Speed Dating With the Dead Read Online Free PDF

with no windows and a bare bulb for light. Two rusted filing cabinets were packed with moldering guest registers, and a pile of outdated menus threatened to topple from above them. Janey’s desk bore a computer that barely had enough memory to type a letter, but it cast a sickly green glow on her wrinkled skin, so it was worth keeping around for visual effect.
    “A couple of grand,” Janey said. “Barely a felony.”
    “Please,” Violet said.
    Violet Felkerson was one of the pretty ones. Hospitality hostesses fared better when they were pretty; the guests were more forgiving of cold water, dirty sheets, and overpriced room service when the apologies came from pert, smiling, submissive lips. And Janey enjoyed this part of the job more when they were attractive. They deserved to meet the ugly inside.
    “Normally, one strike and you’re out,” Janey said. “This hotel was built on tradition and dedication and honesty, and anybody who doesn’t buy into that has no place at the White Horse.”
    Violet’s thick eyelashes descended and fluttered. She was about to cry. Janey had chosen well, because this only worked on those who couldn’t afford to walk away.
    “I’ve got a reputation to uphold,” Janey said. “They don’t call me ‘Battle Ax’ for nothing.”
    Actually, “Battle Ax” was only one of her nicknames. She’d overheard “Horse’s Ass,” “The Mayflower Madame,” and “The Warden” as well, and no doubt plenty of other, cruder ones had made the rounds over the years.
    She drew in smoke and let it tumble out of her mouth and across Violet’s blinking face. “Tell you what. I think we can cover that, move around some money from the maintenance budget. An unexpected leak in the boiler system, maybe. Chad and Stevie will fall for that.”
    Violet angled forward even more, hands clasped as if Janey were the ghost of Mother Teresa. Janey jammed her cigarette into her mouth to stifle a chuckle.
    “Thank you,” Violet said. “I can replace it in six weeks.”
    “You won’t tell anyone?”
    Said the spider to the fly.
    Violet almost stuttered. “Will you?”
    Janey stubbed out her cigarette in the overflowing ashtray, one of the lipstick-stained butts rolling free and bouncing to the floor. “I think we can work something out.”
    A few thousand, Violet had said. According to Janey’s reckoning, the actual amount of the embezzlement had been somewhere around four thousand dollars, give or take a few hundred. Janey had noticed because she was constantly calculating how much she could steal for herself. After all, a woman had to rely on her own devices. When looks faded, all you had left was cunning. It was a lesson Violet was still at least two decades away from learning.
    Chad and Stevie would never notice the parched till. They’d bought the hotel as an “investment” that was actually a tax loss to offset the millions they were making in Palm Beach condominiums. The one time the couple had actually visited the property, they’d decided to book a room at the Courtyard by Marriott in neighboring Boone rather than sleep under their own leaky roof. So Janey’s accounting was a like a whore’s career in a seaport—tight going in and loose going out.
    Violet looked so exuberant that Janey wished she’d played a little longer. But Janey tended to burn them out too fast, and with the hotel’s new billing as “the Blue Ridge Mountain’s most haunted hotel,” the job had been getting harder to fill, despite the recession and the fringe benefit of occasional free drinks at the bar.
    “We can stick some extra charges on Wayne Wilson’s bill.” Janey stood, the chair creaking with a metallic brittleness that befit the hotel’s reputation. “A set-up fee here, a maintenance surcharge there. We’re giving him the hotel for the weekend, so he shouldn’t be surprised by a few surprises.”
    Janey made a slow, stately trek across the floor, which was difficult because of the travel