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

by B. T. Alive

  “What other woman?” I said.

  But Imelda just tilted her head toward an open door at the far end of the room, and she raised a thick finger to her bright lips, in the Universal Gesture for Shut up and listen.

  I strode across the carpet, and as I reached the door, I saw a short, wide hallway, like you might see in any old house. The first door on the right opened into a small room with cheerful wallpaper and a lush carpet; it really did look like a bedroom in a bed and breakfast, except that most of the room was encased in a wall of iron bars.

  Inside the bars stood Cade. He looked, if anything, more well-rested than usual.

  Outside the bars stood Jamie Graves. She looked ready to jump into bed.

  I admit, this was a snap judgment on my part, and not entirely free of bias. I could try to articulate all the little hints that formed this impression of attempted seduction, from her precise choices in eye shadow and mascara to the exact tilt of her hips as she leaned into the bars and rested a hand on Cade’s bare arm.

  But mainly it was what she was saying.

  “Five years, Cade,” she said. “Three, even. We can write it all up, put it in black and white. Give it three years, give it our best shot, and then we both have the option to call it a day. And you have the right of first refusal to buy out my half share.”

  Cade said nothing.

  Don’t explode, Summer, I told myself, with a grip on the nearby door. (Later I’d find out that I’d left nail marks.) Maybe it’s a business deal. You don’t KNOW she’s offering him a trial marriage.

  “I know you love that orchard, Cade,” she said. Her hand slid up to his shoulder, reaching under his cuffed shirt sleeve. “And I think I might love you.”

  I felt sick.

  Beside me, Tina gagged.

  Jamie and Cade both jolted and stared at us. Cade lurched away from Jamie’s hand.

  I glowered at Tina. “Must you?”

  “Sorry!” she said.

  Keegan chirped, “You’re worse than the parrot.”

  “Hey!” Tina snapped. “Summer!”

  Jamie sized me up, her eyes glittering with amusement. The corners of her mouth twitched. “Hello, Summer,” she said. “Do you want to watch the rest of this?”

  “There’s nothing to see,” said Cade.

  “Oh?” Jamie said. “Think it over.” She leaned closer to him, her lean profile nearly touching the bars. “Don’t lie to yourself about how much you really want.”

  Then she swept past me, so insultingly close that she nearly zapped herself by accident.

  “Female dog,” chirped Keegan.

  “Keegan!” Tina snapped, in a shocked tone. She glanced at Cade and I, cringing a little, like a cold, soaked puppy caught between two power fans. “I, um, I’d better get this parrot home. When he gets tired, his language just gets… yeah.”

  She scooted away toward the entrance, then paused at the front door.

  “Don’t forget to tell him how he’s not going to get executed for murder,” she said.

  “What did you say?” Imelda called from her reception desk in the other room. “You caught the killer?” She hadn’t even pretended to start reading her magazine again.

  “Tell you later,” I said, and I marched into Cade’s jail room and closed the door.

  Cade stepped away and sat slumped on the bed in his “cell”. The bedstead looked to be cherry, and I wondered whether he’d made the bed himself, with such a neatly folded quilt at the food of the bed, or if Imelda popped in once or twice a day to fluff up the pillows and bring fresh flowers. Okay, maybe there weren’t fresh flowers… no, actually, there they were, blue chicory and bright black-eyed Susan, gleaming in a slender vase over by the window. Only in Wonder Springs.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” Cade said.

  “Really?” I said. “Try me.”

  Cade sighed. “Summer, listen. I just… I need to catch my breath. It’s barely been twenty-four hours.”

  “Jamie’s not wasting any time,” I said.

  He rolled his eyes. “Jamie’s just…”

  “What? Grieving? Is this some sixth stage of grieving we never heard about? Bribe a hot guy into a ‘trial marriage’ so you can at least get him in bed for a couple years?”

  “Come on, Summer,” he said. “Cut her some slack. It’s not like we’re total strangers.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Oh, I see. Shocker.”

  “Summer…” he said, with a warning tone. “Don’t jump all the way there, we were never—”

  “Are there kids I should know about, too?” I said. “Stashed away in some English boarding school?”

  “Summer!” he yelled, with a sharp, loud voice I hadn’t known he had. It scared me, and I hated that.

  I crossed my arms tight and drew back against the room’s hard wall.

  “Sorry,” he said. “Really, I’m sorry. Just… please don’t assume the worst. I’m already in a cell.”

  “Not for long,” I said.

  “Really?” he said. “You figured it out? Already?”

  “Maybe,” I said. “At least, your dad thinks so.”

  “Don’t you?”

  “I don’t know, Cade,” I said. “It’s not like I’m an old friend. I’ve only known you for two months. Do you have any ‘old friends’ who aren’t super hot, by the way? And/or crazy rich?”

  “Summer, stop,” he said. “You’re the best thing that’s happened to me in a long, long time.”

  At first, that gave me a sweet little burst of warm fuzzies. Then I got stuck on the proviso.

  “That’s nice,” I said. “How long are we talking about?”

  “What?”

  “I just hope I was worth two million dollars.”

  Cade groaned and covered his forehead. “Summer, I swear, I didn’t even know she had that money, okay? I mean, did she look like it?”

  “Yes.”

  “What? No she didn’t!” he said. “You should have heard her gripe about the electricity bill.”

  “Cade, actual millionaires don’t constantly blow it all on Bentleys and cruises to Monte Carlo,” I said. “Especially when they’re past fifty and took early retirement. You had to know that she was draining her savings to keep you hired on her so-called orchard.”

  “No I didn’t!” he said. “And the orchard was the only thing I wanted!”

  As soon as he said it, his voice died. We stared at each other in silence.

  Finally, I spoke, very quiet. “You were totally using her.”

  “Summer, wait—”

  “Don’t,” I said. I held up my hand like a shield.

  “Summer, please. I just lost everything, okay? Give me a chance to breathe. What do you want from me?”

  “Maybe some regret?” I said.

  “Of course I have regret! I was a big, scheming jerk! I’ve had plenty of time to think, and I completely admit that. But I didn’t kill the woman. And unless someone else gets convicted, I’m on the hook. And even if I do get out, I’ve got no job, no place to stay, and no skills worth crud outside the orchard I’ve lost.”

  “That’s not true,” I said. My voice was shaking. “You could help people.”

  “You do not know what you’re talking about!” he said. “I can’t even take care of my dad.”

  “Tina says you could,” I said.

  He scowled. “No, I mean, financially, Summer. He’s been working for peanuts his whole life and not saving a whole lot of it, as far as I can see. And how long do you think he can lie around sick before the town finally steps in and hires about three replacements half his age? Especially when his own son is wanted for murder?”

  “We can figure something out,” I said. “We’ll talk to Grandma—”

  “Grandma can’t solve everything,” Cade said. “The Merediths don’t own this town. Much to y’all’s chagrin.”

  “Very true,” I said. “The Graves women have you in a pretty, golden cage.”

  Cade sighed. “What do y
ou want me to say, Summer? I’m sorry it took me more than point-five milliseconds to refuse a crazy, terrible idea that would also happen to solve my immediate crisis.”

  “Which crisis?” I said. “The one where I walk out?”

  I turned and fumbled for the doorknob. My back was straight, but my fingers were slipping on the slick, cold metal.

  “Summer, no, you’re not listening… geez, I said it was terrible, what are you even thinking?”

  “I’m thinking I really haven’t known you that long,” I said, wrenching the stupid knob with both hands. The door stuck, and I yanked it hard until it finally released me into the hall.

  “Summer—”

  “And if I were Jamie,” I said, “I’d just give you the damn orchard. For my own safety.”

  I walked away without looking back.

  Chapter 31

  The next morning, I tried to eat early and slip out to work without running into Grandma or any of my relatives.

  But Tina snagged me just as I got into the plaza.

  “Good morning!” she chirped, falling into step beside me with a sunny smile. “I almost missed you. I wanted to ask how it went with Cade…”

  Her face clouded. It probably didn’t take an empath to guess that I wasn’t in the mood.

  “Oh,” she said. “Sorry.” We walked together in silence, as I resisted the attempts of the morning breeze and the songbirds to cheer me up.

  “Oh!” she said. “I wanted to tell you something. Last night, after I took Keegan home, I was all excited and I couldn’t sleep. So I went out for a walk in the forest, and I realized I was picking up that excitement! Someone was out there, walking in the dark in the middle of the night! Excited!”

  “Like Ambrose?” I said, dully. “Or David?”

  “No, no, it didn’t feel like either of them,” she said. “I mean, it was faint, I can’t be sure. But I’m pretty sure it was a woman, and it was vaguely familiar… but not like, BAM, I’m sure who it is, you know?”

  “Not so much,” I said.

  “Right! Sorry. I’m just super pumped, it would be huge if I could finally start picking up long-distance waves. Oh my gosh, my mom would die.”

  “She wouldn’t be the first.”

  “Summer! Don’t you think this might relate to this case? Someone sneaking around?”

  “I don’t know. What if they were picking up you?”

  Tina frowned.

  “Look, Tina, I’m just going to work,” I said. “I think I’ve done more than due diligence for that man I was ‘seeing’.”

  “What?” Tina looked confused.

  “Forget it,” I said, and I opened the front door to Frannie’s purse shop and walked inside. Somehow, this morning, even the bright ranks of purses seemed offensively chipper.

  Tina walked right in with me.

  “Tina!” I said. “Frannie’s not going to like—”

  “Summer?” called my boss, from the front counter. She frowned at Tina. “What is this, the buddy system?”

  “Hi Frannie!” Tina said, jauntily walking toward her. “Summer had a rough day yesterday.”

  “Oh, did she?” Frannie said. As I approached her, I saw that the bags under her eyes had darkened since the day before. Even though she’d applied foundation with a trowel, she still looked haggard and upset. She laid a shipped package on the counter, and began to slice open the tape with a box cutter. “I’m sure it must be stressful trying to date a murderer.”

  “Cade is not the prime suspect anymore,” I snapped. “That would be Ambrose.”

  Frannie’s hand jerked, and the box cutter dug an ugly gash in the cardboard.

  “Ambrose?” Frannie said, putting the blade back on the tape as if nothing had happened. “Why on earth would he murder Una?”

  I shouldn’t have let her get to me, but her casual scorn rankled under my skin. Cade might not have been my favorite person at the moment, but he wasn’t here to defend himself, and he deserved for this town to stop thinking he was a killer.

  “Ambrose wanted revenge,” I said. “Apparently he was obsessed with Una, and she finally rejected him. She wrote him this awful, nasty note.”

  “Did she now?” Frannie said, struggling to make another cut. “And did he tell you that?”

  “No, but she told Harriet,” I said. “And he admitted that he went to Una’s house that night.”

  Frannie closed her eyes and leaned on the counter with both hands, the cutter still gripped in one fist. She took slow, deep breaths.

  “Frannie?” Tina said. “Are you all right?”

  “Ambrose couldn’t have read that letter,” she said.

  “Why not?”

  Frannie slapped down the cutter on the counter glass. The clang made both Tina and I jump. She ducked to a shelf behind the counter, plucked out something, and tossed it onto the glass.

  It was a plain white envelope marked, “Ambrose”.

  I stared. The name was written in a tight, feminine hand. I hesitated, then picked it up. It felt thick, with several folded pages. But the envelope was still sealed.

  “Una gave it to you?” I said. “Why?”

  “She asked me to deliver it,” Frannie said.

  “Why would she do that?” I said.

  Frannie picked up the cutter and went back to work on the package.

  Beside me, Tina sucked in a breath.

  “Because of you,” Tina said. “You care for Ambrose.”

  Frannie didn’t answer, but she made a grim half-smile.

  Goosebumps prickled up my arms. I’d been working for this workaholic woman for weeks, and I would never have imagined she could harbor some secret passion, much less for an even older man like Ambrose. I had a sudden, sweeping glimpse of a world where we were all just people, loving and hating with equal intensity, totally apart from the cloak of age.

  Heck, who was I to be demoting people for age? I was already getting jealous of 22-year-olds, with their fresh little faces like teenagers.

  “But… did Una know?” I said. “Why would she want to hurt you like that? I thought you two were friends.”

  Frannie shrugged. “Una really fell hard for that man of yours,” she said. “She was hurting. And she knew it. I like to think she wanted me to use my better judgment.”

  “But she bragged about her letter to Harriet!” I said.

  Frannie frowned. “I don’t know about that,” she said. “I never thought they were particularly close.” She shrugged again. “But I suppose if I had to chat with someone about trying to lash out and destroy someone’s heart to numb my own pain, Harriet might be a possible confidante.” She scowled. “I wonder who else Harriet’s told.”

  “I don’t think she’d told anyone,” Tina said. “It didn’t… feel like it.”

  “But she could have. And it could have gotten back to Ambrose, right?” I said. “At least, the general idea?”

  “I really don’t think so,” Tina said.

  “Tina! He went to her house!” I said.

  “But he said he didn’t go in,” Tina said. “He said she didn’t answer.”

  “He said that, but he had the code!” I said. “Why would he not go in?”

  “That’s Ambrose all over,” Frannie said. “He’s been hesitating with her for ten years.”

  “I’d better tell the sheriff,” Tina said. She pulled out her phone.

  “It’s still not proof,” I said, but she was already explaining to Sheriff Jake about the letter.

  When she finished, she listened, and her face went grave.

  “What? What is it?” I said.

  “He finally got through to the security company,” Tina said. “They track every time the code is used to open the door.”

  “Great!” I said.

  “Not really,” Tina said. “The code was only used twice that night. When Cade left to meet you… and when you both came back.”

  “But… that’s just the front door, right?” I said. “What about a back door? O
r a side door?”

  “I don’t think—”

  “Put him on speaker!” I said.

  Tina swiped her screen, and the sheriff’s voice rasped into the room. He was coughing, and he sounded even worse than yesterday.

  “I thought she’d be over there by now,” Tina muttered.

  “Who?” I said.

  “I’m fine!” snapped Sheriff Jake. “And I’m sorry, Summer, but all the doors in the house are on the same system. One code, one log.”

  “What if Una answered the door? What if she let Ambrose in?” I said.

  “The system was active, so it still would have been logged,” said the sheriff. “After Cade left the house, no one could have entered or exited that house in the time frame when Una Graves was murdered. Not Ambrose. Not anyone.”

  “But what if the company was hacked?” I said. “If someone knew how to edit the log—”

  “I thought of that,” said the sheriff. “Not possible. They have remote, off-site backups. I had them check.”

  “There must be something,” I said. “You can always do some kind of hack—”

  “No.”

  “No? What do you mean no?” I said. “What are you saying?”

  “I’m saying this thing is impossible,” said the sheriff. “No one could have done it but Cade.”

  Chapter 32

  When Tina hung up, the three of us stood in silence.

  “Oh!” Tina said. “Maybe someone entered a side door at the exact same moment that Cade was leaving.”

  “Tina, stop,” I said. “I’m sure the system would have logged that too. Besides, no one else even had the code.”

  “Maybe Jamie,” she said. “Or Paris. We still don’t know.”

  Frannie grunted. “I promise you Una wouldn’t ever have given either of them that code. I didn’t even have it, and I was the closest friend she had left. She only gave the code to Ambrose because he had power of attorney.”

  “All right, all right,” I snapped. “We know Ambrose is innocent.”

  Frannie glared. “Are you planning on doing any work this morning?”

  The front door beeped, and Elaine rushed in. Her long gray hair had blown unkempt, but her gaze was laser-focused. “Summer! There you are!” she said. “Frannie, you don’t mind if I borrow Summer for a minute?”