Roses Are Red; He's Dead (A Mellow Summers Paranormal Mystery Book 9) Read Free

stood up and approached the door. Thinking that maybe I should let it go, I almost turned away, but the same sound rattled the door for a fourth time. I opened it. A man leaned back in a chair—his head lolled to the side as though he were asleep—in the hallway. Something was wrong.
    “Sir?”
    No response.
    “Sir?” I said, moving closer, while hugging the cotton towel to my body.
    Eerie silence. Something was definitely wrong and that prickly feeling you get on the back of your neck struck me.
    “Sir?” I touched his shoulder. He flopped over and crashed to the floor, unmoving.
    In a bit of a panic, I ran to the front desk, my bare feet slapping the wood floor, while I clutched my towel. “He’s dead!”
    Heads turned in my direction as I entered the lobby area as a group of girls walked in.
    “You need to get some paramedics or something,” I said, breathless. “There’s a dead guy back there.”
    “Ma’am, you need to calm down,” said the lady at the desk.
    “I am calm,” I said, “but there is guy in the back and he is not breathing.” I stopped speaking as I realized that all I wore was a towel, and there were an awful lot of people in the lobby staring at me. I wrapped my towel tighter.
    “Call security,” said the gal at the front desk.
    Within moments, security showed up and I led them to where I had found the body and stopped short. It had gone. Nothing was there; not one sign of a body having been there.
    “Where is he?” asked one of the security guards.
    “He was right here,” I said, moving closer.
    Everyone looked at me as though I was crazy.
    “I swear!” I had a throwback to the Christmas parade a year earlier, where I witnessed a woman get murdered and no one believed me because we found no body. What was going on here? I know I saw a man sitting in that chair and he was anything, but alive. “I’m not lying!”
    “No one said you were,” said one of the men present, “but there is no one here.”
    “I know there was a man in that chair. I approached him when he didn’t respond and then he fell over.”
    “Are you sure he wasn’t just sleeping?”
    “I know a dead body when I see one.” The moment those words exited my mouth, I wished I hadn’t said them. The guard’s eyebrows raised. “Look, he wasn’t breathing.”
    “We’ll search the premises, but is it possible that you imagined it?”
    I stood my ground. Not likely.
    “People here sometimes nap and when they wake up, they think something happened when it didn’t.”
    Okay, so I had been dozing a little, but that wouldn’t explain the body. Something didn’t add up. “Perhaps,” I relented, knowing I was not getting anywhere with those surrounding me. “I’m going to get dressed.”
    I went back into the room and put on my clothes. So much for a relaxing massage. As I reentered the lobby, everyone stared at me. They must have thought I was nuts; even I wondered if I was, but I know I hadn’t imagined it. Security reiterated that they found no body and that there was no cause for alarm. Just the mistake of someone who had had too much of the perfumed oils. Mortified, I left, walking back to the cabin, hoping no one saw me and that I didn’t get us kicked out. That would have been a great way to repay Greg’s hard work on this romantic getaway.
    “Hey,” said Greg as I walked through the door. “How’d it go?”
    “Not good,” I replied.
    “Oh?”
    “I saw a dead body an—”
    “Oh, no!”
    “It’s not like I set out to find these things. But the guy was gone by the time help arrived.”
    “I thought he was dead.”
    “He was.”
    “But dead people don’t…”
    “Get up and walk away, I know. They said I imagined it and now everyone thinks I’m crazy.”
    “I don’t think you are,” Greg hugged me.
    “Maybe I did imagine it,” I mumbled.
    “They didn’t find anyone, right?”
    “No.”
    “So, it could have been a trick of your mind. You have been a bit stressed lately and