Have Yourself a Merry Little Witness: A Witchy Christmas Cozy Mystery (Marshmallow Hollow Mysteries Book 2)
Page 13
It twinkled in the early morning light, soft and white, with some of the decorations I’d made when I was little.
I crept in farther, fighting a sniffle just as the sun was beginning to rise, hoping to get in and out without waking her.
But that wasn’t to be. “Mornin’, honey,” she said groggily, rising to her full height on sleepy legs. “Why you up so early?”
Plopping down on a bale of hay, I rasped a sigh, exhaustion setting in. “It’s just been a long night. But I promise to come back later and get you out for some sunshine while it lasts, okay?”
She sniffed the air and honked. “Won’t last long, that’s for sure. I can smell more snow. How’s Monty feeling?”
“Well, he was doing better until this morning, when someone tried to kill him.”
Nana gasped and stomped her hooves. “What? Explain yourself, young lady!”
I told her about the prior evening’s events with Kerry Carver and Uncle Monty as I turned on the heater and warmed my hands by it while the rising sun slowly crept into the windows of the loft.
“Holy hassenpfeffer,” she murmured. “Jiminy, kiddo. I’m sorry you’re going through this alone. I wish I could help, but the only magic I had died with me, and as much as you know I love my Andy, he’s no kinda support in a time like this. He’s too emotional to carry the weight when the problem’s his.”
I sneezed again, pulling a fresh tissue from my jacket pocket. “But I think you know he’s always been there for me. Especially since Mom died. I know he’s dramatic and flamboyant and downright over the top, but if the roles were reversed…”
“He’d turn whomever did this into a gooey blobfish,” I heard Atticus say as he buzzed into the barn and landed on the railing of Nana’s stall. “And she’s not at all alone, Karen. She has me. She will always have me. Speaking of having me, I hear a cold coming on. You should be inside, in a warm bed, with tea and honey, Poppet.”
I chuckled and rose to give my familiar a kiss on top of his head. “I’m fine. Just the sniffles. Now, morning, Atticus. How did you sleep?”
“I didn’t, Poppet. Once you left, I paced the floors a new hole you’ll have to replace. How did the rest of your evening fare?”
I winced. “Not great.”
“Not great is right. Somebody tried to kill Monty, Atti. What’s Marshmallow Hollow coming to?”
Atti didn’t even gasp at Nana’s words. Instead, he flew to my shoulder and rested his head on my cheek. “Oh, my beautiful girl. Had I known it was so bad, I would have gone with you, mortals be hanged.”
Rubbing Nana’s soft head, I clucked my tongue. “A bad apple in Marshmallow Hollow doesn’t make the entire town bad, Nana. Stop with the doom and gloom. It’s just a rough patch.”
Now Atti twittered his agreement. “Indeed, Karen. Must you be so gloomy?”
Nana snorted. “This from the gloomiest of ’em all? Hah!” Nuzzling my hand, she asked, “You wanna talk about it, or do you want to just enjoy the peace of this morning before you have to tell Andy what’s happened?”
“I wish there were more to tell, Nana. I mean, I have diddly squat in the way of suspects or even evidence, and same for the police. We have a pink lipstick with Kerry Carver’s fingerprints on it. A busted taillight from a newer-model car with her DNA, and Uncle Darling’s memory that the killer had a nice crease in his pants.”
That information made my nana chuckle. “Only my nutty Andy, honey. Only he would remember something so blippin’ frivolous.”
I rolled my eyes in agreement. “Tell me about it. He also remembers smelling cigarette smoke, and so does Uncle Monty, and so do I because of my vision. Other than that, I’ve searched Facebook pages and the Twitter accounts of the girls and come up with nothing that would lead me to anyone suspicious, let alone a killer. Yet, I’m sure the person who abducted those girls is the same one who killed Gable Norton. There’s no other answer. And it doesn’t help that Uncle Monty can’t remember a blessed thing. I’m at my wits end, knowing this killer thinks Monty knows something, and I’m worried he’ll end up dead like Gable because of it.”
That terrified me. I almost couldn’t allow myself to think the words.
“And have you tried speaking with the other two girls’ families? Friends?” Atti asked.
“That’s on my agenda today. Though, I did talk to Kerry Carver’s parents, and I get the impression they’ve kept her pretty sheltered because the most I got out of the conversation was Kerry’s a ‘very good girl.’ As to the other two girls? None of their families have gotten back to me, and I get their reluctance after the police all but throwing their hands in the air, but I’m not going to wait around. I’m going to look them up and go see them.”
“What does Hobbs have to say?” Nana asked.
Dabbing at my drippy eyes, I had to give credit where credit was due. “You know, Nana, he’s been with me through this whole thing, and I feel like I’m playing dirty pool because I have these visions that can account for a lot of stuff that I can’t explain to him. For instance, the cigarette smoke. I can’t tell him I smelled the same thing Darling and Monty did, because it happened in my vision, which to a layman sounds positively psychotic and—”
Like a bolt of lightning, in the middle of speaking, the vision hit me, rushing at me in waves of color and sound. My heart slowed its beating, my legs went stiff…and then I saw a man in a dark hoodie with an emblem on the back.
The muffled sound of laughter—no, giggling; a flirty sort of giggle—tinkled in my ears. Then I saw her. Kerry Carver. She was sitting with the man in the dark hoodie…somewhere… A bookstore? A library? Yes, a library! It was definitely a library. There was a discarded book with a checkout card poking out.
I tried to focus on the emblem on the back of his sweatshirt. Two swords crossed and a letter? Or was that a shape above the swords?
Suddenly, Kerry was in a car and I was in the backseat. She was smiling, laughing, singing to the song on the radio—a Christmas song, “Do You Hear What I Hear?”
And the man reached for her hand, placing it on his lap, bringing it to his lips, kissing her fingertips. If he would only turn around!
Turn around! I tried to yell, knowing it was fruitless.
And then there were screams—raw, afraid. It was dark. We were in the woods, and we were running, and the branches of trees were tearing at my face, slicing my skin. I was cold. So cold, and the harder I ran, the faster the footsteps behind me became.
And all at once, as though someone had sucked all the air out of the room, I was back in the barn, only this time I’d fallen on the floor to my knees and I was gasping for breath.
“Hal!” a male voice called out.
My head spun and my heart raced until I felt Hobbs’s hands on my arms, pulling me up and holding me close.
He rested his chin on the top of my head, but his tone held a panicked plea. “Okay, Hal. I’m not falling for the migraine story anymore. Can you please be honest with me about what’s goin’ on with you when this happens? Are you sick? Is it cancer? A tumor? Somethin’ neurological? Don’t insult me by pretending it’s nothing more than a migraine, because I’ve looked ’em up, and nobody has migraines like this. What’s happening?”
It was ridiculous to think I could continue to hide my visions from Hobbs. He was an intelligent man, and the tone in his voice said he was worried. I didn’t want him to fret over some medical condition that didn’t exist.
I also didn’t want him to fret over my being a witch. I wasn’t ready to reveal my talking familiar and my reincarnated grandmother.
In that moment, I decided to tell him at least part of the truth.
Patting him on his broad chest, I let loose a long sigh. “I have something to tell you. Let’s go inside and talk. You’ll want to sit down for this.”
Chapter 15
Blue Christmas
Written by Jay W. Johnson and Billy Hayes 1948
Hobbs blinked at me, but not in that you’re-co
mpletely-out-of-your-gourd way. It was rather like, “I always wondered if psychics were real and here I am, presented with the idea they’re real, but it’s still a lot to process.”
“So no,” I finished. “They’re not migraines. And if you’d like, I’ll prove it to you. Stiles has always known about them, and so does my Uncle Darling. Stiles can tell you that I knew about the pink lipstick without ever going into the bathroom at Feeney’s…because I saw it in my vision.”
“So the ‘migraine’ you had at the store that night? That was a vision of the crime scene with the pink lipstick in it?”
“Yep,” I acknowledged. “Also, the smell of cigarette smoke. My uncle can confirm I’d told him about what I’d smelled just before he told me he’d smelled it, too.”
He’d sat mostly silent the entire time I told him my story, with the exception of one or two questions, but now he held up a hand. “You don’t have to prove anything to me, Hal. I believe you. Totally.”
“Really?” I cocked my head just before another sneeze came on. “You believe me?” I asked, wiping my watery eyes.
He shrugged, then he smiled. “Why wouldn’t I? I mean, you knew things no one could possibly know about the crime scenes. But that does bring up a question. Did you see stuff the last time we fished around a murder—when Lance Hilroy was murdered?”
I gave him a guilty look and sighed. “Yes. I did. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. I wanted to, but it takes a lot of trust… It’s why I’ve never told anyone here in Marshmallow Hollow—because my mother and my grandmother were sure I’d be branded a nut, and they were afraid I’d become an outcast.”
His eyes held realization. “Is that what that Hessy Newman was screeching about at the bakery?”
That was a whole other ball of wax. I shrugged. “Sort of. She’s definitely put me in the nut category a time or two.”
“Then complete honesty, I think your mother and grandmother were right, even though I still think you’re a little nutty. It’s not because you have visions,” he teased, reaching across the dining room table for my hand and giving it a squeeze. “I don’t care, Hal. It’s what makes you Halliday Valentine. That’s all I need to know.”
My stomach did a little hop, skip and a jump. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, but I didn’t want to dwell. I am who I am, and who I am has visions—among other things.
I braced my hand on my chin. “So I guess you want to know what happened in the barn?”
Hobbs grinned and nodded. “Does the pope wear a funny hat? Does it rain in the rain forest? Do birds fly? Do they poop on your car—”
“Okay, okay,” I said with a laugh.
But he held up his hand again. “Only if you want to tell me, Hal. I don’t want to pressure you. I was more concerned for your health than anything else.”
I snickered. “Not telling you might give me an advantage and leave you firing on one cylinder, Cagney. We can’t have that if we’re partners, can we? I’ll tell you all about it, but first, let me get some coffee. You want some?”
“I reiterate, does the pope wear a funny hat?”
I pushed off from the table. “Coffee it is. Would you check the fire in the fireplace?”
As Hobbs stoked the fire and I grabbed us some coffee from the coffee bar and fed Phil—who was as grouchy as ever when I plopped an unwanted kiss on his head, where he slept atop his cat tree—I told him about what happened with Uncle Monty and my latest vision and that I’d been up since long before dawn.
He sat silent for a moment before he said, “So, the guy had a dark hoodie on and he was in the car with her? What kind of car? Do you know?”
“I have no idea. Maybe it wasn’t so much a car as it was the idea of a car? In a vision, I see things pretty clearly, but everything was rushing past me fast. That’s what made me think car. Plus, there was music. ‘Do You Hear What I Hear’ was playing, so I assumed it was on a radio. But maybe they were on a train?”
Hobbs took a sip of the coffee I set before him. “You said he was kissing her fingers, right? I thought Kerry’s parents claimed she didn’t have a boyfriend? Why would he be kissing her fingertips unless they were involved? That seems rather intimate, don’t you think?”
“I do think. I think she had a secret boyfriend. That’s what I think. Did you notice how often her mother said she was such a good girl?”
Hobbs clucked his tongue. “Yeah. I did notice that.”
“I think Kerry probably is a good girl, but I also think she’s the kind of girl who would keep a boyfriend like that a secret because she’s a good girl, and she doesn’t want to disappoint her parents and their expectations. It felt to me like her parents put a certain level of stress on her, maybe about dating and such, that she took very seriously.”
“So you think maybe the boyfriend was a bad boy she knew they wouldn’t approve of?”
I bit the end of my fingernail. “Maybe.”
“I’ll tell you what. Let’s list what we have and go from there.” He fanned out his fingers and began with his index. “We have one pink lipstick that we know is Kerry Carver’s because it has her fingerprints on it. We have the smell of cigarette smoke. A crease in his pants, a broken taillight, the sentence ‘give me that effin’ SD card’, three girls missing, a dead guy with an addictive past…”
“And a partridge in a pear tree,” I sang. “None of those things add up to much of anything, Hobbs. Like, nothing.” And the more nothing we had, the more worried I grew.
“Well, let’s talk about what you saw in your latest vision. A guy in a hoodie with two swords on the back and a letter or maybe it was an emblem of some kind.”
I tried to recall it, but it was all out of whack.
I pulled my laptop toward me and asked Google what sign has two swords, which wasn’t much help. “Right, and all Google does is show me stock photos of crossing swords.”
“Can you remember the color of the emblem? Or what the letter was?”
I shook my head. “Maybe whatever was above the swords was a shape—some kind of shape.” I typed that into Google, but came up dry.
“Maybe it represented a place he’d been or a sports team? But why don’t we start acting rather than researching. We can Google stuff like that in the car.”
I stared out the window, at the sun gleaming on the snow, and squinted. “So next?”
“How about we talk about the library. How many libraries does Chester Bay have? That feels like a good place to start asking questions, doesn’t it?”
I looked up the library and there was only one. “It couldn’t hurt to check it out, I guess. I don’t know for sure if it was a library in Chester Bay. I only saw an open library book with the checkout index card, but why not? It gives us something to do while we wait to hear from Jasmine Franks’s mother and Lisa Simons’s parents.”
Hobbs stirred in his chair, his anxiousness palpable. “And if they won’t come to us, let’s go to them. Also, while we’re at it, you should tell Stiles about this most recent vision. And something else on the list—seeing Kerry Carver. Do you think we can?”
I shook my head. “She’s still unconscious, according to a text from Stiles. The police haven’t even been able to talk to her yet.”
“Okay. Then it’s off to the library and trying to find an address for Jasmine Franks and Lisa Simons,” he said with conviction.
Hobbs gave me hope we’d find who wanted to kill my Uncle Monty. He also made me smile. He’d taken my visions as fact, and he had no idea how much that meant.
“You mean, go to the library and show them her picture and see if they can tell us anything?”
“Sure. Why not? There’s no law against asking questions.” Hobbs was already putting his coat back on.
As I was making sure I turned the coffee pot off and grabbing my wallet, Uncle Darling woke up and stumbled into the kitchen in his black silk robe and red satin slippers.
“G’morning, Lamb. How are you and your handsome dish today?”
He sighed long and dramatically. “Missing my snugglebunny. That’s how.”
Wincing, I realized I had to tell Uncle Darling about what had happened with Uncle Monty this morning, and that I’d better do it before we headed out to Chester Bay.
Wrapping an arm around his shoulder, I pressed a kiss to his cheek. “Uncle Darling? Let’s have a chat before Hobbs and I head out.”
“Lamb, are you feeling all right? You sound as stuffy as an old man at an exclusive country club.”
Sniffling, I nodded. “I’m fine. But I need to talk to you before we leave. More has happened since last night with Kerry Carver turning up in the square…”
His worried face became more worried as I led him to the dining room fireplace and sat him in one of the armchairs while Hobbs fixed him a cup of coffee.
I wasn’t looking forward to telling him about the attempt on Uncle Monty’s life, and he was likely going to be pretty angry with me that I didn’t wake him and bring him with me.
Sucking in a deep breath, I prepared for liftoff.
“He took that like a real champ,” Hobbs commented as we sped along the back roads toward Chester Bay library while a light snow pelted the windshield and the torrid blue of the ocean passed us by.
“If you mean he didn’t fall dramatically on the floor and clutch his pearls, that kind of took it like a champ? Then yes. He took it like a champ, but he was a little peeved with me for not bringing him along. But honestly, I didn’t know what was going on until I got to the hospital, and they didn’t tell me because they didn’t want me driving over in hysterics.”
Hobbs gripped the steering wheel. “Why didn’t you call me? I would have gone with you, Hal.”
“You’re very sweet, but it was pretty late. And I know you’re a night owl, but are you a three-thirty-in-the-morning kind of night owl?”