Back Room Bookstore Cozy Mystery Boxed Set: Books 1 - 12

by Susan Harper

  “Isaac, what happened?” Holly asked, reaching out to put a hand on his shoulder.

  “Holly!” Brian called as calmly as he could. “I’m going to have to ask you wait over this way.”

  Holly frowned, but she did as she was told. She approached Monica first. “You and I both know Isaac didn’t hurt that guy,” Holly said.

  Monica nodded. “Brian just put him in cuffs to break up his fight with Jehu,” Monica assured her. “Jehu was screaming that Isaac killed Like. He wanted to shut him up before people started jumping to conclusions. Was…was Isaac not with you?”

  “No, he went to get ice. Abigail and I were walking around looking at some of the booths while we were waiting on him,” Holly said.

  “That’s not good. Isaac doesn’t have an alibi, I don’t think,” Monica said.

  “Oh, come on, don’t talk like that,” Holly insisted.

  “Just do what Brian says. We don’t want to make things worse,” Monica said.

  Holly stood back as instructed, and she even offered to help Brian with backing off the crowd. The crime scene unit arrived and acted fast to get everything blocked off and to get Luke covered. Brian was the on-scene officer, so he took charge, but he was quickly shut down by the other officers who had arrived. “Sounds like your friend is in trouble,” one of them said when Brian tried to insist that Isaac had nothing to do with this.

  “You just said yourself that Isaac got into a fight with the guy earlier,” said another.

  “And the dead guy’s friend is insisting that your friend is the one who stabbed him,” said another.

  Holly listened in horror as they, Brian included, decided it was best to arrest Isaac. Holly was irate, and she pushed her way up to Brian. “Are you serious right now?” she asked.

  “Holly, I promise I’m going to take care of this, but my hands are tied,” Brian said. “Believe me, I’m not wasting any time. I’m going to get into this right away so that I can clear Isaac as quickly as possible.”

  “He won’t be able to afford bail, Brian, you realize that, right? He’s a newspaper reporter. A part-time newspaper reporter,” Holly said. “You arrest him, and he’s going to spend the next week in jail.”

  “I know, I know,” Brian said. “But I can’t do anything about it, Holly. I’m sorry. Officer Trevor is going to escort Isaac downtown so that I can get right on this investigation. If you want, you can ride with him.”

  “I’ll take Isaac’s car. He probably would prefer I drove it, that way I can drive it back home so that it’s not left here,” Holly said.

  Brian, seemingly having spotted something from the corner of his eye, grunted. “Aw, man, what is Monica’s cat doing here? I could really use her help if we’re going to move this thing along quickly. She’s got a keen eye for this sort of thing.”

  Holly nodded. “Don’t worry. I’ll handle Abigail. You just get going on this investigation.”

  Holly followed Officer Trevor to the parking lot, watching as her best friend was loaded up into the back of the man’s patrol car. Isaac had a look of panic on his face, and Holly shouted at him not to worry—that Brian and Monica were going to handle this. She then took Abigail and loaded up into Isaac’s car before driving down to the station, white-knuckling the steering wheel the entire way. “This isn’t good. This isn’t good at all,” Holly kept saying to herself.

  “Calm down before you give yourself a stroke,” Abigail said. “Brian and Monica have a pretty good track record when they work together. You know it, and so do I. Isaac will be out of jail in a few days tops.”

  “That doesn’t make me feel better,” Holly said.

  They had to wait in the lobby as Isaac was processed. She was starting to wish she had stayed at the park where she could at least be getting some answers about the investigation. Here, she wasn’t able to speak to Isaac yet, and she was growing antsy. While she sat on the bench in the lobby and Abigail curled up in her lap, Holly mindlessly stroked the back of Abigail’s head, causing her to start purring slightly. Holly people-watched, and eventually she spotted someone she recognized: Chief Tollr.

  Monica had recently discovered that Chief Tollr was in fact a human-troll hybrid. It made a lot of sense now that Holly knew all about the world of mystics. The man did have a rather trollish personality. She saw him heading off, so Holly stood, carrying Abigail, and decided to follow the man to his office. “What are you doing?” Abigail whispered.

  “Just introducing myself to Chief Tollr,” Holly said.

  “He already knows you, doesn’t he?” Abigail asked.

  “I’m re-introducing myself, then,” Holly snapped and knocked on the partially-opened door.

  “Come in,” Chief Tollr called.

  Holly entered, and she put Abigail down as she did so. “Hey, Chief,” she said.

  “I figured I’d be seeing you when I saw Isaac being brought into booking,” Chief Tollr said. “What can I do for you, Holly?”

  Holly closed the door behind him. “I know you’re a troll,” she said, and the man jumped a bit.

  “Pardon?”

  “It’s okay!” Holly said quickly. “I know that Monica is really a witch and that Abigail here is her familiar.”

  Chief Tollr stared back at her for a moment. “I’m going to have to call the Sorcerer’s Council on her! There is no way she got a permit to go blabbing to mortals that quickly.”

  “I’m not a mortal,” Holly said. “At least, not completely.”

  Chief Tollr stared at her. “You’re mortal. I can smell it.”

  Holly rolled her eyes. “It’s pretty far back in my ancestry, I think. I’m actually not sure what type of mystic I am exactly. Honestly, I thought maybe you could help with that?”

  “I can usually smell it, but I don’t smell nothing on you, Holly,” he said. “Are you sure you’re part-mystic?”

  “I am,” Holly said and sat down in the chair across from his desk.

  Chief Tollr stared at her, and eventually a slight smile appeared. “Well, welcome to the world of the mystics, Ms. Holly.”

  “Thanks, Chief,” Holly said. “I was hoping to talk to you about Isaac, too.”

  Chief Tollr’s troll side came out. “No, I don’t think so. He’s been arrested. No favors. Judge will issue bond.”

  “But, Chief, you know Isaac didn’t—”

  “That’s enough! I don’t hand out favors. You think telling me you’re part-mystic would make me jump through hoops? Don’t think so, pretty girl. I don’t even like most mystics. Why do you think I’m living in Bankstown instead of back home in the mountains on the other side? No, I don’t give out favors to anybody.” Chief Tollr, seeing that Holly was upset, took a breath. “That being said, I really don’t think you have anything to worry about, Holly. Isaac is in good hands. I know him. I’m not going to let anyone rough him up or anything, if that’s what you’re worried about. He’s a good guy, and we all know he didn’t do this, but right now, the evidence is against him. We have to go by the books on this one.”

  Holly nodded. “I understand. Thanks, Chief.”

  “Jerk,” Abigail said, and Chief Tollr slammed his fist on the table, causing the familiar to jump in surprise.

  Now that the crowds had been scared off and the crime scene tape was up, Brian and Monica were at least able to investigate the area. Brian began looking for footprints, but frankly, the ground was too hard to create much evidence of that kind. Monica, having gathered a much stronger stomach for this sort of thing, took a look at the body. “Oh no, Brian!” Monica exclaimed, calling him over.

  “What is it?” Brian asked, kneeling on the cold ground beside her.

  “Look at the pen,” she said.

  “Trying not to,” he grumbled, but he looked. “What about it? It’s just a ballpoint pen?”

  “Don’t you recognize it?” Monica asked, smacking his arm a bit. “Brian… That’s Isaac’s pen. His lucky pen he showed us earlier.”

  “You’ve got to be ki
dding me,” he said. “I was hoping to find evidence that would point us away from Isaac not back toward him. Are you sure that’s the one he showed us earlier?”

  “Who else walks around with a fancy red pen like that?” Monica asked. “That’s Isaac’s. It’s the same one, I’m sure.”

  “I’ll have evidence pull it aside and check it for prints,” Brian said. “Maybe someone stole his pen and got their fingerprints all over it.”

  “I hope so,” Monica said. “I don’t like this one bit, Brian. It really doesn’t look good, does it? Brian, you don’t think Isaac could have actually done this?”

  Brian had the crime scene unit recover Luke. “No, there is no way…but…I can’t let my friendship with Isaac blind me. I need to look at this like he is a potential suspect just like any other case. You know that, right?”

  “Lucky for you you’re working with me, and I’m not a cop. I can be a little biased,” Monica insisted.

  “Okay, but just don’t get too flustered over this, or I’ll have to ask you to back down,” Brian said. “Trust me, I want to clear Isaac just as much as you do.”

  “Wait… Isaac is left-handed!” Monic exclaimed. “It’s like in that book…um… I just read it… To Kill A Mockingbird.”

  “What about it?”

  “Atticus Finch’s case was strongly built around the fact that the bruises on the woman’s face was inconsistent with the dominant hand of the accused,” Monica exclaimed. “And just like in that book, we’ve got something similar here. Luke was stabbed in the left eye. The pen went straight in. If we assume they were facing each other during the confrontation, and Isaac being left handed, the pen would have gone into his right eye. See what I’m saying?”

  “It did go in pretty straight,” Brian said. “But that’s not going to be enough. We’ve got his pen sticking out of our victim’s eye…and, unfortunately, Isaac’s not left-handed, Monica.”

  “Yes, he is!” Monica exclaimed. “I’ve seen him write with his left hand a thousand times!”

  “He’s ambidextrous,” Brian said. “Believe me, I’ve known him long enough to know that. He’s kind of proud of it.”

  “Dang it,” Monica said. “I thought I was really onto something there.”

  “No, that was good. He usually writes with his left hand, but he does pretty much everything else with his right,” Brian said.

  “Like stab someone,” Monica grumbled under her breath. “I don’t like where this is going. Isaac is innocent, Brian. You know it, and so do I.”

  “I do,” Brian assured her.

  Monica crossed her arms, feeling a bit defeated already. “Now, we just have to prove it.”

  5

  Holly was starting to feel almost nauseated by the time Monica came walking into the station. Her witchy friend spotted her immediately sitting next to Abigail on the bench in the lobby, and she darted through the station to sit with her. “How is he?” Monica asked quickly, practically knocking Abigail off the bench as she did so.

  “I haven’t been back to see him yet. He is still in booking. You got here fast,” Holly said. “Where is Brian?”

  “He is still at the crime scene, but I wanted to come check on both of you. You looked really flustered, and Brian told me that Abigail was with you,” Monica said, glancing down at her familiar, who had hopped into Holly’s lap to keep from being sat on. “Abigail, how did you even get to the fair? You told me you didn’t want to go.”

  “Your aunt wound up talking me into it,” Abigail said. “She came through the portal at the shop and saw me, and she convinced me to come walk around a bit.”

  Holly wrung her hands. “I’m worried about Isaac. No offense to him or anything, but he’s not exactly the type of guy who would do well in prison. You don’t think…”

  “Were you there? What did you see?” Monica asked.

  “I wasn’t there,” Holly said. “You and Brian got to the scene before Abigail and I did. I told Brian that Isaac had gone to get ice, and Abigail and I got tired of waiting around on him and left.”

  “Well, hopefully Chief Tollr will let us talk to him,” Monica said, and the young witch seemed to have spoken it in to existence because Chief Tollr spotted her as he exited his office toward the back of the lobby and came grumbling over.

  “Should have known you were going to wind up in my station tonight, Montoya,” Chief Tollr said. “You here to see Isaac, am I right?”

  “If you will let us,” Monica said as politely as she could, knowing how easily trolls were offended. “I know I’m not his lawyer or anything like that, but you know I’m going to be helping Brian out with the case.”

  “You know, I’m starting to question why I let civilians help out my officers,” he said.

  “Come on, Chief, you know Monica has done a lot for the precinct since she moved to town,” Holly said.

  Chief Tollr grunted and pointed at Monica. “You better be careful, witch,” he warned. “Now that I know what you are, I’m going to have to keep an extra eye out on you. You know you can’t be doing magic to—”

  “I don’t use magic in front of mortals,” Monica assured him.

  The chief nodded. “Fine. Come on back. You can talk to him. I’ll give you five minutes. He’s in the interrogation room right now waiting for our officers.”

  “Thank you so much,” Monica said, and they all followed him down a back hallway toward the room with the double-sided mirror.

  Holly could see Isaac sitting nervously at the table inside the room, his hands cuffed in front of him. He seemed a bit shaky, but other than that, he was unharmed. “Five minutes,” Chief Tollr reminded them and opened the door, inviting them inside.

  “Holly! Monica!” Isaac exclaimed as she, Monica, and Abigail entered the room. Chief Tollr left them, slamming the door on his way out.

  “Isaac, are you okay?” Holly asked, hurrying to take the empty seat right in front of him. She felt her adrenaline starting to pump through her.

  “I’m fine. I’m fine. Just a little…shocked, I guess,” he said. “I swear, I didn’t do it. You two know that, right?”

  “Of course we do, Isaac,” Monica said. “But…your pen was found…in his eye…”

  Isaac grimaced. “My pen? No way. It was in my…well… I suppose it could have fallen out of my jacket…” His face burned red. “Someone might have used my pen to kill Luke…so many people saw me getting socked by him earlier in the night… This looks bad, doesn’t it?” He sounded like he was going to have a stroke.

  “Keep calm, all right?” Monica said. “You know Brian and I are working on this.”

  “I know you are. It’s just that—”

  Before Isaac could complete his thought, Chief Tollr was already barging in on them trying to claim they had already used up their five minutes. Holly tried to argue, but she figured out very quickly there was no use in arguing with a troll. Soon Holly and Monica were standing outside of the station with Abigail at their heels, contemplating where to go from here. “Should we be interviewing people? Looking for evidence? What can I do?” Holly rambled.

  “Right now, I think we both need to go home and sleep,” Monica said.

  “What? No way am I just going home!” Holly cried.

  “Brian is at the crime scene collecting as much evidence as he can,” Monica said. “I’ll meet with him sometime tomorrow and see what we can do to help with the investigation. Us staying up all night worrying is not going to do anything to keep our heads clear. We need to be well rested and ready to work on this case first thing tomorrow if we’re going to be of any use to Isaac. Agreed?”

  Holly hesitated for a moment before sighing and nodding in a half-hearted agreement. Monica put her hand on Holly’s shoulder in a reassuring manner, promising her that Isaac was going to be okay and that they would find out what really went down at the town’s Turkey Trot. Monica and Abigail took her shapeshifting broom-bike home while Holly loaded herself up in Isaac’s car, figuring he would prefer it
to be at her apartment than at the park or at the station.

  Feeling guilty for simply going home and leaving Isaac at the station, the drive home felt like it lasted an eternity. She parked his car next to her own in the small lot next to the apartment complex. “Crud,” she said under her breath as she was about to pass by her car. She had completely forgotten that she had put her leftover lunch in there that morning. She opened her car and was slightly overwhelmed by the horrid smell of half-eaten deviled eggs. “Great, now my car is going to smell like rotten eggs for two day.” She pulled the bag out of her car and headed up to her second-floor apartment.

  The complex wasn’t exactly the most inviting place at night, but it was home. She could remember when she had first moved here—how proud she had felt to be out on her own. She had worked at a law firm right out of high school as their personal accountant. She hadn’t gone to college or anything, and it was just a small firm, but she’d always had a natural gift for numbers. From there she had been hired at a large business for the same sort of thing but on a larger scale. Day in and day out putting in numbers over and over again, and it had been horrid. The pay had been good, and she had thankfully put most of her paychecks aside during that time, but it had gotten to be too much for her. The hours were long, the respect of her employers was low, and frankly, it just wasn’t what she wanted to spend the rest of her life doing. She had gotten into a little tiff one day with her boss and had quit on a whim. Thankfully, not too long afterwards, she had met Monica and the woman had practically hired her on the spot working the bookshop. Monica paid her decently, as decent as you could expect a bookshop manager to make, but she loved it. She truly enjoyed going into work each day, and the fact that the bookshop was built right on a magical portal to the land of the mystics was a major work bonus.

  Because of all the job changes and constant jumping around, she hadn’t had much of an opportunity to look for a nicer place. There was a small part of her that was considering a house. There was also a part of her that wanted a dog, and the apartment complex had strict rules about pets. There were a lot of big-life decisions she had to think about at the moment, but with everything that had happened in the past few months, learning she was part-mystic or simply the fact that mystics were an actual thing, she had been far too busy to focus on any of it.