as an eight-year-old she had seen only what she wanted to see. She had loved the hotel’s elegantly appointed lobby, its highly polished brass adornments, its marble floors underfoot and its crystal chandeliers high overhead, its sweeping staircase and claret-colored carpeting, its uniformed doorman and imposing majordomo.
Most of all Desiree had loved her great-grandfather, resplendent in a perfectly pressed Savile Row suit, starched white collar and old school tie. In a manner of speaking, the Colonel, as his staff had referred to him, had worn a kind of uniform, too. His closet had been filled with identical suits, collars and ties.
It had been her love for her great-grandfather, and for the Stratford with its rich history and traditions, that had eventually led Desiree to make preserving the past her life’s work. She believed that without the past there was no understanding of the present and precious little insight for the future.
She exhaled on a long, drawn-out sigh.
Unfortunately, sentimentality had cost her another good night’s sleep. It wasn’t the first time. It wouldn’t be the last. Not if she went ahead with her plans for renovating the hotel from the ground up.
In truth, the Stratford was a dowdy dowager duchess, a bit threadbare, a bit tattered, a bit—well, perhaps more than a bit—past her prime, but not beyond restoration, not beyond redemption. She could be saved. Desiree was certain of it.
But was she certain in her mind ... or only in her heart?
Desiree punched at the pillows behind her head—there were half a dozen of every size and shape, covered with the finest Egyptian cotton pillow slips—and stretched out, arms flung to either side, in the antique iron-frame bed.
She gazed up at the stars twinkling overhead on the ceiling and began to count in a whisper, “One. Two. Three. Four.” After some time she wetted her lips with her tongue and continued. “Ninety-seven. Ninety-eight. Ninety-nine. One hundred.” She persisted. “One hundred and one. One hundred and two.”
Enough was enough.
“There’s no sense in pretending any longer,” Desiree muttered as she propped herself up against the mound of pillows. “You aren’t going back-to sleep any time soon.”
She was reaching for the lamp on the bedside table when she thought she heard something.
Her hand froze in midair.
She slowly took in her breath and held it. She wasn’t sure which came next: the odd, tingling sensation that raised the small hairs on the back of her neck or the soft pad of footsteps outside in the corridor.
There was no one else staying in this wing, no one else with a reason for being here.
Desiree gave herself a good shake. It was the dead of night. The Stratford was an old building. Old buildings went hand in hand with strange noises.
Or maybe it was no more than an overactive imagination on her part. Not that she was a woman prone to an overactive anything, but she was living alone in this section of the hotel.
Truth to tell, there had been more than one unexplained occurrence since her arrival at the Stratford several weeks ago. Furniture had been found mysteriously moved from one room to another. Everyone swore their innocence in the matter, and no one seemed to have any idea of who or why or when or even how this feat could have been accomplished.
Then there had been the glimpses of something—someone—just at the edge of Desiree’s peripheral vision, but nothing—and no one—was ever there.
Lastly were the inexplicable noises, always at night, always when she was alone.
Perhaps it was someone up to no good. Perhaps it was someone trying to frighten her. No doubt that’s what it was. That’s what it had to be.
Shenanigans.
Monkeyshines.
Tasteless practical jokes, in Desiree’s opinion.
There were stories, naturally. There were always stories about historic old buildings. She had heard the outlandish ghost stories about the Stratford her very first night back in Chicago. Her resident guests had seen to that.
One account; relayed with particular relish by Miss Molly Mays, had concerned the ill-fated workman who had fallen asleep during the renovation of the hotel. He had accidentally been buried alive inside a foot-thick brick wall. The poor devil had suffocated to death, of course, before his absence had been noted by his fellow workmen and the wall could be frantically torn down again.
Then there was the tale of the mobster and his moll, related with equal enthusiasm by Miss Maggie Mays. During the era of Prohibition, the couple had apparently been Chicago’s version of Bonnie and Clyde. The pair had come to an inglorious, although perhaps deserved, end when they were killed in a barrage of police bullets. Ever since, according to the elder Miss Mays, it had been rumored that the lovers’ spirits still roamed the corridors of the Stratford, phantom guns blazing.
Balderdash.
Poppycock.
Pure malarkey, as her great-grandfather would have said. She didn’t believe in ghosts. At least not those kind of ghosts, Desiree reminded herself.
Thump.
Thump.
The sound of footsteps came again.
Without switching on the bedside lamp, Desiree threw back the summer-weight covers and sat up. As a girl her feet had dangled over the edge of the high English-style bed. Now they were firmly planted on the cool hardwood floor.
Thump.
“Enough of this nonsense,” Desiree grumbled under her breath as she reached for her bathrobe and made a beeline for the door.
Despite the twenty years since her last visit, for she had stopped coming to the Stratford after the death of her great-grandfather, she knew the guest room, and the entire apartment, like the back of her hand.
Without a sound Desiree turned the knob, opened the door a crack and peered out into the corridor. Vintage lights, strategically spaced every ten or fifteen feet, cast a garish glow on the flowered wallpaper and claret-colored carpeting.
She stepped into the hallway and quietly slipped along in her bare feet, double-checking each juncture as she came to it.
There was nothing.
There was no one.
There was no sign of whoever had been there.
Not that Desiree was particularly surprised by the results of her impromptu investigation. She had scarcely expected to peer around the corner and catch the culprit red-handed.
“Utter nonsense,” she announced aloud, her voice echoing in the empty corridor. “I’m going to bed.”
It was at that moment that Desiree noticed the door to her great-grandfather’s study was ajar. Surely she had closed it when she’d finished working for the night.
Hadn’t she?
She made a split-second decision. Under the circumstances,
