Hallow Haven Cozy Mysteries Bundle Books 4-6

by Mara Webb

  “Yeah. Why do my clothes smell like I was at a forth of July party?” Emmy said, sitting up on the bed.

  “Someone lit a fire in your room, I’m guessing it was Derek. Your camera got destroyed,” I explained.

  A loud voice rattled through the air from outside. It seemed that Kieran had gotten his hands on some sort of megaphone and was yelling instructions to the guests waiting outside.

  “Hello everyone!” he bellowed. “The fire has been contained thanks to Hallow Haven’s bravest! Let’s give them a round of applause everybody!”

  I rolled my eyes as I thought back to the trashcan fire and how Kate and Miller had just thrown a blanket over it to snuff out the flames. The clapping was loud enough for us to hear it, then I heard Kieran telling everybody that the golf would resume shortly, and the cheers grew louder still.

  “You need to find Derek before he tries to finish the job,” Emmy pleaded. “I don’t know what he thought I knew, but clearly the photograph was enough to make him think I was a threat.”

  “I’ll track him down,” Miller said. “Everyone else, stay here.”

  “No way, I’m coming too,” I insisted.

  “Sadie, you can hardly walk, and I don’t want you putting yourself in danger unnecessarily.”

  “Oh, but it’s fine for you to wander around the island when there is a golf-club wielding lunatic on the loose?” I scoffed.

  “Yes, because I have a gun,” he smiled.

  “Exactly, so surely the safest place for me to be is with the person that has the gun,” I contested. Miller rubbed his temples as he tried to unravel the conundrum I’d just presented to him. If I stayed here then he wouldn’t be able to protect me, but if I went with him then I was probably more likely to run into trouble.

  “Let her go, we can keep Emmy safe,” Kate said. “Drag that weird little lawyer man back here so I can punch him in his turkey neck.”

  “Let’s keep the violence to a minimum, shall we?” Miller suggested.

  “He hit me, in the head, with a golf club,” Emmy added.

  “I agree with Kate,” I said. “I think turkey-neck-punching should stay on the table as an option for dealing with this guy.”

  “I’d like to remind you all that I am the sheriff,” Miller said, looking at the four women in the room.

  “Yeah, and I’d like to remind you that, and I can’t stress this enough, no one cares, Miller,” Kate grinned. “You’re just a pesky cousin that gets luna-loco once a month, I don’t have to listen to you.”

  I nudged Kate in the ribs as I didn’t think now was a great time to bring up the werewolf thing, especially not with Emmy in the room. I kept forgetting that Miller and Kate were second cousins, just like I forgot that Kate and Brielle were cousins on the other side of the family tree. These islands were a mess when it came to familial relations, everyone was related to everybody somehow.

  “Come on,” I said to Miller. I hobbled over to the door and held it open, reluctantly he followed me, and we stepped out into the hallway. “Where should we look first?”

  “If you were anyone else, I would suggest we split up to cover more ground,” he replied. “But because it’s you, I don’t want you out of my sight.”

  “What exactly do you think is gonna happen if you lose track of me? I can look after myself, I’m not totally helpless,” I said.

  “Could you run right now if you needed to?” he asked. Okay, that was a fair point. I wasn’t going to dignify it with a response, so I made for the elevator. “That thing is still going to be out unless someone has done a manual override on the fire systems. I just don’t imagine the volunteer fire team has gotten round to that yet.”

  He was right. There was a glowing red ring around the ‘call elevator’ button on the wall. I guess we had to take the stairs again. I huffed loudly and Miller smiled. He was reveling in being right when he told me to stay in the hotel room, but I wouldn’t admit it.

  “Ground floor? Then work our way up?” I suggested. We were already on the top floor, so I would have preferred to start there and work our way down, but that presented more opportunities for anyone that was hiding to escape.

  “Sounds like a plan,” he nodded. The staircase descent was difficult and took longer than it should have. I wondered if Miller considered picking me up at any point to speed things along. It seemed to be commonplace around here to just pick me up and move me from one place to another, like I was some giant chess piece in denim shorts.

  We kept moving, Miller staying close by my side ready to reach out and grab me if I slipped. He didn’t say much, and I wondered what he was thinking about. I wanted a discreet way to check the time so that I could figure out how many hours we had left together before he disappeared into the darkness.

  “Do I want to know why our room smells like him?” he said. The question caught me off guard and I stumbled as I tried to stop moving to face him. I found myself unable to look him in the eye, but I wanted to so badly.

  “Like who?” I asked. I was a bad actor and an even worse liar. This had happened before; I knew that Miller retained his ability to detect scents even in his human form. How long had he known that Ryder had been in the honeymoon suite with me? Would he know that Ryder had spent the night?

  “You know who,” he said, looking down at his shoes. “Look, you know how I feel, and I thought I knew how you felt. If I’ve gotten my wires crossed then that’s fine, I know that what happened out in the woods last night was probably a deal breaker for you and I don’t hold it against you if you and Ryder—”

  “Nothing happened!” I interrupted. “He carried me out of the forest, had Brielle treat my wounds, then brought me back to the room. He slept on the floor. You were nowhere to be found; he was trying to make sure I stayed safe.”

  “Safe from me, I get it,” Miller sighed. “I wasn’t accusing you of anything, I just…” he trailed off. “Shh!”

  He stepped closer to me and pressed a finger to my lips, then pointed down the staircase to the sound of two men arguing below.

  “You did what?” a voice shouted. “Are you a complete idiot?”

  “I did what I thought was best,” a second man replied. The second man sounded a lot like Derek.

  “All you have done is brought attention to us. This was going to be the end of all our problems, but now you’ve made it so much worse,” the first man said.

  What were they talking about?

  15

  Any hope we’d had of hearing some sort of full confession was quickly dashed when someone else entered the stairwell below and interrupted the talking men. Miller seemed to have decided to put our discussion about Ryder on hold, and we made our way down to the ground floor in the hopes of seeing who had been talking moments ago.

  We spotted Derek, but he was now alone. When he saw us looking, he quickly averted his gaze. Did he know what we had heard? Did he know we’d found Emmy?

  “What do we do?” I asked Miller.

  “Well, all we know so far is that this guy attacked a woman in her hotel room. We should take him in, then try to get hold of the CCTV from the hotel, that would help us corroborate Emmy’s version of events. I mean, that assumes that any cameras were working” he explained with a sigh.

  “Take him in? Where?”

  “I’ll send some folks from the station to keep this island on lockdown. We take Derek into the holding cell which eliminates him as an active threat, and I get to sleep in my cage tonight which eliminates me as an active threat,” he grinned. “It’s a win-win.”

  “Would you want to move your metal crate to my house? We could finally have that sleepover,” I suggested.

  “You want me to sleep in the corner of your room in a crate, like you’re training a puppy?” he laughed.

  “Is that a no?”

  “He’s moving,” Miller said, catching Derek trying to sneak away out of the corner of his eye. “Freeze!” Miller pulled out his gun again and began to charge at Derek, I staggered
forward a few steps and felt the blue electricity on my fingertips, my magic was prepared to burst out of me if Miller got himself into trouble.

  Derek seemed to be a man that had seen a lot of fight scenes in movies and figured that it couldn’t be that hard, so turned to face Miller and started to swing his fists. Miller crouched, swept a leg around the back of Derek’s ankles and knocked him to the floor. With one deft movement, he rolled Derek onto his stomach and pulled his wrists behind him so they could be handcuffed.

  Derek’s face was a picture. It was obvious that he hadn’t been expecting the encounter to go badly so fast, and I watched in amazement as Miller lifted him up onto his feet and began to drag him in my direction. I made my hands into fists to hide the crackles of electricity on my palms.

  Was it weird that my magic seemed to flare up every time Ryder or Miller did something? Was I so hard-up for physical interaction with a guy that this was how my body was responding? Miller didn’t even need to touch me anymore for the surge of blue light to appear.

  “Let’s go,” Miller said. I nodded obligingly and hobbled along behind him, out of the reception area and onto the path that led to the shore.

  “I want a lawyer,” Derek complained. “I want to make a phone call, I want to seek legal counsel, I’ve not eaten yet and I think it’s a human rights violation to interrogate me when I’m hungry. That’s a tactic they use in Guantanamo Bay, I’m sure of it.”

  “You think Guantanamo Bay is famous for withholding eggs benedict?” Miller asked.

  “I still get to see my lawyer,” Derek replied.

  “Of course. I am not going to stop that from happening, we just have to get you to the police station so that you can contact your lawyer from our phone,” Miller explained. Derek was shimmering with sweat by the time we reached the boat, but the weather wasn’t any warmer than usual. He was nervous.

  Miller helped Derek onto the seat, then reached back to assist me. I tried to step down into the boat, but it was too difficult. Miller put a hand on either side of my body and lifted me up, my hands on his shoulder’s steadied me.

  “Are you two going to kiss?” Derek asked. “Because I don’t want to have to see that. I didn’t sign up to be a third wheel.”

  “Oh, shush,” I scolded. I sat down opposite Derek as Miller took control of the engine and began to pull away from the shore. The angle of my seat allowed me to see the hotel growing small in the distance. There was someone staring at us from a balcony, it wasn’t the honeymoon suite as that was on the top floor, so who was it?

  “What is it you think I know?” Derek asked.

  “Do you think I’m going to show all our cards on this boat?” I smiled. “No chance, you can speak to Miller when we get to the station. Unless you have anything you’d like to say about the weather, or maybe how pretty the water looks today, you can keep your mouth shut.”

  “Someone woke up on the wrong side of bed this morning,” Derek laughed. “I guess this is what happens when your boyfriend almost murders you, you start snapping at the wrong people.”

  A silence fell that was initially confusing, but then I realized that Miller had killed the engine. The main island was just coming into view, but we were still far out. Miller turned to face Derek and I sensed that a nerve had been stepped on. I saw Derek gulp nervously, he realized that he shouldn’t have said anything.

  “If you think I’m so dangerous, then why would you be working so hard to get on my bad side?” Miller asked. “What is your plan if I shifted right now?”

  “I…I would…” Derek stuttered.

  “I thought so,” Miller said. “I suggest you listen to Sadie and keep your mouth shut.” He turned back to the controls and carried on propelling us towards the main island. Derek looked down at his shoes for the remainder of the journey.

  It took just under fifteen minutes to get to the station. We walked past the café on the way from the marina and I looked in through the windows briefly but couldn’t see anything untoward. I quietly told myself that if I could hear Effie screaming from outside the building that I would go in to offer my help. Maybe she had figured out this mess with Kane.

  In the police station, Derek was taken into one of the interrogation rooms and Miller waited outside with me for a few minutes. I figured this was a tactic to make Derek sweat, but judging by the damp patches over his t-shirt, he already was.

  “Do you know what you want to ask him?” I said.

  “Well, it would be useful to hear what he has to say about Emmy,” Miller replied. “We just have to wait for his lawyer to show up because it will be a total headache to navigate our way out of this mess if we don’t.”

  “Do I come in with you?” I asked.

  “Yeah, unless you don’t want to. It’s not going to be like TV, this will probably drag on for a long time and be pretty boring. You will probably hear a lot of ‘no comment’ responses and we won’t get far,” he sighed.

  “How long will it take for his lawyer to get here?”

  “How long is a piece of string?” he laughed. “I don’t think we will be seeing him within the hour, let’s put it that way.”

  “I think I should go check on Effie, call Kate and see what’s going on back on Tivercana, maybe grab a donut, you know, the important stuff,” I smiled.

  “Should I come with you?” he asked.

  “I won’t be long. I want you to reconsider my sleepover suggestion though,” I grinned. “I think having your little wolf crate in the corner of my room would be cute!”

  “I think you have questionable decision-making skills,” he teased. I did my best puppy-eyed look, I wasn’t above trying emotional manipulation. “Alright, stop with the face. I’ll think about it. I don’t exactly know how I would get my cage to your house, though.”

  “There has got to be one witch in my friendship group that would be able to help with that, surely,” I said. “Not me obviously, I’d probably blow the thing to pieces by mistake.”

  He gave me a kiss on the cheek, and I walked out of the police station and back towards the high street. I could see the food van at the end of the street that sold the most amazing donuts anywhere in Hallow Haven. I could smell them already and my mouth was watering at the thought of sinking my teeth into it.

  I should probably eat some fruit, or at least start taking a multi-vitamin. As I walked down the slope towards the van, I looked into the windows of the businesses that were bustling with tourists and locals. If you put the suspicious death, werewolf injuries and poorly executed weather magic aside, it was a great day.

  I wondered if Greta was still trying to help Ryder fix the full-moon issue. I hadn’t seen her since the woods, or at least I didn’t think I had. I didn’t know where Ryder was either.

  “Could I get two donuts please?” I asked the guy in the van, reaching into my pocket for my cash.

  “Just two?” he smiled, pointing at an offer on a board above his head that gave me ten for the price of eight. What was I going to do with ten? I suppose I could take them to the café and give them to Effie and the team, maybe that would cheer them up after having to deal with the IRS guy by themselves.

  “Go on then, you’ve twisted my arm,” I grinned. He was making them fresh, and I watched each step in the process with enthusiasm. “Have you been busy today?” I asked. I felt compelled to fill the silence, I wasn’t sure why.

  “Yeah, I think the golfers that came over from the mainland were allowed to bring a plus one, so all the people that aren’t playing golf have come here for some shopping. The beauty salon up the street has had a line out the door all day, everyone wants to get their nails done,” he answered.

  “Yeah? I didn’t even know I could get a pedicure around here,” I admitted. “I should book myself in as an emergency appointment.”

  “Aren’t you busy with the tournament? Or are you having to deal with the dead woman?” he asked.

  “You heard about that?”

  “Who hasn’t? Rick Colte
r and that slimy lawyer of his must be laughing all the way to the bank,” he said.

  “Huh?”

  “When Rick’s first wife died, you know, from ‘drowning’,” he said, making large air quotes around the word drowning. “There was a buzz of investigators from the life insurance company as they had to check for foul play. It turns out that Rick had taken out a policy on his wife, but those things don’t pay out if you get injured or die within the first year or two.

  “But wouldn’t you know it, two years and one week after the policy was taken out…” he raised an eyebrow and waited for me to finish his sentence.

  “She died?” I guessed.

  “You got it! This is all gossip of course, but Rick started wearing an awful nice watch once those investigators left, he upgraded his car, he got hair plugs… you get where I’m going with this.”

  “He got the pay out,” I mumbled. He handed me the donuts in a paper bag, and I mulled over everything he had just said, wondering if Miller knew about any of it. “Thank you, I’ll just drop these off at the café, Effie will be thrilled.”

  “Effie’s not at the café, is she?” he asked.

  “Yeah, why wouldn’t she be?”

  “Your café has been closed for hours. I thought it was weird on a day when we had all these hungry tourists ambling around,” he said. Closed? I felt a shot of panic hit me square in the chest, before reaching up to pass him the cash.

  I looked at my hand as I handed him the notes; it was glistening with blood. I blinked and the blood was gone. It was a premonition; I was sure of it. Ignoring the ache in my leg, I turned and began to sprint towards the café. Something bad had happened, I just knew it.

  16

  The distance between the food van and the café wasn’t huge, but I still had to do most of the running over sand and not a firm surface. I wondered if I would have had less pain in my leg if I’d had to run over tarmac, instead of the beach. My feet kept sliding as I moved and it put unnecessary strain on my injury.

  From the outside the café looked normal. The lights were on inside and I couldn’t see anything to suggest something bad had happened. I didn’t know why the fear was so potent, but I had such a strong sense that there was trouble.