Hurrying along the third-floor hallway toward the supply closet, Bella spots Polly Green in the doorway of the Gable Room.
‘What happened?’ she asks Bella.
‘It’s just the weather – there’s a leak in the room down the hall.’
‘Really? I heard someone scream. I still do,’ she adds, as Eve wails in the Jungle Room.
‘Oh, well … the guest was … startled.’
The guest should have been an actress instead of an influencer. The way Eve is carrying on, you’d think the entire ceiling crashed down, instead of a small chunk of it. Unfortunately, it had been right above the desk where she’d been sitting.
‘Is everything OK in your room?’ Bella asks Polly. ‘The leaks are worse in there than anywhere else up here.’
‘It’s fine.’
Is it Bella’s imagination, or does she say it too quickly? ‘Really? Mind if I take a look? Just to be sure, you know, it’s not … damp.’
‘You’ve got your hands full. Don’t worry about me. Really, it’s all good.’
‘Well in that case … I’m just going to grab the spare bucket from under the sink in your bathroom.’
‘Oh. I, uh … sure. OK.’
She doesn’t have much choice. Bella is already stepping around her into the Gable Room. She scans the space for anything unusual, not sure what she’s expecting to find.
Certainly not the bucket from the bathroom, positioned beneath the drippiest spot in the gabled ceiling. Bella looks from it to Polly.
Her perfect hair is … crooked.
It’s a wig, Bella realizes. She must have thrown it on quickly when she heard Eve screaming down the hall.
Standing by the desk, she’s casually closing her open laptop as if it’s the most natural thing in the world.
A laptop.
Bella thinks of the extensive but quickly typed messages from ‘Sam’, and her heart pounds.
She clears her throat. ‘I thought you said the ceiling was dry?’
Polly meets Bella’s gaze without flinching. ‘I said it was fine.’
Had she? Bella isn’t sure.
‘And I said you have your hands full, which you seem to,’ Polly adds, ‘so I didn’t want you to worry about anything in here.’
‘Oh, well … thank you. I guess I’ll leave the bucket then.’
‘Thanks. I’ll be out of here soon.’
‘Out of here?’
‘You said the room was only available for one night, didn’t you?’
‘Oh … I did. Yes. Thank you.’
‘Thank you,’ Polly returns.
There’s nothing for Bella to do but walk out of the room, closing the door behind her. As she moves on down the hall, she hears Polly turn the lock inside.
She’s probably just skittish about all the wailing down the hall, Bella tells herself as she opens the door to the supply closet and finds a couple of buckets.
Of course Polly isn’t hiding anything. A lot of women wear wigs. Maybe she’s prematurely gray, or maybe she’s sick. And maybe didn’t close the laptop because there was something incriminating on it …
Say, fake texts from Bella’s dead husband, demanding two hundred thousand dollars?
She weighs that prospect against her own paranoia and Odelia’s warning about one of the guests.
Luther. She has to talk to Luther. Now.
Returning to the Jungle Room, she finds him standing on his tiptoes on a chair, straining to get a closer look at the hole in the ceiling above the desk. Grant is examining Eve’s right thumb, using his phone like a surgeon lighting an operating theater. Eve is crying, though more softly now. One can’t keep up hysterics indefinitely, thank goodness.
‘Does it hurt when I do this?’ Grant asks.
‘Ouch! Yes!’
‘I didn’t even bend it yet.’
‘Don’t bend it! It hurts!’
‘What happened again, exactly?’ Bella asks Eve.
‘I was sitting at the desk, you know, working, and the roof caved in, and that boulder fell on me.’
Bella eyes the chunk of drywall on the floor. Hardly a boulder; it’s the same shape and size as a small banana and would fit the ceiling hole like a puzzle piece.
‘I’m so sorry,’ she tells Eve. ‘You must have been so startled.’
‘Startled? It was sheer terror! That rock crushed my hand and my phone and it’s broken!’
‘I don’t think it’s broken,’ Grant says, gently moving her thumb.
‘I mean my phone!’ She grabs it with her left hand and shows him, then Bella and Luther. The screen is shattered. ‘Now I can’t film this!’
‘Film what?’ Bella asks.
At least that’s what she thought she’d asked, but Eve looks at her as if she’s speaking in tongues.
‘Um … my life?’
‘No, I get that’s what you do, but when you said film this, I thought you meant … this.’ Bella waves a hand to indicate the ceiling, the floor, and Eve’s wounded thumb. Seeing her expression, she mumbles, ‘And you did. Sorry.’
‘Well, she is All About Eve,’ Luther says.
Eve’s face lights up and she turns to him as if she hadn’t noticed his presence until right now. ‘You’re a fan.’
It’s an assumption, not a question.
His answer is matter-of-fact. ‘Of course.’
He’s a fan? Bella gapes at Luther, who hardly seems like the type of man who’d be interested in influencers. He gives her a wink.
Eve is howling again.
‘Stay still,’ Grant says. ‘I need to blot the cut.’
‘Cut? I’m bleeding? Noooo! I’m bleeding!’
‘Why don’t you go into the bathroom down the hall and clean that for her?’ Bella suggests to Grant. ‘There should be first-aid stuff in the medicine cabinet – bandages, peroxide.’
‘Peroxide!’ Eve screams. ‘Are you insane? That will hurt!’
Grant escorts her from the room.
Bella looks up at Luther. ‘What do you think?’
‘I think you’re perfectly sane, Bella Jordan,’ he says dryly, ‘and that she clearly mistook peroxide for battlefield amputation.’
‘I agree on both counts, but I mean about the ceiling?’
‘The joists and insulation are pretty dry here, so it’s strange that this is the part that gave way, unless …’
‘Unless?’
‘Nadine?’
‘Nadine …’
‘Your household spirit.’
‘No, I know who Nadine is.’
She remembers what Tommy had said earlier. Our sensors were going crazy on the third floor …
‘Odelia says she’s the orb in the video Eve posted. If you pull it up on your phone, I can show—’
‘My phone!’ She pulls it out and opens the text messages. ‘Luther, come look at this.’
‘The video of Eve?’
‘No, something way more important,’ she says quietly, closing the door to the hallway while he climbs off the chair. ‘Just read these texts from the beginning.’
She hands him the phone and watches him scrolling through the messages.
‘What in the …?’ He looks up at her, wide-eyed. ‘Who’s sending them?’
‘Not Sam.’
‘Of course not Sam,’ he agrees, so quickly that she feels a twinge of …
Disappointment? Really?
Is it because she so highly value’s Luther’s opinion, as a detective and fellow Lily Dale outsider, and she believed that he might consider, even for a moment, that it’s in the realm of possibility that the messages actually are from Sam?
Especially now that Odelia mentioned seeing him outside in the rain with an umbrella and a cell phone.
‘I took screen shots of the texts for you,’ she tells Luther as he hands back her phone.
‘Good. Send them to me right away. I’ll look into this.’
As she quickly scrolls through and highlights the photos, she says, ‘Odelia told me you have some concerns about a guest who’s staying here. Is it Polly Green?’
‘Is Polly the woman who’s claiming to be on a cross-country road trip from Boston?’
‘She isn’t?’
‘It’s a rental car. She probably picked it up at the airport, saw the license plate, and came up with that story.’
‘Airport? So she flew here.’
‘From Chicago.’
‘Chicago!’
Before she can tell Luther about the wig and the laptop, the door jerks open without a knock. Grant is there, unaccompanied.
‘Our driver abandoned us,’ he announces. ‘I don’t know what’s up with him, but he’s not parked out front and he’s not picking up the phone and I need to get Eve to urgent care. She’s feeling faint, and I think we’d better have her hand x-rayed. She’s in excruciating pain, poor thing.’
Oh, Grant, Bella thinks. How can such a smart, worldly, successful man be so very stupid?
Reminding herself that he’s selling Valley View, she decides that he and Eve deserve each other.
‘Maybe you should call an ambulance,’ Luther suggests.
‘Oh, I don’t think that’s necessary. Can one of you drive us? It’s in Dunkirk – only fifteen minutes away.’
‘I live there,’ Luther says. ‘I was just on my way home to take care of a few things. I’ll take you, but I can’t hang around at the urgent care.’
‘That’s OK. I’ll find a driver to take us right to the airport from there.’ Grant turns to Bella. ‘I’ll call you later. I wanted to make sure you’re OK with everything.’
‘Am I OK with your selling Valley View?’ She shrugs. ‘It is what it is, Grant.’
‘You’re selling Valley View?’ Luther looks at Grant. ‘Why?’
‘It’s OK, Luther. Candace and Tommy will take good care of it, and they’ll fit right in here, and they’ll be good neighbors to Odelia, so—’
‘I’m not selling it to Candace and Tommy, Bella.’
‘Who the heck are Candace and Tommy?’ Luther asks, looking from Grant to Bella.
She’s focused on Grant. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Pandora made it very clear that it wouldn’t be fair to rob this town of its most brilliant guesthouse,’ he says, rolling his r’s like she does. ‘And it wouldn’t be fair to expect you and Max to move out. It’s your home.’
‘It is.’ She swallows hard. ‘So … you’re keeping it?’
‘Oh, no, I’m selling it. To Pandora Feeney.’
‘What?’ Bella and Luther ask in unison, gaping at each other, and then at him.
‘Grant!’ Eve yells, down the hall.
‘We’re coming!’ He hurries out the door. ‘Luther!’
‘Right behind you.’
‘Go,’ Bella says.
‘I’m going. But he just said he’s selling it to—’
‘Yes. He did.’
‘What do you think she’s—’
‘I have no idea, but if I think about it now, my head is going to explode.’
‘Just take it one minute at a time. And if you get another text, let me know, and don’t engage.’ He gives her hand a quick squeeze and is gone.
Left alone in the room, she sinks onto the bed. For the first time, she realizes that it’s neatly made.
Drew.
Swept by a fierce need to connect with him, she dials his number.
It rings into voicemail.
‘Hey, it’s Bella. There’s … I have … Can you …’ Choked up, she swallows hard before saying quickly, ‘Just call me, OK? Thanks.’
She exhales and closes her eyes.
In a perfect world, she’d be buying Valley View.
This world is tilting farther from perfect with every passing moment.
‘Pandora?’ she whispers, shaking her head.
She checks her texts. There’s not another message from Sam.
She thinks of Polly, who’d lied about where she’s from. Polly, under Valley View’s roof, where she might have seen the check. Polly, closing her laptop so quickly, and wearing a wig.
Bella steps out into the hall. The house is quiet.
Odelia had taken the boys, and the guests were heading to the auditorium. All but one.
Bella walks to the closed door to the Jungle Room and knocks.
‘Polly?’
Is that even her real name?
‘Polly?’
She knocks again. Waits. Tries the door, expecting to find it locked.
It opens.
She looks in. The room is empty.
Right, because Polly is checking out this morning. Bella hurries over to the window and scans the street below.
The rain has stopped, and the white Chevy is no longer parked at the curb. Across the park, stragglers are heading toward the auditorium.
Her eye falls on Pandora Feeney’s pink cottage.
She’s always longed to come home to Valley View. Fate seems to have set her up to do just that. But what …
Bella gasps. He’s there, standing in the park, gazing up at Valley View, holding a cell phone.
Sam.