Page 2 of Trouble Walked In

He turned back to her. “Damage control incoming.”

“Great.” Her thoughts whirled around all the things she now needed to take care of on top of the remaining highschool reunion events. “Okay, you take care of the water. I’ll try to find a spot for Mr. Onstein before the big dinner tonight.”

“You should throw him out on his ass,” Mark grumbled. “The bastard threw sponge toys down the toilet. Who does that?”

“Tempting, but no.” A giggle rose in her throat that was at total odds with the seriousness of the situation. “I can’t throw him out. He’s the chairman of the planning committee.”

“Well he can sleep on a chair in the damn corner then. You should add the cost of all this to his bill.”

“Yeah, that’s not happening either. He doesn’t have any money. I had to give them a discount as it was.”

Mark gave her a level stare. “Then he shouldn’t throw crap down the toilets. Anyway, you haven’t heard the worst part.”

“Worst part?” Her voice cracked. She cleared her throat. “What do you mean worst part?”

“I can’t turn the water back on in this section of the house until we do something about all this.” He gestured at the room.

Lizzie sat on what used to be a lovely club chair and groaned. “We can’t leave the water off over here. Every room is full with the reunion people. They’ll be back from their winery tour in two hours, and they’ll need to pee. How fast can you get the water back on, and how much will it cost to do the bare minimum? We can’t afford to wait for insurance to kick in.”

Mark shrugged again. “I need to verify it with Bill, but I’d guess around ten grand to get this patched enough to turn the water back on for now. More or less. Maybe. Then another forty to fifty to bring it all up to code and repair the damage.”

She stared at her ruined shoes and tried not to think about what was floating around in the smelly water. “Tengrand. Where am I going to get ten grand this fast? It’s four o’clock on a Friday. I don’t have enough cash in the contingency fund for this. We don’t have any other groups coming, so no deposits to draw from. I’ll have to liquidate something. That can’t happen until Monday, which means it’ll be next Friday before it hits the account.”

Mark moved a suitcase from the precarious perch on a luggage rack to the more secure middle of the bed. “Can we scrounge five? Bill would probably take a deposit, with the rest due next week on completion. His dad and mine were really good friends.”

Shouts down the hall caught Mark’s attention. He splashed over to the door and waved. “Down here.”

Lizzie stood up as two men in boots and overalls trudged in. One was short, the other tall, and both sported scruffy beards and tattoos.

The tall one stopped just inside the door and tapped at the water with his boot. “Hey, Mark. Ma’am.”

Lizzie reached out to shake his hand. “Lizzie.”

“I’m Jay. This is Larry.” He looked around. “Damn. Yeah, good thing we brought the truck. Larry, why don’t you go send up the hose so we can start sucking this out.”

“Yep.” Larry nodded. “This’ll take all night. I got to get home by seven.”

“No problem, man. I can stick around. Me and Mark’ll cover it, right Mark?” Jay chuffed Mark on the shoulder. “I’ll help you get this furniture out. You got an empty room?”

Lizzie groaned. “No. I don’t even have an empty closet right now. You’ll have to haul it to, um, let me think.” She wracked her brains for a good place to store wet, smelly wood during a big high school reunion that filled all the rooms at the inn and spilled out onto the porches. Nothing came tomind except the back lawn, which would displace the corn hole game.

“Don’t worry about it, Lizzie,” Mark said. “We can stash it in the winery storeroom for now. It should fit in there.”

Larry picked up the club chair Lizzie had been sitting on. “I’ll take this down with me.”

“Leave it on the back porch,” Lizzie called after him. Usually, she’d have said the ballroom, but they were supposed to use the ballroom for dinner in—she checked her watch—three hours. “I have to go.”

Mark waved her away. “We got this. Just give Mr. Onstein a swift kick for me, ’kay?”

Lizzie dashed out the door and squished her way downstairs. The smell of sewage followed her the entire way. They’d need to break out the scented candles from Christmas, and the air freshener spray, and maybe have an exorcism.

She poked her head through the ballroom door. Ceiling tiles bulged, and a dark trail of water plunged down the soft gold wallpaper to puddle on the wood floor. She muttered a few comforting swear words to herself and shut the door.

“Carrie?” she called out as she walked across the foyer toward the little restaurant and kitchen. “We need to move dinner to the back porch.”

Halfway across the entry, she glanced out the front doors. It wasn’t a wide-open view, but she could make out enough of the drive to see that a dark red sedan had just pulled up outside.

She wasn’t expecting any new arrivals. She changed her trajectory to open the door, thinking it might be someone Mark had called in to help with the swamp situation upstairs. Just as she reached the porch, a familiar young blonde woman in a sparkling black cocktail dress and bare feet spilled out ofthe backseat. She had a coffee cup in one hand and a crumpled McDonald’s bag in the other.

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