by Stratton, M.
The Thinnest Veil
The Happy Endings Resort Series, #9
By
M. Stratton
October, when the veil between the living and the dead thins until it becomes transparent on the 31st, and the living and dead once again walk together.
Happy Endings Resort, where everyone gets their happy ending. Right?
Esmeralda “Es” Boswell lives at Happy Endings Resort, but she is still waiting for her happy ending. She spends her days working as a receptionist for a local construction company, watching couples come in to design and build their dream homes. Her nights and weekends are spent traveling around the countryside giving happy-ever-after psychic readings at fairs and carnivals. Even her dreams are filled with happy endings, of what could be. But in reality, she is alone, trying to earn enough money to take care of her father’s mounting medical bills and so far away from her happily-ever-after, she believes she is destined to walk her life alone.
Hardened newspaper owner and reporter, Dominic McKay, knows there is no such thing as happily-ever-after. As a boy, his parents died and he was left with his only living relative, his spunky grandmother who raised him. She taught him to stand up for what is right and to fight what is wrong, a trait he takes very seriously as an adult. When she dies suddenly, he knows there is more than meets the eye, there had to be something sinister behind her death. Someone had to benefit from killing her, and he was going to figure out who it was. He looks no further than the local psychic who had been giving her readings on an almost daily basis, and looks to prove she’s behind the murder of the one person he could always depend on.
But where there is one death, there is always another. And death follows Es wherever she goes. Can they both survive what is heading in their direction? Will they have their happily-ever-after? Or will they let this once in a lifetime chance slip through their fingers.
The Thinnest Veil
Copyright October 2015 by M. Stratton
Cover by Covers by TOJ Publishing (http://tojpublishing.com/)
Editing by Amour the Line Editing
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without prior written permission of the author.
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The Thinnest Veil is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Paperback ISBN:
ISBN-13: 978-1518771644
ISBN-10: 1518771645
Table of Contents
Dedication:
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Epilogue
-Check out the pages of my fellow Happy Endings Resort Series authors’ pages-
About M. Stratton
Other Works by M. Stratton
How to Find M. Stratton
Dedication:
Jennifer Benson, my purple loving ninja.
Thank you for everything you have done for not only me,
but all the other authors you’ve helped.
Chapter One
Esmerelda
I cried out in pain as the knife sliced through my stomach, looking down, I watched as blood poured out of me and splashed to the dry, dusty ground.
Sitting straight up in bed, my fingers dug into my stomach, hoping to stop the pain as the remains of the dream still lingered fresh behind my eyes. Another nightmare. Looking over at the clock on my bedside table, I saw it was 3:13 AM. Great, I thought to myself. Not only did I have a nightmare during the darkest hour of the night, I also had it in October, when the vail between the living and the dead was at its thinnest.
My name is Esmeralda Boswell, or Es for short, and I was a psychic living a double life in a small trailer at Happy Endings Resort in Endings, South Carolina.
By day, I was a conservative receptionist at a local construction company. I watched happy couple after happy couple come in, design their dream home and live happily-ever-after in it. But nights and weekends, I traveled the roads, peddling my wears to the populace who were hoping for one future, but in reality, were destined for something completely different. Since no one really wanted to know how dull and boring their lives really were meant to be, I put a spin on it. They all wanted the same thing. Their happy-ever-after.
I tried to keep both of my lives separate, but sometimes they overlapped. Sometimes, as hard as I tried they rushed headlong into each other and burned in a fiery crash.
If my dream was to be believed, I was headed for a disaster of epic proportions. At this point, I could only hope death wouldn't follow me again.
I really liked the people at Happy Endings Resort, I didn’t want any of them to die. I finally thought I had found a place where I was happy, where I fit in. Well, as much as I could, anyway. There were people here who accepted me for who I was. I’d been searching for somewhere to live all of these years and it was here at Happy Endings Resort. I’d seen my future, and it was here. So the real question was, was I going to survive what was coming, or was this my final stand against death?
Chapter Two
Dominic
“This is bullshit.” I threw the paper across his office.
“Such language Dominic, what would your grandmother say?” My best friend Rick admonished.
My heart sank. The woman who had raised me since my parents died when I was twelve. Who taught me how to be a man and how to respect a woman, was gone. Ethel Mae McKay was one hell of a woman. I still felt an unbelievable loss, and she’d only been gone for two weeks. “She’d say I could do better than that. The lady might have been in her seventies, but she could make a biker blush.”
Rick sighed. “I miss her too, man.”
Walking over to the couch, I sat down and rested my elbows on my knees, dropping my head down into my hands. “Natural causes was what the death certificate said. Natural causes. How can it be? She was the strongest person I’ve ever known.”
“Dom,” my friend said with sadness filling his voice. “Even the strongest person in the world can’t live forever. Lord knows, I didn’t know anyone stronger than her.”
“There are a dozen of other ways I could see her dying and I wouldn’t have blinked an eye. The chute wouldn’t open while she was skydiving? She’d laugh and ask ‘what were the odds’. Crashing into the wall while she was drag racing down at the local track? She’d love that. Cord broke while bungie jumping? She’d enjoy flying. But dying in her sleep? No, it’s too peaceful, she was so full of life.”
“Listen man.” Rick stood and walked over to me and sat down next to me on the couch. “It’s going to take time, her death was a shock to all of us, but you have to stop looking for something sinister behind her dying. It was her time, plain and simple. Just because you write for and own this newspaper, doesn’t mean there
is evil lurking behind everything that goes wrong around Endings, South Carolina.”
“That’s where you are wrong.” I stood up and crossed over to my desk, grabbing the file. There was no need to open it, I’d already memorized everything. “My dear sweet grandmother had been paying some two-bit-low-life fraud for psychic readings.”
“So what?” Rick shrugged. “She paid someone for a couple of readings, what harm is there in that? People do that all the time. Hell, my wife Cindy goes to one a couple of times a year. It’s all for fun, it’s not real.”
“That’s just it, it wasn’t only a time or two. Towards the end, she was going every other day. She paid this scammer over five thousand dollars. No.” I shook my head. “There was something more going on here.”
Rick whistled. “Wow. That is a lot.”
I sat on the edge of the desk. “See? And that is what gets me. This is only for the past three months. What if grams didn’t die, how much would she have ended up being taken for? Would she have changed her will so this person would get a cut? Would she have ended up taking everything my grandmother had?”
“I assume you’ve done a background check on this person?”
“You know it. Esmeralda Boswell. Currently resides at Happy Ending Resort. She travels around stealing money from people. I can’t believe this is the first time she’s come up on my radar. She’s right here in our backyard. Scamming people. And here’s the thing, this isn’t the first time she’s pulled this kind of crap. She only lives for a couple of years in any one place before she’s up and moving again. Not too smart though, she’s never changed her name.”
“Well then, it should be easy enough for you to take her down, expose her for the criminal she is.”
“You’d think, wouldn’t you? But here’s the kicker, she’s been investigated for murder no less than five times over the years.”
“Holy-”
“Exactly.” I crossed my arms over my chest and nodded, waiting for him to catch up with me.
“How can she do that? Either she’s really lucky, or she’s innocent.”
“And what do you think the odds are that she’s innocent?”
“Five murders? Hmmm…” Rick shook his head. “No, there is no way she is innocent. Do you think she had something to do with your grandmother’s death?”
I nodded. “I’ll bet the newspaper she did.”
Chapter Three
Esmerelda
I couldn’t shake the feeling. Something, someone was coming, and he was bringing darkness with him. Or maybe the darkness was already here, surrounding me, but he’d bring it out. The urge to run was so strong, I actually opened the closet with shaking hands and pulled out a suitcase. I’d been running for so many years now, I’d forgotten what it meant to stay in one place for any significant amount of time.
My knees buckled and I dropped to the floor. I really liked it here, I’d even begun to dream of what it might be like if I did stay here until I was old and grey. Like Ethel. I wanted to be like her when I grew up. She knew exactly who she was and wouldn’t take any kind of crap from anything. And an adventurer, she’d tell me stories of all the places she went. And I could admit it, I was jealous. I wanted that for myself. I wanted to travel for fun, not because I had to move because someone was nervous about having a psychic around. I wanted the epic love story she had. The loving husband and children. Watching her grandchild grow up. Living my life to the fullest. I wanted it all. Not to be working two jobs so I could make sure my father had the best care possible.
My shoulders slumped. My father. It was almost time for my weekly phone call to him. It was like a knife to the heart every time. He hardly ever remembered me, the disease had stolen his memory of me. If he was having a good day, I’d take the trip over to see him, enjoy what little time I had left with him.
That was my secret. My father. He had Alzheimer’s, and the money I made going around doing psychic readings was what paid for his care. He’d needed around the clock care for years now. He had sacrificed so much for me when I was growing up. It was never easy, my mom had left us when I was a toddler and had started showing signs of my psychic ability. While she had called me a freak, he had always made sure I was loved and felt special, even if that meant moving around a lot when people didn’t like hearing the truth they were trying so hard to hide come out of a child’s mouth.
He taught me right from wrong, to always stick up for the underdog, and when to keep my mouth shut. I was good at everything, except the last. I was still working on that one.
Chapter Four
Dominic
I grabbed my duffle and closed the car door with my hip, not taking my eyes off of the cabin I had rented at Happy Ending Resort. From doing my research even before I drove here, I knew which cabin I wanted, and was lucky enough to find it was available.
Once inside, I dropped my stuff without looking around and went to the window in the bedroom. Carefully pushing the curtain back, I was able to look straight out at the scammer Esmeralda’s trailer. I wanted to keep an eye on her twenty-four hours a day.
She wasn’t due home for another hour, so I quickly set up the camera where it wouldn’t be seen, and I made sure I wouldn’t miss anything that went on over there. I needed to get closer, I had a listening device I could put on the outside of her trailer. Sure, it wouldn’t pick everything up, but we all know these trailers aren’t insulated for sound. I might be able to pick something up.
As casually as I could, I strolled around, making my way up and down the roads around the resort, taking the long way to her place. Walking past the Halloween decorations in one of the common areas, I shook my head. I never really understood the allure of the holiday. Dressing up and going around scaring people? Wasn’t there enough things in the real world to scare us? Did we really need to create new ones?
Since she was the last cabin on the street, I walked around the back of it and quickly attached the listening device.
“Excuse me,” a cold, female voice came from behind me. “What are you doing?”
Fuck. Without turning, I leaned down and looked closer at the flowering bush under the window. “Do you know what kind of plant this is?”
“The kind that if you don’t get your nose out of it and off of my property, will get you thrown in jail.”
I slowly stood up to my full height and turned around, and found that I was looking down at one of the most beautiful women I had ever seen. Her green, gypsy eyes were narrowed at me as the wind rushed by, teasing her hair around her head. “Sorry, I’m Dom, Dominic, it’s nice to meet you.”
She looked down at the hand I extended to her and then back up at me. “You shouldn’t be here.”
I tried to give her my most charming lopsided grin I knew most of the women fell for. “I know, I’m sorry, I just saw something I liked and went after it.”
Crossing her arms, she raised one eyebrow at me. “So you always just ‘go after what you want’ without a thought as to the consequences?”
My first mistake was thinking that because she was some la-la psychic, her head would be up in the clouds. I forgot the fact that she was also a scammer, which meant she had to be smart. Rubbing the back of my neck with one hand, I shrugged. “Maybe not the best choice of words.”
“You would think a man who wrote stories for a newspaper would use his words more carefully.” She shook her head and pivoted on one foot and stalked away.
I stood there for a moment in shock. How could she have known what I did for a living? My feet started moving, chasing after her before I had even finished my thought. Grabbing her arm, I swung her around and looked into her eyes. “How did you know?”
Slowly, she looked from my eyes down to my hand still gripping her arm, and then back up again.
“Sorry,” I said, and let go.
“Your grandmother talked about you all the time.” She raised her eyebrow at me again, and I was beginning to wonder if that was going to be her permanent expression a
round me. “Or what, did you actually for a moment think I might not be the fraud you’ve already predetermined I am?”
I’m not exactly sure why, but for some reason, her words pissed me off. “Now you wait a minute-”
“Oh, I see, I’m supposed to wait a minute so you can talk, all the while you are trespassing on my property, accusing me of being a fake and ripping people off.” She folded her arms and nodded. “By all means, continue.”
This wasn’t going the way I had planned it. Somehow, I had to get things back into my favor. “Look, losing my grandmother is still a shock to me. Is it so wrong that I want to know more about what she was up to the last few weeks before her death?”
“No, no it’s not. However, lurking around my house like some delinquent is not the way to do it. Your grandmother adored you, she loved to tell me everything about little Dom.” Her lips tipped up. “I know more about you than I’m sure you are comfortable with. Why don’t we just leave this alone? Your grandmother knew her time was up, she was trying to get everything in order before she passed. The last thing she wanted was to bother you, or not to cover her bases.” She turned and climbed the steps to her front door.
“Wait.” I took the steps in a leap and was next to her instantly. Part of me wondered why she only casually turned around towards me, there was nothing in her stance to say she was frightened of me. But she should have been, she didn’t know me. “Can’t you tell me more?”
Shaking her head, she put her hand on the doorknob. “I can tell you she was proud of you, of what you are doing. But she wanted more for you. I’m sure there’s something at the lawyer’s office for you that will explain more.”
“I don’t believe in that stuff.” I waved a hand towards her head.
“You don’t have to.” She sighed. “Look, you aren’t the first, and you won’t be the last who doesn’t believe me. I’ve been dealing with it my whole life. If you need anything else, let me know, otherwise, good-bye.”