Crime and Parchment

My 1965, robin’s egg blue convertible backfired as I parked in front of the Wildflower Inn. The noise set off Clover barking in the backseat. Not exactly the quiet homecoming I’d hoped for. I jumped out of my Karmann-Ghia – or “KG” as I’d nicknamed her – to check under the hood, hoping I wouldn’t need to get the roadster serviced yet again. No idea where that money would come from.
A screaming, ranting madwoman poured out of a neighboring house. Maybe in her late seventies, she brandished a large umbrella. I dropped the hood to find the umbrella pointing at me. Clover – all twenty pounds of him – jumped out and started growling.
“Easy, boy,” I said.
“You shoot something off, Missy? Here to cause trouble? Because I’m on the board of the Friends of the Rose Mallow Police.” the woman said. She wore a perfectly fitted Mamie Eisenhower pink skirt suit with enormous pearls – straight out of the 1950s. Her white bouffant billowed around her head. She reminded me of a researcher I’d helped earlier that day at the Library of Congress. That woman had been a murder mystery author looking for books about early detectives. This woman looked like she wanted to murder someone – namely me.
Suddenly I remembered her: Cordelia Sullivan. She was my late grandmother’s arch-nemesis. After my Nana Z had moved to Rose Mallow, they’d competed to be the president of almost every board in town. Nana Z had called it a “friendly rivalry to garner the most civic goodwill,” but I don’t think Cordelia saw it that way. To her, the Blume family were – and always would be – outsiders in her perfect Chesapeake Bay town.
“What’s going on?” My sister Azalea appeared on the wraparound porch of the Wildflower Inn. Although I was two years younger at twenty-eight, she looked like my twin, except that her hair was much longer and darker than my slanted bob. She pushed her bangs back and brought a hand up to her forehead when she saw me. “Juniper? What on earth are you doing here?”
“Well, I…” My words faltered. I’d spent the past hour driving and trying to figure out how to tell Azalea about why I’d finally returned, but every time I tested the words out loud, they failed. Clover had listened with confused curiosity before giving up and falling asleep.
“You know there’s a noise ordinance,” Cordelia said as she waved her umbrella around. Clover barked at the offending instrument. However, I think he wanted to play with it more than anything else. Occasional growling aside, he’s not exactly attack dog material.
“Yes, Mrs. Sullivan. Not until 10 p.m., and it’s not even 8 o’clock yet.” Azalea’s exasperated voice led me to suspect that she’d had this conversation more than once.
“Hmph. I plan on taking your ‘halfway house’ to the zoning board. What a travesty to do to our pristine historic district. You know I’m president of the Rose Mallow Historical Society.” Cordelia wagged a finger at my sister. I closed my eyes before rolling them.
“Mama! Mama!” A young bundle of legs and a mop of nearly black hair appeared next to Azalea on the wraparound porch. I couldn’t believe how big Violet had grown. She was almost four years old now.
She latched onto Azalea’s legs and held on tightly. I wanted to run up to my niece and smother her in hugs and kisses, but I wasn’t sure how I’d be received. Clover apparently did too because he took off after her. The little girl squealed with laughter as he covered her in licks.
“Go inside, Vi. It’s past your bedtime,” Azalea said. She turned to us. “I don’t have time for this. As you can see, I have a young child requiring my attention. Plus, I have a house full of guests. Mrs. Sullivan, it sounds like you have a plan in place to handle my zoning and noise issues. I’ll leave you to it. And Juniper, if you’re here, then let’s get you inside.”
Violet ran inside, letting Clover follow. I took that as a positive sign, so I grabbed my suitcase from the trunk and followed quickly, as Cordelia monitored us. Her umbrella remained held out in the air. She reminded me of Don Quixote in pearls.
“You’ve done an incredible job restoring the place,” I said as I walked across the perfectly manicured lawn. Azalea had recently converted Nana Z’s Queen Anne style mansion into a boutique hotel. After so many years away, I hadn’t been sure what to expect.
She eyed me with uncertainty. I could tell she was debating whether to chew me out for not being here for any of the work, let alone the hotel’s grand opening earlier in the spring. But my sister is much better at maturity than I am. “It’s been a journey. Not an undertaking for the faint of heart. Repairing that turret alone had me almost give up and put up the for sale sign.” Azalea pointed up to the three-story round tower protruding from the side of the house. As a kid, I used to pretend Nana Z’s home was a castle and fought many dragons racing up that tower.
“You wouldn’t.”
“I said ‘Almost,’” she replied with a laugh.
“I love how bright the yellow siding is. I bet that color really pops in the morning against the Chesapeake Bay.” I walked up the stairs to the wraparound, past garden beds bursting with purple coneflowers and Black-Eyed Susans, Maryland’s state flower.
“You know what’s funny is how much I hated canary yellow when we were little. Every time we came here, I’d always wished Nana Z’s house was more like Cordelia Sullivan’s with her dark greens and rich reds. But now that Nana Z’s gone, I couldn’t stand to change it,” Azalea said.
“But it’s such a cheery color. Why would you want something so drab as Cordelia’s place? ” I asked. As a kid, Cordelia’s house had been as scary as the owner. Losing a ball into her yard meant it was never coming back. Neighborhood kids claimed her house was haunted.
Azalea shrugged. “Yeah, the yellow’s growing on me.”