Hallow Haven Cozy Mysteries Bundle Books 1-3 Page 15

  “Then I will make some lunch for everyone!” Meredith announced. “They say the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach.” She winked at Miller and then skipped out of the room.

  “I think she likes you,” I teased.

  “Yeah, she’s coming on a little strong,” Greta laughed. “She’s like this with almost every guy that walks in here, but you seem to be getting the full Meredith experience.”

  “Lucky me,” Miller groaned.

  “I don’t come to this island enough and I know that the mice here are particularly mischievous,” Fitz grinned. “I’m not wasting another minute here with you guys, I’m off on the hunt! Shout for me when the boat is here!”

  He darted out of the door and thundered down the stairs.

  “But it’s raining!” I yelled after him.

  “He’ll figure it out,” Miller laughed.

  “I think I might go for an explore on the island too. Maybe I can find a clue about where everyone is. The rain won’t bother me, I’m a ghost!” Greta winked and faded into nothing and left Miller and I alone.

  “Are you gonna get Meredith’s number before we leave, or…” I teased.

  “Why don’t we stick with the handful of problems we already have,” he replied. “I’m already worried she might follow me home.”

  “Ha!”

  “You know, this whole guardian thing…” he began. “The fact that I am destined to protect you, it’s really hard to wrap my head around.”

  “Why?”

  “You just found out you were a witch when you got to the island, right? Is that not blowing your mind?” he said. I looked at him, standing in his uniform that was still wet, looking at me with concern in his eyes. “Greta’s guardian was her father, that relationship was different to ours. I mean, you and me, what is this?”

  “Lunch is served!” Meredith shouted up the stairs. Dang, she must have been moving around at the speed of light in that kitchen.

  “Coming!” I shouted back. I took a step closer. “We are both going through something that is changing everything we thought we knew about ourselves. I know I’m no Meredith, but I… I like you,” I said. I was blushing wildly at my own boldness, but if there was ever a time to be brave, this was it.

  He closed the gap between us with one step and reached to grab my hand. I felt a tingle where his skin touched mine. I felt suddenly warm.

  “Whoa,” Miller gasped. “How did you…?”

  We were now both in fresh, dry clothes. I grinned at him and shrugged. My powers were still a mystery to me, I had no idea what I was capable of, but this was a pretty useful skill to have on an island that had frequent freak rainstorms.

  “We should go down to eat before Meredith comes looking for you,” I said. His hand was still holding mine loosely. I didn’t want it to end, but I could hear footsteps on the stairs and knew we were about to be interrupted anyway.

  We walked out of the door and met Meredith halfway up the staircase. “Come along now, the soup is getting cold!”

  I don’t know why I had assumed that we would be eating alone, but Meredith made sure that she pulled up a chair as close to Miller as physically possible.

  “I overheard you talking,” she announced. “So you are a guardian too, huh?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Miller replied.

  “I suppose you know there are several guardian bloodlines on these islands,” she said. “You aren’t related to Greta’s father. It’s a complicated business, but I double checked while I was waiting for the soup to heat.”

  “Good to know,” he smiled.

  “It seems you are in line for the British throne, too! All that stands between you and the crown are about eight million people!” Meredith cackled.

  “Wow, so your coronation could be any day now then!” I smirked.

  “Is that how you speak to royalty?” Miller replied, sticking out his pinky finger as he lifted his soup spoon to his mouth.

  The radio was playing in the kitchen and I could just make out the sound of Kate’s voice, it was an ad for the Battle of the Bands competition.

  “Are you going to enter? I bet you have an artist’s soul,” Meredith said.

  “I’m probably going to skip it this year,” Miller smiled. “Are you entering?”

  “Of course! I have only ever written one song and I have submitted it every year, but my talents are obviously too potent for the listenership of The Trident radio station. I am available for private bookings, though. My style is a mix of folk music and hair metal,” she said.

  I almost chocked on my soup trying to suppress a laugh, but it seemed that she wasn’t joking. “I’ll keep it in mind,” I smiled.

  “You own the café on the beach now, don’t you?” she asked. I nodded. “Well I would be a perfect booking for a place like that. My music aids digestion.”

  “Sure,” I hummed.

  The phone started to ring, and Meredith stood up to deal with it. The music on the radio was the only sound now as Miller and I finished our lunch, neither of us able to talk about Meredith being a hair-metal singer.

  “It was naïve to trust someone wicked like you, but I did and look, now I’m wicked too,” the voice crooned from the radio.

  “Who is this?” I asked.

  “Maybe it’s Meredith singing down the phone,” Miller laughed. “They might have called her up to offer her a record deal and skip the rest of the contest all together.

  “Sadie, it’s for you,” Meredith called from somewhere in the house.

  “Okay!” I called back, giving Miller a confused look. He stood up to follow me to the phone. Who even knew we were here? Effie? Maybe something was going wrong at the café, or it was just the lunchtime rush and she needed me to help out.

  “Hello?” I said, taking the handset from Meredith.

  “Oh thank goodness,” Kate said down the phone. “I’ve been running all over the place like a headless chicken trying to find you. Effie said you had left the main island and hadn’t come back, and she couldn’t remember where you’d gone! I’ve called three other islands trying to find you!”

  “What’s going on?” I asked.

  “I need you guys to come back. I think something bad has happened,” she replied.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah, it’s not about me. Look, someone called into the radio station and then… I don’t know how to explain it…” she sighed. “I think they got hurt. It sounded like someone smashed a window and then a gun shot rang out. I’d gone into the studio to promote the competition; I did a live ad. Someone called right after and I answered the phone. We need to find them.”

  “We’re trapped out on Wilmore,” I said. “We have to wait for a boat to—”

  “There’s a boat pulling up to the shallows,” Meredith said.

  “I called the police station and asked them to bring you back immediately,” Kate added. “If someone is injured then we need to find them.”

  “Okay, I’ll get to the boat now,” I assured her.

  “I’ll meet you at the marina.” She hung up.

  “Come on, we have to get on the boat,” I informed Miller. We hurried out of the front door. “Fitz!” I yelled. He came bounding out of the trees covered in spiderwebs and rain. “Time to go.”

  “Dang it, I thought we had more time!” he complained.

  “We’ll come back, I’m sure,” I said. “Meredith, once this is dealt with, I’ll help the police with the search, okay?”

  “Thank you, Sadie. And Miller, you can call anytime about absolutely anything. I’m a great listener,” she winked.

  “Jeez,” I muttered. We climbed into the speedboat and the police officer at the controls quickly started up the engine again. In a matter of seconds we were racing back towards the main island and the café was coming into view.

  Kate was standing on the sand by the marina. I could see her brightly colored hair before I could see the rest of her, she stood out like a beacon on a dark night. The s
un bouncing off her emerald green bangs reminded me of the landing strips at an airport.

  “I have an address,” Kate shouted before the boat was at a complete stop. The storm had mostly blown over by now, the grey clouds in the sky were no longer firing rain down from above. “I looked up the number in the phonebook.”

  “You guys still have phonebooks?” I asked.

  “Yeah, this place isn’t quite as modernized as the rest of the world,” Miller smiled.

  “It’s not far, come on,” Kate urged. I hadn’t seen her panicked like this before. I wondered what exactly she had heard that was making her so frantic. She didn’t know for sure that the sound she heard was a gun, right?

  We followed her along the beach, climbing up a dune on unsteady feet and pulling ourselves up into an alley that acted as a shortcut. We stopped at the last building on the high street, the road began to twist up onto the mountain path on our right.

  ‘The Guitar Yard’ was a two-story building with a glass front, or at least the glass had been there. Something had smashed through the front door and there were shards from the windows all over the sidewalk.

  “This is the place?” I asked.

  “Yeah, whoever called me was in this building,” Kate said. She had heard broken glass on the call, it must have been from the windows.

  I walked forward and pushed open the door. It wasn’t locked. Guitars of every color hung from the walls, books of sheet music lined the display in front of the cash register and a few other stringed instruments stood along the edge of the room. There was a single shoe in the center of the floor.

  I crouched down to inspect it a little more closely. Who would leave a shoe in a guitar store? I walked over to the cash register and found the other shoe. It was on the foot of a man clutching a phone in his left hand. Blood pooled around the bullet wound in his chest. I rushed around to see if he had a pulse, but it was too late.

  The man was dead.

  5

  I double checked, but there was still no pulse. Miller came round to see what I was doing crouched down behind the cash register.

  “Oh,” he mumbled.

  “Yeah, oh,” I repeated. “You better get the rest of the police, right?”

  “For what?” he asked. I looked at him curiously. “I realize that this is a crime scene, but you seem to be forgetting that we don’t have all the fancy forensic stuff on these islands. This place is very old school, and you are pretty much in charge of dealing with crime around here. Most people respect your opinion more than ours.”

  “Right… well my opinion is that someone shot this guy,” I muttered. “Kate, you said that you heard the gunshot on the phone call? Did you hear anything else?”

  “I can’t remember. I mean, it might be recorded… we could just go and listen to the whole thing,” she said. “I can check in with the station.” She pulled out her cell phone and began to type, her fingers moving quickly over the screen.

  “That would be great,” I replied. “I guess we should look around here first in case there is anything obvious to point to a suspect.”

  “Good idea,” Miller agreed. “It shouldn’t be hard to get a name for this guy confirmed. I’ve never been in here before but I’m pretty sure his name was Jack or something.”

  “Jake Hall,” Kate announced. “That’s definitely Jake. He wears belt buckles shaped like guitars, it’s his thing. He’s a cool guy, well he was cool. I haven’t seen him much over the past year, but he was keen on being involved in the Battle of the Bands competition, that’s for sure.”

  “Involved how?” I asked.

  “Well if people on the island suddenly decide that they have a chance at becoming a rock star, the first thing they will need is a guitar,” Kate said. “His business always gets a boost whenever the radio station runs the contest. We had been emailing back and forth about him having a booth at the music festival. He was keen on promoting his guitar lessons, he’s been teaching for years but he’s not great at advertising.”

  “Do you know if he has any enemies? Maybe a rival business on one of the smaller islands?” I suggested.

  “No, Jake has the only music store around. If you want an instrument you either buy it from Jake or pay to get it brought over on a plane. No one ever chooses the plane option, too expensive,” Kate explained.

  “Maybe this was a robbery gone wrong?” Miller mused. “He probably has an inventory around here somewhere; we can see if anything is missing.”

  “Yeah,” I mumbled. “Yeah, it could be a robbery.”

  “Your intuition is telling you something else, isn’t it?” Kate asked.

  “I don’t know yet, but I feel as though this wasn’t random.”

  “Paws up if you think we should go snooping around his apartment!” Fitz yelled. He was already sprinting for the staircase.

  “Look for the inventory, see if you can figure out what’s missing,” I yelled back at Miller and Kate. They both nodded as I chased my familiar into a stranger’s home.

  “What a dump!” Fitz cried as he pushed open the door.

  “What are you talking about? This place is pretty nice,” I said. It seemed to be a one open room that encompassed the kitchen, bedroom, dining space and lounge area. There was a door by the bed that I assumed led to the bathroom.

  He had sheet music in picture frames all over the walls, the sun had bleached the pages causing them to shift into yellows and browns instead of the white they would have originally been. He had a huge pile of books on his nightstand and empty coffee mugs all over the place.

  He had a vase of dying flowers on the kitchen counter and a note stuck to the fridge. I stepped closer to read the words that had been handwritten, ‘it should have been me, one day it will be’.

  “Huh,” I uttered softly.

  “Have you found a clue?” Fitz asked.

  “I’ve found something,” I answered. “I don’t know if it leads me anywhere. Why did you want to come up here?”

  “Oh, I’m just nosy. I can’t even whistle, never mind play a guitar. I used to watch that show on the music channel, you know, the one where you snoop around famous people’s houses. I thought there would be giant stacks of money lying around or something. I’ve not seen a single diamond anywhere,” Fitz scoffed.

  “I don’t think he was that kind of musician,” I smiled. “Not everyone gets lucky enough to get discovered. I saw some video about making it in Hollywood, it’s not always about talent. You have to be talented in front of the right people. This island is so isolated, I don’t know if anyone is ever going to get hugely famous playing music here.”

  “Better not let anyone else hear you saying that!” Kate laughed from the doorway. “Otherwise, no one will enter the Battle of the Bands and I will be doomed to a life serving pizza at Pete’s Za and hosting midnight talk radio. If this goes well then I could get a prime-time slot!” She pretended to cry and projected her bottom lip.

  “Did you guys find an inventory down there?” I asked.

  “Yeah, nah. Miller is still looking but I got bored. All this murder stuff has made me really hungry; did you guys get lunch already?” she asked.

  “Sadie and Miller had a soup date with Meredith,” Fitz yelled from the bed. He was stretching out along the blankets in a sunbeam.

  “Steamy!” Kate laughed. “Did Meredith make a move on him? I bet she did, she probably hasn’t seen a guy that hot in real life before.”

  “She was very friendly, yes,” I smiled. “I could eat again; I need to make some sort of plan for looking into all this.”

  “I do all my best thinking over pancakes, personally. Let’s head to the café and get Effie caught up on the gossip. She’s in The Sand Witch all day every day, if Jake was involved in any drama then she would know about it.”

  “Come on Fitz, you can’t stay here,” I said, beckoning him over with a hand gesture.

  “Urgh, can’t a cat sleep in peace?”

  “Fitz, shift back into your human f
orm and go to your own house,” Kate yelled. “You are an adult man cat, use your head!”

  “Pretty sure no one has ever needed to say that sentence before,” I laughed.

  “She says it to me all the time,” Fitz complained, rolling his eyes at Kate as he strutted past us. At the top of the stairs he changed form and was wearing his Dentist’s tunic. “Peace out!” he yelled, jogging down the stairs.

  “Bye then!” I shouted back. “I thought familiars were more useful than this, or did cartoons lie to me?”

  “It’s all a lie,” Kate smiled. “Come on, we can leave your boyfriend to search for the inventory while we stuff our faces full of carbs.”

  “He’s not my b—” I began, but Kate was already halfway down the stairs. I followed her and saw that she was explaining our lunch plans to Miller.

  “I should go with you,” he said, looking over at me. “If someone is running around the island with a loaded gun then—”

  “Then these two witches will destroy them. I’m also proficient in Muay Thai, Miller. Try and attack me right now, see what happens,” Kate teased. He didn’t seem convinced. “I know you are her guardian, or whatever, but I am also capable of protecting her.”

  “You were friends with Greta too, but she got murdered,” Miller said, looking a little more stern.

  “Oof, low blow!” Kate hissed.

  “We won’t be gone long,” I said.

  “Okay, I’ll stay here with the body. I’ve called the station and they are gonna get the funeral home to come and get him, he’s best off in a morgue at this point,” he explained.

  “Just what you want to hear about before you go and eat,” Kate joked. A faint buzz from her pocket prompted Kate to pull her phone out and read something. “Dang, the phone call wasn’t recorded,” she sighed.

  “Oh. We probably wouldn’t have heard anything that you hadn’t heard the first time,” I said, trying to reassure her.

  “Be careful,” Miller said. He moved his arm as if he was about to reach for my hand again but thought better of it. I wish we could have a moment alone. Since the day I arrived it has been one thing after another that has kept me busy. I wish we had the time to go out to dinner, somewhere that we wouldn’t be interrupted.