by B. J Daniels
Casey appeared more relaxed as if actually enjoying herself once she got some food in her. “You really spent a large portion of the winter here?” she asked, as if as curious about him as he was about her. They hadn’t talked about him making an offer on the hotel yet. It didn’t seem like the time or place. “How was it?”
“Cold, snowy and miserable, but at the same time beautiful in a harsh sort of way. It separates the men from the boys to winter-in, in Montana. I found it rather exhilarating.”
* * *
CASEY HATED TO admit it, but she found being in his company was both exhilarating—and exhausting. He exuded enthusiasm, charisma and pure, unrelenting male sexiness. For a man who said he’d found himself lost and at loose ends, he’d certainly snapped out of it. She said as much, making him laugh.
“All because of the Crenshaw Hotel and your grandmother. I was lost when I got here but became fascinated with the place.” He raised a brow as if seeing her skepticism. “Why do you find that so hard to believe? I was skeptical at first about the place being haunted. Now, not so sure it isn’t.” He grinned, wanting to lighten the mood. “But if Megan’s the one haunting the hotel, I would imagine this reunion will bring her out. Don’t you think that’s what someone had in mind when they planned this?”
Casey had no idea what the planner had in mind and said as much. She also had no intention of hanging around long enough to find out, but still his words made her shudder inwardly. There’d always been stories of ghosts at the Crenshaw for as long as Casey could remember. The stories were passed down each summer season. The young men on the staff always loved to scare the young women—and even some of the guests until her grandmother admonished them.
But after the murder, more and more guests at the Crenshaw Hotel reported seeing a young woman in a white dress stained with blood. Their stories put the Crenshaw on the map as one of the most haunted hotels in the West.
It amazed Casey, who scoffed at even the idea of ghosts, just as she marveled that there really were people who wanted to spend the night in a hotel with an alleged ghost haunting the hallways. Her grandmother had always smiled good-naturedly when asked about the ghosts.
That was why Casey had been so shocked when on her deathbed Anna had sworn that she’d seen Megan. “It was her,” her grandmother had said, gripping Casey’s hand so tightly that it hurt. Casey had felt a chill as she remembered the blonde, blue-eyed and sexy seventeen-year-old Megan Broadhurst had been. It was a memory she feared she’d never be able to forget.
“Gram, it was just your—”
“I saw her. You should have seen the look on her face,” her grandmother cried. “Such torment. It was as if she were begging me to help her. There was blood on her dress, blood in her hair. Casey, that girl can’t rest until her killer is found, and neither can I.” Anna’s words came out choked. “You can’t let that developer who’s been trying to buy the hotel stop you. Once the hotel is demolished... You can still get her justice before it is too late. Do it for me.”
Casey had tried not to scoff. “I manage a hotel. I’m not a detective or—”
“Casey, please. I know about your nightmares. Her killer has to be found before the hotel is turned to rubble, or none of us will ever be free, especially you. Do this for yourself. Do it for me. Promise me.” Her eyes closed, her hand loosening its grip, and for a moment, Casey feared she’d lost her. But then her eyes fluttered open, her hand tightening its hold again. Her grandmother’s glazed eyes found hers again. “Promise me. Promise.”
And she had. Anna’s eyes closed for the last time.
* * *
BENJAMIN TRAVERS HAD found his invitation at the bottom of a stack of mail he’d distractedly thumbed through. He’d seen the return address and vacantly thought it was some type of promotion. It wasn’t until he went to discard it that the invitation fell out from where his assistant had already neatly sliced the envelope open.
Picking up the card, he saw something about the hotel being demolished and read more. He felt disgusted, unable to imagine anything worse than this proposed reunion. What possible purpose would anyone have to go to such a thing?
But as he’d held the card over the trash can, he’d seen the line about only the killer not attending—as though blackmail would change the murderer’s mind.
Maybe the old Ben, as he’d been called back then, would have fallen for that. The geeky teenager with the thick glasses, pimples and skinny limbs. That Ben was gone. Benjamin had spent the past ten years remaking himself, from his body to his place in the world.
He was a prominent scientist, leading in his field of communicable diseases. He’d even been called on during the pandemic. He was currently working on a book when he wasn’t being asked to speak around the world on the subject.
If anything, he had Megan to thank for his career choice. They said the best revenge was success. Too bad she wasn’t here to see what he’d become—someone who was no longer invisible to people like her.
That old familiar bitter taste had risen up his throat to choke him. He’d swallowed it down, pretending that he’d left behind the bitterness, the anger, the pain of the cruelty she’d inflicted upon him.
He’d looked again at the invitation, wanting to rip it to shreds for even reminding him of that summer. Except he didn’t want to let it go. He wanted to show the others how he’d changed, to erase the memory of that summer, to finally put Megan and her ghost long behind him.
He could do that for one weekend, he told himself. He would do that.
* * *
“HOW’S YOUR SALAD?” Finn asked, dragging Casey out of her thoughts. As much as she’d adored Anna and missed her dearly, she hadn’t come back here to find Megan Broadhurst’s killer. Especially since Finn had spent months here thinking he could solve it but had no leads. No, she was only here to have the hotel razed and the land sold, pick up a few things to remember her grandmother by and be gone.
“Not as good as your chicken-fried steak,” she answered. But she wanted to hear more about why he was in town. “So you knew Megan and about the Crenshaw and the murder. But it doesn’t explain why you got an invitation. Or how the person who planned this macabre reunion knew to send you one.” She frowned. “You must have gotten the invitation right after you sold your company. Right before you disappeared.”
He nodded. “I have no idea why I got it or who sent it.”
“But I can tell you’re curious,” she said, wondering what he wasn’t telling her. There had to be more motivation or she couldn’t believe that he would have been invited. “Surely she knew other people? Unless they, too, were invited.” She groaned at the thought. Maybe it wasn’t just the staff from that summer.
He merely shrugged.
She pushed away what was left of her salad and studied her dining companion. His involvement worried her, just as it bothered her that he seemed to know so much about her grandmother—and her.
“I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable,” Finn said. He was more perceptive than she’d thought. Or she wasn’t as good at hiding her feelings as she believed. “I was more curious to see how the girl your grandmother described had grown up. Anna was very proud of you.”
His words brought tears to her eyes. She quickly looked away and changed the subject. “Are you serious about making an offer on the hotel and land?” Another offer definitely would help get Devlin Wright to quit stalling. She needed this over, even sooner now, with the reunion—and now Finn. She didn’t know what to make of him. She hoped to be long gone before she figured it out.
“I am serious. When are you supposed to talk to Devlin Wright?”
“In the morning.” She realized that he might have planned their meeting to coincide with the reunion, because as a former member of the staff from that summer, he would have gotten an invite.
“I’ll have you an offer by morning as well. We should exchan
ge numbers.”
She typed his phone number into her contacts and studied him, amazed how this was happening. It seemed...too easy. He met her gaze and held it until she had to look away first.
By the time they walked back to the hotel, the sun had set, leaving Montana’s big sky a rainbow of colors over the mountains to the west. A cool breeze stirred the pines and lifted her hair. It felt later than it was. It didn’t get dark this time of year until almost ten. With luck, she would be able to avoid everyone until morning, when she’d finish this—one way or another. Hopefully, she’d have an offer on the hotel and land and let the new owner deal with both the reunion and the former staff.
* * *
FINN LOOKED OVER at Casey as they reached the hotel. Was he seriously considering buying this white elephant? Why not? He could afford it, although it would mean reappearing, something he wasn’t looking forward to. The speculation on what had happened to him had died down. He didn’t want to be the Multibillionaire Bachelor in the headlines again or involve Buckhorn or Casey.
But he could see that she needed to get the hotel sold. It was the least he could do, given that he’d spent months camped out on her property.
As he held the door to the hotel open for her, she said, “I’ll consider your offer in the morning as well as Devlin’s.” She sounded all business, those intimate moments in the café long forgotten.
“Don’t accept his until you hear my offer.” He liked a challenge and now didn’t want to lose the hotel he hadn’t even considered buying before today.
“What will you do with the Crenshaw?” she asked without looking at him as she entered the hotel and he followed.
Clearly, he hadn’t gotten that far. “Truthfully? I haven’t considered that part.” She shot him a suspicious look. “But I am serious. I will make an offer.” What he would do with the place, he couldn’t imagine at this point. Tearing down the building seemed criminal, but to make it viable would require more than money. It would require a commitment he wasn’t sure he wanted to make. Nor did he think it was what Casey wanted.
“I get the feeling you want to see the hotel demolished,” he said, studying her as they entered the main hall and stopped, neither seeming anxious to go any farther.
She glanced away as if she didn’t want to talk about her reasons for needing the hotel gone. “Why would I care?”
The sound of laughter and raised voices erupted from the staff wing. Casey headed for the stairs quickly as if hoping to avoid all of it. He followed, wondering if he should warn her about what he’d found. Not just the notebook and what was written in it, but about the missing young women mentioned in Anna’s journals.
If Casey knew what he’d uncovered during his research, how would she take it? Maybe she already knew about the disappearances. Did they have anything to do with Megan’s death? Either way, most of the suspects could be in the hotel before the night was over.
They’d reached their floor, and he’d pushed open his door across the hall from hers to retrieve her suitcase for her. They’d left so quickly, she hadn’t taken it earlier.
“Thank you for dinner,” she said as she took the suitcase handle from him, their fingers brushing. He could see that she felt the electricity. But she had done her best not to show it. “Good night.” She sounded tired as she headed across the hall.
“Thanks for not having me arrested. I enjoyed dinner. You’re not at all what I expected.” He hadn’t meant to say that last part. It had just come out.
Casey stopped to look back at him. “If you got your information from my grandmother’s journals, then I’m not surprised. Or if you got it from the locals. I’m sure neither version is entirely true.”
He said nothing, thinking how she was more than he’d expected, since the first time he’d heard about Casey Crenshaw, it hadn’t been from her grandmother. Nor had it been in the least bit flattering. Megan had described Casey as an ugly, spoiled, brainless brat. Casey was beautiful and far from brainless. He could see now how Megan would have been intimidated by Casey, making her dislike her all the more.
As Casey disappeared into her room, he noticed what he’d missed. A note tacked on his door. Meet down at the firepit. You won’t want to miss the first night’s festivities. Bring Casey.
He chuckled at that. Like he could get Casey to do anything she didn’t want to. But as he stared at the note, he didn’t like the idea of leaving her alone in the hotel, either.
* * *
“WHAT DO YOU MEAN, you aren’t going?” Jen demanded when she’d stopped by the Sleepy Pine Motel on the edge of town to pick up her best friend and former coworker.
Shirley Langer mugged a face at her. “I’m not going to some stupid murder reunion. What do you think I am, crazy?” Shirley managed the motel along the two-lane that ran through Buckhorn. She had an apartment in the back and a life even duller than Jen’s own.
“You can’t not go,” Jen persisted. “Didn’t you read the invitation? Everyone will think that you killed her.”
“I don’t care.” Shirley had turned on the No Vacancy sign hours ago when a busload of tourists had rented all the rooms. Now she wandered back to her apartment, Jen at her heels. With luck, no one would need her assistance until they checked out in the morning.
Shirley opened the refrigerator and took out a beer, handing it automatically to Jen before getting one for herself. “I just want to have a beer, put my feet up and watch something mindless on television. I don’t need any more drama in my life. I certainly don’t need a murder-ghost reunion.”
Jen cracked open her beer and plopped down on the opposite end of Shirley’s sagging couch.
“Lars doesn’t want you to go. Is that the problem?” Jen said. Shirley’s boyfriend—and she used the word loosely—Lars was a point of contention between them. “He has no right to tell you what to do. He needs to put a ring on it before he starts—”
Shirley scoffed. “He doesn’t even know about the invitation. I didn’t tell him before I threw it away. Anyway, I don’t do what he tells me to do unless I want to. Even if he left Tina tomorrow, which he’s not going to do until the baby is born and he can prove it is another man’s kid, I’m not sure I want him.”
It was a small town. Jen’s cousin Tina Mullen was Lars’s live-in former girlfriend who was pregnant with, Lars swore, someone else’s child. “Oh, please, you and your drama.” She had it up to her eyeballs with this lovers’ triangle. Jen wasn’t even sure Tina wanted Lars. It would serve him right to lose both of them.
Shirley turned on the television and cranked down the volume as she took a sip of her beer.
“You have to go with me,” Jen whined. “I need you there. Think of it as a weekend away. But also you might meet the man of your dreams.”
Shirley laughed, looking at her with utter disbelief. “You mean one of the staff who is probably a murderer?”
“Still better than Lars.”
“Away for a weekend? I can see the hotel across the highway from my front window,” Shirley cried. “That’s not my idea of a weekend retreat, to go to an abandoned hotel with Megan’s ghost sneaking around every corner.” She shook her head and shivered.
Jen still wasn’t giving up. “Didn’t you say one time that you wished you could be a guest in the hotel instead of work there?”
“That was before the summer I worked with Megan.” She took a gulp of her beer. “You have to admit, this reunion sounds...stupid. Why would you want to go? How do you know that the killer won’t be there? We’ve always known it had to be one of us.”
Jen considered that for a moment. “We all had good reason to hate Megan and want her...gone. Who do you think did it?”
Shirley shook her head. She’d put it out of her mind, thinking she would never see those people again. “What makes you think I didn’t do it?”
* * *
ONCE IN HER
ROOM, Casey thought she’d feel better, but Finn was just across the hall, and when she looked out the window, she could see people standing around the campfire glowing in the growing darkness. That alone brought back a firestorm of memories, most of them bad.
She counted those gathered around the fire. Five. That meant two hadn’t come. At least not yet. She closed the drapes and turned away, her thoughts boomeranging back to Finn. She wasn’t sure what to make of him. Would she get an offer on the hotel from him in the morning?
There’d been a couple of times during dinner that she’d thought he might be flirting with her. Clearly, he was a man who’d made his fortune by going after what he wanted. But what did he want with her hotel? Or was he after something else?
The thought surprised and unnerved her. She wasn’t what he’d expected? There was something about him having so much prior knowledge of her that made her even more uneasy—and made all of this feel more dangerous.
A murder reunion? Why would someone want to bring murder suspects from that summer back here? She stood in the middle of the room, feeling as lost as Finn had said he was. She’d left the drapes open on the windows facing town. The mountains beyond were a deep purple. Montana’s big sky only had a hint of pink as darkness began to descend. The room felt cold. She rubbed her bare arms, telling herself a hot bubble bath was what she needed.
But as she turned toward the bathroom, she caught a flash out of the corner of her eye. Her heart leaped to her throat, pulse taking off at a sprint. She had only an instant to stifle a scream before she realized that what she was seeing was only a white laundry bag hanging on a hook on the bathroom door.
