Read Online Dark Paradise by Tami Hoag - Free Book Online Page B

train. The twenty-foot
    giltframed mirror behind the bar had reportedly come from a castle in
    Europe, courtesy of an adoring duke. Montana had never seen anything
    more extravagant than Madam Belle's Board and Brothel, as it had been
    called by some.
     
    Sadly, Madam Belle's Popularity faded with her beauty, and her fortune
    trickled away into bad investments and worse lovers. As spectacular as
    the Golden Eagle was, New Eden was too far off the beaten path for any
    but the most curious to visit. The hotel fell into disrepair. Madam
    Belle fell to her death from the second floor balcony, a victim of dry
    rot in the balustrade. And so ended the flight of the Golden Eagle.
     
    Marilee stood on the veranda of the renovated hotel, reading the story
    that was beautifully hand-lettered on yellowed parchment and displayed
    tastefully in a glass case on the wall beside the carved front doors.
    The details didn't even make a dent on her brain. She wasn't even sure
    how she had come to be standing at the doors to the Mystic Moose.
     
    After leaving the sheriff's office, she had just started walking,
    needing to clear those awful scenes from her memory - Lucy's body from a
    distance, Lucy's body up close, entry wound, exit wound. Her head
    pounded from the effort to eradicate those horrific images of blood,
    death, decay. She had walked the west side of Main Street clear out to
    the Paradise Motel, then crossed and walked back down the east side,
    oblivious of the sights and sounds and people around her.
     
    The contradictions of the town penetrated in only the most abstract of
    ways - the pickups that looked as though they had been gone after with
    tire irons and the luxury cars that cost more than most people's houses;
    the boarded-up, bankrupt stores and the windows displaying extravagant
    silver jewelry and custom-made sharkskin cowboy boots; the ruddy-faced
    cowboys and ranchers in town on errands and the faces of people who had
    graced the covers of People magazine. All of it seemed more dreamlike
    than real. In keeping with the theme of the day.
     
    She walked for hours, heedless of her surroundings, unaware of the
    curious and pensive looks she got from the locals; preoccupied by
    thoughts of death, fate, justice, injustice, coincidence, Raffertys.
    Fragments of thought hurtled through her mind like shrapnel, sharp-edged
    and painful. There were too many bits and pieces. She couldn't seem to
    grasp any one of them long enough to make sense of it. Caffeine and
    grief and exhaustion pulled at her sanity and shook her nerves like so
    many ragged threads, until she wanted to grab her hair with both hands
    and just hang on, screaming.
     
    She needed to sit down somewhere quiet and dark, have a drink to dull
    hypersensitive senses, smoke a cigarette to give herself something
    ordinary to focus on.
     
    The double doors of the Moose swung open, and a tall, handsome woman in
    a long denim jumper and expensive-looking suede boots strode out, her
    jaw set at a challenging angle, her eyes homing in on Marilee from
    behind a pair of large glasses with blue and violet frames.
     
    Her face was a long oval with strong features and a slim, unpainted
    mouth. A dense, wild mane of red-gold hair bounced around her shoulders.
     
    Marilee started to step out of her way, murmuring an apology, but the
    woman took hold of her shoulders with both beringed hands and looked her
    square in the face.
     
    "Dear girl," she said dramatically, her expression dead serious. "You
    have a very fractured aura."
     
    Marilee's jaw fell open, but no words came out. A jumble of quartz
    crystals on sterling chains hung around the woman's neck. Opals the size
    and shape of sparrow eggs dangled from her elegant earlobes. "I - I'm
    sorry . . . I guess," she mumbled, feeling more and more like Alice on
    the other side of the looking-glass.
     
    The woman stepped back, tipped her head, and laid a long hand against
    her forehead. " 'Weep not for me, nor all the