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

might be a long story, can I get anyone a refill?” We nodded, patiently waiting to hear the local legend. Was this going to give us any clue as to why there was a dead man in a bomb shelter?

7

“It’s not that unusual for people to want to leave Green Holt. You might hear otherwise from some of the older residents on the island, but it’s true,” Honey began. “This place is nice, don’t get me wrong, but you can’t limit yourself to one hunk of rock in the middle of nowhere.”

“Have you ever left?” I asked.

“I…” she paused, considering her words carefully. “I have, but it’s not something that is easy to talk about. Everyone in Hallow Haven is up in everybody else’s business. If you want to get off Green Holt you have to be very secretive about it. There are the tunnels, I’m sure you know that by now.”

The tunnel network allowed access to the main island from the outer islands. I wasn’t sure of the size of the network, or if every island was connected this way. Mapping them out was on my lengthy to-do list.

“So, you left through the tunnels?” I said.

“I did, but you have a few options. You can obviously use the tunnels, or a boat, or swim. Swimming is risky as the water is deep and… well you get the idea.”

“But using a boat means you have to sign in and out on the main island, right?” Miller said.

“Exactly. That doesn’t make it impossible, money can be a powerful tool and if you have enough of it then the guards on the main island will pretend they didn’t see you and you don’t have to sign the book. Their fee is too high for most people, so they use the tunnels instead,” she explained. “But getting to the main island is only the first part of the journey.”

“The airport,” I muttered.

“Yes! It is much harder to get off the islands altogether. You need a passport and a bribe big enough that the pilot will sneak you away from Hallow Haven without blabbing about it to everyone he meets,” she sighed.

I thought of Tom, the pilot that had flown me from Virginia to this place. He was the only pilot that lived here as far as I knew, if you were planning to leave by plane then he was your only option.

“Where did you go?” I asked.

“I went to Canada,” she smiled proudly. “I’d heard about this weird stuff called snow, that it was cold and fluffy and fell from the sky. We don’t get that here, so I wanted to see it for myself. I had to save up a lot of money to buy the passport, the bribe for the pilot, the cost of the flights and then all my other travel expenses. It was worth every penny, but there was a lot involved in making it happen.”

“Why is it so taboo for people to go on vacation?” I said.

“I don’t know, it’s just ingrained in all of us so deeply that it’s hard to break out of the cycle. If people knew that I’d gone away from here then they could shut down my business or stop inviting me to parties.”

“So for Robert to have a passport that must have meant that he had a lot of money, right?” I asked.

“Yes, no doubt. If you think it is strict now then you can’t even imagine what it was like back then,” Honey explained. “You have to realize that it wasn’t even conceivable that anyone would want to leave Green Holt when he was alive. My parents told me that he went missing, that was how it got started. He had been the most outgoing, wonderful guy and so when he first didn’t show up for a social event, people were worried.

“But maybe he was just sick, right? But then the next day no one spotted him, or the next. They went to his house and he was gone, but none of his things were gone. People started to look for him because they were worried that he might be hurt somewhere, but they didn’t find him. Then the details get a little blurry.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“He was gone and there was no body, he hadn’t taken any of this stuff so it didn’t look like he had gone off to some distant place, although it would probably be easier to run away without luggage,” she paused. “All that meant that, at least in Green Holt lore, that the island had taken him back,” Honey said.

I looked at Miller to see if he was as confused as I was, but he nodded gently as if it had made perfect sense.

“It’s not just Green Holt, there are a few other islands with similar beliefs,” Miller said. “They say we come from the islands, that the witches of Hallow Haven get their power from the islands themselves, so the island can take you back whenever it chooses.”

“It sounds silly, I’m sure,” Honey chuckled. “But they didn’t have the internet back then, so making up weird rumors was pretty much the only entertainment. If Robert Barton had been consumed by the island then that means all the lore was real, he could haunt us, poison the water or kill of the crops.”

“But us finding the body proves that it didn’t happen that way, right?” I said.

“Exactly. Did you see anything other than the passport down there?” Honey asked.

“Just the hole through the skull,” Miller replied. “I didn’t see a gun anywhere around, so he didn’t shoot himself. That man was murdered. Do you remember if your parents said anything about him having any enemies?”

“The fact that he had a passport is the biggest thing that would put a target on his back,” Honey said. “If he was planning to leave and someone found out then he could be in big trouble.”

“Why would he try to leave?” I asked. “If it