A Forgotten Murder (Medlar Mystery 3)

“He was glad to get rid of me. He said I was so emotionally involved with the remodel of the Morris house that I was a pest and...” Jack trailed off, not wanting to repeat his foreman’s language. “He’ll do fine.”

“You need a vacation.”

“What about you? Think Kirkwood Realty can live without you?”

Kate stretched her legs on the long seat. Just months ago she’d sold her boss’s big house, and the commission was enough to allow her to take some time off. She’d been able to send money to her mother and had indulged her love of clothing with a few designer outfits from The Outnet. She did love a bargain! “I think they’ll do very well without me. What do you know about this hotel?”

“Only that years ago Sara shelled out a lot to restore it.”

“This must have been before she got together with you or she would have sent you with your tool belt to do the remodel.” Sara had been a silent partner in Jack’s construction company since he was eighteen years old.

“Okay, so what’s the truth?”

“I think she’s bored,” Kate said. “For many years she wrote two books a year. That’s a quarter of a million words. Then she retired. She had nothing but free time.”

“So she traveled a lot. Saw the world.”

“Yes, then she bought that big house and had you remodel it. That was exciting.”

“Me or the house?”

“The house, of course.” Kate was smiling.

“And we moved in with her.”

“That was definitely exciting,” Kate said.

“Especially since we solved a few murders.”

“For which we got no credit.”

“You want people knocking on your door asking you to help solve what happened to their great-uncle fifty years ago?”

“I thought this conversation was about Aunt Sara,” Kate said. “If it’s about me, I’m going to sleep.”

“Beside me,” Jack murmured.

“Behave or I’ll switch seats with Aunt Sara.”

Jack made a sign of hand over heart.

“Why is she sending us off to faraway Scotland while she stays at Oxley Manor?” Kate asked.

“To give us time to be alone? Just us in all that heather? Hey! Did you know that my ancestry allows me to wear the full Scottish regalia? How do you think I’d look in a kilt?”

For a moment, Kate blinked at that image. Jack was a very handsome man. She shook her head a bit to clear it. “Back to my aunt. In the last year—”

“Of peace,” Jack said.

“Yes, in a year of peace and quiet, Aunt Sara has kept busy, but...”

“There’s been nothing to keep her brain fully occupied.”

“Right. I think maybe she’s going toward something rather than away from it,” Kate said.

“What makes you think that?”

“I, uh, did a little snooping about this hotel.”