Chapter One
“Didyouknowthisplace used to be a brothel?”
The stout repairman handed Kora Meredith his business card and beelined inside the door she held open for him. She propped the door open with a brick to let in the warm autumn air and watched curiously as he put his hands on his hips and made a slow circle around the room. His expression was pure wonder and excitement, as if he’d just won a gameshow prize.
Moving to the far wall, he began lightly knocking on the mahogany panels and running his palms over them. He felt around for a minute, then pressed his ear to the wall, finally turning to her with an eager grin.
What in the world was he doing?
“I always wanted to see the inside of Estes Park’s most famous historical sex shop.”
Well, this was weird. Maybe she didn’t need her printer repaired that badly after all.
“O-kay. The printer’s over here.”
She motioned to the outdated beast of a machine, but Earl, according to the embroidered patch on his ‘We Know Electronics’ striped work shirt, started wandering the space.
“You ever wonder what it looked like in here, you know, backthen?”
He gave a scandalous upward bump of his eyebrows and moved around the mostly empty room as if he could imagine it.
“Not really. So, the printer—”
“Did you know, after its brothel days ended, this place was an orphanage. Yep. And then a religious cult took it over.”
Pulling a patient breath through her nose, Kora moved behind the ancient metal desk she’d found in one of the rooms when she bought the place, leaned her forearms on it and clasped her hands together.
She’d been informed this place came with a lot of history when she’d purchased it four months ago. It was on the town roster of historic buildings, and though it had been remodeled many times since its brothel days, the stain of its original purpose could apparently never be fully removed. Everyone who’d stepped foot inside since she began renovations had a story to tell about the building’s history. The locals seemed infatuated with it but curiously, the building had sat empty for nearly a decade before she’d purchased it from an elderly woman whose declining health forced her to liquidate her assets.
From the moment Kora saw it for sale on the realtor’s website, she knew this was the building that would occupy her time on her self-imposed two-year hiatus. She’d hired a local inspector to check the place out and put in an offer after getting the all-clear, then signed the paperwork and transferred the purchase amount to the realtor without ever stepping foot inside. The internet was a wonderful thing.
Former brothel or not, it was the perfect spot for her new bookstore. She’d get it up and running, sell it, and head back to L.A. feeling refreshed and renewed.
Well, that was the plan.
Earl started feeling the wall again. “I heard there’s a secret room where they used to perform animal sacrifices.”
He wiggled a piece of trim. When it didn’t move, he tried another piece.
“Thankfully, my new bookstore will most definitely not be sacrificing animals and the secret room is definitely not underneath that nifty trim.”
He glanced at her and she pointed at the printer again. Of course, he wanted to know about the secret room. Everyone wanted to know about the secret room. No way was she telling Earl that the room was real.
With a sheepish grin, he approached the printer and stared at it.
“This model is ancient.” He grimaced. “Not sure I can fix something this old.”
“I figured, considering there was about two inches of dust on the top when I found it in the storage room.”
Earl slid into a thoughtful expression. “Well, it probably belonged to old man Lacy. His accounting firm was the last business in here. Yep, he dropped dead at his desk right over there in the corner. So I heard, anyway.”
Jesus. Kora hugged herself. She hadn’t been told about that.
“It was pretty awful. He died on a Friday while his wife was out of town, and no one found him until Monday morning. I hear the smell was getting bad in here for about a—”
She cringed. There was a reason she didn’t watch the news and generally stayed away from social media. Stories like this were bad for her stress level.
“So, anyway, the printer stopped printing the other day and won’t do a thing. Just see what you can do. If it’s not fixable, I’ll have to replace it.”
