Alice felt a sinking sensation in her stomach as she watched the interior decorator walk over to speak to Lloyd. Laura Lattimer seemed quite determined to get what she wanted, even if it meant creating a fuss.
Luckily, Lloyd was still telling the rest of the group one of his longer, amusing presidential anecdotes, so Laura had to wait to get his attention.
Alice still had a chance to solve the problem—if she could think of a way to divert the interior decorator from the objects of her desire. If Viola Reed had had trouble convincing the woman that she was not interested in selling her family heirlooms, then gentle, good-natured Lloyd did not have a prayer.
Lord, if You could inspire me with an idea right now, I would be eternally grateful, Alice silently prayed.
A few moments later the front door opened and, like an answer from heaven, Ethel Buckley entered the house carrying one of the Howards’ gift baskets.
“Your sister sent me over because you forgot this back at the inn,” her aunt said as she came to join her. “So?” She glanced at the group surrounding Lloyd. “How is it going?”
“Fairly well, with one exception. I need some advice.” Alice drew her out of the group’s hearing and swiftly explained the problem with Laura Lattimer and the prayer benches. “It’s almost as if she promised to make a scene if I say anything. But if I don’t do something, I think she might try to talk Lloyd out of his family’s prayer benches.”
“It sounds like she is already trying,” Ethel said, scowling, as she nodded toward the group. “What nerve!”
Alice looked over and saw that Laura was now standing beside the mayor, speaking rapidly and gesturing in the direction of the living room. She even had her hand on his arm.
“Here, Alice.” Ethel handed her the basket. “Let’s go and give Lloyd his gift.”
“It would mean so much to my client, Mayor,” Laura was saying as the two women went over to stand near Lloyd. “He’s a very religious man, a former preacher, I believe. He would be overjoyed to have the benches for the little Bible studies he holds at his home.”
Obviously uncomfortable, Lloyd tugged at his collar with a finger. “I’m sure he would, but—”
“I would be sure to tell him all about the history connected to the prayer benches. I know he would preserve them with the utmost care,” the interior decorator assured him.
Alice stepped forward with the gift basket, intending to speak, only to receive a quick, unpleasant look from Laura.
Lloyd valiantly tried again to make a polite refusal. “I do appreciate that, but I think—”
“You know, I want to recommend this tour to my business associates,” the interior decorator said, her tone growing frosty, “but I’m starting to think the people in this town don’t like outsiders.”
As Lloyd hastily assured the young woman that she was mistaken, Ethel said to Alice in a low voice, “I’ll be right back.”
“What are you going to do?” Alice whispered back, worried now that her aunt might do something reckless and cause the confrontation she had hoped to avoid.
Her aunt was watching Laura. “I’m just going to put my purse in the living room.” With a smile, Ethel went around the corner into the living room.
What on earth is she doing? Alice wondered. She stepped back to look at Ethel, who was taking something out of the corner of the mayor’s wood bin, in which he kept his firewood neatly stacked.
“Alice?”
She nearly jumped as she turned to see Ted aiming his camera at her.
“Smile,” the young man said just before he snapped her photo.
A moment later Ethel reappeared.
“Should I say something?” Alice whispered. She saw that the mayor seemed to be wavering.
“I don’t think that will be necessary, dear girl.” Her aunt headed toward her beau and Laura.
“You know that we give feedback comments on the tour to the company that runs them, don’t you?” Laura was saying to Lloyd. “I do so want to say something really wonderful about Acorn Hill so that they will keep you on the circuit.” She gave him a sly nudge. “Selling me those benches would certainly inspire me to lavish praise.”
“Are you finally getting rid of those awful old benches, Lloyd?” Ethel asked as she came to his side.
Alice blinked. Maybe she’d heard her aunt wrong.
“The benches?” The mayor seemed equally confused. “Well, I, er—”
“It’s about time,” Alice’s aunt told the group, sounding very matter-of-fact. “Who wants them?”
“I do.” Laura lifted her chin. “I have the perfect buyer for them.”
“You’re the interior decorator, aren’t you?” Ethel introduced herself and shook the younger woman’s hand in a businesslike fashion. “Can you take both of them?”
Laura slanted a coy look at Lloyd. “If my offer is acceptable to the mayor, I’d be delighted to take them off his hands. At once.”
“Wonderful. Thank you.” Ethel turned to her beau. “Now Lloyd, before you take her check, you should really have Fred take a look at the termite damage and see what he can do about it.”
Alice frowned. Termite damage?
“I’m sorry,” Laura said. “Maybe we’re talking about a different set of benches.”
“No, he only has one set.” Ethel gave Laura a sympathetic smile. “I know how you antique buyers love that distressed look in the wood, but you wouldn’t want them to collapse the first time your buyer sits on them.”
The benches were certainly old and the varnish on them had darkened, but Alice hadn’t noticed anything wrong with the wood.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Laura marched back into the living room and pulled one of the benches away from the wall.
Alice came to stand beside her and saw little particles of wood on the floor where the benches had stood—particles that were, as it happened, the same color as the interior wood of the benches.
They were also the same color as Lloyd’s firewood.
The interior decorator bit her lip as she bent to peer beneath the bench seat. “Is it … extensive?”
“Oh, those two moldy old things have been riddled with the little pests for years,” Ethel assured her with a casual wave of her hand.
“Have they?” The younger woman stared.
“Lloyd has sprayed them with insecticide and plugged up the little holes they made, but you know how hard it is to kill termites once they’ve set up house in something. They always eat their way back out.”
“Ah yes.” The interior decorator straightened slowly. “Well, Mayor, under the circumstances I think I’d better withdraw my offer. Naturally I can’t sell antiques that are … infested with something.”
“I understand completely. Sorry that I can’t help you.” Lloyd looked as if he wanted to grab Ethel and whirl her around the room, but he settled for giving her a heartfelt kiss on the cheek. “How is my best girl today?”
“Just fine.” Ethel beamed. “I thought that when you were finished with this tour, we could spend a little time together.” She tucked her arm through his. “You owe me lunch, you know.”
“That I do,” the mayor agreed.
Ethel squeezed his arm, and then rubbed her palm against the side of her slacks. A few tiny pieces of wood drifted to the floor. When she caught Alice watching her, she dropped her right eyelid in a slow, deliberate wink.
After Lloyd thanked them for visiting his home, Laura insisted, before getting into the minivan, that the driver leave the group in town for an hour so that she could visit the Holzmanns’ antique shop.
“I don’t like to be rushed into buying anything,” she said, “and we only have one more day here before we go home.” She took out her electronic planner. “There was a snow globe I saw in the window of a shop here. I have to have that for one of my clients, a collector. If only I can get the shop owner to bargain with me.”
Alice found it ironic that the interior decorator liked to haggle over prices and have time to decide on her purchases, but she did not extend the same courtesy to those from whom she bought. She did not comment, however. Since leaving Mayor Tynan’s home, Laura had been acting as if she was spoiling for a fight and Alice was not going to be the person to give her an excuse for one.
I’d better warn Jane, though, she thought.
As luck would have it, nearly all in the group indicated that they had some additional Christmas gifts to buy, so Alice decided to tag along to see if she could find something suitable for Jane.
That is, until Max made his objections known.
“I don’t need to spend any more money than I already have,” he told the group. “I’d rather go back to the hotel now than spend all afternoon tromping through shops.”
“I want that snow globe,” Laura said. “If I wait another day, someone else will buy it.”
“I’m not making two trips,” the driver said. “Either I take my lunch break now and we go back in an hour, or we go now and I take it at the hotel.”
“Max, it’s just an hour,” Edwina said. “Why don’t you go and have some coffee? And that restaurant makes wonderful pie.”
The big man scowled at her. “I don’t want coffee or pie, and I’m tired of sitting around waiting on the rest of you.”
Alice nearly volunteered to drive Max back to the hotel in Potterston when she recalled Jane’s suggestion: I think you should try to cheer him up, Alice. Treat him like one of your crankiest patients at the hospital.
With an internal sigh, she abandoned her own shopping plans and decided to invite him to accompany her on her other task of the day. Perhaps away from the group he would feel more at ease and take some enjoyment in doing something different.
“I wonder, Max, since you have no shopping to do,” Alice said, “if you would like to come with me to see our church.”
His thick eyebrows drew together. “Why would I want to do that?”
“Grace Chapel is a wonderful little church.” When his expression didn’t change, she added, “I know it’s not on the tour schedule, but it would give you something to do while the others are shopping and I would appreciate the company.” Please, God, don’t let my nose grow longer.
“Why are you going there?” he demanded. “Is there some sort of ladies’ circle or prayer meeting going on? I’m not getting in the middle of that.”
“No, I’m only picking up the flowers for the altar from the local florist and taking them over.” She produced her best, guileless smile. “That’s all.”
“Is it?” Max stared at her for a long, silent moment.
What an unhappy, suspicious man. Suddenly she really wanted him to go with her. “It won’t take very long,” she prompted gently.
“I suppose I could. These people won’t be happy until they’ve exhausted the limits on their credit cards,” the businessman said finally.
Alice followed the minivan from Lloyd’s house into town, and there parted company with the tour group. Max Ziglar’s big, brooding presence at her side as she walked to the florist’s was a bit unnerving, but she tried hard to act normal and chatted about Grace Chapel and her own youth ministry.
“You’re a nurse, aren’t you?” Max asked her.
“Yes, I work part-time at Potterston Hospital.” She greeted the mother of one of her ANGELs in passing and then stopped at the corner of Hill Street and Acorn Avenue. “There is the florist’s shop where I have to pick up the altar flower arrangements,” she said, pointing across the street.
“‘Wild Things,’” Max read from the shop’s sign. “Does this woman specialize in wild flowers?”
Alice suppressed a giggle. “No, Craig Tracy—he’s the florist—is something of a nonconformist.”
“A man selling flowers?” Max’s tone went chilly with disapproval. “I should say so.”
Alice loved going into Wild Things, partly because Craig had the interior so artfully arranged with plants and flowers that it usually was a little like stepping into a rain forest. This time of year it was more like paying a visit to Santa’s greenhouse. The shop glowed with poinsettias, holiday centerpieces, lovely decorated wreaths and tabletop Christmas trees.
She called Craig’s name several times, but there was no answer.
“Craig sets up a small tent behind the shop every year to sell Christmas trees,” Alice told Max. “He might be out there.”
Max grunted. “He should get a bell.”
“Alice!” Craig came from the back of the store to greet them. A slender man with short, light-brown hair that had a stubborn cowlick, he wore a dark green suit with a single red rosebud on his lapel. “I was wondering if you’d stop in today.”
Alice introduced him to Max, who had been sizing up the younger man with a stern gaze.
“A pleasure to meet you, sir,” Craig said, shaking his hand. “One of the women over at the Coffee Shop mentioned the Christmas homes tour. How do you like Acorn Hill?”
“It’s different,” was Max’s terse response as he surveyed the interior of the shop.
“Things are a bit jumbled in here at the moment. I have a lot of orders being picked up,” Craig said. “I also have to cover the Christmas tree lot out back.” He turned to Alice. “You’re here for the flowers for church, aren’t you? I have them right over here.”
Craig went to a temperature-controlled case that was stocked with several, delicate-looking floral arrangements.
“It’s been so cold I’ve been keeping most of the flowers in here.” Carefully he extracted two large altar arrangements of white carnations, red roses and small pine branches studded with tiny brown cones. Each was simple but so well put together that it appeared perfectly balanced from every angle.
“Your flower arranger does fine work,” Max said in a grudging way.
“I try,” Craig said, and smiled as he covered the arrangements with some protective wrap and placed them in a shallow open box. “I fancy myself an artist. Flowers are my paint, and pots are my canvas. Of course, it would be a little easier if the palette wouldn’t wilt on me.”
Alice noticed Max’s bleak expression deepening and hurried to thank Craig for his beautiful work. She was startled when Max turned down the florist’s offer to bring the arrangements out to Alice’s car and carried the box himself.
Why is he so short and disapproving toward younger men? She had noticed him treating Allan Hansford with a certain degree of civility, but he had been as terse and unfriendly with Craig as he had been with Ted Venson during the tour of Lloyd’s home.
As she drove to Grace Chapel, Alice became aware that the big businessman had fallen into a brooding silence again and she decided to do something about it. “Do you have any family in the area, Max?”
“No.” When she glanced sideways at him, he added, “I lost my wife ten years ago.”
“I’m so sorry for your loss.” She hesitated and then asked, “Did you have any children?”
“One son.” He looked out through the passenger window. “John.”
So Jane was wrong and he did have some family. “Will you be seeing him this Christmas?”
“No.” Max gave her a sharp look. “Why are you asking me all these questions?”
“I’m just curious. I like meeting people and hearing about where they come from and what their families are like.” She made a face. “I apologize if I’m being too nosy.”
Max fell back into silence. Alice was trying to think of another topic of conversation when he suddenly spoke again. “My son and I don’t speak to each other.”
She wasn’t sure how to respond to that. “Did you have an argument recently?”
“No. He defied me ten years ago and dropped out of business college. Said he wanted to be an artist.” Max invested the last word with a great deal of contempt. “He went off to New York City and we haven’t spoken since.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.” And she was.
“There’s nothing to be sorry for. I have my business interests.” He shifted his weight on the seat. “He’s happy where he is, doing his pictures. He must make a little money at it. He’s never asked me for any. Though God only knows how a man can make a reliable income with such work.”
Alice felt terrible for pressing him on the subject, but that certainly explained his harsh attitude toward younger men, especially Ted and Craig, who were both very artistic. They remind him of his son.
“I’m not a parent, but I can imagine how difficult it has been for you.”
“I don’t know why I let it bother me. I suppose it’s the holidays.” He shook his head. “I can’t even get in a decent week of work, what with the Christmas parties and everyone expecting time off. No use trying to keep the office open by myself.”
“Is that why you took this tour?”
“I thought I’d get away from the city for a few days,” he snapped. “Is that all right with you?”
There is always hope, Max, you just haven’t found yours yet. She gave him a serene smile. “That’s fine.”