by K. J. Emrick
Natasha tried to answer, but all she could do was sputter, and wave her gloved hands helplessly.
That was as good as a confession in Miranda’s mind, and Maisie’s murder was solved. More than that, she knew the forensics on the gloves would prove their accusations about Leah as soon as Jack could get them to the lab. Natasha would be going to prison for life for committing such heartless, cold-blooded murders.
There was still one more detail to clear up.
“What I don’t understand,” she asked Natasha, “is why you killed Leah.”
At the back of the room, behind the couch, a shimmering blue form stepped into view. As if hearing her name had drawn her out of wherever she was hiding, the ghost of Leah Robinson-Wells floated into view. She was a spirit now, temporarily trapped in the world of the living.
Kyle looked at Miranda. “Should we…”
Miranda shook her head. They were in the middle of solving Leah’s murder. That in itself might be enough to send her on her way to the hereafter.
Jack stepped forward, bringing his police manner to bear on Natasha. “Mrs. Wells. You should know that at this point you’re under arrest for the murder of Maisie Fraser. I will be placing you under arrest for the murder of Leah Robinson-Wells, also, based on the evidence we have found. Because of this, you don’t have to say anything, and whatever you do say will be used against you in a court of law.”
Miranda gave him her best “oh really” stare, wishing that he’d left that part out for at least the next minute or so. She wanted Natasha talking, not clamming up to ask for a lawyer.
His eyes found hers, and just as clearly as if she’d heard him speak it, she knew what he was thinking. I had to. It’s part of the job.
“Mrs. Wells?” he said to Natasha again. “Do you understand the rights I’ve told you?”
“Yes, yes, of course,” she said bitterly.
“Good. Now. It would probably go a long way to helping your case if you could just tell us why—”
“Because she said she was taking my Paul away from me, too!”
The surprise in the room was so thick Miranda could have cut it with a knife.
Over in her corner of the room, Leah’s ghost tossed her head defiantly. “He was my husband,” she whispered through the ether. “Mine!”
Paul shuddered, as if he’d heard a familiar voice from beyond the grave.
Natasha seemed to crumple in on herself, folding her arms over her heart, and managing to look years older than she had a moment ago. “This evening, after dinner, when Miss Wylder was gone snooping around out back, and Paul was gone up to his room like he does almost every night to avoid me… I was in the dining room all by myself when Leah came storming in. She said that she and Ashton had a fight and that Ashton had insisted that she leave Paul.”
Ashton touched his cheek, where the cut that Leah had given him from her slap was still raw and red.
Natasha looked at Paul, her eyes pleading with him. “She said that she was going to make you move out of Moonlight Bay. She said there were too many people trying to control your life and the only person who was going to do that was her! I panicked, don’t you see? I chased after her down the hall, and I begged her not to take you away but she wouldn’t listen to reason!”
“So you grabbed the cricket bat,” Jack filled in the next part. “She ran, and you chased her, and then you hit her with the bat.”
“Yes…” Natasha gasped, like she only now realized what she had done. “I hit her, and I hit her, and then my hands were so numb that I dropped the bat. There was blood on my gloves and I had to strip them off to get rid of them. I threw them… well, you know where I threw them of course. You found them. I had my spares with me and I put them on and then ran inside and waited until Ashton found me. I pretended to be worried about Leah. He followed me outside to look for her but of course she was already there and… and…”
She laughed giddily. Miranda took a step back. Paul stared at his mother. The truth of what she had done was cracking her mind. She was feeling the effects of taking souls without cause, and without justification.
A long sigh caught Miranda’s attention. She and Kyle turned to see Leah’s ghost smiling at them. The answers about her death had put her soul at ease. With a hand reached out toward Paul, the man she had loved with a possessive sort of jealousy, she faded away like dust on the wind. Just like that, her spirit went on to the next place.
“Well,” Kyle chirped. “That was easy. Not sure she deserved it, but those decisions are above my level.”
Miranda watched as police officers came in from the hallway at Jack’s direction. They put handcuffs on Natasha, and led her away. Paul dropped heavily onto the couch, tears running freely down his face. Great wracking sobs shook him as his emotional dams burst. Ashton held him. The two of them looked devastated, but they were obviously taking strength from each other.
“No,” Miranda whispered to Kyle. “There was nothing easy about this one. Nothing at all.”
Chapter 17
“Oh Lord, it’s dear Deirdre,” Kyle said from the passenger seat of the car as Miranda turned onto her driveway. Their annoying neighbor was pacing up near the entrance of Ragged Rest, from the porch steps to the gravel drive and back again. Kyle chuckled as he watched her standing there in her flowered nightgown. “Wait, Jack’s right behind us. Let him deal with her.”
“I wouldn’t wish Deirdre on my worst enemies. I’d like Jack to stick around for a long time. As it is he’s only going to be here with us for a few minutes. They’ll need him down at the station. And five minutes with Deirdre is likely to send him running for the hills.”
“Well, what is it the Bible says? Love is patient, love is kind, love endures all things?”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Miranda said as she brought the car to a halt. “And to everything there is a season. Turn, turn, turn. I just wish Deirdre would turn around and go back to her house. It’s been an excruciatingly long day already.”
“Well, maybe she doesn’t want anything at all,” Kyle suggested. In the exterior lights from the house, Deirdre stopped to watch them pull up and park. “After all, she’s just standing there.”
“Not likely. That’s not how our luck runs.”
Jack was at her door now, opening it for her. “You’ve got company, I see.”
“That’s one word for it,” Miranda commented in a whisper. “We have others. This is the crazy neighbor I warned you about, Jack. Recently she’s gotten worse. Nosy, snarky, opinionated. Like a bad penny that just won’t go away.”
“Well, I don’t think she’s going to go away just for the wishing,” he smiled at her. “Might as well talk to her, right?”
“I was really just hoping for some alone time with you,” she sighed. Taking his hand in hers she held it up to her cheek to nuzzle his rough skin. “Tonight kind of drained me. Why isn’t there ever enough time for just us?”
“Remember, I promised to take you away from here when all of this is done. A real vacation, even if it’s just for a day or two.”
“I’m holding you to that, Jack Travis. Fine. Let’s go see what my lovely, insane neighbor wants to tell us.”
As Miranda and Jack approached her, Deirdre held out a large, flat manila envelope. Her frizzy hair bounced as she thrust out her double chin. “I am not your personal mail carrier!”
Kyle floated close to her, inspecting both her and the package. “Do you think she might be insane? I mean, like, clinically insane?”
“Deirdre,” Miranda said, “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“This! This! This is what I’m talking about.” She held the envelope out for them again. “Somebody came by earlier and dropped this off for you.”
“Someone? Who?” Jack asked, immediately suspicious.
“Well I didn’t get his name, now did I?” Deirdre snapped. “Oh, no. I’ve just been standing here for hours waiting to drop it off to you, is all. A ‘thank you’ might be nice.<
br />
“Well, thank you, Deirdre,” Miranda said, taking the envelope. Maybe it was something from her editor. Of course, her editor wouldn’t ordinarily deliver things by hand. As she continued to muse, Deirdre began to flutter her hands about.
“Well, aren’t you going to open it?”
“Yes, I am going to open it,” Miranda said, meaning to do it later. However, under Deirdre’s intense stare she realized the woman wasn’t going to go away until she got some sort of satisfaction. “I mean, yes. I’m going to open it right now. I’ll be sure to let you know if it was important. Thanks again.”
With a loud huff, Deirdre finally took the hint and walked away, back up to the road to head over to her house. Miranda sighed in relief. Jack wasn’t so quick to relax.
“Let me see it,” he insisted.
“Jack, can we just let whatever this is go until tomorrow?” There were no markings on the envelope, no return address, just her name written in a handwriting she didn’t recognize. “This is supposed to be time for you and me, remember?”
“Seriously, Miranda. Let me see it.”
“Better let him do it,” Kyle advised. “He’s the police officer, after all. If there’s, like, booby traps in it or anything then maybe he’ll see them before it blows us all up to Kingdom Come.”
“You’ve already been to Kingdom Come,” she reminded him.
“Well, then blow me back to Kingdom Come, but still. You know what I mean!”
“What’s Kyle on about?” Jack asked her.
“He says you should check it out,” she answered reluctantly, handing him the package. “He says that you’re one of the smartest people he knows and as a spirit guide he can’t think of anyone better to open this and protect my life and my limbs.”
“That is not what I said,” Kyle muttered in a sing-song.
But Miranda watched the way Jack’s face brightened to think that Kyle, her best friend and ghostly nuisance for them both, had given him such a compliment. Maybe, she thought to herself, Kyle’s opinion meant more to Jack than he let on.
He took the envelope, holding it by the corners, and turned it around and around. “I think,” he said at last, “that it’s just an envelope.”
Kyle made a raspberry noise. “That’s the sort of Sherlock observation that I expect from the great Detective Jack Travis.”
Miranda ignored him, but she couldn’t keep the little smile from twitching at the corner of her mouth.
“Let’s open it inside,” Jack said, still handling the envelope like it might explode at any moment. “I want to use a knife to slice the end open. Let’s not use our fingers.”
They retired to the kitchen, and Miranda got him out a paring knife before starting the coffee maker. It was late, and she was exhausted, but she didn’t want to go to sleep yet. What she really wanted was for Jack to hold her on the couch for a long, long snuggle. That wasn’t going to happen if she dozed off. But of course, that wasn’t going to happen anyway when he was needed back at work. She let out a long sigh.
Carefully, Jack inserted the knife, and sliced the end from corner to corner. Then he pressed in on both of the sides and the envelope popped open. He looked inside, and then looked at her, and then upended the package over the table.
Out slid a yellowed piece of newspaper. An article, clipped neatly with the headline still intact.
Moonlight Bay Woman’s Disappearance Deepens
Miranda read the first few lines, and then gasped.
“This is about my Aunt Connie. About how she went missing. My mother always said she just left one day but I didn’t know there was all this mystery about it… look at this. The police were investigating it as a missing person’s case. I never knew that!”
Jack leaned over her shoulder to read with her. Kyle floated above them both, scanning the article with them. Miranda’s thoughts wandered back to when she was a little girl, when her mother would talk about her Aunt Connie, and all the stories about Ragged Rest. There was nothing in those stories about any of this stuff in the article.
Nothing.
From outside, out toward the waters of Moonlight Bay, the low sound of an explosion startled all three of them.
Leaving the article on the table, Miranda rushed to the windows facing the back of the house. Kyle was faster than her by virtue of not needing to touch the floor. He zipped there through the air, and then Miranda was there with him, and Jack close behind.
Out on the water, a boat was on fire. Black smoke coiled up into the night, illuminated by the red and yellow glow of the flames. It took a moment for Miranda to recognize the small craft.
It was the tour boat of Captain Josh Bates.
What in the world was going on?
“Huh,” Kyle said shortly.
Miranda looked his way. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Well… remember that warning I said I was here to give?” He waited for her to nod that she did indeed remember. “Well… I think this might have something to do with it.”
“You think so? That’s all?”
He shrugged. “That’s all for now.”
Jack already had his phone out to call it in. He was halfway to the back door before he turned to look at Miranda.
“Let’s go check it out. Looks like our night isn’t over yet.”
-End-
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About the Authors
K.J. Emrick
Kathrine Emrick writing as K.J. Emrick is the author of the popular Darcy Sweet Cozy Mystery series and the Pine Lake Inn Cozy Mystery series.
Strongly influenced by authors like James Patterson, Dick Francis, and Nora Roberts, Kathrine Emrick dreamed of being an author for the majority of her life.
She never quite gave up on the idea of being a published author and at the age of 51, thanks to the self-publishing explosion, she finally realized her dream. Her maturity allows her to bring a variety of experiences and observations to her writing.
She lives in beautiful South Australia with her family which includes several dogs and cats.
Kathrine can always be found jotting down daily notes in a journal and like many authors, she loves to be surrounded by books and is a voracious reader. In her spare time, she enjoys spending time with her family and volunteering at the local library.
Her goal is to regularly produce entertaining and noteworthy content and engaging in a community of readers and writers.
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To find out more please visit the Kathrine's website at kathrineemrick.com
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Kathryn De Winter is a passionate Cozy Mystery Author & Bookworm who spends her days writing and reading in Melbourne, Australia. Born in the UK her passion for crafting stories began during her childhood and it has stayed with her ever since.
Anytime Kathryn writes, she strives to create something entertaining that her readers thoroughly enjoy to read and dreams of being a New York Times® Best Seller one day. The authors who influence her work the most are Agatha Christie and James Patterson. She is also deeply inspired by her good friend K.J. Emrick.
Kathryn lived in the USA during her twenties where she became a single parent after her first marriage ended. Coincidentally, she met her now Australian husband in the US five years ago, when they were both there on holidays.
When she has a few moments to herself, Kathryn likes swimming, bike riding, cooking tasty meals, and discovering new places. She is also an avid music and animal lover. (Drums are her instrument of choice and she is a cat & dog person.) One of Kathryn’s favourite places to be is her local library. Most importantly, she loves spending time with her wonderful husband and son.
Kathryn De Winter recently finished a three-part cozy mystery series and has written another two mysteries in a different three-part series. To find out more about her publications, visit her official website: http://www.kathryndewinter.com
