Drew brought the perfect supper for a night like this: cold fried chicken, biscuits and side salads. They eat at the picnic table in the backyard, accompanied by mosquitos, yellow jackets, and Jiffy Arden.
They’re midway through the meal when he cuts through Odelia’s yard with Jelly scampering at his feet.
‘Hi, Doctor Drew. Hi, Max. Hi, Bella. Me and Jelly thought we should come over because we smelled something and we didn’t know what it was,’ he says with an exaggerated sniff.
‘It’s probably a dead fish,’ Max tells him, pointing at the lake.
‘No, it’s a good kind of stink.’
‘Did you eat dinner, Jiffy?’ Bella asks.
‘Yep, but what are you having? Because I can have two dinners if it’s something I love like fried chicken and macaroni salad and biscuits and some ice-cold lemonade.’
‘You’re in luck,’ Drew says with a grin. ‘Have a seat, kiddo.’
‘I’ll go get you a plate. Does your mom know where you are?’ Bella asks, standing.
‘Yep.’
‘Really?’
‘Well, she probably does. She’s a good guesser.’
‘How about if you text her, just to make sure? Tell her that we’ll get you home safely in a little while.’
‘That’s a lot of stuff to write.’
‘It’s OK. I’ll let her know,’ Bella says. ‘I’ll be right back.’
Earlier, she’d left her phone plugged into the charger in the Rose Room. She’s been meaning to retrieve it to see whether Millicent had returned her call, and if Misty had learned whether Jiffy had admitted to staging the theft.
The house has yet to cool off, and it feels deserted, probably because the evening message service is under way in the auditorium. She can hear a male medium addressing the audience over a microphone as she makes her way through the first-floor rooms, pausing to draw lace curtains across open windows in the front parlor.
This is her favorite time of day in this room. The mantel clock ticks softly. Stained-glass Tiffany lamps cast a mellow glow over the old woodwork. In the adjacent library nook, three walls of shelves are stocked with books, classic board games and jigsaw puzzles, to keep the guests occupied on rainy days.
Chance and Spidey are dozing on the window seat. Bella pauses to pet them. They purr as she strokes their fur, and she lingers. Through the window, she sees a white Chevy with Massachusetts license plates parked in one of the visitors spots out front.
It must belong to Polly Green from Boston. Polly Green, who’d mentioned that she was passing through on a cross-country road trip, visiting the Dale for the first time.
I’ve never even heard of this place, she’d said.
And then, thanks, Bella.
It’s been nagging at Bella ever since – that Polly had known her name.
It’s such a small and seemingly insignificant detail.
Or is it?
It’s not as if Bella wears an employee badge, and there’s no name placard on the registration desk. It isn’t even posted on the Valley View website. She supposes it wouldn’t be hard to find in an online search. Occasionally, previous guests post comments about her on travel sites, often praising ‘Bella’s homemade scones’.
But if you’d never heard of Valley View until you wandered by and saw the vacancy sign, would you have stood outside with your phone to comb through online reviews?
Possibly.
Not that Polly looked as though she’d just been lingering in hundred-degree humidity when she walked through the door.
She sighs, staring out into the quiet street.
On a nearby porch, a glider squeaks rhythmically, and she can hear every word of the conversation between the occupants. It isn’t particularly intimate, or even interesting, but they’re likely unaware that anyone is listening.
Voices carry farther and more clearly at night due to refraction of sound waves. Science again. Physics.
Shortly after Bella’s arrival in Lily Dale, she’d mentioned to Luther Ragland that she doesn’t believe in the paranormal. She’d fully expected him to agree with her. After all, he’s a detective. His livelihood, like hers in teaching, depends on facts and straightforward evidence.
She’d been taken aback when he informed her that what happens here is all about energy – quantum physics. He’d reached into his wallet and pulled out a creased, well-worn slip of paper he’d carried ever since Odelia helped him solve his first case.
Upstairs in the Rose Room, Bella opens her jewelry box and takes out the same slip of paper.
‘Keep it,’ Luther had said, handing it to her. ‘I know it by heart. It might help you while you’re here.’
Bella unfolds it now and rereads the handwritten quote that she too now knows by heart.
Everyone who is seriously involved in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that a spirit is manifest in the laws of the Universe. – Albert Einstein
The tourmaline necklace from Sam is also tucked away in the jewelry box.
Rather, the necklace Bella had found in a hidden compartment here at Valley View last July. Precisely the same necklace she and Sam had found in a little shop on a beach vacation a few months before he’d gotten sick. He’d told her that it was going to be her Christmas gift, and they’d laughed about how terrible he’d always been at keeping secrets.
Six months after his death, the necklace had turned up under a stair tread in a house Sam had never visited, in a town she’s sure he’d never even heard of. Even if he had, he couldn’t have known, when he was alive that summer, that by the following one he’d be gone. He couldn’t have known that his wife and son would soon be starting over in Lily Dale, of all places.
‘Yes, he did!’
She jumps and whirls around, half-expecting to see someone behind her. Then she hears footsteps on the street below and realizes the voice had floated up through the open window.
‘I don’t think so,’ someone responds. ‘He’s back in Hollywood, and the son lives in New York City now, and the housekeeper moved out.’
‘Mrs Remington? No way. She’s been with them for decades.’
Bella instantly recognizes that they’re talking about the Slaytons. Like any other small town, Lily Dale has an industrious gossip mill.
As the footsteps and voices fade away, she returns the paper to the jewelry box and unplugs her phone from the charger. There’s a message from Misty on the home screen.
Hi Bells. Jiffy swears he didn’t fake the robbery. I believe him.
OK, well … she’s his mother. If she believes him, Bella will certainly give him the benefit of the doubt.
Yes, she will, despite the fact that Jiffy’s a creative thinker, and that he’d have known Misty wouldn’t miss that vase …
And that it’s far more reassuring to believe Jiffy had lost his scooter and tried to cover it up than to think an intruder had taken it.
Still, if there had been a break-in at the Slaytons’, Misty probably should let the authorities know about this, just in case.
Catching her reflection in the bureau mirror as she returns the Einstein quote to the jewelry box, Bella quickly reaches for a hairbrush, though a hairdryer would be more appropriate. The best she can do is pull her damp hair back from her forehead and off her sweaty neck and hope her haphazard updo passes for presentable.
Then she returns to her phone and starts a text to Misty.
I think you should call …
No. She deletes that. Misty isn’t big on unsolicited advice.
Are you going to call the police? she asks instead and waits for a reply.
And waits.
She suspects that Misty is there, on the other end of the phone, trying to figure out what to say and do. And Bella doesn’t blame her for being reluctant to inform Lieutenant Grange. But if a crime occurred, it should be reported to the authorities.
Then again …
An ugly vase, an incomplete jigsaw puzzle, a scooter …
There’s no way Grange will take this seriously. He’s bound to draw the same conclusion Bella had about Jiffy’s involvement, regardless of the boy’s claims of innocence.
Bella writes, or maybe you should call Luther?
A moment later, three dots wobble in the text window, and a reply whooshes in: Do you have his number?
It’s quickly followed by, You call him for me, Bells, OK? He likes you better.
Shaking her head, she types, That’s not true!
He thinks I’m nuts.
Bella rolls her eyes. It’s not entirely untrue.
Please? Call him!
She sighs. OK.
Then, remembering, she adds, Making sure you know Jiffy’s here?
Misty doesn’t acknowledge that she’s aware, just offers a thumbs-up emoji.
Bella says, He wants to eat with us. OK w/ you?
If the situation were reversed, Bella would make sure it’s not an imposition, maybe ask what they’re having, and what time she should collect her son.
Misty’s reply: another thumbs-up.
Bella sighs and calls Luther. It goes directly to voicemail.
‘Hey, it’s Bella. Can you give me a call when you have a minute? It’s not urgent, but …’
She reconsiders.
‘It’s about a robbery. I think. Just … call me and I’ll explain.’
She hangs up, pockets her phone, and steps out into the hall. About to turn back to lock the door behind her, she catches movement in the hallway out of the corner of her eye and cries out.
‘Sorry!’ Polly Green says. ‘I didn’t know anyone was here!’
‘Neither did I.’ Bella presses a hand against her racing heart. ‘Are you on your way out?’
‘On my way in. I went out to get a salad.’
‘At the Soul-stice Bistro.’
‘How’d you know? Oh … right. It’s Lily Dale.’
‘Yes, but I’m not psychic,’ Bella says. ‘It’s the only place in the Dale that would be open right now for anything other than ice cream.’
‘I didn’t say it was in the Dale, Bella.’
And again, I didn’t tell you my name was Bella, either.
Of course she would have introduced herself by name earlier, if the other woman had said, ‘Hi, I’m Polly Green, and you are …?’
Or if Polly hadn’t given her a startled once-over when she walked her perfect self into Valley View, assessing Bella as if she might be the kitchen help, or a vagrant who’d wandered in off the street.
That had put Bella on the defensive, so she’d deliberately identified herself as just, ‘the manager’.
She’s a hundred percent certain she hadn’t mentioned her name in the ensuing conversation, either.
Well, ninety-nine percent certain, given her preoccupation with what had happened yesterday, Odelia’s message, having the dogs here, and Drew …
OK, maybe there’s a larger margin for error.
And maybe Perfect Polly isn’t quite so perfect, other than that fussy hairdo of hers. She may not look as though someone just threw a bucket of water over her head, as Bella does, but she’s not impervious to the humid heat. Her face is shiny, and her eye makeup is smudged.
‘If you’re not psychic, Bella, and I didn’t tell you I stayed in the Dale for dinner, how did you know? You’re not following me, are you?’
Her smile strikes Bella as forced.
‘Oh, I’m way too busy to follow my guests around,’ Bella returns, suspecting her own breeziness is just as forced. ‘I just saw your car parked out front. White Chevy, Massachusetts license plate – that’s you, right?’
‘Right. That’s my car. You sure do pay attention to the little details, don’t you?’
Uncertain what to make of that, Bella hears a burst of applause from outside. ‘The message service just ended. You’re lucky you went to the bistro when you did, because the place will be a madhouse now.’
‘That’s what the owner said.’
‘Walter? Or was it Peter?’
‘Tall Black man?’
‘Walter.’
Polly nods. ‘When I mentioned I was staying at Valley View, he said to tell you hello, and that he’s looking forward to hearing about the wedding.’
Bella nods.
‘So you got married?’ Polly presses.
‘Me? No, I … no.’
‘Who did?’
Bella reminds herself that the woman is merely making small talk. Yet her tone is pointed and there’s a shrewd expression in her eyes and …
And she just doesn’t seem like a Polly, or a New Englander.
Which makes no sense, really.
For Bella, the name evokes warmth and friendliness, but it’s silly to assume all Pollys share those traits.
And not all New Englanders call a car a ‘cah’ and go around wearing Red Sox caps with … with lobsters tucked under their arms.
It’s not you. It’s me, she silently informs Polly. This weather is making me irritable. And ridiculous.
‘I’d better get back,’ she tells Polly. ‘Everyone’s going to be wondering what happened to me.’
‘In Lily Dale? Seems pretty safe around here.’
You’d be surprised, Bella thinks, but says only ‘Good night,’ as she turns away and heads downstairs.