Doom With a View: A Merry Ghost Inn Mystery by Kate Kingsbury

Author:Kate Kingsbury
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: FIC022070 Fiction / Mystery & Detective / Cozy
Publisher: Crooked Lane Books

Chapter 8

Liza shuffled a little closer to her granddaughter and peered up at Nick’s face. “We want to know what you were doing on the balcony of our inn in the middle of the night.”

Melanie could feel the hair rising on the back of her neck as Nick turned his head to stare at her grandmother.

“What the hell are you talking about?” He jutted out his chin. “I have never set foot on your damn balcony.”

With Ben’s warning ringing in her head, Melanie took hold of Liza’s arm and pinched it.

“Ow!” Liza glared at her, and Melanie briefly shook her head at her. “It’s just that someone saw a man on the balcony the night Walter died,” Liza said, turning back to Nick, “and we thought it might have been you.”

“Well, it wasn’t.” Nick turned away, then paused and looked back at her. “Not that it’s any of your business, but I’ll tell you what I told the cops. I left the inn right after you paid me. I came back here and waited for Cindi in her trailer. We spent the night in there together. End of story.”

Liza gasped, and he sent her another dark look before stomping off after his two workmates.

“Well,” Liza said, looking shaken, “what an unpleasant man. What on earth does Cindi see in him?”

“You can’t blame him for losing his temper,” Melanie said as she opened the car door for her grandmother. “You practically accused him of murder.”

“You know what they say about people who protest too much.” Liza climbed back into the car. “I don’t trust him.”

“Cindi obviously trusts him.” Melanie slid behind the wheel, trying to avoid Max’s enthusiastic cold nose on her cheek. “Sit!” she told him, and he obeyed at once, squatting back on his seat as she started the engine.

“Cindi’s young.” Liza fastened her seat belt. “She’s guided by her heart, not her head. We’ll have to ask her if Nick really did spend the night with her.”

“That’s prying into her personal life.”

“That’s establishing an alibi.”

“Right. But if it wasn’t Nick who Joe saw on the balcony that night, then who was it, and how did he get in the house?”

“Like I said before, someone could have climbed up to the balcony.”

Melanie tried to picture that as she pulled out of the campground. As far as she could remember, the only handhold on the outside walls was maybe a drainpipe.

“As long as we’re out,” Liza said as they turned onto the coast road, “how about lunch at the hardware store? We need to ask Doug Griffith if his brother knows anything about our murder. Maybe Grumpy Dutton knows something we don’t.”

Remembering how the cheerful pub owner loved to tease her grandmother, Melanie had to smile. “Even if he did, I doubt if he’d tell Doug’s brother about it. Shaun’s only a reserve police officer.”

“Yet somehow, Shaun seems to know what’s going on at the station. Someone must do a lot of talking.”

Melanie slid a glance at her. “You don’t have to make an excuse to see Doug.

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