Page 70 of Spark
He listened intently, and thankfully without any reactions or facial expression that indicated that he thought she was crazy.
She finished with, “…some of the people I spoke with are convinced that it’s the ghost of Laura Tringstad haunting the hotel. So, I’m thinking that the unsolved murder aspect of the story will be a key point of my article. The haunting is a great hook to draw in readers, though.” She studied Sven closely, looking for his reaction when she mentioned Laura’s name. “I understand that Laura was your niece?”
He closed his eyes briefly, as if pained, and sighed. “Poor Laura. What have you learned about her murder?”
His bright blue gaze fixed on her with the same startling intensity she’d noticed when interacting with other shifters. If he was a Tringstad, then he was one of the town’s wolf shifters.
How much do I tell him?Sophie wondered.
She thought about her reply. She guessed that he might really be asking whether she was in on Bearpaw Ridge’s biggest secret—that nearly all of the established families living here were shapeshifters of one kind or another.
“Well, I’m not a shifter myself,” she began.
His eyes widened.Bingo!
She continued, “But I’m Dimitri Medved’s stepdaughter, and Elle Swanson adopted me into the Swanson clan when Mom married him. Anyway, one of the things I found out when looking into Laura’s murder that she and Silvio were different kinds of shifters. The Tringstads are wolves, right? And the Ornelas family are jaguars.”
Sven nodded and put his own plate of cake aside.
“Here’s something that you probably haven’t heard,” he said, leaning forward confidentially. “Those people were harassing Laura for weeks before the wedding, calling her names, spreading rumors about why a wolf shifter from a family like ours would want to mate their precious boy Silvio. The way they were complaining, you could tell that they consideredus…one of Bearpaw Ridge’s oldest families…a step down for their clan.” His tone is thick with loathing. “I justknowthose dirty cats killed her and got off scot-free.”
“Well, since Police Chief Jacobsen just reopened the cold case on the file, I hope we’ll get an answer soon.”
Sven's blue eyes went wide.
“She’s looking into Laura’s murder? After all these years?” He sounded really surprised. “I thought that Ken—the old sheriff, that is—had tied up all of the loose ends? He told us that he was sure that one of the Ornelas boys had done it, even if he couldn’t get a jury to convict them.”
“Well, Annika’s got the cold case file,” Sophie explained, wondering why Annika’s great-uncle hadn’t been informed yet about that yet—or interviewed as part of the police investigation. “And after talking to a bunch of the hotel employees, I’m pretty sure that all the weird stuff happening at the hotel is tied to Laura’s murder somehow.”
Sophie’s phone, which sat between them on the lace-trimmed white tablecloth with its recording app on, suddenly began ringing. She glanced at it to make sure that it wasn’t an emergency of some kind, and saw that her bio-dad, Noel was calling.
“Sorry about that,” she apologized to Sven, quickly tapping the Decline icon.
Noel was probably just calling to chat in one of his free moments. He’d started doing that after re-establishing contact with her a few years ago.
She decided she would return his call when she left the Tringstad farm and headed back home. It was a forty-five-minute drive from here to the Grizzly Creek Ranch, so they’d have plenty of time to catch up.
“So, there was a lot of opposition from your family and Silvio’s family?” she asked Sven, because Alejandro had mentioned it, and she was interested in Sven’s side of the story. “But I heard that you invited Silvio for drinks at the hotel bar after the wedding. And that your daughters were Laura’s bridesmaids.”
“Exactly!” Sven said. He reached for the teapot and topped off her cup. “I was trying to do my part to mend fences between my pack and their clan, since Laura and Silvio were already mated by then, and there was nothing to be done at that point.” His mouth twisted. “The wedding was just a formality to make the government happy. 'Weddings are for paperwork and a party,' as we shifters like to say.”
“And mating is a lifetime bond, right? Shifters don’t really divorce?” None of the shifters that Sophie knew had ever gone into a lot of detail about what the mating bond involved, just that a mated shifter was completely committed to their mate, whether that mate was another shifter or an Ordinary like Sophie.
The gravity of Matt and Chris’s courtship declaration suddenly weighed on her.When I pick one of them, I'll have to be really sure of what I’m doing. Because for them, there’s no going back after that.
“Yes, ‘until death do you part,” Sven quoted. “Look, I admit I wasn’t happy about Laura and Silvio's match at first, especially since a match had already been arranged for her down in Texas, but Silvio grew on me. He was a very hard-working young man.”
“So, would you say that it was mainly Silvio’s family who opposed the marriage?” Sophie asked.
Sven nodded vigorously. “You should have heard those cats yowling about how their precious bloodline was going to be diluted!” His voice was tinged with bitter resentment. “Back then, Alejandro was always talking about how his ancestors were ancient Mayan kings, and they all acted like they were somehow better than the rest of us! Well,myancestors were elite Viking warriors and chieftains!” He shook his head, then changed the subject. “Now, back to that ghost that you’re writing about. Did anyone mention the haunted bathtub in the old honeymoon suite? Apparently, the shower turns itself on at precisely 4:45 pm every year on the anniversary of Laura’s death…”
Sophie stayed for another hour, drinking tea and listening to Sven spin his stories about the various ghostly occurrences that he knew about.
Some of the paranormal events that Sven described were new to Sophie—the shower in Room 444; the grand piano in the hotel lobby where invisible hands sometimes played music in the middle of the night; and unseen hands pushing guests and housekeeping staff out of various rooms.
But with the exception of the shower story, none of the other incidents seemed to have any connection to a murdered bride possibly seeking vengeance on the family accused of killing her.
It was nearly dinnertime when Sophie finally made her goodbyes, thanking Sven for his time, and returned to her car.
