Broomstick Blend

by Kennedy Layne

  Broomstick Blend

  A Paramour Bay Mystery

  Book Eight

  KENNEDY LAYNE

  BROOMSTICK BLEND

  Copyright © 2019 by Kennedy Layne

  Kindle Edition

  eBook ISBN: 978-1-943420-83-4

  Print ISBN: 978-1-943420-84-1

  Cover Designer: Sweet ’N Spicy Designs

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED: The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 years in federal prison and a fine of $250,000.

  All characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.

  Dedication

  Jeffrey—A home generator was the best idea…no power outages!

  Cole—If you truly believe, it will come true!

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  About the Book

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  About Spirited Blend

  Books by Kennedy Layne

  About the Author

  A baffling whodunit arises while comical antics abound as USA Today Bestselling Author Kennedy Layne continues her Paramour Bay Mysteries…

  Lady bugs, bumblebees, and butterflies are enjoying the humid summer days and nights in the quaint Connecticut coastal town of Paramour Bay. Completely exhausted, Raven Marigold is doing everything she can to keep her cool after the town mysteriously loses power. No electricity means no coffee…no coffee means that Raven’s nerves are more than a bit frayed.

  After a bit of investigating, Raven discovers evidence that witchcraft might have been involved in causing the power outage that has puzzled the residents and left them a little bit cranky. Well, their irritability turns into straight up panic when a possible murder victim is discovered smack dab in the middle of the town’s cobblestone square.

  Bring a flashlight if you want to help Raven and the rest of the gang solve this latest blackout mystery that will have you scrambling to turn the pages until the very last sentence!

  Chapter One

  The small coastal town of Paramour Bay, Connecticut was quaint, unique…and currently, extremely hot. A heat wave of epic proportions had descended upon the area, sending the temperatures soaring into the high nineties with virtually no breeze off the bay. To make matters worse, a power surge had occurred in the main electrical grid that fed the Connecticut coastline last night, and the entire town had fallen prey to the blackout…that is, anyone without a generator and fuel.

  Normally, events like this one weren’t too much of a big deal and the power usually returned in a few minutes.

  This time?

  Not so much.

  It was now going on two o’clock the following afternoon with no relief in sight. That’s right…we were going on fourteen hours without the benefit of electricity. That didn’t stop the owners of the mom and pop shops on the main thoroughfare of town from flipping their welcome signs and opening their front doors to whoever wanted a brief respite from the blazing hot sun.

  Including me—Raven Lattice Marigold.

  I was the owner and proprietor of a charming tea shop in Paramour Bay called Tea, Leaves, & Eves. The charming town sat comfortably on the southern coastline looking out over the Long Island Sound. We usually enjoyed a lovely breeze that came off the water in the later afternoon, but even the elusive southwestern onshore winds had deserted us.

  I found myself counting my blessings, in that it was a good thing I had received a delivery of inventory yesterday to steep the perfect combination of tea leaves for a deliciously unique sweet tea blend. The oversized glass jars were currently sitting on high-top tables just inside the entranceway to lure the patrons in for a sample. What little ice I had left from a large five-pound bag I’d gotten from the gas station had melted hours ago.

  I’m dying.

  “You’re not dying, Leo,” I mumbled from my draped position at the counter, allowing the battery-operated fan in front of me to rotate a weak imitation of a breeze over my face as it panned to and fro. There was no keeping the drips of perspiration from rolling down my cheeks from underneath my hairline, but the slight movement of air was better than nothing. “You have your fresh bowl of water and my only other battery-operated fan. I heard that the power should be restored soon.”

  I’m not hearing voices, I swear.

  How do you know it’s not the delirium from heatstroke?

  “Because you’ve been a thorn in my side for much longer than the power has been out,” I countered irritably, wondering if there was any cold left that had been trapped inside the malt shop’s deep freezer next door. There could be worse places to hide out until the power came back on. “Plus, I’m pretty sure that I wasn’t the one who made all those online purchases of premium organic catnip on my credit card.”

  Are you sure? I’ve seen you sleepwalk before, you know.

  I guess I should explain exactly who I was carrying on a conversation with these last few minutes. It wasn’t because I had been deprived of my coffee today, either. You see, the voice only I could hear inside of my head was actually my familiar.

  Well, technically Leo had belonged to my grandmother. He’d been left behind to mentor me.

  Nan had been adventurous enough—okay, maybe a bit careless, too—to use a necromancy spell to keep Leo from crossing over into the afterlife with her. She’d wanted him here to help me adjust to my new way of life as a practitioner of the mystic arts, but there were some pretty harsh consequences for dabbling in such dark magic.

  With that said, I’m almost certain Leo’s flair for the dramatic had already been ingrained in him from the start. He certainly hadn’t acquired his snarky behavior by aging gracefully.

  The definition of dramatic was you telling me that we’d have our air conditioning working by this morning. You lied, and now I’m going to die from heatstroke. Don’t invite Skippy and his band of ninja squirrels to my funeral. I don’t want him to know I died in such a dishonorable death. Maybe you could circulate a story that I suffered from Post Traumatic Squirrel Disorder.

  Let me catch you up to speed—the Marigolds happen to be a family of witches.

  I didn’t find out until I’d moved here last October, so you can imagine my surprise to discover that I had the ability to cast magic spells. My mother, who is entirely another story for a later time, thought it best to keep me in the dark about the skeletons in our familiar closet—no pun intended. Thinking back, my thirtieth birthday was the day that my life had been turned upside down and I’d finally found a place to call home.

  Where? The deepest depths of Hades?

  “Beetle should be here soon,” I reminded Leo, trying to get his mind off the fact that he had a very thick coat of tangled fur. I was so tempted to try another call to my part-time employee on his ancient cell phone. He’d been gone for hours, in search of more ice from a vendor who hadn’t been cleaned out this morning. I’m pretty sure that the majority of the residents had already bought every bag of ice there was within a thirty-mile radius of Paramour Bay, but Beetle still shouldn’t have been gone for this long. “I’ll put some ice cubes in you
r water bowl the second Beetle walks through that door.”

  I’ll be dead by then. Do you have a notepad handy? I should probably pen my last will and testament.

  I didn’t bother to reply to Leo this time, who was currently flopped on his back with his paws stretched out toward the ceiling in the middle of the tea shop. The small battery-operated fan barely moved his fur, and his tongue was peeking out the side of his mouth.

  Oh, and that little necromancy spell I’d mentioned a bit ago?

  It had done a number on his physical appearance. Seriously, his black fur now had splotches of an odd orange color. His whiskers were bent, his tail was crooked, and his left eye had a tendency to bulge out more than his right when he was stressed. On top of all that, his munchkin legs somehow managed to carry his somewhat oversized body, which was quite a few pounds heavier than it had been before going through such a dangerous life-altering spell.

  My weight is the least of my worries. I can no longer feel my tail, Raven. It’s gone numb once again. There’s not even the slightest tingle left in that poor wretched appendage. I thought that symptom only came with hypothermia or one of your more poorly worded spells. Clearly, I’ve been permanently transmogrified.

  “Leo, your tail is resting in your water bowl, and I’m not sure that is even an actual word.”

  I’m too weak to look nor instruct you further on the proper use of the English language.

  I attempted to blow a strand of hair away from my forehead, but it stuck to my skin like it had been dipped in superglue. As a matter of fact, I’m pretty sure I’d need a steam iron to get my clothes off tonight. At least I was wearing one of my favorite broomstick skirts, which helped a bit in the heat.

  Don’t think it hasn’t crossed my mind to utilize witchcraft to fix whatever might have happened to the power grid station. The problem with using magic was that I might actually surprise a poor lineman with a sudden restoration of power. The last thing I’d want was to electrocute someone over self-gain. You should know that my track record on past spells was a bit rocky.

  I love your ability to understate the blatantly obvious.

  “Leo, your tail only lost feeling for a tad bit that one time when I practiced creating that arthritic tea blend for Otis…and that was months ago.” I opened the drawer underneath the cash register, grabbing one of numerous hair ties that I had laying around in various drawers of the tea shop. It didn’t take me long to secure the damp strands away from my forehead and off the back of my neck. “And for your information, I haven’t flubbed up a spell in a couple of months.”

  You would go ahead and jinx yourself, wouldn’t you? It doesn’t matter. I’ll be dead before you can cast another spell.

  “Hey, this blackout definitely wasn’t because of me,” I said defensively, though doubt did creep in when I thought of those who could have done such a thing. The list was rather short, but what could any of them have gained by descending Paramour Bay into complete darkness last night? “You don’t think…”

  No.

  “Aunt Rowena has been visiting Mom in the city,” I reminded Leo, wary that I might actually be onto something. “What if—”

  I’m not about to die talking about those…witches. I can’t take this anymore, Raven. Is it possible to melt? I don’t want to be a big glob of goo in the end.

  “You’re not going to melt,” I reassured him, though I wasn’t so sure that heatstroke should be taken off the table. That was the only reasonable explanation as to why my suspicions about the blackout had veered toward witchcraft. It was most likely a blown circuit on some board that controlled some switch or something equally similar. I wasn’t going to waste any more time on inviting bad karma into my life when everything had been going great. I glanced over my shoulder to look at the clock hanging on the wall. What in the world was causing Beetle to take this long? “I’m going to call—”

  “Raven, Raven!”

  My BFF! He’s come to save me. I’m too weak to greet him, though. Just tell him to pour the bag of ice directly on my stomach. I don’t care if I get squashed, because it’s better than melting in this fur coat.

  You should know before meeting Beetle that he was rather…unique. Kind of like the tea blend I’d used to make the sweet tea. The only way to describe him would be to compare him to the mad scientist from the movie Back to the Future. Seriously, he had the same white hair that stood up on end and similar wild blue eyes that widened every time he had a crazy idea—like dating my mother.

  Beetle also had a thing for cardigans and bow ties, but even he’d had to shed the layers for a short sleeved buttoned-down dress shirt. He used to be the town’s CPA before deciding to retire, thus handing over the reins to my best friend—Heidi Connolly.

  It was sweet, really. Beetle had practically hired himself, not wanting to while away in his retirement. He didn’t know much about tea nor was he the best salesman, but the financials of the tea shop had never been in better order.

  I’m dying of heatstroke, and you want to ramble on and on about the tea shop’s accounting practices? Get your priorities straight, Raven!

  “Hi, Beetle,” I greeted with a grateful smile, hopping down from the high-top stool that I kept behind the counter before walking around to take one of the large bags of ice. He’d somehow bumped into the glass door, which was slowly closing behind him. “How far did you have to drive to find these? You’ve been gone for hours.”

  “The sheriff is dead!”

  The exclamation that Beetle had blurted out came with those wide eyes I was talking about, but I had to have heard him wrong. I rested the back of my hand to my forehead. Maybe Leo was right about heatstroke causing delirium.

  “The sheriff is dead!” Beetle exclaimed again, dropping both unopened bags of ice in the cooler before I had a chance to recover from hearing his declaration the first time. He pressed the palms of his hands to his cheeks. He also had an odd quirk of repeating his words, which definitely brought me up short once again. Third time was a charm, right? “The sheriff is dead, Raven! I saw him lying in the middle of the street with my very own eyes!”

  I finally came to an abrupt halt and stared back at Beetle in horror.

  I was delirious.

  There was no way that Sheriff Liam Drake was lying dead in the street.

  It simply wasn’t possible.

  I would have known.

  It is possible, and I’m next. The poor fella…the good ol’ sheriff probably perished from heatstroke. May his soul rest in peace. You’ll find me wading in the cooler.

  “Stop it,” I replied angrily, barely able to hold back my tears. This couldn’t be happening. Beetle’s blue eyes widened even further at my abrupt directive, fully convinced that I’d been shouting at him. Now would have been a good time to explain that no one in Paramour Bay actually knew that I was a witch, but I could barely gather my thoughts together. “I have to see for myself that Liam is okay, because you are wrong. Liam is not dead, Beetle. He just isn’t.”

  I rushed past Beetle before he could say another word, barreling through the glass door and practically spilling onto the sidewalk. Looking frantically to my left and right, I finally spotted a crowd forming smack dab in the middle of the town’s cobblestone square. My chest hurt, but it wasn’t from my heart beating so fast and hard. No, it was from thinking that my time had been cut short with the one man who I truly believed was my one and only soulmate.

  “Raven, you don’t—”

  I gathered the material of my skirt with my fingers, clutching the fabric in my hands as I quickly ran toward the commotion where the residents were hastily creating a circle. I ignored the fact that Beetle was calling my name from behind me, because there was no way I could stop until I saw with my own very eyes that the man I loved was alive and well. He couldn’t have been taken away from me too soon. He just couldn’t have. There had to be some mistake.

  “Move,” I pleaded with Albert and Eugene, the two older gentlemen who always played c
hess over at Monty’s hardware store. I shouldered past them with a mumbled apology, dodging around Desmond Barnes who happened to own the malt store next to my tea shop. “Please, let me get by.”

  I wasn’t even sure how I got the words out around my constricted throat without breaking down, but I couldn’t accept what Beetle had blurted out so callously without definitive proof.

  “I need to—”

  I stopped short after practically shoving Bree Stonehedge to the side when I finally set my frantic gaze on Liam—who just happened to be standing across from me and the bakery shop owner.

  Would you look at that? The good ol’ sheriff is alive and well.

  “Isn’t it just horrible?” Bree muttered, seemingly having ignored the fact that I’d nearly knocked her down. “That poor man. Do you think he had a heart attack?”

  “Maybe heatstroke,” Paula answered while holding up a hand to keep the sun out of her eyes. She was one of the waitresses at the diner across the street. “Terrible thing, this.”

  See? I told you that I was showing signs of heatstroke. By the way, my symptoms are worse now that I’m standing on this boiling asphalt. My paws might actually be smoking.

  Liam recognized right away that I was part of the group of gawkers whom he was trying to disband, and he lowered his brow in concern by what must have been pure panic written across my perspiring features. He continued to wave for everyone to back away from the dead body while silently asking if I was okay.

  Honestly, it was a wonder that I hadn’t joined the man lying dead at my feet.

  I’ve already got that spot reserved. Do you think they would mind if I stood on the body? I mean, my paws are really burning.

  I could only nod jerkily in answer to Liam’s unspoken inquiry, hoping that he didn’t think I was having some sort of seizure. To cover up the fact that I was still trying to compose myself and to make sure that Leo’s paws weren’t being damaged, I bent my knees and hoisted Leo into my arms. No easy feat, but it afforded me the ability to take a few more seconds for my body to catch up with what my sight was signaling to my brain—the sheriff whom Beetle had been referring to wasn’t Liam.