by Patti Larsen
I quickly checked him in, warm breeze from the still-open front door carrying the scent of his cologne to me. A bit spicy for my taste, preferring the deep and earthy one Crew wore. Still, Tyler was adorable and I suddenly didn’t hate people nearly as much as I had before he walked through my door.
Yup, my job had occasional perks.
“You’re playing in the tournament?” I handed Tyler his keys while he eagerly nodded like a puppy handed a brand-new toy he couldn’t wait to play with.
“I came pretty close last time,” he said, still grinning, lugging his own suitcase and not making any attempt to foist it off on me while I led him toward the stairs and the third floor. He went on as I showed him the way, carrying the bag instead of letting it thud against my steps, bless him. If I wasn’t already enjoying the view I would have liked him on the spot for such courtesy. “Two weeks ago, in Santé Fe.” He shook his head, grin turned rueful, sparks of hunger in his eyes as we made our way up the next flight, not a hint of a quitter in him. “Can’t wait to try again.”
“I’m sure you’ll be great.” Wow, Fee, weak, but he bobbed a thankful nod and entered his room when I took the keys back from his full hands and let him in. He retrieved them with a beaming smile.
“Thanks,” he said, sounding like my support meant the world to him. “I appreciate it, Miss Fleming. Be seeing you?”
I nodded, left him to get settled, almost light-hearted as I headed back down the stairs with pep in my step. The kid had an infectious level of energetic awesome to him that I hoped he never lost.
Distracted by the mercurial shift in my mood, I almost missed the tall, blonde woman waiting for me at the desk, Jack Nethersole and Leo Amato standing at her side. So much for the arrogant golfer getting out of my hair for the rest of the day. I did my best to cling to the happy Tyler had lent me while I pointedly ignored the sullen expression on Jack’s face, offered Leo a pointed smile and then focused my attention on the woman in the crisp, gray suit whose brusque manner, at least, wasn’t offensive as much as it was busy.
Busy, I understood.
“Petra Stowers,” she said, glancing at her phone before meeting my eyes with her dark brown ones, startlingly so framed by pale blonde brows and light hair, though her thick lashes wore enough mascara to make those deep chocolate irises stand out. “I believe I’m in the same area as Jack and Leo.”
I found her keys, handed them over. “Ms. Stowers,” I said. “We weren’t expecting you until late tonight.” The note on her reservation said the GoGolf rep would be checking in after 8PM but it was only 1:30.
She actually looked apologetic, so at least she wasn’t as arrogant as she was occupied by other things, apparently. “Is my room ready?”
“Of course.” I turned to lead her out myself only to find one of the girls standing there, waiting. Daisy must have sent her, so efficient. “Julia can show you where to go.”
“Clare.” The just older than a teenager rolled her eyes at me and I winced. What was it with me and the names of my staff?
“Clare.” I forced a smile at Petra who didn’t seem to notice, not while Jack leaned in toward her with a surly look on his face.
“We need to talk about my sponsorship contract,” he said, not even trying to keep his voice down.
Petra, on the other hand, looked first horrified and then furious. “Not here, Jack,” she snapped, “and not now.”
“Then when?” Jack’s petulance made me want to smack him so I could only imagine what was going through her mind, since she clearly had a history with him. Anything longer than the amount of time I’d spent with him already was too much, thanks. She was a brave woman to put up with his attitude and I saluted her silently while she inhaled to respond.
Leo beat her to it, all Mr. Smooth Things Over, clearly not the first time, either. “We’ll get it sorted out, right, Petra? Jack, let’s go have a drink and let her get settled then we’ll talk about it.”
“We’ll see.” Leo had managed to mollify me at least to a point, but it was clearly apparent he’d run out of steam when it came to this woman, whoever she was to Jack Nethersole. “And we’ll be having a much more serious conversation once this tournament is done, if things go the way they did in Santé Fe.” She marched off toward the kitchen door without another word to me, Clare chasing after her. How the woman knew where to go I had no idea, but I let Clare deal with her and the still angry Nethersole while Leo offered me yet another sorry smile while he mounted his own pursuit of his companions.
Grunt. At least they were staying in the annex. I could avoid them and let Daisy deal. Nice of me, right?
It wasn’t until I finished her reservation login that I remembered Tyler mentioned Santé Fe, too. Not that it mattered, but my brain had a way of logging information that connected to other bits and pieces without really trying.
I didn’t get to ponder those bits and pieces, not when my final check in huffed his way into the foyer, lugging a heavy suitcase behind him, mopping at his wide, receding hairline with a bright red handkerchief, cheeks a near match to the fabric. His round belly bulged out in front of him like the helm of a ship parting waves on the ocean, short legs bowed as if from the extra weight he carried, giving him a rolling stride that carried him with surprising grace across the entry and to the desk.
At least he was smiling when he let his case thud upright. “Hudson Harriet,” he said in a low, deep voice, leaning into the counter with a heavy sigh, still wiping his sweating face though it wasn’t really all that hot out yet. “Warm one, isn’t it?”
I murmured agreement despite the lack of truth and hurried through his reservation. I had him on the third floor and almost winced at telling him but when I did, he just shrugged.
“Life of a fat man,” he said, far too jolly, really, for a man about to lug himself and his bag up two big flights of stairs. “Lead the way, Miss Fleming.”
I did so, my offer to take his bag waved off.
“A gentleman carries his own luggage,” he said with a wink of one blue eye, wide lips split into a grin. As we climbed, he seemed intent on the second floor, peering down the hall a moment before following me upstairs. “Don’t suppose Jack Nethersole is staying here?”
“The annex,” I said, pointing vaguely through the building and across the yard, though I realized as I did my guest would have no idea what I meant. “Next door.”
Hudson seemed tickled by that, actually grinning despite his continuing sweat-fest.
“I’m a huge fan,” he said between panting breaths, breathing hard enough I was beginning to worry about him. “Huge. Saw him play in Orlando a month ago. And just two weeks ago, in Santé Fe.”
Huh, there it was again. “Did he win?”
Hudson chuckled as we stopped finally at his door, wheezing a bit before fishing an inhaler from his pocket and taking a hit while he wiped yet again at his streaming face. “Did he,” he said. “Played his heart out. Say,” he leaned in, voice dropping in volume, slightly hungry look to his expression making him seem less innocuous suddenly and more like a man who hid who he really was behind a smile and a persona, “I don’t suppose you know where a guy could catch some local action?”
Eep, was he hitting on me? “What kind of action?” I actually swallowed hard and fought the urge to back away.
But he had other things in mind that weren’t related to flirting with redheads. Smart man. Or not so smart, depending on your point of view. “Just a little innocent side action,” he said. “You’re local, right?”
I recognized the faintly desperate look of a man on the edge, and realized he was talking about gambling. Yes, I could have easily helped him out, sent him to The Orange and Malcolm. But I was the sheriff’s fiancé for goodness sake, daughter of the former lawman in these parts. And I wasn’t about to give Petunia’s the kind of reputation that sharing such information could create.
Sure, I liked Malcolm—maybe more than I should have considering who he was to me—but I wasn’t
going to help his illegal business if I could help it.
Before I could reject Hudson’s question, his face flickered, as if he understood he’d overstepped. He laughed then, a forced guffaw of fake humor, and shook his head. “Just teasing you,” he said. “Going to get settled, thanks for everything, nice to meet you!” His door thudded firmly shut behind him before I could get a word in edgewise and I found myself yet again descending the steps to the foyer, this time with more cynicism than happiness. And honestly, I felt gypped.
I’d tell Crew to keep an eye on Hudson. But in the meantime, the man’s questions about action made me think about Malcolm and his demanding text. When I reached the foyer I messaged him back, a bit resentfully, but knowing he wouldn’t get that from the short response.
I’ll try to stop in later.
Okay, maybe it would come through loud and clear. Still, he could wait. And when he didn’t answer back right away while I finished my paperwork on the computer and checked the time, I caught myself in a spiral of annoyed irritation.
Fine, he could just come to me, then. While he hadn’t been quite so dark since his meltdown in March, I still worried about him, but I wasn’t his mom or his keeper. If Malcom Murray wanted to talk to me so badly, he could make a damned effort.
Leaving things with Mom and Daisy, I harnessed my wriggling pug and left for my appointment with Oliver Watters.
***
Chapter Eight
The inside of Watters Antiques always had that faint smell I associated with a cross between a library and a funeral home, a mix of old chemicals, leather, ancient books whose pages had begun to decay and the passage of a multitude of souls through the life and times of the artifacts within. I suppressed a faint shudder, though it was a musty sort of humid inside, keeping Petunia tight on my heels as we navigated the narrow way left for customers amid the piles of antiques, display cases and cases filled with old tomes surely no one had even dusted in an age.
Oliver stood behind the counter, leaning forward over the glass with his gaze locked on a tiny woman in a large wheelchair that looked much too big for her slight frame. She turned to watch me approach as if she’d been expecting me, while he seemed irritated by my arrival. I chose to ignore his attitude—anyone who knew Oliver did their best to, frankly—and extended my hand to the woman instead.
She smiled back, long, pale red hair in a delicate braid over one shoulder, her green-gray eyes washed of most of their color as if time had leeched the hue for its own purposes. But her grip was firm and warm, thin fingers almost delicate, the heavy brown sweater she wore bundling her as if we were in a much colder surround.
“Miss Fiona Fleming.” She nodded to me, quiet voice with the faintest trace of an accent I couldn’t place carrying as Oliver blew air through his lips in a rude sound. “Shani Bysh, delighted to meet you at last. I’ve heard great things. Mostly from Alice Moore.” She gave me a sly smile before nodding at Oliver. “Not so much from this one, though.”
Hardly surprising. But Alice? “How do you know her?” The young psychic debunker hadn’t spent much time in town the last few months, not since she told me she and her boyfriend, Denver Hatch, grandson of dearly departed fake soothsayer, Sadie Hatch, had taken up traveling to investigate paranormal activity.
Shani shrugged her thin shoulders, though her smile didn’t fade. “Professionally.”
Huh. Did that mean the pile of Tarot cards I now noticed resting on the counter belonged to her, or was she in the market to make a purchase?
“You’re late.” Oliver interrupted, glaring at me as I glanced at the giant clock behind him, showing the agreed-upon time had only just arrived, thanks.
“Nice to see you, too, Oliver,” I said, leaning against the counter.
He didn’t respond to that while Shani tsked.
“You could try being nice from time to time,” she said as if this was an old argument, though without a trace of irritation. If anything, she sounded delighted, her accent deepening. Where did I know that lilt from?
“Why?” His bluntness made her giggle.
Their banter was infectious and I found the light hearted feeling Tyler Hendy lent me return. I grinned suddenly at Shani, winking. “Clearly you two have been at this a bit,” I said and they both nodded. “You put up with him, why?”
She laughed then, a tinkling sound of delight. “He amuses me.” Shani’s hands settled in her lap, over the denim of her jeans barely held up by the thin lines of her thighs. “Not much does, these days.” Her hands rose again, reached for the Tarot deck, shuffling them absently, pausing long enough to lean ahead and give Petunia a scratch behind one ear when my pug—uncharacteristically—stood up on her back legs to sniff at the woman’s hand. “I hear you have something of a mystery of your own to ask about.”
Oliver had told her why I was here? Whatever. “Fiona Doyle,” I said, this time to the old historian. “What do you know about her?”
Shani didn’t comment, focusing on Oliver as much as I did, while the cranky shopkeeper grimaced at me, his wrinkled lips puckering like an apple left out in the frost.
“Why are you digging up that old story?” He seemed rather offended by the question, though he did settle his bottom-heavy bulk tucked into faded brown corduroys onto the cracked leather seat of the stool behind his counter. The furniture piece groaned softly under the pressure, his patched elbows supporting him when he leaned over the finger-print smeared glass housing a selection of his own books to blink at me. “Honestly, I thought you had a better mystery for me to sink my teeth into than that waste of time.”
And that was Oliver, anything if not genteel, respectful and compassionate. I had to remind myself he was Denver’s grandfather and my young friend’s only remaining relative on the face of the earth just to keep from snapping out something that would likely get me into a great deal of trouble.
Grunt. Who was I kidding? Oliver would have loved a good back and forth.
It was Shani who put an end to the taunting rudeness. “I, for one, would love to hear about it,” she said. That seemed to catch Oliver’s attention and, despite his very recent denial, he shrugged his shoulders under the worn wool of his cardigan and carried on like he’d intended to all along. And, knowing Oliver, maybe he had.
“Fiona Doyle,” he said in his raspy voice, poking an index finger in my direction like her disappearance was my fault instead of something that happened before I was even born, “was trouble from the moment she set foot in Reading and she’s still at it, all these years later.” He scowled briefly at Shani who sat there with that interested look on her face that elicited more response from him than my pointed questions would have. “The girl waltzes into town, makes friends with everyone,” he waved his arms around him as if she’d been some kind of weather phenomenon like a hurricane or tornado wreaking destruction wherever she went, “including those parents of yours,” he jabbed at me yet again while I fought the urge to tell him to get to the freaking point already, “before running off with that Patterson fellow.”
Wait. What? “I thought she disappeared.” Malcolm didn’t say anything about an affair. Which Patterson?
“Oh, she disappeared, all right.” He grunted that as if the truth of her vanishing should be obvious and, I guess his implication made it so. “Along with some of Marie Patterson’s money, her husband, Teddy, all with a belly bigger than it rightfully should have been if the girl wasn’t doing things she shouldn’t have been doing with another woman’s husband.”
I gaped at him, heart pounding in my chest. Not because I believed him, but because I couldn’t believe what he was saying. “She was pregnant? With Marie Patterson’s husband’s baby? And she was paid off to leave town?” With the husband in tow?
Oliver sat back with a smug smile and crossed his arms over his chest. “That’s what happened. And everyone in town with any sense knows it.”
Anger woke, seethed inside me, burned a hole in the pit of my stomach while I took my turn leaning
over the counter at him. Because he did not just tell me my father was broken up over the disappearance of this woman all these years to the point of lying to me, covering up and hiding from me because she’d seduced another woman’s partner.
“That’s why Dad’s been looking for her, I guess,” I said, knowing my voice came out in a hiss. “Because why, Oliver? Not that he thinks something horrible happened to her or anything. No, no way. Not my dad.” He blanched slightly while my voice rose in volume. I had a temper, fair enough. I’d never denied it. But I’d also never had this kind of abject idiocy and outright untruthfulness thrown in my face when I had evidence to the contrary. “Right, and Malcolm Murray, her father, has lingered here in Reading all these years out of, what? His own best interest? Not because his daughter vanished without a trace and he’s been desperately trying to find her all this time.” I backed away from the counter, ready to shake the old man, not sure I was stable enough on my feet not to need something to lean against instead. There were times I loved my town and times I seriously wondered how any of the lifelong residents with their whispering, gossiping stupidity hadn’t been the end of themselves out of sheer idiocy.
Oliver choked on his response, his face red enough I knew whatever came out of his mouth would only make things worse. I fully intended to storm my way out of there, to stomp to the exit and just wash my hands of this ridiculous errand, knowing I’d wasted my precious time on trusting anyone in this town, when my gaze flickered to the case under Oliver’s hands and everything.
Stopped.
I heard him talking, knew he was saying something and not in a pleasant tone of voice, but my anger was gone, my frustration and annoyance faded in the face of the small square of parchment with the wavering lines of faint black that I knew as well as I knew my own heart. Because that penmanship, that material upon which was sketched the fragment of what looked like a mountain?