A Creed in Stone Creek - Linda Lael Miller [24]
Hurry home, Ash, Melissa thought, as she parked and got out of the car.
A shrill wolf whistle from the front yard of the B&B stopped her in her tracks.
She shaded her eyes with one hand, since the sun was still bright, and spotted an elderly gentleman standing just inside the fence, in the shadow of Ashley’s prized lilac bush, wearing white Bermuda shorts, a white polo shirt, white shoes and white knee socks.
“Now that,” the old man said, gazing past Melissa to the roadster, “is some car.” He shook his leonine head of snowy hair. “Beautiful. Simply beautiful.”
Melissa smiled. At least he wasn’t a masher. “Thank you,” she said, pausing to look back at the car with undiminished admiration. “I like it, too.”
“You must be Mrs. McKenzie’s sister,” the man said, shifting his focus from the car to Melissa.
Mrs. McKenzie, of course, was Ashley.
Melissa was still getting used to that—Ashley married, and a mother. Sometimes, it seemed incredible.
“You must be one of the current guests,” she replied, smiling, extending a hand across the picket fence. “Melissa O’Ballivan,” she said.
“I’m John P. Winthrop IV,” the man replied, with a nod and a very wide—and very white—smile. “But you can call me John.”
“How’s it going, John?” Melissa asked, thinking she might be able to wrap up this interview quickly and dash off an honest email to Ashley when she got home, assuring her that the B&B was still standing. “Is there anything you or any of the other guests need?”
He beamed. “Well, we can always use another croquet player,” he said, making a grand gesture toward the nearby side gate, which led into Ashley’s beautifully kept garden of specially cultivated wildflowers.
A teenage boy from the neighborhood did the watering and mowed the lawn, so the flowers, a profusion of reds and blues and pinks and oranges, looked good, if a little weedy here and there.
“I wouldn’t be an asset to any self-respecting croquet team,” Melissa smiled. She ran two miles every morning, but that was the extent of her athletic efforts. “But I would like to meet your friends.”
John P. Winthrop IV rushed to work the latch and swing the gate open. “You look like you could use an ice-cold glass of lemonade,” he said.
Try a shot of whiskey, Melissa thought wryly, recalling the Velda debacle. She hoped Byron Cahill had been waiting when his mother got home. If he’d taken off for parts unknown, he was in all sorts of trouble.
“Thanks,” she said aloud, bringing herself back to the moment. “Lemonade sounds good.”
Mr. Winthrop closed the gate and sprinted to catch up to Melissa on the flagstone walk. He seemed pretty agile for a man of advancing years.
Maybe it was the croquet playing.
“There is one thing,” he said hastily.
Something in his tone, a sort of mild urgency, made Melissa stop and look up into his kindly and somewhat abashed face.
“We’re a little—different, my friends and I,” Mr. Winthrop said.
“Different?” Melissa asked, while inside her head, a voice warned, Here we go.
Mr. Winthrop cleared his throat. “Mabel should have told your sister in advance, when we booked the rooms,” he said. “But we were all counting so on this little getaway and when it turned out we were going to have the whole place to ourselves, well, it all just seemed meant to be—”
Melissa squinted, still several beats behind. “Mabel?”
“Mabel Elliott,” Mr. Winthrop said helpfully. “We’re all retired, living in the same community, and relatively comfortable financially, and we take a lot of these little jaunts. Mabel knows how to use the internet, so she’s in charge of arranging accommodations.”
“I see,” Melissa said, still mystified, and beginning to wish she hadn’t agreed to that glass of lemonade. She could be home in a couple of minutes, taking a cool shower, donning shorts and a tank top and sandals, puttering around in her struggling vegetable garden and generally minding her own business.
Mr. Winthrop took her elbow, in a courtly way. “And with all the foliage surrounding