Veiled in Murder (A Ryli Sinclair Mystery Book 5) by Jenna St. James

Author:Jenna St. James [St. James, Jenna]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2018-07-28T04:00:00+00:00

***

“I say we go by the Granville Hotel and see if the fiancé is still around,” Aunt Shirley said as I fired up the Falcon. “I’d like to get his take on Samantha and whether or not he thinks she could be the spy.”

“Do you really think he’ll tell us if she was the spy or not?”

Aunt Shirley shrugged. “Worth a shot.”

Five minutes later I pulled into a slot in front of the Granville Hotel. Aunt Shirley pulled open the ornate, gold-plated door of the hotel and we walked inside the dimly-lit foyer. The smell of mildew and stale smoke greeted me, and it was all I could do not to turn around and walk back out.

“How can I help you?” the older lady behind the counter rasped as we approached. I loathed to walk any closer. I could see a thin line of smoke curling upward toward her face from the counter.

I had no idea who she was…and that was saying a lot. I thought I knew just about everyone in Granville. Outside of the years in college, I’d lived in Granville my whole life. I placed her in between Mom and Aunt Shirley’s age, with curly silver hair and a heavily-wrinkled, leathery face.

“You two needing a room?” she asked as she blew out three perfect smoke rings. She squinted her eyes at me, then looked over at Aunt Shirley. “This isn’t no funny business, is it?” She pointed her cigarette hand at me. “This lady hasn’t kidnapped you and is now selling you into some kind of kinky se—”

“No!” Aunt Shirley and I shouted at the same time.

The lady’s bony shoulders shrugged. “Hey, you do what I do for as long as I have, you learn to start asking questions.”

My heart plummeted at that thought. While I’m not totally naive to the goings on in the outside world, never would I have looked at someone like Aunt Shirley and me and instantly thought human trafficking. I looked past her into the room behind her and could see the soft glow of a TV.

“Are you the lady that bought the place a few years back?” I asked.

“Yep.” She stubbed out the cigarette. “My name’s Enid.”

“Well, Enid, I can assure you my aunt and I are not here for anything nefarious, nor are we even here for a room for that matter.”

Enid squinted her eyes at us. “Then why’re you here?”

“We are hoping to talk with someone you have staying here,” Aunt Shirley supplied.

“I can’t tell you who’s staying here.”

“Could you at least get a message to him” I asked. “It’s important we speak to him. It’s about his fiancée who was recently killed.”

Enid’s eyes clouded with sympathy. “Oh, yes. Poor boy…and so polite.”

I pulled out a business card and handed it to Enid. She took it then scowled. “You’re with the newspaper? You want to hound this poor boy in his time of sorrow?”

“It’s not like that,” I said quickly. “I was one of the last people to see his fiancée, Samantha, before she was killed.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.