3.0 - Shadows In The Garden Hotel

by Krista Walsh

  Unfortunately, going home was no longer an option.

  She cursed the draugrs for putting her in this position. She would have left them alone if they had paid her the same courtesy. Who was she to judge their need to survive? She’d been fifteen when she’d made her first kill, first seducing and then sucking the soul from a young man at a beach resort before drowning out the experience with the bar’s perfect mojitos.

  Sixteen years later, and after too many souls to count, death rarely made her flinch. Although she found the whole process ugly, she knew it was simply the way the world worked. Aunt Louisa used to call it a necessary balance, and as much as she resented her role in it, Allegra was helping to maintain that balance. Just as the draugrs were in their own way.

  But they had come after her, and she could not let that stand. They had already stolen from her. Not just her lifeblood, but the lifeblood of someone she had looked to with professional respect and some personal consideration.

  They were also putting her career at risk. While she might have been willing to ignore a few deaths for the sake of being left in peace during her stay at the Garden, these monsters had broken the stalemate by interfering with her crew. Any one of her colleagues might notice the creature in the corner of her eye and turn to see what had raised the hair on the back of her neck. It could be Courtney. While Allegra didn’t think much of the producer, she didn’t want to have to go through the hassle of training a new one, either.

  Her demon blood boiled as her will to fight rose higher, and she bound it tightly under her self-restraint. Now that she was armed with knowledge, she had a plan, and she meant to see it through without losing control.

  “Is there anything else you need, ma’am?” the taxi driver asked.

  The question jerked Allegra into the present. She lifted her chin and cast him a sideways glance. “If there were, I would have asked for it.”

  She climbed out of the cab and walked up the path to the front doors.

  Her heart jumped into her throat and all thought of draugrs vanished from her mind when the door opened. Matthew stood in front of her wearing a wide smile. He’d changed his suit to a dark gray pinstripe with a black tie against his bright red shirt. The color brought out the natural blush in his cheeks and made his brown eyes that much richer and larger. She found herself staring at his lips, remembering all of the wonderful things they’d done the night before and wishing she could invite him upstairs right now. All the tension she’d worked off through him had returned, and she doubted she’d be able to think straight until it eased.

  “What are you still doing here?” she asked, surprise preventing her from screening her words. “I believed you were leaving this morning.”

  He offered a half shrug. “Courtney didn’t feel up to handling the rest of the shoot on her own and asked me to stick around.” His smile thinned into a sly grin that crept over his features, curling the corners of his eyes. “Is that going to be an issue?”

  Allegra schooled her expression, hating that she’d given her discomfort away so easily. “Of course not. I am sure things will run much more smoothly with you here. Excuse me.”

  She pushed past him into the lobby and started upstairs, her blood steaming at the amusement dancing in his eyes.

  ***

  As she got dressed, Allegra ran through everything she and Vera had discussed and everything she’d learned from Lee. She stood in front of the window and stared into the garden as she absently counted each stroke of the brush through her hair.

  Where was she supposed to start looking for a corpse on the grounds? She already had an inkling of who the victim might be, but that wouldn’t narrow down where to find the body.

  Lee had said the draugrs had arrived twelve years ago, after the previous owner of the hotel had packed up and left. She’d taken her bags in the middle of the night and no one had ever heard from her again.

  The timing of her disappearance and the arrival of the draugrs was too close to be a coincidence. While Allegra conceded the victim might be one of the guests, she thought it too likely that a missing guest would have been noticed and reported.

  From what Lee had said, the previous owner had been very particular about her hotel. In Allegra’s experience, no one who dedicated her life to the building of a business — her name, her brand — would sneak off in the middle of the night without a word of explanation or plans in place for a smooth transition. So was the previous owner — what was her name? Penny? Penny Orlay — hidden somewhere on the hotel grounds, or had she committed the crime herself and disappeared into the night to avoid being caught?

  In all the years the hotel had been running, no one had ever found a body, which meant whoever had committed the murder had done a good job of hiding the evidence. Based on Lee’s story, Penny never did anything by half measures. She would have been capable of hiding a body properly. But the possibility of Penny being the murderer, while feasible, didn’t sit well with Allegra. If she knew she’d done a good job at covering up her crime, why would she have run?

  If Penny was the murder victim, then whoever had done away with her had shown an equally impressive attention to detail, even going so far as to make it look as though she’d fled.

  Allegra set down her brush, slipped on her shoes, and went downstairs for her morning photo session.

  She found Cody at the bottom of the stairs. He was leaning against the wall and looking up at her with a bright smile, his hat tilted at a rakish angle.

  “I hoped you’d be down soon,” he said.

  “Please do not tell me you’ve waited here all this time,” she said. “While persistence is an admirable trait in a lover, there does come a point where it passes from tantalizing into irritating.”

  Cody’s grin widened. “I’d hate to have hit irritating already. I’m not even trying to be all that persistent. I was waiting here for someone else, and it was just my luck you came downstairs. Did you have a nice morning?”

  “I did.”

  “Can I see you later?”

  “No,” Allegra replied. She walked away without waiting to catch his reaction.

  ***

  Courtney had planned another garden session for the morning, but they only managed two hours before the rain came in. The wind blew in such gusts that it knocked over one of the larger stage lights. Three people caught it before it fell, but even Courtney, who appeared ready to tear out her hair, agreed it would be best to wrap things up for the day.

  Allegra’s satin dress sagged under the weight of rainwater and left a trail of droplets on the marble floor as she entered the lobby behind the others. The material clung to her skin like a tacky glue, and she wished she could strip it off right there.

  Moaning and complaining about the weather, the rest of the crew headed upstairs to dry off and change. Allegra wanted to follow them to do the same, but she decided it would be best to speak with Lee first. She wanted to find out more about Penny Orlay, and while she hated the idea of returning to the kitchen with all those smells, her dress was already ruined and she would have to shower later anyway. Best to go now when she was already a wreck.

  She wrung out her hair as she walked to the kitchen door, then glanced over her shoulder before opening it. She didn’t want any of the other staff or her crew spotting her going downstairs to mingle with the help.

  As soon as she reached the basement floor, the stench of the kitchen wafted up her nostrils and clung to the back of her throat. She knew some people reveled in such smells — their mouths watering, their stomachs grumbling — but if she had to eat human food, she preferred when it was complete rather than in process.

  Beneath the aroma of garlic and roasting vegetables lingered a fainter odor. Something putrid, like meat turned foul. Allegra covered her nose and breathed through her mouth, but all that did was allow her to taste the rot.

  Restaurant kitchens, my own personal hell.

  Swallowing her distaste, she pushed open the swinging doors and watc
hed the staff skitter about like mice, first one way, then another. She glanced at the clock on the wall and realized she must be interrupting their lunch schedule.

  She jumped out of the way when three servers barged through the doors to grab orders. One bumped into her on his way out, and she shrieked as a splash of orange sauce sprinkled across her chest.

  “Sorry,” he said quickly, but didn’t stop to offer any other apology or help before he bustled upstairs.

  Allegra gaped after him, then glanced down at the orange stain splayed across the royal blue material of her dress.

  A low chuckle dragged her attention deeper into the kitchen, and she raised her head to find Lee smiling at her from the work station against the wall. “That sauce has a chicken-fat base. Pain in the ass to wash out, and the grease mark never really goes away. Guess you’re blessed with a nice souvenir of the Garden kitchens.”

  Allegra frowned. “I thought I’d gained enough memories with the damage you did to my hair on my last visit. I required three shampoos to remove the stench.”

  “Welcome to my world,” he said, rubbing his hand over his bald head before replacing his ball cap. She met his gaze and spotted something more than amusement in his gray eyes. Curiosity. She supposed that made sense — she was hardly the sort to consider the kitchen an ideal escape from reality.

  He confirmed her suspicions as he said, “Since I doubt you’re here for a cooking class, what brings you to the wrong side of the tracks? Miss my smiling face?”

  Allegra stepped away from the door toward the counter where Lee was chopping vegetables.

  She cast a sidelong glance at the rest of the staff, but they all appeared to be too engrossed in their tasks to pay any attention to her. Even if they were interested in what she had to say, she doubted they would be able to hear her over the clatter of pots and pans and the sizzle from the stove.

  “I hoped I might speak with you about the previous owner you mentioned. Penny.”

  Lee arched an eyebrow. “Now that’s an odd subject to bring up. You sure you’re just a model on a job, or are you some secret journalist looking to dig up dirt on this place? Because if that’s the case, you can escort yourself out of here and get started on the shampooing. I like my job. I don’t want to do anything to risk it.”

  Allegra crossed her arms, hissing through her teeth as the cold satin pressed against her chest. “I am no journalist, and have no desire to destroy anyone’s reputation. My primary concern is my own wellbeing, and in this case, I believe the only way to ensure it is to know as much as possible about the troubles of this hotel.”

  Lee met her gaze. His clear eyes scoured her intently, as though gauging her sincerity. Allegra didn’t blink and didn’t look away, refusing to be cowed by his hair-netted beard and grease-stained apron.

  After a moment, he grunted. “That’s as good a reason as any, I guess, although I can’t figure out how Penny has anything to do with it. But sure, what do you want to know about our dear old ex-employer?”

  His gaze dropped to the counter as he started chopping again, and almost immediately Allegra felt something brush against her shoulder. She shifted so her back was against the wall, then cleared her throat and swallowed her rising panic that the room was closing in on her.

  “You told me she packed up and disappeared in the middle of the night,” she said, relieved that her voice remained steady. “How do you know she left? Did anyone see her leave? Does anyone know where she went?”

  Lee’s lips twitched, as though her questions amused him, but he didn’t explain the source of his entertainment. Instead, he said, “Can’t say anyone did see her go. That’s just what we assumed happened when her suitcases turned out to be missing along with some of her favorite outfits. If anyone knew the secret of where she went, they never spoke up. Not even when the cops came sniffing around a few days later. Some of the staff thought she might have got in trouble with some moneylenders or something and skipped town to avoid the debt, but I can’t speak to how true that is. As far as I know, she ran a tight ship, and she wouldn’t have gotten involved with any shady characters like that.”

  “So what is your personal guess?” Allegra doubted he’d say straight out that his previous employer had been murdered, but out of anyone at the hotel, he was the most likely to know the truth about Penny’s fate.

  Lee raised a shoulder, never hesitating in the motions of dicing his green onions. “Burn out? Woman pushed herself hard in the day-to-day and was never satisfied if anything fell short of her expectations. I don’t see how a body can go on like that without snapping. I’ll bet that if you wander the beaches of Aruba, you’ll find her reclined in a chair on the white sands sipping Mai Tais and watching the world go by.”

  Allegra pressed her lips together to keep her disbelief to herself. By the forced cheeriness of his reply, Lee didn’t believe the tale he’d spun either. The police would have checked the airports to see if Penny had booked any flights. As to the moneylenders, Allegra doubted a woman as strict and practical as Penny would have made that mistake.

  The other options were rapidly disappearing, leaving Allegra’s guess as the reigning champion. Working on the assumption that she was right, Allegra shifted her attention to the other half of the puzzle. A person couldn’t be murdered without a murderer.

  “What happened after she left? Who benefited by her disappearance?”

  “Well, that would be Tim, wouldn’t it,” Lee said. He dumped the onions into a large bowl of Cobb salad, then started on the avocado.

  His answer took Allegra aback. “Why Tim?”

  Lee glanced at her from beneath his gray eyebrows. “You must think I’m a real gossip.”

  She crossed her arms. “Aren’t you?”

  He glanced over his shoulder to make sure no one else was listening, then shrugged. “Nothing else to do to pass the time around here, I guess. All right. You wouldn’t know it to look at the smug bastard, but Banks is the Iron Lady’s nephew.”

  Allegra’s thoughts stumbled as she put that information together with the rest of the picture. She thought of Tim’s pride in the hotel and the way he grew angry at anyone who mentioned the curse.

  Was that guilt I saw in his eyes? she wondered.

  “How did he react to his aunt’s disappearance?”

  Lee turned his back on her to shout some kitchen jargon at his staff, then nodded his head toward the stove. Allegra followed him across the room and stood against the wall to avoid a woman hauling a pot of chili from one work station to another.

  “He didn’t act like he much cared,” Lee replied to her question as he flipped the chicken frying in the pan. “I’d say it was business as usual for the first little while. He was Penny’s only heir, so from the day he hit twenty-one she’d taken him on at the hotel to train him to replace her. He slipped into her role so smoothly, no one really noticed the change. His style was a little less overbearing than hers, though I wouldn’t go so far as to say the man was pleasant. I also wouldn’t say the staff was any happier working for the nephew than the aunt. But the guests continued to check in, the hotel kept making money, and we all had jobs, so no one complained too loudly.”

  “What changed?” Allegra asked. She was hoping her theory was right. Then she could banish these restless spirits and return to her comfortable life of not caring about other people’s problems.

  “The walking corpses showed up, as I said, around the same time Penny disappeared. Almost as soon as the first rumors started, they became a common subject on everyone’s tongue — staff and guests alike. Honestly, I wonder if the creatures were what drove Penny away. Maybe she saw one monster too many. Maybe she got scared or realized the damage they could do to her business, so she jumped ship before the crash. Either way, the ghost stories drove Tim crazy for a while, until he realized he could make money off it. He printed fliers for the front desk advertising haunted tours, so people who couldn’t afford to spend a night here could pay to go on an hour-long guid
ed walk. He limited the tour to the oldest parts of the hotel, going on about the architecture and the stories of ghost sightings people had shared with him over the years. The idea made a mint for a good long stretch. Then the market for the spooky died off.”

  Lee wiped his brow on his arm to clear the sweat and handed the chicken over to another cook while he crossed back over and checked on what appeared to be a full pig. Allegra didn’t know what was on the menu for supper, but she thought she might order the salad.

  “After that, the reservations slowed, and we had to start pinching pennies to keep the place running to standard. Over the last couple of years, Banks has debated the option of closing the hotel during the off-season to cut down on overhead costs. I think he’s hoping this photo shoot of yours will kickstart a new rush of guests, a gaggle of bored housewives looking for a romantic getaway with their husbands or something, but I think he’s grasping at straws.”

  A slam echoed through the room as another pot was set down on the warmer next to Allegra. She jumped, then cursed herself for scaring so easily. Lee turned away from the stove and crossed his arms. “So now that I’ve answered your questions, are you going to tell me why you’re asking? I think I’ve earned a few answers of my own.”

  Allegra eyed him carefully, not sure how much information she should give the man with the bland gray eyes and graying beard. He was just the cook in a fancy hotel — what right did he have to her secrets?

  And yet, he believed in the draugrs, which put him as much at risk as anyone else who knew about them. It cost her nothing to share what she’d learned at Vera’s. Even if he told others that she had been the one to bring him the information, she doubted anyone in her circles would believe it. He was no threat to her.