Whispering Pines Mysteries Box Set 3

by Shawn McGuire

  The fact she hadn’t been there for the big event didn’t stop Honey from offering some advice on the topic. “You and Dillon really need to deal with this. Carrying around all this anger is bad for your karma.”

  “Dad isn’t angry,” I insisted. They all turned to look at me.

  Rosalyn burst out with a laugh. “Of course he is. Why else would he spend so much time out of the country away from us?”

  I disagreed with a headshake. “I don’t think it’s anger. Didn’t you see the look on his face when he saw Flavia?”

  “I did,” Sugar said. “It was pain. He cared a lot about Priscilla.”

  “We will not,” Flavia roared, “speak of that night or Priscilla.”

  “Like ignoring it for all these years has made it better,” Sugar pushed. “Everything that happened that night was your doing.”

  “You weren’t even there.” Flavia dismissed her with a turn of her head.

  “I was until Willie dragged us home,” Sugar insisted. “I saw how it started.”

  “Sugar, stop.” Exhaustion was heavy in Laurel’s voice. “You were ten years old. You can’t possibly remember what you saw or why. All I know is that a few minutes ago we were having the nicest conversation with Dillon, reminiscing about the past and catching up on our lives”—she turned to Flavia—“and then you walked in. You heard what he said. I don’t know exactly what he meant by ‘you ruined everything,’ but Honey is right. If the two of you don’t get past this, it will continue to eat you up.”

  Flavia released her tightly pursed lips long enough to say, “It wasn’t all me.”

  While they continued to argue about who was there and who wasn’t, who should accept blame and who shouldn’t, I switched my focus to Reeva.

  As often happened when someone was confronting Flavia, Reeva stood back in silence with her hands folded and the smallest possible smile playing at her lips. I imagined her doing the same thing as a child, standing in the corner of the living room, giddy, while Flavia got scolded by their parents. It could have been amusing, but at that moment, my patience with the topic had reached its limit.

  “You know what?” I announced loud enough that everyone stopped mid-argument. “You all are free to continue discussing this for as long as you want. If things turn physical, call my deputy because I don’t want to hear about it. Rosalyn and I haven’t seen our dad in two years, so we’re going to go spend time with him.”

  I didn’t give anyone a chance to reply. I grabbed Rozzie by the sleeve and pulled her outside, Meeka right behind us.

  We rushed, silently, back to the station to find Dad sitting in the Forester, shivering.

  “You could have turned the heater on,” I told him after putting Meeka in the back.

  “I’m fine.” Left unsaid was that his anger at Flavia was keeping him warm. “Let’s go home. Maybe play some board games before dinner. The jet lag is starting to hit me, so I’ll probably head to bed early.”

  If Rosalyn thought Dad’s sudden change of mood was odd, she didn’t say anything. Instead, she agreed with him. “That sounds like a good plan to me. For the last two weeks, I was studying for and taking finals so got maybe four hours of sleep a night.”

  So, we did as he suggested. When we got home, we sat at the dinette set next to the wall of windows that looked out at the lake and played one board game after another. Tripp threw the meat pies into the oven and made plank-style sweet potato fries while I tossed together a green salad for dinner. Dad told us about the various dig sites he’d been working at over the past two years. Rosalyn talked about how free she felt not being tied to James anymore and how she had decided to pursue a career in public relations focusing on community health issues. In the middle of all that, River came home, met Dad, and explained how he ran his family’s tech company.

  After a few hours of acting like a normal family, catching up on what had been going on since we’d last seen each other, Dad and Rozzie went to their rooms. Tripp and I headed up to our apartment.

  “Was that weird?” I asked Tripp as we got ready to watch a movie. “Or is it just me?”

  He flipped the switch on the corner space heater that resembled a small cast-iron stove. He promised to put in a freestanding fireplace in the spring.

  “I’m going to need a little more to go on. We do live in Whispering Pines, so ‘weird’ kind of rules here.”

  I held aside the blanket as he snuggled in next to me and then flipped it over his legs. Meeka had taken over the right half of the sofa and was already snoring. For such a little being, she took up a lot of space. I gave Tripp the quick version of events from the afternoon.

  “I don’t know your dad well enough to give a solid answer, but I think the Alan/April interaction sounds weirder than the Pack meeting. I never even heard of Suzette Thibodeaux. How is she suddenly causing so much trouble?”

  “Good question. I have to talk to Reed before the celebration starts tomorrow.”

  “He’s home for winter break already?”

  “Got home this afternoon. I’m glad he’ll be there as backup. Half of the village is supposed to be at The Inn.”

  “Glad to see you’re going into this holiday gathering with a positive attitude.”

  “Hey, you said it. We live in Whispering Pines, the place where if something can go wrong, it will.”

  He switched on the movie. A spy thriller. “I can help if you need another set of eyes.”

  I thanked him with a kiss.

  The movie started out okay, but I got bored with it at about the three-quarter mark. I wanted to turn something else on, but Tripp insisted we had to see it through to the end. I distracted him by nibbling on his ear. Which led to nibbling his neck. Which led to Meeka giving us a dirty look for kicking her off the sofa and us completely missing the end of the movie. At some point, we made it to our bed, played around a little longer, and fell asleep in each other’s arms.

  Or rather, he fell asleep. I eased out of bed, careful to not wake him, and wrapped a throw blanket around my shoulders. I crossed the apartment to stand by the windows that overlooked the lake. Snow was falling again, gently and steadily, blanketing the boughs with a fluffy coat of white. It was absolutely still out there, not a single puff of wind. Despite the two feet or more we’d already gotten over the past month, every snowfall was beautiful to me, especially peaceful ones like this.

  I stood there thinking of how my dad, sister, and I were all under the same roof for the first Christmas in years and suddenly missed my mom. It didn’t seem right that we were together without her. It’s not like they were divorced. They just forgot how to be married. The last time I could remember Mom being really happy was right before Gran told her about Donovan. She deserved to be happy again. We all deserved to have a happy family.

  “If I can have one holiday wish come true,” I whispered to the pines, “please, let my parents work this out. Or at least start working on it.”

  After so many bad years, fixing the broken bits would take a while.

  As if responding to my plea, a bough on the branch closest to me dipped, letting its mound of snow drop to the ground, and then sprang back up, lighter without such a heavy load weighing it down.

  Chapter 8

  The commons area looked like a picture postcard winter wonderland. The decorated Yule trees that stood in each of the pointed sections of the pentacle garden had been up for a couple of weeks. I hadn’t been to the commons in nearly a week so hadn’t seen the lights until now. Old-fashioned lanterns were held aloft on long poles that arched over the snow-encrusted red brick path while strings of fairy lights were strung between the poles. The lights had also been strung along the Fairy Path and lit up the woods.

  Rosalyn squealed and looked around with wide-eyed glee. Dad took on a faraway expression that told me he was remembering his childhood in the village.

  “Nothing has changed,” he murmured to himself. This time, the tone was more affectionate than disenchanted.

 
“Are you ready?” I asked him when we got to The Inn’s front door.

  He shrugged. “Sure, why not? It’s not like I’ll know most of the people.”

  We walked inside, and the first person we saw was Briar, looking gorgeous in a deep-green velvet gown with bell sleeves and a hood. It was one-part Victorian, one-part Wiccan, and one hundred percent Briar.

  Dad froze in his tracks when he saw her. She’d been chatting with Morgan, who looked equally stunning in a similar gown of deep crimson with black lace trim. Morgan stopped talking mid-sentence, touched Briar’s arm, and nodded toward us. Briar turned, went immediately to Dad, and wrapped him in a hug. He returned this embrace, his expression full of emotion. Without saying a word, she hooked her arm with his and the two old friends wandered off, already lost in their own world.

  “Wow,” Rosalyn said, shocked. “That’s a one-eighty from the way he greeted everyone else.”

  “Briar and her mother Dulcie were the first to move here, remember,” I told her. “Dad and Briar have been friends since they were five years old.”

  My emotional sister placed her hands over her heart. “I love that they’re reuniting.”

  “So does Mama,” Morgan assured.

  Tripp leaned toward her and kissed her cheek in greeting. “You look beautiful.”

  She did. Her gown perfectly accentuated her long raven-black hair, growing belly, and ever-expanding bustline. Her heavily made-up eyes and blood-red lips popped against her ivory skin. Maternal and drop-dead sexy at the same time.

  I felt underdressed in flowy black palazzo pants and a silky red peasant top. Rosalyn, of course, looked adorable in a short green-sequined dress with a full skirt and red-and-white sequined trim at the hem. Tripp was handsome yet laidback in a simple black suit, red shirt, and Christmas tree tie with tiny flashing lights.

  “Mama and I have a special task to perform tonight. Otherwise we’d be more simply dressed.” She swept a hand across the lobby. “What do you think?”

  To say that Laurel and her staff had gone all out for the Midwinter Celebration wouldn’t begin to describe the decor. Evergreen boughs, pinecones, clove-studded oranges, and silver bells covered nearly every horizontal surface in The Inn’s lobby. The aroma intoxicated me and brought me back to nights as a kid when we set up the Christmas tree. Dad always vehemently insisted on a fresh one, never an artificial. I think I understood why now.

  “Evergreens,” Morgan explained, “symbolize life and rebirth as they never lose their green hue.”

  Mallory floated happily past us then, ringing a little bell encased by a holly cluster.

  “Scaring away bad fairies?” I asked her.

  “Scaring away the dark,” she responded joyfully. “Scaring bad spirits.”

  Before I could ask what that meant, she skipped away.

  Morgan smiled. “Ringing bells welcome the light that will slowly begin to overtake winter’s darkness. The sharp points of the holly leaves keep bad spirits away.”

  Bellringing sounded like the perfect job for Mallory.

  The boughs and bells were impressive, but what really pushed the decorations over the top were the candles. There were literally hundreds of them tucked in amongst the evergreens, in sconces hanging on the walls, and in freestanding candelabras. A two-foot-tall pillar candle made of red, green, and white beeswax sheets rolled together and surrounded by a glass hurricane stood proudly on the lobby’s front desk.

  “This is impressive,” Tripp said of the candle.

  “Isn’t it?” agreed Emery from behind the desk. “Beckett the beekeeper makes a candle like this for the village every year.”

  “Aren’t you going to light it?” Rosalyn asked.

  “We do that at the official start of the celebration,” Emery explained. “Then it stays lit for twenty-four hours. That’s what the hurricane is for. It’s considered bad luck for the candle to blow out.”

  All the candles were covered by hurricanes or some sort of glass holders. This was a community gathering, which meant lots of children. Children liked to run around and knock things over.

  “Tell me you’re not sitting behind the desk all night,” I told Emery. Laurel promoted him as of today to The Inn’s assistant manager. He insisted on still working the desk as much as possible, because he loved talking to the guests.

  “Heck no.” He produced a bunch of mistletoe from somewhere on the desk and held it over his head. “I’ve got other things to do tonight.”

  “Let me be the first.” Rosalyn slid around behind the desk and placed a kiss on his cheek.

  Morgan laughed when his face turned berry-red. “Along with the return of the sun, fertility is also a strong theme for Yule. Red holly berries represent the blood of the Goddess. The white berries of the mistletoe the seed of the Oak King.”

  It was Rosalyn’s turn to blush. She pointed at the dining room. “Think I’ll go find something to eat.”

  “Good idea.” Tripp held up his basket of cheeseballs and crackers. “I have to find a place for these.”

  “Are you coming?” I asked Morgan.

  “I’m waiting for River. He had something work-related to address. He’d better be here before the lighting of the Yule log.” She closed her eyes and released a small sigh of annoyance. “Go on ahead.”

  “We’ll save spots for you.” As I turned away from her, someone with a white hat walking out the front door caught the corner of my eye. I went into cop mode, thinking about the problems we had last month with a white-hatted stranger in the village. Tripp had teased me about always expecting trouble, but if I let my guard down it could mean the villagers’ safety. I took a breath and reminded myself that everyone had been instructed to dress in colors of the season tonight—red, green, black, light blue, gold, silver, or white. If I was going to get twitchy every time I saw a flash of white, I’d be vibrating like a jackhammer by the end of the celebration.

  Meeka tugged on her leash. Some of her dog friends were in the dining room, and I could’ve sworn I saw Morgan’s all-black rooster, Pitch, too. Pets were welcome as long as they remained in control. Otherwise they’d be corralled in the board room behind the front desk.

  “All right.” I bent to remove her leash and adjust the red and green sweater Briar had knitted for her. Then I had her sit at attention. “Behave yourself. No running. No stealing food from the tables. Crumbs on the floor are fair game but don’t make yourself sick.”

  While I spoke, her eyes kept shifting toward the dining room.

  “Meeka? Are you listening? No running.”

  She pranced her paws and gave an impatient ruff of confirmation. I flicked my finger, the sign that she was free to go, and she was off.

  The dining room was, of course, as spectacular as the lobby. Along with boughs, bells, and candles, a large Yule tree with a small mountain of wrapped gifts beneath it stood proudly in the corner by the fireplace. Activity tables ran the length of the right-hand wall. Kids were decorating gingerbread men supplied by Sugar and Honey at one. At another, folks were rolling beeswax sheets Beckett brought into their own smaller versions of Yule candles. That’s where I found Lily Grace, the teenage fortune teller.

  “What are the sprinkles?” I indicated the tiny gold charms, stone chips, and herbs she had scattered across the beeswax.

  “I’m making this for Oren.” She was as serious as I’d ever seen her. “He hasn’t been himself lately. I’m hoping this will get him out of this funk.”

  The conversation at Reeva’s shop yesterday sprang into my mind. Lorena claimed Suzette Thibodeaux had “something big” on the teen. Was this blackmailing rumor true? Was Suzette threatening Oren with something?

  “The little gold broom charm,” Lily Grace continued, “is to sweep away negativity. The peace sign is for, well, peace. The rose quartz chips are for love and harmony. The dried gardenia is also for peace as well as healing.” She took a vial of essential oil from a rack at the back of the table and added a few drops. “Gardenia oil f
or an extra dose of peace and healing.” She stood back and looked at her charm, herb, and oil-infused wax sheet and then added a wick. Just before rolling it all up, she took a small herb bottle from another rack. “Dried huckleberry to ward off hexes.”

  That was a lot of peace, love, and harmony. She was really worried about him. “Do you think he’s being—” I almost said blackmailed but didn’t want to upset her further if she didn’t already know about the rumors. “Do you think he’s been hexed?”

  “I don’t know what’s going on.” Lily Grace began rolling her candle, carefully ensuring the edges were even and all the sprinkles stayed tucked inside. “Whatever it is, he won’t talk about it. The candle will smell a little girly with the gardenia and huckleberry, but he doesn’t worry about stuff like that.”

  I observed her painstaking process of gently pressing the edge of the wax with her thumb to seal the seam. “I didn’t know you could make charms.”

  “Morgan told me what to include.” She gave the candle a final inspection and nodded her head, satisfied. “Now all he has to do is light this when he gets home tonight and let it burn to the bottom.”

  And just that fast, his hex would be gone and peace restored to his world. He’d probably also finish his senior year with all As.

  Lily Grace narrowed her eyes and held the candle at arm’s length from me. “Keep your skeptical energy away from Oren’s charm.”

  “I wasn’t being skeptical.”

  She sighed and rolled her eyes, an oh, please gesture. “I don’t need to hold your hand anymore to know what’s going on with you.”

  That was new. When I first came here, I had been highly skeptical about everything related to Wicca and fortune teller magic. Then Lily Grace performed her first reading ever on me. Her vision came true, and I’d been less skeptical ever since. Looked like our connection had ramped up.

  “When did that start?” I asked.

  “Reading you without being directly in your energy field?” She shrugged. “A while ago.”

  I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. It was one thing for her to read me when I welcomed it. Her latching onto my thoughts unbidden was entirely different. “Let me know if I can help with Oren’s problem. Although I’m sure your candle will fix everything.”