Stranded by Lorena McCourtney Page A

What’s the matter?”
    I pointed to the carpet under my feet. Abilene isn’t a shrieking person, but even she gave a small squeak. Blood stains, enough blood stains for an ax murder, were seeping out from under the base of the carousel horses. The stain hadn’t been noticeable earlier, mixed with the floral pattern of the carpet, but now . . .
    I clutched Abilene’s hand and looked at Kelli. “This is where . . . ?”
    “Oh no. I’m sorry!” She waved her hand and gave an embarrassed laugh. “I’d forgotten. I should’ve warned you.
    It isn’t a blood stain. At least I don’t think so.”
    “It isn’t?” I said doubtfully.
    “I thought it was blood too, when I first saw it,” Kelli admitted. She walked over and peered down at the stain with us. “I even wondered if I should check back to see if one of the wives had mysteriously disappeared sometime. But then I got to looking closer, and I think it’s just a wine stain. I’m guessing one of the wives threw something like a bottle of burgundy at Uncle Hiram sometime. He tended to marry the hot-tempered kind.”
    I knelt and examined the irregular stain and decided Kelli was right. Part of the stain was under the base holding the carousel horses, which meant they’d been moved into the room after the bottle-throwing incident, probably fairly recently. But why? Why would old Hiram bring something as unlikely as expensive and beautiful carousel horses into his bedroom? Especially when, with a wedding coming up in only a few months, he wouldn’t have been living here much longer?
    “I don’t know if the stain wouldn’t come out, or if he decided it wasn’t worth the bother,” Kelli added. “In any case, it hasn’t anything to do with the murder.”
    “And so,” I asked, figuring I’d earned the right to take a flying leap over sensitivity and tact, “where did the murder occur?”
    “I’ll show you. What do you want to see? The beginning or the end?”
    While I was wondering what that meant, she made the decision herself and motioned for us to follow. Abilene hesitated. I recognized her dilemma. Curiosity runs deep in Abilene, maybe almost as deep as it does in me. We’ve both read enough mystery novels to write our own Murder for Dummies manual, with footnotes. But now she was torn. Dr. Sugarman or murder mystery?
    Dr. Sugarman won. Which told me again how much the job meant to her. She glanced down the hallway toward the front door. “Would it be okay if . . . ?” she began tentatively.
    “You run along. We’ll see about moving our things from the motor home over here later.”
    Kelli looked at her watch. “I have to take the Bronco in to Nick’s for that two o’clock appointment. We can do it right after that.”
    Abilene wasted no time heading for the door. I followed Kelli at a slower pace down the hallway to the foyer and stairs. I was certain we were heading for that closed door. I was even anticipating a shivery Inner Sanctum –type squawk when it opened.
    But Kelli turned toward the stairs leading upward. She noticed my questioning look at the door. “Nothing happened in there. It’s just Uncle Hiram’s office and library. I’ve already moved his records and papers over to my office, so it’s just books in there now.”
    So much for my vibe-recognition abilities. “I thought Hiram had donated his books to the Ladies Historical Society.”
    “He did, but they’ve never picked them up. They spent every cent he gave them on getting the new wing for the library added onto their building. When they ran out of money, he said he’d donate another bundle for maintenance and to hire someone to organize and catalog the books, but he hadn’t yet gotten around to that before he was murdered.” She paused, frowning slightly.
    I jumped right in with a possibility. “Could there have been some connection? Someone didn’t want him to make that next donation?”
    She groaned but also laughed. “Don’t say that. If the town