Chocolate Chip Cookie Conundrum (Murder in the Mix Book 32) by Unknown (romantic love story reading txt) 📗

includes Greer Giles, a pretty brunette with an entire solar system of stars taking up residence in her hair. She’s still wearing the same white ruched dress she had on the night she was killed, and it still looks just as smokin’ on her. Next to Greer stands her two-hundred-year-old boyfriend, Winslow Decker. He once owned a pig farm on these very grounds. And next to him is their adopted daughter Azalea, aka Lea, and she happens to be holding their pithy black cat, Thirteen.

“Lottie!” Greer shouts as I speed over to where they’re standing, just shy of the reception desk. Greer is a girl about my age who was shot a few years back. I’m not sure why Greer and the other ghosts are allowed to stay in Honey Hollow while the ghosts that help me solve crimes are whisked back to paradise not long after the perpetrator is caught, but I’m happy to report I don’t care what the reason might be. I happen to like the fab four poltergeists who haunt these shockingly pink halls. And I happen to count them all as friends. Heck, at this point they’re family.

In fact, both Greer and Thirteen, the sweet ghostly black cat with stray miniature stars floating around his whiskers, helped me do just that—solve a case—and yet they still remain.

Thirteen floats right out of Lea’s arms and over to me. “That little baby girl of yours is a sugared up dream. You don’t know how lucky you are to have a baby of your own.”

“You can have her from the hours of nine PM to six in the morning.” I’m quick to give away my firstborn child in exchange for a little shut-eye. “I just took a solid nap on the toilet, and believe me it was bliss. If I hadn’t hit my head on the door, I would have probably missed this entire shindig.”

Little Lea gives a maniacal laugh. “I would have hunted you down and removed your head. That’s enough to wake anyone.”

Lea is forever six, wears her long brown hair combed right over her face, has on a dirty pinafore and a pair of scuffed Mary Janes, and the best part? She wields a machete in her hand, ready to avenge the deaths of her family members who were slaughtered right over these sacred grounds who knows when. I have a feeling Lea was a part of the slaughter, too, but we’ve never talked about that.

I say let sleeping massacres lie.

“Keep your machete to yourself,” I tell her. “I have a little girl of my own to live for. And unlike Thirteen, humans don’t have nine lives.” Not that he has them anymore either.

Thirteen yowls, “And to think I used up all nine lives in record time. My mother always did say I was in a hurry to do everything. I guess you can add living and/or dying to the list.”

Cluck Norris clucks up a storm. “How about we get a move on, Lottie? After we quiz the suspect at hand, Thirteen says he’ll show me where they keep the caviar and truffles.”

“Figures,” I say. “Now that Cormack and Cressida are running this place into the ground, donuts and croissants have taken a backseat to pricier breakfast offerings. I bet they’re running in the red with this place and don’t even know it.”

“What’s this?” a female, and I suspect a featherheaded woman, calls out from behind.

I turn around to find not one but two featherheads in my presence. Both Cormack and Cressida are dressed head to toe in hot pink frocks along with what amounts to an entire jewelry store dangling off their necks and wrists.

“See that?” Cormack winks to Cressida. “Linoleum here loves us so much, she can’t stop thinking about us.”

Neither Cormack nor Cressida has ever bothered to get my name right. And at this point in the game, I couldn’t care less.

“Who are you talking to, Lala?” Cressida sniffs as she looks past me. “Let me guess, the ghosts?”

“Actually, I was,” I tell them and they both break out into cackles.

Cormack sniffs. “As if they’d ever want to speak to you. I’m officially their best friend. Each night I leave out a fresh large pizza from Mangias in the kitchen for them, and each morning every last slice is gone.”

“It’s true.” Greer is quick to attest to the yummy Italian exchange. “I wouldn’t say we’re best friends, but let’s just say we’re close.”

Lea nods. “Cormack makes certain exchanges with us when she’s setting the pizza down. Last night she asked for one of us to scare the pants off the guest in room fifteen because he was threatening to sue over dirty towels. She said there would be a couple of meatball sandwiches along with the pizza for us if we complied.”

I suck in a quick breath. “Cormack, are you bribing the ghosts to do your bidding by way of pepperoni and meatballs?”

She shoots me a sly look. “I didn’t get this far in life without initiating a bribe or two. Just wait until I sic those ghosts on you, Lima. Big Boss will be back in my arms, where he truly belongs.”

Greer gives a ghostly laugh that has the power to rattle the walls and does just that.

“Don’t worry, Lottie,” Winslow reassures me. “There’s not enough pizza in the world for that to happen.”

Greer clucks her nonexistent tongue. “But what I wouldn’t do for a fresh Maine lobster.”

I guess everyone has their price.

Cluck Norris belts out his signature cry, and for a second there I think I’m seeing stars, and I am—his.

“Let’s hurry with the suspect, Lottie,” he crows. “I haven’t had pizza since Candace fed me a slice. My beak is watering just at the thought of it.”

I try to move past the two ditzes before me, but Cressida steps in my path.

“Everything is a go for the next taping of Getting Candid with Cormack, and I expect you to be there with bells on if you want to take