Shirley laughed, looking at her with utter disbelief. “You mean one of the staff who is probably a murderer?”
“Still better than Lars.”
“Away for a weekend? I can see the hotel across the highway from my front window,” Shirley cried. “That’s not my idea of a weekend retreat, to go to an abandoned hotel with Megan’s ghost sneaking around every corner.” She shook her head and shivered.
Jen still wasn’t giving up. “Didn’t you say one time that you wished you could be a guest in the hotel instead of work there?”
“That was before the summer I worked with Megan.” She took a gulp of her beer. “You have to admit, this reunion sounds...stupid. Why would you want to go? How do you know that the killer won’t be there? We’ve always known it had to be one of us.”
Jen considered that for a moment. “We all had good reason to hate Megan and want her...gone. Who do you think did it?”
Shirley shook her head. She’d put it out of her mind, thinking she would never see those people again. “What makes you think I didn’t do it?”
ONCE IN HER ROOM, Casey thought she’d feel better, but Finn was just across the hall, and when she looked out the window, she could see people standing around the campfire glowing in the growing darkness. That alone brought back a firestorm of memories, most of them bad.
She counted those gathered around the fire. Five. That meant two hadn’t come. At least not yet. She closed the drapes and turned away, her thoughts boomeranging back to Finn. She wasn’t sure what to make of him. Would she get an offer on the hotel from him in the morning?
There’d been a couple of times during dinner that she’d thought he might be flirting with her. Clearly, he was a man who’d made his fortune by going after what he wanted. But what did he want with her hotel? Or was he after something else?
The thought surprised and unnerved her. She wasn’t what he’d expected? There was something about him having so much prior knowledge of her that made her even more uneasy—and made all of this feel more dangerous.
A murder reunion? Why would someone want to bring murder suspects from that summer back here? She stood in the middle of the room, feeling as lost as Finn had said he was. She’d left the drapes open on the windows facing town. The mountains beyond were a deep purple. Montana’s big sky only had a hint of pink as darkness began to descend. The room felt cold. She rubbed her bare arms, telling herself a hot bubble bath was what she needed.
But as she turned toward the bathroom, she caught a flash out of the corner of her eye. Her heart leaped to her throat, pulse taking off at a sprint. She had only an instant to stifle a scream before she realized that what she was seeing was only a white laundry bag hanging on a hook on the bathroom door.
Her pulse began to slow. She blamed Finn. Honestly, between him and the ghost stories and this stupid reunion, she was jumpier than a long-tailed cat in a room full of rockers, as her grandmother used to say. Did Finn really believe that Megan’s spirit still walked these halls? Or was he just trying to scare her like all the boys she’d ever worked with here?
“Megan, if you’re here, I don’t care,” she said, her voice seeming unnaturally loud in the empty hotel room. “You made my life miserable when you were alive, and now you’re here to torment me? Guess what? I don’t care. This hotel is going to be rubble soon. Still want to hang around? Be my guest, but I’m out of here soon, and I won’t be looking back.”
“I hate to interrupt,” Finn said, startling her. She spun around. He stood in her doorway. Hadn’t she closed and locked it? Or had she been so anxious that she’d forgotten to close it properly, let alone bolt it? Finn now stood leaning against the doorjamb.
She felt her cheeks flare hot, his look daring her to lie. “I was just talking to Megan’s ghost.” As if he didn’t already know that.
He nodded and grinned. “She say anything interesting?”
“Not that I ever heard.” Just like when she was alive. “I was getting ready to take a bubble bath and call it a night. I guess I forgot to bolt the door.”
“It was open when I came out of my room. Could have been the breeze if you didn’t close it securely. My windows are open across the hall.” He handed her the note.
She read the neat printing. “‘Bring Casey’?” she inquired incredulously as she handed back the note.
“I rolled my eyes at that part as well, but it might be a good idea.” She looked at him as if he were joking. Before she could argue the point, he rushed on. “I thought you might like to go down with me. I’ve had a lot more time to think about this...reunion than you have. Doesn’t it make you wonder who’s behind it? Someone put this together to get all of us here. Why? What if the reunion is a ploy?”
“What are you saying?”
“That I believe the person behind this got us all here for a reason other than saying goodbye to Megan and the hotel. I’d like to know what it really is.”
She rolled her eyes. “Maybe whoever did this saw it as a way to get all the suspects together again. Maybe the person is trying to find Megan’s killer. Let’s see—who just spent months in this hotel looking for the answers? Oh, what a coincidence that you just happened to be here doing that very thing and got an invitation even though you weren’t part of the staff, weren’t even
