Veiled Secrets - A Whispering Pines Mystery, Book 6 (EBOOK)

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Chapter 1
I LET MY GAZE SKITTER across the lake and up at the cloud-thick sky as I carried a bucket of cleaning supplies up the boathouse stairs. Everything looked overcast and gloomy, as it had for the last three days. The clouds were the puffy dove-gray kind that blocked most of the sun but didn’t appear to have any water in them, so at least no precipitation had dropped on us. Yet.
“A storm?” I asked the woman who had followed me across the backyard. “What makes you think there’s a storm coming?”
“Told you. I’ve got a headache.” Arden, our fifty-something-year-old housekeeper, had been complaining for two days about a headache that had taken up residence in the indent where her nose and forehead met. “That’s proof enough for me. Also, I’ve lived here for twenty years. Trust me, sweetness, I can tell when the skies over the village are preparing to unload on us.”
“Or,” I began as I opened the door to my apartment, “it’s a foreshadowing of chaos coming over the next few days.”
Arden paused, the color drained from her face, and I realized a statement like that could have deadly connotations in Whispering Pines. With seven unnatural deaths in the not quite six months that I’d been here, the village had developed a rather nasty reputation for death.
“That’s not what I meant,” I assured her. “I meant because Rosalyn is coming. An altogether different kind of chaos.”
And my sister was staying with me. In the boathouse. Normally, every room in our B&B being booked made me happy. I’d gladly take a thousand-dollar loss over the next five days, however, if it meant one of our guests would back out and free up a room for her to use. She and I had been super-close as kids, but our relationship could only be described as strained, at the best of times, for the last seven years.
“She’s your sister,” Arden scolded. “It’s just normal sibling stuff. I’m sure she’s not that bad.”
Right. “Check back with me in a few days.” I glanced around the apartment, noting the grapefruit-size dust bunnies in the corners. I didn’t even want to think about the layer of soap scum in the shower and toothpaste speckles on the mirror. “I can’t thank you enough for doing this for me. Cleaning, obviously, is not a talent of mine.”
The last thing I wanted was for Rosalyn to report back to our mother that we weren’t maintaining the family property, the one I’d begged to turn into a bed-and-breakfast. I wouldn’t put it past my sister to leave a scathing, negative review on our website. Then she’d rally her posse to share that review all over social media. We’d be lucky to ever book a room again. Just the thought of it raised my blood pressure.
“You don’t need to thank me.” Arden smiled at me like a kindly neighbor happy to lend a hand. Then she winked at me. “I’ll be sure to add it to my timesheet.”
We paid our housekeepers by the room rather than by the hour and took deductions if rooms weren’t cleaned to satisfaction. A tip Laurel, the owner of The Inn, gave us.