New Release! MURDER AT THE MOTEL by Beth Dolgner – Includes an Excerpt!

Murder hits close to home for Olivia Kendrick when her annoying neighbor at Cowboy’s Corral Motor Lodge turns up dead. Did one of the other guests hold a grudge against Leonard Evers?

Even while she’s eyeing a few shady suspects, Olivia can’t help but blame herself. Maybe she really is a conjuror, and maybe she accidentally killed her downstairs neighbor with magic.

With the help of her supernatural friends at Nightmare Sanctuary Haunted House, Olivia will spy on a plumber, get an eerie prediction from a psychic, and face veiled threats.

At the same time, Olivia’s jerk boss, Damien Shackleford, learns a secret that will change the way he thinks of his family forever. Olivia must help Damien deal with the life-altering news, even while she tries to find the killer…

MURDER AT THE MOTEL, the fourth novel in the Nightmare, Arizona paranormal cozy mystery series by bestselling author Beth Dolgner. This lighthearted series is about starting over, found family, and solving murders in a quirky old mining town with a secret supernatural community.

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Chapter One

I yawned and blinked at Madge. “Sorry, what?”

Before she could answer, I felt something wet against the back of my hand. Without even bothering to look down, I turned my wrist so I could pet Felipe. “Hey, buddy,” I mumbled.

When my fingers felt fur instead of leathery chupacabra skin, I glanced down. It hadn’t been Felipe’s wet little nose I had felt, but a snout. Zach was sitting on his hind legs, looking up at me with wide black eyes. His rust-red fur shone in the light of the overhead chandelier. He huffed out what I thought was supposed to be a greeting.

I retracted my hand. “Zach, I am not going to pet you. That’s weird.”

Zach cocked his head. I knew he understood every word I was saying. Even in his werewolf form, Zach still retained his full human consciousness. I bent at the waist, so we were nose to nose. “You,” I said, “are a human being most of the time, and I am not going to pet you.” I paused, then added, “Especially not in your human form, so don’t get any ideas.”

Zach huffed again, his tongue lolling out. I wasn’t sure if he was amused by my joke or trying to look adorable. Well, as adorable as a werewolf could possibly look, anyway. In answer, I crossed my arms and gazed at Zach with one eyebrow raised. 

I had never heard a werewolf sigh, but that was exactly what Zach did, before he rose onto all fours and padded away. We were in the entryway of Nightmare Sanctuary Haunted House, and Zach headed in the direction of the dining room, where he probably hoped to find a staff member who was more open to the idea of giving a werewolf a belly rub.

I stifled another yawn as I lazily watched Zach’s retreating form, but when Madge spoke again, I returned my attention to her.

“I asked if you enjoyed your evening.” Madge tossed her long blonde curls over her shoulder and peered at me. “You look exhausted.”

“Because I am. A guest at the motel was shouting up a storm in the middle of the night. Then, another guest began to shout, probably trying to quiet the first man, but it only added to the racket.” 

Madge smiled, which made her look even more beautiful. I wanted to ask her if she was born that gorgeous, or if she had used some witchcraft on herself to look that way. “Go home, Olivia, and get some sleep. Tomorrow is Saturday, so we’ll be busy here. You need your rest!”

I waved languidly. “I will happily take your advice. Good night, Madge.”

I turned and made it all the way to the double front doors of the old building, before I heard firm footsteps coming from the direction of Damien’s office. My hand shot out, and I yanked on the door handle, but I was too late to make an escape. Damien called my name, and I turned to him reluctantly. 

“Can you please come to my office?” Damien said quietly. He was wearing his mirrored sunglasses, which was never a good sign. It meant his emotions were flaring up, and he was trying to hide the telltale sign of his green eyes glowing.

I opened my mouth to protest. I wanted nothing more than to fall into bed and, hopefully, have a peaceful night in my apartment at Cowboy’s Corral Motor Lodge. Damien, though, looked tense, and I knew whatever he wanted to discuss shouldn’t wait. I nodded curtly and followed him down a hallway to his office.

At first, I didn’t realize someone was sitting in one of the two oxblood leather chairs in front of Damien’s desk. Vivian was so petite her head didn’t rise above the back of the chair, and I only saw her as I moved to sit down, too. “Oh,” I said, suddenly understanding what this was about.

Vivian was a psychic medium. I had met her on my first night of work at the Sanctuary, but I usually only saw her in passing. She and her husband, Amos, tended to keep to themselves. During a recent Friday the Thirteenth party, Vivian had explained to me that her psychic senses could overwhelm her sometimes, so she often had to isolate herself from others to “quiet the noise.”

“Hi, Olivia. I already told Damien, but he thought you needed to know, too.”

The hesitance in Vivian’s voice put me on my guard. “Know what?” I asked. I had been in the process of dropping into the other chair, but I remained standing.

Vivian and Damien exchanged a quick glance. “Vivian didn’t pick up on much at the mine,” Damien said. Earlier in the day, Vivian had visited the old mine owned by his father, Baxter. The mine had been converted into a home, though it clearly hadn’t been lived in for decades. We were hoping we might find clues there that could help us learn more about Baxter’s disappearance about eight months before.

“So, there weren’t any psychic imprints left on the place?” I asked Vivian.

“I sensed a deep feeling of pain,” Vivian said. “But, also…” She fell silent and looked at Damien again.

I felt my chest tighten. I didn’t know what was coming, but clearly, it wasn’t good.

Vivian tugged nervously at the hem of her vintage shirt. With cropped jeans, a white button-down blouse, and her long dark hair pulled up in a red bandanna, she looked like a pinup queen from the nineteen fifties. “Your name was in my head, Olivia. I don’t mean I heard a voice speaking to me. It was more like someone directed my thoughts to you.”

“Why?” I wasn’t sure if I was upset by that news or simply curious. It certainly seemed to make Vivian uncomfortable.

Vivian shook her head. “I don’t know.”

“It means I was right. There’s a link between you and my father.” Damien had been standing, and he finally settled into the chair behind the massive oak desk. “Whether it’s a psychic link or something magical, I don’t know.”

“Again, why?” I pressed. “You’ve been saying that for a long time now, but we still don’t know why I would have a connection to a man I’ve never met.”

Damien took off his sunglasses and slid them into the inner pocket of his tailored gray suit jacket. “I don’t know, but I think we were right when we speculated that Sonny’s Folly Mine is going to help us find my father.”

I turned to Vivian. “What about the pain you sensed? Is it coming from Baxter? And if so, is he feeling pain now, wherever he is, or is it old pain?”

Vivian thought for a few moments before she said, “It’s old pain, but I don’t know who it’s coming from. It could even be coming from more than one person. There was some terrible sorrow in that mine, and it left a strong impression. I didn’t pick up on any details, though.”

“Thank you for doing this for us,” I said. It had been Damien’s idea to send Vivian to the mine to see what psychic impressions she might pick up on. The mine was warded against ghosts, so we had known she wouldn’t encounter any of those to communicate with, but we had hoped she might get other information. 

And she had. It just hadn’t been the kind of information we were anticipating.

Damien echoed my thanks, and Vivian told us she was happy to help before leaving. When it was just Damien and me in the office, I looked at him and asked, again, “Why me?”

“Maybe because you’re a conjuror, and your magic will be the key to finding my father.”

At first, I had argued with Damien a lot when he suggested I was a conjuror. I was certain I wasn’t supernatural at all. But, as time had gone on, I had realized Damien’s insistence about me being able to desire something so much that I could magically make it happen wasn’t just him being stubborn. 

He wanted it to be true because it gave him hope that we would find Baxter.

So, over the last couple of weeks, I had stopped arguing with Damien about it. Instead, I was willingly letting him give me lessons in controlling my thoughts and emotions to hone my alleged skills. It sometimes took an enormous amount of patience on my part, but it wasn’t doing any harm, and it made Damien feel better.

There wasn’t much else to say after Vivian had left. We could speculate all night long about what she had sensed in the mine, but it wouldn’t get us any closer to knowing the truth. So, I wished Damien a good night and walked to my car as fast as I could. I didn’t want anyone else asking for a moment of my time.

When I pulled into the parking lot of Cowboy’s Corral Motor Lodge, I was surprised to find nearly every spot was taken. I had never seen the motel so full before. The parking lot sat between the two cinderblock wings of the motel, which ran perpendicular to the road. At the front of the property, a two-story office building sat right in the middle of the driveways into and out of the parking lot. 

My efficiency apartment was at the rear of the wing on the right, but I had to drive past it and loop around as I hunted for a parking spot. I eventually ended up near the office. 

As I cut through the parking lot on the way to my apartment, I heard a loud voice and looked over to see a man on a cell phone. He was pacing back and forth in front of a ground-floor room almost directly beneath my own. I recognized the voice as the one I had heard shouting the night before.

This time, the man was yelling into the phone about needing to cancel a contract. “I’m not going to be back, so why would I want to keep paying for it?” he yelled. With his free hand, the man reached up and tugged at his thinning brown hair.

A moment later, he added, “That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard!”

You’re the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard, I thought. Being tired made me snarky.

A voice boomed from somewhere nearby. “Keep it down, or I’ll call the police!” It must have been the same guest who had been yelling at the loud man the night before. 

I groaned and trudged up my stairs. Even once I had closed the door of my apartment, I could still hear the shouting. I quickly put on my pajamas, washed my face, and fell into bed. I lay on my side and clamped a pillow over my ear. It turned the shouting into a low drone, and I fell asleep within minutes.

When I woke up on Saturday morning, I stretched and rubbed my eyes. It was bright in my apartment. Too bright.

My front door was standing wide open, the sun shining onto my orange shag rug. In the open doorway, I could see the backlit silhouette of a man.