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

by B. T. Alive

  “Wedding?” I blurted. “You were here for Dante’s wedding?”

  Her eyes narrowed. “What of it?”

  “You dated Dante Radcliff?”

  In retrospect, I could have been more subtle.

  Fiona stiffened, and she crossed her arms. “I don’t know where you get your information—”

  “He told me himself,” I said. “He said all his guests were exes. Every one. So unless you’re friends with Lee Lannon—”

  “He told you? You?” she snapped. “Some random chick? Oh, isn’t that him all over…” She clenched both fists, and then, with a sudden lunge and cry, she whipped back toward the back of the barn and hurled the shovel like a javelin. It soared at least sixty feet and stabbed the pile so hard it stuck out straight.

  Then she stood, her back still toward me, heaving slow breaths.

  “I hate him,” she growled. “So, so much.”

  Her fists were clenched at her sides. As I watched, in the dim light, I couldn’t be sure that they weren’t starting to fur. Oh man… I did not want to be the only one around if this woman felt the urge to shift.

  “The guy’s a creep,” I said, trying to find common ground. “You know he’s a telempath, right? I mean, whatever he did to you, I wouldn’t blame yourself—”

  “Yes, I know,” she hissed, with a fury in her voice that escalated so hard that I actually took a step back toward the door.

  It occurred to me that if she weren’t at least partly ambivalent toward the guy, she probably wouldn’t have come back for the wedding. Oops.

  I had no idea why finding out that a creep you’d fallen for had been essentially drugging you with telempathy wouldn’t at least reduce the self-loathing, but I also didn’t expect to understand this woman any time in the next century or so.

  “Sorry!” I said, for lack of anything better. “If you want to get back to, ah, mulching, go for it. I’m cool. Don’t want to intrude on your… agricultural enthusiasms.”

  To my bewilderment, she whirled back to face me with a growl of rage. I flinched in dread of what I might see, but her face was still human, at least. Though also incensed.

  “And what is that supposed to mean?” she hissed.

  “Agricultural… enthusiasms?” I said. I blinked… and then I got it.

  “Oh!” I said, so pleased with my deduction that I kind of forgot I was talking to a six-foot irate shifter. “You did it! You cut the vines! Of course.”

  In the ensuing silence, as we shared a stare, I reflected that, if she happened to shift into a bear or even a rabid dog, she could do as she liked with me and no one would ever know. No wonder Cade was so big on impulse control.

  Finally, she said, in a low voice, “What are you going to do about it?”

  Chapter 12

  “Me? I don’t care,” I said, which was at least partly true. “Just as long as they don’t blame Tina.”

  “Tina?” Fiona snorted. “She’s been the little golden-haired girl in this town since the day she was born.” She paused, possibly waiting to see whether I’d be pedantic enough to point out that Tina’s hair is glossy black. I wasn’t. Not then.

  “You didn’t hear Glynis Beverley,” I said. “She may be local, but she saw Tina ranting and storming off.”

  “Tina?” Fiona looked genuinely shocked.

  “And the person who really cares is Lee Lannon,” I went on. “To her, Tina’s a complete stranger.”

  Fiona frowned. “Tina’s a good kid,” she muttered. She started pacing, in a tight circle like a restless tiger in a cage. “Where was this? And when? They can’t pin it on her just because she let off steam.”

  “She yelled this wedding is a travesty—”

  “It is!” Fiona roared.

  I shut up.

  Then she closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and said, with almost ordinary calm, “Okay. What’s the worst-case scenario here? At the end of the day, it’s a bunch of grapes.”

  “It’s a felony,” I said. “She’d go to prison.”

  “Well, I’m not going back to prison!” Fiona yelled, and her face was so fierce that I had to look away. I wondered if she really might be emotionally unstable. Wait, I’d seen for myself what she’d done to those vines. I might not have to wonder.

  “Look,” she said, quiet and rational once more. I met her gaze. “It wasn’t even my idea.”

  “What do you mean?” I said. “There was someone else?”

  She nodded.

  “Who?”

  She shrugged.

  “You won’t say?” I said.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “She—or he, I can’t be certain—wore a mask. Dressed all in black, didn’t show an inch of skin.”

  “You can smell my deepest fears, but you couldn’t tell whether this was a man or woman?” I said.

  She smiled, baring her teeth. “Fair question. I hadn’t thought about that. I guess I just… was focused elsewhere. Emotionally.”

  “On hacking up those vines?”

  She nodded. “It was… cathartic.”

  “So what exactly happened?” I said. “How’d you first get contact from this Masked Cutter?”

  Fiona cocked her head. “Why do you need to know this, again?”

  “I’m telling you, we’ve got to bring someone in,” I said. “Otherwise they’ll get Tina.”

  “And even if I knew who this person was, which I don’t,” Fiona said, “don’t you think the first thing he or she would share is that I was right there slicing at their side?”

  “That’s kind of your problem,” I said.

  “I’d say it’s ours, sweetheart,” she said, with a gleaming, toothy smile. “Unless you really want to be single.”

  “Oh my gosh,” I snapped. “What is wrong with you?” I walked right up and got in her face. “I don’t know what I ever did to you, but I met you, like, yesterday, and you have been a non-stop sister-in-law from hell. The nicer I try to be to you, the more you threaten to claw my face off. Possibly literally. You want feelings? I feel like if you’re seriously willing to let Tina take the fall for your little revenge party, you’re no better than the dude you claim to hate!”

  I stood there, panting. For most of this diatribe, I hadn’t been looking at her face; honestly, I’d been monitoring her fingers for claws. None so far.

  Now I looked up. She was grinning.

  “Maybe we can be friends,” she said.

  “Sure,” I said. “I can write you in prison.”

  She laughed.

  “I’m serious,” I said. “If it’s you or Tina, forget it.”

  Behind me, Cade spoke.

  “Tina’s got her own problems.”

  His voice was so stricken that a chill clutched my chest even before I saw his face.

  “Cade, what is it?” I said. “What happened?”

  “It’s that groom. Dante Radcliff,” Cade said. His lean face, usually tan, was strained and pale. “He’s drowned.”

  “Drowned?” Fiona snapped, her voice sharp and cold. “How?”

  “They’re not sure,” Cade said. “It looks like he fell through the railing on his bridge—that little bridge that goes to his house. We didn’t get the full storm yet, but it did rain last night, and the river—”

  “That bridge!” I said. “I knew I hated that thing! But what does any of that have to do with Tina?”

  Cade’s face twitched, but when he spoke, his voice was controlled, almost dead. “Because his fiance Lee found Tina on that bridge. Standing there in the night and the rain, staring at the broken railing, less than a half hour after Dante had left the house.”

  He drew in his breath, and then, utterly matter-of-fact, as if he were passing on the time, he said:

  “Now Tina’s in jail. On suspicion of murder.”

  Part II

  Chapter 13

  I ran all the way to the police station.

  Cade had started to come with me, but I’d said, “No,” and pointed at his sister. �
�She cut those vines and she’s letting Tina take the fall. Deal with it.” The crescendo of their voices had followed me as I ran.

  At the police station, I got buzzed in and burst into the lobby, ignoring the charm of the converted Victorian mansion that would usually have brightened even the grimmest of visits. “Where is she?” I demanded. “Where’s Tina?”

  Imelda, the police secretary, pointed down the hall with a tinkle of her bracelets, rings, and other middle-aged bling. Her normally impeccable makeup seemed to be smudging around the eyes, running on either side of her nose in tiny, gleaming rivulets. Everyone loved Tina. Almost.

  I yanked open the door to the hallway, and I nearly plowed into Sheriff Jake.

  His mustache was drooping, and his eyebags were sagging like a dog in the rain. But he met my eye with a grim look, and his voice was stern.

  “Ms. Sassafras, you know I wouldn’t do this lightly—” he began.

  “Don’t Ms. Sassafras me!” I snapped. “She’s my cousin.”

  “And I haven’t hesitated to incarcerate my own son,” he said.

  “I know! And how did that work out for you?”

  Through the open door back to the lobby, Imelda smothered a giggle.

  The sheriff sighed, but the glint in his eye did seem to soften just a bit. “Summer,” he said, “I’ve known Tina since she was in diapers. Everything you’re thinking, multiply it by a lifetime. But this… this looks bad.”

  He held up a plastic evidence bag that showed a bright strip of fabric that had torn from a shirt. I recognized the pattern, and my stomach turned; it was the orange Hawaiian shirt that Dante had worn.

  “We found this caught on the broken railing,” the sheriff said. “And Tina…” he sighed. His eyes cut to the small hallway door that led to her cell. The door was closed, but he still leaned toward me and lowered her voice. “She was standing right there in the rain, staring down at the choppy river. And according to the woman who found her, the man’s fiance, she looked ‘wild-eyed and distraught’.”

  “Of course she looked distraught,” I hissed. “She was crossing that stupid rickety bridge and found that someone had fallen through the railing! She might even have recognized that scrap!”

  “But what was she doing on the man’s bridge, past eleven o’clock?” the sheriff said. “And where has she been the last two days? She can’t account for her whereabouts.”

  “You can’t arrest her on that,” I said.

  “We’re holding her for questioning,” he said.

  “She lives down the street—”

  “We’re a small station, Summer. This is the best we can do. It’s critical not to play favorites; it could look bad… later.”

  “Later?”

  “When they find the body, I’m sure there’ll be a trial. Lee Lannon is convinced that her fiance was pushed.”

  “But they haven’t actually found the body yet?” I said.

  “They will. It hasn’t been that long,” he said. “The river is deep and treacherous at the Respite, and with last night’s rain, he could have been carried downstream for miles.”

  “But it’s still possible—”

  “Summer. The man couldn’t swim.”

  I realized I was raising all the same false hopes he must have already cycled through himself and crushed. “And she really has no alibi? She’s not saying anything?”

  “You’re welcome to try,” he said. And he nodded toward the door.

  I went in.

  It was the same room where Cade had been held after the murder (by someone else!) a couple months back. Since the entire station was a converted Victorian house, the room could have been at a charming bed and breakfast, except that most of it was enclosed in a cage of bars. As I entered, a woman leapt up from the bed and rushed to the bars. It took me a second to realize she was Tina.

  I tried to conceal my dismay. She looked wretched. She hadn’t changed her clothes since I’d last seen her, and her pretty shirt and long skirt were now a disaster—covered in dirt and grass stains and even bits of twig. Her normally lustrous hair hung limp and greasy and bedraggled, dangling around her face, which was the worst part of all.

  I’d seen Tina suffer all kinds of awful emotions over the previous months, but she’d never looked looked like this. Not just sad, not just haggard… there was something else haunting those wide, dark eyes. Something grim.

  At my look, she winced, and she raised her eyebrows. With a little smile, she said, “Do I look that good?”

  I laughed, but my eyes were dangerously wet. At least her voice was the same.

  Tina laughed too, but she reached her arms through the bars. Unlike any of my other relatives, Tina had insisted on perfecting a touch-free hug. As I came close and we carefully embraced, she smelled of mud and forest and rain, and her back felt warm through her shirt, almost hot, as if she were edging toward a fever.

  That last bit pushed me over the edge. I pulled back and attacked her with questions, like some frantic aunt. “Are you all right? Are you sick? Where were you? Where have you been? What were you doing on that bridge—”

  “I’m fine, I’m sorry,” she said. She drew back, crossing her arms so tight it was almost a self-hug. “I was only in the caves.”

  “Where in the caves?” I insisted. “There could be anyone down there.”

  “It was fine,” she said. “I just… I left you that note. I needed to be alone.”

  “Tina…” I hesitated. “Tina, listen, I get it. I met him.”

  She snapped me a sharp glance. “You did? When? Why?”

  “Yesterday. Didn’t you hear about the vineyard? After you stormed off and didn’t come back, people thought…” I hesitated, then decided to just plunge in. “Tina. Why’d you never tell me he was a telempath?”

  At the word, Tina winced. She drew back, as if shrinking into a protective shell.

  “Doesn’t that change everything?” I persisted. “I mean, what a creep.”

  In a low voice, staring at the floor, Tina muttered, “I don’t know that’s all it was.”

  “Why not?” I said. “Why wouldn’t you want to just be like, well, good thing that was completely fake! It’s not my fault I’m uniquely vulnerable to some jerk who can manufacture my feelings.”

  “It’s not that simple,” she said.

  “Maybe it is.”

  “Maybe feelings are how I connect,” she snapped, fixing me with a sudden glare that was so intense that I winced myself. “Maybe I’m not so glib about that all being a lie!”

  “All? He was just one dude!” I said.

  But somehow we both went silent, realizing I’d just said was.

  Tina’s lips clamped into a tight line. Her eyes filled with sadness, but also, again, that strange something else. There was something off about her that I couldn’t quite place… her face seemed almost… shrouded?

  Wait. Was Tina Meredith trying to conceal an emotion? Was she hiding something?

  “What is it?” I blurted.

  Tina looked away, and her lips clamped tighter. She was hugging herself again, but rocking back and forth with some pent-up energy.

  “Tina, please,” I said. “You can tell me.”

  “I don’t… know,” she rasped, her eyes tight shut. She sounded scared. “I don’t know what I feel.”

  Behind me, an older voice said, “Yes, you do.”

  I turned, realizing who it was. My Aunt Helen.

  But as she walked into the room beside me, I again had to conceal my dismay. Like her daughter, my Aunt Helen looked so changed as to be almost unrecognizable. It wasn’t her clothes—her outfit and grooming were normal enough, and she looked like any other tired middle-aged mom who’d just wrapped a long night of professional work.

  No, it was her face.

  She was gazing at her daughter with this look of love and care but also… devastation. Aunt Helen looked stricken.

  “Honey,” she said, and the pain in her voice caught my breath. “Honey, I
can feel it. Even now. After he’s dead.”

  To my horror, Tina rocked faster, clenching her teeth and breathing hard. Her eyes were squeezed shut, and a low, stifled keening was rising from her throat.

  “What is it?” I croaked. “Feeling what?”

  “Rage,” said Aunt Helen. “Rage enough to kill.”

  Tina burst into tears.

  “Oh my God,” I said. “No.”

  But Aunt Helen stood erect, speaking with a voice that was both gentle and cold as a judge. “Can you deny it? This feeling?” she asked her daughter. “For this one man you ever fell hard for?”

  But Tina only shook with gut-wrenching sobs.

  Chapter 14

  A few minutes later, Aunt Helen and I emerged onto the police station porch, silent and stunned.

  Since the station was situated near the entrance into town, we had a wide, fairly gorgeous view: the forested slope down to the river, the lovely covered bridge into Wonder Springs, and beyond, the mountains shimmering orange and red and gold in the bright morning sun. The night’s rain had left a lingering freshness, and the cool moist air smelled of the river and wet autumn leaves.

  And beneath all this beauty, muffled by multiple walls, I could just make out the keen of Tina’s weeping.

  With stiff, slow movements, as if she were a much older woman, Aunt Helen shambled across the porch and eased herself into one of the comfy chairs. (This is Wonder Springs; even the police station has a generous porch and cozy rocking chairs.) Slowly she creaked in the chair, blinking in the unfamiliar sunlight.

  Seriously, both my aunt and my uncle were spending too much time in that tower. If they didn’t get out in the sun more often, their pale skin was going to start sprouting mushrooms.

  I took a seat beside her and creaked along. I had no idea what to say.

  Even with the creaking, we couldn’t quite hide the moan of Tina’s misery. We’d stayed with her as long as we could bear it, trying to get her to at least talk. But she’d only wept louder, ebbing and flowing in visceral groans of wrath.