Add to all that a highly trained and discreet staff ready to pander to a guest's every whim, lovely rooms and cottages with luxurious beds and bedding that guests had been known to purchase after a visit, and first-rate spa facilities, and you had a hotel that had put Leisure, Tennessee, on the map. Or at least on the map of deluxe vacation spots.

"The only problem," Quentin told Bishop as they got out of Quentin's rental in the circular driveway in front of the main building, "is that the place has a nasty habit of losing people — and they're almost always children."

"I don't imagine they include that in the brochures," Bishop said.

"No." Quentin shook his head. "To be fair, there isn't really a pattern to the thing unless you have the sort of suspicious mind I have. And from what I've been able to piece together over the years, the dead and missing, though usually connected to the hotel in some way, are almost never guests. Kids of people who work here, or in the general area, mostly. Locals. And people in this part of the country don't open up to outsiders, or want anyone meddling in their business."

"Even when that business is missing children?"

"They're the self-reliant sort, believe me. They get their dogs and their shotguns and go looking for themselves. In the old days, nobody even bothered to report any kind of problem to the police, and as far as I've been able to make out, it's just as often true in recent years."

"What sort of time frame are you talking about?"

"I've gone back twenty years, at least. And found half a dozen suspicious accidents or illnesses, as well as one unquestionable murder. Not statistically significant for a hotel with as many people passing through as The Lodge can claim, according to the books. But I'm not buying it. And—"