Death Quixote (A Paranormal Cozy Mystery) (Magical Bookshop Mystery Book 4)

by Samantha Silver

  Making my way further down the street, I passed by a souvenir shop, then a tiny bike repair shop. It was barely two hundred square feet, and every inch of the walls was covered with stuff for sale, while there was a small technician’s area in the back. A guy in his early forties–who, going by the dirt on his arms and face, had gone mountain biking before coming to work today–was in the technician’s area at the back working on a bike.

  “What can I do for you?” he asked. “Hey, you’re that new Calliope, aren’t you? You’re Francine’s niece, the one who took over her shop?”

  “That’s me,” I smiled.

  “I’ve seen you around, the red hair gives you away. I’m Pete, I own Pete’s Cycles here. Anyway, what’s up?”

  “I was wondering if you saw Sapphire Sam here on Saturday.”

  “No, I wasn’t working then. My employee Sally was here that day.”

  “Oh,” I said, dejectedly. “Do you know when she’ll be working next?”

  “Sure, hopefully she’ll be here tomorrow.”

  “Hopefully?”

  Pete gave me a wry smile. “Well, she’s actually scheduled to be working now, but this is a really fun town to live in when you’re in your early twenties. She didn’t show up to open today; I figure she’s nursing a pretty bad hangover.”

  “Does that happen often here?” I asked, shocked.

  “More than you’d think. Lots of people come here to live the ski or bike bum lifestyle, and sometimes they go a little too hard when Annie Oakley, one of the clubs around here, has their locals’ night on Sundays.”

  “Wow. All right, thanks,” I said, turning to leave.

  “No problem,” Pete replied, leaning back down over his bike.

  “Hey, sorry, one more thing,” I said. “Can you think of any reason why Sapphire Sam might be interested in a certain bike lock made by SecurLock? Like this one?” I asked, motioning to the same lock as I’d seen in the previous shop on the wall.

  Pete frowned for a moment as he looked at the lock.

  “Hmm, not really. I mean, Sapphire Sam wasn’t into stealing bikes. He did like to stop people from stealing them though. If I had to guess, I’d say there was something about the lock he didn’t like. But I mean, as far as I know, that’s just a normal bike lock. There are some less-than-ideal ones out there, and some better and more expensive ones as well, but that’s not one of them.”

  “Thanks.”

  I left the shop with a new respect for business owners; I wondered if Cat ever had to deal with Maddie not showing up to work because she partied a bit hard the night before. Somehow, I just didn’t see Maddie as the type.

  It seemed as though Sapphire Sam was definitely interested in that bike lock for some reason. I decided that if nothing else, I should probably go tell Chase about it. He probably wouldn’t be happy that I was snooping around, but seeing as I was handing him some information that was pertinent to his investigation, I hoped he’d let it slide.

  Chapter 6

  As I continued to make my way along the pedestrian-only stroll that made up the main part of the village, my stomach began to rumble. I checked the time on my phone and was surprised to see that it was already after one in the afternoon!

  I popped into a little deli that did Australian-style meat pies. It was an absolutely tiny shop; there was space for a small counter, a serving area, a kitchen at the back and two bar stools near the window that served as the only seating. It was very much a take-out place.

  I ordered a steak and pepper pie from the girl working behind the counter, who had an Australian accent, and got it to go. I figured I could eat it on the way to the police station.

  “Hey, you didn’t happen to be working here on Saturday, did you?” I asked.

  “Yeah, I was here all day,” she replied.

  “Did you see Sapphire Sam that day?”

  “The weird guy dressed in a Superman outfit?” she asked, and I nodded. “Yeah, he ran past here, oh, I dunno, maybe around six?”

  “He was running?”

  “Ok, maybe not running, but like, he was walking quickly. And he was pale, and kept looking behind him, like someone was following him.”

  Now this was the kind of thing I wanted to know.

  “Really? Did you see who was following him?”

  The girl shook her head as she dropped my pie into a paper bag and handed it to me.

  “Nah. If you ask me, I doubt there really was anyone. There was something off about the guy. My bet is whatever it was, he was just imagining it.”

  “Yeah, you’re probably right,” I said, turning to leave. I absolutely didn’t think the girl was right at all. It sounded like Sapphire Sam was being followed, probably by the person who killed him.

  I munched on my pie, thinking things through as I made my way toward the police station. Sapphire Sam had been seen simply wandering around the café, then he went into the bike store and asked about a lock, and a few minutes later was seen rushing further away, looking furtively behind him. But that didn’t make sense; if Sapphire Sam was heading away from the gondola, that meant he was heading away from where he was killed.

  I was so caught up in my thoughts I almost passed the low building which housed both the Municipal Hall and the Police Station. There was a ruckus at the front of the Municipal Hall, which I assumed was related to the upcoming Mayoral election. The citizens of Sapphire Village were going to the polls in exactly two weeks, which meant that it was now crunch-time for the candidates.

  As much as I would have liked hanging around and seeing what all the excitement was about, I was far more interested in seeing Chase. He was sitting at his desk in his office, on the phone. As soon as he saw me his face lit up and he waved me over.

  “Ok, thanks for the info,” Chase said before hanging up the phone and looking at me. “Hey you, what’s up?”

  “Not too much, how’s the case going?”

  Chase shot me a sly look. “You’re not thinking of trying to solve this one too, are you?”

  “What? No, of course not,” I lied. “I just happened to have a chat with some people in town and found out some stuff I thought might help.”

  Chase sighed. “You do realize that it’s dangerous for someone who’s not actually a trained law enforcement officer to be playing vigilante? After all, look at what happened to Sapphire Sam.”

  I bit my lip. I couldn’t admit to Chase that I was actually safe when it came to hunting down killers–although I’d had one close call that Cat saved me from–and that the biggest threat to my life was actually some weird paranormal creatures intent on stealing souls.

  “I know. Don’t worry about me, I wasn’t doing anything dangerous, just chatting with people in town.”

  “So what did you find out?” Chase asked, grabbing his notebook.

  “Oh, so I’m not allowed to investigate, but you’ll happily use my information to your advantage?” I teased, and Chase grinned.

  “You said yourself, you were just chatting with people.”

  “Fine. Anyway, the girl working at that Australian meat pie place saw Sam running past her shop, away from the gondola, around six. She said he was pale, and kept looking behind him, as though someone was following him.”

  “Wow, that is interesting,” Chase said. “I sent one of my officers out to get information on who might have seen Sam on Saturday, but I didn’t hear that.”

  “Did you hear about how he was in the bike shop asking about a certain lock?”

  Chase nodded. “Yeah, that I heard. It’s interesting, that, because a lot of the bikes that have been stolen recently were locked up using that same model he was talking about. None of the locks had been cut, they’d all been opened.”

  “Hm,” I said.

  “Of course, it might all just be a coincidence. After all, that’s a pretty common lock. I’d be willing to bet every store in the village that sells bike equipment has them in stock.”

  “Yeah. Still, it’s something.”


  “It is something.”

  “Have you been able to narrow down the time of death?” I asked, and Chase narrowed his eyes at me.

  “You do realize this is a police investigation, and that’s not information I’m really at liberty to tell you.”

  “Well, I’ve already narrowed it down to after six and before eight fifteen, you may as well just tell me the rest.”

  Chase sighed. “Fine. The coroner thinks he was killed between six fifteen and six forty-five. He can’t be more certain than that since the body was found outside and the temperature would have been dropping.”

  “So not too long after he was seen at the pie shop,” I said, almost to myself.

  “Sounds like it,” Chase said.

  “You should hire me as an investigator,” I teased. “I’m pretty good at it.”

  “You’re also not trained as a cop,” Chase replied. “I would have gone out and done the interviews myself, but you know, I’m still not at one hundred percent.”

  “Oooh, that’s a low blow,” I replied. Ok, so I still felt a little bit bad that I’d accidentally skied into Chase and caused him to strain the MCL in his knee. He never acted like it bothered him, and he was no longer on crutches, but he definitely still walked with a limp.

  “I’ll make it up to you. Dinner in a few days, when this all blows over? I have at least one date to make up already.”

  “Sounds good,” I said with a smile. “Though, hopefully, I’ll see you before then.”

  “As much as I’d like to, I hope not, because I don’t want to see you getting hurt. I know you can take care of yourself, but still. You’re just a civilian, and you’ve almost been killed by murderers a couple of times since moving to Sapphire Village.”

  “Fine. I’m going to go next door and see what all the ruckus is about.”

  “You didn’t hear it from me, but apparently Denise Williams is accusing Frank of rigging the election.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “The voting hasn’t even started yet.”

  “Oh, I know. She’s accusing him of tampering with the electoral process by talking to the person in charge of the Municipalities’ elections.”

  “Well that sounds just ridiculous enough that I’m going to go out and see.”

  “Have fun, I’d be joining you if I didn’t have a murder to investigate. Try to make sure a riot doesn’t start, I want to make some more headway on this case.”

  I waved at Chase and made my way back out to the front of the building. The crowd gathered was now growing. There were at least twenty people now gathered outside, and somewhere along the line, Denise had found herself a microphone.

  “He’s trying to stop us! He’s using dirty tricks to win, because he knows he has no other options!” she shouted to the crowd, her shrill voice amplified to a level that could kindly be described as “excessive”.

  “Yeah!” shouted someone from the crowd.

  “Wait, who’s doing this?” asked another.

  “It’s Frank! Frank Harding, one of the other candidates for council!”

  I rolled my eyes. Frank was one of the first people I’d met when I moved to Sapphire Village, and he seemed to be a genuinely good guy. Denise, on the other hand, had accused Cat of murder the first time I saw her, and only got crazier from there.

  “Stop trying to make excuses for losing before the election’s even happened,” I shouted from my spot at the back. I wasn’t entirely sure why I was getting myself involved. After all, it wasn’t like I was a life-long resident of Sapphire Village. But Frank did strike me as a good guy, and I was tired of the smear campaign and negative politics Denise was running all over the place.

  “Well, if you look at that! We have a new citizen to Sapphire Bay, obviously used to big city corruption, who doesn’t understand our small town values.”

  “I didn’t realize being a giant cow was a small town value!” I shouted back. I didn’t know why I did it; provoking Denise Williams was absolutely the sort of thing Cat would do, not really my thing at all. It just made me so angry to see her taking such a negative stance against one of the other candidates, especially one that I couldn’t imagine cheating.

  A couple of people in the crowd chuckled at my reply, and Denise looked around wildly, her eyes alight with fire. The last thing she wanted was to lose grip on this crowd.

  “What would you know? You’re an outsider here! You always have been, you always will be!”

  “Is that really what you think, Denise? I would have thought a mayoral candidate would be more welcoming to new additions to the town.”

  “I welcome people who actually contribute here, not troublemakers like you.”

  “Oh yes, you know us bookstore owners, we’re well-known hooligans.”

  “Before you showed up, this was a peaceful little village! We never had anything untoward, like the murders that have become a regular thing since you showed up.”

  “So first you’re blaming Frank for cheating at an election that hasn’t happened yet, and now you’re blaming me for three murders, that three different people are currently in jail for committing? Is that right?”

  The crowd around began to grumble. Apparently my words were making some sense. Denise could sense herself losing control. “I’m not saying you committed the murders, I’m saying they were all committed since you showed up to town, and there might be something fishy about that.”

  I noticed then that a few of the people in the crowd were nodding their agreement. Seriously? Did they honestly believe that?

  “I’m in no way responsible for the recent crime string in Sapphire Village, and you’re just trying to throw the blame on me to deflect from the fact that your platform sucks and you’re going to lose this election.”

  “I’m not saying anything. I’m just saying, I think it’s a bit strange that an outsider like you came to town, and now all of a sudden there’s a lot more crime. It might be a coincidence, but it’s a funny one, isn’t it?”

  The crowd began to murmur their agreement, and I had to strongly resist the urge to roll my eyes.

  “Fine, well, if you want to keep throwing mud, I’ll leave you and the rest of your little piggies to your games,” I said. After all, I wasn’t involved in this election; I didn’t mind annoying the people who apparently believed that I could have been the reason there was more crime in Sapphire Village, despite not only having had nothing to do with any of the recent string of murders, but also having solved all of them. Except for Sapphire Sam, of course.

  I turned and walked off. “That’s right, run away, like the coward you are!” I fought the urge to flip her off as I left; she wasn’t worth the effort. I seethed with anger as I walked off. I couldn’t believe the crowd actually believed Denise’s lies about me! They weren’t even real lies, they were just insinuations. And yet, that was enough for them to all turn on me, as though I was the reason people had been dying in Sapphire Village.

  That did it. I didn’t want that kind of rhetoric from my mayor in town. I swore, right then and there, that I was going to do whatever was necessary to make sure Frank got elected.

  Chapter 7

  When I got home I was still steaming mad, but I also knew that more important than the mayoral election was finding out who had killed Sapphire Sam. So I did what any good millennial would do: I looked it up on the internet.

  Lying down on the couch, I took out my iPad and looked up the same model of the SecurLock on the internet. The first few links were obviously from bike shops selling the product. There were a few review sites as well, but then as I got deeper and deeper into the search results, I started to find forums and other communities talking about the product.

  Eventually, I clicked on one forum link, titled “SecurLock–easy to break into?”

  I was completely absorbed as I read the first post on the forum: Yo dudes, what’s up? So I was at my local today, and they got this new SecurLock in. Since I’m me, I immediately took it home and started playing around
with it, and uh, I’m pretty sure I figured out a trick to break this lock. It turns out if you’re pulling on the lock while twisting the numbers, when you hit the right number, there’s a tiny little click. So yeah, I’m pretty sure any losers who want to grab your ride can do it easily if you use this lock. I haven’t confirmed this with a second try, but it seems pretty problematic to me.

  That sounded pretty problematic to me as well. And going by the replies to the post that I scrolled through, I wasn’t the only person to think so. About six hours later someone else posted that they bought the same lock and were able to replicate the problem, and they let SecurLock know about the issues.

  I wondered if it was still an issue.

  After all, if someone on the internet had figured it out, it would stand to reason that anyone could find out about that issue. What if Sapphire Sam had read about it, or found out about it somehow? What if he had discovered there was a group of thieves targeting bikes using that particular lock, and they found out about him before he had a chance to report him?

  That would be a pretty good motive for murder. A lot of bikes cost well over a thousand dollars around here.

  I hatched a plan and quickly put it into motion by texting Cat.

  Hey, you wouldn’t happen to have a mountain bike, would you?

  Her reply came through about ten minutes later.

  Of course I do, this is Sapphire Vill. Why, you want to ride?

  No, but can I borrow it?

  Why do you want to borrow my bike if you don’t want to ride it?

  I want to use it to set up a sting operation to catch some people I think might have killed Sam.

  That time, it took a few minutes before Cat finally replied.

  Ok, but only if you promise to actually catch the people who killed him.

  I’ll do my best.

  I’ll bring it over after work. And I’m staying over, there’s no way I’m trusting my bike to you alone.

  I smiled as I read the text, thanked Cat and then headed back to the cycling shop where I’d first seen the lock and bought one of the SecurLocks I’d seen earlier that day.