Murder & The Heir Read online

  “You want a diner?”

  I nodded, biting my lip. I didn’t want to see her disappointment.

  “At the beach?”

  It was painful to admit it. It was what I had been saving for, but it wasn’t going to happen. I didn’t have enough. I probably never would.

  “It won’t happen,” I said, knowing it was true. “But that’s what I want. It’s hard to figure out something else when that was…it.”

  “Really?”

  My expression must have reflected what I thought of her continued surprise.

  “It isn’t what I pictured,” she said. Her short hair fell into her face and something crossed her expression that I couldn’t quite read.

  “It’s not going to happen,” I said defensively. “But, I’m tired of wanting it and not doing anything. I’m thinking…I’ll take my savings and try to find a little apartment and a job. Maybe in Astoria or Lincoln City. It’ll be better than misery in the call center.”

  “Rosemary…”

  “I don’t want to disappoint you,” I cut in, “but I can’t keep living like this. I’m sorry. Having a waitress daughter at the beach was never what you wanted.”

  “Rosemary Desdemona Elizabeth Baldwin, you have never disappointed me,” Mom snapped. “I don’t understand why you never said anything. I am not a snob.”

  “I know,” I said, wishing I’d been brave enough to tell her. Maybe brave enough to pursue what I want before.

  “I teach at a community college not at Harvard. All I want is for you to be happy. It’s all I ever wanted.”

  “I know…”

  “Just because I love talking about Shakespeare and Jane Austen doesn’t make me think that other things are stupid.”

  “I know…” I sniffed and felt like I was 13 again and hated feeling like that.

  “If making cinnamon rolls will make you happy, I think you should do it. Having your own place, I could see why that would be important to you.”

  “I can’t,” I snapped. “I wish it were possible, but I don’t have enough saved.”

  “Oh, Rose…” Mom bit her lip and examined my face for too long before she said, “I…you know I’ve been dealing with so much. I…”

  “Your mom and dad died,” I said with a watery sniff. “This isn’t your fault. I snapped at work. And I am an adult.”

  “We weren’t close. You know that. And I knew…”

  “I’m sorry to bring this up again,” I said cutting in again. I took my mom’s hand. It was just so…unfair. I had such a great parent and she had something so…lesser. “I don’t want to make things harder for you. None of this is fair to you.”

  “Rosemary, my love…” Mom shook her head and then reached out and smacked me lightly on the side of my head, “Let me finish. Because you darling fool, I got a call from my parent’s lawyer. I knew…”

  I leaned back, trying to read her face. She was struggling to speak.

  “I knew they had money. But I didn’t know what they’d do with it. Especially…given how things…were. But…well…goodness. They left everything to you and me. They split it equally and put it in trusts. They had…well…they had a lot. And there will be more from the life insurance.”

  “What!”

  “They were quite wealthy.”

  I blinked.

  “Now we’re quite wealthy.”

  I had just taken a swallow of cocoa, and I froze, holding it in my mouth.

  “You could have a diner or a hotel or a house or never work again. I mean…I knew they had money, but…not like this.”

  Which is when what she was saying struck me and I choked on the feel of my heart in my throat and the cocoa in my mouth and coughed that luxurious cocoa all over my cream call center cardigan.

  * * * * *

  According to my mother, life on the Oregon Coast required a Subaru Forrester. I wasn’t sure I agreed, but when she insisted I get one, I let it happen more out of a desire to see if it would happen. I was testing this madness. Mom knew me well enough to know she was railroading me, and I was testing this surreal dream. When she was done, I had a shiny blue Forrester and a confirmation that money really had come out of nowhere.

  While I sorted my apartment, my mom barged over, picked up my laptop, and found me a cottage on the Oregon Coast for the next four months.

  “Mom, I can do that.”

  “I’m excited,” she said, tucking her hair behind her ear. “This is your dream. I can’t wait to see it play out.”

  Even after the Forrester, I didn’t believe it was real until Mom dragged me into the bank and had me sign more paperwork than I’d have thought necessary for anything but becoming the leader of the free world. When it ended, I had been left speechless at the balances of the accounts, the fact that people who had barely knew me had left it to me, and that I was leaving with one of those black credit cards.

  Mom was the one who started loading my car. I helped, of course, but I got distracted by the scent of rain and the way the wind seemed to whisper happiness. Somehow finding my dream had become the most terrifying thing that had ever happened to me even as excitement bubbled in my stomach.

  Mom turned from putting the last of my stuff into the Forrester and then squeezed me again. She looked at my face, cupped my cheeks and whispered, “Find a pet, a lover, your dream, and so much happiness. I’m not coming until you’re settled. I want to see it in its glory, so get it together.”

  “You find a lover,” I said, pulling back with a laugh.

  Her glance to the side paused me, and I examined her. There was a twitch at the corner of her mouth, and I gasped, “You have a lover.”

  Mom’s wicked grin told me I was right. What an idea! I was going to let her happiness carry me into my second chance. My hands shook as I started the car and backed out of the driveway. It was all starting, and I was still waiting to wake up.

  Chapter 2

  It was a fierce need to use the restroom that had me stopping at the feed store outside of Silver Falls. I knew I wasn’t that far from the cottage, but I hadn’t been there before, and I didn’t want to have an episode that only toddlers would empathize with.

  I ran into the store, interrupted the store clerk, and wove my way through the aisles. When I finished, I slowed up and decided to wander the store. What was it that made you feel guilty for using the restroom and not buying something? I had to at least pretend to look for something. As if I would fool anyone.

  The first aisle was pig food. The next was nails and hammers and other implements I tried to avoid. The one after that took me to an outdoor area where they were selling chicks and other baby birds. I paused to coo at them and then wandered past a desk where I heard little growls and yelps.

  “Oh, hello,” I said, squatting down and finding a pile of basset hound puppies in a cardboard box. There were, perhaps, a half dozen sets of floppy ears, wagging tails, and little black noses.

  “They’re $50.00,” said a little boy with dark brown hair and bright blue eyes, “Mom said to get money for them, so they don’t get fed to snakes. They’re full breed. It’s a real, real good deal.”

  I paused at that one. Too good of a deal, I thought. But one set of dark, soulful eyes caught mine and I knew I’d regret not at least petting the little soul. I lifted a puppy with each hand and felt two little noses brush against each of my cheeks, but the puppy in my right hand licked me frantically, and I couldn’t help but put down the second puppy to snuggle my little lover.

  “They’re mutts.”

  It was a man’s voice that cut-in to my puppy kisses. He was behind me, and his voice was deep and dark enough that I had to turn to see if his face matched his voice.

  His voice did. It was as yummy as his face. He had to be at least six feet, four inches tall. I suppose I stared because I expected a gut and a crooked nose. Something that was the complete opposite of that voice. What I got was a healthy man with dark stubble on his face, kind dark brown eyes, and a strong jaw. He wasn�
��t stop you in your track handsome, but he was good looking. What really caught my attention was the way the boy’s eyes lit up with sheer, unadulterated joy.

  The man continued speaking while I stared. “And JJ Masterson, your mom told you to make sure they found good homes and not to charge a single penny.”

  The boy’s initial reaction was followed by a flush and then he moaned, “Fifty dollars is enough for the new lego X-Box game, and this lady would have paid it. Look at her, ‘tective. She’s a softy.”

  The man grinned and his passable attractiveness morphed into a long tall drink of oh-my-goodness handsome.

  “Hello,” I said grinning because I had no self-control, and he was just so pretty with that smile. “Thanks for saving me $50.00.”

  “You gonna take that puppy? They look like basset hounds, but Kat Masterson’s female isn’t a full breed. She’d be furious with her son for saying the dog was pure.”

  The puppy wriggled in my arms and kissed me again. As if it knew its future was on the line, the puppy squirmed, kissing my cheek and laying its chin on my shoulder.

  “I do feel like I’ve been chosen. I’m not sure I can leave..umm…” I checked the sex and then said, “Her behind.”

  The man grinned at me showcasing a handsome set of teeth and making my knees weaken a bit. I was easy. I had worked too long in a call center full of people warped by their work. “You from around here?”

  I scrunched my nose, told myself to make friends and not freeze up just because he was handsome and talking to me, and said, “I hope to be, but I’m moving here from Gresham. Just staying in a little rental right now, and kind of…figuring things out.”

  There was something warm in his eyes that I hadn’t seen for quite some time and I certainly hadn’t expected. I tucked my hair—my frizzy reddish hair—behind my ear and wondered how I looked after the drive. Given that I’d rolled the windows down and let the wind push me along, I suspected I looked a little bit homeless.

  But, the flash of his grin said that he liked my answer, and I could feel my face heat in response to the way his eyes roved over me. Mostly my face, a level of tact I appreciated, since I was a bit thick from too much time literally tied to a phone and a chair.

  “Well now, JJ,” he said, glancing at the boy. “Tell us about these pups.”

  JJ told me that my puppy was the one who liked to snuggle and had been sleeping by his shoulder every single night. Her best friend was a little fellow with darker ears and freckles. The man the kid had called ‘tective held out his fingers to my little gal’s buddy. What could ‘tective mean? Was it some weird nickname? Like the things people called each other while they were playing video games? I wouldn’t be surprised to find out this man played video games with little boys just to make them happy.

  My puppy’s little buddy waggled his tail and yipped at the man frantically. He circled the ‘tective’s boot like a kitty and then pawed at his calf.

  “Uh-oh,” I said, wondering if he’d succumb. He put his hands on very lean hips and the puppy yipped at him again, touching him lightly with a paw—all the while, the puppy’s tail was waving so frantically it beat a tattoo against the ground.

  The man looked over at me, grinned again—further weakening my knees—and scooped the pup up. Was it gratuitous for an attractive man to stand there smiling at me with a puppy in his arms? There was something almost—explicit—about a tall, handsome man holding a wriggling, yipping, puppy. Yes. Yes. It was definitely gratuitous to see something quite so knee-weakening.

  “I’m Simon Banks,” he said, scratching the puppy’s belly.

  Yes, I thought, yes. Regardless of who this fellow was—this moment of watching him semi-flirt over a puppy belly had made this day perfect.

  “Rosemary Baldwin,” I replied and scratched his puppy’s belly as a sort of adjusted handshake.

  “You going to the jazz festival in the park tonight?”

  I paused, wondering if he was asking me out, and then risked, “I hadn’t heard about it, but that does sound fun.”

  “Maybe you’d like to join me for a picnic?”

  I blinked. He was. He was asking me out. I liked the kindness in his eyes and the way he scratched that puppy’s belly and the way the kid was looking at Simon as if he were a hero.

  “That sounds lovely,” I answered in a smooth, confident voice that definitely did not belong to me. “I need to get situated, but I should be able to make it.”

  “Great,” he said. He glanced me over again, took note of the little red and white basset puppy in my hands and asked, “Need the puppy aisle?”

  I grinned and followed unashamedly enjoying the view from behind. He was charming and shopping for my little friend made my 2nd chance seem all the more real, far more so than the car had. Maybe because the car had been my mom’s insistence, and the dog was all me. I found her a pink collar with white daisies on it, a name tag, and a few other things. She had red ears and little red freckles on her nose, and her wrinkly, floppy skin was the softest. Her sweet puppy breath, and a few more kisses, and things were looking up.

  On the way out, I dug into my pocket and pulled out $50 for the child. These puppies hadn’t been free to take care of, and I was betting his mom would have eventually bought him that game. I wanted to help at least some because I was thoroughly in love.

  Simon noticed but said nothing. He did, however, walk me all the way to my car, opened the back for me, and said, “His mom really did tell him to give those puppies away. Jay’s right. You are a softy.”

  I grinned as I confessed, “The boy is a charming scamp. And the puppies cost them money to care for.”

  Simon laughed. “And sharp. He was right. You are a softy.”

  I shrugged since what else could I say?

  His voice deepened in the next moment and I had to pause in sheer appreciation as he said, “I’m glad you’re moving here, Rosemary.”

  “Me too.” Suddenly feeling like an idiot, I wasn’t quite sure what to do with my hands and my hips were 4 sizes bigger than they had been a few moments before and somehow my feet were clownishly large.

  “Are you going to work from home? Or did you get a job here? You looking?”

  I hadn’t told anyone but my mom what my plans were. It took me a moment to gear up my courage and then I admitted, “I’m planning to open a diner or perhaps a coffee shop.”

  My little puppy licked me and wriggled in my arms as if she approved. Or maybe she just sensed how stressed it made me admit my dream which sounded so…insane. It was like saying you wanted to make a living by painting portraits—unlikely. Businesses like the one I was talking about failed all the time.

  “Are you now? Have you been to Jenny’s?”

  I shook my head, hoping this wasn’t some friend who already had an awesome diner and wouldn’t like my plans.

  “She’s looking to sell. Has been for a while. You might check her out.”

  “Really?” I felt a thrill of hope that I could actually get my dream up and running. Maybe very soon.

  Simon nodded and said, “She’s on Main Street right next to the Soda Shoppe. Seems like a good spot for a restaurant to me. Now if you buy that place…” He paused dramatically and said, “I’m going to need to keep finding cinnamon roll pancakes for breakfast.”

  “I might be able to do that,” I said, knowing cinnamon roll pancakes would be going on the official menu. What could be better than somewhere that was already established? I was getting super excited at the idea. Maybe I’d be pouring out pancakes and experimenting with the recipes that I was still working on in a week or two. How long did it take to buy a diner if it was the right one for me? I could always slowly update it to the dream. That might even be better if it were a well-loved place. My mind was racing, and my heart was thudding, and I was so excited I wanted to bounce, but I didn’t want to look like a child.

  “I’ll have to check it out,” I said, trying to keep cool. “So where’s the festival?”

>   “In the park next to the beach. Meet you by the Sacajawea statue. 7:00?”

  I grinned and nodded and opened the passenger door of my car. I’d bought the puppy a bed, and I placed it on the passenger seat and then put her in her new place. When I stood, he shut the door and walked me around the car to open the driver’s side for me.

  “It was a pleasure to meet you, Rose,” Simon said.

  And then he did that grin again. I suppose it had just been too long since I’d had attention from anyone. Which wasn’t quite true, I just hadn’t been that interested in anyone who’d made overtures before now.

  “Likewise,” I told him, hoping that meeting a gentleman before I’d even reached my new hometown was a sign of good things to come and also that he really was a gentleman.

  * * * * *

  My rental was one in a set of cottages. They surrounded a courtyard on three sides with the final side being the parking lot. The shared yard had a play set, a picnic table, and several benches. Each cottage had the weathered looked of repurposed layered shingles. With bright doors and white shutters and flower boxes, the cottages were especially adorable given how the flower boxes and garden beds were full of flowers and greenery.

  I walked through the little place with my puppy under my arm. There was a living area with a small kitchen and eating nook, a bedroom, and a big bathroom. The bedroom wasn’t much bigger than the bed and an armoire, but it was lovely in shades of gray and green. The living room was a couch, a few chairs that faced the ocean, and a flat screen tv. The view was, of course, breathtaking. The Oregon Coast might not be warm or conducive to sunbathing, but it was shockingly beautiful. I had one of the cottages with the backside facing the ocean, and there was a wide picture window off of the living space that showed the crashing gray ocean and gray skies.

  The cottage was barely larger than a studio apartment, but it had things no college apartment would have: a large soaking tub, a separate shower, wide cushy chairs, and a fireplace. There was a fenced back deck area with a four-person hot-tub, a tiny patch of grass just big enough for the pup to to do her business, and a small gas grill.