Down by Kirsten Weiss

Author:Kirsten Weiss [Kirsten Weiss]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Misterio press
Published: 2016-11-22T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

I shouldn’t have done it.

Connor had told me he would talk to Van Oss. And yet, Saturday morning, when I should have been prepping to open the bookstore, I stood in front of the Historic Doyle Hotel. It looked like something out of New Orleans’s French Quarter. Opened in the 1850s as a stopover on the stagecoach road, the walls were square blocks of stone. People believed the stone walls and iron shutters had been designed to protect Doyle from forest fires. But no mountain fire had ever done more than scorch the edges of Doyle’s borders. I suspected we had a certain fairy to thank for that.

I glanced down Main Street. Most of the old buildings had iron shutters, and iron was a protection against the fae. Had the early townsfolk suspected, even then, that an unseelie was at work?

A wedding couple posed for photos on the hotel’s second-floor balcony, swagged with red-white-and-blue bunting. The bride wore a wedding dress, her bouquet in one hand. Her fiancée, in an untucked, loose white shirt and khaki slacks wrapped his arm around her waist. From the middle of the road, a photographer snapped pictures. Even the photographer looked happy.

My heart clenched. If we failed, Jayce and I would raise Karin and Nick’s daughter. I didn’t want to think about losing either of them.

And that was why I’d come on a hot morning to see the arrogant bookdealer. Van Oss was obviously connected to Mike’s murder. I didn’t care what the police said or what the coroner would say. Someone had pushed Mike off that ladder or laid his body beside it to make his death appear an accident. It was the only explanation for his tortured spirit. I couldn’t wait for the police. Not with my sister so close... My throat tightened, and I blinked rapidly.

Squaring my shoulders, I walked through the high front doors. I paused, scanning the reception area, cobalt blue with white wainscoting.

The receptionist, Erica, looked up from behind the reception window. She came into the bookstore often – historical romance was her game, and if it involved a vampire, so much the better.

She smiled, her brown eyes crinkling. “Hi, Lenore. When’s your sister going to write a historical?” My age, she was tanned and slim, a whimsical pattern of freckles dotting her nose and cheeks.

I laughed. “Probably never.”

“So what brings you to the hotel?”

“I’m here to see Heath Van Oss.”

“Let me call up for you.” She picked up the desk phone’s receiver and dialed, smiled at me, frowned. “I’m sorry, he’s not answering. He might be in the breakfast room.”

“Mind if I check?”

“Go right ahead. Oh, Lenore?”

I paused.

“I’m sorry about Mike,” she said. “He was a great guy.”

“Thanks.” I nodded to her and strolled into the breakfast room. The same color scheme dominated here – blue and white. Couples sat in antique, wooden chairs at tables covered in white cloths.

I ignored the ghosts sitting beside them.

Morning light streamed through the high, paned windows and was diffused by sheer curtains.

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