A Wonder Springs Cozy Mystery Omnibus: Books 1, 2 & 3

by B. T. Alive

  Mr. Charm blinked, which I took as a yes. He never seems to require much context; it’s one of his more excellent qualities.

  “Awesome,” I said, as I set him down with his bowl. “And I can ignore bizarre, random rhymes from some ancient dude who can’t even clean the rust off his truck, right?”

  But Mr. Charm’s head was buried in his bowl.

  I slogged through eight hours of purse retail without incident (Mr. Wilson, thankfully, opted not to return), but I managed to get stuck right at the end with a tiny, time-sucking accounting glitch as I tried to close out the cash register. When I finally escaped Frannie’s purse shop into the twilight, I was already late for my own class.

  I hustled down the cobblestones, cortisol brimming, and I darted through the back door of Elaine’s Essentials. The owner, who really was named Elaine, had offered me her space for the class, and though I truly did appreciate the gesture, she was high on my short list of leads whom I hoped would not take the course. You’ll see why.

  Inside, I found myself alone in a bare back storage room, crammed with boxes. Through the open door into the main store area, I could hear the roar of a raucous conversation, at least twenty ladies strong.

  “You okay?” said Tina, from somewhere close.

  I startled. Okay, I jumped, thudding into a stack of boxed inventory that I had to lunge to save from a crash. It turned out to be teacups of bone china.

  “Where did you come from?” I gasped.

  “Sorry!” she said, standing beside me with a hand on the still-teetering tower. “I forget that not everyone can feel when someone’s close.”

  “It’s worth remembering.”

  Tina eyed me with care. In the ghastly fluorescent light, her usually rosy face looked pale and morbid.

  She winced. “Wow!” she said. “You’re so nervous!”

  “I’m fine.”

  “No, really…” She laid a hand on her stomach. “I think we both might throw up…”

  “I’m fine,” I snapped. “Just a big crowd. Which is good. What do we have out there, twenty leads? Twenty-five? I ought to be able to sign at least eight, maybe ten or twelve.”

  “Oh, no worries, there’s only four,” Tina said. “They’re just really loud.”

  “Four?” I rushed to the door of the main store to look. “Oh, crud,” I muttered.

  Tina hurried up and stood beside me at the door. “What’s wrong?” she whispered. “I thought you used to do pitches all the time to big conference rooms of alpha males.”

  “Yeah, and then I never had to see them again,” I whispered back. “Besides, who do you really think is more intimidating?”

  Tina studied the women who had taken over the store. “I see what you mean,” she muttered.

  First, and loudest, there was Harriet.

  “Oh my gawd, these are gorgeous,” belted Harriet, a stylish hairdresser in her fifties who was handling every last vial in a rack of boutique scents. She opened a slim red glass bottle, took a deep sniff, and moaned with pleasure. “Elaine, how do you not take all these home?”

  Elaine, the owner, had taken a defensive position behind her counter, perched on a high chair that put her at eye level with the rest. She gave Harriet a shrug and an uncomfortable smile, then picked at the clear nail polish on her pinky.

  Elaine also had to be fifty, at least, but she wore her gray hair long and loose and frizzy, and while her outfits looked expensive, like her store, she still somehow came off as amateurish and frumpy. She always looked like some junior high girl whose mom was rich but had never taught her how to dress.

  “Summer! You’re here!” intoned Frannie, my boss at the purse shop.

  Frannie’s sharp eyes didn’t miss much. As the other women turned to stare, I scooted into the room with a pounding heart and a pasted-on smile, as if I’d meant to be caught lurking at the door.

  Frannie squinted. She had snagged a central seat by a coffee table that looked antique enough to have served Jane Austen. (Elaine’s store was fairly eclectic; the main themes seemed to be “for women” and “expensive”.) Frannie was in her late fifties, but she kept her long hair a moderate blond and used just enough makeup to put some color into her pale face.

  I had no idea why my boss, of all people, had to be one of my four leads, but I had a guess: tonight’s class was free. For someone who sold purses that could each feed a family in rural India for a year, Frannie was mind-blowingly “frugal”.

  Even now, she was eating her dinner right here, out of a microwavable bowl, to avoid wasting time. She was also using a wedding-themed napkin left over from her daughter’s wedding… which had been two years ago. Frannie had carefully cut each thick napkin into pieces to make it last a week.

  The odds of Frannie spending money on my course were maybe one in… what’s the speed of light again? That number.

  “Summer! You look great!” cried Natisha, my fourth and final lead for the evening. Besides me and Tina, Natisha was the youngest woman here, a black curvy woman in her mid-40s who served tea and taught yoga at Namaste With Natisha down the street.

  “Thanks,” I said, grateful that she wouldn’t be making me hold any poses. I’d once made the mistake of attending one of her free yoga classes, and the “introductory” poses had made my thighs ache for a week.

  The memory didn’t help my self-confidence. As I looked around at these four older ladies, who were now all gazing at me with expectant stares, I tried to remember the slick intro I’d planned, but I couldn’t recall a word.

  Who was I to try to teach these women? Every one of them was a successful entrepreneur and had been running her own small business for years. They’d been at this since I was in high school, at least.

  I wanted to bolt and go hide under my covers, snuggling my warm, cozy cat.

  Then I thought, Wait.

  Why was I craving my cat?

  Was this rising panic… a psychic attack?

  Oh crud. Not here. Not now…

  Chapter 6

  When I’d first come to Wonder Springs a couple of months ago, I’d suffered the first “panic attack” I’d ever had in my life. I’d only avoided disaster thanks to the calming touch of the magnificent Mr. Charm. Seriously, as soon as I’d touched my cat, the fear had vanished.

  And according to my relatives, I really had been attacked; just as Tina could take in feelings as an empath, other psychics could push feelings on others, as telempaths.

  That was my Uncle Barnaby’s gig: using his telempathy on strangers to help them avert tragic mistakes. His targets had no idea why they’d get a sudden emotional boost.

  It was a pretty awesome way to use his gift, I had to admit… even if the guy did talk like a pompous professor and walk around dressed like Gandalf, including the beard, robe, and hat.

  Not that he got out much. Like his sister, my Aunt Helen, he usually slept during the day, so that the two of them could stay up all night in their tower room in the Inn, working together to seek and assist the people who needed help most.

  Well, that and keep watch against the psychics who wanted to hurt.

  A malicious telempath, for instance, could make you feel so freaked out that you were sure you would die. That’s what had happened to me; apparently I’d drawn the attention of a particularly nasty specimen, a secret emotional assassin that my family hadn’t yet been able to identify. They knew her only by feel. And they called her Malice Alice.

  “Summer?” said Elaine, in her flat, quiet, self-deprecating voice. “Are you feeling all right?”

  “Absolutely!” I lied. Get a grip, Summer, I thought. This wasn’t some psychic attack, I told myself. This was garden variety stage fright. I was just out of practice.

  It didn’t help that Tina was hovering two feet away, looking ready to throw up. Maybe bringing an empath along hadn’t quite been a stroke of genius.

  Not to mention that if I crashed and burned, I’d get the added agony of failing in front of a friend. A friend who’d li
terally feel my pain.

  Okay, stop, I thought. You’re a smart woman, and you deserve to feel the security you’ll get from making real money again. You can do this. Just start.

  I strode to the center of the room and struck a power pose.

  “Thank you all so much for coming tonight!” I said.

  Then I gasped and jumped. Tina had snuck up beside me again. She looked panicky.

  “You all know Tina,” I chirped, trying to recover.

  Tina gave them a sickly wave. She looked like she was auditioning for her first musical, but she’d just realized she couldn’t even remember her own name.

  “Go ahead and sit, Tina!” I said, with forced hilarity.

  “You sure?” she whispered.

  “Yes.”

  Tina scurried off. Elaine had set out way too many folding chairs, with a false optimism that bordered on being passive-aggressive, but at least Tina easily found a seat near the center of the mostly empty row. Empathy seems to fade with distance, and as she sat, even the ten feet or so she’d put between us was obviously giving her relief. She exhaled, then gave me a big smile and an embarrassing thumbs-up.

  Great. I really was that nervous.

  “I’ve got a lot of fantastic information to share with you tonight,” I blared. “These sales tactics can bring your business to the next level.”

  “Hold, please. Is this a sales pitch?” Frannie interrupted, her forkful of tofu paused in mid-flight. “One of those quote-unquote ‘free classes’ that are just a half-hour infomercial for an overpriced course?”

  A few seats away, Tina winced.

  “I will have a special offer at the very end,” I said. “But first I have a complete session, totally free, to give you right now on—”

  “The upsell!” cried Harriet. She had moved on to a display of luxury soaps, and she was sniffing each one in turn, with gusto.

  “Correct,” I said. Why hadn’t she sat down yet? Was this junior high? This was not a problem I’d run into much with senior executives.

  “Oh! Sorry, am I being distracting?” she said, with a grin. Her lipstick was fire-engine red, and it made her mouth separate and bright from the rest of her face, like a creature with a life of its own. Also, although she’d grown up in Wonder Springs, her mother had been from New Jersey, so her accent was a strange lurching combination of a Virginia lilt and a northern nasal twang.

  “I’ll be honest, sweetheart,” she continued, as she plucked up a soap bar labeled Watermelon Coffee. “My mind’s all over the place. I can’t think straight with that David Sky poking around.” She flicked her fellow entrepreneurs a knowing leer.

  The other women tittered, but I frowned. “Who’s David Sky?”

  “Oh, you must have seen him,” Harriet said. “Tall, good-looking, a silver fox. He’s a developer.”

  “He’s got some big project, all hush-hush,” Natisha said. She shrugged. “Probably the last thing we need in Wonder Springs.”

  “Don’t be hasty,” Harriet snapped. “I’ve heard he made some very juicy offers to buy properties. Well above market value.”

  “And I heard he was snooping around,” Natisha said. “Prowling around those properties at all hours of the night.”

  “Wait, a silver fox?” I said. “Like, gray hair? I did see this guy! Tina too! At the—”

  “At the orchard,” Harriet cut in, smug.

  “How did you know that?” I said. I flicked Tina a glance, but she just shrugged. Sure, she’s an empath, but she can’t read minds.

  Harriet blinked. “Sweetheart, I run a salon. People love to talk.”

  “And you love to listen,” Natisha grumbled.

  It was true. Harriet was pretty much the town gossip.

  “Besides, Summer,” Harriet said, with a crooked grin. “Aren’t you in that orchard all the time? It’s very… private.”

  My cheeks flushed hot. All the other women, including my boss, avoided meeting my eye.

  Private? I thought. You mean, because Cade’s afraid to let Una see me? Is that what you’re all thinking?

  I felt trapped, judged, and on display.

  “I wonder what David Sky would want with the orchard?” Elaine cut in.

  “Are you kidding?” Harriet said. “Right next to Main Street? That’s prime real estate.”

  “Una would never sell,” Frannie said. She spoke with cold certainty, which made sense; Cade’s boss/mother surrogate was reclusive and had few friends, but from what I had heard, she and Frannie were close. Or had been. “That land’s been in her family for generations,” Frannie went on. “That Sky guy doesn’t stand a chance.”

  “Agreed,” Harriet said. “Just ask Natisha.”

  Elaine gave Natisha an anxious look, and even Frannie flicked her a glance over the awkward silence.

  “Are you still on the market, hon?” Harriet persisted, grinning as Natisha frowned. “Una’s getting her hair done tomorrow. If you’ve got a fresh offer, I could pass it along.”

  Natisha grimaced, then she turned to me. “Una’s property borders my shop,” she explained. “And it’s no secret that I’m running out of space. My place wasn’t designed to hold both a tea shop and a yoga studio.”

  Harriet smirked. “But Una won’t even sell you a teeny weeny piece.”

  Just then, a ringtone sounded, a tinny jazzy piece that was absurdly upbeat. The women all clutched for their phones, but Frannie got hers first and swiped it off. “That’s me, my alarm,” she said. “I’ve got to get going.”

  “What time is it?” Natisha said, checking her own phone. “Oooh, I’d better go too.”

  “Wait, what?” I said. “We didn’t even get started! I have this whole class just on the upsell! And then there’s the full course, it’s five separate class sessions plus in-person training! I’ll give you personal live coaching with actual customers! And a customized action plan! And a private group on Tribesy! And—”

  “How much do you want for this?” Frannie said.

  I told them.

  The oxygen sucked from the room.

  Tina actually shrieked.

  She clapped both hands over her mouth and looked mortified, but it was too late. Thanks, bestie.

  “There’s a full money-back guarantee,” I added weakly.

  The women just stared. Like I’d crashed their daughter’s wedding and was dragging away the table of gifts.

  Then a tremulous hand was slowly raised. Elaine.

  “That sounds perfect,” she said. “Sign me up!”

  Elaine. Of course.

  The others exhaled a collective sigh of relief and made their escape. Elaine unlocked the front door and saw them out, flicking me eager glances that only deepened my dread.

  Tina jumped up and rushed to me. “I’m so sorry—” she whispered.

  “It’s fine,” I said. “Forget it.”

  Coming from me, that phrase always makes Tina startle and back off a little, in case I’m about to break my promise (which she extracted) that I’ll never zap her.

  “Relax,” I said. “I just mean, it’s over. At least it wasn’t worse.”

  Tina nodded, then looked over my shoulder and beamed. “Hi, Cade!”

  I whipped around to see. There he stood, at the front door, trying to smile but clearly pained.

  How long had he been standing there?

  Long enough, obviously, to witness my spectacular failure.

  Chapter 7

  To his credit, he did try hard to be nice.

  “Hey,” he rumbled, with a warm smile that gleamed bright against the dark, rich work tan of his skin. He gripped the open front door and held it open for Harriet, who’d been exchanging some final barb of gossip with Elaine, and then he nodded down the street with a ripple of his short, shaggy curls. “How about that ice cream?”

  Elaine, standing close by at the door, melted a little with open adoration. She eyed me like I must be feeling like a fairy tale to have this man waiting here on me.

  But I
wasn’t some toddler to be placated with a treat. Sure, he was gorgeous and sweet and he was here right now, but if he got a text from his boss, he’d ditch me in a second. Again.

  One epic failure was enough for one night. If I couldn’t trust myself to pay my way anymore, at least I could try to salvage some self-respect.

  Beside me, Tina frowned with concern. “Summer? Wait, please don’t—”

  “Talk to you later,” I said, and I marched toward Cade.

  Elaine tried to cut in with intricate questions about the course, and I managed to be polite and professional with her long enough to get outside. Part of me knew I should be grateful even for one student, but the problem was that making this course would be a ton of work; doing it all for only one student would be like writing a whole book for only one reader. In the moment, it felt like I’d only made myself more helpless and locked in.

  Outside, Cade took a step back and gave me a look of wary surprise. The summer night breeze might be turning chill on my cheek, but my face felt feverish hot.

  “Everything okay?” he said.

  “Sure,” I said. “Let’s go see Una.”

  I strode off down the cobblestones toward the alley path to the orchard.

  “Summer?” Cade said behind me. “Summer!”

  He caught up to me and matched my pace, loping with long strides. “Please don’t do this. I’m sorry about yesterday—”

  “It wasn’t just yesterday.”

  “That’s true. But I’m here now.”

  “Unless she texts.”

  “Summer, she is my boss.”

  “Who you live with.”

  Cade sighed. “Look. I wouldn’t be thrilled either if you were a live-in employee for some old rich dude. But I promise you, it’s just cost-effective. She’s my landlord.”

  “Who texts you if you miss a meal,” I said.

  “Okay, so she likes to cook,” he said, with an elaborate shrug. “Come on, Summer. My room is way upstairs. It’s like a whole different house up there… the air conditioning doesn’t even work. She’s always on my case for sleeping with the window open.”