I was heading back to my table when Nigel and his brother waved me over.
"Mrs. Ferguson," Nigel said. "You wanted to meet Dr. Morgan? He's sitting right over there."
I followed his finger to a table with an elderly man working his way through a prime rib dinner. He had to be in his seventies, with white hair and a pair of wire-rimmed glasses. He looked like an advertisement for a Normal Rockwell painting of a country doctor.
"He should have office hours tomorrow from nine to four," Nigel added.
"Thanks Mr. Hickenlooper…" I nodded at his brother. "And Mr. Hickenlooper."
"Hal, please." The man winked. "It's too small a town to stand on ceremony."
"You must call me Merry," I said as I turned to look at his brother, hopefully prodding him into the reciprocal action.
Hal looked at Nigel too, who acted as if he had no idea what was going on.
"Forgive my stuffy brother," Hal said. "You can call him Nigel."
Nigel scowled at his brother and didn't say anything in support of or against the idea.
"Well, then, Nigel, Hal, have a lovely evening."
As I walked away, I heard Nigel ask his brother, "What are you doing?"
Hal replied, "Relax. It's good to be friendly. Now finish dinner. I've got to get back to the shop to take care of things."
"Mrs. Wrath," Lauren asked as I sat down, "did you get the scoop?"
I felt a small surge of accomplishment. "I did. Not much, but I did pretty well I think."
Betty eyed me skeptically. "We did too. Did you know that Aunt June had three boyfriends?"
Ava nodded as my jaw fell to the floor. "And they didn't find out about the others until two days before she was murdered!"
"What…how…?" I stammered.
For a moment, I really thought that they weren't going to tell me.
Kelly spoke up, "The table behind us…"
I looked around. Right behind me was the back of a man and two middle-aged women, one with a green bouffant and the other with hot pink highlights in her light blonde hair. Nancy walked between us, balancing a tray of apple pie. Her purple beehive glowed like a beacon.
What was it with the hair here? I listened but only heard the women discussing the weather. The gossip had stopped. In fact, it seemed like the banal discussion was meant to keep us from snooping any further. Just what had the girls done when they overheard this? The image of Betty breaking out a pair of rusty pliers came to mind.
I opened my mouth to speak, but Kelly shook her head. She was telling me it wasn't a good idea to talk here. I'd trained her well.
"Did you save room for any dessert?" Nancy stopped by holding a pot of coffee.
"Yes!" four little girls cried out in unison.
"Lady," Betty said as she turned her napkin into a prison shank, "we're kids. And kids need sugar."
"Especially if we want to keep our leaders up all night," Kaitlyn added before giving me a wink.
Kelly asked for menus as I studied Kaitlyn. I realized that I'd never really spent much time with just one of them before. The Kaitlyns, in addition to looking alike and sharing the same last initial, had mothers who were all improbably named Ashley. They'd always seemed to have one cohesive personality. I always suspected that they did it just to confuse me. It worked.
But this Kaitlyn, after being apart from her three cohorts, was thriving among the other girls. In fact, by the time this trip was over, I'd be able to tell at least one of the Kaitlyns from the others. That certainly seemed like a reason to celebrate with pie. Okay, I really didn't need a reason to have pie. It just helped.
Nancy dropped seven small menus on the table and ran off to answer a customer. She was back in seconds and took our order, which consisted of two slices of apple pie for the adults and four molten lava chocolate cakes that turned into five once Betty discovered they wouldn't charbroil any of the desserts.
"So what's next?" Kelly asked as Nancy left.
"We crash tonight and head over to Aunt June's house in the morning."
I left out the thought that we'd probably have to drug the girls to get them to sleep. Too bad I didn't bring any of my melatonin brownies. It was something I'd been tinkering with to deal with the first night of any sleepover with these kids. I almost had it right, too. The last batch was so potent that Philby slept for thirty hours straight, and her narcoleptic feline daughter, Martini, had to be rushed to the vet to see if she was in a coma. When Rex found out I was using the pets as guinea pigs so that I could dope the troop, he confiscated the bottle of melatonin capsules and my notes. I think I could've recreated the recipe if I'd had more time before we left.
"After the night hike!" Inez insisted.
"Look," I reasoned, "can we put that off until tomorrow night?"
Kelly agreed. "By the time we get back and unpack, it'll be pretty late."
A groan went up that caught the attention of everyone in the place, and every single head turned our way. It was a new trick of the girls to embarrass and guilt Kelly and me into whatever they'd been asking for. It wouldn't work. I was used to being humiliated in public. After all, I'd been a Girl Scout leader for four years now. Nothing scared me.
Ava pouted. "But it's our first night at camp!"
"We always hike the first night at camp!" Lauren insisted.
"And there are ghosts and aliens," Inez said.
I explained, "Yes, but we usually get in fairly early to do that."
Kaitlyn bit her lip. "Can we at least make s'mores?"
"You're eating cake," Kelly said calmly.
Betty finally spoke up. It was the moment I was dreading. "Sure. We
