K J Emrick & Kathryn De Winter - [Moonlight Bay Psychic Mystery 01-06] - A Friend in; on the Rocks; Feature Presentation; Manor of; by Chocolate Cake; A-Maze-Ing Death (retail) (epub)

by Неизвестный

  Kyle came back from lagging behind, floating along at Miranda’s side. “I waved right in front of Sapphire’s face,” Kyle reported to her. “Of course, she didn’t see a thing. That woman is no psychic, no matter what she wants to believe. She wouldn’t see a spirit if one reached around and pinched her on the butt. Not that I did such a terrible thing, mind you.”

  His smile suggested otherwise.

  The walkthrough of the house continued, and as the silence stretched on their way to the study Miranda tried to find something to talk about. “So, since you’re Mister Keaton’s attorney, I take it you’re here to oversee the contract signing between us? Because I have to tell you, I’m really only here to listen to what he has to say. I don’t want to disappoint anyone but this was all a little unexpected, if you know what I mean.”

  “The autobiography, you mean.” Fiona nodded. “He told me about that, but you’re right. It would be very premature to have an attorney here on that matter. No, I’m actually here to help Jonah redraft his will. Now that you’re here I’ll wait until you two are done. Ah, here we are then.”

  Fiona stopped in front of a door sporting cherubs and flowers in carved relief, and knocked loudly upon it.

  “Enter.”

  Miranda immediately recognized the somewhat reedy and elderly tones of Jonah Keaton she’d heard on the phone earlier.

  Fiona smiled as she held the door open for Miranda to walk into the study. “Mister Keaton, this is Miranda Wylder. Now, if you will both excuse me? I have a few things to attend to.”

  “Of course, Fiona, of course,” Jonah said, dismissing her with a smile.

  Jonah Keaton’s study was certainly an unusual sort of room. It was entirely circular, like the oval room in the White House or something. The walls were lined with thick wooden shelves, all of them holding many, many books. The old style, with thick red spines and gold lettering.

  “Wow,” was Kyle’s comment. He went flying around the room, in one big circle after another, as though he’d found a merry-go-round. “You could charge admission to his place.”

  Miranda watched him for a dizzying moment until she heard a strange buzzing sort of a noise, and Jonah moved forward in his chair, which she now saw was an electric wheelchair. A thick blue blanket covered his lap and hung down the sides. It had covered the wheels before, hiding his infirmity.

  “How very glad I am to finally meet you, Miss Wylder. Dear Sapphire has spoken so fondly of you.”

  “I had no idea that you and Sapphire were friends, Mister Keaton,” Miranda said, as cheerfully as she could. “I can’t remember her ever mentioning you, I’m sorry to say. How long have you known her?”

  “Well, to be honest, Sapphire is rather Lea Maroney’s friend. They seem to get on very well so when Lea stays here, she often has Sapphire over to stay. I agree to it because after all I’ve got so much space here. There’s no reason not to share it when I can.”

  “Mister Keaton, I really must ask you something. I understand we have this mutual friend with Sapphire, and I am a top-notch author or at least that’s what my publisher tells me. But why are you asking a crime novelist to write your memoirs?”

  “Stop selling yourself short,” was Kyle’s advice to her. “You’re fantastic.”

  Miranda sent him a little smile of thanks for that.

  Jonah cleared his throat. “Well, you see Miss Wylder, as old as I am I’m still very busy with stock and share trading. It takes up most of my time, and I’m finding it all a little bit exhausting now that I’m eighty-one.” He paused for a moment, almost as if waiting for Miranda to protest that he looked so very much younger than he claimed to be. “Well. Anyway, I want to tell my story before I’m too old and I’m willing to pay top dollar to see that it is done.”

  She couldn’t help but notice that didn’t really answer her question.

  “Well, Mister Keaton, I do have a different fee structure for anything I do outside of my fiction work. I’m sure you’ve lived a very long and full life from just the little bit that I’ve read, so it will probably take up quite a few pages, and I would be charging you by the word.”

  Jonah was smiling at that, but before he could actually answer there was the sound of running footsteps and suddenly the door to the study flew open, and the young man Fiona had identified as Jonah’s son, Algernon, came rushing in.

  Jonah’s face registered annoyance. “What is the meaning of this, Algernon? I am in the middle of something, and you all were asked to wait in the sitting room until…”

  “It’s Lea,” Algernon panted. “Oh, Dad. It’s Lea, she’s dead.”

  “What?” The elderly man’s face paled to the color of ash.

  “She started choking while eating her soup and I didn’t know anything was wrong until she just fell forward and stopped breathing. How does a person choke on soup? Father, I don’t know… I didn’t know what to do…”

  Kyle floated up close to him, peering directly into his eyes, invisible to the panicked young man. “Likely story. Miranda, we have to see the scene. Um, right? Don’t we? That’s how it works, right?”

  Jonah Keaton tried to propel his electric wheelchair toward the door but shock and nerves were obviously making it awkward. He was reversing and going forward and reversing and going forward and succeeding in banging into every single piece of furniture in the room before he got himself set straight.

  “Here, let me help you,” Miranda offered, coming around behind him to push his chair.

  “Thank you, Miss Wylder. I just can’t believe this. Would you be so kind as to push me to the sitting room?” His voice was quiet as he added, “And Algernon, I think you’d better call the police.”

  Chapter 3

  Algernon had raced on ahead and by the time Miranda had wheeled Jonah into the sitting room, the room was already in turmoil.

  Fiona was there now, pacing back and forth. “It must have been the soup! You’ve been experimenting with new recipes again, haven’t you?” she demanded from the rotund chef, standing nearby with his apron fisted in his hands.

  “No, it was not the soup!” Morgan argued. “It was just soup! It was good soup! Made exactly the way Lea liked it. Her special tomato soup with the flakes of broccoli and baby Brussel sprouts instead of croutons. Disgusting I know but it was the way she liked it.”

  “So you say!” Algernon chipped in. “She’s dead, and she was eating the soup! Or… maybe it was the bread.”

  Sapphire Moon-Flower flapped her arms in her long, flowing dress. “We were all eating the bread, remember?” When she saw Miranda pushing Jonah in she brought her hands up to her broad, expressive face. She was a hippie out of her time and had always worn her emotions on her sleeve. “Oh, Miranda, I’m so glad you’re here. Poor, poor Lea, I simply cannot believe that she’s dead!”

  “I know,” Miranda said, and hugged her friend tightly. “I’m so sorry. Did you see it happen?”

  “Well, yes. She just choked and fell over and I tried doing CPR, I really did, but she wouldn’t breathe and there was no heartbeat. You have to work it out, Miranda.” She lowered her voice to barely a whisper. “You have to speak to her ghost. Is she here? I can’t feel her but you’re better at this than me.”

  Kyle snorted, leaning over the dead Lea’s body. “That’s because she’s a real psychic, and you’re a fraud, Sapphire Moon-Butt.”

  He liked to make fun of her name, Miranda knew, but this was so not the time. She was going to have a talk with her ghost friend as soon as they were alone. As soon as she had figured out if the woman on the floor had died from natural causes, or something else.

  “Sapphire, I don’t see her ghost,” Miranda whispered. “But it doesn’t always work that way. I’ll let you know.”

  “Okay,” Sapphire said through her tears. “It’s so unfair, Miranda. Lea was so troubled lately, so depressed, and I just could not get to the bottom of it. I thought perhaps my being here would help her. I was doing some crystal work with her but it made
no difference. Lea had such a heavy black aura, with occasional touches of pink.”

  Pink? Miranda didn’t quite understand that. In truth, even though Miranda did see auras on occasion, she had never studied the issue or done any research at all to find out what different colored auras actually meant. So, sure. Why not pink?

  “What do the colors signify, Sapphire?” Miranda asked.

  “Well,” Sapphire said, “black is always an indication of bad news, depression or sadness. Hatred too, sometimes. But the pink suggests that she loved or was loved by somebody. That makes it all the sadder, doesn’t it?” Sapphire began to weep again.

  “Everyone,” Jonah Keaton said suddenly, “please, come with me to the dining room. I can’t bear to be with her in this room any longer.”

  Miranda took the opportunity as they moved just one room down the hallway to take a good look at those gathered. Algernon was a slight man around thirty, and had appeared not to have worked a day in his life. His level of panic when he burst into his father’s study suggested to Miranda that, perhaps, he had been the one to love Lea.

  The lawyer, the chef, the son of the investment millionaire, and Sapphire Moon-Flower. Quite the cast of characters.

  As they settled into chairs around the table to await the arrival of the police, Miranda leaned in close to Sapphire. “Can you think of any reason why Lea might have been depressed?”

  “No, as I said she wouldn’t tell me. I guess there were a couple of things worrying her. Whenever they met up here, I believe that Fiona picked on her a little, maybe even insulted her on occasion. And then there was Morgan,” Sapphire said vaguely, almost as if talking to herself.

  Miranda exchanged a glance with Kyle, and then they both looked over at the chef. “Sapphire? What about Morgan?”

  “I guess he hounded her little. But she wasn’t interested, you see. Anyway, I think it got a bit much for her and she mentioned it to Jonah. I’m surprised that Morgan still has his job here.”

  Their talk was suddenly interrupted as Algernon Keaton grabbed Morgan and dragged him away, out of the dining room altogether. Before any of them could follow, there was the sound of a great struggle and the smacking sound of a punch being delivered.

  By the time Miranda had raced out into the hallway, she could see Algernon shoving Morgan into an open door that led to some sort of closet. Shoving the door closed again he produced a set of keys from his pocket and locked the closet up tight. “There!” He shouted. “You can just stay there until the police come to arrest you, is what you can do!”

  Miranda stared at him in amazement.

  “And just who are you?” he almost spat the words at her. “Another one of my father’s charity cases, no doubt?”

  The doorbell interrupted Miranda’s answer, along with a string of questions she wanted to ask.

  “That’s probably the police,” Jonah said as he hummed out into the hallway in his wheelchair. “Algernon, go and answer it, boy!”

  On his way to the door, Algernon gave Miranda another glare. Violent man, this one. Could he possibly be the person who had loved Lea Maroney?

  Or maybe, the one who killed her?

  “I do not like this, Miranda.” Suddenly Kyle was at her side, having materialized through the wall. “I don’t like this one little bit. You need to be careful on this one.”

  “I always am,” she quipped. “Besides, I’ve got you to watch my back.”

  “Right. If anyone threatens you, I can yell ‘boo’ at them.”

  She couldn’t help but smile, in spite of the circumstances. Kyle could always make her feel better when things were going wrong.

  “I’m not so sure I like it either,” she had to agree, “but we’re here now and we’ll just have to make the best of it. Look, can you drift through that wall and go sit with Morgan in the closet? Just see what he does or says, okay?”

  He stared at her. “Really?”

  “What?”

  “You’re sending me into the closet?”

  Miranda could feel her face heating. Kyle and she had the same taste in men. “You know I didn’t mean it like that!”

  “Oh, sure, but it’s not lost on me that you just asked me to get into the closet.”

  “Kyle.”

  “I suppose later I’ll come out of the closet. Won’t that just be all metaphorical like.”

  “Kyle!”

  “All right,” he said finally. “Fine. Here I go…!”

  With that he phased through the wall, his blue glow disappearing through it as though it wasn’t there.

  Just in time, too. As Miranda turned to go back to the dining room, Algernon was coming back with two police officers. One was wearing the blue uniform of the Moonlight Bay Police Department, his hat with the white and black checkered band set squarely on his head.

  The other was Jack Travis.

  Dark haired and blue-eyed, he always filled out his three-piece suits so nicely. Miranda had seen him in regular clothes, on their dates, and the view from her side of the table had been just as nice. Maybe nicer. He was still keeping some secret from her but she just let it go for now. After all, she was still keeping the fact that she had a ghost following her around a secret from him.

  Seemed fair. For now, their dates were just for fun.

  “Hey,” he said to her by way of greeting. “We have to stop meeting like this.”

  His hand touched hers briefly. He was working, and a public display of affection would have to wait for their next date. She thought about their almost kiss from their last outing and felt her cheeks start to warm. If only he had followed through.

  “Um, right,” she said. “I agree. We should meet in some other way. Maybe this Friday? For dinner, maybe?”

  He smiled, but it was a slim thing. “I’m serious, Miranda. Do you know that since you’ve come to Moonlight Bay our homicide rate has gone up, like, two hundred percent?”

  She was trying not to feel insulted by that. “You can’t possibly blame that on me!”

  “Not directly, no, but I’m not a big believer…”

  “In coincidence,” she finished for him. That was interesting that he said that because one of her favorite sayings went right along with it.

  Nothing is coincidence.

  “Look, Jack,” she started to say, only to be interrupted by the noise of an argument starting all over again in the dining room. Jack and the other officer raced there, leaving her standing in the hallway.

  A sigh escaped her lips. This was the real problem with their relationship. If she wasn’t holed up in her office at Ragged Rest typing out the last few pages of her latest novel, he was rushing off to do his duty. There seemed to be little time for them to just be them.

  She hadn’t even had the chance to tell him about the man in the closet yet.

  Back in the dining room, everyone had begun blaming each other for what sounded like everything since the beginning of the world. Jack immediately took charge. “Everybody calm down. My name is Detective Jack Travis. I’m with the Moonlight Bay Police Department. And, you can all stop trying to talk at once, because we’re getting nowhere.”

  As everybody began to back off a little, Sapphire stepped over to Miranda’s side. “Right,” she said. “Well, you have the floor now, Detective Travis. Just tell us what you need.”

  Miranda almost laughed. The woman could see auras but she could not see what was right in front of her. If pink was supposed to indicate someone cared about you romantically, then hers and Jack’s auras should be shooting off little pink sparks. Still, a murder had been committed and Miranda’s romantic aspirations would have to take a backseat to that.

  “Where’s the body?” he asked.

  Jonah cleared his throat. “Detective, I’m Jonah Keaton. This is my home. Lea is next door in the sitting room. We decided it would be best to leave her there, along with all the evidence.”

  “Right, who actually witnessed the death?” Jack began.

  “I didn’t see a thi
ng, Detective. I was in my study with Miss Wylder.” Jonah’s electric wheelchair buzzed its way up closer. “The first I knew of it was when Algernon burst into my study in a state.”

  “Okay, first things first. Is this everyone?”

  “No,” Miranda said quickly. “There’s one more person who was in the manor. The chef, Morgan Dale, is locked in the closet in the hall.”

  He stared at her incredulously. “In the closet? Why in God’s name is there a man locked in the closet?”

  “Because he did it!” Algernon exploded. “He wouldn’t leave Lea alone and she rebuffed his every advance. He poisoned her. I’m sure of it!”

  Jack traded a look with Miranda, as if to ask why she hadn’t started with that bit of information. “Okay, then. Algernon, is it? You and I are going to take a walk. We’re going to let your prisoner out of his cell, and then you and I will talk first. Officer Snopes, make sure nobody leaves here.”

  And with that, Jack and Algernon left the sitting room.

  There was a general grumbling from the others as they went to find seats around the dining room table. Miranda remembered the promise of a lavish dinner but with the chef being a suspect in a sudden death, she didn’t think she would have much of an appetite until she left the house.

  Jonah wheeled himself over to the very far corner of the dining room to where a sideboard was cluttered with odds and ends. When he reached it, he lifted a book that had been left there and open, and began to read. Miranda could not help but think that a rather curious thing to do in the middle of such mayhem.

  She saw Fiona Remington make her way over to join him by the window. As the two began to talk quietly, Miranda nonchalantly worked her way around the edge of the room to stand in front of another window, close enough to hear what they were saying.

  Fiona sighed and laid a hand on Jonah’s arm as he closed the book into his lap. “Why would anyone want to hurt Lea? I just can’t imagine it.”

  “Really? You can’t imagine it, Fiona? You and Lea were hardly the best of friends, were you? Just yesterday the two of you were arguing so loudly I had to send Algernon to separate you.” He paused to take a breath and seemed to realize how harsh he sounded. “Look, I’m sorry, I should not have said that. And I won’t be mentioning it to the police, so don’t worry. Although, I believe I should tell them about threatening to fire Morgan. Perhaps my son is right. Morgan does seem to have plenty of reason to try for murder.”