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

by B. T. Alive

  Inside, not even Glynis Beverley or Wonder Springs itself had been able to prevent the interior of the funeral home from getting trapped in the same timeless, alternate dimension that apparently connects all funeral homes ever made. It had the same gloomy fixtures, the same nondescript carpet, the same indefinable air of an empty hotel lobby where only the dead would ever check in.

  We followed tasteful, hand-lettered signs to one of the side rooms, which felt like a chapel that was so empty that even the altar had died and been discreetly removed. At the front of the room, in lieu of a coffin, an enormous bouquet of blooms erupted from a tall, fairly menacing urn. Behind it, a dark crimson curtain covered the entire wall as a background, and a few rows of plush chairs tactfully awaited the posteriors of the living.

  “Should we sit up front?” I whispered to Tina. “Or is it better for you in the back?”

  Tina, who was looking stark in the only dark clothes she owned, gave me a pained look. “Doesn’t matter. Let’s just sit. Before—”

  “Tina! And… Summer?” trilled Glynis Beverley, materializing out of nowhere between us and the chairs. I’d never yet seen her in Funeral Mode, and I was a bit surprised at how flattering her elaborate black dress looked on her, along with her tasteful makeup. Maybe she had to run to a wedding afterward.

  Glynis eyed me, giving me either a stern and disapproving glare or possibly just a British hello. “I wasn’t aware of your connection to the deceased.”

  “I know,” I said. “I’m so sorry for your loss.”

  “Thank you,” she said, automatically. Then she frowned, confused, like she’d started telling a knock-knock joke and I’d glitched it by stealing her line. She struggled for a moment, then gave it up and turned to Tina. With ill-concealed glee, she intoned, “I’m afraid we can’t allow any pets.”

  Oh, right. Tina was carrying Mr. Charm.

  What else could we do? The killer was going to be right there—who knew what they might try to make Tina feel? The last thing we needed was Tina raging out right there, with a horde of witnesses.

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “The cat’s for medical reasons.” Which was kind of true.

  “Excuse me?” Glynis said. She arched a penciled eyebrow. “I’m not familiar with a protocol for medical cats.”

  “Of course,” I said. “Lots of people are allergic.”

  “Dante is,” Glynis blurted. Her face twinged with pain. “Was.”

  “See?” I said. “There you go.” I nudged Tina, and then started ushering her around Glynis toward the seats.

  “Really, I’m afraid I must insist—” Glynis began to protest.

  “Forget it,” I said, and I zapped her.

  “Summer!” Tina snapped, as Glynis staggered, stumbling into the back of a chair. I moved to ease her down, but Tina said, “Don’t touch her again,” and, hefting Mr. Charm onto her shoulder like a sack of flour, she used both hands to guide Glynis safely into a seat. As the older woman sat staring and dazed, her coiffed head slowly bobbling back and forth like a slow bubble in a lava lamp, Tina clutched Mr. Charm back to her chest and glared at me.

  “She’s just going to say the same thing,” she hissed.

  “Who’s going to say the same what?” Glynis said vaguely, frowning and squinting, first at me and then Tina. She saw the cat, and her eyes went wide.

  “Tina’s doctor was just saying the same thing,” I said smoothly. “She knew you’d be understanding of Tina’s medical needs. Thank you so much; I know you’ll be discreet about Tina’s… condition.”

  “Summer!” Tina hissed.

  “Ah. Quite,” said Glynis, clearly racking her memory for details as I shooed Tina off to a chair.

  “She’s not going to buy it,” Tina muttered, as we both tried to sit, nonchalant, in a funeral home room with my massive cat on her lap. I kept my gaze fixed ahead, but at the rim of my vision I could just see that Glynis had twisted in her chair and was staring openly at us across the room.

  Then I heard someone else walk in, and Glynis leapt up and exchanged heartfelt murmurs. I couldn’t quite make out what they were saying, only a few snatches from Glynis. “… no, no, the cat is therapeutic… it’s very sad, I had no idea… she’s so young…”

  Tina squirmed. “Thanks a lot,” she whispered. “Now the whole town’s going to think I have some crippling disease.”

  “You are an empath.”

  Before Tina could respond, like by throwing Mr. Charm at my face, the person who’d entered passed us and took her seat in the front row. It was Lee.

  After Rhonda’s insinuations yesterday, I’d spent a lot of time thinking about whether Lee might have attacked Dante herself. She’d certainly been enraged with the man when I’d met her up at the vineyard: distraught and accusatory and ravaged with suspicion. It could have been an accident; I imagined the fight they might have had that night, screaming at each other in the house that should have held their honeymoon. Maybe she’d stormed out toward the little bridge, and he’d followed. Or vice versa. Once they stopped to argue on that tiny rickety walkway, all it would take would be one rhetorical shove… it was at least a ten-foot drop, and she could have been so stunned that she didn’t think to dive in until he was long gone. Or maybe she had dived in, who knew?

  But no, she couldn’t have tried to rescue him… because even if it had been an accident, she still would have had to choose not to call for help. To go back into the house and let him drown… and then rush back out, faking her shock, when she saw Tina crossing on the bridge.

  It wasn’t a bad theory.

  The only problem was, I couldn’t believe it of this woman I saw before me. Not for a second. This bereaved Lee Lannon was a total wreck.

  The lines in her face, which had seemed so faint in her photo shoot, had cracked into fresh new grooves in an earthquake of sorrow. Her pretty eyes were bloodshot and raw from crying, and they seemed to have sunken into her skull. She sat ramrod straight, in a plain black jacket and skirt, fixing the urn with a fiery stare. Her hands were folded in her lap, and her only movement was to twist a ring with a sharp glitter of diamond, around and around and around.

  I leaned close to Tina. “Getting anything?” I whispered. “Is she for real?”

  But Tina was clutching the cat, holding Mr. Charm so close I hoped he could still breathe. “Way too real,” she whispered.

  The other guests arrived soon enough, exchanging a whisper with Glynis and then taking a seat. Adora and Kelvin, Rhonda, even Frannie and Ambrose… with each new person, I prodded Tina, but she only shook her head and grasped my poor cat tighter.

  “Easy,” I whispered. “You’ve got to let him breathe.”

  “It’s too much,” she whispered. “Even with him.”

  “I’m sorry to hear it,” I whispered. “But if you shield too much, you might miss the feel from the killer.”

  “It’s too much,” she repeated. “Everyone’s so sad.”

  “It’s a funeral,” I hissed, managing not to groan in frustration. True, everyone did look exceedingly grim, even Kelvin and Ambrose. But wasn’t that normal? “Haven’t you been to funerals?” I whispered.

  “Not like this.”

  Just then, the strong step of a final mourner sounded in the back. I snuck a glance, but I already knew who it had to be. Fiona.

  She wore black jeans and a black T-shirt with the screeching logo for some thrash metal band, and her face was absolutely devoid of expression. She looked like a mannequin.

  Before I could even ask, Tina winced and muttered, “Her too.”

  Okay, then. We had all Dante’s exes in the same room, plus his possibly jilted fiance.

  And according to the empath, every single person here was prostrate with grief.

  “You’re sure?” I whispered. “You’re not getting anything besides heartfelt sorrow? Maybe a pang of remorse?”

  “We all have remorse,” she hissed. “He just wanted to be loved.”

  I sat away from Tina, clench
ing my jaw to keep from hissing something snide. Great.

  Maybe I’d killed him. Apparently I was the only one at the moment who didn’t think the guy walked on water.

  (Okay, relax. No, I didn’t kill him, or anyone, ever. I’m not going to go all Roger Ackroyd on you. I hate those kind of books.)

  At the front, Glynis stood and cleared her throat. Unlike when we’d first come in, she seemed agitated, even nervous. That was odd; I’d have assumed she’d be confident in a crowd.

  “Thank you all so much for coming,” she said, the slightest of quavers in her firm governess voice. “We thought it might be best if we each stepped forward to share a few words… whatever comes to your heart.” She lifted a finger to touch away a tear, but her hand was trembling.

  “Anyone?” she said. She smiled, but it went lopsided. “Dante was a… very dear friend… I’m afraid I don’t quite trust myself to speak.”

  Wait, was that sweat on her pristine forehead? What was going on with this woman?

  I flashed back to that look she’d given Lee, that secret smirk of triumph. What if this whole service was a sham? What if she’d cooked it all up to hide the revenge she’d taken on the bereaved Lee?

  Glynis could even have been the Masked Cutter who savaged the vines, even while she was getting paid to plan the wedding for her nemesis. But maybe it was just like Uncle Barnaby had said; she’d wrecked the wedding, but still not been sated…

  True, I still had no idea what Lee ever could have done to this woman to so madden her to revenge. And hadn’t Dante said that the two hadn’t even known each other until now? But maybe he didn’t know everything… and of all the people who might have killed Dante, maybe the most likely suspect was the one woman in this room (besides Frannie) who had never been besotted with him.

  In the front row, Adora Shain rose to her feet. “I will speak,” she said, and she swept to the front as Glynis gratefully vanished to her own seat.

  I tried to pay attention to Adora’s eulogy, but it was so stilted and formal and preposterous in its praise that I found myself watching her husband, Kelvin.

  What would it feel like, I wonder, to marry a beauty like Adora on the rebound from Dante? Had she truly gotten over him? No one else ever seemed to.

  I watched him carefully, tracing the planes of his handsome face. But he sat still as stone, watching his wife without a visible flicker of feeling.

  To my surprise, I realized that I wasn’t flickering either; the strange attraction that had kept troubling me with this dude seemed to have utterly subsided. Well, there was one bit of good news. Kelvin really was a bit foppish, I reflected; even Dante, for all his faults, had had a certain robustness to him. He may have been well into middle age, but he still had a—what had Adora just called it?—a “craggy virility that impressed you even from afar”…

  Wait, wait, wait… what? Was I getting wistful about the old dude now? What the heck? Was it catching? I was seriously starting to feel this vague sentimental ache for the guy… this was insane.

  And what was Adora saying, exactly? Holy crud, she was just going on and on and on about him…

  “Tina,” I whispered. “What’s her deal? Was she still in love with him?”

  “Can’t… tell…” she whispered back, through grit teeth. “Feels like… everyone was…”

  From the back, a firm voice cut through Adora’s monologue.

  “Don’t mean to interrupt,” said Fiona, leaning in a little to her born-and-bred Virginia lilt. “But I got something I need to get off my chest.”

  Adora looked startled. The two prima donnas faced each over the heads of the rest of us, and then Adora, with a patronizing smile, murmured, “Of course,” and resumed her seat.

  Fiona took her time walking to the front, allowing the silence to marinate. When she faced us, I tensed; until now, I hadn’t yet gotten a clear look at her face. She looked like she’d aged overnight; not that her face had lines, but an even more severe leanness, a fell aspect that was dread and grim.

  “Let’s cut the crap,” she said.

  Her voice cracked across the room like a bugle. I sat up straight, eager to hear her start blasting us with some sanity. Everyone else was sitting up too, watching her with wary indignation.

  “Dante Radcliff was a mess,” she said. There was a collective gasp, but she pressed on with utter indifference. “He was selfish. He hurt people. If I’d had a sister and he’d even looked at her, I’d have told her she’d be happier as a nun. All this, I know with my head.” She was jabbing the air with a forefinger, preaching it like a prosecuting attorney. “But in my heart?” She clasped that hand to her chest, and her eyes abruptly sheened wet. “Now that he’s gone, I can say this for sure. I will love that man till I’m cold in my grave.”

  Lee, still ramrod straight, didn’t even blink.

  In a back row, in the corner of my eye, Rhonda stifled a sob. Ahead of me, Adora covered her face, and beside me, Tina shuddered and moaned. She covered her own face, shaking in a silent sob… and Mr. Charm, thus freed, leapt lightly from her lap.

  Oh, crud.

  I lunged to grab him, but he dodged me with practiced skill. “Mr. Charm!” I hissed. “Get back!”

  But he pranced lightly to the front of the room, parading past Fiona with, I swear, a smirk on his little face.

  Fiona, thus disrupted in her crescendo, stared at him blankly, and others in their seats hissed with disapproval. But Mr. Charm, impervious, strutted right around her, all the way to the curtained wall. There, he sat, and fixed his feline gaze on the curtain with an expectant air.

  “This is outrageous,” Glynis intoned, with such wounded dignity that I actually felt a twinge of guilt.

  It occurred to me that I was probably expected to go retrieve my cat, rather than just sitting there stunned with everyone else. And I was just going to give my legs the message to go ahead and do that, when something happened.

  Someone sneezed.

  Everyone in the room went quite still.

  “Your cat—” Glynis cried. She rose to her feet, looking half hysterical.

  “Quiet!” Fiona barked. Glynis froze.

  Another wet sneeze erupted.

  Behind the curtain.

  Lee’s eyes and mouth fell open; she looked like she might choke in silence on her own breath.

  Behind her, Rhonda shrieked, and she actually collapsed sideways, crashing into the empty chairs in a dead faint.

  But Fiona strode to the curtain, seized the edge, and ripped it aside.

  “You… bastard,” she hissed.

  In a dark alcove in the wall, wiping his nose with an embroidered handkerchief, stood Dante Radcliff.

  Chapter 21

  Multiple people screamed. At least Adora, and possibly Kelvin too.

  Lee was transfixed, so transfigured with relief and joy and desire that I couldn’t bear to look. In that moment, I knew with dead certainty that whatever she might have done to her poor first husband, she could never hurt Dante as long as she lived.

  Then I realized that I was still trying to solve this guy’s murder.

  “This is ridiculous,” I muttered to Tina. “I wish we’d been charging someone, so we could bill them anyway.”

  “He’s alive,” she breathed. “You’re alive!” she called, and she waved like she was at a concert.

  Dante beamed. He gave Tina a look so saccharine that I wanted to puke.

  And yet… I also felt this tug of wanting that too, of wanting that look at me. And as he gazed around at the hubbub of his rejoicing mourners, his face soft with love, I felt all connected and whole.

  “You’re all so wonderful,” he murmured.

  Then he sneezed again.

  And the whole cult vibe glitched, and my head went clear.

  “You freaking telempath,” I muttered. “Tina, he’s doing it again.”

  But Tina was staring, and she looked scared. I followed her gaze, and it wasn’t at Dante.

  It was Fiona.
>
  Fiona was seething, towering over Dante with her fists clenched and her eyes nearly incandescent.

  “You… faked this,” she spat.

  Her words hissed on the hubbub like the steam of water on fire. Like Tina, the rest of us were riveted by Fiona’s sudden hate.

  Dante drew away from her, unconsciously cringing, half holding up the hanky in defense. “Fiona, I can explain—”

  “You staged your own death?” she cried. “You’ve been listening at your own funeral.”

  “Please… I’m so disoriented,” Dante said. “I can see what you might think, but truly, I’ve been lost… in the forest… I had to walk for miles, and I wandered in…”

  “That’s a closet,” Fiona snapped. “You were here before we started!”

  “Is it?” Dante said, trying to look surprised at the brooms and mop bucket in the narrow space. “I don’t remember—”

  “And you!” Fiona boomed, wheeling on Glynis like an accusing angel. “You must have known he was here. You must have helped.”

  Glynis flushed red in that porcelain British profile. She flapped open her mouth, then clapped it shut again, in futile wrath. I had never imagined anyone could look so transparently guilty.

  “Did he say you two would run off together?” Fiona demanded. “Did you actually believe that?”

  Glynis was awful to behold. Her prim and proper face had disfigured into a war zone, a pitched battle of shame and rage and naked lust.

  Even Dante looked taken aback. Although Glynis was several feet away, at her chair, he stepped away from her too, edging away from both women toward the corner.

  “I admit, I was frightened,” he said, looking back and forth between them with a placating plea. “The attack on the vines was so violent, and then Lee was talking like she wanted to cancel… to cancel… I was lost…”

  “How dare they attack you!” cried Adora. She leapt to her feet, flushed and glaring at Fiona. “How do you know he didn’t fall in that river? How do we know you didn’t push him?”