Seeing how taken he was with the hotel, Hugh told him that presidents and kings had once stayed there years ago. “Now it’s just full of ghosts.”
Leroy had shot the man a surprised look. “You’re just foolin’ with me.”
“No, I ain’t. I wish I was,” Hugh had said as he’d parked and killed the engine. “Let’s go see what we’ve got.” He had started to open his door but stopped. “You aren’t going to faint at the sight of a dead body, are you?”
“No, sir.”
“If you feel like you’re goin’ to upchuck, you get the devil out of my crime scene.” With that, Hugh opened his door, and Leroy quickly followed, surprised and a little disappointed when they hadn’t gone into the hotel.
Instead, he’d followed the marshal across the parking lot to where some people were standing around a campfire. One of them directed Hugh toward the woods.
He’d never forget walking through those dark woods, chasing after the marshal’s flashlight beam and trying to see what was waiting for them. He’d been afraid it was going to be something so gruesome that he might embarrass himself.
That was when Hugh stopped and Leroy saw Megan Broadhurst sprawled facedown on a bed of dried pine needles. Her long blond hair was dark with her blood, and so was her white dress. She’d lost a shoe, so one of her feet was bare.
Hugh had turned to him. “Get your notebook out. Get the witnesses’ names back at the campfire. Don’t let any of them leave.” Then the marshal had stepped to the body, squatted down and checked for a pulse. “Get moving, son,” Hugh said. “Don’t let them change their clothes, and if they have already, I want what they were wearing.”
Then the marshal had gotten on his radio and called for the coroner and more deputies.
Leroy had already called for backup as he turned on the patrol car’s lights and siren and raced toward Buckhorn through the darkness. This time they would be going into the hotel—into the bowels of it.
He couldn’t help but think about what Marshal Hugh Trafton had said as he’d hit the gas and the Crenshaw Hotel had disappeared behind them that night ten years ago.
“That is one scary-ass place,” Hugh said, glancing in his rearview with a shudder.
Leroy had looked at him in surprise. He’d never taken a big, strong, by-the-book man like Hugh to be afraid of ghosts and foolishly said as much.
“Ghosts?” the marshal howled. “Ain’t the ghosts that scare me. It’s the evil I felt the one time I stepped in that place. Something lurks in the depths. Mark my words. Something dark and dangerous.”
At the time, Leroy had kept his opinion of that to himself. He’d silently scoffed as he’d looked in his side mirror, the lights of the hotel barely visible behind them.
FINN HELD CASEY tightly to him as they waited by the back door. The marshal had been abundantly clear. Don’t touch anything else. Stay where you are. Don’t tell anyone else. I’m on my way.
“We’re not staying down here. We’ll meet you at the back door,” Finn had said.
The marshal had sworn. “We?”
“Casey Crenshaw and I. She’s with me. I’m taking her upstairs.”
“I just told you to stay—”
“It’s cold down here by the wine cellar, and we both need air,” he’d snapped. “We’ll meet you at the back door. Everyone else is outside by the campfire. We haven’t told anyone, and we won’t.”
He could almost hear the marshal grinding his teeth. “I’ll see you at the back door.”
They’d stepped out onto the patio, where they would be able to see when the marshal arrived but no one at the campfire would see them there in the dark. They huddled together, both in shock. He hadn’t told Casey any more than he’d told the 9-1-1 operator and the marshal. He’d given his name, his location and said that there’d been a murder.
“It’s Claude?” she’d asked, and he’d nodded. “Devlin?” He’d nodded again, and she’d begun to cry. Now they were both silent, comforted by being together with no need for words.
Finn’s head was spinning trying to make sense out of everything. Claude and Devlin were dead, locked in the wine cellar of the hotel, killed apparently the same way Megan had been. He didn’t think that was a coincidence.
When the first law-enforcement vehicles pulled in, lights flashing, siren blaring, the marshal had barely gotten out before two more squad cars pulled up.
Marshal Leroy Baggins was much younger than Finn had imagined, but he carried himself like a seasoned veteran. He was tall, lean and all business as he strode up to them. “Finnegan James?”
Finn nodded.
The marshal turned to Casey. “You’re the owner of the hotel?”
She shook her head. “I was, but I sold it to Finn earlier today.”
The marshal looked from one to the other before turning to his deputies, who were standing beside their vehicles as if waiting for orders. “Cordon off the hotel. Get the names of those people at the campfire, and keep them down there until I tell you different.” He turned back to Finn and Casey. “You two, show me where you found the body.”
“Actually,” Finn said, “it’s bodies.”
LEROY COULD TELL that the last place either of them wanted to go was back down to the wine cellar. He was hit with the smell first, then that feeling of being underground with the weight of the hotel overhead. Nothing about it was pleasant.
Within yards of the wine cellar, he ordered, “Stay here.” He saw the drag marks on the floor going into the wine cellar, but none outside it. Stepping closer, he saw what appeared to be narrow tire tracks. That could explain how someone had gotten the bodies in. But how had they gotten them down the steep stairs from the floor
