Miz Scarlet and the Bewildered Bridegroom by Sara M. Barton Page A

assistant director for public
safety at Princeton University if I couldn’t ask him what I should
do? As the new regional chief of Mercer Security, he could advise
me.
    “Are you alone,
Scarlet?” he wanted to know.
    “No, I just dropped off
Lacey and a guest. I called Bur,” I told Kenny. “I can see him
now.”
    “Round up the guests in
the living room and wait there. I’ll be with you in five minutes.
In the meantime, I want you to call the cops.”
    Right after I called
911, I put the dogs in the powder room, just to keep them from
getting underfoot while the cops searched the
house.
    Looking out the window,
I noticed the only car in the inn’s parking lot was the Wilkies’
sedan. The Johnsons must have left for their college reunion
luncheon, I decided. They had settled their bill before breakfast.
Where was Jenny? A moment later, I heard sirens screaming up the
street. A marked cruiser pulled up to the front door, followed by
Kenny’s SUV.
     

Chapter Six --
     
    “What’s going on?”
Jenny appeared at the top of the stairs, a worried expression on
her face.
    “It looks like someone
tried to break in through the porch. The dogs were outside when we
got back.”
    “What?” Her nimble feet
flew down the steps, with Mozzie on her heels.
    Bur ushered Lacey and
Florence into the living room, just as I opened the front door to a
pair of uniformed officers. I led them through the dining room and
onto the sun porch, where I showed them the damage.
    “Okay. Let’s just take
a look around,” said Officer Burnley, as Kenny joined us. They
walked through the inn room by room, checking closets and under
beds, to make sure the intruder wasn’t lurking.
    Twenty minutes later,
with nothing apparently stolen, the officers were ready to leave.
“If you find anything missing when you do an inventory, we’ll
update the incident report. Your insurance company will want a copy
in the event you make a claim, so have their rep call
us.”
    “Thanks.” I saw the
pair to the door, even as Kenny, prince that he is, got busy
replacing the glass. He grabbed a tape measure and jotted down the
information before he made a trip to the hardware store for caulk
and a new window pane, cut to size. Bur hung around, just in case
there was more trouble. He settled himself down with the Sunday
papers in the living room, keeping Lacey and Florence
company.
    Poor Jenny, home alone
at the time of the attempted break-in, was rattled. I couldn’t
really blame her for feeling that way, especially if our return
from church was the only thing that scared off the
perpetrator.
    “I don’t understand.
Why didn’t Huck and January bark, Miz Scarlet?”
    “There was no
barking?”
    “I swear I didn’t hear
a peep from the pooches.”
    “Hmm....Maybe the
culprit was careful not to raise the alarm. Maybe he knew we had
dogs.”
    “I was here all alone,”
she reminded me again, a note of disbelief in her voice. Of all the
scary thoughts running through her head, that was the one that most
frightened her. I understood her concern. Should we worry that she
was the intended victim?
Think,
Scarlet. What does she need to hear?
    “Well, you weren’t
totally alone. Bur was in the carriage house. He came the second I
called him.”
    “Still....”
    “Don’t worry, Jen.
Kenny’s taking care of the broken glass. We’ll ask him what to do
about security when he gets back from Moriarty’s Hardware
Store.”
    “It’s just creepy that
someone tried to break in.”
    “He didn’t just try,
sweetie. He succeeded. That’s how the dogs got
out.”
    “But Mozzie was with me
and he didn’t bark either,” she pointed out.
    “Maybe the burglar
didn’t make any noise,” I suggested, trying to make sense of this
baffling episode. “Or you were out of earshot when the glass was
broken.”
    “Come to think about
it, I only went up to my room about fifteen minutes before you got
home.” She considered the possibilities. “I put the food