Kathy, who helped in the dining room, shook his hand vigorously. She was petite with a pixie cut and an abundant amount of energy for a woman who was on the other side of forty.
Lucas also met Oscar, who did maintenance and landscaping. He was a weathered, unshaven man who either didn’t speak much English or was just the quiet type.
Riley was there as well, her tight, unhappy smile speaking volumes. She wore the same perfume she’d worn while they dated, and a whiff of it nearly did him in. He tried not toremember the way she’d been before, the woman who’d been warm, open, and always made him laugh. The woman who could make his breath hitch with one look at him through lowered lashes. That Riley was gone, replaced by coldness and edges.
Once Mr. Ross finished the introductions, he took Lucas past the front desk and down a short hallway to his office. “The inn is busier this month than usual, but that’s a good thing. Paying customers, that’s what keeps us in business.” Mr. Ross said all this with forced cheer as though he had to sell the benefits of the extra load. Lucas supposed that was because Mr. Ross had been looking forward to things being slow before his retirement. This would be his last day at the inn.
Well, Lucas had never been afraid of hard work. He could handle things.
Lucas spent the next three hours going over every spreadsheet and program that had anything to do with expenses, vendors, repairs, and payroll. “Riley knows all of it,” Mr. Ross said. “If you have any questions, she’ll help you.”
Lucas went over the spreadsheets again, familiarizing himself with them and asking Mr. Ross clarifying questions. The fewer things he had to ask Riley about, the better.
When Lucas was satisfied that he understood everything, he turned his attention to a large box sitting beside the desk. “Is that more stuff we have to go through?” He hoped not. He needed a break from records.
“No. Those are the curtains for the owner’s apartment. The real estate agent had me take them off because she thought the place showed better without them. I had housecleaning wash them and never got around to putting them back up. If you want them, you’ll need to reinstall the rods. Those are behind the box.”
Well, it was good to know he wouldn’t have to keep changing in his bathroom.
After giving this piece of information, Mr. Ross walked out the door with the spring to his step of a man who could leave the Montana winter for a beachfront cabana in Florida.
Lucas didn’t want the box cluttering up the office, so he carried it upstairs to his apartment and put it inside. On his way back down, he came across Wendy on the second-floor landing. Her head swiveled back and forth from the hallway to the staircase. “You didn’t happen to see a wallaby anywhere on the third floor, did you?”
That must be some house-cleaning term he didn’t know. “What’s a wallaby?” he asked.
She looked at him in surprise that he didn’t know. “It’s a little kangaroo. They jump around.”
He stared at her, still unsure of the question. “You want to know if I saw an actual kangaroo in the inn? I thought we had a problem with rats.”
Wendy peered down the stairs, wringing her hands together. “It’s Mrs. Lewis’s pet, and it tries to make a break for it every time I clean her room. I’m not going into room ten again. I’m not. The thing is impossible to catch.” Without waiting for his response, she hurried down the hallway, checking behind potted plants and the decorative hutch that sat in the middle of the passage.
Okay, so that was strange. Lucas had thought the inn had a no-pet policy. Why had they allowed someone to bring a miniature kangaroo to their room?
Lucas continued down the stairs toward the lobby to let Riley know about the situation.
Was it even legal to have a pet wallaby? At the very least, the owner needed to have a permit for exotic animals. He was thinking about this so intently that he didn’t pay attention to the man coming up the steps until the guy gasped at him and said, “What are you doing here?”
Lucas’s gaze snapped to the man. He was thin with a hooked nose and hunched shoulders. He looked familiar, but Lucas couldn’t place him. That was the problem with being a policeman in a small town. People remembered him.
“I’m going downstairs,” Lucas said in a friendly tone. “How about you?” He was fishing for information. Had the man been someone Lucas helped or someone he’d given a ticket?
“I have every right to be here,” the man insisted, drawing himself up. “My room is paid for. You can ask the front desk. They’ll tell you.”
Ah, now Lucas remembered him. Lark Springs only had a few hotels. About a month ago, one of them had called the police because a homeless man had come inside and was sleeping underneath the stairs.
Lucas always felt bad making homeless people go out into the cold, but he had to enforce trespassing laws. He’d taken the man to a nearby McDonald’s and bought him a meal so he could stay there for a while.
The man hurried past Lucas and went up the stairs, still muttering that the cops couldn’t make him leave. The guy was cleaner than he had been, with hair and beard trimmed, but Lucas was still uneasy about the man’s presence here. Did he actually have a room this time or just a more convincing story?
Lucas continued down the stairway and across the front room. Riley was standing over a printer, plucking pages as they came from the machine. Her auburn hair fell in waves around her shoulders, and she wore black pants and a white flowing shirt that hugged her figure, emphasizing her slender waist.
He really shouldn’t notice details like that about her.
“I just spoke to Wendy,” he said. “Did you know that we have a wallaby loose in the inn?”
“Yes,” she said calmly. “I’ve called its owner, and she’s on her way back to the inn. She’ll be able to calm Tippyroo down andcatch him. Until then, I locked all the exterior doors, left a note on the back doors telling people to come to the front, and I’m watching the front door so no one inadvertently lets Tippyroo out while they’re coming or going.”
She said all of this like it was normal procedure, just another zoo creature on the loose.