Shades of Earl Grey

Chapter 14

The Lady Goodwood Inn was operating at about half-capacity. The hotel staff was at the ready, with desk clerks and concierge ready to check guests in, bell hops and chamber maids all available to tend to their needs. And in the kitchen, cooks, sous-chefs, prep workers, and waiters were ready to spring into action at a moment’s notice. The two women who handled bookings for parties and event catering were waiting for the phone to ring. But it didn’t. Business had slowed considerably since that fateful evening when the glass ceiling of the Lady Goodwood’s Garden Room had collapsed atop Captain Corey Buchanan.

Frederick Welborne, the man who’d proudly served as general manager at the Lady Goodwood Inn for the better part of two decades, gazed about the empty lobby and sighed. This was not the venerable old inn’s finest hour.

Tall and angular, balding and long of face, Frederick Welborne, a man who already appeared slightly burdened, now bore a look of perpetual sadness. The Lady Good-wood Inn was in a state of disrepair. And when the good lady was ailing, he was ailing, too.

In the past few days, yards of wet carpeting had been hauled from the ruined Garden Room. And despite the scented candles that had been burned, air fresheners that had been sprayed, windows left open, and contract cleaners who’d been brought in to work their magic with potions and sprays and ion machines, there still remained the unmistakable trace of mildewy odor.

Guests had grimaced at the sight of the wreckage. Two large dumpsters were hunkered down in the parking lot, the repository for all that ruined carpet and glass.

And the question still remained: what would be done about the old greenhouse, the Garden Room? The owners, descendants of the original Goodwoods who didn’t even live in the area anymore, wanted it repaired. The inn was, after all, a continuing source of revenue for them, what with the many wedding receptions, business meetings, club functions, and private parties that were booked there, to say nothing of the tourists who stayed in the guest rooms.

One of the contractors who’d been brought in to survey the damage had just shaken his head and recommended the Garden Room be torn down completely.

Now a second contractor had been brought in at the specific request of the absentee owners.

Frederick Welborne wouldn’t be a bit surprised if that contractor recommended patching it up.

“Mr. Welborne, do you have a moment?”

Frederick Welborne turned with a slow smile to greet Theodosia and shake her outstretched hand.

“Miss Browning,” he said, “nice to see you under slightly better circumstances.” After that fateful night, Frederick Welborne had instructed his staff to continue searching for the missing wedding ring and had felt badly that no one had been able to recover it.

“I’m afraid I still don’t have hopeful news regarding your friend’s wedding ring,” he told her. “We’ve been looking, we’ve all been looking. But alas, no luck.”

Theodosia saw the sadness behind his smile, noted the empty corridors of the Lady Goodwood, and knew all was not well. But then again, how could it be?

“You’ve got quite a cleanup operation going on here,” she told him. “I saw dumpsters out in the parking lot.”

“The sooner those are gone, the better,” Frederick said. “Just a sad reminder.”

“Any plans to rebuild the Garden Room?” she asked.

“Still up in the air.” Frederick Welborne sighed. “That decision, I’m afraid, is being left to our attorneys, insurance agents, building contractors, and owners.” He smiled sadly. “I am, when all is said and done, simply a humble manager, charged with running this establishment.” He gazed around. “Such as it is.”

“And a fine job you’ve done,” said Theodosia with as much warmth as she could muster, for she and Drayton had catered several engagement teas, a New Year’s Eve party, and even a children’s teddy bear tea at the Lady Goodwood Inn over the last couple years. And on each occasion, arrangements at the inn had been impeccable.

“May I go in and take a look?” she asked.

Frederick Welborne held up a finger. “Yes, but give me a moment.” He retreated quickly to his office, returned with two yellow hard hats.

“You’ll have to wear one of these,” he told her. “Regulations.”

“No problem,” said Theodosia as she slipped the hard hat on her head.

Frederick Welborne smiled faintly at the sight of all that auburn hair spilling out from beneath the yellow work hat. “It looks good on you, you’re a natural,” he told her as he led her into the Magnolia Room, where Camille and Captain Buchanan’s cocktail party had been held, then through the doorway into the Garden Room.

“The room looks a bit different, doesn’t it,” said Frederick Welborne.

Theodosia gazed about. The Garden Room had looked awful the night the roof collapsed, but now it was barely recognizable. Carpet had been torn up and metal scaffolding crowded the room. The ceiling, which had formerly been a glass arch, had been rebuilt as a temporary flat ceiling of plywood.

“What’s going to happen to this room?” asked Theodosia. She gave a little shudder. Now that she’d returned to the scene of Captain Buchanan’s death, she was struck by the full magnitude of what had really happened here. Or is it the scene of a crime? she wondered.

“Mr. Welborne? Telephone.” A bell hop in a burgundy uniform with matching cap stood at Frederick Welborne’s elbow. They turned and followed the bell hop out into the hall.

“Joey here went through all the carpeting after it was torn up,” Frederick told her. “Looking for the ring. But he didn’t find anything.”

“No, sir,” said Joey with what seemed like genuine regret. “And I really did look.”

“I believe you,” said Theodosia. “Thank you, thank you both,” she said, smiling at the two of them.

“We’ll stay in touch,” said Frederick as he scurried off down the hall to take his phone call.

“I take it business has been slow?” Theodosia said to Joey, noting that despite his youthful name, Joey wasn’t exactly a kid. In fact, Joey looked like he might be in his early sixties.

“Glacial. I’ve been here twenty-six years and never seen anything like it. We had two big wedding parties cancel out on us. And then, yesterday, a ladies luncheon group just turned on their pointy little heels and left. Guess they got spooked because the workers were taking the roof down.”

“The roof came off yesterday?” asked Theodosia.

Joey nodded. “What was left of it. That’s what that second dumpster’s for. The metal struts and such. Got to separate stuff these days. Even landfills are getting particular. Or maybe it’s because they recycle it, I don’t know.”

“Joey,” said Theodosia, “is there a way for people to know about the events that go on here?”

Joey cocked an eye at her. “What do you mean?”

“When the Lady Goodwood has receptions and parties and such, is that information published? Or posted somewhere?”

Joey scratched his chin, thinking. “We have a newsletter,” he told her.

“A newsletter,” repeated Theodosia. “And your mailing list would be... how large?”

Joey shrugged. “I don’t know, maybe a couple thousand.” He stared at her intently, then his lined face seemed to light up as another idea dawned. He snapped his fingers. “We have a web site, too,” he told her proudly. “That probably reaches a whole lot more folks.”

I’m sure it does, thought Theodosia with grim determination. Maybe even the person who came here that night and left with a diamond ring in his pocket instead. “Thanks, Joey,” Theodosia told him.

Joey touched his hand to the short brim of his cap. “No problem.”

Walking across the parking lot to her Jeep, Theodosia found that her gaze was once again drawn to the two large brown metal dumpsters. Jingling her car keys in her hand, she walked across the parking lot to the side of the building where the dumpsters sat. One was piled high with glass and remnants of old carpet. The other, for all practical purposes, looked empty.

Intrigued, she walked up to that dumpster, stood on tiptoes, and peered in. It wasn’t empty at all. Joey had been right. This dumpster was half-filled with metal struts and rails. The bones of the greenhouse roof, she thought to herself. The skeleton.

As she gazed at the twisted metal, Theodosia recalled the strange oval-shaped metal ring she’d seen attached to one of the ceiling struts. She hadn’t given the metal ring a lot of thought. After all, she’d been balancing precariously on a monumentally tall ladder just moments after Captain Buchanan had been buried in rubble. More than a few things had been occupying her mind.

But as she stood with her hand on the rough edge of this heavy metal dumpster, something prickled at Theodosia’s thoughts.

If someone had crashed through the roof, had actually descended inside the Garden Room, then how did they get back up again?

How exactly did one manage an acrobatic feat like that?

She supposed you could use a pulley of some kind. Or something akin to the high-tech “spider” apparatus that filmmakers loved to feature in spy films like Mission Impossible.

Could the ordinary person just buy that type of equipment right off the shelf? Better yet, could an ordinary person even negotiate that type of equipment?

Did Cooper Hobcaw have the strength and flexibility to manipulate a spiderman rig like that? she wondered. Maybe. He was a runner. Or at least he claimed to be a runner.

Could Claire Kitridge? She looked fairly lithe and limber.

And what of this Graham Carmody? Was he agile, too? Or didn’t he have to be. Did he just show up as a waiter and then work his angle?

The questions burned in her mind like wildfire.