The Ghost Detective Books 1-3 Special Boxed Edition: Three Fun Cozy Mysteries With Bonus Holiday Story (The Ghost Detective Collection)

by Jane Hinchey

  Leaning forward, he took the card from me, mimicking my hold. “What—exactly—were you doing at Myra’s?” he asked. His tone was conversational, but I’d seen the flash in his eyes, half worry, half suspicion.

  “Ashley Baker hired me to find out who killed Myra. I was working the case.” It came out like a defiant teenager who had just one upped her parents. Defensive, but with the certain smugness that she was right.

  “And you’re here to discuss this with me as your supervisor, right? Considering you just totaled your car because you were being chased by gunmen who may or may not have been involved in a bank robbery. That you were also involved in.”

  “Well, that too.” It was my turn to lean forward, “Look, like it or not, I’m on the case. I’m here,” I shot an uncomfortable look at the closed door, “when I really don’t want to be.”

  He studied me intently for several heartbeats, his eyes not missing a thing, from my rapid breathing to the sweat beading my brow. “What has you so worked up about being here?”

  I dropped my voice. “Have you checked your office for bugs?”

  He jerked back, surprised. “You think I need to?”

  I was about to tell him that yes; I did think he needed to, given he was apparently investigating corruption under this very roof when he held up his hand to silence me. “Point taken.” His voice rolled out, deep and low, a rumble that vibrated through me. His gray eyes had darkened like an approaching storm and I wondered what had triggered his response. He blinked, his eyes lightened, and I watched as he slid the Tarot card into an evidence bag, unplugged my phone and handed it back to me, and stood. “Let’s take this someplace else. I could use a decent coffee.”

  Ahhh. Good to see we were finally on the same page. I wasn’t convinced these walls didn’t have ears, and it seemed Galloway was in agreement. I shot a quick look around the room to see if Ben had returned. Nope. Too bad, he’d just have to catch up with us later.

  Out in the parking lot I stood by my sturdy backup, my seventies era Chrysler, who’d been in retirement in Ben’s garage but was now back on duty. “I’ll meet you at Ben’s place. I have decent coffee.” I said, resting my hand on the roof.

  “Ben’s place? Don’t you mean your place?”

  “Semantics.” Flipping him a grin, I slid into the driver’s seat and slammed the door. It didn’t catch, so I slammed it again. Third time was the charm. I patted the dash in gratitude when the engine started first try, albeit with a loud backfire and a cloud of smoke. Pulling out of the lot, I kept my eyes on the road and not a certain SUV that tailed me all the way to Ben’s house.

  “Oh good, you’re back, I’m starving!” Thor greeted me at the door, and I bent down to scratch his head. “You’re always starving.” I told him, leaving the front door open for Galloway. In the kitchen, I left my phone on the counter. The slight amount of juice Galloway had given it wasn’t enough to even turn it on.

  “Excuse me!” Thor demanded, sitting in front of his bowl. I checked. Yep, still had kibble. Rearranging the biscuits in his bowl into a neat little pile, I stood back and watched the giant teddy bear of a cat nod his head in apparent satisfaction and begin crunching the kibble.

  Just like he had many times before, Galloway took charge of the coffee machine and I slid onto a kitchen stool and watched him. It wasn’t a hardship. He plugged something into the spare power socket, then grabbed my phone and plugged it in, all without a word. I figured he must’ve had a spare charger in his car.

  He spoke with his back to me. “Tell me what you got.” He commanded.

  “What I’ve got?” I frowned.

  “Your case.” He prompted, and I blushed. For a moment, with the distraction of Captain Cowboy Hot Pants moving about in front of me, I’d forgotten all about the case and Myra.

  Clearing my throat, I began. “Ashley Baker owns the new age shop next door to Myra, Nine. She hired me this morning.”

  “She rang you?”

  “What? No. Lemme take a step back. I caught the news this morning, I was watching the story on the bank robbery,” I couldn’t contain a grin. “I got some press out of that. Anyway, the next story was Myra’s murder, and I saw Jacob Henry, the clerk from the bank, and it seemed bizarrely coincidental, so I went down there. You lot had already left. Ashley recognized me and hired me on the spot.”

  “And your next course of action was to break into Myra’s shop?” Galloway prompted. I snorted. “No. I didn’t break into anything. I had a key.”

  I didn’t miss the rolled eyes, but thankfully he didn’t call me out on it. It was a crime scene, and I had ignored the tape across the door telling me to keep my ass out.

  Galloway slid a steaming mug toward me. “You look good by the way.”

  I blinked in shock. “Errrr. Thanks?” One minute we’d been talking about Myra’s murder and suddenly he tells me I look good? I mean, I’ll take it, but...

  He chuckled. “What I mean is you’ve pulled up okay after the accident. I admit I was surprised to see you in the station, I was expecting you to be laid up in bed for a few days.”

  “Yes, well, a massage by Ashley with her special oils helped a lot with that.” Ashley’s treatment had worked wonders. I was still sore and my muscles still twinged, but it was bearable.

  Galloway seated himself on the stool next to me and waved a hand. “Continue. You let yourself into the crime scene. Then what?”

  “Not much. At first I didn’t even see the blood, couldn’t smell it over the incense, but yeah, underneath her chair, a small pool of blood had soaked into the rug, so I’m assuming she was stabbed or shot.” Galloway said nothing, so I continued. “I couldn’t find her appointment book so I guess the police have it, but I did get some information from Ashley on who Myra’s regulars were.” I ticked off on my fingers. “Jacob Henry saw Myra frequently. And I mean frequently. Pretty much daily. Regina Davis saw her on a weekly basis, and Kit Chambers saw her semi-regularly, but Kit is on vacation back in England.”

  “Those are your suspects?”

  “There’s also a boyfriend. Lee. He’s quite a bit older than Myra.”

  “And that makes him a suspect?”

  “Pft. No. It was just an observation.” I took a sip of my coffee, scalding my tongue. “I found the Tarot card under the table. To be fair, I didn’t see it, I felt it, but if your officers had been using their flashlights, there’s no excuse for them not to have found it.”

  Galloway ignored my dig. “Odd that it was under the table.” He said, cradling his own coffee cup inches from his lips. “What were you doing under there?”

  “Looking for tricks. Hidden switches and the like.” It was a half truth. “But I’ve been thinking about the card. If she’d dropped it, it would have been in plain sight, on the floor. Not under the table.”

  “What does that tell you?”

  Oh, good. A quiz. “That there was a struggle?” I chewed my lip, imaging the scene in my mind. “Myra had opened the store and was preparing for her first client of the day. She’d told me she opened at nine, but Jacob wasn’t due until ten, so she had time for a walk-in or two before he arrived. What would you do while waiting for customers? Shuffle the Tarot. Maybe do a reading on yourself. Her killer arrives. Seats himself opposite her and she deals the cards. Places the deck on the table. Then things go pear-shaped. The customer doesn’t like the reading. Or maybe he thinks it’s all BS. Maybe he intentionally sweeps the cards off the table in anger. Or flips the table. Then kills Myra.” I paused, thinking. “She’s dead and he... takes the time to straighten up, to put the cards back on the table, only he misses one.”

  I glanced up to see Galloway looking at me. “She told you?”

  Crap! I’d slipped. It had been Myra who’d given me the information, but considering she was a ghost, I couldn’t tell him that. My hands flailed around in panic. “Ashley.” I pounced on the only name I could think of. “Ashley told me Myra opened at nine and that she took her first bookings from ten t
o allow for walk-ins.”

  Galloway nodded, that dimple flashing again. “Actually, that’s not bad. Plausible. Only I’d change a couple of things.”

  I breathed a sigh of relief. He’d bought it. “Oh?”

  “The killer didn’t just tidy up the cards, he took them with him. There were no Tarot cards at the scene. Well, other than the ones Myra had for sale, that is. We didn’t even realize they were missing, not until you turned up with that card.”

  “And the other thing?”

  “She was stabbed in the back. Blade went straight into her heart.”

  I swallowed. At least it was quick. “That tells us she knew her killer. It was someone she trusted, someone she was comfortable with, it didn’t alarm her he was behind her.” I said.

  “Unless she didn’t know they were there.” Galloway pointed out. True. Maybe the killer had been hiding, waiting to strike, sneaking up behind her and taking her unaware.

  “Was she sitting down? At her table?” That’s how I’d found ghost Myra, sitting at her table with her head in her hands, screaming her lungs out. I figured that’s where she’d died.

  “She was. Why’s that?”

  “Because Myra was reasonably tall. If you wanted to stab her in the heart, you’d have to be a similar height.”

  “Or... wait until she was sitting down.” Galloway pointed out.

  “Which means... she wasn’t killed in a fit of rage. Whoever did this? Planned it. It was premeditated.” We had a cold-blooded killer in Firefly Bay. A shiver danced over my skin, raising goosebumps. My sixth sense was tingling, warning me none of this would end well. Galloway confirmed it when he turned to me and said, “you’re not doing this one solo.”

  I blinked. “What?”

  “This is dangerous, Audrey. And like it or not, you’re still in training.”

  “I’m halfway through.” I argued, but in all honesty, if he was offering to work the case with me, I wouldn’t complain. The maniacs with the guns had rattled me. Was the bank robbery connected to Myra’s death? Or was the fact that Jacob Henry had been present at both purely coincidental?

  “You’re with me on this one.” His tone brooked no argument. With his stormy eyes so tantalizingly close, I did the first thing that popped into my head. I kissed him. A quick peck on the lips, but it was enough to ignite a fire in my belly. Galloway briefly rested his forehead against mine. “I’ll take that as a yes.”

  10

  Galloway hadn’t been kidding when he said I was with him. Riding shotgun in his SUV we headed into town, first stop, the Firefly Bay Community Bank. It was a two birds scenario. I still hadn’t signed the errant document that had triggered this whole series of events, and we needed to talk to Jacob Henry. Ben had caught up with us, materializing in the back seat, startling me so much I’d yelped and then had to brush Galloway off with a lame excuse about a cramp. I’m not sure he bought it, but he didn’t call me on it, and for that I was grateful.

  “Promise me you’ll wait for me before you talk to Jacob.” I demanded, stepping through the doors of the bank with Galloway behind me, radiating a lovely warm, comforting heat. In front of me, Ben, doing the exact opposite.

  “I’ll wait.” I could hear the smile in his voice, didn’t need to turn around to have it confirmed.

  Susan caught sight of me and hurried from behind her service desk to envelope me in a bear hug. I tried not to wince as she squeezed my bruised shoulder. “Audrey, how are you?” She ran her hands up and down my upper arms, “all recovered?”

  “Errr.” I cast a quick glance at Galloway. Did people know about my car accident? Granted, word traveled fast in Firefly Bay, but I thought I’d managed to sneak this one under the wire. Galloway shrugged.

  “From the bank robbery, silly.” Susan chided, dragging me over to her workstation.

  “Yes. I’m all... recovered... thank you. How about you?” So much had happened since then that the robbery felt far from a recent memory.

  She typed something into her computer, then pulled open the drawer and retrieved a piece of paper. “I’m fine. I was rattled at the time, but the bank has offered counseling, which I took advantage of. Here, I still had this out and ready for you from yesterday.”

  Placing the document on the desk, she handed me a pen, and I dutifully signed where she pointed. “All done now? That’s it? You don’t need anything else?”

  She beamed at me, the smile one hundred percent fake, and I realized that Susan wasn’t as okay as she said she was. Who would be after having masked gun wielding bandits storm into your place of work and here you were, a day later, standing in that exact same spot, pretending nothing ever happened? This time it was me who patted Susan’s arm. “Thanks for everything, Susan. Take it easy, okay?”

  Seeing our business was concluded, Galloway spoke up. “We’d like a word with Jacob Henry if he’s around?”

  “He’s got today off. Compassionate leave since he found that psychic woman.” Susan sniffed, her disapproval palpable.

  “You’re not a believer?” I guessed.

  “Pft. It’s a load of nonsense. But she had her hooks into Jacob, nice and deep. Spending all that money on some floozy who was supposedly helping him get his wife back when anyone can see that it ain’t ever going to happen. That girl lost interest in him as soon as the wedding was over.”

  Galloway and I exchanged a look. “So you know his wife?” I asked.

  “Of course. Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s a damn shame what she did to him, absolutely broke his heart she did. They’d been sweethearts for a while and... well I don’t know. Maybe she was genuine, maybe not. All Jacob ever wanted was his own family, you know? The white picket fence, the kids, the wife, the whole thing. He was an only child and his mom a single parent and I think his childhood was lonely and he wanted more for himself. He thought he’d found it in Emily—we all did—but she’s young, they both are, maybe she realized she was in over her head?”

  “So they weren’t married long?”

  Susan was shaking her head, “Not even a year, coming up to their first anniversary in a couple of months.”

  “And that’s what you think it was? That Emily was just in it for the wedding itself? One big party and then...”

  “She was spoiled, that one.” Susan leaned in. “Everything she ever wanted, her parents provided. So when she wanted a big fancy wedding, that’s what she got. But then suddenly she wasn’t under mummy and daddy’s roof anymore, they weren’t providing for her. Jacob was.”

  “And he didn’t have the same financial resources I’m guessing.” Galloway’s voice was droll, like he’d heard it all before. In his line of work, he probably had.

  “You got it. Oh, that poor naïve boy,” she sighed, clutched a hand to her chest. “He was so clueless when it came to her. He was excited to be married, even more excited after the wedding, he was already talking about saving for a deposit on a house and then starting a family.”

  “And she wasn’t on board with that?”

  “Emily came from a comfortable upbringing.” Susan shrugged. “Even though she knew she’d be living with Jacob in his apartment once they were married, I think the reality of it was a shock to her. And I don’t know, maybe she was expecting mom and dad to buy them a house as a wedding present.”

  “They weren’t living together before the wedding?” That surprised me. Most couples cohabitated before tying the knot these days.

  Susan shook her head, “Nu-uh. Jacob was real traditional that way.”

  The bank doors slid open behind us and a customer walked in, drawing Susan’s attention away. “Oh, hi, Mrs. Green!” She waved and then glanced back at us. “Was there anything else I can help you with today?”

  “No thanks, Susan. Take care.” She’d relaxed a ton while gossiping about Jacob, but I’d seen the way she’d tensed when the doors opened, the way her eyes had darted toward the door, body rigid, before relaxing when she’d recognized Mrs. Green.

  Be
n, who’d disappeared through the back wall, returned. “Henry isn’t here,” he confirmed. I gave him the slightest of nods while following Galloway back to his SUV. “What next?” I asked, watching while he did something with his phone. Without looking up he said, “you tell me. It’s your investigation.”

  “We go see Jacob at his home.” I didn’t even have to think about it. Jacob was in this up to his neck, I just needed to work out exactly what this was.

  “Which is where?”

  “Oh.” Good point. I didn’t have Jacob’s address and hadn’t thought to ask Susan for it. I’d have been surprised if she’d given it to me though, what with privacy laws and all that. Galloway flashed his phone at me. “Good thing I have his address, hmmm?”

  “Oh ha ha,” I joked. “You could have said.”

  “Nah, it’s too much fun watching you think. Your face is an open book.” He started the car and headed us toward Jacob’s apartment, which wasn’t far from the bank, walking distance in fact.

  “You will have to work on your poker face, Fitz.” Ben teased, poking me in the shoulder. I ignored the icy blast. And my best friend.

  “Do you think Jacob could have done it?” I asked, worrying my lip with my teeth. “Given that he was desperate to get his wife back and that Myra was apparently helping him? He must have spent a fortune visiting her. I wonder what she told him that kept him coming back?”

  “He had opportunity. As to motive? We don’t know how he felt about Myra, we can’t go on gossip from a co-worker. He may have found her help invaluable. Or maybe he realized he was handing over his hard earned money for nothing. We won’t know until we talk to him.”

  Fair point. We pulled up outside a three-story apartment building. I followed Galloway to the top floor—there was no elevator, which must be a pain if you lived here and had to lug groceries up three flights of stairs. Maybe that’s why Emily left—if she was the poor little rich girl Susan painted her to be, living in such a place could have been a deal breaker. But then, she must have visited Jacob at his apartment, spent time here, so it shouldn’t have come as a surprise.