by B. J Daniels
Finn must have seen her weaken because he charged ahead as if he was closing a business deal. “Another reason we should have dinner is that I know you’re also anxious about seeing the townspeople for the first time after word got out about your plans for the hotel. Your ears must have been burning when they found out. There was even a group led by Vi Mullen to try to get the hotel into a historical register to stop you.”
She felt a moment of alarm. Nothing could hold up the sale. She’d been counting on this.
“Don’t worry. They failed. But I would make a great buffer the first time you go into town since some of the residents act like they’re afraid of me, except for Earl Ray.” He shrugged. “Earl Ray likes me, but I suspect he likes everyone.”
“He does.” She felt herself giving in. Maybe Finn wasn’t as delusional as she’d thought. He’d certainly summarized her situation quite quickly and easily. But then again, she reminded herself, he’d spent months hiding out in a boarded-up hotel in Buckhorn looking for a ghost. That did make him questionable, even if he was rich and eccentric. “I can’t believe the locals haven’t figured out who you are. Especially Earl Ray.”
He shrugged and grinned. “I look homeless, don’t I?” She nodded. “They’ll be surprised that you haven’t had me arrested for trespassing.”
“I’m still considering it.”
His grin broadened. Dang, but the man was gorgeous. “Their mouths will drop open when they see us together at the café. Plus, it will give me a chance to show you that I’m not dangerous. Nor a crackpot. But the townspeople don’t have to know that.” He laughed, and she actually smiled.
Still, she couldn’t help feeling skeptical as well as wary. The man had sold his business, made a fortune and disappeared, only to turn up after hiding out in this old hotel most of the winter hoping to see Megan’s ghost? That would make anyone leery of him. Nor was she sure she could believe him—let alone trust him. And to find out he’d known Megan...
No matter what he said, she sensed he was running from something. As someone who was doing her own running, she recognized the look. She told herself she should be careful because a man like that, well, he was dangerous, especially if a woman let that grin of his get to her.
But danger was relative, she thought as she considered that one of the former staff from ten years ago was probably a killer. Now they were entering the hotel on the floor below with plans to stay for the entire weekend. They’d all been suspects in Megan’s murder, her included. Right now, Finn seemed the most normal person here, and she really was hungry. “This dinner you’re suggesting... Who’s buying?”
“I think I can afford it.” His grin really did make him damned irresistible. Right now she would have considered having dinner with the devil if it meant escaping the hotel and this so-called reunion.
* * *
JENNIFER MULLEN HAD given little thought to her basic nature—until the invitation came in the mail. She was abrasive, argumentative and had a mouth on her and a questionable past. Enough people had mentioned it that she’d accepted it as true. She also carried a grudge, as any of her exes could attest.
“You’re never going to find a man if you don’t tone it down,” her mother used to tell her. Like Jen wanted or needed a man that badly that she’d been willing to change. Maybe if she ever met a man who made her want to be different...
Then she’d gotten the invitation for the Crenshaw Hotel reunion and thought about the teenage boy who’d taken more than a piece of her heart ten years ago. He’d been the rare one who’d made her wish she were capable of being someone else. Someone who might find herself married to a famous doctor named Claude Drake.
She’d thought that ship had sailed—until she got the invitation. There’d been a lot of other men since then, but Claude had been a real heartthrob. Although, he hadn’t seemed to know it. He’d been young and so innocent for someone who was brilliant in other ways. He’d skipped a bunch of grades, graduated from high school and college early and was headed for medical school at eighteen. He’d been inexperienced; that much she knew. Too much book learning and not enough street smarts, especially when it came to girls. He’d been starry-eyed with Jen. His first.
But then Megan had turned his head. Jen hadn’t blamed Claude. Megan had a way of getting what she wanted. Clearly she was rich like him and like Jason. So what had she been doing working at the Crenshaw, anyway?
Not that it mattered after ten years. She Googled Dr. Claude Drake. He was famous for coming up with a new surgical procedure. Surely he wouldn’t come back to Buckhorn for some murder reunion? What if the invitation was a joke, just one she wasn’t getting? Was there even one of them who wanted to spend any time remembering Megan? And yet she’d never forgotten her and doubted the others had, either.
What would Claude be like now? Would he remember the two of them in the woods that night? She felt her pulse tick up at just the thought of seeing him again. If this invitation was real...
She’d studied the invitation as if the answer to her future was subliminally printed on the card stock. Last chance before the hotel was demolished... So Casey Crenshaw really was going to raze the old place, just as Jen had heard?
She’d checked the return address. The postmark was San Francisco. Jen had heard that Anna had died out there recently. So that meant her granddaughter, Casey, must have sent the invitation. She remembered the timid, redheaded kid that Megan had given such a hard time. Why would Casey want to remember Megan any more than Jen did?
She tapped the edge of the invitation card on her front teeth and thought. Did she care who had sent it to her? She cared more about who would be there and what she was going to wear. Pulling out her phone, she called her cousin to tell her.
“That sounds ghastly,” Tina Mullen said. “Surely you aren’t going?”
“Why not?”
“You hated Megan. You threatened to kill her, as I recall.”
“That was just between us. Anyway, everyone who knew her wanted her dead. Besides, remember that boy I told you about?”
Her cousin sighed. “I should have known that’s what this is about.”
“I’m thinking he might be there. It might be fate.” She rushed on before Tina could argue. “By the way, the hotel is going to be razed. It’s not just a rumor. That’s why the reunion is being held, because it’s the last chance before the place is gone.”
“Mother is going to have a fit.” Jen’s aunt, Vi Mullen, had tried to get the locals to chip in to buy the place and failed.
Not that Jen had cared. “I need to borrow something to wear. Since you can’t fit into any of your cool clothes...” Her cousin was pregnant and hadn’t been able to fit into anything for months. “I need something...sexy.” She thought of Megan and felt her stomach roil. “Just in case I run into Megan’s ghost, I want to look really good. I have a final score to settle with that bitch.”
“I’d be careful talking like that. People will think you really did kill her.”
* * *
CASEY REALIZED THAT she had needed the fresh air as much as the short walk into town to the café. The hotel was only a couple of blocks outside the city limits. The cool evening spring air felt good against her sunburned face. She caught the familiar scents of Buckhorn. They reminded her of better days when she and her grandmother would wander in on an evening. Anna loved this town, and the residents had loved her.
A few people glanced in her direction as they reached town, but she didn’t recognize anyone she knew. The busload of tourists were already scurrying about town as if having money to burn before nightfall. She noticed that the bakery, candy shop and ice-cream parlor were all busy, and so was the general store down the block.
With a start, she saw that they’d reached the café. Like a perfectly normal gentleman, Finn held the door open for her, and she stepped in. She stopped just inside the door. Earl Ray looked u
p from where he sat at the counter. He was a welcome fixture in Buckhorn and the nicest man Casey had ever met. He’d always been kind to her and her grandmother and was dearly loved by anyone who knew him.
His blue eyes brightened at the sight of her as he got to his feet. At mid-to-late fifties, he was still spry and athletically built with thick salt-and-pepper hair. He was smiling as he pulled her into a hug, saying, “It is so good to see you. I was so sorry about Anna.” As he drew back, he met her gaze. “She will be missed.”
Casey could only nod as she looked into the man’s open face. There was true caring in his expression.
“If you need anything, anything at all, let me know.” Earl Ray shifted his gaze to Finn. She saw the moment of surprise, but Earl Ray hid it well as he smiled and held out his hand to Finn. “Good to see you. Wasn’t sure you’d still be with us.” The older man’s gaze came back to her. “Hope you’re staying for a while.”
“Thank you.” It was all she could say since she wasn’t staying. But he and the rest of Buckhorn’s residents would know that soon enough—if they didn’t already. After all, Finn had seemed to know her schedule.
Finn said goodbye to Earl Ray and then, putting one large, warm hand in the small of her back, ushered her toward a booth away from everyone else. She’d felt an electric shock at his touch and hoped he hadn’t felt her reaction. “Nice guy,” he said of Earl Ray as they took seats across from each other.
Casey nodded distractedly. What was she doing here with this man who unsettled her? Worse, she hated to admit that he was right. The moment she walked into the café, she could tell that word had gotten out about her—and the sale. While it had been ten years since she’d been here, people had recognized her. Probably the hair. Eyebrows had shot up at the sight of her. The sight of her with Finn added even more disapproval to their expressions.
“This may have been a mistake,” she whispered. Of course this was a mistake. Coming back to Buckhorn had been a mistake.
“You have to face the music sometime,” he said. “Don’t worry—they’ve been serving me for months. They’ll still feed us.”
“And spit in our food,” she said.
“Where is your faith in the goodness of humanity?” he joked as a waitress she didn’t recognize came over with two glasses of water and two menus.
Casey could feel the locals staring at the two of them. She hid behind her menu until she heard Finn chuckle.
He couldn’t have missed the sour looks they were getting and seemed to be enjoying it. “They can’t eat you,” he whispered, still chuckling.
She peered at him over the top of the menu. “You should know.” The items to order hadn’t changed in all the years her grandmother had brought her to this café—the only one in town. Only the prices had changed. She closed her menu and put it down, concentrating on the man sitting across from her as a distraction.
“You were going to tell me the real reason you’re here, why someone invited you to this...reunion and how you knew Megan,” she said quietly. “You haven’t been here looking for a ghost.”
Finn didn’t bother to pick up his menu, just pushed it aside, as he leaned forward and locked gazes with her. She stared into those sparkling eyes and realized he was about to tell her the truth whether she was ready for it or not.
“I grew up mowing lawns.” He nodded affirmation as if she had questioned that. “My father owned a landscaping business. I knew I didn’t want to do that the rest of my life, so I worked hard in school and college and started my own business.”
“That was all in the news after you disappeared.”
He smiled at her impatience. “I’m getting there.” The waitress returned. “Want a milkshake?” Finn asked Casey impulsively. “Chocolate?”
She shook her head and turned to the waitress. “Ice tea, please, and I’ll take the baked-chicken salad with vinegar and oil.”
Her companion looked crestfallen before he ordered a chocolate milkshake and the chicken-fried steak with fries. He grinned over at her. “If you’re nice, I’ll give you a bite.”
Casey shook her head but couldn’t help smiling. “You really are incorrigible,” she said as the waitress left, taking the unused menus with her.
“But you’re glad you came to dinner with me, aren’t you?”
She couldn’t help but smile and admit she was. With the waitress gone to put in their orders, he continued as if he hadn’t been interrupted. “Then I worked more years, nose to the grindstone, to make the business successful. One day I was offered more money than I could count for that business. I took it, not realizing how it would feel when suddenly I didn’t have that challenge anymore. I’d worked hard since I was fourteen. Suddenly I didn’t have a job. I had so much money that I didn’t have any reason to get up in the morning unless I felt like it. I didn’t have...a goal. I was questioning everything about my life. My father had died a few months before that, my mother right after him. I was alone with too much money and too much time on my hands.”
“I’m sorry about your parents,” she said, offering condolences and wondering where he was headed with this discussion and if he would ever get there.
“My father and I were especially close since we used to work together. He and I used to take care of the Broadhurst estate.” She felt her eyes widen before he added, “Megan lived there before she took a summer job at your grandmother’s hotel. Before she was murdered.” He shrugged. His gaze felt electric as it settled on her. “She and I had gotten close for a while back then. So, lost and at loose ends, I decided to solve her murder by coming to the hotel, and if I got to see her ghost, well, that would be something, too, wouldn’t it?”
Casey laughed before she realized he meant it. “You’re serious.”
CHAPTER SIX
“WHEN I WANT SOMETHING, I go after it,” Finn admitted, enjoying being with Casey. While he hadn’t thought he wanted an old, haunted hotel, he definitely was intrigued by the owner.
“That at least answers one of my questions,” she said. “You really thought you could accomplish what the state investigators couldn’t? Just like that? You decided to solve the cold case that no one else could. I suppose you thought you’d find the killer hiding in the hotel?”
Finn laughed. It wasn’t the first time a woman had questioned what they took as conceit. Except with Casey, he wasn’t insulted. “Megan’s killer was never apprehended. I thought the answer might be here.” He shrugged. “It was worth a try.”
Worth a try? “You’re telling me you spent months looking for clues?”
“I had some time on my hands. Anyway, I loved exploring the hotel, looking in lots of nooks and crannies, learning about the hotel—and you—from your grandmother’s journals.” She blinked in obvious surprise. “You knew that your grandmother kept journals, right?”
She shook her head as if to clear out the cobwebs. “I knew my grandmother was old-school. She used registration books instead of a computer because she liked doing things the way they’d always been done. But she kept journals?”
“There was a journal for every year that she ran the hotel. And an entry for every day at that. I found a stack of diaries in a cabinet in the office, kind of hidden in the back. It was interesting reading on those lonely nights. Through those, I learned about the hotel, its history, your grandmother’s love for it—and about you and her love for you.”
“I was wrong. This could get worse,” she mumbled under her breath.
He could see that all of this had hit her hard. He didn’t know how to soften the impact. She hadn’t expected to find him in the hotel—let alone discover the staff from that summer planned to spend the weekend with her.
“The hotel’s history is fascinating,” he said, hoping at least to prove to her he wasn’t a threat. “The more I read, the more interested I became.” In the hotel, but mostly in Casey. But he’d also been loo
king for answers to Megan’s murder and some other mysteries that had turned up. “I haven’t spent all my time wandering around the hotel looking for a ghost like I first led you to believe. I contacted libraries, museums and historical societies around the area for even more information. The locals provided old newspaper articles and stories.” And Megan’s ghost hadn’t bothered to show herself in all that time. So like Megan, he thought.
Casey didn’t look all that relieved by the news.
He thought about the notebook and the other information he’d found. This was definitely not the time to tell her about that—or his suspicions.
During his extensive research on the hotel, he’d found that every few years, a young girl connected to the hotel would go missing in Buckhorn. Megan, though, was the only one whose body had been found.
“You seemed to have attacked this with the same intensity I suspect you had with your business,” she said. He smiled in answer as the waitress brought their meals and drinks. They didn’t speak until the young woman left them alone again.
“I’m sorry I scared you earlier.” She looked as if she was going to deny it, but he rushed on. “I’d been looking forward to meeting you.” He picked up his fork and knife and cut a piece of chicken-fried steak. He took a bite, then cut a piece and slid it onto her plate with a grin.
He knew the smell alone had to have her mouth watering, but she still pretended she didn’t really want it even as she picked up her cutlery, cut a piece off and popped it into her mouth. She closed her eyes as she chewed, making him chuckle at her expression.
“It’s as good as it smells, huh?”
Those blue eyes flashed open. “This steak is wonderful.” He couldn’t help but grin. He liked looking at her. She had a very expressive face. He wanted to ask her if she still was interested in art, but then he’d have to tell her that her grandmother had saved a lot of her earlier works. He didn’t want to embarrass her.