Reservations for Murder - Tim Myers [62]
As they walked toward the clerk’s desk to settle his bill, Alex said, “You had to go back for your father, Elise. You don’t owe me any apologies.”
“Well, I’m here now.” She paused, then asked, “What’s going on with Mor and Emma? They were out in the waiting room with me, then all of a sudden they started arguing about something in whispers. The next thing I knew, they both just got up and left.”
“They’ve been trying to iron out the differences in their relationship over the past couple of days. I think they’re either going to break up after all this is over or get engaged.”
Elise said, “Which one are you pulling for?”
Alex sighed. “That one’s easy. Whichever solution makes my friends the happiest.”
Elise nodded. “Well said. Alex, why don’t we get you back to the inn, and I’ll fix you a nice dinner. How does that sound?”
“That’s the best offer I’ve had all day.” He knew Hatteras West’s lobby would still be in the middle of Irene’s crime scene investigation, but he didn’t care.
All Alex really wanted to do was to go home. He drew energy from the lighthouse, from Bear Rocks, from all of The Hatteras West Inn.
Having Elise there with him again was more than he could ever ask for.
It was time to go home.
And now a peek at Murder Checks Inn, book 3 in the Lighthouse Inn mysteries by Tim Myers.
Murder Checks Inn
By Tim Myers
Chapter 1
“I still don’t know why we had to come all the way out to the middle of nowhere to read Father’s will,” Ashley Trask-Cooper said impatiently, smoothing the invisible wrinkles from her pantsuit with abbreviated flicks of her hand as she spoke. It was readily apparent that Ashley wasn’t used to waiting for anyone. She had asked her mother and brother the same question a dozen times since they’d recently arrived. It was obvious the Hatteras West Inn was the last place in the world Ashley wanted to be.
Alex Winston looked up from his position behind the check-in desk at the people who had been fidgeting in the lobby of Hatteras West for the last forty minutes. Though they hadn’t introduced themselves upon their arrival, it hadn’t been all that difficult for Alex to match names with faces.
When no one deigned to answer, Ashley continued, speaking loud enough for everyone in Elkton Falls to hear. “Only Father would book us into a lighthouse motel in the North Carolina mountains!”
As the owner and innkeeper of the “lighthouse motel,”
Alex had to fight to hide his smile. He knew how unusual most people found it to see a lighthouse in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, but to him, the original structure on the North Carolina Outer Banks was the one that looked oddly out of place without the lush green hardwood forest and the mountain’s foothills surrounding it.
Cynthia Shays-Trask, the matriarch of the clan, was a slim older woman stylishly dressed in a designer outfit and sporting a graying closely cropped haircut. She said curtly, “Ashley, we are here because your father demanded it. That obese nightmare of a man has found a way to continue to spoil my life even beyond the grave.”
Steven Trask, a young man in his mid-twenties with neatly trimmed hair and a runner’s physique said, “Mother, I won’t have you speak of him that way, do you understand? It’s time to put the past behind us.” Unlike his sister and her outfit, Steven looked at home in a nicely tailored suit.
“Oh please, Steven,” Ashley said. “It didn’t do you the slightest bit of good being his favorite while he was alive, and it matters even less now. He can’t hear you.” All three shared the same hooked nose and prominent chin; the family resemblance was undeniable. Alex would have known they were related even without having the reservation book open in front of him. Though they were booked at the inn for the entire week, the group had refused to check in until Jase Winston, Alex’s uncle and an attorney in town, arrived on the scene.
Jase had just recently moved back to Elkton Falls after retiring from a big law firm in Charlotte, and Alex had been glad for the chance to get reacquainted