Dead to Me: A Paranormal Cozy Mystery (Mountain Shadow Mysteries Book 4) by Tarah Benner

Author:Tarah Benner [Benner, Tarah]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2024-12-02T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Fourteen

After hitting another dead end with Beckett’s case and Martha cancelling Christmas, I spent the next several days wallowing in self-pity. Another visit to the building department had proven fruitless, and construction couldn’t start up at the hotel until I got the stop-work order lifted.

There was plenty of bookkeeping and web-design work to be done, but with the Holiday Historic Tour cancelled and no prospects for bookings in the new year, I was feeling thoroughly defeated.

It didn’t help that Will was tied up with Beckett’s case. The Mountain Shadow PD had their officers working overtime investigating the actor’s death, so I’d barely heard from him since the morning of the parade.

“Would you quit wallowing?” Gran huffed one morning when I gave a particularly loud sigh.

I’d been sitting in the kitchen drinking my coffee and staring forlornly at our construction timeline. Gran was doing her Tae Bo workout, and I could hear her tracksuit swishing from the living room.

“I’m not wallowing,” I protested, raising my head so I could see over the counter.

Desmond, who was lapping loudly at his water bowl, paused to fix me with a judgmental stare.

“Traitor,” I mumbled. Then, loud enough that Gran could hear, I added, “Martha Mayberry cancelled Christmas. That means no Holiday Historic Tour, no buzz for the hotel, no bookings, no —”

“Wah, wah, wah,” Gran replied, still swishing in time with her tape. “First . . .” She punched the air with her tiny purple dumbbells. “That old bat can’t cancel Christmas. Second . . .” Gran paused to aim a few low kicks. “You seemed to be doing just fine with your marketing before you even knew about this holiday tour thing.”

“That was before there was a double homicide at my hotel.”

Gran stopped moving and grabbed the remote, turning off her tape and swishing into the kitchen in her sunshine-yellow tracksuit.

“Well, if you insist on sitting around feeling sorry for yourself, you might as well make yourself useful. I have some boxes in the attic I need you to bring down so I can finish setting up my village.”

“Your what?”

“My village.”

Suddenly, a memory of Gran’s house at Christmastime came flooding back.

I was a kid, and her living room was illuminated by dozens of tiny light-up houses. I remember it feeling uniquely magical, but it had been so long since I’d visited her at Christmas that I’d almost forgotten about them.

“They’re all labeled ‘village,’ so just bring those down,” Gran instructed, going over to the fridge to retrieve the milk and chocolate syrup.

Stifling a groan, I heaved myself out of my chair and shuffled down the hallway to access the attic.

Pulling down the little door, I coughed as a cloud of dust escaped with the fold-up ladder. Hauling myself up and looking around, I realized that Gran’s definition of “some boxes” was a lot different from mine.

There had to be at least thirty cardboard boxes marked “village,” along with half a dozen others that were unlabeled but piled with what was very clearly Christmas decor.

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