Cinderella Search Read online

  The Cinderella Search

  Judy Griffith Gill

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Author’s Note

  Chapter One

  “THE ATTIC? YOU WANT me to crawl around in the attic?”

  Lissa Wilkins stared in disbelief at Rosa Macurdy, the Madrona Inn’s breakfast cook, who stood before the front desk, rain dripping from her curly gray hair, her long, spare form stooped under the weight of a brown backpack. “There are spiders up there!”

  “Hush!” Rosa glanced furtively around, though at eleven-fifteen on a Friday evening, Lissa couldn’t think who might be there to overhear. The elderly guests, who came year after year to the rustic inn and the peace of Madrona Cove, were long since in bed. The younger ones who came for fishing and fun were still at Chuckles, Madrona Cove’s favorite watering hole and social center.

  “Don’t kill the messenger,” Rosa said. “I don’t want you to go up there.” She pulled at the straps of the backpack, trying to remove it. Lissa rushed out from behind the desk and caught the heavy weight, easing it down Rosa’s back. “Reggie wants you to,” Rosa added, shrugging her shoulders in obvious relief. “Reggie needs you to.”

  Reggie, the inn’s handyman, was supposed to have put the CD player and timers in the attic over Steve Jackson’s bed hours ago, while Steve, the most unwanted guest the Madrona Inn’s staff had ever dealt with, was at the bar across the street.

  Lissa set the pack on the desk. “Why does Reggie ‘need’ me to do it? He’s the handyman. I’m the night clerk. Somehow, I don’t think attics and spiders are in my job description. Nor,” she added, “is toting around heavy packs in yours. You have to be on duty in less than five hours. You should be home in bed, Rosa.”

  A scant short of retirement, Rosa was beginning to look her age. The job was too hard on her. Lissa wished her father would get his act together and marry Rosa.

  “Reg sprained his ankle,” Rosa explained. “Your dad’s upstairs right now making sure the springs and wires are all fixed right.”

  “You let my dad go up those stairs?” Lissa all but yelled. Her father should not, in her opinion, be climbing three flights of stairs.

  “Will you keep it down?” Rosa glanced around nervously again. “Besides, you know your father. How was I supposed to stop him? He was the first one Reggie phoned when he sprained his ankle. Just lucky I was with him at Chuckles when Reggie tracked him down there. I couldn’t keep him out of the inn or off the third floor, but I can keep him from traipsing around in the attic.”

  She paused and pinned Lissa with a cast-iron stare from under her eyebrows. “With your help.”

  Lissa nodded. “Sure. Okay.” She’d do a lot more than clamber around the attic to help her dad. Two years ago, she’d given up a job in a big city hotel to do just that, though it hadn’t been such a great sacrifice. This elaborate trick they were organizing might be though, what with the spiders she knew were up there … waiting for her.

  “I only wish you’d called me at home so I could have worn jeans and sneakers instead of this.” She flicked at the fullness of her calf-length cotton skirt. “And these!” She glanced down at her stylish, wedge-heeled thong sandals. Staff dress at Madrona Inn was generally casual, but Lissa felt more professional in a skirt, though she’d been glad to give up panty hose and spike heels except for special occasions. Living on a boat made high heels impractical.

  “Here, wear these,” Rosa said, kicking off her well-worn Birkenstocks.

  Lissa laughed. “They’re too big. I’d be better off with bare feet.”

  “Suit yourself.” Rosa patted her mouth with the back of her hand as she yawned. “But if you step barefoot on a spider, don’t come crying to me.”

  Lissa shuddered and slid her feet into Rosa’s sandals. She slung a strap of the pack over one shoulder and shuffled toward the stairs at the back of the office.

  “After he measured out the distances, Reggie put a small steamer trunk on the rafters right over Jackson’s bed,” Rosa said, following her to the foot of the stairs. “He said all you have to do is aim for that, put the stuff in place, set the timers and then skedaddle. I’ll wait here at the desk in case Jackson comes in. I’ll stall him with stories of your dear, departed ghostly great-grandmother.”

  Lissa glanced over her shoulder. “Make sure you do.” She met her father as he descended the narrow service staircase. A tall, handsome man with close-cropped steel-gray curls and happy blue eyes, Frank Wilkins was obviously in his element, running an appreciative hand along the smooth, wooden banister. It was, Lissa thought, a lump forming in her throat, as if he were stroking the skin of an adored woman. He loved this inn, which had been the center of his life until two years ago.

  As he whispered a few last-minute instructions to her, he looked as furtive as Rosa had. He and Rosa were clearly having a ball, enjoying the excitement of the conspiracy.

  Conspiracy! Lissa continued up the stairs, thinking the plan ridiculous, trying to convince Steve Jackson the Madrona Inn had a ghost. But because she cared about her father and, on his behalf, about the inn, she’d go along with it. All they needed was a few more weeks, then the inn would be theirs.

  Or so the whole community hoped.

  But first, it was necessary to convince Steve Jackson the inn was not worth his father’s money or effort. If, indeed, he was the right Steve Jackson. But he was. All she had found on her Internet searches suggested he was though she didn’t find the evidence conclusive, the rest of the committee was convinced. Who else could he be? Why else would he be there?

  Fact: the inn, property of the fifth uncaring, absentee owner in fifteen years, was for sale again. Fact: the town’s purchasing committee, of which she was a member, had a bid in on it, contingent upon their raising the required funds before their option ran out. Fact: John Drysdale, the Realtor who held the listing, had offered what he called “a friendly warning” that “someone in the resort business” was more than a little interested and was considering making a cash offer.

  At first Lissa’s father thought Drysdale was merely trying to up the ante, but then along came a reservation for a full three weeks from a man named Steve Jackson. It didn’t take a genius to put two and two together.

  The Jackson resort chain was one of the largest and best known this side of the Rockies and Steven M. Jackson Sr. had been buying up properties left, right and center for the past six years. He focused on old, rundown places, bought them for a song, tore them down and put in something bright, shiny, new and modern … the likes of which would never fit in Madrona Cove.

  Well, fine. If Jackson Senior had sent Jackson Junior to check out the Madrona Inn, hoping his son would find fault so he could get away with a very low bid, the plan was to give him plenty of fault to find. Then if Jackson Resorts, Inc. made its bid, with any luck it would be lower than what the town committee had made.

  And toward that end, Lissa would even brave spiders.

  On the small landing outside the attic door, she stopped, checked the contents of the pack, and found everything she’d need.

  She eased open the door. Up there under the roof, the sounds of the summer storm were intensified. The wind howled low and mournful, rain lashed against the cedar shingles and beat at the small window in the gable end overlooking the marina. She flicked on her flashlight, found the bare light bulb hanging from a wire dangling from the roof, and unscrewed the bulb.

  Setting it down carefully atop one of
the dusty old pieces of junk her father happily referred to as her “heritage,” she screwed in the plug socket she’d found in the backpack. With a long black extension cord plugged into that and paying out of the backpack slung once more on her shoulder, she tiptoed in Rosa’s floppy sandals to the edge of the floored area.

  Stretching out before her in the beam of the flashlight were parallel rows of floor joists, along which she was going to have to navigate to get to the trunk. It looked as if it were a mile away, over there where the slope of the roof met the flat of the ceiling, below which was Steve Jackson’s bed.

  Sucking in a steadying breath, she put one foot on one joist, the other on the next one, and inched toward the trunk, trailing the cord over her shoulder, hoping it wouldn’t catch on anything and tip her off balance.

  As she neared the trunk, the slope of the roof forced her into an awkward crouch. Her full skirt threatened to trip her with each step. Pausing for a moment, she bunched it up under her arms, baring her legs, making her duck-walk more comfortable.

  Finally reaching her destination, she set the pack on the trunk, took out the CD player, balanced it on a floor joist beside her, plugged in the timers, set their clocks, and hooked them up to the power bar, which she connected to the extension. The timers began to click slowly around, the first set to trigger the machine at one-thirty in the morning for eight minutes, a second at two-fourteen, for twelve minutes, and the third at three-forty-eight, for another six minutes.

  Ghostly cries, sobs, laughter … would they disturb Steve Jackson’s sleep? Would they scare him? And even more important, would they induce him to send home poor reports to his father, regarding the inn’s viability as an investment opportunity?

  She doubted it, but the rest of the committee thought it was worth a try.

  Hoping the old gypsum board between the rafters would hold the weight of the equipment, she reached out to position the CD player just as an enormous black wolf spider leapt out of the dark and landed square on the back of her hand.

  With a scream, she jerked away, felt her feet slip and then she was falling, crashing through the ceiling right over Steve Jackson’s bed.

  The old inn creaked and groaned as heavy winds and rain beat with relentless intensity against the leaded glass windows of his room. Steve felt as gloomy as the weather as he sat leaning against the pillows propped at the head of his brass bed. Some vacation this was turning out to be. Maybe he should have stayed at the bar and taken up the redhead singer-cum-dining room hostess on her tacit invitation, but he hadn’t been in the mood. Nor was he in the mood for the lurid paperback thriller he’d been trying to get into for the past half hour. It wasn’t living up to its hype, any more than the Madrona Inn was living up to its reputation.

  Trouble was, he wasn’t in the mood for a vacation, either. When his contract had run out and no one had offered him another one, he’d thought, what the hell, he hadn’t taken time off for three years and now seemed as good a time as any. A low, howling wail quavered in the air for a long, tremulous moment, then stopped suddenly.

  Have you met her yet? Have you seen the lady? You know the old inn is haunted, don’t you?

  Each time he’d been asked one of those questions by the staff at the inn or the friendly crowd in Chuckles, the local hangout, he said that he didn’t believe in ghosts. And he didn’t. Though that wind, if he let his imagination run free, did have a ghostlike wail to it.

  A thud from above drew his gaze to the ceiling. “Idiot,” he muttered. “You know perfectly well there’s no such thing as—Arrgh!”

  He screamed and hurled himself off his bed as a body crashed feet first through the ceiling accompanied by a shower of broken plaster. Dammit! He, the intrepid deep-sea diver, the fearless explorer of an alien environment, actually screamed. Luckily, his own embarrassing bellow was drowned out by a loud, anguished howl mingled with some pretty hair-raising cussing as the body came to an abrupt halt. Dangling from the hole in the broken plaster was a pair of decidedly shapely, feminine legs.

  As he continued to stare, the legs began to flail, and a pair of slender feet clad in brown sandals kicked furiously in the air.

  “Hold on!” Steve shouted, leaping back onto his bed. He managed to capture one warm-skinned, smooth-textured, delicate-boned ankle. The free foot then kicked him square in the face.

  Blood gushed out of his nose, splashing across the white sheet and pillows.

  “Let me go!” the voice demanded, muffled as if its owner had a mouthful of cloth, or had her head buried in a sack.

  Steve blinked hard, his eyes flooded with stinging tears of pain. “Let you go? Are you nuts, or what?” To better control the legs, he wrapped one arm around the woman’s knees, pinning her lower legs against his shoulder. “I’m trying to help you, so hold still!” He gave a tug and felt her body descend.

  Instinctively, wanting to make her descent as smooth as possible, he placed the flat of his hand under her buttocks as they emerged.

  “Get your hand off my butt, you lecher!”

  “Jeez!” He moved his hand down to her thigh. “You think I’m enjoying this?” He stared upwards at a round, lush bottom covered in nothing but a pair of hot-pink panties with a dainty row of lace around the legs. “In case you haven’t noticed,” he added, “You’re stuck in the middle of my ceiling, sweet-cheeks.”

  “‘Sweet-cheeks?’” she repeated, her voice an indignant squawk. “Nobody calls anybody that anymore!”

  Steve laughed. “They do if they’ve got the kind of view I have down here.”

  “Oh!” Even that sounded like cussing. “You’re not even supposed to be there!” she said, renewing her futile struggles.

  “Tell me about it.” He wiped his bloody nose on the back of his hand. “But if I’d gotten the cabin I wanted, you might still be in this predicament, honey, though I sure as hell wouldn’t. Now quit fighting me. Put your arms over your head. I’ll pull you the rest of the way through.”

  “No way!” Her squirming renewed. “Push me up.” It sounded like an order, but a second later she added a reluctant “Please?”

  “Be a whole lot easier to get you down. Gravity, you know.”

  “If gravity was going to get me all the way down, it would have already done so when I fell,” she answered with what Steve had to admit was excellent logic. Not that he was about to tell her so. She still had his bloody, aching, undoubtedly swollen—maybe even broken—nose to pay for. He tugged at her waist, bending his legs. The bedsprings squealed almost as loudly as she did.

  She wriggled those delicious, silky limbs against his bare shoulder and chest. Feeling only a bit guilty, he realized he was enjoying it more with each wiggle. Hell, he liked legs. He liked women. He especially liked women with legs like this one had.

  Looking up again, he saw something crawling out from under the leg of her panties. He swatted it. “Ouch! Dammit, what was that for?” He stared at his empty hand, then at the bug still perched on her rear. “I think I just smashed your tattoo. Sorry, I thought it was a spider.”

  She shuddered. “Perish the thought,” she muttered.

  “Spiders are a problem, huh?” He could relate to that. Personally, he hated moths, as irrational as he knew it to be.

  “Spiders are the problem.”

  “Then let’s get you out of there.” As he planted his feet wide apart to steady his stance, he felt her lift away from him as if someone up in the attic was pulling her. Someone was. She was.

  “Come on, honey,” he said. “Help me here, so I can help you. Make like an eel and let yourself slither.”

  “I’m not an eel, I don’t slither, and I’m not your honey you … you … opportunist!”

  That was distinctly unfair. “Well, you sure as hell aren’t a salmon, which is all this opportunist came here for,” he replied. “If you think catching an ungrateful—” He stopped, sucking in a couple of steadying breaths. She was stuck. She was scared and likely embarrassed. He wasn’t going to get any
where with her if both of them were mad and hyperventilating.

  Maybe if he got her to relax a little, he could get her out of this mess. Compliments. Women liked compliments. “If your top half lives up to your bottom half, maybe I’ll forget about fish. You might turn out to be the catch of the season.”

  “Oh, sure, great, and I end up stuffed and mounted above the fireplace with a plaque under my belly?”

  He laughed. “Works for me. You’re a good, firm specimen, anyway. Stuffed and properly mounted, you’d be in less danger of falling down.”

  Suddenly, the word “mounted” not to mention “stuffed” took on entirely different connotations in his mind. As if she sensed that, she renewed her struggles and let loose a further string of curses. Tired of arguing, tired of trying to maintain his balance on the sagging mattress, he gave another tug on the woman’s legs and felt her come down a further two inches.

  “Stop pulling and start pushing, Mac! That top half you’re so interested in is jammed up here and you’re about to rip off what I’m certain you’d consider the most important parts of it.”

  Oh.

  “All right, all right,” he said. “Up you go, then. But believe me, I want an explanation—sweet-cheeks.” Just barely, he resisted giving them another little pat for good measure.

  Bending his knees, he wrapped his hands around her ankles and put her sandaled feet on his shoulders. With one hand on her bug, and the other splayed against the head of the bed for balance, he boosted her up through the hole.

  Suddenly relieved of her weight, he staggered backwards on the too-soft mattress, fell off the bed and landed on the floor with his back against an oak highboy. His head smashed so hard into a drawer-pull that he saw stars. While recovering on the floor from his fall, he watched a trunk come hurtling onto his bed.

  It popped open, spilling out some yellowed papers and old clothing that smelled of mothballs. Slowly, Steve got to his feet. Cautiously, he approached the bed. When he was sure nothing else would come tumbling down upon him, he shouted, “Hey, you okay up there?”