Page 21 of Bed and Breakup (Dial Delights #15)

Robin

What. The hell. was that ?

Too flustered to talk to the woman who’s been trying to slip me her number ever since I agreed to sign her body, which I regret, by the way, I hold my phone up to my ear and pretend to have a very important conversation with Edgar by the limestone wall.

All I wanted was a fun night out with Jesse and Caro to celebrate my new gig, and instead I’m dodging fans left and right, having a fight with Molly that’s been brewing for weeks, then ending up with her tongue in my mouth.

I don’t even remember what either of us said in that argument; I couldn’t hear us over the sound of my pulse racing in my ears after watching her dance with some handsy stranger. Jealous? Me? Hell no. I was concerned.

I yap about scheduling some fake flight until the woman goes inside, then tuck my phone back in my pocket and sit down on the ground, dropping my head into my hands.

Yeah, okay, maybe I was jealous. But this is our bar.

It’s where we came to celebrate with our friends after I proposed.

It’s where we had the watch party for our first-ever TV feature, on Inn for a Treat.

How can she hit on someoneelse here, right in front of me?

What happened to the sweet, quiet, gentle Molly I met back in 2012? This can’t be the same person.

Did she kiss me first? Surely. She’s the one who’s drunk and hyped up. I don’t remember what happened exactly, but she must have thrown herself at me in a moment of confused passion.

But, if I’m being honest with myself, I also had a role in it. She’s this fireball of fierce rage and tattoos and freckles and every time she looks at me, even in a scathing way, I feel the urge to grab her and…well, kiss her. So I guess there’s the tiniest chance that I started it.

No. I’m too angry to admit that possibility.

Somehow she gets off scot-free for hiring some terrible management company that did such a piss-poor job of running the inn that it’s been vacant since the pandemic, and she calls dibs on the whole town where we both lived for years.

I’ve got friends here too. Hell, I’ve got an actual job here, not just whatever she’s been tinkering around with in the shed.

That kiss was quite the distraction, but I haven’t forgotten the hell she’s put me through these past two weeks. Tonight I get my revenge.

I let Molly have her head start. I stand up, brush myself off, smooth my hair where Molly mussed it, and go back in the bar like everything is completely normal.

After chatting with Jesse and Caro a little more, I sign a few autographs and tell Keyana that Molly left but I’ll make sure she got home all right.

Then I say my goodbyes and walk home, scheming the whole way.

Once inside the front door, I take off my shoes and tiptoe up to the third floor. Molly’s gentle snores are audible through her door. She always sleeps like a rock after a couple drinks. That’s perfect for me, because I can set up without tipping her off.

It takes a little over an hour to get everything together.

Then I wait a while longer, because everyone knows the scariest time of night is between three and five a.m. I spend my time remembering when Dot first told us about the rumored ghosts of the Hummingbird, the ones she talks about on her walking tours.

How, after she told us, Molly and I had to sleep on blankets in the dining room with the lights on for three nights because we were so freaked out.

I’m hoping that fear is still lying dormant in Molly, ready to be reawakened.

When the moment is right, I connect my phone to a Bluetooth speaker hidden on the stairs between the second and first floors and play a track I found online of a girl quietly singing and laughing. God, kids’ voices out of context are so creepy. This is off to a great start.

Except, after a few minutes, Molly’s still asleep.

I bump the volume up a notch; still nothing.

Luckily, I know how to move around this house quietly, how to evade the creaky floorboards and squeakiest hinges.

I tiptoe to the third floor and crack open Molly’s door an inch to let in more of the sound.

I’m about to head back downstairs when Marmalade comes out of Molly’s room, blinking her big eyes at me curiously.

I give her a head scratch, and she chirps.

The snores stop. I put a finger over my lips and, as if Marmee understands, she silently disappears up the stairs to the fourth floor. Good. It’s best she stays out of this.

I sneak all the way down to the main floor on light feet. The soundtrack of the girl singing has looped back to the beginning, and even though I know it’s fake, I still get goosebumps as I pass the disembodied voice.

Just as I reach the front hallway, I hear Molly’s door open. Let the games begin.

“Robin?” I hear her say tentatively. “Is that you?”

I hit pause on the track, play a sound effect of a girl screaming, then hurl a sack of oranges to the top stair of the second-floor landing. It falls exactly as I hoped, noisily thunking down the steps back to me. I grab it and duck behind the check-in desk.

“Jesus Christ! Robin! Are you all right?”

I hear Molly run down to the second floor, then pause at the open door of the Zinnia Room to see it empty, my bed made as if I haven’t yet come home from One More Round.

“Robin?” Molly says again, her voice more nervous this time.

I hope she’s thinking about that story of the little girl who won the Princess of the Ozarks pageant back in the 1950s, then fell down the stairs that very night and bashed her head in, still wearing her crown.

Guests in Miss Addy’s day claimed they saw the girl sometimes late at night.

Time for phase two. I connect my phone to the Bluetooth speaker I hid in the basement and play a track of glass bottles clinking.

Molly flicks on a light on the second floor and slowly makes her way downstairs.

I catch a glimpse as she turns the corner onto the main floor.

She’s in her underwear and that short robe again, just like the morning of the dolls.

Her hair is in two messy buns, and her eyeliner is smeared like a punk-rock raccoon.

When Molly realizes the sound is coming from the basement, I hear her mutter, “Oh, fuck this,” then, more loudly, “Robin? God, I hope it’s you.

But if it is you, I’ll kill you.” She pauses to grab a lamp from a side table in the hallway and holds it up as an improvised weapon, then flips the light switch at the basement door and descends toward the sound of clinking glass.

I wait just long enough for her to get down the stairs before slamming the door shut behind her and using an app to kill the smart bulb I installed a couple hours ago.

Molly’s scream is immediate and much worse than the recorded one I played earlier.

I imagine she’s thinking about the bootlegger rumored to have used the inn’s basement for his bathtub gin who poisoned himself with a bad batch.

I launch myself back behind the check-in desk and power up the flat-screen above me with a message in an old-school typewriter font: “ The End was written on my story too soon. My business is not yet finished.”

A moment later, Molly comes hurtling out of the dark basement, breathing heavy, clutching the lamp to her chest like a life vest. I assume she notices the screen because she immediately screams again.

Now she’s probably thinking about the story that gave us the most trouble, the one about the typewriter salesman who built this house, accused of murdering his annoying mother-in-law by pushing a stack of typewriters onto her in the attic, now the penthouse apartment where we used to sleep.

Anytime the old house used to creak, we’d both think it was the sound of a typewriter’s keys, the sign of the mother-in-law’s ghost saying she’d seek her revenge.

I must be right, because Molly starts running back upstairs mumbling, “Oh no, not today, I do not mess with ghosts.”

I’m hardly holding back laughter when I hear a loud crash, breaking glass, and Molly’s pained grunt.

“Shit,” I say, leaving my hiding place to find Molly splayed on the landing of the second floor, the lamp shattered next to her. “Molly! Are you okay?”

I’m almost to her when she holds out a hand to stop me. “Careful!” she says, looking at the scattered ceramic and glass shards between us. “I…I think I’m okay.”

I step strategically around the mess to help Molly up and ask, “Are you sure?”

She pats her sides, shifts from foot to foot, and twists her arms around looking for damage. “I’m not hurt,” Molly says. Then, realization dawning, she shoves me hard, but away from the stairs or the broken glass. “What the hell, Robin? You did all this?”

Stumbling to regain my balance, I say, “I…uh…”

“This is a new low.” Molly’s face is more furious than I’ve ever seen it, red, scowling, eyes narrowed to slits. “You’re some kind of evil mastermind. I can’t believe you.”

I can tell that both of our hearts are still racing. “It’s only fair,” I say breathlessly, trying to organize my thoughts after worrying I actually hurt her. “The dolls. We’re even.”

She lets out some kind of indecipherable roar, then storms away up the stairs to her room and slams the door behind her.

Turns out revenge doesn’t taste as sweet as everyone says. I don’t feel better. Actually, I feel worse.