded. “You told Tess, who told Rams, who called Luke, who told Joce, and she called my mother.”

  Mike laughed. “If only our government worked so efficiently.”

  “The government isn’t as nosy as this town is. So what about the kilts?”

  “Your mother—” Mike looked at his glass.

  “You aren’t blushing, are you?” Sara leaned toward him. He’d shaved, and without his black whiskers, he looked less like a pirate. “I’m afraid to ask what she did.”

  “Took off my jacket, pulled up my shirt, and put her arms around me.”

  “I assume she was holding a tape measure.”

  Mike nodded.

  “In case you don’t know, putting you in the fair is her way of making you part of Edilean. She’d had a few hours of knowing that another man was near me, and that’s all it took for her to decide that you were better for me than the man I’m going to marry.”

  “About that—” Mike began, but Sara interrupted.

  “It’s all right. I know what they think, since most of them have told me. It’s almost as though Greg works to annoy the people in this town.”

  Mike took a deep drink of his tea. “Why would he do that?”

  “I don’t know. Sometimes I think that what Greg really wants is for the two of us to move to some remote island and live there all alone.”

  Mike didn’t say anything. The first rule of control is to isolate your victim. It looked as though Vandlo had already started to put it into Sara’s pretty head that they would be better off away from people who knew her. It was Mike’s guess that Sara was right and Stefan was purposefully making the people of Edilean dislike him. After he and Sara were married, Mike figured Vandlo would increase the animosity until he got Sara to move away. When they were living among strangers, Sara would meet with a fatal accident, and as her husband, Stefan would inherit whatever she owned.

  He didn’t want Sara to see the seriousness in his face. “So what’s for dinner?”

  She didn’t hesitate but held up the stack of clothing. “Let’s see … There’s cotton for an appetizer, wool for the main course, and silk for dessert.”

  “Sounds perfect. Would you mind if I put a few scallops and asparagus with them?”

  “I think that’s the best idea I’ve heard all day. But only on one condition.”

  “And that is?”

  “More tequila.”

  Smiling, Mike stood up, picked up her sewing for her, and they began walking back to the house. “Maybe tomorrow you’ll show me your shop. By the way, who’s running it now?”

  Sara gave a loud sigh. “Greg hired a woman from D.C. She has a degree in …” She waved her hand. “I don’t know. She wears suits and she’s so brilliant at business that she scares me. I think that when Tess gets back I’m going to sic her on the woman.”

  “Are you referring to my baby sister? My sweet-tempered, gentle little Tess?”

  “The one and only. Did you ever hear the story about the red dress?”

  “I heard it from Tess, but she told it only from her point of view.” Tess had told him that Ramsey, who at that time was her boss, had called her into his office for an evaluation. He had no complaint with the job Tess was doing, but he said she should stop wearing her skin-tight jeans. “After all, this is a place of work,” he’d said pompously. Mike could have told him that ordering Tess not to do something was a guarantee that she’d do it. The next day she’d shown up in a red silk dress so tiny it could have been used as a handkerchief. Since some people he was trying to impress had been there that day, Rams was properly chastised. Never again did Rams complain about anything Tess did.

  “Were the men in the office also put into their place?” Mike asked.

  “Ha! My cousin Ken wanted to declare a Red Dress Day in Edilean, but his wife vetoed it.”

  They were at the door of the house, and Mike held it open for her. As they had yesterday, she sat down at the table while he moved about the kitchen, and Sara glanced down at her phone. The red light wasn’t on.

  All day, every time her cell buzzed, her heart had leaped. Maybe it was Greg at last calling her. But it never was. It was either someone in town asking her some asinine question about whether she was going to be in church on Sunday or if she was going to the fair—or whatever he/she could come up with to find out if Greg had called her. Sometimes they asked about the wedding. The planner—whom Sara’d met only once—called to say that she was having trouble getting carnations the exact color of yellow that she, Sara, wanted. Listlessly, Sara’d said that whatever she had would be fine. If it had been left up to Sara, she would have ordered flowering, fragrant herbs and big roses that dropped their petals, and she would have asked her mother’s employees to decorate the church. Sara had grown up around most of them, and she knew they’d love to make garlands and wreaths. But when Sara had suggested that to Greg, he’d said that her mother hated him so much she’d probably fill the church with poison ivy.

  By that afternoon, when Mike arrived with a glass of iced tea, Sara was near to tears. There’d been no call from Greg, and he’d not so much as acknowledged her e-mails or texts. Was it over between them but he just hadn’t told her? She’d never felt so alone in her life.

  But Mike’s dimpled smile diminished her unhappiness. He too was alone since he knew no one in town—and he didn’t even have a home to return to. When she’d thought of him during the long day, she’d vowed to be nicer to him. Even if Tess and the town had conspired to introduce Mike to her, Sara didn’t think he was part of it.

  Last night he’d seemed to be genuinely puzzled by the accusations she’d hurled at him. In fact, today she’d thought of telling him the truth about what was going on. She even thought of telling him about her fears with Greg. It hurt that she had no one to confide in. If she told anyone in Edilean that she was worried that he was dumping her, they’d probably raise a banner of celebration in the town square. But Mike was an outsider, so maybe they could be friends.

  “What’s that look for?” Mike asked.

  “I’ve just been thinking, that’s all. I’m looking forward to another scrumptious meal.”

  “You sound like you’re in a good mood. Something happen?”

  “If you’re asking if Greg called, no, he didn’t. But that’s all right. I’m sure he has a reason.”

  Mike had to turn away to keep from saying, Yeah, iron bars. He look
ed back at her. “I didn’t ask if you like scallops.”

  “Love them.” Sara watched him move about the kitchen. Like yesterday, he was beautifully dressed. He wore dark slacks of a lightweight wool and a perfectly pressed blue cotton shirt with the sleeves carefully folded to the elbows. His shoes were polished, and she knew from her retail experience that they had cost several hundred dollars. “Do you always dress like this?”

  “Sometimes the only real thing in a person’s life is his body, so I do what I can with it.”

  Since his arrival, she’d been too agitated to give much thought to his looks and, now, how she’d described him to Tess rang in her head. When she looked at him, he wasn’t as bad as she’d first thought. Actually, Mike wasn’t exactly short. He was more average height. And her seamstress eyes calculated that he had a waist that was no more than thirty inches. Some of her female customers would kill for a waist as small as his.

  “You’re looking at me awfully hard,” he said as he pulled packages from the refrigerator.

  “I still don’t see that you look like Tess.”

  “You’d see the resemblance if we were together. You like asparagus?”

  “Only if it isn’t covered in that awful pink sauce.”

  “A girl after my own heart.” When Mike smiled like that, he almost looked handsome.

  Turning away, Sara saw the big folder on the table with a title company’s name on the front. “What’s this? Did you go to a closing today?”

  “Yes, and it’s a gift from my sister.” Mike was washing the scallops.

  “She gave you land, or is it a house?” Sara’s voice was astonished.

  “Both, I guess. The place’s been owned by the McDowell family for years, and now it’s mine as long as I or my descendants live there. If I so much as try to rent it out, it goes back to my new brother-in-law.”

  “That sounds like Rams. So which place is it? The family owns about a dozen houses.”