by B. J Daniels
But when he’d seen the Crenshaw Hotel, his eyes had gone saucer-wide. That night it was all lit up, looking so out of place on the edge of that tiny Western town backed up against the pine-covered mountainside.
Seeing how taken he was with the hotel, Hugh told him that presidents and kings had once stayed there years ago. “Now it’s just full of ghosts.”
Leroy had shot the man a surprised look. “You’re just foolin’ with me.”
“No, I ain’t. I wish I was,” Hugh had said as he’d parked and killed the engine. “Let’s go see what we’ve got.” He had started to open his door but stopped. “You aren’t going to faint at the sight of a dead body, are you?”
“No, sir.”
“If you feel like you’re goin’ to upchuck, you get the devil out of my crime scene.” With that, Hugh opened his door, and Leroy quickly followed, surprised and a little disappointed when they hadn’t gone into the hotel.
Instead, he’d followed the marshal across the parking lot to where some people were standing around a campfire. One of them directed Hugh toward the woods.
He’d never forget walking through those dark woods, chasing after the marshal’s flashlight beam and trying to see what was waiting for them. He’d been afraid it was going to be something so gruesome that he might embarrass himself.
That was when Hugh stopped and Leroy saw Megan Broadhurst sprawled facedown on a bed of dried pine needles. Her long blond hair was dark with her blood, and so was her white dress. She’d lost a shoe, so one of her feet was bare.
Hugh had turned to him. “Get your notebook out. Get the witnesses’ names back at the campfire. Don’t let any of them leave.” Then the marshal had stepped to the body, squatted down and checked for a pulse. “Get moving, son,” Hugh said. “Don’t let them change their clothes, and if they have already, I want what they were wearing.”
Then the marshal had gotten on his radio and called for the coroner and more deputies.
Leroy had already called for backup as he turned on the patrol car’s lights and siren and raced toward Buckhorn through the darkness. This time they would be going into the hotel—into the bowels of it.
He couldn’t help but think about what Marshal Hugh Trafton had said as he’d hit the gas and the Crenshaw Hotel had disappeared behind them that night ten years ago.
“That is one scary-ass place,” Hugh said, glancing in his rearview with a shudder.
Leroy had looked at him in surprise. He’d never taken a big, strong, by-the-book man like Hugh to be afraid of ghosts and foolishly said as much.
“Ghosts?” the marshal howled. “Ain’t the ghosts that scare me. It’s the evil I felt the one time I stepped in that place. Something lurks in the depths. Mark my words. Something dark and dangerous.”
At the time, Leroy had kept his opinion of that to himself. He’d silently scoffed as he’d looked in his side mirror, the lights of the hotel barely visible behind them.
* * *
FINN HELD CASEY tightly to him as they waited by the back door. The marshal had been abundantly clear. Don’t touch anything else. Stay where you are. Don’t tell anyone else. I’m on my way.
“We’re not staying down here. We’ll meet you at the back door,” Finn had said.
The marshal had sworn. “We?”
“Casey Crenshaw and I. She’s with me. I’m taking her upstairs.”
“I just told you to stay—”
“It’s cold down here by the wine cellar, and we both need air,” he’d snapped. “We’ll meet you at the back door. Everyone else is outside by the campfire. We haven’t told anyone, and we won’t.”
He could almost hear the marshal grinding his teeth. “I’ll see you at the back door.”
They’d stepped out onto the patio, where they would be able to see when the marshal arrived but no one at the campfire would see them there in the dark. They huddled together, both in shock. He hadn’t told Casey any more than he’d told the 9-1-1 operator and the marshal. He’d given his name, his location and said that there’d been a murder.
“It’s Claude?” she’d asked, and he’d nodded. “Devlin?” He’d nodded again, and she’d begun to cry. Now they were both silent, comforted by being together with no need for words.
Finn’s head was spinning trying to make sense out of everything. Claude and Devlin were dead, locked in the wine cellar of the hotel, killed apparently the same way Megan had been. He didn’t think that was a coincidence.
When the first law-enforcement vehicles pulled in, lights flashing, siren blaring, the marshal had barely gotten out before two more squad cars pulled up.
Marshal Leroy Baggins was much younger than Finn had imagined, but he carried himself like a seasoned veteran. He was tall, lean and all business as he strode up to them. “Finnegan James?”
Finn nodded.
The marshal turned to Casey. “You’re the owner of the hotel?”
She shook her head. “I was, but I sold it to Finn earlier today.”
The marshal looked from one to the other before turning to his deputies, who were standing beside their vehicles as if waiting for orders. “Cordon off the hotel. Get the names of those people at the campfire, and keep them down there until I tell you different.” He turned back to Finn and Casey. “You two, show me where you found the body.”
“Actually,” Finn said, “it’s bodies.”
* * *
LEROY COULD TELL that the last place either of them wanted to go was back down to the wine cellar. He was hit with the smell first, then that feeling of being underground with the weight of the hotel overhead. Nothing about it was pleasant.
Within yards of the wine cellar, he ordered, “Stay here.” He saw the drag marks on the floor going into the wine cellar, but none outside it. Stepping closer, he saw what appeared to be narrow tire tracks. That could explain how someone had gotten the bodies in. But how had they gotten them down the steep stairs from the floor above?
“Is there an elevator that comes down here?” he asked over his shoulder.
“No. There’s a service elevator near the kitchen, but it was never brought down here because of the cost,” Casey said.
Leroy nodded and entered the wine cellar, careful to step around the tracks that were already in the dust. The bodies were at the far back. He crouched down next to the first one. There was no reason to check for a pulse; the man was obviously dead and had been for some time. He did worm out the deceased’s wallet, though. Devlin Wright. It appeared the man’s head had been bashed in from behind—much like Megan Broadhurst’s had.
Letting out a curse, he moved to the second body nearby. The man’s ID said he was a doctor. Dr. Claude Drake of San Francisco. He’d also had his skull crushed from behind. Again, just like Megan Broadhurst’s. That unsolved case had followed Hugh to his grave, something the old marshal had never gotten over. Now it was coming back to haunt Leroy.
Stepping back outside the wine cellar, he found Casey Crenshaw in Finnegan James’s arms. He’d picked up on the energy between the two of them. Lovers, he thought. He found that both interesting and suspicious, especially after his initial run of both of their names through his system. Finnegan James had been missing for months and presumed dead. Casey Crenshaw had been a main suspect in Megan Broadhurst’s murder.
“Is there a place we can talk upstairs?” he asked.
“There’s the main lounge and lobby,” Casey said. “If you want more privacy, you can use the office behind the main desk.”
He followed the two of them upstairs, sealing the doorway to the basement before they walked down to the main lounge and ordering one of the deputies to seal the entry with crime-scene tape.
Leroy took in the amazing hotel as he did. Ten years ago, he’d promised himself he would come back to the hotel as a guest. He never had. He blamed Hugh for that, even though he’d come to agree
that evil did seem to live in certain people—and places.
“Why don’t you have a seat out here in the lobby while I talk to Mr. James,” he suggested to Casey.
Taking Finn back to the office, he closed the door and said, “Help me understand what’s going on here. Imagine my surprise when I ran your name through our system. Everyone thought you were dead, but I’m sure you were aware of that.”
“I can explain,” Finn said, and Leroy waved him into a chair as he sat down behind the desk and turned on his recorder. Patiently, he listened to the man’s explanation.
“You do realize how crazy that sounds. Okay, what’s this about a reunion?”
Finn explained. “I have the invitation in my room.”
Leroy studied him for a moment before he asked for the names of everyone who’d gotten the invitation.
“I don’t know, but I can tell you who showed up,” Finn said.
Leroy wrote down the names as Finnegan called them off: Jason Underwood, Dr. Benjamin Travers, Dr. Claude Drake, Jennifer Mullen, Shirley Langer, Devlin Wright and Patience Riley. “And these were the staff members the summer Megan Broadhurst worked at the hotel?”
Finn nodded. “And Casey.”
“Yes, Casey. Did you two know each other before this?”
“No.”
Leroy did the math in his head. “Who is missing?”
Finn frowned. “Claude and Devlin were the only ones.”
The marshal radioed his deputy outside the hotel to do a head count. “It appears that Patience Riley left earlier. You didn’t know that?”
Finn shook his head.
As a deputy appeared, Leroy said, “Go with Mr. James here to get the invitation, while I talk to Casey Crenshaw.” He looked at Finn. “Send her in on your way out. I hope I don’t have to tell you not to leave. I’ll want to talk to you again.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
THE MARSHAL STUDIED the young woman as she entered the room, remembering Casey Crenshaw from ten years ago. Who could forget that red hair or that face? Her freckles weren’t quite as discernible now, but those blue eyes... Those he could never forget.
Just as he hadn’t forgotten that she was a suspect in the original murder. In fact, she’d had a huge quarrel with the deceased that had been overheard by witnesses the night before Megan had been killed.
Ten years ago he’d seen fear in those blue eyes. Now he saw shock but also a wariness. “Please have a seat,” he said. “Maybe you can tell me what’s going on here and how you’re involved.”
She sat down, took a breath, let it out. “I came to Buckhorn to sell the hotel and property and take a few of my grandmother’s things that she wanted me to keep. That’s all. I was planning to leave for California tomorrow morning.”
He motioned the deputy who’d stuck his head in the doorway to enter and give him the invitation. “Tell Mr. James to wait. I don’t want him talking to the others.”
The deputy said that the crime-scene crew had arrived and had gone down to the scene, then backed out the door as Leroy read the invitation and looked up at Casey. “Did you—”
“I didn’t send those,” she said adamantly, as if it weren’t the first time she’d had to deny this. “I’d never seen one before Finn showed me the one he’d gotten in the mail. I have no idea who sent them.”
“So everyone who’s here was here ten years ago when Megan Broadhurst was murdered.”
“Except Finn. He wasn’t part of the staff, but he had dated Megan. He assumed that’s why he’d gotten an invitation.”
“You came here to sell the hotel.”
She explained that Devlin had been giving her the runaround, trying to get the price down. “Finn made me a generous offer, and I took it.”
“Devlin wasn’t happy about this?”
She shook her head. “He was upset because apparently his investors were counting on him to make the deal.”
“Who were his investors?”
“I have no idea. He kept that from me, and I didn’t really care. My grandmother recently died. I was anxious to get the place sold.”
“What was your relationship with Claude Drake?” Leroy asked.
She shook her head again. “I knew who he was because we worked together ten years ago, but I hadn’t seen him since or ever really talked to him before he left this weekend. At least, we thought he’d left.”
“Why did you question whether he had or not?”
She told him about the ghost stunt. “The lock of hair found on the tree was synthetic. It was someone wearing a wig and a white dress just trying to scare us. Also...” She seemed to hesitate. “I’m sure Finn has probably already told you about the car accident Megan was in earlier that year. It was apparently why her parents had sent her out here to work for the summer. Megan had lied about being behind the wheel. Finn found out that Claude might have taken the job here at the hotel to get some kind of revenge on Megan, since he was friends with the brother of one of the girls who was badly hurt in the wreck.”
No, Finnegan hadn’t mentioned that. He wondered if it had anything to do with these latest murders or if all of it was tied to Megan Broadhurst and her murder.
“Who had access to the wine cellar?”
“I don’t know,” Casey said. “I hadn’t been down there until tonight. I was surprised to see that someone had replaced the lock down to the basement and put a padlock on the door.”
“You went down to get wine?” She nodded in response. “Who broke the locks?”
“Finn.”
He nodded. “I’d prefer you didn’t leave town.” She didn’t seem surprised at his request, and she rose to leave but then hesitated again. “Yes?” He expected her to tell him that she needed to get back to work or some other excuse.
“There’s something I need to tell you.” He saw her swallow, and he thought, What now? “You asked me about Megan’s diary ten years ago.” He realized he was holding his breath. “I said I didn’t know anything about it.” She swallowed again. “I wasn’t telling the truth. I found the diary before Megan was killed and burned it because she’d been tormenting me and saying she’d written awful things about me in it.” Relief seemed to make her body limp. “I didn’t read it. I just burned it in the firepit.”
He swore silently. She’d interfered in a murder investigation. He doubted she was the only one. “You were sixteen, right?” A nod. “Megan had been tormenting you?” Another nod. “How did everyone feel about Megan?” he asked, suspecting Casey wasn’t the only one who’d lied.
She met his gaze. “They hated her. She plagued the entire staff. That’s why I can’t understand why they would come back here for some stupid reunion.”
“Apparently, someone had unfinished business.”
* * *
FROM OUTSIDE BY the campfire, Jason watched the bodies being brought out of the basement in black body bags. No one had told them anything except that they weren’t allowed to leave. He didn’t have to guess who was in those bags.
The cold night spring wind whipped the boughs of the nearby pines as the bodies were loaded into the back of the coroner’s van. Shirley was crying, Benjamin holding her. Jen stood staring into the fire as if she couldn’t bear to watch.
Jason couldn’t help but think of Megan. She’d been zipped up for that same ride. Like tonight, he’d stood out in the cold and watched as the body was taken away. Like then, he’d realized he was lucky that it hadn’t been him.
The deputy who’d ordered them to stay by the fire had said the marshal would be speaking to each of them before the night was over. Jason had been one of the first to go inside. He’d answered a few questions about why he was at the closed hotel and then the last time he’d seen Claude, then Devlin.
He’d answered the marshal’s questions, before being told to not say anything to anyone else. He’d been
asked his room number, and a deputy had escorted him to it.
Sprawling on his bed, he couldn’t get Megan out of his mind. He was sure Devlin and Claude were dead because of her. He thought of the night he’d gotten his hand caught in the scarf she’d had tied around her neck. She’d actually dressed up to come down to the campfire each and every time as if she wanted everyone to know that she was special.
But that night, alone with her, both of them breathing hard, he’d pulled back from a kiss, and his hand had gotten tangled in that damned scarf.
When he tried to jerk it free, it had tightened around her neck. He remembered the way her eyes had widened in alarm—and something else. It was the something else that had excited him.
He’d twisted the scarf, tightening it around her throat as her eyes widened further. He’d been scared that he might keep tightening it, but even the thought excited him. He’d kept twisting until she writhed on the bed beneath him and clutched at him, digging her fingernails into his shoulders.
That had been the best sex he’d ever had, and Megan had come back for more, each time saying she didn’t want it rough.
But the truth was, she did. Until she didn’t. Just like Patience.
* * *
FINN FOUND CASEY in her room. The moment he walked in, she ran to him. He took her in his arms, kissing the top of her head as she cuddled against him.
“It’s just so...awful,” she said as she pulled back to look at him. All he could do was nod. There weren’t words. He’d feared something had happened to them, just as he feared it wasn’t over yet. “Is it true Patience is missing?”
“Jason says she left.” He could see that she didn’t trust Jason’s word on anything. He felt pretty much the same way.
One of the windows was open a crack. He could smell the campfire and see the glow of the fire. But everyone had been brought in and questioned before being sent to their rooms. The deputy had tried to get Finn to go to his room, but Finn wasn’t having it. “I’ll be in Casey’s room. I’m not letting her out of my sight.”
