Reservations for Murder

by Tim Myers

  Alex could deal with the pain. He had to. At the moment, he had one task, and that was to escape with his life.

  His foot stumbled on loose rock, and he almost went down with a twisted ankle. Fortunately, he caught himself before he fell, though the jarring contact with the stone sent another wave of nausea through him.

  The loose gravel gave him an idea. Alex had been a pretty decent pitcher in high school, though he hadn’t thrown much since. Maybe, just maybe, he could clip her shooting hand and make her drop the gun. At least she’d shot him in the right arm; he thanked the stars above that he was left-handed.

  “Come out, come out wherever you are,” Jenny called, laughing.

  Alex stuck his head up quickly and saw her back was to him now. He’d managed to work his way around her! Taking a stone the size of a softball, Alex hurled it at her head. It struck her shoulder instead, nearly spinning her around with its impact.

  When she faced him again, there was a look of pure hatred on her face. She was almost unrecognizable.

  Alex heard the shot whistle past his ear as he ducked down again.

  After she realized she’d missed, Jenny said, “Now Alex, why did you have to do that? It’s going to leave a bruise for weeks! I’m afraid I’ll have to punish you for being bad. Come out like a good boy and take what you’ve got coming.” There was a cloying edge to her tone that set his teeth on edge.

  He had to get another clear shot at her. Rushing through a precarious passageway he hadn’t been through in twenty-five years, Alex moved quickly among the rocks.

  When he looked back at her, Alex saw that she’d been moving in the same general direction! She was much too close! He’d have to throw the stone in his hand and get back down before it hit. Zipping it toward her, she must have sensed something, because Jenny whirled around, sending a wild shot screaming into the rocks above him. Her aim was definitely getting worse.

  Alex couldn’t afford to see if the stone had struck home.

  Hurrying down another passageway, he kept moving until he was sure he was far enough away to throw another stone.

  He was wrong.

  There, standing less than a foot away from him, Jenny had her revolver trained straight at Alex’s head.

  There was no way out.

  Alex’s time had just run out.

  “Jenny, let’s talk about this,” Alex said, trying to figure a way out of the jam he was in now.

  “Enough talking,” she shrieked. “Now it’s time to die. Alex, I’m truly sorry. I really did like you.”

  “Hold it right there.”

  Alex looked over his shoulder to see Sheriff Armstrong twenty feet away. He had his gun drawn, and there was a look of steel in his gaze that Alex had never seen before.

  Jenny snapped, “Put that away, you idiot. If you shoot me, I’ll kill him before I die. There’s no way you can stop me.”

  Alex said, “Jenny, what good will that do? You’re going to be caught; there’s no escape now.”

  She said snappishly, “I’ve already killed one man,

  Alex. What are they going to do, execute me again for killing you? What have I got to lose?”

  Alex said softly, “Flip the coin, Jenny. What have you got to gain?”

  “Are you kidding me? You toyed with me one too many times. You have to pay for that, Alex.”

  He touched his arm and pulled away a bloody palm. As he held it out to her, he said, “Don’t you think I’ve paid enough?”

  “Oh, that’s just the start of it, Alex.” There was a look of pure, intense hatred on her face as she said it.

  Then she pulled the trigger.

  Alex kept waiting for the explosion of pain that never came. Jenny cursed the gun, trying to figure out why it hadn’t fired, but Alex didn’t hesitate. He threw the last of his rocks at her, then climbed toward her just as she hurled the gun at his head.

  It missed, clattering off the rocks behind him.

  “Enough,” Armstrong roared. “If you don’t freeze this instant, you’re going to die!”

  “So shoot me,” Jenny screamed. “I don’t care!”

  “Stop,” Alex shouted as he fought to scale the rocks between them. She was still cursing as he wrapped his arms around Jenny in a bearlike grip so she couldn’t move. “Don’t shoot, Sheriff. I’ve got her.”

  It was an awkward embrace, but Jenny couldn’t escape, that was what was important. Instead, when she realized that she wasn’t going anywhere but jail, she buried her face in Alex’s chest, sobbing. “He had to die, Alex, he had to. Don’t you see? He had to die.”

  Alex wanted to feel pity for her, but he couldn’t. All he could see was Jefferson Lee’s lifeless body pinned against the beam with a steel shaft through his heart.

  Jenny gave up completely. She was surprisingly docile as Armstrong put the cuffs on her. After the sheriff put her in the back of the squad car, Armstrong said, “Sorry I couldn’t get here sooner, Alex. I was taking care of some personal business, and I didn’t get your message until it was almost too late.”

  “Don’t beat yourself up over it. Everything worked out fine, Sheriff.”

  Armstrong looked at Alex’s arm. “You’d better get that checked out pretty quick. Why don’t you ride into town with me?”

  The last thing in the world Alex wanted to do was to spend another second in Jenny Harris’s company.

  He was spared that, at least.

  A voice behind him said, “That won’t be necessary, Sheriff. I’ll see that he gets there.”

  Alex couldn’t believe it. Elise was standing a few feet away, a worried look on her face.

  She’d come back to Hatteras West after all.

  Chapter 23

  “Oomph,” Alex grunted as Elise accidentally brushed against him. The pain in his right arm was really intensifying now that his adrenaline rush was nearly over. Waves of angry bolts shot through him every time he so much as moved.

  “Oh, Alex, I hurt you! I’m so sorry.”

  “It’s not that bad,” he said. “I’m so glad you’re back, Elise.”

  She frowned gently. “I wouldn’t leave for good, Alex, you should know that. This place is too important to me. Listen, we can talk about that later. Right now, we need to get you to the hospital.”

  “Okay,” he agreed as he fished his keys out of his pocket. “You’d better drive, though.”

  “Alex, I’ve missed you,” she said calmly as she helped him into the passenger seat of his truck.

  “I’ve missed you, too. How’s your dad?”

  As Elise drove, she said, “He’s good enough to go back to the inn and recuperate there. I stayed as long as I was needed, but it just wasn’t the same anymore.”

  “Sometimes I imagine it’s tough going home again,” Alex said.

  “That’s the whole problem, Alex. It wasn’t home. Elkton Falls is my home now.”

  It was the best thing in the world she could have said to him.

  Doc Drake was at the emergency room, having just taken care of young Jimmy Hickman’s broken arm.

  As he worked on cleaning Alex’s wound, he said, “You are the luckiest man I know. The bullet just grazed you, Alex. I’ll be able to stitch you up and have you out of here in no time. I never would have believed Jenny Harris would snap like that.”

  “If you’d seen what I had, you’d believe it easily enough.”

  As he finished bandaging the wound, Doc said, “Well, you’ve been through a lot today. You need anything to help you sleep tonight?”

  “No, I’ll be fine,” Alex said.

  Doc Drake grinned. “I hear someone’s waiting for you outside. You’d better not keep her standing there in the hallway much longer.”

  Alex offered his left hand to the doctor to shake.

  When the door suddenly opened, Alex expected to see Elise, but he found Sheriff Armstrong instead.

  “Got a second, Alex?”

  “Just about that. I need to get home, Sheriff.”

  Doc
Drake said, “If you two will excuse me, I’ve got another patient to see.”

  After the doctor was gone, Armstrong said, “I just wanted to let you know what I found out.” He gestured to Alex’s arm. “I figure I owe you that.”

  “It wasn’t your fault I got shot.”

  Armstrong hung his head. “Nice of you to say so, but I can’t say I’d agree with it. I shouldn’t have been so bent on pinning the murder on Yadkin. I made a mistake there, one I won’t likely repeat.”

  “It’s okay,” Alex said.

  Armstrong nodded, then said, “I just found out where Marilynn Baxter was hiding out. Her neighbor Ruby Garnet came into the station an hour ago and told me she’d been helping Marilynn lie low. Ruby feels something awful about letting her go back alone when she was still so distraught, but she couldn’t have known.”

  “The only thing she’s guilty of is having a big heart,” Alex agreed.

  Armstrong said, “On the way to the station, I asked Jenny about breaking into Jefferson Lee’s shop. Seems Jefferson had himself a Polaroid Camera, and he liked to use it when they were, uh, you know, together. Jenny said she found the pictures and burned them before she came after you. She kept saying you were her last loose thread. You’re lucky to be alive, Alex.”

  “Don’t I know it,” Alex said as he got up, holding his arm gently. “Thanks for the update, Sheriff, I truly do appreciate it, but I really need to go home.”

  Armstrong made a motion to pat Alex’s shoulder but stopped abruptly. “I’ll be out at the inn later to check on Irene. She’s working the crime scene.”

  Alex almost tripped over Elise as he opened the door to leave.

  “Alex, I was so worried about you. Are you all right?”

  He lifted the sutured arm gently in the air. “I’m just glad I’m left-handed, or I would have never been able to throw those rocks at Jenny. I think that’s what saved my life.”

  “I’m so sorry I wasn’t there for you, Alex. You needed me, and I let you down.”

  As they walked toward the clerk’s desk to settle his bill, Alex said, “You had to go back for your father, Elise. You don’t owe me any apologies.”

  “Well, I’m here now.” She paused, then asked, “What’s going on with Mor and Emma? They were out in the waiting room with me, then all of a sudden they started arguing about something in whispers. The next thing I knew, they both just got up and left.”

  “They’ve been trying to iron out the differences in their relationship over the past couple of days. I think they’re either going to break up after all this is over or get engaged.”

  Elise said, “Which one are you pulling for?”

  Alex sighed. “That one’s easy. Whichever solution makes my friends the happiest.”

  Elise nodded. “Well said. Alex, why don’t we get you back to the inn, and I’ll fix you a nice dinner. How does that sound?”

  “That’s the best offer I’ve had all day.” He knew Hatteras West’s lobby would still be in the middle of Irene’s crime scene investigation, but he didn’t care.

  All Alex really wanted to do was to go home. He drew energy from the lighthouse, from Bear Rocks, from all of The Hatteras West Inn.

  Having Elise there with him again was more than he could ever ask for.

  It was time to go home.

  And now a peek at Murder Checks Inn, book 3 in the Lighthouse Inn mysteries by Tim Myers.

  Murder Checks Inn

  By Tim Myers

  Chapter 1

  “I still don’t know why we had to come all the way out to the middle of nowhere to read Father’s will,” Ashley Trask-Cooper said impatiently, smoothing the invisible wrinkles from her pantsuit with abbreviated flicks of her hand as she spoke. It was readily apparent that Ashley wasn’t used to waiting for anyone. She had asked her mother and brother the same question a dozen times since they’d recently arrived. It was obvious the Hatteras West Inn was the last place in the world Ashley wanted to be.

  Alex Winston looked up from his position behind the check-in desk at the people who had been fidgeting in the lobby of Hatteras West for the last forty minutes. Though they hadn’t introduced themselves upon their arrival, it hadn’t been all that difficult for Alex to match names with faces.

  When no one deigned to answer, Ashley continued, speaking loud enough for everyone in Elkton Falls to hear. “Only Father would book us into a lighthouse motel in the North Carolina mountains!”

  As the owner and innkeeper of the “lighthouse motel,”

  Alex had to fight to hide his smile. He knew how unusual most people found it to see a lighthouse in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, but to him, the original structure on the North Carolina Outer Banks was the one that looked oddly out of place without the lush green hardwood forest and the mountain’s foothills surrounding it.

  Cynthia Shays-Trask, the matriarch of the clan, was a slim older woman stylishly dressed in a designer outfit and sporting a graying closely cropped haircut. She said curtly, “Ashley, we are here because your father demanded it. That obese nightmare of a man has found a way to continue to spoil my life even beyond the grave.”

  Steven Trask, a young man in his mid-twenties with neatly trimmed hair and a runner’s physique said, “Mother, I won’t have you speak of him that way, do you understand? It’s time to put the past behind us.” Unlike his sister and her outfit, Steven looked at home in a nicely tailored suit.

  “Oh please, Steven,” Ashley said. “It didn’t do you the slightest bit of good being his favorite while he was alive, and it matters even less now. He can’t hear you.” All three shared the same hooked nose and prominent chin; the family resemblance was undeniable. Alex would have known they were related even without having the reservation book open in front of him. Though they were booked at the inn for the entire week, the group had refused to check in until Jase Winston, Alex’s uncle and an attorney in town, arrived on the scene.

  Jase had just recently moved back to Elkton Falls after retiring from a big law firm in Charlotte, and Alex had been glad for the chance to get reacquainted with his father’s brother. Since Alex and his brother Tony had lost their parents, Jase had done his best to serve in their stead. Alex was glad his uncle had grown bored with retirement and had hung out his shingle in town. The man was coming alive again with cases to keep him occupied. He’d confided to Alex that the two of them were a lot alike; they both dealt with the public and tried their best to serve them. Alex wondered if that was what his uncle had in mind when he’d gotten himself involved with this family.

  Ashley rubbed her hand hesitantly across the top of an ornately carved black urn sitting on the table between them. “This is just like Father, popping up like this. It smacks of his annual Christmas postcards to the family. The only way he comes back to us from South America is in a jar full of ashes. He had some kind of nerve, leaving us all behind and sending a card once a year just to gloat about his new life.”

  Steven’s face turned red as he snapped, “He just wanted us to know he was okay!” It was obvious his sister knew just what buttons to push to get a reaction from him.

  Cynthia said sadly, “Steven, you always were such an innocent.”

  Ashley said, “He’s not all that innocent. I could tell you stories about your precious little boy that would curl your toes, Mother.”

  Alex could tell that Steven was trying his best to ignore his sister’s jab. “Can’t we all just get along until Jase Winston gets here and reads the will?”

  Ashley said, “Don’t hold your breath hoping for family harmony, Steven. I for one refuse to honor a man who deserted me.” Ashley frowned, then added, “I still don’t understand why Donald and the children couldn’t come with us this week. They’re my family; they have every right to be here, too.”

  Cynthia said, “We’ve been over this a hundred times. The instructions stated clearly that no spouses or children were to attend. Your father wanted this to be just the three of us.”


  Alex had dusted the same spot on the front desk for the seventh time when Elise Danton came up behind him.

  “Alex, I need you outside.”

  Elise served as the head of housekeeping at Hatteras West. It was a glorified title, since there were just the two of them on staff, but Alex knew he couldn’t run Hatteras West without her. He’d discovered that quickly enough when Elise’s father had suffered a major heart attack, and Elise had been called back to his side. He hoped her parents enjoyed good health for a long, long time. Alex was not at all certain he could go through running the inn by himself again.

  “Is it important?” he asked. Alex would never have admitted to her that he’d been eavesdropping, but he couldn’t | help himself. It was one of the fascinations of running the inn, meeting such a vast variety of people.

  “I don’t think it can wait,” Elise said as she motioned him to the rear of the building.

  When they got to the back hallway, Alex said, “Elise, you aren’t going to believe our newest guests. I was under the impression that this was just going to be a normal family reunion when Jase booked their rooms, but they’re here for the reading of their father’s will. And from the sound of it, nobody but the man’s son is all that upset he’s gone.”

  Elise said, “Alex, I honestly don’t care if they’re here to hold a séance to bring him back; they’re paying guests, and we need all of those we can get right now.”

  Alex knew too well how true that was. They’d nearly finished rebuilding the Main Keeper’s Quarters a few months before when they’d run out of the money raised from the sale of emeralds found on the property. Unfortunately, Emma Sturbridge, their staff gem hunter, still hadn’t been able to locate the source of the main vein of stones, if in fact one even existed. The original discoverer had taken that secret with her to the grave. Because of that, Hatteras West, so named because of the exact replica of the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse built beside the two keepers’ quarters that served as the inn, was heading dangerously close to being in the red again.