Free The Heart of Christmas by Brenda Novak

about
solving
the crime as chronicling the mystery and suggesting possible scenarios.” He tilted his head as he studied her. “It should be good publicity for the B and B,” he said by way of enticement.
    But he’d been talking about doing a book on Little Mary for several years. Did he really have to come and talk to her right
now?
The day after she’d slept with a total stranger? Make her worry that he might have heard the news? Make her wonder if he found what she’d done as pathetic as she did?
    Mr. Taylor had returned earlier. Eve had watched him come in. But he didn’t look at her or acknowledge her. He’d walked right past her and marched up the stairs. Then he’d gone out again shortly after—without his bags. Since checkout was at noon and it was after two, she could only assume that he planned on staying another night.
    She wasn’t quite sure how she felt about that, whether she should do anything to enforce her request that he leave or just pretend, like he seemed to be doing, that last night had never happened. Their encounter was probably so meaningless to him that he didn’t care whether he ran into her every time he passed through the lobby.
    “The B and B is doing better these days,” she told Ted. “The tea I’m offering is generating some interest. We’re getting groups of Red Hat Society ladies, and we’ve had an increase in couples ever since we started advertising in bridal magazines.”
    “I’m glad to hear it, but advertising is expensive, and this will be free. If this book takes off, you could get a steady stream of visitors, curious to see whether this place really is haunted. That’s how it worked after
Unsolved Mysteries
aired, didn’t it?”
    “For a while.” She supposed she should be grateful to him for taking an interest—on behalf of her and the town. She would have been if she didn’t already have so much on her mind.
    “So...shall we get started?” he asked.
    She sat back. “Of course. Ask away.”
    “Why don’t we go over the basics, just to make sure I’ve got them straight?”
    “You should know the basics. The whole town does.”
    “I’m aware that Mary Hatfield was six when she was found strangled in the basement in December of 1871. Her birth and death are engraved on her headstone in the cemetery next door. But you lived here when you were little, too. I’m actually hoping you’ll tell me what that was like.”
    “We were only here for a few years, until the first round of renovations were completed. Then my parents bought the property where we live today, and we moved out there.”
    “I remember when that happened. We were still in grade school. But you didn’t move because of Mary’s ghost....”
    “No, my parents wanted a regular family life, where they could be off work sometimes—and we could have some privacy as a family.”
    “Are you glad they did that?”
    She nodded. “I am. I love this place, and I did even then. But...it would’ve been difficult facing guests constantly with no break. And making sure three little kids were behaving perfectly at all times was too tall an order for any mother.”
    “Can you tell me about some of your earliest memories of this place?”
    “I remember the musty smell of it more than anything else. And I remember playing with the old stuff in the attic. Dressing up in the clothes I found in various trunks, taking my Barbie dolls up there, that sort of thing. Being in that space made me a bit uneasy, even back then, but it was the perfect size for a child and the only place I wouldn’t be bothered by my brothers. I could play for hours.”
    “What about the basement?”
    She shivered. “I never played here. But I remember my brothers locking me in once, just to frighten me.”
    “That was where Mary’s body was found.”
    “Yes. So you can imagine how terrified I was. They called through the door, telling me that her ghost was going to get me, and I was absolutely convinced they were