Chapter Three
Laney
A cold sweet tea in hand, Laney walked swiftly to the Cattleman’s Crossing Inn to confirm that everything was a go for tomorrow night. Between sips of the sugary drink, Laney shook her head and mumbled to herself, not caring how she looked to the good people of Dallas.
Lucas Moore had said no to her? There had to be a first time for everything. No one said no to a Stonewater.
It was both a relief and incredibly annoying.
Laney was the daughter of con artists. Karl and Sandy Stonewater were deeply in love by the time she was born—not just with each other, but the lies they told, the pretty fictions they wove to keep gourmet food on the table and a roof over their heads. The scams they ran were less Ocean’s Eleven and more used car salesman, but they formed the roots of Laney’s childhood. From insurance schemes to tales of woe to their fellow man, the Stonewaters almost always walked away with thicker wallets and placid grins.
Laney had her father’s undeniable smile and her mother’s tenacity. And Lucas Moore had told her no?
His swift dismissal aside, Laney was also frustrated that along with the firefighter not answering her inquiries into his experience at the inn, she’d somehow wound up with even more questions.
Why was Lucas acting like something strange had happened that night, something he couldn’t speak of? Could he actually think the inn was haunted? He seemed like a smart, sensible man. Why would he believe in such hokum like the spirit world? (Laney really couldn’t think of that phrase without wanting to make “ooh-hoo-hoo” sounds and wiggling her fingers.)
Of course, Adele Lyons was intelligent too, and yet she believed the inn was haunted, all right. Though Laney could chalk that up to something else: desperation. Adele’s husband had been the one to die in the fire that night, and the woman was eager to assign a supernatural cause to her husband’s odd disappearance. Rationally, Laney knew Adele’s husband had likely been burnt to dust in the inferno somehow or—as Laney thought in her more jaded moments—had used the fire as a distraction to sneak out and skip town with another woman.
Still, Adele’s beliefs and dedication to discovering the inn’s spirits were going to make Laney’s article into serious clickbait.
Along with her reunion with the firefighter who’d been just a boy that night.
Laney gurgled up the rest of the sweet tea with her straw and slammed the cup in the trash as she reached the front of Cattleman’s Crossing.
The inn wasn’t one of the large, elegant hotels that graced downtown Dallas, nor the sort of cozy bed and breakfast that boasted of ghosts of kindly old women who tucked little children in at night. In terms of size and mood, it was in the middle—or maybe something else altogether. It was too small to be stately, and too strange to be quaint. Painted in pale yellow, it was a simple three-story building, the ground floor shaded by the orange canopy of ash trees and seven windows each on the second and third floors. A steer’s horn stretched above the entrance, a nod to its Texas roots, and potted cactus stood sentinel on either side. Inside, though, it looked like a New England transplant: narrow hallways and cramped rooms, odd spaces and old-fashioned sinks.
Laney crossed underneath the horn and pushed the door open.
A series of framed pictures on the staircase showed the progression of the inn the hundred years it’d stood in Dallas, but none of them had people.
A teenage boy hunched over the front desk, fiddling on his phone. At the sound of her approach, he startled and dropped his cell.
“Oh, hey,” he said, fumbling under the desk for his toy. He reappeared, his shoulder-length, mouse-brown hair flopping in his face. “You must be…”
“Laney Stonewater.” She walked up to the desk, pulling her hair off her neck and fanning her face. “Is it always this hot?”
“Right. Laney Stonewater. Yeah, it’s always this hot. I mean, not usually this late in the year, though.” The kid gave her a sheepish grin and put out his hand. “I’m Tucker. We spoke on the phone.”
“Hi, Tucker.” As she learned when they’d spoken a few weeks ago, Tucker was the son of the Dixons, a local wealthy family who’d bought the inn five years ago. Though he was barely seventeen, Tucker manned the desk at Cattleman’s Crossing. It would’ve been a mind-numbingly boring job for most teenagers, but Tucker had an interest other boys his age didn’t.
Ghosts.
“Everything’s the way you wanted,” Tucker said. “I’ve been telling everyone who’s called to reserve a room that the place is undergoing fumigation.” He smirked. “Spiders.”
“Clever.” She had offered Tucker a chunk of money to keep the inn empty for this particular reunion, but she hadn’t needed to. The boy had a trust fund, and what’s more, he was eager to witness the so-called spirit that graced the building his parents owned. Barely a twinkle in his mother’s eye when the fire had ravaged the inn, Tucker had grown up on the lore and was hungry to experience it with his own eyes. Laney hadn’t had to do any arm-twisting when she’d called and explained her article idea to him. That is, as long as she let him in on their little reunion party.
Laney dropped her hair and asked, “Has Adele Lyons called to confirm her reservation?”
“Yeah, she’s showing up tomorrow afternoon. Said she’s bringing a friend too?”
“Of sorts.”
Tucker leaned over the counter and lowered his voice. “So did you get him to say yes?”
Laney sighed. “Not yet. But I think I will.” It might take showing back up at Dallas Fire and Rescue in her shortest dress, offering Lucas Moore money, and giving him a mother of a guilt trip, but Laney would get him to come to Cattleman’s Crossing tomorrow night come hell or high water. Her article and future depended on it.
“Good.” Tucker nodded, shuffling around some papers on the desk. “Is it okay if I set up some equipment here tomorrow night?”
“Hmm.” She bit the inside of her cheek, considering. She wanted the inn quiet enough to capture some quotes from Adele and Lucas as they reminisced about what happened that night, without a teenager running around with bullshit monitors and recorders to detect bullshit paranormal activity. Then again, if Tucker managed to capture some random temperature fluctuation that could seem like it was the work of ghosts, that would be a real boon to her piece. “Okay,” she finally said. “But nothing too fancy, okay?”
“Right. Thanks.”
She tilted her head at him. “You actually think this place is haunted, don’t you?”
“Oh, I’m sure it’s haunted,” Tucker said. “I’m just not 100 percent sure which kind of ghost.”
Lifting her eyebrows, Laney repeated, “Kind?”
“Yeah.” Tucker pulled his brown hair behind his ears. “I mean, you got like a bunch of different types of apparitions. There are your poltergeists, which generally just like to screw with your shit. The ghost here could be that, because a lot of people have mentioned things being moved, especially wallets and loose change left around. Then there are residual haunts, which happen when something big and traumatic happens in a place, and the energy just sort of echoes—like footsteps or a scream, you know?”
“Uh-huh.” This was probably the sort of thing that Laney should be paying more attention to, but she didn’t believe in ghosts, let alone ghost taxonomy. But she nodded and pulled out her phone, jotting down a few notes.
“But what I think,” Tucker said, “is that it’s the saloon guy.”
Laney stopped typing and glanced up. “Silas Bolton?”
He grinned. “You got it.” Reaching under some papers on the hotel desk, he pulled out an old, yellowed newspaper. It was dated 1892, and on it was a picture of a young man scowling and leaning against a bar, his eyes dark and gleaming. Laney had seen the image before. It always got her how these black and white photos from the Old West made you feel like you were right there in the saloon. She could almost smell the cigars, hear the horses whinnying and stomping outside, and see the men sitting around tables with cards and bottles of whiskey.
Pointing at Silas, Tucker asked, “Doesn’t he look like a guy that would haunt you?”
“That’s for sure.” Silly as it was, Laney had done her homework. Silas “Pocket” Bolton was one of the most infamous suspects rumored to be haunting Cattleman’s Crossing.
Pocket had frequented the saloon that was once located where the inn now stood. Back then, he’d had a reputation. A bad one. Young as he was, he was greedy, and he had a dishonest streak a mile long. He spent his time in the saloon, drinking and gambling and parting other men from their hard-earned money. He got the nickname “Pocket” because of the way he carried himself: one hand out, the other in his left pocket where he kept all the coins he’d won.
It must’ve been a lot of coins. His obituary claimed he’d never lost a hand.
“There are old stories that say Pocket Bolton got some help from the devil.” Tucker’s eyes lit with excitement.
Laney shrugged. “He was probably just really good at cheating.”
“Yeah, but one day he disappeared into an upstairs room of the saloon,” Tucker said, “and when they went looking for him, all they found was a pile of ash and his gold coins on top. Like the devil had come to take his side of the bargain.”
Laney wrinkled her nose at the picture of the dour-faced man. “He should’ve asked the devil for a facelift. Or maybe some Zoloft.” She tapped the newspaper. “So if our ghost here is supposedly Pocket Bolton, what kind would he be, a poltergeist?”
“Nope.” The boy squinted at the grainy image of the gambler. “Probably an intelligent apparition, and judging by this dude’s expression, maybe a malevolent one. Those are the real baddies, the ones that don’t just want your attention.”
“What could ol’ Pocket Bolton want?”
Tucker’s voice grew quiet. “Well, if he sold himself to the devil, maybe there’s something else he collects now besides coins. Like souls.” He shook himself. “I mean, that’s what the Dallas tourist guide I read says.”
Laney jotted that down, briefly shuddering as a drop of cool sweat slid down her spine.
Tucker scooped up the old paper and stowed it under the hotel desk. “Well, if there’s an intelligent apparition here, I’ll be sure to capture it on my equipment.”
Spirits, demons, Bigfoot, little green aliens, non-corrupt politicians, the Loch Ness monster—it was all the same to Laney. But these days, publications that gave over a dollar a word were as hard to spot as ghosts. She was going to use every bit she could. With a wry smile, she thought of it as one last con before she could put her past—and her parents—behind her.
When their lies had caught up with the Stonewaters—when sympathetic bank employees wanted a loan back or neighbors realized nobody was dying of any incurable disease—the family left town. Again and again. She’d been raised faking broken legs and absent relatives and failing to make any friendships that lasted beyond six months. Karl and Sandy had been kind to her, and fun in their own way, but they never stopped playing pretend. Sometimes she wondered if she even knew their real names. When Laney had graduated college, she’d finally severed ties and left them to their retirement beach house in New Jersey. They’d at least given her a bank account in her own name, but the money there was slowly dwindling, and it was never hers—never theirs—to begin with.
She wanted to make it on her own, without lies or guise. This article would be one last half-truth to help her stand on her own two feet and launch her career as a freelance writer. Sure, she didn’t believe in spirits, but there were a lot of things she pretended to believe in, like democracy in 21st century America.
Shitty parents or not, she had her mother’s curves and her father’s big promises, and she would use whatever she could to nail this.
She scrolled through her phone. “Well, I’m going to take some photos, and then…” Laney tapped her lips with a forefinger.
Tucker raised an eyebrow. “Then?”
“I’m going to go back to the fire station and get Lucas Moore to agree to spend tomorrow night here.”