Chapter 1
Chapter One
Three Months Later
Behind the front desk, the clerk had gone quiet, and Max didn’t like it. In his experience, people going quiet and then frowning at their computers was a bad sign, and the longer they were quiet and frowning, the worse it was.
“It might be under Maxwell Golding,” he said, just to say something. She’d probably looked it up by last name already, but he was getting antsy.
“Sorry, sir,” she said automatically. “I’ve found your reservation, but it appears that there’s a slight problem. Can you give me a moment?”
“Hope my warrants didn’t catch up with me,” Max said, raising an eyebrow and grinning. In return, he got a smile that very clearly said, I am required to tolerate stupid jokes from guests.
“I’ll be right back,” she said, and walked through a doorway behind the desk.
Max stayed where he was and wished he hadn’t made a stupid joke. In what world was Hey, I could be a dangerous criminal funny to some poor hotel employee?
Behind the counter, the wall was tastefully wallpapered in some sort of stripey gold paper with a vaguely old western feel.
On it hung an elaborate sign that said Welcome to the Hotel Bellwether.
So, at least he was at the right place. He’d made the reservations for the right day, right?
Monday? Once, he’d accidentally made a flight reservation for the wrong week, and his friends still hadn’t let him live it down.
He checked the calendar on his phone twice, then moved on to looking at a brochure about couples’ massages when the doors at the other end of the lobby opened and a woman walked in.
Not walked. Swept. Swept in like the whole place belonged to her—the carpet and the wallpaper and the desks and the chandeliers, everything.
Swept because she was wearing a giant hat and big sunglasses and some sort of frothy, floor-length robe concoction straight out of the 1950s.
Except it was—Jesus, was it see-through?
Or was it just white? Or made of something with a lot of little holes, or whatever that word was, the one that meant sort of see-through?
The dictionary in Max’s brain had gone offline.
He’d been in the car for a little over ten hours.
The Central Valley had been hot as fuck, and none of his usual podcasts had been any good.
He’d gotten stuck in traffic a little ways north of Los Angeles.
He felt rumpled and like his hair was plastered to his neck and also like his brain had finally popped out of his head and made a run for it somewhere around Anaheim, and so, yeah, he stared. A little. In a non-weird way.
And then, halfway across the lobby, the sweeping woman finally took the giant sunglasses off, and there was Sloane.
“Oh,” Max said aloud, to no one.
Shit, he said silently, to himself.
“There’s some problem with the rooms,” Sloane said when she’d walked up to him, sliding her sunglasses into the neck of her garment. The weight pulled the neckline down a little further. Max tried not to notice.
“What problem?” he asked.
Sloane shrugged. “I didn’t ask. I just told them my colleague would deal with it when he got here and went to the pool.”
“You couldn’t text me?”
“You were driving.”
“It was a really boring drive.”
She rolled her eyes, and not for the first time, Max noticed they were somewhere between pale blue and green and brown. Gray? But not, like, silver gray. Warm gray, the color of—river rocks or slate rocks or—other rocks, probably. It had been a very long drive.
“Okay, I should have texted you and risked your life for what, so you could worry in traffic? You’re figuring it out now. It’s fine.”
Max frowned at her. For too long, probably.
Because first he was frowning at her and then getting a little distracted by—well, by Sloane’s whole current look.
The frothy, floaty, sheer thing she was wearing and how he was positive she had to be wearing something under it but couldn’t for the life of him find its outline, and it had been a very. Long. Drive.
“Who are you, and what have you done with Sloane Vanzetti?” he finally asked. “You know, the woman who organized a full-day wine tasting for fifteen people and sent out individualized itineraries to every one of them at Manny’s wedding back home last fall?”
“You told me to relax,” Sloane said loftily. She tilted her chin up and therefore also the brim of her giant hat. “This is me relaxing. Ta-da.”
“You adjusted all the times on Josh’s itinerary to be fifteen minutes earlier than everyone else’s because he’s always late,” Max pointed out. “Are you okay? Did you hit your head?”
“When you told me where we were going after I lost your dumb bet, you very specifically said, ‘And maybe you can relax for once.’ And now you’re giving me shit because I actually relaxed?”
“You’ve never been good at following orders.”
“I’m not following orders, I’m taking suggest—”
The door behind the front desk opened again, and a man in khakis, a button-down, a striped tie, and a nametag that read Brian M.
, manager, stepped out. “You must be Max Golding,” he said, smiling and offering a handshake over the counter.
“We spoke on the phone. Welcome to the Bellwether. We’re very excited to be working with you. ”
“Likewise,” Max said as professionally as he could muster with his sweaty hair sticking to the back of his neck. “This is my assistant, Sloane.”
“Delighted,” Sloane said, also offering a handshake. Max could feel her bristle at assistant without needing to look.
“We apologize for the problem with your rooms,” Brian went on, typing something into the computer. “I’m afraid we’ll have to move you, and I wanted to come tell you your options myself.”
“Great,” Max said, because he was supposed to say something.
“We previously had you in two rooms overlooking the courtyard in the Mansfield Park section of the Austen. But there have been some problems with the air-conditioning,” Brian explained.
“Some other guests reported that it wasn’t holding the correct temperature, blowing hot and cold at random.
One woman said there was mist coming out of the vent.
Someone else heard knocking and moaning inside the unit.
So we’re closing those rooms until it can be fixed. ”
Ah, thought Max. Manager Brian was at least trying to be subtle about planting ideas for their investigation, though Max didn’t think he was trying that hard. We moved your rooms because the air-conditioning unit was haunted was a new one, though.
“I see,” Max said. Next to him, Sloane shifted, and he wondered how hard it was for her not to argue with Brian about a thermostat that spoke in tongues or whatever.
“The Austen is the original building and the oldest part of the Hotel Bellwether.” Brian looked at them eagerly. “We like to think of these little oddities as part of its charm.”
“Are there other rooms available?” Sloane asked in a tone that was technically polite.
“Apologies—yes.” Brian gave her a customer-service smile.
“If it’s all right, we’ve upgraded you to two ocean-view rooms across the courtyard, in the Northanger Abbey section, which are also convenient to the library and ballroom.
Though I’m afraid that one has a king bed and the other has two queens, though both have Jacuzzi bathtubs and balconies. ”
Max came very close to asking if there were demons in the shower nozzles.
“Sounds perfect,” he said instead.
“If you’d like, I’d be happy to show you to your rooms,” Brian said, doing something with key cards. “I’m also a bit of an expert on the history of the Hotel Bellwether, if you’ve got any questions.”
“No need to trouble yourself,” Max said, because he had a feeling that if they accepted, it might be hours before he could get into the shower.
After telling them about the restaurant, the coffee shop, the library, the various pools, the availability of couples’ massages, and the gift shop, Brian finally handed over the keys.
With another customer-service smile, he promised to have their things taken to their rooms, then finally let them go.
“Which one do you want?” Max asked Sloane once they were out of earshot of the front desk.
“Which one’s better?”
“They’re the same, they just have different numbers of beds.”
The hotel lobby was two stories high on the inside, with a chandelier hanging from the high ceiling and a mezzanine wrapping around the second floor.
An elaborate wooden floor with an intricate border, dark wooden columns, and wooden vaulted ceilings were all polished to a high gloss that practically glowed in the diffused sunlight.
Strewn around the lobby were lavishly upholstered couches and chairs that wouldn’t have been out of place in a brothel from the 1890s.
It was a style that Max thought of as Old California Fancy—or maybe Gold Rush Fancy, though that didn’t apply much to San Diego—and it always reminded him of home.
Not that Last Chance had buildings half as nice as this one, but it felt the same: the wooden balconies, the exposed beams, the combination of dark wood and red tile roofs.
Sunlight streaming in, unhindered by mountains and forest.
“I’ll take the two queen beds. I like having somewhere to put all my stuff that isn’t the floor,” Sloane said, holding out her hand for a key. “Are they next door to each other?”
“Three-fourteen and three-sixteen,” Max said, opening up the brochure with their rooms circled in red that Brian had pressed into his hand. “Looks like we’re at the end of the hall.”
“So if there’s spooky knocking and whispering, I’ll know it’s you.”
“Sloane.” Max grinned, one hand to his chest. “I would at least make something gooey drip down one of the walls. Give me a little credit.”