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

by B. T. Alive

Jamie just shuddered and nestled deeper between the bars into Cade’s shoulder.

  “On the bright side,” I said. “You did just get another million dollars.”

  Jamie groaned, and Tina snapped, “Summer!”

  “I had to check,” I said. “How she… responded.” I raised my eyebrows, hinting my question.

  Tina glared. “She is obviously terrified.”

  “Terrified?” I said. “Of what? Why?”

  “Because I’m next,” Jamie shrieked. She unclenched from Cade and faced us with wild eyes. Her mascara had smeared into streaks of panic. “Were you not listening at the will? It said next of kin. Whoever killed Una killed Paris, and I’m next in line.”

  “I thought you two were it!” I said. “Who is your next of kin?”

  But Jamie slumped back against the bars. She started to hyperventilate.

  Tina tensed up. She gasped a few short breaths, then closed her eyes and took a deliberate long breath.

  “Jamie, this is crucial,” I said, in my best, slow, no-really-I’m-calm voice. “Who is your next of kin?”

  Jamie breathed faster.

  Cade reached over and started massaging her neck.

  “Dude—” I said.

  “Do you want her to talk or not?” Cade snapped.

  I bit my lip.

  Jamie’s breathing began to slow. She rocked her head in some kind of relaxing yoga roll. “Mmmm,” she said. “Wow, you are good.”

  “Great. She’s cured,” I said.

  “I’m still feeling some tension,” Cade said.

  “Would you just tell us who’s trying to kill you?” I barked at Jamie.

  “I don’t know,” Jamie moaned. “That’s what makes it so awful. But it has to be someone.”

  Sheriff Jake cleared his throat. “You truly have no idea? No one ever spoke about your extended family?”

  “They dropped a hint, like, every five years, if that,” Jamie said. “I lost both my parents a long time ago.”

  “What about Una?” the sheriff said. “Did she ever say anything about other living relatives?”

  “Not directly,” Jamie said. She frowned. “But now that I think of it, she was kind of obsessed with genealogy.”

  “Did she keep records?” said Sheriff Jake.

  “I don’t know,” Jamie said. “Maybe?”

  “We’ve got to search her house,” I said.

  The sheriff nodded.

  “How do you know it’s safe?” Jamie quavered.

  “Ms. Graves, I highly doubt that the perpetrator would be hiding in your residence,” said Sheriff Jake. “But you’re welcome to stay here.” He nodded at the cell, and his eyes twinkled. “I’m sure my son would appreciate the company.”

  “No no, I’ll come. I’ll help look,” she said. “I can’t just sit around, I’ll go crazy.”

  “I’ll come too!” Cade said. “You need someone around if that killer’s close.”

  Both I and Sheriff Jake scoffed in unison. But I decided to let the sheriff take point.

  “I beg your pardon?” the sheriff said, with icy courtesy.

  Cade lifted his hands in a soothing gesture. “That came out wrong,” he said. “I mean, you have been sick—”

  “Let’s roll,” said Sheriff Jake, and he marched out toward the front door.

  “What? Dad! Come on!” Cade called. “I just want to help!”

  “Now, Imelda, don’t hesitate,” the sheriff’s voice wafted back from the front room. “We’ve got a white noise machine in here for a reason. You don’t need to suffer if this one gets whiny.”

  “He is loving this,” Cade muttered. He cocked an eyebrow at me. “And so are you.”

  “Loving what?” I said, with airy nonchalance.

  Cade replied with a playful frown. But then he turned serious as his gaze shifted past me.

  “Goodbye, Cade,” Jamie said. She stood in the room’s doorway, looking all tragic and vulnerable.

  “Hey. Stay safe,” he said.

  She nodded, and then she swept out.

  I stood in the doorway and struck a Jamie pose. “Goodbye, Cade,” I mimicked, with hands clasped. Tina giggled.

  “Hey,” he said. “Her freaking aunt just died, and now someone’s trying to kill her.”

  “Yeah, well…” I said. “That is… technically accurate.”

  “I don’t know why you two have to hate each other,” he said. “If you’d just hang out—”

  “Okay, we’re done here,” I said, and I walked out the door. “I’ll be ‘seeing’ you, friend.”

  “Sounds good,” he said. He frowned. “Wait, are you still mad about—”

  I closed the door.

  Tina and I caught up with Jamie and Sheriff Jake on the porch. They had paused at the top step to argue.

  “You really can’t call backup?” Jamie said. “Aren’t there any other police?”

  “I’m not calling in the state unless I absolutely have to,” he said. “I’ve done it before, trust me. Last thing you want is a jackhammer when the situation calls for a skeleton key.”

  “All right,” she said. “If you’re sure.”

  “Ma’am, believe me,” he said. “We are conducting a search of your residence. If I see the slightest sign that you could be in danger, I will abort and get you to safety.” He eyed me and Tina. “All of you.”

  “Bring flares,” said Grandma Meredith.

  We all startled, even the sheriff. Grandma must have come down the back stairs and snuck around the corner on the wraparound porch, because now she was standing there, one hand on the porch railing, watching us and very still.

  “Flares, like, when there’s a car accident?” I said.

  “Just do it,” she said. “Bring them all.”

  She met the sheriff’s eye, and a strong emotion I couldn’t decipher flickered across her face.

  “And, Jake?” said Grandma Meredith. “Watch your back.”

  Chapter 37

  When we finally walked up to the Graves ancestral home, I realized I was already feeling tired.

  Partly, I’d done a lot of hoofing it today, even for wonderful walkable Wonder Springs. My thighs were muttering, and my shins were getting seriously catty.

  Also, my shoulder was slowly wrenching into early arthritis from my purse. Even at the best of times, my purse was hardly svelte, but I had been nominated to bear the burden of Grandma’s warning. Meaning, I’d raided the station’s supply closet and loaded my purse with flares. They were fairly freaking heavy.

  But really, the mansion itself made me tired just looking at it. The sky had gone gray, and the trees were brooding and still, and the afternoon shadows crept long and dark. The building seemed to glower with sullen resentment, silently vexed at being disturbed.

  Plus, last time I’d been here, I’d found a dead body. There was that.

  We all stomped up onto the porch, making more noise than we needed to. The sheriff pulled out a ring of keys with a worn leather loop.

  “Hey,” I said. “Aren’t those Cade’s?”

  He nodded. “He’ll get them back. If he’s innocent. I’ll need you or Tina to give us that code.”

  Between us, Tina and I remembered the numbers that the parrot had read from the mind of the dead woman’s lawyer (boy, that sounds kind of weird when you type it out), and we entered the home of Una Graves.

  The air already smelled stale. Like it hadn’t been lived in for a year.

  Back when Cade and I had found Una, this place had given me a confused impression of gigantic spaces with sumptuous decor. In the darkness of night, each new lamp had seemed to flood my eyes with light.

  Now, the light was gray and flat, a twilight where the bright and the dark merged into shadow. Jamie clicked on a lamp in the massive entrance foyer, but the pool of light seemed small and pale and cold.

  Sheriff Jake tensed, and his nostrils flared.

  “Hey,” I said. “You okay? What is it?”

  “Not sure,” he mutter
ed, turning his head this way and that, breathing in deeper whiffs. “Not… what I’d expect.”

  “Great, thanks for clarifying,” I said. I lowered my voice. “You might want to go easy on the sniffage. At least in present company.”

  The sheriff arched an eyebrow, but he glanced at Jamie and nodded.

  “Is everything all right?” Jamie said. She was kneading the strap of her purse, darting glances in every direction as if any tasteful antique might hide the killer.

  “Everything’s fine,” the sheriff said. “I need you to stay on task, Ms. Graves. Where would your aunt have kept her records of your family?”

  “I don’t know,” she snapped. The streaked mascara probably wasn’t helping her look, but stress bags seemed to be darkening under her eyes even as we spoke. “Maybe her office?”

  “Fine,” he said. “Lead the way.”

  She led us through the central, cavernous “living room / dining room / too much room” space, darting from lamp to lamp like a nervous child hopping from rock to rock across a deep stream. In a back corner, she fiddled with the latch to a thick oaken door.

  “Sorry,” Jamie said, wiping her hands on her skirt and trying the latch again. “She never let us in here. I’m not sure what we’ll find.”

  The door groaned open. The office was… pretty much a disaster.

  Did you ever have one of those college professors where you’d go to their office and it always looked like they were just moving in? And there’d been a global box shortage, so they’d had to haul their entire life’s work of research over in chest-high teetering stacks?

  The office of Una Graves had the same overall flavor. Except that usually, your professor hadn’t also just died.

  “Can I let you guys do this?” Jamie said. She was hanging back from the doorway, leaning in to take her peek. “I know we’ve got to do it, but she just… she was very particular. About her privacy.”

  The sheriff frowned, and he took a tentative sniff.

  “Did she actually read all this?” Tina said. She walked in to the nearest stack and lifted up a magazine. “Virginia Country Style,” she read off the cover. She flipped through the pages. “It’s all home remodels and interior decorating.”

  “There’s a lot of paper in here to look through,” the sheriff muttered. He lumbered in past several stacks, and he surveyed the crammed built-in bookshelves with a weary eye. “You sure you have no idea where your aunt might have kept her records?”

  “What about the desk?” I said. I stepped into the small, stuffy room, and crossed to the wide antique desk that occupied most of the back wall. I tried the top drawer on the left. It stuck, then jolted open.

  “Whoa,” I said.

  “What? What’d you find?” said the sheriff.

  “White-out,” I said. I held up the small black-and-white bottle. “Now that is old school.”

  “Wow, the whole drawer’s full?” Tina said. “I don’t even see a typewriter.”

  “That was Aunt Una,” Jamie said, from the doorway. “Never threw out anything.”

  “It’s like a ball pit!” Tina said, rummaging around in the pile of bottles with both hands. “Or that claw machine with all the toys inside…”

  Then something scraped, and she froze.

  “What? Did you find something?” I said.

  “The prize,” she said, and she held up an iron ring with three old keys.

  I mean old. Like, the kind the evil king in a fairy tale would use to lock the peasant girl in a dungeon. Rust flaked off, staining Tina’s hand red.

  “Let me see those,” Sheriff Jake said, urgent, and he yanked them to his nose before Tina had even let go. He spun toward Jamie. “What are these for?” he demanded.

  She shrank back. “I have no idea,” she said. “I never saw them in my life.”

  “Think,” he said. “Are there any old closets? Any parts of the house that were never remodeled?”

  “Not that I can think of,” she said. “I mean, except the basement. And I’m not even sure about that—she was super touchy about how ‘dangerous’ it was. I only saw the staircase once.”

  “Show me,” he said.

  Jamie led us back around the huge central area, and then down a dark hall to the northern edge of the house. The walls were plastered and uneven, and the air was musty and even more dead.

  “Here you go,” she said, and she nodded at a plain door of painted white boards. The brass doorknob was old and tarnished, and below it stared a keyhole.

  Jamie crossed her arms and stood back against the opposite wall.

  The sheriff fingered the rusty ring of keys, and he tried the smallest key in the lock. It scraped with a screech that made us jump, but it turned, and a bolt clacked. He twisted the knob and tugged at the door, and on the third yank, it burst open with such a sudden force that the sheriff tripped backward before the yawning dark.

  Air hit my face in a rush like a breath, moist and dank and cold.

  Sheriff Jake went into a fit of coughing. He hunched up and turned away, leaning against the wall.

  “Sheriff?” Tina said, rubbing his shoulder but closely watching his face. He’d turned away from Jamie and me, so I couldn’t see him, only Tina’s concern. “Sheriff, you want some water?”

  “I’m fine,” he said. He cleared his throat and turned back to face the doorway. No fur on those cheeks, unless you counted a couple days of stubble. We were good. For now.

  I leaned in and felt around in the darkness for a light switch, but I touched only rough wood and flaking paint. “Is there a light?” I said.

  “I really don’t know,” Jamie said. She was staring down into the darkness like it was some infinite void.

  “No need,” said the sheriff, and he pulled out a flashlight. The beam was fierce, like the brights on a semi. The plain plank stairs on a bare frame stretched down to the basement, and the floor at the bottom was concrete. In the ceiling above the stairs hung a single bare bulb with a dangling chain beneath.

  When I pulled the chain, the bulb’s yellow glare made the whole passage suddenly mundane. This was just an ordinary old unfinished basement. My gut had permission to unclench.

  But the sheriff leaned at the top of the stairs and breathed deep bursts through his nose. In his hand, the flashlight gave a slight tremble.

  “What is it?” I hissed.

  “We’ll see,” he said, and he clomped down the stairs.

  The basement turned out to be extremely old, and therefore not quite ordinary. The most recent feature was a string of bare bulbs along a ceiling joist, spaced not quite close enough to light the long, narrow room, and those “recent” fixtures had to go back at least fifty or sixty years. The thick wires to power them were stapled to the bare ceiling joists, and they met in strange junctions with bulbous connections that I’d never seen.

  Again, all that stuff was the most recent. The rest was straight out of the 19th century. Maybe even the 18th.

  The concrete floor was warped and uneven, and the walls were vertical boards like the sides of a barn. Long, deep shelves ran along one wall, the wall that had to be facing the outside earth.

  The shelves were littered with junky old tools, the kind of rusted-out shovels and garden forks you might find in an abandoned shed. But at one far end, beyond the light of the last bulb, sat a single large water-stained box.

  I got there first, and I opened the flaps. The box held a stack of leather notebooks. On the cover of the top book was markered, FAMILY RESEARCH.

  “The mother lode!” I cried, as I pried it open and flipped through yellow pages that were scrawled with dark ink. The dusty grime of the cover rubbed off onto my fingers, the tang of mildew bit my nose, and the leather felt deathly cold. “Jamie!” I called. “I found it!”

  Jamie was still hovering at the top of the stairs, but now she skittered down and came beside me to look.

  “Check out these names and charts,” I said. “It’s your relatives. It has to be.”

>   Jamie took the notebook gingerly, and she wrinkled her nose. “What a mess,” she muttered. “It’s all out of order. These people are from the 1800s.”

  Tina came over and levered another huge book out of the box. “This one’s closer,” she said. “1920s. And lots of different last names. She was really looking wide to try to find family.”

  “Do you recognize any names, Tina?” I said. “Anyone who lives here?”

  “The killer could be using a fake name,” the sheriff said quietly. He was standing on the other side of the room, near the end of the built-in shelves.

  “Perfect,” I said. “That makes all of this a total waste of time!”

  “I wouldn’t say that,” he said.

  “Why? It could be anyone. Anyone at random. Like that goober David Sky, there’s a fake name.”

  “He’d better be for real,” Jamie said. “I’m going to sell all this to that damn hospital and get the hell out of this crazy town.”

  Tina and I shared a glance of dismay. I’d forgotten all about that. Whatever else happened, when all of this was over… the orchard was pretty much doomed.

  At the other end of the room, the sheriff inhaled with a particularly enthusiastic snuffle.

  It’s really not a very pleasant sound.

  I left Jamie and Tina to keep poring over the notebooks, and I came up close to where the sheriff was fiddling with the shelves.

  “Could you please tell me what you keep sniffing?” I said, in a low tone.

  “It’s not so much what as where.”

  “Are you trying to be cryptic?”

  “Nope. Succeeding.” He gently shook another stretch of shelf. This time, an entire three-foot board came loose, lifting off the brackets between two supporting posts. The old tools slid back on each other and clanged.

  “You’re certainly doing due diligence with these high-priority shelves,” I said. “What were they even for? They look ancient, even older than this junk.”

  “Food storage,” said Sheriff Jake. “This would have been a root cellar.”

  I shrieked.

  “Sorry!” I said, as the others recovered and complained. “It’s just, I figured out who your relative is, Jamie. The killer.”

  “What?” Jamie shrieked. “How? Who is it?”