Hallow Haven Cozy Mysteries Bundle Books 1-3 by Mara Webb (hardest books to read TXT) 📗

the collection of things she had been wearing when she died. I spotted her sneakers in a plastic bag towards the bottom of the box and extracted one shoe carefully. The soul was muddy, dirt was deep into the tread and I worried that the flood at the cemetery might have compromised it.

I pressed my fingers against the dirt and the images began to form in my mind. The sounds of the evidence room faded away, the ticking of the clock, the rattling of the pipes, Miller’s breath... all gone. I was standing on a dirt track and the scent of fresh bread was floating through the air, I could see a vaguely familiar outline of bare rock. The dark sand beach was down the sidewalk and to the left.

The bakery and the dark sand... I was on Port Wayvern.

I let go of the shoe and saw Miller leaning against the wall a few feet away. I had no idea how long I had been caught in the images my magic had created, but when he saw my body began to move, as if I was reanimated, he took a few steps closer and waited for me to speak.

“This isn’t mud, it’s the dark sand from Port Wayvern. She was on that island last, which makes me think she died there. I had suspected that it was one of the Davick’s that had killed her because of the damage to her car.

“It looked like it had been beaten with a golf club and they have a golf course on Tivercana. What if the Conerty’s killed Chris? They wanted to relaunch their feud in a more violent way and murdering a member of the Davick family, the one keeping things calm, that would be a sure-fire way to do it.

“Greta must have sensed that something was going on, gone to Port Wayvern to ask questions and been killed to further fuel the rage fire they were trying to build.”

“How sure are you?” Miller asked.

“Totally sure,” I said, standing up as the ache in my thighs had become too much in the crouched position.

“It’s been like five minutes since you were sure that it was Simon Davick.” Good point.

“We should speak to Rosie about her stalker, if she thinks it is Simon then I might have been right the first time. Maybe Simon killed Greta on Port Wayvern and is trying to frame the Conerty’s. Someone moved those rocks when you and Simon ran away from my house, was it you?”

“I don’t remember. I knew I needed to get away, but... no I think the rocks were already gone.”

“Okay, so our suspects are from opposing families and we need to be sure before we go any further, otherwise things will get worse. We need to speak to Rosie before we do anything else,” I said, putting Greta’s shoe back in the bag and closing the box. Miller put the box back on the high shelf and we walked out of the evidence room back towards the sunlight outside the station.

I looked at him as if to make an assessment, maybe I was curious as to my own safety when wandering around the island with a werewolf. “You’re scared of me,” he said, clearly reading my expression.

“No, actually I’m not scared at all which is the part that is worrying me,” I smiled. He scratched the back of his head and when he noticed what he was doing, we both laughed.

“I think wolf-me spent most of the time scratching behind his ear, my ear, I don’t know who owns what,” he chuckled. We approached the café and when Rosie caught sight of us walking through the door, she seemed to fidget with her apron awkwardly and fluster about the counter as if searching for something to make her look busy.

Miller looked at me, but I kept facing forward. I felt as though I could sense what he was thinking; Rosie has been hiding something. “Rosie?” I said, forcing her to acknowledge us. Our shadows were growing eastward as the sun sank into the sky. Rosie was excused by an obliging Effie, and we beckoned her to join us outside so that we could speak privately.

“I didn’t mean to cause any harm,” she said, unprovoked.

“What do you mean?” Miller asked.

“Simon broke up with me and I knew he had made a mistake, so I thought I would help show him that he still loves me,” she squirmed. Her fingers interlocked and twisting, she was nervous. This was a confession, but what was she confessing?

“What did you do to make him think that?” I said.

“I had the idea that if I was in danger, or you know, he thought that I was in danger, that he would come running to my rescue.”

“This is about the stalker...” Miller said, his voice trailing off as he made the same realization as me. The stalker wasn’t real.

“I just told a few white lies about someone following me, you know, waiting outside the café or whatever, and I think that’s why he has been hiding by your house, trying to see if he can catch the guy. He told me that you saw him, and he thought he was in trouble,” Rosie sobbed. I had to consider that they were crocodile tears as she had just revealed herself to be quite manipulative.

“You said he was a tall guy, you described him!” I said.

“Not really. You seemed to think he was tall, and I just agreed with you,” she said.

Urgh.

18

It was time to head to Port Wayvern. Rosie had been let off with a stern word from Miller and a disgruntled look from me. The stalker angle had been a dead end. My suspicions that this was the beginnings of a new war between the Conerty’s and the Davick’s might be right, no matter how much I didn’t want it to be true.

When I was a kid, the drama of the school yard felt like the most important