The Mistletoe Secret

  “Thank you for appreciating the work we’ve put into it. The owners have gone to extraordinary lengths to make this inn special. I’m afraid much of it is missed.” She glanced down at her computer screen and said, “We have you registered for the William Shakespeare Room.”

  “That’s right.”

  “I have you down for nine days, departing the following Tuesday morning, the twenty-second, is that correct?”

  “Yes, ma’am. If I need to extend my stay a little longer, would that be a possibility?”

  “You think you might be staying longer?”

  “I’m not sure, but it’s possible. I don’t know exactly how long I’ll be in town. I’m a little bit in limbo.”

  She looked back down at her computer screen. “As of right now your room is open until Christmas, but if we start to fill up I’ll let you know.” She set a guest form on the ledge between us. “If you’ll just sign here.”

  She handed me a pen and I signed the form.

  “Your room is on the second floor. I’ll lead you up.” She retrieved a key from a wall cubbyhole and walked out of the back room, joining me in the lobby.

  Bag in hand, I followed her up a circular staircase. The lower half of the staircase walls and banister were stained and polished, dark wood beneath an oxblood-red plastered wall. The lighting fixtures on the wall were electric candle-shaped bulbs mounted to small deer antlers.

  The second-floor landing had a hallway on one side with the other open to the dining room below. My room was at the top of the stairway across from the inn’s library.

  The antique wooden door had an inset hand-carved wood panel of a hare, hung by its feet. Above the door was painted, in delicate calligraphy:

  William Shakespeare

  “The Shakespeare is one of my favorite rooms,” she said as I read the words above the door. She unlocked the door with the heavy key and pushed it open. “After you.”

  I stepped into the room. It was large with a tiled, European fireplace in the center. The south wall was mostly paned windows, and in the center of the room was a large, four-poster bed. The floor was covered by a black wool carpet.

  “Do you like to read, Mr. Bartlett?”

  “Yes.”

  “Just across the hall is our library. And right here, in keeping with the room’s name, is our collection of Shakespeare. All of our rooms are named for authors—Shakespeare, Austen, Dickens, Thoreau, Brontë, Chaucer—the classical writers.” She smiled at me. “If all is well, I’ll leave you to your room. Breakfast is served between six and ten. We are well known for our breakfasts, which are complimentary for our guests. And there’s always something to snack on in the dining room. Right now, there’s some lemon-blueberry bread you may help yourself to.”

  “Is there somewhere close you would recommend for dinner?”

  “Our own restaurant, of course. We’re very proud of it.” She smiled again. “You won’t need to make reservations, just come on down. It’s open tonight until ten.”

  “Thank you,” I said.

  “I hope you have a good stay, Mr. Bartlett. My name is Lita. If there’s anything I, or my staff, can do to make your visit more pleasant, just let us know.”

  She handed me my room key. It had a large circular pewter key chain with the inn’s embossed crest. “The door doesn’t lock by itself so you’ll need to use the key. If you leave the inn, feel free to leave your key at the front desk. That way, you won’t have to lug it around and we’ll know when your room is vacant for service.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Thank you for staying with us.” She stopped at the doorway. “If you don’t mind me asking, what brings you to Midway?”

  “I’m looking for someone.”

  She looked at me with a quizzical expression. “Well, they shouldn’t be too hard to find. Midway’s not that big a town. Good night.”

  “Good night,” I said.

  After she left, I locked the door and looked around the room. The bed was king-size and at least three feet off the ground, resting on a dark oak wooden frame. On the ­adjacent wall was a tall crested armoire of cherry and birch veneer, elaborately carved in Old English designs.

  I opened the armoire’s bottom drawer and emptied the whole of my suitcase into it, with the exception of my shirts, which I hung in the upper section.

  I slipped off my shoes, then climbed up onto the bed. Without pulling down the covers, I lay back on the padded duvet cover. The concierge’s parting words came back to me. They shouldn’t be too hard to find.

  I hoped she was right.

  CHAPTER

  Thirteen

  About an hour later my hunger exceeded my tiredness, so I washed up and headed back downstairs.

  The dining room wasn’t crowded. There were only three tables of couples, but it sounded like more, as they were all talking and laughing, happy to be in each other’s company. Pachelbel’s Canon in D played lightly from the room’s sound system.

  I was again greeted by Lita. “Hello, Mr. Bartlett. Would you like to join us for dinner?”

  “Yes, thank you.”

  “Follow me, please.” She seated me at a small table for two near the front of the restaurant, away from the other guests. “Is this acceptable?”

  “Perfectly.”

  She smiled at me, then handed me a sheet of white paper and a heavy leather menu. “Someone will be right out to take your order.”

  As she walked away, I looked down at the paper she’d given me. It contained information on the room’s antiques.

  The dining area consisted of two rooms, and the walls were painted a distinct green, a shade between fern and dark olive drab. The interior room was a darker hue than the outer and both were abundantly decorated with paintings and antiques.

  On the north wall was a carved wooden crest of the Habsburg dynasty. Crossbows were mounted on either side of it. According to my paper, they had all seen battle.

  The rooms were lit by three chandeliers made of varying sizes and types of antlers. I was in a world very different from the Spanish-infused setting of Florida.

  A young, wholesome-looking woman with short blond hair brought me a cloth-covered bread basket. “Our bread is baked on the premises,” she said, folding back the fabric to ­reveal two kinds of bread. She was obviously a young local and was earnestly trying to appear as sophisticated as possible. “Sourdough and wheat. May I get you something to drink?”

  “Do you have a wine list?”

  “Yes, sir. I’ll bring it right out.”

  She returned with the list and I looked through their selection, then back over my menu. I ordered the chicken scaloppine with a glass of chardonnay. Then I returned to my inspection of the room, trying not to look as alone as I was, which reminded me of what LBH had written about how embarrassed we are to appear lonely.

  Just fifteen minutes later my waitress brought out my soup, a butternut squash bisque. This was followed by the chicken scaloppine with baked spaetzle and asparagus spears. For dessert I had cheesecake. Everything was delicious.

  When my waitress brought me my bill, she asked, “Are you staying in the inn?”

  “Yes.”

  “Which room shall I bill this to?”

  “The Shakespeare.”

  My response seemed to please her. “I love that room. But they’re all nice. If you get a chance, you should have someone show you around. Our pub in back is especially amazing.”

  “I didn’t know there was a pub.”

  “It’s called Truffle Hollow,” she said. “It’s small, but pretty cool.”

  I charged the bill to my room and decided to take a walk around the inn. I followed a hallway back to the pub. Mounted along the wall were two large display cases with hundreds of collector pins from the 2002 Winter Olympics. I paused to look at them, but there were too man
y to devote much attention to them.

  As I made my way back to the lobby, passing through the hall near the kitchen, I came to two paintings. Both were set in either kitchens or restaurants, which was appropriate for their location, and the first, to me, was especially ­haunting—a portrait of a waitress in an apron standing before a table. It was titled Ester. There was something about the look in the woman’s eyes that I was drawn to. Something honest. Strong, yet vulnerable.

  According to a gold plate on the wall, the artist’s name was Pino. I didn’t know anything about him and I vowed to look him up.

  It felt late, especially since I was still on Eastern Standard Time, so I went up to my room and got ready for bed. I wondered what tomorrow would bring.

  CHAPTER

  Fourteen

  When I woke the next morning, the window blinds were glowing. I rolled over onto my back, feeling the soft mattress contour with my body. Maybe it was the elevation or the fresh air, but I hadn’t slept that well in a long time.

  I climbed out of bed and lifted one of the blinds. It was bright and blue outside, subfreezing, and droplets of water had condensed inside my window. Beautiful, I thought. Just beautiful. I was glad that LBH lived in such a beautiful setting. It seemed fitting.

  I showered and dressed, then went downstairs to the dining room. There was music playing, though it was contemporary, not the holiday music that had played the evening before.

  There were about four other groups dining, and I seated myself at a table set for two. A waiter soon came out holding a wooden menu, the cover engraved with the inn’s trademark boar.

  I ordered the buttermilk griddle cakes with fruit, and less than ten minutes later the waiter returned with my meal. I had just started to eat when four elderly women and one man walked into the dining room. The man, who was gray-haired and large of tooth and nose, glanced at me, then left the women and walked up to my table.

  “Are you alone, sir?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  He smiled broadly. “My name is Herr Niederhauser. But you may call me Ray. I am the innkeeper.” He stated this with only slightly subdued pride.

  “It’s a pleasure to meet you. Are you German?”

  “Only in spirit. But I speak Deutsch. In my youth I lived in Germany for a few years. Would you mind if I joined you?”

  “Not at all. Please.”

  He pulled out the chair across from me and sat. Then he raised his finger at the waiter, who made a beeline to our table. “Yes, Ray.”

  “Gary, may I please have a coffee with ham and eggs? And I’ll need utensils.”

  “Of course.”

  The waiter hurried to the kitchen.

  “How is your meal?” Ray asked.

  “I just started eating. But good so far.”

  “If you’re here for Sunday brunch, you must try the Scotch eggs. Nothing like them in the world. Are you staying at the inn?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “What room?”

  “The Shakespeare Room.”

  “Ah. Lovely room. One of my favorites. And how are your accommodations?”

  “Everything is wonderful,” I said.

  “Very good, very good. Wonderful is our goal. We do our best to pay special attention to detail.”

  “So you’re the innkeeper,” I said.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “How long have you been with the inn?”

  “Almost eighteen years now, ever since the Warnocks purchased the property. Mrs. Warnock is my wife’s cousin. We were dining with them in Park City when Mr. Warnock mentioned this property he had seen in the local real estate papers. We finished our dinners and drove to Midway that very evening. If my memory serves me, the Warnocks purchased the inn the next day.

  “Of course, it didn’t look like this back then. It used to be called the Huckleberry Inn. Mr. Warnock didn’t want to tell his hunting buddies that he owned an inn called the Huckleberry, so he changed the name to the Blue Boar after an old pub in Oxford, England—which not coincidentally was mentioned in the legends and ballads of Robin Hood. There’s a framed picture of a woodcut in your room showing Robin Hood and the Tinker sitting in front of the Blue Boar Inn.”

  “I saw that,” I said.

  “Our boar logo,” he said, motioning to it on my key chain, “came from a three-hundred-year-old woodcut Mr. Warnock found in his travels.”

  “So the inn’s English, not Swiss?”

  “It’s European. I would call the inn’s design more Alpine than Swiss,” he said. “The Warnocks remodeled the inn and we’ve been busy ever since. Of course, things really took off after Utah hosted the Winter Olympics in 2002. The Olympics were a special time.” Again, a large smile crossed his face. “Among our guests we had the IOC members from Russia and Norway. The Russians didn’t speak English, but they spoke Deutsch, as do I, so we communicated quite well.”

  “How did they find the inn?” I asked.

  “I found them. I went over to Soldier Hollow, where they were building part of the Olympic venue, and invited them over for breakfast. It’s easy to become friends over good food.”

  He suddenly laughed. “Ah, but when they came back over for the games, things really got interesting. The Russians arrived with a truckful of luggage—more than two dozen cases. They dropped them off by the front door and said, ‘We’ll be back to figure out what to do with them.’ A half hour later a truck from the Utah National Guard arrived. The driver said he had a delivery for the Russian IOC delegation. Then the soldiers pulled back the tarp covering the truck and there were twenty-two cases of vodka. ‘Where would you like them?’ he asked.”

  Ray laughed jovially and slapped the table. “What a time, what a time. If you get a chance, you’ll have to look at my Olympic pin collection. It’s in the hallway on the way to Truffle Hollow. I have one thousand, one hundred and eighty pins.”

  “I saw it last night,” I said. “It’s impressive.”

  “I would hope so. It cost me a few groceries to collect them all.”

  “What did you do before you came to manage the inn?”

  “I was a peddler,” he said. “I sold high-end skiwear. And what about you?”

  “I’m a peddler too. I sell technology.”

  “Ah. I was never so smart.”

  “I don’t believe you,” I said.

  “It takes more heart than brains to be an innkeeper. It’s the Golden Rule. Give them the hospitality that you would like for yourself.”

  “That sounds pretty intelligent to me.”

  The waiter returned with Ray’s ham and eggs. Ray cut into the ham steak, took a bite, then asked, “Where are you from?”

  “Daytona Beach, Florida.”

  “Racing capital of the world.”

  “Have you been there? Or are you a racing fan?”

  “Neither. I once had someone stay here from Daytona Beach. I have a good memory that way. I looked the city up on the Internet. It’s beautiful.”

  After I’d finished eating, Ray said, “If you have a minute, I’ll show you around.”

  “I’d like that,” I said.

  We both stood, and he led me over to the west wall of the interior dining room. “These paintings once hung in a very famous Paris restaurant. They were painted in 1852 by Jean-Maxime Claude. The building went through the war, and the only reason these paintings weren’t looted was because they were set into the walls.” He stepped closer. “Now, notice the cabbage in this painting. Originally, this dining room was painted brown, but Mrs. Warnock didn’t like the brown walls, so she matched the two greens in this cabbage and painted the dining room after them.” He grinned. “I told you, there is much special ­attention here.”

  He led me down the hallway, past his Olympic pin collection, to the Truffle Hollow pub.

  “The truffle is th
e boar’s mainstay, so it was natural that we named the pub after it,” Ray said as we walked inside. “This wooden sign outside the door is a replica of one the Warnocks found in England. Come sit.”

  There were about a dozen identical tables in all, and I sat down at one in the center of the room. Ray picked up a few nuts from a small dish of pistachios on the table and began to crack them open.

  “Let me tell you about this room. The bar here was originally a travel trunk from the 1600s. You can see the locks on it.”

  The case was about four feet high and twice that long.

  “How would someone carry a case that large?” I asked.

  “Servants, no doubt. But she’s beautiful, isn’t she? The floor in here is made of southern pine imported from a World War I airplane hangar in North Carolina. And these tables all came from a bar in Austria. They’ve been together for more than one hundred and fifty years. But this table is especially valuable. Look here.” He tapped the outer edge of the table. There was a brass plaque that read Ray’s Place.

  “Not bad,” I said.

  “I will live in infamy.” He pointed up to the lamp above the bar. One half of it was a wooden carving of a woman’s upper body, the other half were deer antlers. “This lamp is from the sixteenth century. The style is called Lusterweibchen.” He grinned. “It means ‘lustful wench.’ There’s one just like it upstairs in the library.”

  “I saw it,” I said.

  “Then you’ve seen the library. Beautiful, is it not?”

  “Every room I’ve seen in the inn is beautiful,” I replied.

  He stood. “Well, I’d better get back to work.”

  “Thanks for the tour,” I said.

  “You’re very welcome.”

  As we headed back to the lobby, we walked down the hall with the two paintings I’d admired the night before. “I love these paintings,” I said.

  He stopped in front of them. “Both of these are by Pino. Are you familiar with Pino?”

  “I had never heard of him until yesterday. But I was planning to look him up.”