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

by B. T. Alive

  We were one.

  When I had to stop for breath, his eyes fluttered open. His smile warmed, brighter and brighter like a sunrise, and he lifted his strong hand and touched my cheek.

  “Wow,” he whispered. He ran his fingers through my hair, as soft as a breeze, gentle and confident, and I could have melted into him right then. “Oh, Summer. Wow.”

  “Are you okay?” I said. “It doesn’t hurt?”

  “It’s fine.” He smiled, and then he reached up and held his palm against the center of my upper back. A burst of energy made me shudder with pleasure, and his smile turned mischievous.

  “Heart chakra,” he said. “Watch this.”

  And the cruel cuts in his cheek and neck slowly closed and smoothed, and his swollen eye opened and shone.

  By then I was crying.

  “Whoa,” he said. “That was amazing. I know you think I’m the healer, but that was all you, baby. You’ve got some serious energy. I mean it, I bet there’s conditions I’ve had trouble taking care of that, if you were there—”

  I put my fingers on his soft lips. “I get to touch you,” I said.

  Then he started crying too.

  Chapter 43

  Now, before you get all freaked out and anxious—don’t worry, I could still zap people. If I wanted to.

  And yes, it would still occasionally happen by accident. I couldn’t be all blissed out and enlightened every last minute of the day. Also, I quickly discovered that my newfound cosmic consciousness did not yet extend to tech. I fried a couple of cheap phones before finally accepting that I still wouldn’t be texting any time soon.

  But I was way too happy to care.

  I would walk around town sometimes in this near altered state, hugging, shaking hands, patting total strangers on their fuzzy warm arms. I felt like I’d been blind, and I’d gotten back my sight. I was living in a richer world, exploring a new dimension.

  And then there was Cade.

  Yes, we were taking it slow. Savoring each small new incremental treasure. But all day, every day at work, as we walked around the orchard like a double star system in mutual orbit, pretending to be professional, we moved in a stream of tiny touches for any conceivable excuse… a brush of the arm, a hand on the back, a leaning into the shoulder. We finally lived in a shared world.

  And then, about a week after that crazy night at the Respite, something else happened.

  I woke up to Tina’s excited knocks on my door. Even as I hopped up to let her in, I could see through my windows that the day was sunny and gorgeous and would, with any luck, be unseasonably warm. In Virginia, autumn loves to thrash between winter and summer; you can get bronchitis at Thanksgiving and then be wearing shorts on Christmas.

  I let Tina in and, as per the new normal, she tackled me in a hug. I loved it. Feeling so close to Tina these days was as amazing as being with Cade, in its own way. Physical contact. Who knew?

  “I got the day off!” she said. “And look…”

  She bent and plucked a note from the floor. I flipped it open, my heart already dancing a bit at the sight of Cade’s firm handwriting. One theory about my continued phone aversion was that I didn’t want to stop getting Cade’s notes. It was a solid theory.

  The note was short:

  Hey, babe. I know we’ve got work, but can you meet me on the back deck of the Respite? I’ll be waiting… with a surprise.

  Cade

  “A surprise?” Tina said, with a playful nudge. “Ooooh…. can I come?”

  “I guess so,” I said. “As long as you can take a hint if things get… personal.”

  “Of course,” she said, her eyes twinkling. “What do you take me for?”

  “That depends on how far away you stand,” I said, primly.

  “For the fiftieth time, I’ve only gotten your makeout waves one time—”

  “We were not making out!”

  “—and I didn’t know it was you guys!” she said. “I was just tired of walking, and I was trying to sit on a bench, and you were the ones getting all lovey-dovey around the corner. I told you, it’s no big deal, I get it all the time. There’s couples all over the place.” She cocked her head, and her face turned dreamy. “You really are into him, though.”

  “That is so uncalled for, on so many levels,” I said. But part of me had to admit that I did finally have a friend who knew how I felt.

  I plucked up Mr. Charm, who was still waking up, with every intention of giving my beloved (but lazy) cat a walk, rather than a carry.

  Totally didn’t happen. But I had a nice walk, with Mr. Charm purring warm in my arms and Tina laughing and chatting beside me, giving me little tingles of joy every time we touched.

  We crossed the concrete bridge to Haven Island, and I marveled at how calm and smooth the river was flowing in the sun. The storm from a week ago had passed without a trace.

  Up on the vineyard slope, the mound had been removed, and now that the trees on the mountain slopes were losing their leaves and bare, the shorn vines weren’t looking so bereft. They would recover. Next fall, they’d be heavy with fruit.

  “Oh look! It’s Grandma!” Tina said. She called and waved.

  High up the gravel driveway, Grandma waved back. She was walking around the property with Frannie and Ambrose, and they turned and waved as well, spontaneously leaning close in a sideways hug.

  “Even at fifty yards, they’re adorable,” I said, as we walked on along the grassy path that wound around Haven Island. “When are they going to get married already?”

  “We’ll see,” Tina said, her eyes dancing.

  “What, did you hear something?”

  She gave an elaborate shrug. “All I can say publicly is that whatever deal they’re working out with Grandma for the property, they particularly want to keep the Respite.”

  “Well, then,” I said. “That’s one way to deal with bad memories.”

  “Sure is,” Tina said. She gave a happy sigh. “I’m so glad you were so totally wrong about Frannie being a murderer.”

  “Thanks,” I said.

  Honestly, I was glad too. I hadn’t been wrong about her cousin Lee, though; she was under arrest and awaiting trial for Adora’s murder. Frannie had gotten saddled with that huge mortgage after all, but it looked liked Grandma was going to hatch some scheme to make some sparkly new addition to Wonder Springs. Grandma Meredith… what would we do without her?

  Frannie had initially made some noise about hunting down the “vineyard vandals” and prosecuting to the full extent of the law. But after a closed-door session with Sheriff Jake, she had agreed to “drop it and move forward” for reasons that were apparently never to be disclosed. All we did know was that Grandma’s interest in the property had happened to pique on the morning after the meeting.

  Also, Fiona had disappeared.

  Neither Cade nor the sheriff had any idea where she might have gone off to, or when she might come back. I wasn’t quite sure whether to be relieved… or sad.

  Kelvin Shain was also long gone, who knows where, the poor man, as was Rhonda, though the latter had threatened most amiably to return. She’d also promised to get some therapy, which I was glad about.

  Noreen Quigg, on the other hand, was continuing to torture our prima donna chef Vladik by staying at the Inn but eating and holding court at the Old Inkling. She was exceedingly, disturbingly vague about how long she planned to stay.

  Glynis had vanished for the first few days after that night at the Respite. I’m not sure any of those women had quite bought our story that they’d all “fallen asleep” from “emotional exhaustion”—and the sudden bizarre damage to the wooden doorway to the dining room had not helped at all—but I don’t think Glynis got drunk very often, if ever, and she seemed to think she’d passed out, and she’d taken that very hard. Also, her professional reputation had not exactly been unsullied by doing that whole Fake Funeral Where the Dead Guy Shows Up thing. Tongues had wagged.

  But in recent days she’d bee
n spotted out and about, acting pretty normal and talking about renovations for the funeral home. She would mend.

  Besides, her peccadilloes had been mostly overshadowed by, you know, the two murders. Not to mention the tragic drowning of a beloved local entrepreneur.

  Drowning. Grandma had totally called it.

  Alice’s death had left behind a fair number of questions. Over the past several days, I’d often found myself picking over my memories of her as “Elaine”, hunting for the clues that should have alerted me to her truth.

  Even tiny incidents started to feel significant, like all the times I’d felt anxious, stressed, or on edge around Elaine. Had she been doing that to me? On purpose?

  There were bigger events, too. A few months back, when I’d tried to launch a little sales course for the sales ladies, I’d gotten sideswiped by stage fright and bombed… had that been her? Because then Elaine had signed up as my one student… only to hassle me while I was trying to investigate a murder, then fire me and demand a refund, right in front of Frannie, who was then my boss.

  Elaine had always been so petty.

  Had she been messing with me for fun? Or was it part of some larger campaign to get me sour on the human race, more isolated, easier to recruit?

  Maybe it had somehow made me easier to manipulate. The more I gave in to whatever she was making me feel and let her exploit my weak points, the more easily she might make me feel… and do… other things later. Like she’d done with Fiona.

  For all I knew, she’d been slowly wearing me down. If Dante hadn’t crashed back into her life and forced her to take action to protect her fake identity… who knew how vulnerable I’d really have been when she finally made her move?

  That was a cheerful thought.

  Sometimes I wondered what she’d really felt about Dante when she’d seen him again. She could say it was all ‘business’, but that photo of them as a young couple lingered in my mind, of the look she’d given him that most men would have built a marriage on.

  How had that ended? What had he done to her?

  Whatever it had been, it hadn’t faded with the decades. When she’d stood beside me in that vineyard, watching Dante with his new fiance… Tina had felt her rage.

  And yet, would Alice still have killed him if sabotaging the vineyard had scared him off, away from Wonder Springs? Could the spark of humanity I’d seen in her at the end have ever been fanned into flame?

  I’d never know.

  Which was fine. I guess.

  Now, as Tina and I rounded Haven Island and came in view of the tiny back island that housed the Respite, I found myself wishing that Cade had chosen some other rendezvous.

  For one thing, the wooden bridge was still wrecked and gone—even Frannie and Grandma couldn’t get a new bridge built in a week—so we had to climb into a little canoe and paddle our way over. Mr. Charm was less than thrilled. On the other hand, Tina still gets excited about canoes every single time, so really, my main problem was that I just didn’t want to stand on the deck where I’d watched somebody drown. Not even Malice Alice.

  But maybe Tina was right. Maybe this was a good way to deal with bad memories.

  As we paddled across, I saw that we weren’t the only little boats on the river. Wonder Springs has an avid boating community, and on this possibly last warm day of the season, with the river calm and the sun bright, a whole scattered crowd of beautiful small crafts were sauntering along the plain of the water. Canoes, kayaks, paddleboats—people waved and smiled and called to each other, happy and together and shining under one sun, like water lilies on a pond.

  We traipsed up to the house and around to the back of the deck. Under a bright blue sky and in calm weather, it almost felt like a different place, which was good. But the floorboards still creaked beneath my feet, thin and weak.

  “Where’s Cade?” said Tina.

  I tried to think of some quippy excuse, but I had already seen it.

  A clear plastic freezer bag was stapled to the railing, a foot or so from where Alice had crashed through. Inside the bag was an envelope.

  Five seconds later, I was standing by the railing, the river feeling too close even if it was calm, and my fingers shaking hard enough I almost couldn’t read Cade’s handwriting.

  Baby—I’m sorry for the drama with this. They made me and they promised you’d be left alone.

  I don’t know how much you know about the Truce. I don’t know a lot myself, but it’s these rules that all these psychics agreed to a long time ago, so we wouldn’t all kill each other. Nice, right? I guess the standard law enforcement techniques weren’t really up to the challenge.

  There’s a lot to the Truce, but one of the rules is that, basically, because Alice got killed here, we “owed” them one. One of our people.

  They wanted you, but I couldn’t let that happen.

  For one thing, it’s not going to be great that they’re getting another Tuner, but another Disruptor? That would be terrifying.

  But the real reason is that you’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me. And not just this past week, either.

  Grandma and Dad are going to go ballistic, but tell them not to freak out. And then tell yourself. PLEASE DO NOT TRY ANYTHING. I need to know you’re safe.

  And I’ll be fine. These disputes have all kinds of negotiating, and it’s going to drag out for months, but in the end, I’ll be back. I will.

  But if I’m not, I want you to know that you’re free. Now I’m not saying I have any plans to ditch YOU for some evil hottie out here. Are you kidding? As far as I’m concerned, you’re the only

  The final sentence in Cade’s handwriting ended unfinished, and the ink scratched jagged across the page, like the paper had been torn from his hand.

  Then, in another hand, there was written in block letters:

  THANK YOU FOR FOLLOWING DIRECTIONS. PLEASE SMILE FOR THE CAMERA.

  I looked up, in dazed horror. Tina, clutching my bare arm, shouted and pointed out over the water. Not twenty feet away was hovering a drone. As I stared and Tina yelled, the drone buzzed off like a hornet.

  But the block letters still weren’t done.

  WE LOSE ONE, YOU LOSE ONE. THAT’S THE TRUCE.

  SURPRISE.

  P.S. WE MIGHT BE OPEN TO A TRADE.

  “Summer?” Tina said. “Summer! What are we going to do?”

  With slow, careful movements, touching the paper as little as possible now with my trembling fingers, I folded the letter back up and slid it into the bag.

  “Guess,” I said.

  Don’t Stop Now

  Dear Reader,

  What can I say?

  Cade’s been kidnapped.

  We’ve got to save him.

  Get Book 4, Murder in a Psychic Prison.

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