“Are there any diversion programs?”
The lieutenant nodded. “If you’re willing, you could have them work it off on your golf course. That could be a win-win.”
“Forget it,” Jack said. “I can’t trust anyone on an environmental crusade near my course.”
After a few minutes discussing other types of diversion programs in the area, Jack liked the sound of making them help bring in the strawberry harvest. It was grueling work. Jack had picked strawberries every June when he was in college. He spent each day stooped low, knees locked, and his back screaming. It was dirty, itchy work, and it was the reason he disliked strawberries to this day.
Jack signed a form indicating his willingness to let the brats go into a diversion program, but as he prepared to leave, Lieutenant Sparks had a word of advice.
“There may be more trouble once the rest of the students return in the fall. Let me show you the various online groups to keep an eye on where the students post their protests.”
It was all good insight, and Jack noted the names of the various activist groups that had been protesting the golf course for years. Some were on the college website, while others were Facebook groups. As soon as he got back to the Roost, he fired up his laptop to bookmark the sites.
He did a cursory scan of the social media sites associated with Williamsburg and was surprised to see Alice Chadwick’s name pop up. There was a picture, too. He straightened his spine and leaned forward to look at the startling photograph.
Alice looked tragic and embarrassed as she was walked between two security officers, her wrists locked together in a pair of handcuffs. His jaw dropped as he read the headline:
Local College Professor Implicated in Celebrity Stalking Scandal
The photo was from earlier in the year in England. He skimmed the first few lines of the story, noting the name Sebastian Bell, one of those British heartthrobs who starred in a bunch of historical dramas Jack never wasted his time or money on.
Never in a million years would he have suspected Alice of something like this. She seemed too refined, too controlled, but the story was breaking out all over social media, and where there was smoke there was usually fire.
He was tempted to rush over to her place and warn her about what had been posted, but she probably already knew about it, and this wasn’t his problem. He had his hands full with golf course business, and his life motto was to look out for Number One. He shouldn’t worry about Alice.
It was still hard to imagine someone as classy as Alice Chadwick getting involved in a seedy celebrity scandal . . . and healready worried that something terribly unfair had happened to her.
Chapter Eleven
Alice arrived at the William & Mary library first thing in the morning to sink back into the joys of foraging through a world-class library on the hunt to solve a mystery. She needed to find something that might relate to the snippet in that old letter about a woman named Helga who had sailed to America in the hope of a child . . . and the strange botanical symbol doodled on the letter that matched the one carved onto the lintel stone at the Roost.
With her laptop open and stacks of books mounded on her favorite table, she was ready to start hunting the meaning of the leafy doodle mark. Could it have a symbolic meaning from long ago?
Her attention kept straying to memories of last night’s dinner with Jack. He was her complete opposite in every way, and yet . . . his rugged appeal attracted her like metal filings to a magnet. She’d never dated anyone like him, but he seemed to return her interest.
And yet, she could be wrong about that. Less than a year ago she believed Sebastian Bell was infatuated with her. He certainly gave her good reason to think so after their brief encounter on a train in Germany. She returned to Virginia, where Sebastian began bombarding her with gorgeous bouquets of flowers. He had his agent call her, beckoning her to theEmmafilm set. Her first day in London, he met her at the Heathrow Airport with a helicopter and whisked her away for a bird’s-eye tour of London’s iconic landmarks. They flew past Big Ben, the Tower Bridge, and Hyde Park, all while sipping champagne.
It couldn’t all have been her imagination, could it?
Maybe she needed to get back on the horse that threw her, as the saying went. Sebastian’s betrayal wouldn’t be so searing if she had another man in her life. The problem was that almost all the men she worked with at the college were either married or held no appeal for her.
For the millionth time she wished Brandon Tilney wasn’t twenty years older than she, but was fifty-two really too old for her to date? Pierce Brosnan was forty-nine when he made his last James Bond movie, and any right-minded woman would be attracted to him.
Her cell phone vibrated with an incoming email, but she ignored it.
Brandon Tilney was everything she dreamed of in a man. He was intelligent and cultured and thoughtful. He always wore a collared shirt, even the time he came over to help her dig a trench to improve the drainage in her yard. Brandon Tilney would never eat chocolate pudding with his fingers.
Her cell phone vibrated with another incoming text and her attention was already fractured so she checked it.
Actually, there were five messages that had built up in the last hour. Most were from old friends, but she clicked on the one from Arlo Whitworth from the Historic Preservation Board because it might be important.
It had nothing to do with the Roost; he wanted to know if she had checked Twitter.
Twitter? She had an account she rarely logged into, but the online conversation hub was noted in the subject line of several other messages.
A weight lodged in the bottom of her stomach. Why did so many people suddenly urge her to check Twitter? Her fingers shook so badly it took three tries to successfully log in. She went to her homepage, horrified to see that her name was trending.
Alongside Sebastian Bell’s name.
