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“Maddie, dear?”
She perked up, moving down the counter where Miss Francine was standing. Miss Dotty was nowhere to be seen, which meant Maddie must’ve half dozed off and not noticed her leaving the shop. “Yes, Miss Francine?”
The woman tilted her head, looking down her long, narrow nose at Maddie. “Are you getting enough sleep?”
“No,” she replied before she could stop herself. “I try to be in bed by seven or eight at night, but sometimes I just lie there while my brain spins. And lately, when I do fall asleep, I get woken up by the noise from the bar.”
Miss Francine narrowed her gaze. “That’s right. You bought the old Victorian across the street from Woody’s, didn’t you?”
“I did. And I love that house, I really do. But between the noise at the bar going until all hours and the stench from the pizza place always in the air, it’s turned out to be less than ideal.”
“Can you move?”
Maddie shook her head. “No. I just bought the place. What little money I do have is tied up in it and the bakery. I owe my father and my grandmother my firstborn. And really, the house is perfect. I wish I could just pick it up and drop it in a different part of town.”
She’d gotten used to the smell of Italian food constantly wafting in through her open windows, but she couldn’t get past the noise. During the week, the bar was open until ten thirty. Fridays and Saturdays, it was open until two in the morning. Not even earplugs and a sound machine could muffle the music, laughter, voices, honking cars, and drunks shouting in the street. One morning, she actually found vomit on her lawn.
“Have you spoken to Mr. Sawyer about the noise?”
Mr. Sawyer? Somehow that name didn’t suit Emmett at all. He was more like a surfer who’d lost his way and wandered inland. He didn’t belong in a town like Rosewood. She couldn’t fathom why he would come to a place like this if he hadn’t been born and raised here. But for some reason, he’d decided to buy Woody’s, revive it, and make her life miserable.
“I tried, once. He told me that while he’d try to tone things down after ten, there were no sound ordinances in Rosewood until that time and, technically, he could make all the noise he wanted before then. Although he tried to be diplomatic about it, he basically told me I shouldn’t have bought a house by the bar. He was there first and if I didn’t like it, I could move.”
/> Miss Francine nodded in understanding and sympathy. “I always thought it was a shame when they built that bar so close to such a beautiful, historic home. Have you called the cops?”
“Not yet. I feel bad distracting them from doing real police work.”
“Like what?” Miss Francine pressed. “We live in Rosewood, dear. The last lick of crime we had around here was Pat Kincaid’s wife peeping in windows trying to catch him cheating on her. It’s been months since that happened. I’m sure they’d like something to do.”
Maddie frowned. Her brother Simon was a local officer. Perhaps she could get him to help. “Okay. I’ll try that next time.”
“You do that. You need your rest. When 10:01 rolls around, you have that number ready to dial. If they get called out there enough, Woody’s will eventually get fined. Hit him in the pocketbook since he wouldn’t respond to your polite request.”
Maddie would love a good night’s sleep. Just a solid few hours without being woken up would be heaven. “What if that doesn’t work with him? What if calling the cops just makes Emmett angry and he gets louder?”
Miss Francine smiled a smile that told of younger years of deception and craftiness. Maddie had no idea about her past, but she got the feeling they would’ve been partners in crime if they’d been born in the same era.
There was a wicked glint in her eye as she leaned into the case and spoke in the sweetest southern lilt. “Then, my dear Madelyn, that means war.”
With a groan, Maddie grabbed the pillow beside her and tried to smother herself. Maybe she would pass out and get some sleep. When that didn’t work, she rolled over and looked at the neon-green numbers on her alarm clock—9:52. Damn it.
She took a deep breath and tried to suppress her anger. Every night. Every. Night. The thump-thump-thump of the music across the street vibrated in her chest. The sound of people laughing drifted up to her bedroom window. It was Thursday night. Didn’t these people have jobs or homes or someplace else to go?
She felt like the Grinch. Oh, the noise! Noise! Noise! Noise!
Giving up, she sat up in bed and looked around her bedroom with blurry eyes. As much as she loved this room, it had become her nightly prison. Well, a prison with damask wallpaper and chenille blankets. The master suite was on the second floor, facing the street and the bar across from it. The lights of Woody’s parking lot lit up her lace curtains and cast her room in a golden glow.
Maddie flung back her comforter and got out of bed. She grabbed her cell phone off the charger and carried it down the hallway to her guest room. This room was smaller and filled mostly with boxes and junk she wasn’t sure what to do with yet, but it had a bed and it was at the back of the house. At this point, she wanted to be as far from Woody’s as she could get.
She switched on the light and moved a couple of plastic totes filled with her winter clothes off the bed. She pulled back the eyelet lace comforter and switched on the small Tiffany-style lamp on the bedside stand before she turned off the overhead light.
Maddie crawled into bed and snuggled into the soft sheets. She felt her body instantly relax into sleep. She turned off the lamp and found that the room was blessedly dark. And quiet.
With a sigh, she closed her eyes. The elusive fog of sleep wrapped around her, luring her off to her much-needed rest. She was seconds from oblivion when she heard it.
“Oh my God. Oh my God. That is the funniest thing I’ve ever heard. Curt! Curtis! You’ve got to hear this.” The shrill but slightly slurred woman’s voice was like an ice pick in Maddie’s ear. “Jesse, you’ve got to tell that story to Curt.”
Maddie gritted her teeth and screamed in frustration. She couldn’t hear the music in this bedroom, but the people loitering in the parking lot might as well be sitting on her bed as they told their drunken tales.
