Pumpkins in Paradise (Tj Jensen Paradise Lake Mystery Book 1) (2 page)

Fifty minutes later Tj sat behind the registration desk of Maggie’s Hideaway, waiting for the last of the weekend arrivals to check in
. Echo, her hundred-and-thirty-pound mountain dog, was lying on the rug next to her, sound asleep except for the occasional whimper as he actively participated in what must be a rollicking doggy dream. After the mayhem of the day, the world once again seemed balanced and serene.

Huge picture windows lined the back wall, transporting the beauty of the lake and surrounding forest into the interior of the mountain lodge
. It was a perfect fall day, cool but sunny, with just a few clouds hinting at the storm she knew was brewing over the summit. A lone coyote walked along the now-deserted beach as squirrels scurried across the wooden deck gathering pine nuts for the long winter ahead. Pouring herself a cup of coffee from the sideboard, Tj selected several ginger snaps from the tray, then wandered over to the desk to check the reservation sheet. There were three guests who hadn’t checked in yet. She hoped they’d all arrive in a timely fashion since Jenna and her daughters, Kristi and Kari, were coming for dinner and movie night. Jenna’s husband Dennis, a firefighter for the Serenity Fire Department, was on duty for an overnight shift.

“Seen your dad?
” Grandpa Ben walked up behind her. A mountain of a man, well over six feet with broad shoulders and a deep baritone voice, he filled the room with his presence. Dressed in dirt-stained work jeans and sturdy boots, Ben looked much younger than his sixty-eight years in spite of his head of thick white hair.

“I think he was moving boats
. Why?”

“
Headin’ over to The Grill to help decorate for the Halloween Party next week, but we can’t seem to find that box of decorations we used last year.”

“Did you check the attic space above the garage?” Tj wondered
. “I think I saw some stuff up there. I’ve been meaning to get it down and decorate the house. The staff did a good job with the rest of the resort.”

“Yeah, it looks real nice.
” The decorating crew had gone all out this year, with a pumpkin patch on the front lawn, an old-fashioned horse-drawn wagon filled with bales of hay near the resort’s entrance, and brightly dressed scarecrows scattered throughout. The lobby featured garlands of brightly colored fall leaves, wreaths, and festive bouquets of seasonal flowers. “Guess I’ll head over to the house and see if I can find the decorations. I’ll put the stuff for the house in the mud room.”

“Thanks, Grandpa.”

“By the way,” Ben added, “Bookman wanted me to tell you that he can’t make dinner this week, and next Monday doesn’t look good either. Guess there’s a town council meeting that night. Wanted to know if we could do it another night.”

Ben’s friend Bookman, aka Best-selling author R. L. Hellerman, was one of the five elected citizens who sat on Serenity’s town council
. “I thought the council meeting wasn’t for another three weeks.”

“It’s not
. At least the normal monthly town meeting isn’t. There’s a special session on November 1 to discuss the permit Lloyd Benson applied for. I guess there’s some urgency for reasons of which I’m not privy, and Lloyd didn’t want to wait until the regular town meeting.”

“What’s he tearing down now?
” Tj sighed. Lloyd was famous in the community for tearing down their old buildings and replacing them with new, modern-looking ones. He called it redevelopment, but Tj and a lot of the other lifers saw it as destruction of the community’s quaint, small-town charm.

“He’s not tearing anything down this time,” Ben informed her
. “He reapplied for a permit for those condos down by the lake he’s been trying to build for the past couple of years.”

Tj frowned
. “How is he going to do that? I thought the whole thing was a no go if he didn’t have Zachary’s land as an access point.”

Ben shrugged
. “I really don’t know. Maybe Zachary finally sold.”

“He wouldn’t do that,” Tj insisted
. “He was really adamant about not wanting people traipsing through his property. There must be more to the story.”

Ben shrugged
. “Guess you can ask Zachary about it.”

Tj frowned
. “Yeah, I will.” Zachary would never sell access to his land. Would he? Surely he hadn’t sold out to Lloyd after all these years. He had been acting odd lately, and she’d had the sense for months that he was working on some sort of secret project, but still she couldn’t imagine him agreeing to anything that would threaten his privacy. She’d planned to have lunch with him the following day; she guessed she’d ask him about it then.

“Does Doc know about the reschedule?
” Tj asked, referring to Ben’s other best friend, retired coroner Stan Griffin.

“Yeah, he was there when Bookman mentioned it
. Guess I’ll head on over to the house. What do you want me to do with the pile of pumpkins on the dining-room table?”

Tj groaned
. In a moment of temporary insanity, she’d volunteered to carve twenty-five pumpkins for the annual pumpkin festival. “Sorry. I totally forgot those were being delivered today.”

“I’ll move them into the mud room for now,” Ben volunteered.

“Thanks, Grandpa.”

After Ben left Tj greeted a pair of identical-looking sexagenarians, each carrying two bags of identical size and color. “Welcome to Maggie’s Hideaway. Are you checking in?” During the summer the lobby of Maggie’s Hideaway was crowded with guests checking in and out every day of the week. But during the slower shoulder seasons, roughly the three months between summer and ski season, and then again between the end of ski season and the beginning of summer, most arrivals and departures were limited to a few weekend visitors.

“Maude and Millie Morrison,” the twin on the right answered
.

“We won an all-expense-paid trip,” the twin on the left added.

“That’s great. Radio contest?” Tj smiled at the pair, each of whom looked a lot like Aunt Bea from
The Andy Griffith Show
. Tj hadn’t even been born when the show first aired, but her Grandma Maggie used to watch the reruns on cable before she passed away.

“No,” Maude answered, “we received a letter in the mail informing us that we’d been chosen to receive a ten day trip
. We don’t remember entering a contest, but at our age we usually can’t remember what we had for breakfast.”

“This isn’t a time-share, is it?
” Millie asked.

“No, I can assure you the trip wasn’t sponsored by Maggie’s Hideaway.
” Tj glanced at the computer screen. “The reservation simply states that the cabin was prepaid in full. Perhaps the trip was sponsored by one of the casinos? They sometimes offer special incentives to seniors.”

“We’re not here to gamble,” Maude assured her.

“We’re here to meet men,” Millie added.

“Well, I’ll be sure to keep my eyes open for good catches.” Tj smiled
. “I see you’re staying in cabin twelve,” she continued. “It’s one of our nicer two bedrooms. Right on the beach, in an isolated cove surrounded by old growth pines, with its own deck and hot tub. Very private for entertaining.” Tj waved over a dark-haired teenager who had wandered in while she was speaking to the women. “This is Emily,” she introduced her to the sisters. “She’ll show you to your cabin and answer any questions you have along the way.”

“Oh, aren’t you adorable,” Maude gushed
. Emily possessed a petite doll-like figure, huge blue eyes framed with thick dark lashes, and fistfuls of thick curly hair.

“Love your shoes,” Emily complimented the two women on their shiny new white
Skechers as she reached down to pick up one of their bags, causing a book to fall from the top in the process. “
Twenty-five Ways to Please a Man
,” Emily read aloud as she picked up the book.

“Sister and I figured we were a bit late out of the starting gate so could use some advice,” Maude explained.

“Just read the first five,” Millie joined in. “Figured you really only need the first two, but we brought the book along just in case.”

Tj and Emily looked at each other, trying not to laugh.

“Still that thing with the whipped cream sounded fun,” Maude reminded her sister. “Maybe we should have brought some.”

“If you decide you need it just let me know and I’ll have some brought to your cabin,” Tj promised.

Tj watched the group walk away. She certainly didn’t want to be Maude and Millie’s age and still looking for a man. After her mom died and her sisters came to live with her, she and Tyler had parted ways. Tj knew he wasn’t looking for anything serious, but it hurt that he’d tossed her aside like yesterday’s laundry once it had become apparent that carefree and unencumbered were things of the past.

Tj had come to terms with
her separation from Tyler, but it would be nice to have a date for the upcoming Black and Black Ball. Dotty Harris had tried to set her up with her son David. Maybe she’d been too hasty in turning her down. David was an okay guy, in a nerdy sort of way. He’d bought the local pharmacy two years earlier, when Barry Holden retired and moved to Florida. He was clean cut, dressed nice, and smelled better than any man she had ever met. He wasn’t the type of guy to make her heart pound or her palms sweat, but maybe…Tj sighed as she looked around the room for Echo, who had vacated his napping spot behind the registration desk and wandered over to the seating area near the fireplace, where a man who appeared to be in his early thirties, with wavy blond hair, deep blue eyes, and a body an underwear model would envy, was reading an R. L. Hellerman mystery. Tj made it a policy never to get involved with guests, but she had to admit this one was tempting. She watched as the man stopped reading and set his book aside as Echo approached. Echo was friendly, but at his size he sometimes intimidated guests who hadn’t gotten to know him yet.

Echo sat at the man’s feet, placing one paw on his knee in greeting
. Tj didn’t think the man had stayed with them before, but Echo, who could be standoffish with people he didn’t know, acted like the two of them were old friends. The man said something to the large dog and began scratching him behind the ears in exactly the way he loved best.

Tj walked across the room, picked up a log from the pile, and tossed it on the blaze burning warmly in the fireplace be
fore approaching the man. “I apologize for my dog,” she said in greeting. Echo’s head was in the man’s lap by this point. “Normally he doesn’t bother the guests. I have no idea what’s gotten into him.”

“It’s not a problem,” the man said with a smile
. “I like dogs and generally they like me. I had to leave my lab at home, so I’m glad for the company.”

“Well, now that you’ve scratched Echo in his favorite spot, he’ll probably come over and bug you every time he sees you
. If he becomes a pest, just let me know.”

“It won’t be a problem
. I promise.” The man continued to run his hands thorough Echo’s coat. “With all that thick fur, I bet he loves the snow.”

“The colder the temperature, the happier he is,” Tj acknowledged
. “Comes in handy when we need him to track down a lost skier in the winter.”

“He do search and rescue?”

“I had him trained as a pup.” Tj glanced at her dog with affection. “He’s good too. Quite a few people can thank him that they lived to see another day.”

“Do you go out with him?
” the man wondered.

“We usually work together, but he’s been trained to work with the other guys on the S and R team as well.”

“I taught my dog to catch a Frisbee,” the man volunteered.

“An equally valuable skill.”
Tj grinned. She knew she should call Echo to her side and walk away, but she found herself lingering.

“R. L. Hellerman fan?” She nodded toward the book he had been reading before Echo wandered over.

“Yeah, I love his stuff
. He really pulls you into the mystery right from the beginning. You a fan?”

“The biggest
. He lives in Serenity, you know. In fact he’s a good friend of the family. I can introduce you, if you’d like.”

The man’s eyes lit up with anticipation
. “Really? That would be great. I’ll be here all week.”

“I’ll let you know the next time he’s at the resort,” Tj promised
. “He usually pops in every day or two. My name’s Tj, by the way.”

“Kyle.” The man held out his hand.

“Here on vacation?”

“Job interview
. I got laid off six months ago and I’ve been looking ever since.”

“I’ve lived here all my life
. Maybe I can put in a good word for you. In a town this size, I know pretty much everyone.”

“The company I’m interviewing with is called the Repository.”

Tj frowned. “I’ve never heard of them. What kind of company is it?”

Kyle sat back as Echo wandered over to his favorite rug in front of the fireplace to wait
. “I’m not sure. I work as a computer programmer, so I’ve worked for a variety of different types of enterprises. This particular company didn’t go into much detail about what they did exactly, but they sent me a letter offering me a job at an obscene rate of pay, so I decided to check it out.”