The Gallery of the Dead (Tropical Breeze Cozy Mystery Book 3) Read Free

but I’m no Teddy. Friends have told me I look like a little white-haired professor who wandered away from school and can’t remember how to get back. At five-foot seven, I don’t consider myself little, per se, but I won’t quibble.
    “Well, I suppose right away,” she said, like she couldn’t remember.
    I doubted her immediately. People who sense a Presence tend to have total recall of the moment. Still, I kept an open mind. It’s what I do.
    “Please,” I prompted. “In your own words.” I cocked my pen and prepared to take notes.
    “It’s all right, Mother,” Paul murmured, leaning toward her. “Don’t let him scare you.”
    “Well, it was when I first went through the house with my real estate agent, Rocky. Rocky Sanders. She has an office right next to Don’s Diner, where I met you.” She had turned back to Teddy with a melting smile. “You know, that was the luckiest day of my life, bumping into you like that over at the diner. I’ve blessed my lucky stars ever since then, and I just know you’re going to help us.”
    “I’m going to do my best, my lady,” he said gallantly, patting her hand. “We’re professionals. We do this kind of thing all the time.”
    I began to have even more doubts about having signed onto the show with him. Before that moment my gravest doubts had been about Porter.
    “ Ahem ,” I said, shooting a glance at the hand-petting. “Where precisely?” When she gave me a blank look, I specified. “Where precisely on the premises did you have your first sense of the paranormal?”
    “Where did you see the ghost?” Teddy asked warmly.
    “Oh. In the gallery. Upstairs. You know, where the thing happened.”
    Teddy turned to me to explain the suicides nearly a hundred years ago, but since I was the one who had given him the local gossip in the first place, I was naturally impatient. I didn’t interrupt, but I probably didn’t manage to hide my irritation, because I found Misty glaring at me.
    “I see,” I told him shortly. Then I turned back to Misty. “And were you aware of the house’s tragic past before you came here with your real estate agent?”
    “Oh, no, not at all! The first time we walked through it, I simply fell in love with the place, and there was just that one little shiver I had in the gallery, which I didn’t understand at the time, so I made an offer on the house right away – not what they were asking, of course, because you never do that in a down market, and the house needed some repairs – but we bargained back and forth and came to an agreement and I bought the place, because how was I to know what was to come?”
    “What was to come?” I asked, jotting down a reminder to talk to Rocky Sanders.
    She stared at me blankly.
    “What’s happened since then?” Teddy asked. Warmly.
    “Oh! It was about two months later, after I had been living here about a week. I was remodeling the house before opening the inn, and the noise and the dust were just exhausting me. When I finally got into bed that night I just lay there, kind of regretting that I would have to share my new home with lodgers, but of course, I had always intended to run it as an inn, and I do love entertaining. I don’t really think of it as providing rooms to let ; I shall think of it as entertaining. And with Paul to help me, I’m sure we’re going to be a great success. I’m an excellent chef, you know, and I was experimenting in the kitchen, getting my breakfast menus settled, deciding which little temptations to make for afternoon tea, and of course, making the larger decisions, such as whether or not to serve hard liquors as well as wine with the cheese trays for the evening soirees. I think not –“
    I found it necessary to interrupt. “And the incident took place in the gallery at the top of the stairs? Was this during the daytime?”
    She looked at me blankly.
    “We know how difficult this must be for you,” Teddy said tenderly. She didn’t look to me like