Fixer-Upper Mystery #08: Premeditated Mortar

- Blurb -

Shannon Hammer' s friend Jane Hennessey has purchased one wing of the Gables, formerly the old state insane asylum, located on a bucolic hillside two miles northeast of Lighthouse Cove. Jane plans to turn her section into a small luxury hotel with twenty ocean-view rooms, a bar, a restaurant, and a conference space. Shannon knows that the real reason why Jane is determined to restore the old landmark is because her beloved aunt once lived in the asylum. Jane had bad dreams about the place for years afterward, and now she' s excited to turn the facility into something beautiful and relaxing while-hopefully-exorcising some of those bad memories. Shannon knows that the Gables isn' t haunted, but weird things are happening on the construction site. Tools are disappearing, chains are rattling, and cold spots are popping up on the stairs. The disturbances are so cliched, though, that Shannon and her team laugh them off whenever they occur-until the day they find a dead body strapped into a bathtub in the old hydrotherapy hall. Now Shannon wonders if all the "haunting" effects were rigged, not to scare people away but to force them to discover the body and declare the place to be too dangerous to remain standing. Someone wants to put an end to the renovations and have the old asylum torn down. But Shannon won' t give in to the fearmongering. She is determined to see her friend' s project come alive. Even if it kills her.