Chapter 6
Breakfast was, of course, a very serious affair, especially since the Dead & Breakfast had a full house.
Arthur hurried around the kitchen like a multitasking tornado, checking the timer for the scones, flipping the bacon, and stirring the scrambled eggs.
In almost every aspect of his life, Arthur preferred order. This was the one exception.
“I do so love to live deliciously,” Sal said, reaching to steal a piece of bacon from the griddle. “Ow! Ow!”
Arthur tutted as Sal clutched his burned fingers. “That’s what you get for trying to skip the line.”
“Shouldn’t there be some kind of perk for being married to the chef?” he asked through a pout, holding out the injured hand.
“I should think our marriage is perk enough.” Arthur bent to swiftly kiss the owie, as was his duty. “You and I eat when the guests eat.”
“I’m surprised you don’t want to be more efficient about it.”
“What do you mean?” Arthur started the electric kettle for tea.
“Just that we have a date with a coven today. Eating with the guests will surely slow us down.”
“I don’t see how. We have to wait until they’re finished to wash the dishes anyway.” Arthur wiped his hands on his apron and shuffled out from behind the counter. “That reminds me…Can you keep an eye on the eggs? I wanted to write something down.”
“Oh, Arthur, I wish I could, but you know how I feel about eggs.”
“Well, you prefer them fried, but I don’t see how—”
Sal threw his head back in a dramatic fashion, sighing audibly. “No, no, Arthur. The event. The eggvent, if you will.”
“I don’t think you’ve told me this one before.” It was rare that one of Sal’s stories was new to Arthur these days. He didn’t mind the repetition. It was like listening to a favorite album. This was proof, perhaps, that even after decades together, there were still firsts to be had between them.
“It was the mid sixteenth century. I was but a pauper in need of gainful employment. I answered an advertisement for what I thought was to be a job as an egg chef—”
“Is there such a thing?”
Sal ignored him. “It turned out the job was for an executioner, of all things!”
“That’s quite the mix-up.”
“Well, it was their fault for spelling it eggsecutioner. What did they expect?”
“Do you mean eggspect?”
Sal clapped a hand over his mouth, stifling a cry. “I just can’t, Arthur! The things I’ve seen!” He swept from the room, leaving Arthur to deal with the eggs alone.
It was just as well. Sal was never much help in the kitchen anyway.
Probably it was just a ploy to get out of menial labor.
Besides, it would be terribly odd for a sign in sixteenth-century Italy to be written in English, with a coherent pun, no less.
Arthur finished making breakfast by himself, with only the sizzling bacon as a conversation partner.
Sal did not return until after the timer for the scones went off, conveniently.
“Got something for you, my dear!” he announced from under a pile of mail.
A few of the envelopes bore familiar notices in red ink on their fronts.
More bills, ones he worried they wouldn’t be able to pay in a timely manner.
He really needed to sit down and sort it all out, but between solving a murder, searching for Brody’s mom, running the inn, and looking for Rumble, he didn’t know when he’d find the time.
“Set it on the table, I’ll get to it later.” Arthur turned to plate the scrambled eggs while Sal unburdened himself. He couldn’t spend all morning stressing about finances.
“Our Fresh Bites box is here!” Sal opened the box, the popping sound of Sal puncturing the tape with his fingernails an odd accompaniment to the whistling kettle. “It’s O positive again.”
Their delivery of ethically sourced blood came every week, and Sal loved reading all the information on the donor card. Arthur didn’t really need to know so much about where his food was coming from, but who was he to deny Sal such a simple pleasure?
“This week’s donor is Daniel Tanaka. He loves rock climbing and his precious kitten named Bartholomew.” Sal sniffled. “He’s a father, too.”
Before Sal could devolve into a blubbering mess over Rumble again, Arthur shoved the scones onto a platter without arranging them. “Breakfast is served!”
“Oh goodie!” Sal clapped in delight. “And look, there’s a letter that doesn’t look like a bill.”
“Who’s it from?” Arthur didn’t get much personal mail. Most of their post was for the inn’s operations, so he was admittedly curious. Perhaps it was a new client for his private investigator business.
Sal pranced over to him and held up the envelope slightly above his own forehead so it would be at eye level for Arthur.
Their address was handwritten on the front, but it was the return address that stopped him in his tracks.
It was Brody’s mother’s PO box. This could be it.
She’d written back. One way or another, he was about to have the closure Brody sought.
Arthur almost reached for the letter but remembered at the last second that his hands were covered in various kitchen substances. “Open the letter for me?”
“A dramatic reading?” Sal fluttered his lashes.
“You can be as dramatic as you like.” Arthur stepped around him to finish plating the rest of breakfast.
“Dearest Arthur Miller, of no relation to the—”
“Drama without editorializing, please.”
“Dear Mr. Miller,” Sal said in a Boston accent, for some reason. “We are sorry to inform you that Wilhelmina Young is no longer associated with our organization and cannot be reached at this address. Warmest regards.”
Arthur waited a moment. “Who signed it?”
“No one,” Sal said in his normal affectation. He flipped the single sheet of printed paper over, but judging from the lack of more dramatic reading, there was nothing else. “How very curious. Organization. What organization? Do you think she’s in the mafia?”
“That hardly seems likely.”
Wilhelmina wasn’t in contact with whoever had written the missive.
Unless she herself had sent it, to throw him off the scent.
But that didn’t seem likely. From her messages to Brody, she wanted to reconnect with her son.
Arthur had been very honest in his letter, entreating her to return for Brody’s sake if nothing else.
Whoever wrote this didn’t seem interested in reuniting a family.
Perhaps there were even more sinister reasons for the brevity of the message.
Someone could be trying to keep Wilhelmina from returning.
“I really need to interview more people about Wilhelmina,” Arthur said as he took gluten-free biscuits out of the oven. “She’s from Trident Falls, so there must be people who knew her.”
“Sounds dreadfully boring.” Sal yawned as he arranged biscuits into the shape of a coffin. “Why couldn’t we have moved to one of those small towns that’s full of deadly secrets?”
“The mayor was murdered and dumped in our garden, Sal. What more could you want?” Arthur supposed most people’s lives were boring from the outside, maybe even his and Sal’s. That didn’t mean they didn’t matter. The day-to-day might be full of drudgery like dishes and laundry and taxes—
“Oh, I almost forgot. I need to call Martha,” Arthur said.
When he’d seen her at the festival, she’d been very clear about calling her tomorrow, and, well, it was now tomorrow.
June fifteenth had come and gone before Arthur had realized his quarterly taxes were due—they’d not had a profit in previous quarters—and he had no idea how to properly file them.
“Can you set the table without me? You do it with such flair.”
Sal’s reaction to the compliment was to spin in a pirouette and give Arthur a bow. “Of course. Anything for my handsome husband. Especially if it lets me leave the room so I don’t hear any of her dull stories.”
Arthur went to the front desk, looked up the accountant’s number, then called. Martha answered on the second ring.
“Good morning, Arthur. You had some questions about the software I sent you?”
For a moment Arthur froze—how had she known it was him? Then he recalled the ubiquitous use of caller ID these days. “I did, indeed. Excellent memory!”
“Encyclopedic,” Martha said.
“Really? That’s quite rare, isn’t it?”
“I wouldn’t know.” Even her voice sounded bored. Perhaps Sal wasn’t so wrong about her. “I’ve never met anyone else with my gift, but then I’ve always lived in Trident Falls, and it’s not exactly a bustling metropolis.”
Arthur was halfway to his spreadsheets under the desk when he paused, pensive. “You’re from Trident Falls?”
“Yes.” She didn’t elaborate.
“Then you must be familiar with Wilhelmina Young!”
Arthur thought for a moment that the call had been disconnected, but then Martha said, “Yes. We went to school together.”
“Do you happen to recall details about why she left?”
“I don’t feel comfortable sharing her personal business. She hated to leave her boy behind, but…” She trailed off as if there were more to the sentence, but whatever she’d been thinking, it seemed she didn’t want to say.
“When you knew her, did she ever get into any trouble?” he pressed. “I know it might be uncouth to ask, but, you see, I’m trying to help her son find her so they might reunite.”
“Trouble?” The word cracked over the phone speaker. “No, not Wil…helmina. She was a real stickler for the rules.”
Arthur couldn’t read her tone. He wished he’d waited to have this conversation face-to-face.
“Really? I thought perhaps she might have some connections to a criminal element or some sort of…organization.”
“Organized crime?” Martha brightened at the subject. “No, she was never interested in it. Didn’t even care to hear me talk about any arrests or suspected hits. When we were seniors, there was this huge federal case about a family of werewolves who smuggled—”
A crash sounded from the dining room.