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

by Susan Harper

They parked a short distance away from the cabin. “That the place?” Brian asked. It was a bit dark out, and Holly squinted up ahead.

  “Yeah, this is where we went,” Holly said.

  “I’ve got backup coming,” Brian said.

  “We’re not just going to wait around, are we?” Monica asked. “Isaac could be in serious trouble. Tiff is obviously crazy, you read that journal. What will she do if he turns her down?”

  “I don’t know,” Brian said. “I haven’t really ever dealt with a female stalker situation before. Not as common, and Bankstown isn’t exactly a hotbed for criminals and crazies.” Brian checked his phone. “It’s going to take way too long for them to get here.”

  “Then let’s get in there,” Holly said, inching forward as though she intended to head straight in.

  “Hold up,” Brian said, grabbing her arm. “Let me check the perimeter. We don’t know if she is armed or not or what sort of state of mind she’s in. You two stay here and stay hidden, and I’ll circle back.”

  “Will do,” Monica said, and they watched Brian head up toward the cabin. It was dark out now, so Monica found herself constantly glancing over her shoulder in the event someone snuck up on them. “This place is creepy,” she said.

  “It’s actually really nice during the day,” Holly said, and she sighed. “I keep thinking back to the day he brought me up here. I feel like such an idiot. He obviously likes me. Why haven’t I seen it?”

  “Do you feel the same way about him?” Monica asked hopefully.

  “I don’t know…” Holly said under her breath. “Brian sure is taking a long time.”

  Monica looked up toward the cabin. “It sure is quiet. Look over there… Fresh tire tracks.”

  Holly followed the direction that Monica was pointing, and there were definitely some tracks in the soft ground. “Looks like someone was just here and left,” Holly said. “You think Tiff left? Maybe she decided to relocate?”

  “I’m not sure,” Monica said just as Brian came around the front of the cabin and gave them a reassuring nod.

  Monica and Holly came up to the cabin’s front porch, where they met Brian by the door. “Well?” Holly asked.

  “He’s in there, but I don’t see Tiff,” Brian said. “I checked all the windows. Looks like she stashed him here and then ran.”

  “We saw tire tracks,” Holly said, “but no car.”

  “She might have run out for something,” Brian said. “Not sure what. We need to get in and get out quick.”

  “There’s usually a key under the mat,” Holly said, and Brian checked. Sure enough, they had the front door’s key and were able to enter the single-room cabin without making much noise.

  Monica was met by a rather disturbing scene. There was a dinner table in front of the window draped in a lovely white tablecloth and covered in red rose petals. Two glasses of wine had been poured and white plates and pink napkins had been set up, a large bouquet of red roses at the center of the table. To one side of the table was a very tired-looking Isaac, strapped to the table with what looked like an entire roll of duct tape. “Isaac!” Holly exclaimed, and when he looked up and saw her, he jumped for a second.

  “Oh, wow, I thought you were Tiff,” he grumbled.

  “No, it’s me,” Holly said, hurrying over.

  Brian gave her a pocketknife to start cutting him free while he guarded the door, gun drawn. “I should have made Monica call this in before we came in here,” Brian grumbled, pulling out his phone to text someone. “Good, I got service out this way. Isaac, you all right?”

  “I’m fine. Just got a killer headache,” he said.

  “Where is Tiff?” Brian asked.

  “I don’t know,” Isaac said. “She said something about needing to go pick up dessert. She’s got dinner in the oven. Guys, she is really nuts.”

  “Wait until you see her diary,” Holly growled. “Monica, come help me. There’s a lot here.”

  Monica started to tug up the pieces of tape as Holly sliced through them, hoping to do what she could to get Isaac free as quickly as possible. “Diary?” Isaac asked.

  “Yeah, she’s got this long stalker book all about you,” Holly said, and Isaac shivered.

  “Why is she doing this?” Isaac asked.

  “Well, she probably realized that we were onto her and decided she wanted to make sure she got to reveal her heart or whatever you want to call this freak show to you before she wound up going away to prison,” Monica said.

  “Prison?” Isaac asked.

  “For killing Luke,” Brian said. “We found a confession in her desk at work. It was in the diary she was keeping about you.”

  “I had no idea,” Isaac said a bit shakily. “I really didn’t… I mean, I guess I sort of realized she probably had a little crush on me or something, but I didn’t realize she was totally obsessed like this. You should see what she did to herself.”

  “What do you mean?” Brian asked just as Monica and Holly finished pulling the rest of the duct tape off his chest and started on his legs, which were strapped to the chair separately.

  “She dyed her hair and cut it,” Isaac said. “Straightened it to look just like Holly. Did her makeup different… She put freckles on herself with some brown eyeliner or something.”

  “Well, that’s just horrifying,” Holly said, ripping his left leg free just as Monica freed his right one.

  “Let’s get you out of here,” Brian said, opening the door.

  Isaac stood up, swaying as he did so. Thankfully, Monica and Holly were on either side of him and each grabbed an arm to help him balance. “Whatever she gave me is making me lightheaded,” he said.

  They hurried out the front door, but when they reached the patrol car, they found that one of Brian’s tires had been completely removed. “Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me. She’s here,” Brian said. “Isaac, Holly, Monica—get in the car,” Brian warned, and he stood there looking around in the dark with a flashlight in one hand and a gun in the other. “Tiff!” he called as he slammed the passenger’s side door shut, closing Monica inside. “Tiff! Come on, I know you’re here!”

  Monica heard sirens in the distance. “Sounds like the cavalry has arrived.”

  Tiff came fumbling out of the woods a short distance off looking quite distressed and carrying a lug wrench at her side. She also carried a small to-go container in her free hand. “Officer Brian, what are you doing?” Tiff asked.

  “Me? Tiff, you drugged a man and kidnapped him,” Brian said.

  “Isaac knows me,” she assured him. “He’s not upset.”

  “I beg to differ,” Isaac whispered to Holly in the back seat of the patrol car.

  “Tiff, I need you to put down the wrench and come here,” Brian said. “You need to come with me before you make this even worse on yourself.”

  “Make what worse?” she asked.

  “Tiff, we found your diary,” Brian explained. “We found your confession. We know you’re the one who hurt Luke.”

  Tiff did not even deny it. “I only hurt him because he hurt my Isaac! Don’t you see? He’s the real criminal. Isaac’s told me all about Jehu and Luke and how they used to treat him when they were all kids. It disgusts me! I love him, and I just had to do something after I saw Luke hit him. It was so wrong. No one should hurt my Isaac like that.”

  “Isaac is my friend,” Brian said. “And I agree that no one should get away with hurting him. But, Tiff, don’t you see that’s what you’ve done too? I need to go so that I can get him to a hospital. Can you tell me what you put in those muffins you brought him? He may need medical attention.”

  “Just a little bit of ziprasidone,” she said. “He’ll be fine. I would never hurt my Isaac.”

  “Good,” Brian said. “At least we’re in agreement there. Now, last chance, put down the wrench and come over to me, or I’m coming to you.”

  Tiff likely heard the sirens in the distance as well. She looked frightfully disappointed, but she placed the wrench
on the ground and gently set her cake down as well and held up her hands. Brian put his gun back in his holster and pulled out a pair of handcuffs. “That’s good, Tiff,” Brian said to her, stepping closer. “Thank you for cooperating…”

  Tiff’s eyes lowered, and Monica realized she was looking toward the patrol car. She spotted Holly and Isaac in the back of the car together, and she lost it. She screamed and darted in their direction, bypassing Brian, who had to spin around on his heels to go after her. Holly screamed in surprise as Tiff yanked the door open and reached toward her. “What do you have that I don’t? You’re just a loser who works at a stupid bookshop!” Tiff shouted, and her declarations were followed by a sudden, surprised scream right before she fell down.

  “Dang,” Brian grumbled. “Never had to Taser a lady before…” He hurried over, put cuffs on Tiff, and then proceeded to jerk the pins out of her hip.

  He helped her sit up, and she leaned against the front bumper of the patrol car screaming about Isaac and how they were meant to be together. “Can I stay in the car and just hide?” Isaac asked hopefully.

  “Yeah, I would,” Brian said as his backup finally arrived.

  Monica remained behind with Isaac and Holly. She turned around and looked at the two of them. “You all right, Isaac?” Monica asked.

  “I’ve admittedly been better,” Isaac said, then smiled. “Thank you, guys. This was a very…weird experience. I had no idea she liked me, let alone was totally obsessed. I’m not really used to getting a lot of attention from women…especially not like that…”

  “Oh, come on, you’re a good-looking guy,” Holly said, nudging him a bit playfully. “I’m sure you got ladies lining up at the doors for you.”

  “Just the one nut-job,” he said as they watched Tiff being lifted by some other officers to be carried off in another patrol car. Once she was gone, the three of them exited the vehicle.

  Brian encouraged Isaac to take a ride in an ambulance to the hospital to get checked out. There was no telling if ziprasidone really was the only thing Tiff had drugged him with, and Holly elected to ride with Isaac in the ambulance. Monica, on the other hand, remained behind with Brian until he was able to put his patrol car’s tire back on.

  “Well, that’s done,” Brian grunted as he stood upright. “Now, I say we head to the hospital to check in on Isaac.”

  “Yes, please,” Monica said. “I’m ready to get out of these woods. With the crazy stalker lady sneaking around here, I was starting to feel like we’ve found ourselves in the middle of some horror movie.”

  “You mean moving picture show?” Brian teased.

  “You’re never going to let me live that one down, are you?” Monica asked, thinking back to her first few weeks in Bankstown when she was still getting used to mortal phrases. While Brian still did not know her witchy secret, he still found her little catchphrases, as he would sometimes call them, to be mildly entertaining.

  “Never,” he said and laughed as they loaded up into the patrol car and headed for Bankstown Hospital.

  15

  Holly sat in the hospital room with Isaac as the nurse unhooked his IV. They had merely flushed him with some fluids and taken a blood sample to make sure everything was okay. The ziprasidone had been the only drug found in his system, and as it turned out, it was used to treat people with schizophrenia. Those not used to taking it usually experienced extreme drowsiness, and with the high dosage she had put in those muffins, it was no wonder that Isaac and the officer at the station had wound up passing out.

  “So, Tiff is a diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic,” Holly said. “That certainly explains a lot about her behavior.”

  “And why she likes me,” Isaac grumbled.

  “Why are you so negative about yourself all the time?” Holly asked him. “You’re a great guy, you know?”

  Isaac smiled at her. “I guess. Thanks for coming after me, Holly. You, Brian, and Monica… This could have turned out really bad,” he said. “I was really freaking out for a minute there.”

  “I know you were,” Holly said with a laugh, then touched his hand. He blushed and smiled back at her. “So, there were some things written in Tiff’s journal…about me…stuff you’ve said to some of your friends at work.”

  “Oh?” Isaac asked, trying to play coy.

  “Don’t you oh me,” Holly said. “Isaac, do you have feelings for me?”

  Isaac tugged at his shirt collar for a moment. “Look, I never wanted to actually say anything because you and I have just been friends for so long. Yeah, I do, okay? I just… I don’t really want to ruin what we have, but there are some days where I can’t stop thinking about you.”

  Holly held his hand a bit tighter. “Why haven’t you told me?”

  “I was worried about what you would say,” he said. “I was worried about losing you as a friend if you didn’t feel the same way, and that’s the last thing I wanted, Holly. We’ve been best friends since we were kids. I didn’t want to make you uncomfortable. Make you feel bad for not feeling the same. I’m happy being your friend, you know that? I didn’t want to pressure you into something you didn’t want to be a part of. I know I’m just the weird alien-conspiracy geek, but—”

  “It’s not so weird,” Holly said, knowing good and well that Isaac was certainly onto something, even if it wasn’t aliens. “I need to…think about how I feel, if I’m honest. I just don’t know. I know you’re my friend, and I don’t want things to get uncomfortable either. You’re not going to lose me as a friend. That’s the last thing that’s going to happen.”

  Isaac smiled. “Well, that’s good to hear, at least.”

  Holly tapped her fingers against the side of the hospital bed for a moment. “So, there is something totally unrelated that I’ve been wanting to talk to you about.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I contacted the adoption agency I came from,” Holly said. “They found my dad.”

  “Whoa!” Isaac exclaimed.

  “Sorry I haven’t said anything yet, but you were kind of arrested, and I had that on the forefront of my mind,” Holly said. “Now that that is behind us, I wanted to share the exciting news.”

  “Have you talked to him yet?” Isaac asked.

  “No, he doesn’t even know I’m thinking about reaching out, I don’t think,” Holly said. “I haven’t tried to contact him or anything yet.”

  “Why not?” Isaac asked.

  Holly began twiddling her thumbs. “I don’t know,” she said. “I mean, he gave me up for a reason, right? What if I reach out to him, and he doesn’t want anything to do with me?”

  “Then he’s a jerk who is missing out,” Isaac said. “But you’re never going to know how he is going to respond until you find him.”

  “I suppose that’s true. I’m just nervous is all,” Holly said. “I might just wait until after the holidays. For all I know, he’s got this whole other family that he has all these traditions with, and I don’t want to bombard on them so suddenly at this time of year, you know?”

  “I suppose that makes sense, but I’m worried you’re just using that as an excuse,” Isaac said. “Reach out to him, Holly. Don’t put it off.”

  Holly nodded, though she still wasn’t so sure. She wanted to talk to Isaac more about what all this meant—about the fact that her biological father might be able to tell her more about herself, about how she was part-mystic, and how it went so much deeper—but she couldn’t. As she was pondering this, Monica and Brian entered the hospital room. “So, he survived?” Monica asked.

  Isaac laughed. “Just some abrasions from someone jerking duct tape off my arms,” he said, winking at Monica a bit.

  “Sorry!” Monica exclaimed, and he laughed.

  “Turns out this is hardly Tiff’s first time getting in trouble with the law for stalking,” Brian said. “She harassed a guy out in Arizona for about three years before a restraining order had been filed. This time, she hurt someone and kidnapped you. Her behavior escalated s
omething serious.”

  “I’d say so,” Isaac said and took a deep breath. “Thanks, you guys, for believing me when I said I didn’t kill Luke.”

  “Of course,” Monica said. “You’re our friend, Isaac.”

  The four of them sat around the hospital room until Isaac was at last given the all-clear. Holly’s first instinct was to invite herself to Isaac’s apartment to make sure he got home okay, but she recalled that she had a demonic elf staying at her place that was probably going to be needing its next sugar fix very soon. “I guess you and I need to head back to my apartment if you’re going to get Abigail,” Holly said.

  “Is there any particular reason that your cat has been staying at Holly’s?” Brian asked as they stood in the parking lot outside of the hospital.

  “Um…” Monica couldn’t think up an excuse quite fast enough.

  Holly beat her to the punch. “Monica painted her bathroom and was worried about the paint fumes making Abigail sick, so she’s been staying with me. But she’s probably good to come back home now, right?”

  “Er, right,” Monica said, and after a farewell to Isaac and Brian, the latter of whom offered the first a ride home, the two ladies headed off.

  When the ladies arrived back at Holly’s apartment, Holly was relieved to see that this time, they had left behind enough cookies to keep the elf from going all Cujo on them. He was happily chewing on a cookie and watching television with a disgruntled Abigail. “All right, little elfie, we’re back,” Monica said, and the elf smiled and waved at her, his mouth full of cookies. “And now, we need to figure out how to get you home. If your reindeer ditched you, I’m not sure if you’ll be able to get all the way back to the North Pole by yourself.”

  “There’s no way we could pack him enough cookies to make it that far,” Holly groaned.

  The elf swallowed his mouthful and stood up on the couch, turning around and propping his elbows on the back of the couch to look at them. “Perhaps the ladies wouldn’t mind, if they gave young Thaddeus a ride? Back to the North Pole, I must go, as Christmas Eve approaches not at all slow.”