Her Husband-To-Be

Her hands in her pockets, Danielle continued her circuit of the house. She was halfway around now anyway, so she might as well check the other side on her way back to her car.

She strolled around the back porch, the most utilitarian feature of the house’s exterior, and started up the side, where French doors in the dining room looked out over a slate-paved patio where Miss Fischer had served mint tea on warm summer afternoons. But when she saw the patio, tucked into a sort of nook between the dining-room wall and the end of the front porch, Danielle stopped dead in her tracks.

Scattered over the dark gray paving stones were bits of broken plaster. Kate’s figurines, she thought as she stooped to pick up a fragment. It was the face of a shepherdess; Danielle remembered noticing that particular statue on one of the few visits she’d made to the Merry Widow after the Jablonskis had moved in.

She scuffed at the pieces with the toe of her shoe At first she’d thought the figurines had simply been heaved from the end of the porch onto the slate below, but none of the bits was larger than her hand and most had been reduced to little more than white dust—as if they’d been pounded to pieces by a hammer. And the moss that had lain undisturbed between the stones for decades was gouged in places as if the weapon that had shattered the figurines had slipped now and then. As if it had been wielded in fury and none too carefully.

And if Kate’s figurines had been smashed by a furious hand, Danielle thought numbly, what of Kate herself?

The sign on the front door had taken on a more sinister tone. “I don’t like the looks of this at all,” she muttered.

A deep, slow voice said from behind her, “It is rather a mess, isn’t it?”

Danielle jumped and spun around to face Deke, standing on the grass at the very edge of the patio. “What are you doing here?” she gasped. That was stupid, she told herself. Like you’ve got a right, and he doesn’t!

“Probably the same thing you are,” Deke said mildly. “Joe came by my apartment this morning to drop off a key, and—”

“Oh, it was nice of you to warn me before the gossips decided that Kate and Joe just walked out. If I’d known you were taking care of the place...” She paused. “Come to think of it, why are you taking care of the place? I didn’t realize you and the Jablonskis were pals.”

“We’re not. And I didn’t tell you because I didn’t know it myself till half an hour ago. I was out with a client when Joe came by.”

“Of course,” Danielle said sweetly. “Dear Norah.”

“So he left the key with the shopkeeper downstairs, and I didn’t get the message till I came back after lunch. Joe said something about their marriage hitting the wall.”

“That explains it,” Danielle murmured. She bent and placed the shepherdess’s face gently on the slate.

“The Merry Widow claims another set of victims? I thought you didn’t believe in that nonsense.” He didn’t wait for an answer. “As a matter of fact, the gossips have it just about right. With a divorce pending, neither Joe nor Kate has any interest in the business. So they’re simply walking away from it.”

“Giving up?” Danielle was startled. “They’re sacrificing the work and the money they’ve put into it?”

Deke nodded. “And washing their hands of the whole deal.”

Danielle sighed. “Well, that’s a relief.”

“Oh, really? Then you can deal with the whole mess, since you’re so pleased.”

“I didn’t mean... I was only saying it’s a relief to know that I’m not going to find Kate in the basement with her head bludgeoned in. If he could do this to her figurines—”

“Who said he did?”

“Isn’t it obvious?”

“Of course it’s not. It’s quite possible she did it herself. At least Joe had enough sense and self-control to let somebody know what was going on. Kate seems to have just vanished into the sunset. But why are we fussing over figurines when we have plenty of important things to argue about?”

“Like what? It’s not our prob...” She paused. “Oh.”

Deke nodded. “I see you haven’t quite forgotten the terms of the sale after all. Since we sold the Merry Widow to the Jablonskis with a private arrangement and financed it ourselves instead of making them get a mortgage from a bank—”

“You don’t need to rub it in. I remember perfectly well that the contract sale was my idea.”

Deke hesitated for a second as if he’d like to agree. Instead, he said coolly, “I wasn’t placing blame, only stating the facts.”

And my prissy Aunt Edna wears army boots, Danielle thought.

“It’s beside the point that if we had insisted on a mortgage instead of agreeing to the contract, we’d be free and clear right now and the bank would be deciding what to do with the Merry Widow. We didn’t, so here we are—stuck once more with the biggest white elephant in Elmwood.”

“It’s not a white elephant,” Danielle said automatically. “Just because it’s big and awkward and impractical and not in the best part of town these days doesn’t mean—”

“How else would you define ‘white elephant’, Danielle? But since you’re convinced of its value, I’ll tell you what—my share’s for sale, and I’ll give you a great price. But no more contract arrangements. It’s cash on the barrelhead this time.”

“You expect me to buy you out? Not likely. I don’t want this place any more than you do—and we all know what the probability is of you settling down and wanting a house near a school with room for a dozen kids.”

“I’m glad we’ve at least got that much straight this time around.”

Danielle gritted her teeth. She’d already said far too much. And slugging him wouldn’t do any good; she’d probably break her hand against that granite jaw.

Dammit, Miss Fischer, she thought, why did you have to go and create this mess? Why didn’t you take the easy way and just leave the place to the historical society?

She didn’t realize she’d actually spoken the thought until Deke answered. “Because they didn’t want it. Remember? We tried that route already.”

Danielle tried to will away the evidence of her embarrassment, but her cheeks stayed hot and her tongue felt fat and useless.

Deke tipped his head back and stared up at the peak of the tower, silhouetted against the brilliant afternoon sky. “This house is like a counterfeit bill, you know. Once in your possession, it’s tremendously hard to pass it on to someone else.”

Danielle bridled. “Fake twenties can be shredded and thrown away. Houses can’t.”

Deke looked as if he’d like to argue the matter. Danielle could almost see in his mind the image of bulldozers and wrecking cranes. Then he seemed to think better of it and said levelly, “The point is that once again, we own a house. You don’t want it, I don’t want it—as far as I can tell, nobody wants it. So what in the hell do we do with it now?”

CHAPTER TWO

DANIELLE didn’t know if it was the tone of Deke’s voice that made her shiver or the sudden chill in the air as the spring breeze freshened. She looked up at him—at the strong line of his throat under the unbuttoned collar of his pin-striped shirt, the square-set jaw, the uncompromising mouth—then let her gaze follow his to the house.

From this angle, the Merry Widow loomed over them, looking even taller than its actual three full stories. She could almost hear the house issuing a challenge. What are you going to do about me this time? it seemed to be saying.

Danielle couldn’t help thinking of a nightmare she’d occasionally had as a child, one that had played out the same way from start to finish each time she’d experienced it. No matter how hard she’d struggled to change the outcome, she’d been stuck; the same scary sequence of events had marched inexorably forward to the same scary conclusion.

It looked as if the Merry Widow was going to turn into precisely that kind of bad dream. Not only did they have the whole process to go through again, just as they had ten months ago, but they were just as unprepared. They hadn’t anticipated the Jablonskis’ defection any more than they’d foreseen the announcement that Miss Fischer’s will had left her beloved house in equal shares to her young friend, Danielle Evans, and to her friend, Deke Oliver....

But Deke was right about one thing, Danielle reflected. He’d effortlessly put his finger on the main factor that would keep the scenario from playing out identically. This time, they knew exactly what a tough sell the house would be. Ten months ago, when they’d still been stunned by the bequest, it hadn’t occurred to either of them that no one would want the Merry Widow.

It even seemed, for a while back then, that we might want it....

Knock it off, Danielle told herself. There had never been a “we”. There never could have been—and though Deke’s cold, blunt announcement of the fact had rasped her pride like a carpenter’s file on balsa wood, at least it hadn’t broken her heart. Danielle thanked heaven for being spared that particular pain.

She forced her mind back to the important question, the one she didn’t want to face because it seemed unlikely the answers would come any more easily this tune than they had ten months ago. What were they going to do about the house?

“Did the Jablonskis leave the furniture?” she asked abruptly.

“How should I know? And why should they?”

“Because it was part of the deal we made with them that the furnishings stayed with the house.”

“Agreements don’t always mean a lot when the pressure’s on.”

“You should know,” Danielle said sweetly. “I don’t think they could have taken out much without Elmwood noticing, though, and I haven’t heard so much as a whisper. Did you say you have a key? Maybe we’d better see what we’re actually dealing with.”

Deke dug into his trouser pocket for a brass key. Unmarked and without even a cheerful key ring to keep it company, it looked small and lonely as it lay in his palm.

The back door swung open with a creak. “Too bad it’s the wrong season for a haunted house,” Deke muttered as he pushed the door wide and dropped the key back into his pocket “This place is a natural.”

Danielle ignored him and stepped over the threshold into the kitchen. She was surprised to find that it looked almost the same as in Miss Fischer’s day. Except, of course, that Miss Fischer would never have condoned the stack of dirty dishes in the sink. “I thought they were going to remodel the kitchen.”

“There was a lot of talk about it,” Deke mused. “But then, they seemed to have all sorts of grandiose plans—at least while they were negotiating to buy the place. It’ll be interesting to see if any of them got done or if they were just talking a good game till they got possession.”

“If you’re implying that I was gullible in wanting them to have a chance...”

Deke’s eyes narrowed. “Feeling a little sensitive, are we?”

Danielle swallowed hard.

“Anyway,” Deke went on, “as far as the kitchen goes, they’d have had to install a new one before they could open a regular restaurant, as Joe said he wanted to do. But there’s an exception in the law for bed-and-breakfast places—they don’t have to have commercial kitchen facilities.”

Danielle pushed open the swinging door into the butler’s pantry and walked through to the dining room. The shades were drawn on most of the windows, and in the dim light the rooms seemed almost timeless.

The furniture had been rearranged since Miss Fischer’s day; if it hadn’t been for that, Danielle might almost have expected her friend to look up with a smile from the velvet slipper chair in the front parlor and lay her needlepoint aside.

But so far as Danielle could tell, nothing was missing from the public rooms. The knot in her stomach relaxed a little.

“Well, that’s a relief,” Deke said. “Though, on the other hand, if they’d stripped the place we’d have had a lot less to deal with.” He stared at the crystal chandelier that hung at his eye level above the huge oval dining table. “You know, if we just called in an auction house—”.

“Miss Fischer specified that the house and furnishings should stay together.” Danielle walked on into the front foyer and stooped to pick up the envelopes scattered beneath the mail slot in the door.

“And what’s she going to do about it if we don’t stick to the rules? Follow us around rattling chains and shrieking down chimneys?”

“Probably only you,” Danielle murmured, “since it’s clearly not my idea to sell all her treasures to the highest bidder” She flipped absently through the mail, then laid it in a neat pile on the carved sideboard that served as a hall table.

“Well, I don’t believe in ghosts. It’s all very well to carry out the wishes of the dear departed, but sometimes what people want isn’t very practical in the real world, and the ones who are left with the mess just have to do the best they can. Since we’ve already been down the road of selling the place as a package, with somewhat mixed results, I’m only suggesting that—”

“You know, there’s a problem here.” Danielle was hardly listening to him.

“Only one?” Deke leaned against the sideboard and folded his arms across his chest. “I can’t wait to hear what you’ve singled out for special attention.”

“We can’t just walk in and put up a for-sale sign.”

“Why on earth not? The property has reverted to us. Just as a bank can foreclose on a mortgage holder who doesn’t make the payments—”

“But that’s just it. The Jablonskis haven’t even missed a payment yet In fact, the next one isn’t even due till...” She calculated “Till Tuesday.”

“Joe said they’re walking out—leaving it all behind. A voluntary abandonment means that we have all rights back immediately.”

“I don’t doubt that you’re correct about the legalities—if Joe really meant everything he said. But what about Kate? She’s got just as many rights as Joe has, and I don’t think it’s terribly safe to take his word for what she thinks right now.”

Deke frowned.

“And what if they change their minds and come back?” Danielle went on. “If they were really giving up the last hope, wouldn’t they have salvaged everything they could—agreement or not? Not the furniture, maybe, that would require a moving van. But it didn’t take you any time at all to spot that chandelier and know it’s got some value. And it would fit in the back seat of my car, never mind the Jablonskis’ van.”

Deke was shaking his head. “If you’re disillusioned and sick of trying and you just want out in a hurry, you don’t hang around to disassemble crystal chandeliers, no matter what they’re worth. You didn’t hear Joe’s message.”

“But that’s just it, Deke. You didn’t hear it, either. I mean, you didn’t talk to him yourself, so can you really judge his state of mind any better than I can?”

“Believe me—”

“What if they decide to get back together just as abruptly as they seem to have decided to split? We don’t have any idea what their fight was about or how serious it really was.” She glanced into the music room, tucked under the stairs, that the Jablonskis had turned into an office.

“Those smashed-up statues out on the patio looked pretty serious to me.”

“Oh, really? A little while ago, you seemed to think all that damage was just Kate having a temper tantrum. Which is my whole point, really. What if it was just a silly quarrel and they do work it out? If they come back in time to make the next regular payment and find that in the meantime we’ve sold the property—”

“Before Tuesday? We should be so lucky.”

“You know perfectly well what I mean. We’d get hit with lawsuits from about a dozen different directions.”

Deke didn’t answer, but in his silence Danielle could hear reluctant agreement. Finally, he said, “A formal eviction could take months. So what do you suggest we do, Ms. Layman Lawyer? Just stand around and twiddle our thumbs while the place runs down?”

“I don’t know,” Danielle admitted. She reached for a leather-bound calendar that lay open on the desk and flipped the pages. Not every square was filled, but a respectable number were. And Kate hadn’t been exaggerating about the list of guests already booked for the strawberry festival, little more than a week away. “It’ll take days just to cancel the reservations,” she muttered.

Why cancel them? asked a little voice in the back of her brain.

Danielle frowned. What kind of stupid suggestion was that? Of course they’d have to be canceled. Guests would have to be notified or they’d show up on the doorstep and be fighting mad when they found a Closed sign. And she knew better than to assume the Jablonskis had taken care of that little detail.

“I guess the trouble is,” she said slowly, “that I just can’t believe Kate and Joe are simply walking away from this.”

“All this,” Deke drawled. “Yes, how anyone could walk away from this treasure is certainly beyond—”

“There’s no need to be sarcastic. They have a lot invested here.”

“Are you certain of that? I suspect they aren’t leaving behind as much as you think.” Deke sat down on the corner of the desk. “The work that’s been done—and there hasn’t been all that much of it—Joe did himself. The grand plans to remodel the kitchen obviously came to nothing. There’s a little new wallpaper and paint, but not more than a few hundred dollars’ worth.”

“It’s apparent,” Danielle said dryly, “that you haven’t priced wallpaper recently. But go on.”

“And though they were never late with a payment on the contract, they’d have been paying just about as much in rent if they lived somewhere else. And I have a nasty suspicion any cash that was left over didn’t go back into the business.”

“Well, they had to eat.”

“Just brace yourself in case they didn’t bother to pay the property taxes—because I’ll make sure you get your half of the bill.”

“And what am I supposed to use to pay if?”

“How about your half of the payments the Jablonskis have been making every month?”

Danielle bit her tongue.

“Don’t tell me you’ve been spending every cent on ...” Deke paused. “Now what could you have spent it all on? Not eating out, that’s for sure. You must have nearly every meal at work. Or rent—you are still living with your dad, aren’t you? Or travel. I doubt you’ve been out of town in the past three months. Clothes, perhaps?”

Danielle tapped her toe on the faded Oriental rug. If he dared take it upon himself to criticize her clothes, she thought grimly, she’d mop the floor with that elegant herringbone jacket of his.

Deke looked almost sad. “You really should have listened to me, Danielle, about the power of investments and compound interest. If you had, you could have been on the way to financial independence.”

“Not on half of the payment the Jablonskis were making. And what I spend my money on is none of your business.”

“Right—as long as you have enough to meet your share of the expenses. Even if we walk out right now and lock the door, there are going to be some bills along the way. We can’t simply turn off the utilities, you know. And if you insist that we just let the Merry Widow sit here and gather dust till we’re absolutely sure the Jablonskis aren’t going to reappear...” Deke pushed his jacket back and put both hands on his hips. “How long do you think that’ll be anyway? A month? Six months? Seven years, till they can be declared legally dead?”

“Don’t be silly. I’m not suggesting we just let it sit here.”

“Then what are you suggesting we do, Danielle?”

She looked down at the reservations calendar, still open to the pages set aside for the week of the strawberry festival. Then she squared her shoulders and said, “Run it.”

Deke stood absolutely still, while time and Danielle’s nerves stretched longer and longer. Then he threw back his head and started to laugh.

She folded her arms across her chest and waited, but her patience ran out before his hilarity diminished. “I’d love to stick around a while longer and be jeered at, but I really have things to do,” she said coolly.

Deke held up a hand. “No, wait. Just give me a minute to recover. The place is already a failure, so you want to run it? And do what? Make the hemorrhage of cash even worse?”

“The Jablonskis’ marriage is on the rocks,” Danielle pointed out stubbornly. “That doesn’t mean the Merry Widow is a failure.”

“I thought you said a minute ago that they probably just had a lovers’ spat.”

“I said... Never mind. Whatever their problem turns out to be, it has nothing to do with the Merry Widow.”

“I wouldn’t be so certain of that.” Deke sighed. “And you’re splitting hairs, you know. This is not exactly a record-breaking concern. If Kate and Joe couldn’t make it successful, how do you expect to?”

“They had to make payments for the house.”

Deke shook his head. “Oh, no. You can’t disregard the value of a capital asset just because you happen not to owe a debt on it. That still has to be figured into—”

“Will you stop being a financial analyst for half a minute and just listen?”

“All right. I’m listening. What is there to gain from keeping the Merry Widow open?”

“I’d never have expected to have to explain it to you, oh great fiscal wizard,” Danielle said crisply. “But then, most of your business experience is in the abstract, isn’t it? Stocks and bonds and mutual funds and things like that?”

“And since you grew up in the restaurant trade, you know everything about running a business?”

Danielle refused to react to the irony in his voice. “Being actively involved in a retail trade is a much more practical education than an M.B.A. We’ve already learned that there isn’t much of a market for this house—”

“This is news?”

Danielle ignored him. “As a house. But it’s not just a house now, it’s a business.”

“I don’t anticipate that fact creating a great deal more interest. Who’d want to buy it as it stands?”

“Nobody, if it isn’t running. That’s the whole point.”

After a long pause, Deke nodded. “You’re right.”

Danielle was annoyed. He didn’t have to sound so amazed about it or act as if the admission had been forced from him. “If our best chance of selling the Merry Widow is as a bed-and-breakfast, then it has to be up and operating.”

Deke shrugged. “All right. It’s true that a great deal of the value of a business is lost in the first few weeks it’s closed. Of course, that’s assuming that it had any value to begin with.”

Exasperated, she snapped, “So do you have any better ideas?”

Deke leaned back into the worn velvet cushions and shook his head. “You utterly amaze me, Danielle.”

There was a note in his voice that set Danielle’s teeth on edge. If he accused her of thinking this up so she could maneuver him back into her life.. Well, the sooner that possibility was wiped out of his mind, the better. She held out a hand. “If you’ll give me the key, I’ll get started. Would you like regular reports or will learning about it on the grapevine be good enough?”

“Oh, I’m sure anything I need to know I’ll hear about.” There was a tiny twist of irony in his voice, and Danielle noted that he didn’t waste any time digging into his pocket for the small brass key as if he couldn’t wait to wash his hands of the whole problem.

And she wondered for just an instant, as she stood there holding a key still warm from his body, if she was an utter fool not to have done the same.

The rich scent of roasting prime rib wafted toward Danielle from the Willows as she got out of her car at the farthest corner of the restaurant parking lot. She’d only taken a couple of steps toward the building when Pam’s car pulled in beside hers, and she leaned against a fender and waited for Pam to gather up her belongings

“Sorry I didn’t call you earlier,” Pam said breathlessly. “There was a crisis at school and Josh ended up at a friend’s house, so I had to go retrieve him and get him to his clarinet lesson. Anyway, I didn’t see any sign at the Merry Widow, and—”

“It’s there. Right on the front door.”

Pam sighed. “I might have known you couldn’t stay away. Honestly, Danny...” Her gaze focused on the back seat of Danielle’s car. “Why is there a suitcase in your car? Your father didn’t have another attack, did he?”