RETIRED DENVER METRO area detective Frank Walker received the letter like the other guests, on Tuesday. He’d been in the middle of watching Antiques Roadshow—it was his favorite because Detective Walker loved the stories. Who wouldn’t enjoy finding a hidden treasure in the attic or at a flea market? He went to garage sales every weekend, but so far all he’d been able to pick up were a few trinkets, none worth anything substantial.

So when the invitation came, Detective Walker felt like a real winner. He rubbed his bald, dark brown head and couldn’t resist a little smile.

“What’s that?” Penny asked. His granddaughter was visiting from Florida for the week and had a giant stack of books in front of her, waiting to be read. Penny was curled up on the couch, her tiny frame taking up just the smallest corner. Her dark skin made her eyes look extra bright as she tried to see what was on the paper. “That letter looks fancy.” She wrinkled her nose to push her glasses up.

“It’s an invitation,” Detective Walker said. He handed Penny the letter.

She grinned as she read it. “You’re a winner, Grandpa! It says so right here.” Penny’s face lit up. “What’s this Barclay Hotel?”

“It’s famous,” Detective Walker answered. “They say it’s haunted.”

Penny grabbed her phone and let her fingers dance across the screen. “Sure is. Says here it’s the top haunted location in Colorado. And”—her face lit up even more when she shared this—“it has the largest private library in the state of Colorado.”

Unlike JJ, Penny loved to read. She could spend hours at the library, getting lost in the stacks like there was a treasure hunt and she was the explorer. In fact, her parents often had to pick her up at her local library after it closed, because Penny would forget about time. She made getting lost in a book an art form.

Detective Walker took the letter back, and read it again. There had to be a catch somewhere, a kink in the cable . . . You don’t just win a weekend getaway without entering a contest somewhere.

Penny did read the tiny print, unlike the other invited guests. “Says there’s no cell phone service.”

“Huh.” Detective Walker considered this. No cell phones. That seemed like a nice break anyway: just peace and quiet.

But then he hesitated. In the back of the detective’s mind, there was a tiny alarm bell going off—it was his detective’s hunch, telling him that something about this invitation was off. But he also imagined himself having the relaxing spa weekend of his dreams . . .

“Can we go?” Penny asked.

Now, Penny didn’t ask for much when she visited. She’d go along on all Detective Walker’s garage sale hunts, she’d watch Antiques Roadshow, and she’d eat whatever he cooked (which wasn’t very fancy) without complaining. Even when her grandpa made broccoli casserole.

These trips to Colorado were a much-needed break for Penny. Her parents owned a scuba diving school, and while that may sound super fun to everyone else, Penny would rather spend her time reading and drawing (she was getting quite good) than swimming underwater. She was afraid of a lot of things; being underwater was somewhere near the top of her fear list. But a giant library? Now, that sounded amazing. . . .

“Please . . . ?” Penny asked again.

The detective hesitated. His daughter had told him specifically to keep things quiet. Apparently, Penny was prone to panicking lately. But Detective Walker really wanted to go too. He was a winner, finally.

He paused to ponder the decision for a moment longer.

“I like this ‘no cell phone reception’ business,” Detective Walker mumbled. “Says here there’s a hot tub.”

Secretly (or not so secretly, because Penny knew all about it) he really wanted a pampered getaway. Being a detective for several decades had given Detective Walker a crick in his neck, and a good massage sounded like a dream.

“I’ll bet there’s a spa too, with salt scrubs and massages and mud facials,” Penny said, basically reading his mind. She had no idea if this was actually true (for the record, it wasn’t), but she really wanted to go to the Barclay Hotel, so she went along with the dream.

Detective Walker smiled. “You think they’ll put those little cucumber slices on my eyes?” he asked. “I’ve always wanted to try that.”

“Of course,” Penny said, nodding. “And we can take nice long walks around the grounds, eat some fancy food.”

The detective was silent. Penny knew he just needed a little nudge to say yes.

“Can we go, please, Grandpa?” Penny gave him her best pleading face. It was a good one, with sad-dog eyes.

“You’re not afraid of the ghosts at the Barclay Hotel?” he asked her.

“Poppycock,” Penny said with a smile. That means “nonsense.” It was their word—Grandpa and Penny’s. They’d heard it on Antiques Roadshow and laughed at the sound. Then it became their thing. Grandpa and Penny were both just-the-facts kind of people.

He glanced at the invitation one more time. “Oh, why not,” he said, and made the call to RSVP. Penny cheered and rushed off to start packing her bags, imagining the hours she was going to spend in the Barclay Hotel library.

Detective Walker was the only guest with no secrets. Later, he would realize why he was at the Barclay Hotel and why he’d been chosen. It was exactly because he had no secrets. And because everyone else on the guest list had secrets to spare.

Even Penny had a secret, something she hadn’t told even her grandpa, and she pretty much told him everything. They were two peas in a pod, her mom liked to say. When she wasn’t visiting, Penny called her grandpa at least once a week, to talk books, detective TV shows, and yard sale hunting.

But this secret she kept in her heart, like the twist in a good mystery book. Maybe someday she’d share it—but for now, she had a trip to prepare for!