Pumpkins in Paradise (Tj Jensen Paradise Lake Mystery Book 1) Read Free Page A

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