Resort to Murder by Carolyn Hart Page A

unhappy on several counts. I didn’t like remembering the frightened sound in Diana’s voice or Neal’s dogged insistence that there was no one near the tower, no living person. I didn’t like the fact that I’d reassured Connor, insisted the ghost was a prank. Most of all, I didn’t like the fact that George had played me for a fool.
    I intended to have a talk with George. As soon as possible.
    I plugged in the coffeemaker. The coffee perked as I dressed, a white cotton turtleneck and navy slacks. Butit wasn’t until I poured the steaming dark brew into a mug, a blue mug with a white tower on one side, and moved toward the closet for my shoes that I saw the square white envelope lying on the floor where it had been slipped beneath the door.
    I stared at the envelope. Obviously, it had been put beneath my door after our wing quieted down. As we came back into the hotel, Aaron was insisting that a chaise longue was a great place to sleep as he stepped into Marlow and Jasmine’s room. Connor clutched Lloyd’s arm and said, “We’ll pack. We’ll pack right now.” As their door shut, Lloyd said sharply, “But we can’t leave…”
    Jennings and I had exchanged swift glances as we stood by our doors.
    â€œThat’s what you saw last night.” I made it a statement.
    He grunted, “Yeah,” stepped into his room, slammed the door.
    Neal had checked my room and Diana’s, making sure the balcony doors were locked, waiting to hear us snap the chains in place.
    It was almost two before I’d turned out my light, lain wide-eyed and angry in my bed, rerunning the moment in my mind, the sound of the screams—why precisely the same each time?—and the luminous swath of whiteness so tantalizingly near the tower, so far from the ground, so inexplicable.
    No one there.
    The words had ricocheted in my mind for the remainder of the night, sometimes an angry shout, sometimes a forlorn mumble, but over and over again, an ugly counterpoint to recurring screams.
    But now in the brightness of a new morning, I was not so much angry as determined. I was going to find out whathad happened last night. And maybe this envelope would show me the way. I bent down, snatched up the envelope. I didn’t know what was in it, but I knew that I held in my hand the beginnings of a trail, one that I could follow with sharp questions and quiet observations. By God, here was a specific discrete entity. Somebody had slipped a message beneath my door and I never doubted that it was connected directly to the apparition near the tower.
    I put the mug on the table, studied the envelope, turning it over in my hands. It was hotel stationery, the Tower Ridge House address in the upper left corner, and, of course, the white tower, outlined in blue. My name was printed neatly on the outside in red ink:
    Â 
    MRS. COLLINS
    Â 
    The envelope was sealed. I loosened the flap, pulled out a folded sheet. The message was printed in bright red block letters on a sheet of hotel stationery:
    $1000— NO GHOST
    $2000— GHOST
    $5000— PARTICULARS???????
    The first sum was crossed out, the second sum circled.
    A simple sketch at the bottom of the page showed a headland jutting into the water, sharp rocks below the prong of land. The time—8 A.M. —was written below.
    There was no signature, of course. But George didn’t need to sign this missive. Only he and I knew that I had offered him one thousand dollars to lay the ghost to rest. Oh, well, to be precise, perhaps he and I and one other person were aware of that fact. Becausesomeone else, obviously, had paid him two thousand to raise the ghost last night. And now, for five thousand dollars, he was willing to reveal the truth behind the screams and the luminous apparition near the tower.
    I was amused in a grim way. But I intended to get the information out of George without paying a cent. And I certainly didn’t