Katie didn’t know what she was getting into with that. There had been a lot of back and forth communication with them both about whether they could film inside the Inn and whether the power sockets could handle the drain from their equipment, and so on. For all Katie knew the Heritage Inn was going to end up plastered all over the internet with people giving tours and wondering if their flashlights were going to flicker like in those haunted paranormal investigations shows.
She would worry about it if something happened, she decided. In the meantime, she had her own errands to run. Like she’d been telling herself just a few minutes ago, everything was almost ready. The kitchen was all stocked and the rooms were all set up, but the guy who ran the laundry service in town was still being evasive about the terms of their agreement. It was at a point now that Katie wasn’t even really sure they had an agreement.
With all the sheets and cloth napkins and towels they were going to have to keep clean, they needed someone to do it for them. Otherwise, Katie could look forward to spending every night for the foreseeable future doing load after a load of laundry with her own two hands. She would much rather have someone else do it so she could spend her nights with Riley in their bed upstairs. They’d just moved into the master bedroom suite two days ago, and they were still breaking the place in.
Whoever they chose to do the laundry had to be someone dependable, though. Not someone who wouldn’t even return her voicemails.
Katie collected her jacket and her purse from the coatrack behind the check-in desk, and patted the pockets of her jeans to make sure her car keys were still there. The weather was getting gradually chillier now that October had arrived. Her long-sleeved top would probably be enough for a quick trip down the block and back, but the jacket was coming with her anyway. There had been rainclouds in the sky all morning.
“Riley?” she called up to him.
It was a moment before she heard the sound of something metal clattering, and then a few swear words that were both colorful and creative. When he appeared at the top of the stairs he was sucking on his knuckle and there was blood on his fingers.
“Yeah?” he muttered around his injured hand.
“What did you do?” she asked, staring at the blood.
He waved his other hand to tell her it was fine. “It’s nothing. Really. I just got pinched between the wrench and the pipe.” He took a rag out of his back pocket and pressed it to his knuckles. “See? I’m fine. I’m a big boy.”
Well, that certainly was true. He was tall and broad-shouldered and his years of physically hard work building and renovating houses had toned every single inch of him. His hair was nearly as dark as hers. It clung to his forehead now, damp with sweat. The white t-shirt he was wearing outlined his body nicely. He was tough, and she loved him deeply, but she really wished that he would just admit when he was hurt.
She dropped her purse on the floor and started up the steps. “I was going to go over to the laundromat and talk to Herman again. He might own the only business in town that cleans clothes but if he wants our business he better learn how to return a phone call. Um. Maybe I should stay here and help you wrap that, though.”
“I got it,” he promised her. “Really. I wouldn’t be much of a contractor if I stopped working every time I got a little scrape. Go ahead. I’ll be here when you get back.”
She hesitated, but then she blew him a kiss. “Okay. I won’t be long. Want to grab some lunch when I get back?”
“Yes, please. I should have the pipes fixed by then.”
“Good. See you in a few minutes.”
He waved to her as best he could while keeping the pressure on his wound. Just as she turned away, she saw a single drop of blood fall from his hand to the floor.
She hoped he cleaned that up quick. Blood had a tendency to leave a stain.
Chapter 3
The town of Twilight Ridge was small and cozy. There wasn’t a single streetlight anywhere. The biggest intersection was on Main Street, a four-way stop with businesses all around. Her Inn was a right turn from Main Street, down past the Good Eats Diner. The laundromat was on another side street, further up and to the left.
It hadn’t taken long to memorize the layout of the town. Not like some of the cities she’d lived and worked in. There was the library and the museum and the Grace Community Church, and lots and lots of houses. The diner. Her Inn. The grist mill. Oh, and the antique shops. That was the real industry here in Twilight Ridge. Antiques for sale on every block.
This was New Hampshire, after all, where antiquing was taken seriously. Just last year an unsigned original copy of the Declaration of Independence had sold for one and a half million dollars. A shoe was once worn by George Washington’s personal valet sold for two hundred thousand. Katie wasn’t interested in pouring out that kind of cash for anything, but she had gotten some great pieces right here in Twilight Ridge.
People drove for miles to find interesting antiques, and if something was one of a kind they could be willing to pay almost any price. That meant a steady stream of tourists, and Katie’s Inn was the only place for any of them to stay in Twilight Ridge.
What a change this was going to be from the life she’d known. Flipping houses had always been what she lived for. It had been her passion for years. Now she was in her--ahem--late twenties, and she just might have a business on her hands that could make her money with only a minimum of effort on her part.
Not that she minded the effort, but how awesome it was to imagine being retired by the time she was thirty. If the Heritage Inn did well for her, maybe she could find another little town with another little Inn that needed fixing up, and do it all over again.
Katie Pearson, entrepreneur. It had a nice ring to it.
She shook her head as she parked her car at the curb in front of the laundromat, a goofy grin on her face that she just couldn’t shake. “Let’s just take this one step at a time,” she told her reflection in the rearview mirror. “No sense getting ahead of ourselves.”
She got out and was smiling up at the dark clouds coming their way, daring them to ruin her good mood, when she nearly ran into a man coming down the sidewalk from the other direction.
“I’m sorry...oh, Reverend Keller, hi!” She resettled her purse on her shoulder, completely embarrassed. “I guess I need to watch where I’m going.”
“Nothing to worry about,” he told her. “We all lose sight of where we’re going from time to time.”
Brent Keller was an older man with a fringe of gray hair that circled the bald spot on top of his head, and fine wrinkles around both his mouth and his washed out brown eyes. He liked to give out cryptic advice, too. She supposed all pastors did.
The black suits he wore might be reminiscent of a Catholic priest’s uniform, but Brent was a non-denominational pastor. His collar had no white square. There was no touch of color at all, actually. Just all black.
Keller was one of the first people in Twilight Ridge who had come to greet Katie when she moved into the Inn. He’d invited her to his church, and let her know that if she needed anything she could feel free to call on him. He knew just about everyone in town.
“Were you out for a walk?” she asked him.
“I’m on my way to Winnifred Holcom’s house, actually.” He stuffed his hands into his pockets as he shrugged his shoulders. “She hasn’t been feeling well. I’m trying to convince her to go to the hospital but she’s stubborn, I’m afraid. She doesn’t have any family. So, I do what I can for her.”
“That’s very nice of you.” It was good to know there were decent men like this around. Men other than her boyfriend, of course. “Well, I won’t keep you. I have to talk to our friendly neighborhood laundromat owner, myself, if I expect my guests to have clean sheets to sleep on.”
“Ah, yes. Mister Middleton. He takes some getting used to, but there’s no one better at the business of cleaning laundry.”
“Maybe that’s because he’s the only laundromat within fift
y miles.”
Reverend Keller raised an eyebrow at her.
“I know,” she said, “because I checked. I have to deal with him but he needs to know he can’t just run over me because I’m a woman, either.”
He smiled and reached over to put a hand on her wrist. “I’m so glad that you took over the Inn, Katie. I never liked that place. It just felt...evil. All the time I’ve lived here, whenever I would walk past there, I felt like something or someone was watching me. Now that we’ve heard what the previous owner was doing in the basement, I understand why.” He nodded, as if he was confirming what he was saying. “We needed someone like you in Twilight Ridge. You’ll be a good addition to our town. I know you will.”
“Thank you, Reverend Keller. I won’t be here forever, though. Just long enough to get the Inn running on its own.”
He actually seemed disappointed. “Well. Maybe you’ll change your mind after you’ve been here for a while. Twilight Ridge has a way of getting under your skin.”
Smiling at her again, he turned and whistled his way up the sidewalk, nodding to people he knew as they passed by.
The shopkeeper's bell over the door jingled as Katie walked into the cleaners. The smell of chlorine and floral-scented cleaning agents filled the narrow room. A square service window in the wall opposite the door had a counter and a cash register. Beyond the window, in the back part of the building, items of clothing in clear plastic sleeves hung from a circular track suspended from the ceiling.
The whole place was eerily quiet.
“Hello?” she called out.
There was no reply.
“Perfect,” she muttered to herself.
There was no access to the back of the building from here. Herman’s laundry was as secure as Fort Knox. All Katie could do was lean through the window to look around. There were white canvas clothing bags piled to one side, and cardboard boxes stacked haphazardly to the other. She couldn’t see anything else through the wall of clean clothes hanging and waiting for pickup.
“Hello?”
With a squeak and a whir of electrical motors, the clothes began to move.
Startled, Katie jumped back, her hand going to her chest where her heart had tried to leap into her throat. She watched the clothes going around and around, the plastic rustling softly like words barely spoken, the clank of the endless belt-like chains carried by an angry ghost.
Then she took a breath and told herself not to be so jumpy. This was the laundromat, for the love of God, not some horror novel where something was waiting to jump out at every turn.
The clothes stopped.
A man appeared in the window, leaning on the counter, smiling at her like he’d just played the best trick in the world. “Well hey, it’s Katie Pearson. Sure it is. What can I do for you today?”
Herman Middleton was a long-time resident of the town. He was in his fifties and he had apparently spent nearly every single day of his life indoors because he was pale as spoiled milk with hands that were soft and smooth and permanently wrinkled. Katie had talked to him several times before. He was always polite. He just wasn’t always helpful.
Katie took a minute to collect her breath. “What you can do for me, Herman, is finalize our agreement for you to do the Inn’s laundry.”
He scratched at the side of his neck with a finger. “Well, dash it all. Didn’t I send you the final contract to sign for my services? I’m sure I did.”
“No,” she told him directly. “No, you did not.”
“Well, isn’t that just me all over.” He laughed. Katie didn’t laugh with him. “Tell you what. Got a copy of it right back here. I’ll just give it to you now and you can bring it back to me later. I’m looking forward to your business, ayup. Sure am.”
Katie thought he certainly had a funny way of showing it. “I’ll look over the contract here and sign it now. We’re opening tomorrow.”
“Are you now? Well, I’ll be. How wonderful for you.” He was reaching under the counter, and she could hear him shuffling things back and forth. “That last owner did all her own laundry, you know. Of course, that’s probably because she was killing people in the basement. Lord almighty, sure can’t picture that. Right under our noses and all. Never know what’s going on behind closed doors, I suppose. Now that’s a fact.”
He stopped for a minute and stared straight at her, and Katie had the impression that he was talking about her specifically.
“Ah. Here you go.” He set a piece of paper down on the counter. “Knew I had it.”
He put a pen down with it, and Katie came over to turn the contract around so it was facing her.
His hand slammed down on top of it, fingers splayed, with a loud thump.
Katie jumped. Again.
His gaze locked with hers. “I just want to make sure,” he said, “that you really want to stay here in Twilight Ridge. Our town isn’t for everyone, ‘fraid not.”
Angry that he’d been able to spook her a second time, she tugged the paper away from him. “That’s my concern, Herman. Not yours. You just do the laundry. Okay?”
His expression turned to stone, like she’d managed to insult him somehow. “Ayup, I understand. Just remember what I said. Now, I take delivery of dirty clothes on Tuesdays and Fridays. Don’t take in clothes on Sundays. That’s a day of rest, sure enough. I’m always over at Reverend Keller’s church on Sunday. I expect we’ll see you there, seeing as how you’re part of our town now?”
Katie listened to him with half an ear as she read the contract over to make sure it was what she had agreed to.
“Well, church isn’t for everyone, I suppose. Some of us like to have our immortal souls saved. Some of us like to stay ignorant. That’s all.”
She eyed him, not dignifying that comment with a response, and then she signed across the bottom line and pushed it back to him.
“There,” he said, smiling like he hadn’t just tried to insult both her intelligence or her soul. “All done and proper. You’re going to do just fine here in Twilight Ridge, sure enough. ‘Course, you could stand to be a bit nice to the folks who came here before you.”
He stared at her a moment longer, and then he turned away and went back to doing whatever it was that he’d been doing before Katie got here.
She walked out without saying another word. Obviously, she wasn’t going to make friends with everyone in Twilight Ridge.
Chapter 4
Katie couldn’t remember ever having a morning this busy.
It wasn’t quite nine o’clock yet and already the guests for two of the rooms had checked in. Both of them had their “equipment” out and ready. Cameras, long microphones wrapped in foam, protective clamshell cases for thermal imagers and other tricks of the ghost hunting trade. Katie smiled and nodded as they explained their techniques and made promises that nothing they would do was going to interrupt the Inn or her.
The man who checked in second, one Victor Akers, asked her where the best place to see a ghost would be. Katie answer was the movies, and he laughed. “Good one,” he said, taking pictures of everything around him and checking the digital display each time.
Katie winced with each photo he took, but each time the screen showed nothing at all. She didn’t know what she was worried about. If regular cameras could capture ghosts, wouldn’t there be photos of ghosts everywhere?
Victor smiled at her and winked as if he’d heard her thoughts. Katie smiled back. As long as people were willing to pay her money to stay at the Inn, they could take as many photos as they wanted to.
Everything was set and ready. The plumbing worked, the menu was set, and each room had a little paper welcome bag in it with wrapped chocolates and bottles of water and some coupons for the local shops. That last part had been a little suggestion of Riley’s, to bolster cooperation between them and the rest of the town. It was the diner and a few of the antique places, mostly, but there was a ten dollar off coupon for a car wash at the gas station down the road, too.
Such a smart man she’d managed to fall in love with.
She was humming to herself when the front door opened again and a man came in carrying a backpack over one shoulder and a suitcase in his hand. Katie was expecting more hard plastic suitcases of camera equipment, but this guy had just his luggage. He smiled brightly at her as he came up to the registration desk.
“Hi. I’m Jason Maldeeves. I have a reservation.”
Katie smiled back at him--her face was starting to hurt from smiling so much--and brought up his reservation screen. “I’ve got your information right here, Mister Maldeeves. We’re glad to have you staying with us.”
“Likewise,” he said gleefully. “But, call me Jason. Mister Maldeeves was my father.”
Katie couldn’t even work up a polite laugh for that one. If there was one joke in the world that she’d like to kill with fire, it was that one.
“Just give me a moment,” she told him. “I’ve got your payment information already so this shouldn’t take long.”
“No problem. I’m just really excited to stay here. I’ve been searching for ghosts for years, staying in all the haunted Inns all over New England. The history of this one is so much deeper than anywhere else I’ve been. The murders, the rumors of witches in the town’s history, I mean wow. I wouldn’t be surprised if I see a ghost the very first night.”
Katie nodded as he talked. It was pretty much the same stuff that the other guests had said to her, and she let it just wash right over her. That was part of the attraction of the Heritage Inn, and if she wanted to keep reaping in money from return clients she was going to have to play into it.
Katie hadn’t advertised the history of death surrounding this place. She hadn’t done anything to keep people from finding out either. She didn’t have to. After all, a simple internet search would reveal everything anyone wanted to know, and more. Some of it had even surprised her.
She just didn’t want her guests to be disappointed now that the ghosts of this place had gone quiet.
Sight Unseen Complete Series Box Set Page 49