“I smell trouble,” Octo-Cat said with a grin, hopping out of the car and craning his neck to see better while hiding behind my legs. Always hungry for someone else’s drama, that one.
Millicent spilled forth from the entryway, waving her arms overhead.“Officer, officer! This is them!” It looked as if she’d taken great care with her appearance, considering the obscene amount of both makeup and jewelry she now wore. She’d been expecting us.
The policeman unfurled himself from the driver’s seat, reaching an impressive height, close to seven feet, if I had to guess. He tucked his thumbs into his belt loop and approached me and Charles.
Paisley shook and squirmed, not because she was frightened but simply because she was eager to say hello to the new arrival.
Clearly a dog person, the cop reached over and scratched under her chin with his thick fingers, then pulled back and glared down at Charles.“You been giving Mrs. Strobel trouble?”
“No, sir,” he said, standing in place, far more calm and collected than I could ever be in this type of situation.
“Are you kidding me?” I boomed.
Millicent ran in front of us, shouting,“Yes! Yes, they have! Then they refused to leave when I asked them to. That’s why I’d like you to escort them from the property!”
The officer glanced at each of us in turn, finally deciding on Charles as the most rational one among us.“Would you like to tell me what happened here today?” he asked, pulling out a notebook that looked comically small in his oversized hands.
Charles didn’t miss a beat. “My fianc?e’s engagement ring went missing,” he explained, taking care not to talk with his hands the way he usually did. “We reported it to Mrs. Strobel immediately upon discovering its absence last night.”
The officer bobbed his head.“And then?”
“This afternoon, we returned from meeting a friend when Mrs. Strobel met us outside the bed-and-breakfast, demanding to know where we had gone and whether we’d engaged in any illegal activity. She then accused us of stealing the ring, not realizing that we were the same ones who’d reported itmissing. When we pointed this out, she accused us of implicating her establishment in a planned insurance fraud, which I can assure you is not accurate.”
The officer raised one eyebrow.“Then?”
“Then she demanded we leave. Naturally, since we had booked our reservation for two nights, we didn’t see any reason to check out before said duration. Also, my fianc?e was not eager to leave before we could find her missing engagement ring.”
“Uh-huh. Then?” He glanced sidelong at Millicent, who stood openly scowling at Charles.
“We had lunch with a friend in our room, went back out to visit the same friend that we’d gone to see that morning, and then returned, leading to present circumstances,” Charles concluded.
Millicent shook a finger at us. The sleeves of her oversized mint silk blouse belled in the wind.“You see that? They have too many friends! I don’t trust them one bit!”
The policeman shifted his posture slightly so that he was facing Millicent.“Ma’am, what evidence do you have that these two guests of yours faked the disappearance of their engagement ring?”
She patted her stomach furiously.“I don’t need any evidence. I feel it all right here. In my gut! Always go with your gut!”
The officer pressed his lips into a firm line.“Unfortunately, that’s not how the law works. Without any evidence to go on, I won’t be able to follow through on your request. Also, it seems to me that you are, in fact, the one in the wrong here.”
Her jaw fell open.“What?” she barely managed to gasp. I was guessing that neither Millicent’s brain nor her lungs were getting much oxygen in that moment.
“Quite simply put, you’re harassing these people.”
She shook her head, apparently too angry to argue. Well, good, because I was more than done here.
“There’s something else, too,” Charles shot in, finally speaking freely again, hands and all. “A case of gross negligence. You see, there’s this problem with our door…”
I listened with a smug grin as Charles went on to describe our issue with both the front door and the side door for our room. He also filed a formal police report about my missing ring.
At some point, Millicent stormed off. If she hadn’t hated us before, she definitely did now.
Charles and I laughed the whole thing off as we made our way back to the room. Not even Millicent’s ridiculous antics could spoil the wonderful day we’d had with my grandmother.
“That plan backfired on her, huh?” Charles asked with a wink.
“Oh, spectacularly!” I giggled. “And I loved every moment of it.”
Suddenly, Paisley surged forward, barking as she ran.“Get away, you big bully!”
I just barely spotted the flash of orange as Louis scurried off into the night.
“Paisley!” I lifted her to my face and let her lick my cheeks. “I’m so proud of you! You stood up to him all on your own!”
“And don’t come back!” she yelped into the night, clearly very pleased with herself.
“What a strange trip this has been,” Charles said as we finished the walk to our bedroom. The door, as always, was cracked partially open.
“Strange, but good,” I added.
We bobbed our heads in agreement.
“But let’s stay somewhere else next time we come to pay Grandma Marilyn a visit?” Charles wanted to clarify.
I grabbed his hand and planted a kiss on the back of it.“Definitely.”
Next time we came for a visit, I already knew exactly where I’d be staying. Grandma Marilyn had invited us to come soon and often and said we always had a place to stay.
And who needs decently reviewed bed-and-breakfasts when you have family?
18
“For all its faults, there is one thing I’ll actually miss about this place,” Charles said after we’d both taken a moment to relax following the stressful encounter in the parking lot. Our emotions were ping-ponging all over the place out here, and we just needed a moment to catch up with them.
“Oh, yeah.” I turned toward him with an expectant smile. “And what’s that?”
His cheeks lifted in that signature smile I loved so much.“Beach access.”
“There are a million beaches back in Glendale,” I reminded him, wrinkling my nose playfully.
“Yeah, but none are right outside our back door.” He stood and offered me his hand. “One more moonlight stroll?”
“Oh, you hopeless romantic, you,” I teased. Really, Sharon was right. I was, in fact, the luckiest woman alive.
I followed Charles in a lovesick daze until a short way from our room, I tripped and stumbled forward.
Thankfully my knight in shining armor caught me before I could connect with the ground.
“What was that?” I asked, glancing back but unable to see what had tripped me up.
Charles took out his cell phone and shone the flashlight onto a small pile of assorted beach bric-a-brac.
“Just some random nature stuff,” he said with a shrug. “At least I believe that’s the technical term for it.”
“Wait,” I shouted as he moved to slide his phone back into his pocket. “Go back over that stuff again, but a bit more slowly this time.”
Charles shrugged and did as I asked, moving the light back and forth until it caught on a shiny black rock.
No, not a rock.
“That’s a clam, right?” I asked, remembering the scene with Paisley earlier.
He shrugged again.“Yeah, I think so.”
I ambled over and pointed at a pink shell.“And that’s a shell?”
“Yes, that one I’m sure of. I’m absolutely certain that is a seashell.” He poked me playfully in the side, but I was too focused to return his silliness in kind.
“Paisley,” I called into the night, turning back toward our room, which was still in sight. The little black dog nudged the glass door open and then came bounding toward us.
“Yes, Mommy?” she asked, one ear tall and pointy and the other flopped forward.