One Corpse Open Slay

by Dakota Cassidy

  ONE CORPSE OPEN SLAY

  MARSHMALLOW HOLLOW MYSTERIES BOOK 3

  DAKOTA CASSIDY

  COPYRIGHT

  One Corpse Open Slay

  Published 2020 by Dakota Cassidy

  Copyright © 2020, Dakota Cassidy

  ISBN: 9798566748573

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of Dakota Cassidy.

  This book is a work of fiction. Any similarity to actual persons, living or dead, locales, or events is wholly coincidental. The names, characters, dialogue, and events in this book are from the author’s imagination and should not to be construed as real.

  Manufactured in the USA.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Welcome to Marshmallow Hollow Mysteries! Set in the wintery, seaside (and totally fictional) town of Marshmallow Hollow, Maine, where it’s all Christmas all the time, and murder is hung by the chimney with care! I’m so excited to introduce you to Halliday Valentine (Hal for short), Atticus Finch—her crusty hummingbird familiar—her small gang of crime solvers, and the quirky folks from her beloved hometown.

  Please note, this series is a bit of a spinoff of my Witchless in Seattle series, in that Hal and part of the gang were introduced in book 10 of the series, titled Witch It Real Good. But there’s no need to read the Witchless series if you haven’t.

  That said, this is an ongoing series (not a standalone) and there will be some underlying mysteries that will linger from book to book, but I promise to wrap up the central mystery with a big, fat bow by each book’s end! Also note, I’m taking artistic license with places and names of things in the beautiful state of Maine—thus, any and all mistakes are mine and certainly not meant to offend.

  Lastly, Christmas is my absolute favorite time of the year. I love everything about it, the decorations, the music, the gathering of friends and family, and most of all, the hope the season brings.

  I hope you all love Hal, her friends, and her tiny little Christmas town as much as I do!

  Dakota XXOO

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Cover artist: Katie Wood

  Editor: Kelli Collins

  CHAPTER 1

  We three kings of Orient are…

  “Stiles?”

  “Uh-huh?” my best friend Stiles Fitzsimmons muttered, the edge of his tongue firmly planted at the corner of his mouth as he concentrated on tweaking our ice sculpture creation.

  Yes, that’s right. I said ice sculpture.

  “I don’t want to be, as my sister says, Miss Judgy McJudgerson, but I feel like we’ve gotten a tiny bit off course here.”

  He stood back in the cold evening air and planted his hands on his hips with a grating sigh as he looked over our table at the Marshmallow Hollow ice sculpting contest (novice level. Like, super novice) with a critical eye.

  Located smack dab in the middle of the ice festival, we, along with the other competitors, were in the midst of ending a very long day of ice carving.

  A. Very. Long. Day.

  We’d been taking classes together for a couple of months now and this was the culmination—a contest he’d talked me into entering.

  As he glanced at one of our pieces, he asked, “Why do you hate the Yoda, Hal?”

  I winced at my oops. “That’s Yoda?”

  He sucked his teeth and pulled his red Santa cap tighter over his ears. “I told you, Yoda is the baby Jesus, Hal. I’ve told you that a thousand times since we entered this ridiculous contest.”

  I held up a gloved finger and narrowed my eyes at him as we stood under the competition tent in the freezing cold.

  “Jesus, we did not make,” I joked in Yoda fashion, but Stiles wasn’t amused. Not if his sourpuss was any indication. “Listen, this ridiculous contest, was a contest that was your idea to join, by the way. I was plenty happy to just take the beginners ice sculpting class and call it a day. Maybe learn how to make a cute swan or a dragon. I didn’t want to enter contests. But it’ll be fun, you said. Uh, nope. Not fun when you, and your competitive streak a mile wide, just had to get in there and beat the pants off Buddy Wilson.”

  Buddy Wilson was the big-mouth braggart in our class of just ten people. He always finished first, his designs were better and cleverer, and he was quicker to pick up techniques than anyone else. Just ask him and he’d tell you.

  Buddy had also bullied Stiles back in middle school, and to say Stiles hadn’t forgotten is to underestimate how long he can hold a grudge.

  Even though he was now twice the size of Buddy, some zingers never fade.

  “Oh, come on,” he drawled, the cold air under the open tent puffing from his mouth. “He brags all the time about how great he is. You know he gets on your nerves, too, Hal, and don’t try and tell me otherwise. The only thing we could do was enter. He called us chickens for not entering. Chickens.” Stiles flapped his arms like the wings of a chicken. “That kind of aggression will not stand.”

  I looked around at the last few competition stragglers, clearing up their tables for tomorrow’s first round of judging for the novice level.

  Yule Wolfram, a tall, thin, distinguished champion from Germany who was also a judge—and sort of a stuck-up, ice-carving elitist, if you asked me—was glaring at one entry from the expert level with clear disapproval. A gorgeous ice castle with waterfalls. If he didn’t like that entry, he was going to annihilate ours.

  “But did it bother me enough to enter a contest and make complete fools of ourselves, Stiles? Um, no. I was good taking the classes and learning slowly. It was you and your crazy adrenaline, high over the compliment Darien gave you about how great your ice apple was, that led us to,” I spread my arms wide over our ever-burgeoning table, “this.”

  Darien Markham was our teacher for the class.

  Stiles snickered. “I did a really good leaf that night, Hal,” he protested. “Even you said it was good. Besides, you gotta admit, Darien’s pretty cute.”

  I pictured Darien in my head, his handsome, pearly white smile and dark eyes flirtatiously eyeballing my BFF.

  Sure. He was very cute. But maybe not cute enough for us to have entered an ice sculpting contest after only five classes just to prove we’re not chickens.

  “All I’ll admit is you were preening and showboating and that led us to this bit of overambition, Stiles. We’re going to be complete laughingstocks. Which, hey. What’s a little finger-pointing among friends?”

  He looked at our entry in the ice sculpting contest and shrugged before crossing his arms over his chest. “I disagree. I think Chewbacca shows real promise as one of the three kings.”

  I looked at our sad, sad attempt to carve ice and snorted a sharp laugh that made people turn and look at us—most especially Yule Wolfram and Blanche Ritter, another champion judge.

  “Listen, when I agreed to do this, and you said you wanted to do a Star Wars nativity theme, and I knew there was no talking you out of your impossible dream, I went along with it, thinking what’s the worst that can happen?” Pointing at the table, I said with a grimace, “I think this is the worst that can happen, Stiles.”

  “Aw, c’mon, Kitten. It’s not that bad,” he said, brushing away a bit of ice dust from another of the three kings (and I use that term loosely) as played by Darth Vader.

  “Stiles? It’s that bad. Yoda looks like a melting cinnamon bun with ears, and Luke as Joseph?” I pointed to the place where his eyes should be, but instead resided two gaping holes. “Does this look like Joseph to you, Fitzi? Since when did Joseph have two uneven, hollowed-out holes for eyes?”

  “How do y
ou know he didn’t? Have you ever met him?” he countered.

  “How would he have been able to find his way to the inn to learn they had no room for Mary to give birth if he had two hollowed-out sockets for eyeballs?”

  “Whatever.” He brushed his finger along the top of what was supposed to be Luke’s lightsaber. “But you have to admit, this came out pretty good.”

  I popped my lips and frowned. In the spirit of BFFs and honesty, I shook my head. He’d tell me if a pair of jeans made my butt look big; I was about to tell him that his death slab of pointy ice didn’t look anything like a lightsaber.

  “No. It didn’t. It looks like an ice pick. That thing’s so sharp, it could stab someone clear through, Stiles.”

  He gave me a sheepish look. “Maybe I went a little too far with the chiseling, but it does look like a weapon…mostly anyway, and when we add the lights, it’ll be kinda cool.”

  I grabbed him by the arm and forced him to stand back next to me. “No. It’ll look like a big pointy stick with lights. Not a lightsaber. Stiles, look at this. Really look. It looks like a bunch of ice someone hacked up with a butter knife. How does that blob even remotely resemble Darth Vader?” I waited for an answer, and when he didn’t respond, I said, “Know what? It doesn’t, and you know it.”

  He sighed the sigh that meant he was coming to terms with the truth of our very sad matter. “But…Mary’s Princess Lei buns are good, right?”

  Rocking back on the heels of my insulated boots, I shook my head again. “Yeah, no. No, they’re not good, Stiles. They look like crooked, oversized warts.”

  “Talk about doom and gloom. What happened to good old-fashioned optimism?” he accused.

  I scratched my head. “There’s optimism and there’s devastatingly hopeless. We, my friend, are in the devastatingly hopeless category, with even less optimism for turning this into anything remotely resembling a nativity scene, let alone one that looks like a representation of Star Wars.”

  He made a face at me as he pulled off his Santa hat and dropped it on the table in defeat. “Then what now, smarty-pants? You have any brilliant ideas? The contest starts tomorrow afternoon and if we don’t have anything to show for our efforts, we’ll be disqualified.”

  I bit the inside of my cheek. “You want to fake a sickness? Or maybe we tell them your great aunt Tilda in Idaho died?”

  Stiles made a face at me. “I can’t pretend to go to Idaho. I have to work later tomorrow, Hal. Can’t you just…you know, fix it.”

  I was aghast at the suggestion I use my magic to cheat. “I most certainly will not. What would Atti say?”

  “What he doesn’t know won’t hurt him.”

  Rolling my eyes, I straightened my own Santa hat. “He would too know. You know he can feel it when I use it, Stiles. Besides, that’s wrong and not fair to everyone else.”

  “Fair schmair. Is it fair that we’re so bad at this?”

  “What did you expect after only five classes, Fitzi?”

  “I expected Darien to ask me out by now,” he said with a pout. Darien had been taking his time, and Stiles wasn’t budging on his traditional take on dating. He was the asked, not the asker. “That still doesn’t answer my question, Hal. What do we do?”

  I peered out at the ice festival goers, the last few stragglers outside the big tent where all the tables for the contest were set up, heading toward the parking lot.

  “We’ll just have to withdraw and suck it up—or we can present this nightmare scenario and be laughed right out of Marshmallow Hollow. Your choice. I’m with you either way.”

  Hobbs entered the tent then, his smile warm as he strolled over to us to pick me up for our hot chocolate date.

  It was only a week before Christmas, and I’d mostly recuperated from my last bout with a killer. During that time, Hobbs and I had spent much more time together, doing all sorts of Christmas activities.

  There was the gingerbread house contest, where we lost in such a stunning defeat to one Gabby Smith—a seven-year-old reincarnation of Picasso—that we were still laughing about it as of this afternoon when we’d had lunch.

  We’d also entered the snow angel contest and lost by a landslide due to what Hobbs had laughingly labeled questionable judges with no taste.

  In between the holiday festivities, we’d spent many nights by the Christmas tree, warmed by the fireplace in my house, sipping wine and talking about anything and everything, having dinner together and watching tons of Christmas movies.

  A few nights ago, we’d gone on a horse-drawn carriage ride through the fields behind Marshall Langley’s farm with the moonlight shining down on us, snuggled up in a warm blanket as the ocean crashed against the rocks and snow gently fell.

  To say I liked Hobbs a lot was to say War and Peace was just a little book. He made me laugh and secretly smile to myself more often than not. Every meal we shared, every bottle of wine or cookie the size of your face we enjoyed together, brought me closer to telling him about the other half of my secret.

  My witch half. The half that didn’t always work right, but tried hard just the same.

  I’d only had a couple of visions since I’d told Hobbs about them, but they were really minor. One was about that stinkin’ typewriter again, sitting alone in a room with nothing more than four walls; the other had to do with a disproportionately large saucer sled. Like, an enormous saucer sled as wide as a car.

  Still, nothing major had occurred, no dead bodies, no blood, no murderers I couldn’t identify.

  And I was enjoying the peace of my time off from running Just Claus, and spending it with Hobbs.

  He approached with a smile that was as fake as Mitzy Hawthorne’s eyelashes, but he was trying, and I loved that about him.

  He dropped a kiss on my cold cheek before he said, “Hey, guys! Lookin’ good.” He gave us a thumb’s up, cementing his inability to lie—or at least lie well.

  “Ya think?” I asked. “What do you like best, Hobbs?”

  He blinked his gorgeous eyes. “Uh…all of it….”

  I pointed to what was supposed to be Darth Vader. “Do you think he looks like him?” I asked, purposely vague.

  Hobbs frowned. “Like who?”

  I gave him a coy smile. “Who do you think he’s supposed to look like?”

  “Um…” he blustered. “I’m not very good at celebrities. The name escapes me.”

  I nudged him in the ribs and rolled my eyes. “Oh, it does not and you know it. It doesn’t look like anyone, Hobbs. It looks like a bunch of blocks of ice with holes and gouges in them. It’s okay. We’ve come to terms with our lack of skill.”

  Stiles slapped Hobbs on the back. “Don’t listen to her, Dainty. I mean, come on. Tell me that doesn’t look like a lightsaber, Hobbs.”

  Hobbs gave me a deer-in-the-headlights look. “Uh… it looks very pointy. I mean, I guess it could be a lightsaber.”

  I made a face at him. “Way to dodge the truth. I repeat, it does not. We’re going to have to withdraw. There’s no shame in admitting we couldn’t cut the mustard, Stiles.”

  “How about we sleep on it and tomorrow, we’ll get here early and discuss. Deal?”

  I eyed him suspiciously. “I think that translates to, let me think of ways to get Hal to sign off on this atrocity and stick this out till the bitter end.”

  Stiles grinned as he pulled his gloves on with a shrug. “Maybe. And now I’m out. I wanna grab a hot cinnamon bun before they close the stand. See you tomorrow, bright and early.” He dropped a kiss on my forehead and was off.

  I looked at Hobbs, who gave me guilty eyes before he held out his hand.

  I took it, but not without admonishment. “You are a big fat liar. This looks nothing like a Star Wars nativity scene, Cowboy.”

  He winced as he pulled me out of the tent and onto the grounds of the ice festival, where the twinkling Christmas lights lit our path through the amazing ice sculptures crafted by true artisans.

  The ice festival was one of my favor
ite events in Marshmallow Hollow at this time of year.

  “You’re right. I chickened out. But what was I supposed to do, Hal? He’s my friend, and I don’t want to crush his dreams of ice-sculpting glory.”

  I stopped us in the middle of an ice display of elves doing cartwheels and handstands. “But what about my dreams of saving face?”

  “You’re in the novice-level competition. I’m sure they take that into account.”

  “Did you see Buddy Wilson’s Christmas tree with all the presents and an ice skater, skating around the bottom of it? He even has a design on the presents that looks like real wrapping paper. That’s part of the novice-level competition, Hobbs.”

  “Ohhh,” he said low and deep, scratching his darkly bearded chin. “He’s a beginner?”

  I clucked my tongue and pulled him along to the hot chocolate stand. “See my point? He’s really good, and I’m not totally convinced he hasn’t done this before. But the fact remains, we’re going to end up smoked.”

  Hobbs pulled me near and smiled. “But you’ll be awesome while you do it.”

  I chuckled and pressed a kiss to his cheek as we got in line to get some hot chocolate. “Good save, Texas. Now, two marshmallows or four?”

  He looked down at me, his eyes gleaming beneath the masses of Christmas lights hanging overhead. “That’s you being funny, right?”

  We stood in line at the little hut Gracie Good owned. The cute wooden sign above the small boxlike structure read Gracie’s Goodies, and had a hand-painted mug of hot chocolate with marshmallows floating in it, all lit up. Flickering lights also lined the counter and a bunch of wrapped treats sat in a wicker bowl.

  There were plenty of hot chocolate makers in Marshmallow Hollow, but I loved Gracie’s hot chocolate and homemade marshmallows the best. She added cinnamon and some special ingredient she wouldn’t reveal to anyone, making it the creamiest, most delicious confection in all of Maine.

  As we waited in the icy air, the couple ahead of us—a pair of mid-level ice sculptors—clung to one another, whispering and giggling. They were tall and lean and very pretty to look at.