I clung to the back of his peacoat and followed him forward. Maple, Wiley, Sam, and Kenta filed along behind us. Everyone seemed shaken but alright, their faces lit by cold light. We reached the front of the group and froze.
Iggy’s golden light cast a flickering circle on the ground, illuminating our tour guide, Tim. He lay on his side, eyes unseeing, blood pooled around a wound in his stomach. Maple gasped and buried her face in Wiley’s chest, and he wrapped his arms around her. I crept forward as Hank ducked down beside the man and pressed his fingers to the side of his throat. He shook his head. “He’s gone.”
The middle-aged lady in the headscarf shouldered her way forward and stared, wide-eyed, at Tim’s body. She rubbed a necklace with an odd charm between her fingers and muttered to herself, as if chanting some spell.
I pressed my free hand to my mouth, horrified. I held the lantern higher in my other hand, using Iggy’s light to see better. Something glinted in the darkness, and I moved toward it.
My flame grumbled to himself. “Oh, great, yes— let’s get closer to the dead body.”
There, beside Tim, lay a bloodied dagger with a jeweled handle.
3
The Oddities Shoppe
Hank introduced himself as Prince Harry (we’d gone unrecognized in the dark) and quickly took charge. He cast a spell around the crime scene—Tim’s body and the dagger—and then ushered us all back above ground.
My friends and I had had enough dealings with unnatural deaths to know the procedure. Once outside, Hank used magic to send up a police signal—a sort of hovering firework in the night sky—that would let the cops know there’d been a murder.
Our entire tour group then hurried the short distance from the sewer tunnel entrance back through the dark, cobblestone streets to the oddities shoppe, where we’d bought our tickets. Rain poured down, cold and heavy, and we were half soaked by the time we ducked inside, despite the short distance. The bell tinkled over the door as we entered the small, cluttered space, and I crinkled my nose at the smell of dust and moth balls.
A large guy with a goatee and shoulder-length hair sat on a wooden stool at the very back of the store, behind a waist-high glass display case. The older couple who’d left the tour early stood with their backs to us, arguing with him.
The tall old man wore a sweater vest and shook his bony finger at the guy behind the counter. “Why, Bethusa here slipped on the way out!”
The guy who’d sold us our tickets earlier crossed his arms over his round belly and huffed. He shifted on the stool, agitated, and his tone was anything but customer service friendly. “It is a sewer. It’s wet.”
“It wasn’t water!” The older lady’s voice quivered. She pointed at her thick-soled shoes. “It was slimy! I could’ve broken a hip!”
The guy behind the counter looked over her head and frowned at us as our entire group poured into the store and moved down the center aisle toward him. There were a couple more aisles on either side, formed by shelves absolutely stuffed to the ceiling full of oddities. I curled my lip as I looked up, hugging my arms around myself for warmth. Even the ceiling was cluttered with draped nets and hanging taxidermied ravens and bats.
“Imogen, look—a bowl of dead men’s fingers. You want to get a head start on your Christmas shopping?”
I shot Iggy a look and he cackled.
“I demand a full refund and—”
The guy behind the counter rose from his stool, waving a thick hand in front of the old man to shush him. He frowned at the rest of us. “What are you all doing back early? No way am I refunding all of you. Where’s Tim?”
Hank strode forward, hands in the pockets of his black wool peacoat. “I’m afraid Tim’s been murdered.”
The long-haired guy paled and fell back onto his stool. “What? How?”
My friends and I trailed behind Hank up to the counter. The older guy took his wife into his arms and pulled her to the side. She held a fluttering hand over her mouth. “Murdered?”
Her husband pressed his wrinkled lips together. “I definitely demand a refund now! Murder? How unprofessional.”
I mean, it was a haunted underground tour, so that was debatable, but I doubted poor Tim had intended to get killed.
Hank, broad shoulders squared, gave the guy behind the counter a sympathetic look. “I’ve sent up the police signal. They should be here shortly.” He spun to face our group. “In the meantime, we all need to remain here in the shop for questioning.”
The group’s reactions varied. The guy with the tattoos paled despite his tan skin and clutched his scroll and quill to his chest. The woman in the headscarf rubbed her necklace between her fingers, again muttering to herself, and the younger couple huffed.
The young woman shook her head. “This is ridiculous. We had plans after. We can’t wait around all night!”
She started toward the door but Hank called after her. “It’s a royal order. You must stay put.”
She stiffened and huffed, but turned around, muttering to the man she’d come with. Hank dipped his head down and gave me the slightest hint of a grin. “Occasionally, it pays to be a prince.”
I smirked back at him. Normally he hated all the formalities of people bowing and fawning all over him the moment they realized who he was. I got the treatment too sometimes, but to a lesser degree. I hadn’t been a princess for long, but he’d been dealing with it all his life. He was right though—being royalty paid off every now and then.
My friends and I moved away from the front counter and stood in the center of the store, surrounded by flickering candelabras, specimen jars, and dusty books with leather spines. “So what now? We just wait for the police?”
Hank shot me a suspicious look. “What else would we do?”
I shrugged and pressed my lips together, trying to look innocent. “Well… it’s not like this is our first murder.”
Iggy popped his flaming head out of his lantern and gave me a thumbs-up. “Real point of pride there, Imogen. Be sure to announce it louder next time.”
I shot him a flat look.
Wiley crossed his arms and chuckled. “What are you suggesting?”
“Yeah, Imogen, what are you suggesting?” My little flame blinked up at me.
I lifted a palm. “Just that we could be of help.”
Wiley shook his head at me, grinning. “I’m sure Inspector Bon would love that.”
I sniffed at the mention. The police inspector didn’t appreciate my forays into detective work. “Well, if he did a better job solving mysteries, we wouldn’t have to.”
Maple bit her lip and slid closer to Wiley, hugging Cat tightly to her chest. “I don’t know.” Her blond brows drew together as her gaze shifted around the dark shop. “It’s pretty creepy in here as it is—I’m not sure I want to do any digging.”
“C’mon! It’s Halloween!” I clicked my tongue. “What’s more Halloweeny than solving a murder?”
Sam shivered as Kenta rubbed his shoulders. “But we know it wasss the ghossst, don’t we?”
Kenta nodded. “Not to jump to conclusions, but Tim said Mr. Havillard’s angry spirit roams the tunnels, murdering people with a bejeweled dagger. And then that exact thing happened.”
Hank frowned. “Which is quite coincidental.”
I shuddered at the memory. “But if it wasn’t an angry ghost, then it had to be someone on the tour.” I raised my brows and looked significantly around our little circle. “Which means we might be in the shop with a murderer right now. Don’t you want to figure out who it is, just in case?”
We all turned to look at the others. Had it been the guy with the tattoos who’d been taking notes? Or maybe the interrupting younger couple, who seemed eager to leave? Or maybe the muttering woman in the headscarf?
Maple whimpered. “I’m spooked.”
Wiley put an arm around her and hugged her tight to his side.
Iggy shook his head. “Again, this spooks her, but the literal monster in her arms is fine.�
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Maple buried her face in Cat’s fur, as the little guy turned his head a full 360 degrees, grinning with razor-sharp teeth.
I curled my lip. “Love does funny things to people.”
Hank nodded. “Alright—why don’t we at least find out a little bit more about our tour guide, Tim.”
I grinned. “Yes! Okay, where should we start?”
Hank turned toward the checkout counter and the guy with the long hair. “With Tim’s coworker.”
I nodded. “Good thinking.” We moved down the center aisle of the tiny shop. The older couple saw us coming and moved away. Maple, Wiley, and Cat followed us, along with Sam and Kenta.
I rested my hands on the glass counter, the display filled with brooches, knives, small swords, black feathers, a spell book that looked as though it were bound in skin—shudder—and a whole shelf of lockets labeled “cursed.”
The guy behind the counter didn’t look up.
I drummed my fingers and cleared my throat. “Hi.” I put on my friendliest, cheeriest tone. “I don’t know if you remember us, you sold us tickets earlier this evening and—”
“Stop.”
I blinked at the overweight guy with the long hair.
Hank frowned. “Excuse me?”
He pointed a stubby finger. “You’re smudging the case. Quit it.”
“Oh.” I looked down at my hands, then shoved them in the pockets of my vintage tweed blazer. “Sorry about that.” I flashed my eyes at Maple, then started again. “I’m also sorry about Tim. Did you work together for long?”
The guy looked pale—understandable, considering he’d just learned his coworker was dead. Then again, I wasn’t sure there was much love lost there.
When we’d come in to buy our tickets, right before the tour started this evening, the men had been speaking with raised voices. They’d cut off as soon as they’d noticed us, and he and Tim had looked our way with surprised expressions—like we’d caught them in the middle of something.
They’d both acted flustered, and I’d picked up on some weird tension between them. I suspected one of them might have spilled something and caused a mess. Tim had hustled off behind the curtain that led to the back, and the long-haired guy had enchanted a mop to clean up the area behind the display case.
“Did you not even read the brochure?” The guy gestured at a stack of glossy pamphlets on the counter. A picture of him and Tim took up most of the top half. I glanced up at the guy behind the counter—he looked identical to his pic, even down to the lack of a smile. Tim, on the other hand, looked a lot heavier in the picture. He’d clearly lost a lot of weight since then.
The brochure boasted that the Haunts of Bijou Mer tour company had been founded by Tim Mulaney and Bryan Moreau and had been the leading tour company on the island for the past twenty years.
“Wow.” I looked up at the guy who must be Bryan. “Twenty years? Congratulations.”
Maybe the tension between him and Tim earlier hadn’t been too big of a deal then. Two guys who’d been in business together for that long were bound to have their moments.
Bryan nodded, quite serious. “Thank you. We built it from nothing, Tim and I. For the last twenty years, it’s just been the two of us. And we’ve recently expanded with our tours of the sewers.” His expression darkened. “Tim hoped to expand those even more. They’ve been quite the hit.” A muscle in his jaw jumped, and his tone grew bitter.
“Who doesn’t love a good romp in the sewers?” Iggy flashed his eyes at me, and I bit back a smile.
I looked up and raised my brows at Hank. Bryan was clearly upset. But was it because he’d just lost his business partner or because of something more sinister?
I cleared my throat. “Well, we were enjoying it.” Right up until the whole murder part.
Hank lifted a brow. “Not to be indelicate, but will you be able to continue without Tim? Seeing as it’s just the two of you?”
“Hard to say.” Bryan shrugged and looked down at his feet. “Tim was the showman—the storyteller.” He rolled his eyes. “I was just the guy who sat behind the counter, doing research, writing the scripts Tim read.” He huffed. “Tim was the one everyone loved, the one they paid to see.” He waved his hand about.
“Not jealous at all,” Iggy muttered from his lantern in my hand.
The bell over the door tinkled, and my friends and I whirled around. I half expected to see one of our suspects making a break for it, but instead, a few familiar faces walked in, rain still pouring in sheets behind them.
Officer Peter Flint and his canine partner, Daisy, entered first, followed by Jolene—a witch who could speak with animals and often consulted on cases with the cop. She and Officer Flint were also seeing each other, or so I gathered from all the flirty looks. The tour group moved away, eyeing them with a mix of curiosity and alarm.
Jolene, hands in the pockets of her bomber jacket, stomped her boots on the welcome mat, while Daisy, an enormous German shepherd who could magically sniff out lies, shook her tawny fur, spraying water droplets everywhere.
Bryan groaned, and Officer Flint winced. “Sorry.”
4
Between Two Shelves
Officer Flint, in the blue-and-gold uniform of the Bijou Mer police, marched toward us, a sheepish grin on his face. “Sorry for Daisy—that’s my partner.” He thumbed behind him at the German shepherd, her fur wet and spiky. He drew his wand from the breast pocket of his uniform jacket. “I’ll clean that all up.”
Bryan waved him off, grumbling, “Don’t bother—I’ll do it.”
“Yeah,” Iggy muttered. “Wouldn’t want to damage the Victorian garden made of human hair or that delightful collection of taxidermied squirrels.” I bit back a grin.
“Right.” The officer replaced his wand as Jolene and Daisy joined him in the middle of the store. “You’re the shoppe’s owner?” He glanced behind him toward the door and the rain falling hard outside the front windows. “We saw the signal—there was a murder?”
Ah—that’s right. Officer Flint’s beat was the Darkmoon District, near here. He must’ve been the closest officer and the first to respond. I stepped forward, waving. “Hey!”
While Inspector Bon and I weren’t fans of each other, I did have a few friends on the force. Flint, Jolene, and Daisy gazed at me for a moment before recognition set in. The officer’s eyes widened in surprise, and Daisy wagged her tail and trotted right over to Maple for pets, though she kept her distance from Cat, who perched on Wiley’s shoulders. Understandable.
“Good to see you all.” Officer Flint beamed, then raised his brows as he seemed to remember his duties. “Oh—excuse me for now.” He slid past us and began questioning Bryan, who still sat behind the glass display case.
Jolene, her long black hair swept back in a ponytail, chuckled. “Inspector Bon wasn’t kidding—you do attract murder and mayhem, huh?”
My cheeks grew hot, and I glanced up at Hank for help. He sucked on his lips to avoid smirking, and I shook my head at him. “Traitor.”
His blue eyes twinkled. “It’s one of my favorite things about you.”
I crossed my arms and fought a smile. “Sure.”
“It’s a good thing.” Jolene winked, hands still stuffed in her pockets. “My favorite people are the ones who are at least a little trouble.”
I grinned and stood a little taller. Considering Jolene was one of the most effortlessly cool people I’d ever met, I’d definitely take it as a compliment.
She looked past me to Hank, Maple, Wiley, Sam, and Kenta and nodded her hellos. “Almost the whole gang’s here.”
Maple looked up from scratching Daisy’s head. The huge dog sat on her foot, tail thumping the floor. “We’re celebrating Halloween with a spooky haunted tour.” She bit her lip and looked down. “Though it didn’t end well.”
Jolene nodded. “I’ve heard of Halloween—too bad. And—oh!” She curled her lip and stepped back. “You brought your weird demon pet.”
Map
le, scratching behind Daisy’s big, pointy ears, beamed like a proud mother. “Yeah, you remember Cat.”
It peeked out from behind Wiley’s head and hissed, its leathery bat wings shuddering.
“Ugh.”
I held Iggy’s lantern up, and he flashed his eyes at me. “She probably couldn’t forget him—even if she tried.”
Jolene leaned over and dropped her voice. “Oh—I tried.” She raised her brows. “That thing haunts my dreams. I’m surprised you guys needed a tour to get creeped out.”
“Yes!” Iggy nodded his little flaming head. “This girl gets it.”
I grinned. I certainly didn’t understand how Maple, my sweet, innocent friend, could fawn over her mind-control monster the same way she’d coo over a newborn or a little kitten. I chalked it up to her big heart, but Iggy was still convinced Cat had her and Wiley under his spell.
“Jolene?”
“Hm?” She looked up as Officer Flint waved her and Daisy over. “Bryan’s going to take us down to the crime scene.” He raised his voice and addressed the rest of us. “We’re locking the shop up. Please remain here until we return and can question you all. Thank you for your patience.”
“That’s my cue.” Jolene followed her boyfriend behind the glass display case. On her way out, she quietly growled at Daisy. The dog jerked her head up and snarled at her before licking Maple’s cheek and trotting behind. I smirked. I could never understand what Jolene and Daisy were saying to each other, but they seemed to have a snarky repartee going.
Bryan drew his wand and pointed it at the front door, muttering a spell. A lock clicked, and then he, Flint, Jolene, and Daisy exited through a hanging black curtain that presumably led to a back door. We heard the creak of hinges and then another lock click.
“Now that we’re alone…” I rubbed my palms together and raised my brows at my friends. “Time to do some sleuthin’.”
Wiley shook his head, grinning. “Oh boy, here she goes.”
Maple bit her lip and slid up against his side. “That means we’re locked in here with a murderer.” She whimpered. “Either that, or a murderous ghost did it.”
Cold Cases and Haunted Places Page 2
