Table of Contents
Zombie Waffle Murder
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Zombie
Waffle
Murder
A Wicked Waffle Paranormal Cozy
Book 8
By
Carolyn Q. Hunter
Copyright 2018 Summer Prescott Books
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Zombie
Waffle
Murder
A Wicked Waffle Paranormal Cozy
Book 8
Prologue
“Are you about ready to go, babe? Our flight leaves in just a few hours,” Ruby heard her boyfriend yell from the bottom of the stairs.
“Yeah, just give me a minute,” she called back, staring at her reflection in their bathroom mirror.
“Well, hurry it up, hon. I don’t want to be late.”
Ruby rolled her eyes as she popped open her tube of lipstick and applied it. “Hold your horses,” she replied, smacking her lips so the coating of makeup was even.
“Well, I’m going to start loading up the car, K?” he said.
“K,” she agreed, dropping the lipstick in her travel kit and then grabbing out her mascara next.
She stood poised with the wand next to her eye for a moment, just until she heard the glass door shut. Replacing the wand in the tube, she set her mascara down and softly padded over to the bedroom door to peek down the stairs.
For sure, Kamson had gone outside.
With a swiftness in her step, she rushed back into the bedroom and opened the closet door. Standing up on the tips of her toes, she pushed aside the pile of spare blankets and brought down the old double speaker boombox from the top shelf. Carrying it over to the bed, she set it down and turned her attention to her suitcase which lay open. Digging into one of the pockets, she brought out a white plastic pill bottle of multivitamins.
Making sure to keep her ears perked up for any sign of Kamson coming back in the house, she undid the bottle lid and headed into the bathroom. With one singular twist of her wrist, she dumped the complete contents of the bottle into the toilet bowl and flushed it all away.
Stepping back into the bedroom, she popped her head out the doorway one more time just to check that her boyfriend hadn’t come back. If she was lucky, he got stuck talking to one of the neighbors.
Coming back to the bed, she turned the boombox on its front and pulled the plastic tab to open the large battery slot which was made to hold four D batteries. However, the electronic held a secret. What was inside the compartment wouldn’t give the speakers any juice?
Instead, the slot was filled with little white pills that looked almost identical to the vitamin capsules that Ruby had dumped.
Grabbing handfuls of the pills, she deposited them inside of her bottle, making sure to not drop any on the bed or carpet. When she was done, she closed the plastic cover on the boombox. Just as she did, she heard the glass door open.
“Hey, where the heck are you?” Kamson yelled up the stairs. “Do you need help with something?”
“No, no. I’m coming down now,” she announced, practically running over to the closet and placing the boombox back behind the stack of blankets where she’d found it.
There were footsteps on the stairs, coming up two at a time.
Shutting the door, she moved back to the bed.
“What’s the holdup?” he asked, standing in the doorway with his hands facing up in a questioning stance.
She held up the bottle and wiggled it. “Almost forgot my vitamins.”
“Like you could ever forget those. You’re practically addicted,” he said. “Besides, how many times have I told you that you don’t need any special vitamins to succeed? You’ll do great at this marathon with or without them.”
“I’m sure you’re right,” she agreed, hiding the lie behind her smile as she zipped up the suitcase and lifted it off the bed. “Okay, let’s go.”
Chapter 1
“Oh, my,” Sonja huffed heavily, clearly out of breath as she tumbled backward onto the green lawn outside her cottage home. “Why are you making me do this? This is insanity.” Face bright red and hair matted with sweat, Sonja wondered just how frumpy and unattractive she looked to her new husband.
They’d only been married for about two and a half months, and she still wasn’t used to having him around all the time—having him see her in every state of disarray. From the groggy mess of morning hair and makeup-less face to the drudged up dark circles under her eyes after a long day’s work.
Now, to top it off, he was seeing her in a state of sweaty worn-out post exercise.
She hated to admit it, but it made her a little uncomfortable still. “I hate this,” she voiced her concern out loud, but didn’t specify what it was she was upset about.
Frank, despite his sweat, only looked more handsome. If anything, the sweat made his chest glisten beneath his tight-fitting black tank-top. How could he look so dang hot and Sonja feel so disgusting?
He had his hands intertwined behind his head, breathing smoothly and deeply after their run. “Well, how do you expect to participate in the Zombithon if you don’t get into shape?” he questioned.
“Get into shape? I don’t think it’s going to happen. We’ve been doing these stupid practice runs for a month and I’m in worse shape if anything,” she groaned, closing her eyes and leaning her head back against the cool dew-soaked grass.
Why had she agreed to participate in the first annual Zombie Run in the Sun also kn
own as the Zombithon among the locals?
It was a marathon charity event to raise money for the local food pantry for the coming year. The town council had voted on it, and they would match the monetary contributions from the runners who paid the entry fee donation. The baseline was twenty-five dollars, but runners were encouraged to pay more. She and Frank had both paid a hundred dollars apiece.
Runners from all over the region had signed up to participate, thanks to some excellent ad campaigns done by the city’s public communications department.
Sonja had also signed the diner up to hand out free electrolyte-rich drinks at the finish line and was planning on cooking up a delicious zombie themed waffle as part of the celebration—if she wasn’t completely dead on her feet by the end of it all.
To make the event a little more fun, and hopefully more enticing to teens and other young adults from local schools and organizations, the town council had agreed to make it a zombie run. It meant that all the runners were supposed to dress up like zombies for the event.
Sonja, being a fan of old horror movies, thought it was a fun idea. Unfortunately, now she was dreading it more and more the closer the date got.
“You know, it’s better to stay standing when you’re done exercising. You really shouldn’t sit or lay down right after a run,” Frank pointed out again.
Sonja set her jaw and let out a little growl. “Ugh, of course. Heaven forbid I rest after forcing my body to do something so unnatural.”
“It will be more natural the more you practice,” he said.
She thought of the practice run they’d just taken, the longest route yet. Down the lengthy mountain road from the manor estate where Sonja was caretaker—the highest point in all Haunted Falls—and then back up it again.
Going down hadn’t been so bad, not at first, but coming back up at the steep incline was murder on her legs. “How can I stand up after running up an entire mountain? My legs have basically liquified by this point,” she moaned, laying an arm over her eyes and blocking out the sun.
“Come on,” he encouraged her, holding out a hand to pull her to her feet. His large shadow covered her, blocking out the blinding rays of light. Sighing, she took his hand and popped back up to her feet, wobbling for a second before regaining her balance. “You know that the trail leading up to the falls is steeper right?” he asked, reminding her of where the marathon path was.
“But it isn’t as long,” she retorted, putting her hands on her hips and trying to copy her husband’s breathing. It had been a month earlier when he’d first talked her into participating in the Zombithon. While Sonja loved the outdoors, she was never much one for running—or exercising at all for that matter. She much preferred coming home at the end of a hard work day at the Waffle Diner and Eatery and relaxing on the couch with a bag of chips and an old black-and-white horror movie. Misty, her wispy ghost of a cat, often snoozed next to her.
Frank had sat on the poor thing one too many times, thanks to the fact that Sonja could see ghosts and spirits and her new husband couldn’t. Sonja often felt like a child with an imaginary friend.
“No, don’t sit there. You’ll squish the cat,” and “Hey, that’s Misty’s spot!”
Frank hadn’t known about the little otherworldly pet until after the honeymoon and wasn’t too thrilled about living with a ghost—let alone that Sonja could see them. Still, he’d gotten used to her powers over the past couple years of dating.
“Anyway, run inside and get a drink of water and then we’ll do a cooldown run,” he said.
“A cool down run?” she exclaimed. Hadn’t they run enough for the day? For the rest of the year? Unfortunately, she understood the cooldown run was a part of the routine that Frank had set up.
“Don’t worry. It’ll be short. Then, maybe we can soak in the tub,” he offered, wiggling his eyebrows at her.
Sonja pouted. “I’m too tired for any of that,” she said, deflating his smile in an instant. It was partly a lie. She was tired but not that tired. Still, she sort of wanted to punish Frank (or was she just punishing herself) for talking her into this ridiculous marathon. “I’ll be right back,” she told him, heading through the cottage door. Their home was the house where the servants used to live on the estate, but it was still larger than anything the two of them could afford on their own.
Belinda, Sonja’s good friend and an expert on the supernatural, had asked Sonja to be the live-in caretaker when she’d gone off to travel the country on a national ghost hunt. It had seemed too generous, to say the least. However, Belinda had also included Sonja as the singular heir to the entire estate if anything should ever happen.
It was uncomfortable, but Sonja had learned a long time ago not to argue with her strong headed and rather wealthy friend.
Slipping out of her sneakers, despite knowing she’d have to go right back out, Sonja sighed happily as her swollen feet relaxed on the cool brick flooring of the entry hall. Turning right, she stepped through the dining room and into the kitchen on the opposite side. The sink sat in front of a bay window that looked out on the estate grounds and the forest beyond.
“How did I get myself into this?” she questioned herself for about the fiftieth time that month.
When Frank had asked if she wanted to do the run with him, she’d hesitated. However, after a second of thought, she’d heard the words, “Sure, sounds like fun,” flying out of her mouth.
Why had she said that?
Now, she realized that a large part of her wanted to do more things with her new husband, to make a deeper connection with him. At that moment, she’d thought that maybe running together could be their shared hobby. What she hadn’t considered was that she hated running and heavy exercise in general.
It also didn’t help that she’d allowed Frank to set their regimen. Being a well-seasoned Sheriff, he was used to the rigors of police work and the standards they were meant to uphold for fitness.
Sonja quickly realized that she was in very poor shape compared to her lean and toned husband.
She had quickly found herself growing more and more irritable with each passing practice. Frank had simply taken her on jogs around the perimeter of the large estate at first. It had been difficult and tiring, but Sonja had managed.
However, each day that they went out, the runs got longer and more intense. Today had been the longest yet, all the way down to the very bottom of the mountain where the road ran into town in the valley below. Then, it was back up it again.
Insanity. Pure insanity.
Sonja realized she could have quit weeks ago but was too stubborn. Now, she had something to prove to Frank—even if it meant killing herself in the process.
Of course, complaining about it the whole time surely didn’t help, but it was hard not to when she was feeling so worn down.
Filling a glass with water from the sink, she gulped it down in one go, relishing the coolness of it on her throat. A purring noise came from her feet, and she glanced down to see Misty weaving in and out—and through—her legs.
“Hey, sweetie. I’m going back out in a second. No time to play or cuddle,” she said, leaning back over the sink to fill her glass again.
As the water ran, she glanced up out the window.
A flicker of pale blue light caught her eye among the trees just outside the wrought-iron fence of the estate. She already knew for a fact that it was a ghost. Between the visual signs and the familiar tingle along her spine and arms, she’d become an expert at ghost spotting.
Usually, if she saw a ghost, she went to try and find them, talk to them. Most spirits who wandered the earth had some sort of unfinished business. They needed help with something. Telling someone they loved them, revealing the treasure or money they’d hidden, or even solving a murder.
Sonja had found herself in the middle of these types of cases all too often—and much to the dismay of her husband.
Shaking her head, she decided she was too tired to go and investigate. The older she got
, the more spirits she could see.
She couldn’t try and talk to all of them, could she?
Chapter 2
“Boy, don’t you look beat,” Alison, Sonja’s best friend and business partner, commented the next morning. Sonja had just come in the back door of the Waffle Diner and Eatery to help with the breakfast rush.
“Don’t remind me,” she said rolling her eyes and absentmindedly smoothing down her red hair that she’d simply thrown into a ponytail that morning. Grabbing her black apron with a skeleton body on it, she slipped it over her head and tied it at her waist. “Frank is running me ragged with this stupid exercise routine.”
Alison nodded, holding back a little smile as she flipped some chipotle hash browns she had cooking on the griddle.
“What is so funny?” Sonja demanded to know, walking over to the fridge and getting out some eggs to make a fresh batch of waffle batter.
“Oh, nothing. It’s just that marriage is always more trying than we first suspect.” Ally, who was married with a cute little girl, had slightly more experience in living with a significant other than Sonja.
“Being married to Frank is a dream come true,” Sonja announced proudly. It was the truth, too. She adored him and even loved his dedication to fitness. She realized now, when she wasn’t in the heat of it, that she wasn’t so out of shape as she thought—she was just weak compared to him.
“I don’t doubt it, but it seems like you’re struggling with this whole Zombithon thing.”
“Don’t rub it in, okay, Ally?” Sonja begged, not wanting to feel guiltier than she already did. She wished she hadn’t complained so much the day before. She knew she probably sounded real whiney to her husband. How embarrassing.
“Why not just tell Frank how you’re feeling about it?” Allison offered.
“How can I? I mean, yeah he knows I’m tired and uncomfortable, but how can I tell him I just don’t want to do this anymore?” she asked.
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