Wicked, Manor, and Murder (Paranormal in Manhattan Mystery: A Cozy Mystery on Kindle Unlimited Book 7)

by Lotta Smith

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  P. S.

  Keep on reading for a sneak peek of Wickedly Ever After…

  PROLOGUE

  On a sunny morning in August, Clara Rowling checked herself in the mirror and gave a contented nod to her own reflection. She looked great in her Oscar de la Renta trumpet gown in midnight blue, and adding a pink sash embellishment made a perfect look. One of the perks of being dead was that she didn’t need to pay anything to dress nicely.

  Applying some rouge on her lips, Clara was excited. It was a special day for her. Rick, her only son, was putting a period in his life as the most eligible bachelor, and getting married.

  Not that she gave birth to him, but she raised him since his biological mother walked out of her life with Dan and Rick. At that time, Rick was just three years old, and Clara was a fresh college graduate working as an au pair for the Rowlings. Clara could still recall the day when Alice, Rick’s biological mother, left their mansion on Park Avenue.

  “Clara… Mother went to some faraway place because she’s so busy… but I won’t cry,” Rick said, burying his face in Clara’s chest.

  Clara still remembered the warmth of the child, and how his voice was trembling, and how much her heart ached out of the sympathy toward the little boy. Before she knew, she burst into a full-blown sob. But at the same time, she was impressed to see the little Rowling exhibiting headstrongness apparently inherited from his father.

  “It’s okay, Clara. Don’t be so sad.” Rick gently stroked her back, as if to console her.

  Holding Rick in her arms, Clara kept on weeping, feeling absolutely sorry for the little boy, and loathing Alice for her bad decision. She knew the child she was looking after was an apparent prodigy. Despite his age, he spoke like an adult. At the age of two, he had already mastered four arithmetic operations, and he could even read and comprehend adults’ books. Sometimes, Clara found herself wondering who was caring for whom.

  “Clara, I have an idea.” When Rick said abruptly and raised his face, she found his face dry and completely free of tears. “If you feel so sorry about me because my mother abandoned me, you can be my mom.”

  “Excuse me?” Hiccupping, Clara blurted. “What are you talking about, Rickie?”

  “Oh, it’s just a little proposition of mine.” The little boy shrugged. His mesmerizing emerald eyes were twinkling playfully. “My father likes you so much, and I like you, too. Also, I feel really safe around you. So, I’d be really, really happy if you marry him and become my mother.”

  Clara’s jaw dropped. She was speechless but she was secretly growing fond of the child’s proposition. She was still crying but she started to giggle. The boy was beyond handful but she couldn’t help cherishing him.

  “Well…” Wiping the tears from her eyes and whisking a strand of stray blond hair from Rick’s forehead, she managed to say, “Before making any moves, I have to learn more about your dad’s opinion and his feelings.”

  “Okay,” He said, hugging her. “I hope things work out fine because you’ll make a great mom for me. You know, Clara, I like you very much… perhaps I like you more than that lady who just left home.”

  “Rickie, you shouldn’t talk about your mother like that,” Clara chide the little boy, but her tone was warm and sympathetic.

  “Okay. I won’t,” Rick complied without arguing. “Clara, between you and me, can I call you Mom?”

  She gasped, but she didn’t have a heart to say no. Rick was acting nonchalantly and playful, but Clara could feel the pain in his little frame. She took a deep breath, embracing him. “Yes, you can… just between you and I.”

  Three months later, Clara married Dan, giving a reason for Rick to call her Mom in the public. Although she didn’t get to give birth to her own child, her marriage to Dan, and her new life as Rick’s mom lasted for fifteen years until her life expired after she lost the battle with multiple sclerosis.

  Looking at her own reflection which couldn’t be seen by most people, Clara chuckled. She was dressed to the nines, but she wasn’t holding high hopes of being seen by Rick and Dan, much less talking to them. Still, she had to look presentable even though no one at the wedding could see her. Crashing a wedding in inappropriately casual attire was rude—especially when your son happened to be the groom. Also, she had caught rumors that Brian Powers, Rick’s buddy from childhood and the minister, was officiating the wedding ceremony. She had heard him telling Rick that he often saw dead people’s spirits. Clara wasn’t sure Brian was just bluffing like any kids or he was serious, she wanted to look her best just in case he could actually see her.

  Smiling to herself, she flew over to the premier wedding venue in Tribeca.

  To be continued…

  Books by Lotta Smith

  Paranormal in Manhattan Mysteries: http://amzn.to/2nnn8N9

  Book 1: Wicked for Hire: http://amzn.to/25IHH6X

  Sometimes, the opportunity of a lifetime busts your door instead of gently knocking at it...

  FREE on Kindle Unlimited!

  Medical student Amanda Meyer thought she had her life all planned out until people started dying the moment they touched her. Being cleared of any wrongdoing didn't stop the medical school from expelling her, and it didn't rid her of the unfortunate nickname Grim Reaper.

  Luckily, having a rep as the harbinger of death isn't a total resume killer. Rick Rowling, Special Agent for the FBI's Paranormal Cases Division recruits her to work for the Bureau. But the sexy, brilliant, outrageous loose cannon proves to be just as untouchable as the mysterious creature or creatures that may be responsible for the seemingly unsolvable murder that becomes their first case together.

  Instead of treating patients, Amanda's life becomes a test of her patience and a wild ride into the wicked paranormal world where her new boss runs the show. Together they face a ghoulish force that could destroy the entire city and a grueling family dinner that could leave Amanda contemplating harakiri.

  It's a battle of life and debt [student debt, that is] and saving the world has never been so funny.

  Prologue

  966 Park Avenue Tower

  11:48 AM, November 10…

  With a weird moan, her whole body shivering, she collapses onto the sofa.

  I think she’s lucky that she’s already sitting on the sofa as she crumples. If she was standing, she might have cracked her head on the marble floor like Humpty Dumpty—which won’t be pretty.

  She’s lying there, totally motionless. One elbow’s stiffly bent at a right angle, as if she’s turned into stone as the result of looking Medusa in the eye.

  I gasp—fearing she’s dead.

  Rick Rowling, the head of the FBI’s New York Paranormal Division and my boss for the past two days, approaches and touches her neck. Looking totally blasé, he confirms that she’s still alive.

  I let out a sigh of relief.

  On the other hand, Rowling announces that we leave the place because “It’s boring.”

  My eyes widen with a total disbelief.

  Of course, I disagree with him, but he brushes off my objection, stating that he doesn’t care about all the crap of making arrests, prosecuting, and taking cases to trial. Again, he says that it’s just a minor issue and he’s way too busy for that. “You know what? I have better things to do,” Rowling declares, turning on his heels to leave the condo.

  “Excuse me, Rick,” I call to his back.

  “What?” he asks, without turning around.

  “We can’t just leave,” I say. Then it suddenly occurs to me that offending my boss isn’t in my best interest, so I add, “I’m afraid.”

  “Why not?” He cocks his head. “Mandy, don’t be such a killjoy. The NYPD can work on the boring stu
ff, such as deciphering the social pathology of crimes and so on, because they have time to kill. On the other hand, I have no time to waste.”

  “Okay, so we don’t need to decipher the social pathology of crimes, but we do need to figure out the whereabouts of the human-eating monster, don’t we?” I point out.

  I’m not joking or exaggerating.

  I’m talking about a practically imperishable ghoul which could eat up the entire population of New York State, if not the whole world.

  * * *

  At precisely 2:13 in the morning, John Sangenis was standing in front of a shabby five-story apartment in Washington Heights. Fortunately, he didn’t live there. He was just visiting Ivan Flynn, the insufferable asshole.

  Usually, he had better things to do than visiting his worst enemy before the crack of dawn, such as sleeping like a log. Or making love with Ruth, which was even better than sleeping on his own. Ruth MacMahon was his girlfriend, who was unbelievably beautiful, dazzling, and had a truly big heart. Also, it didn’t hurt that she was rich. What was more wonderful about her was she appreciated John’s talent as an actor. It was a rare trait to come across in society, and it was why she happily provided him both moral and financial support.

  If there were any shortcomings about her, it was that she was two-timing him with Ivan.

  He thought about her taste in men, or lack thereof, and shrugged.

  John wasn’t the sharpest knife in the kitchen, so he didn’t realize describing Ruth’s taste in men as horrible was the same as admitting that he was a total loser.

  A cold, wet late-autumn breeze was blowing from the East River. A sprinkle of rain hit him in the face. The metal stairs were slippery, occasionally letting out squeaks and squawks, as if the steel structure itself were threatening to fall into pieces any minute, which made John nervous. The building’s elevator hadn’t functioned since God knows when, so he had no choice but to climb up the damned stairs. Getting smashed with the lousy staircase like a piece of garbage wasn’t high on his to-do list, so he ran up the stairs.

  As an actor, he went to the gym to do occasional workouts and training, but that didn’t mean he was a big fan of vigorous exercise. On normal days, he would have shied away from walking up the rusty metal stairs of a sad-looking apartment. Actually, he wouldn’t have set a foot in this neighborhood unless he was starring in a gangster movie or TV show, hopefully as the lead role. After all, it wasn’t the area where any of the characters of Sex and the City lived. It almost felt comical that this neighborhood was still included in Manhattan.

  While he mentally dissed Washington Heights, he completely forgot about his own social status as one of the least important actors in off-Broadway theater scenes. He also conveniently forgot the fact that, if it weren’t for the tiny apartment in Brooklyn, which he inherited from a late great-aunt, and financial assistance provided by Ruth, he couldn’t even keep a roof over his head.

  He jumped and let out a girly yelp when a rat the size of an obese Chihuahua ran up the stairs from behind and went ahead of him.

  “What kind of miserable excuse of an unknown artist lives here?” he muttered to himself after some cussing—again, completely forgetting the fact he happened to be one of those miserable excuses himself.

  As he approached the third floor where Ivan lived, John remembered his last exchange of words over the phone with his enemy, and being annoyed so greatly that he almost felt like his blood flowed backward.

  About thirty minutes ago, he received a strange phone call from Ivan.

  Getting a phone call from him was a rare event, mostly because the feeling of hate between the two of them was mutual. Both were Ruth’s kept men, and both were trying their best to convince her that the other guy wasn’t worth her time—or money.

  “Hey, John the loser, I’ve got bad news for you,” Ivan declared as soon as John picked up the call. He sounded like he was drunk, but there was something in his voice that made John nervous.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m calling to deliver a piece of special news to you. Now that I’ve acquired something to make me the El Greco of the twenty-first century, you’re so out of sight to Ruth and out of the picture. She is going to choose me, and she’ll dump you like a piece of garbage. Ha! Why don’t you curl up in the corner of your tiny apartment and cry like a little girl?” Then the line went dead.

  Immediately, John rushed from his apartment and took a cab to Washington Heights. He was determined to confront the SOB and beat him till he cried like a baby.

  As soon as he reached apartment 312, he banged on the door.

  “Who’s there?” Ivan’s voice demanded from inside.

  “It’s John. Open up.”

  “No way.”

  “I have something to say to you. Open up!” John banged on the door even louder.

  “Stop bothering me. Just leave!”

  “No, I won’t. I won’t ‘just leave’ until I get to talk to you face-to-face.”

  “I have nothing to say to you. You have to leave, or else I’ll call the cops and have you—”

  It seemed Ivan was about to say “arrested,” but his words stopped short.

  Instead of menacing words, he let out an agonizing moan. It became louder and escalated to a high-pitched shriek.

  Then came silence.

  “Hey, Ivan, what’s going on?” John asked as he switched from banging to knocking on the door.

  No reply.

  “Come on, Ivan. Open up. You can’t fool me!” John yelled at the door, but again, no reply.

  “Guess what, Ivan? You’re all words and no action. You’re just running away from me because I’m stronger than you. Ha!” John yelled at the door and turned on his heels to leave. After taking a couple of steps, he went back to his love opponent’s door.

  “Loser!” Yelling, he jumped and kicked at the door. He was just trying to make his point, but the worn-out door made of a thin veneer wood panel broke easily.

  John lost his balance and fell onto the cold concrete corridor.

  “Crap,” he groaned.

  Lying on the hard, cold floor, John was half expecting Ivan to come out of hiding, yelling at him, but no one came from inside. Instead, a twentyish Asian guy stormed out from next door.

  “What is the matter with you?” he demanded.

  John mumbled an apology and the guy went back to his room.

  Something wasn’t right.

  He got up and reached for the now-broken door. It was locked, but he could put his hand inside to unlock the door.

  Getting inside was a piece of cake.

  “Hello?” John said. “Ivan? Um… Sorry about the door.”

  As he opened it, dim light came into his eyes.

  “Ivan…?”

  There was no one in the room.

  “What the hell…?” he muttered.

  It was a tiny, one-bedroom, matchbox-sized apartment. In the living room / dining room / workroom was a 30” x 40” painting sitting on an easel. It was nothing fancy. The whole background was painted in an assortment of dark, boring, and depressing colors. The only part that caught his attention was the large blank area in the canvas. It looked as if whatever was portrayed had run out of the canvas and vanished.

  He advanced closer to the painting.

  On the side of the canvas, the title G.H.O.U.L. was written in pencil.

  Glancing down, John gasped as he spotted an assortment of men’s clothes, including underwear, heaped on the floor, as if someone stripped off those garments and left.

  Or whoever had those garments on had disappeared like smoke.

  “Hey, Ivan?” Not grasping the situation, John searched the apartment for his rival, but he couldn’t find any signs of him.

  John glared at the heap of clothes in front of the canvas for a while. Then, out of the blue, he kicked the garments. As the shirt, pants, and underwear scattered, something like pebbles of stone rolled over the floor.

  “What
the…?” John picked up a piece. It looked like a tooth—small, white, and hard, with a metal bolt on the base.

  As an actor, he liked to play the role of a tough guy, but in reality, he wasn’t. Startled, he dropped the tooth on the floor. When it hit, he caught a glimpse of several other pieces. Each was about the size of a chick pea, yellowish white with dark brown stains.

  The moment he realized the stains might be blood, John passed out and dropped on the hard floor.

  CHAPTER 1

  Green and purple… Seriously? Who had the deciding vote in determining the color schemes of this hideous building? USCIS? Or FBI? I wondered as I stood in front of 26 Federal Plaza in Manhattan, my new workplace.

  It was my first day of work at the FBI’s New York Field Office, and I wasn’t sure if I was happy or unhappy about my new career as an FBI special assistant.

  If this were a book, movie, or TV show, I would be a budding FBI special agent or something really badass.

  In that case, I would be ready to protect and defend the United States as I fought menacing terrorists or a group of evil aliens trying to invade Earth. In addition, if it were fiction, I would look like Jennifer Lawrence and have a really flashy educational background under my belt, such as having graduated from an Ivy League school at the top of my class. Not to mention I would be driving a Ferrari or a Lamborghini, or a Mercedes at least.

  Unfortunately, none of the above characteristics applied. After all, I was talking about my life, and lately, it kind of sucked.

  My name is Amanda Meyer. I’m a twenty-five-year-old American with Italian, English, and a little bit of Romanian heritage.

  I’m an American woman in my mid-twenties, but that’s all I have in common with The Hunger Games star. I stand at 5’4”, and I’m a size or two—or maybe three—larger than her dress size.

  I don’t have an Ivy League education under my belt, mostly because Harvard, Yale, Columbia, and all other such schools rejected my application. As for the car, I don’t even own one. I used to drive a relatively new Toyota Camry, but I sold it. I was trying my best to convince myself I didn’t need to have a car anymore now that I moved back to my parents’ home in Queens, New York.