Murder Ghost Foul: The Complete Mystic Springs Paranormal Cozy Mystery Series

by Mona Marple

  “Oh, thanks. It was Violet, really,” I said.

  Violet shook her head from her seat. “It was all you, lady. Although if this hunk wants to come and tell me how great I am, I’ll happily let him.”

  Kraspian beamed at us. “You were both incredible. Ms Warren, my mother has your art work in her dressing room. She’s a huge fan.”

  “I’m very flattered,” Violet said, then gave me a wink. “I’ll leave you to it.”

  Alone in the coffee house with Kraspian, I couldn’t think of a single word to say. My stupid head refused to co-operate and actually turn my thoughts into reasonable sentences. I mean, I couldn’t tell him what I was really thinking - you’re so hot was just the start.

  “Cool place,” he said, finally as he took a good look around. “It must be so cool to get to work here every day.”

  “It is pretty cool, actually,” I agreed, and I meant it. My humble coffee house was pretty darn neat.

  “Use your powers to do the cleaning up?”

  “I haven’t been,” I said, with a laugh. “But I might start.”

  “Well, look, I’m heading out on a business trip but I really wanted to see you. I don’t know what’s going on in your life, I mean I’m sure you’ve got guys… you know. I guess I was just… I wondered if I could maybe take you out one night?”

  “Take me out?” I repeated. “Like a date?”

  His face fell as he misunderstood me. “Look, it’s totally okay if you don’t want to. I don’t want you to feel awkward. Just forget I said anything, honestly.”

  “I’d love to,” I said. “Love to go on a date, I mean, not forget you said anything. Geeze, can we start over? What I mean is, yes, I’d love to go on a date with you.”

  I picked up a napkin and scrawled my cell number down, then handed it across to him. He read it, actually saying each digit aloud. It was a beautiful moment, watching the handsome love God trying to memorise my number.

  And, of course, it was interrupted by the clanging of the bell announcing another customer’s arrival.

  I glanced up at Kraspian and offered him a shy smile. He leaned in, gave me a little peck on the cheek, and left. My phone had dinged with a message from him before I’d even finished making the strawberry cold brew for the first paying customer of the day.

  The bell rang out again and Crystal burst towards us, carrying a takeout coffee. Only Crystal could be late on her way to her first day of work in a coffee shop because she’d stopped to get coffee.

  “Have I missed anything?”

  I laughed. “Nothing you’d believe.”

  THE END

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  The Circus of Mystic Springs

  A Mystic Springs Paranormal Cozy Mystery

  Copyright © 2020 by Mona Marple

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  In this book, creative licence is used to include one reader as a character. This reader was consulted about the creation of this character and authorised the draft version before publication.

  As an author, I rely on the help of readers to spot those pesky typos that sneak through on each book.

  Thank you to Nadine Peterse-Vrijhof, Carmela Devito, Sandy Giden, Trisha Kelly, Erik Langskaill, Renee Arthur and Theresa Arbuckle for your help tracking them down in this book!

  1

  Violet frowned at the closed doorway and cleared her throat, hoping that would be enough to signal to the odd little man in her downstairs toilet that he’d been in there some time.

  She knew she should have turned the job down, but it paid handsomely and she was curious about meeting any man who volunteered high six-figures to have their own portrait painted.

  There was movement from within the bathroom and Violet straightened her back and plastered on her game-face smile. The slouch was an unavoidable side-effect of her career but occasionally she caught sight of herself and her artist’s hunched back and gasped in horror.

  Youngsters imagined that vanity was something they had sole claim to, but Violet had found the opposite. She hadn’t appreciated a single part of her beauty until they’d begun to fade. First, the grey hairs arrived. Had she ever spent a moment of her life appreciating a full-head of luscious brunette locks before that first white one invaded her head? She thought not.

  “Are you okay in there?” She called as she realised that there was silence in the bathroom again. She heard the exasperation in her tone. She’d promised her agent that she’d play nicely, but she hadn’t considered that the man would make himself so comfortable in her toilet.

  “Just… preparing,” his booming voice came from the hallway behind her. Violet turned, paintbrush in hand, ready to welcome him into the studio with a smile. Instead, the sight of him made her jump from her stool.

  “What on earth?” She exclaimed as she covered her eyes. “Put your clothes back on this instant!”

  She heard shuffling and when she dared peek out from between her fingers, the man had gone. The bathroom door was closed and she heard the frantic pulling up of jeans and swipe of a zip. Her heart raced as she paced the studio. She was no prude, but the thought of a man’s dangly bits invading her creative space was enough to make her wonder what had happened to the world.

  She pulled up the email that her agent had forwarded to her. Nothing in the man’s enquiry suggested that he planned to get naked in front of her! Goodness. What a mess.

  Some minutes later, the man unlocked the bathroom door and at least had the decency to look embarrassed.

  “I’ll see myself out,” he said.

  “You will indeed,” she said, but she felt the hint of a giggle in her throat. Before she could stop herself, she heard the noise sneak out, then erupt into a hearty laugh.

  “I didn’t mean to offend you,” the man said.

  “I’ve seen worse,” Violet said. She let out a sigh and glanced back at the studio. “Look, if you can keep your clothes on, you might as well stay.”

  The session went by quickly after that. The man sat perfectly still and Violet had a strong suspicion that he was a man used to modelling for portraits that nobody had commissioned other than himself. She made sure to flatter the shape of his face and make him appear a belt notch smaller.

  Finally, she presented the finished piece and watched him give one small nod of satisfaction. Portraits were difficult and not her preferred line of work. If she displayed too much talent, and made the image too like the person, they would no doubt be unhappy, because most people disliked their appearance. To have the art truly appreciated by the model, she had to actually limit her talent and create something that resembled the model but through rose tinted glasses.

  “You know, there are places you can go. For that other kind of painting,” Violet avoided his eye as she lead him out of the studio to the front door.

  “I was under the impression that you did boudoir art,” came his gruff reply. He’d paid her fee in advance, as was her requirement, so there was little for him to do other than slip into his coat.

  “Ah,” she said. He was right. She had done boudoir art. Back when she was young enough to accept any work that paid, and new enough to need any chance to add to her portfolio. She’d never enjoyed it. If a person was sensitive about how many chins she painted, they were ridiculously vain about the… erm… proportions of their nether regions. “I did many a thing once upon a time.”

  He grunted, grabbed the coat and tucked it under his arm, and saw himself out.

  With the house safe, she donned a pair of rubber gloves and found the cleaning basket in the kitchen. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d cleaned her own bathroom, but
desperate times required desperate measures.

  After an hour on her hands and knees the house smelt overpoweringly of bleach and she wondered if she’d overdone it a little.

  “Abandon ship!” She said aloud to the empty house.

  She pulled on a hot pink feather jacket, which she’d lovingly begun to refer to in her mind as her Flamingo Coat. Paired with turquoise pixie boots and black leather trousers, it was quite the outfit. Every day was worth dressing well for.

  She nodded at her reflection in the mirror and set out across town.

  Screamin’ Beans Coffee House was so quiet that Ellie Bean, proprietor and secret witch, sat in a chair behind the counter reading a textbook.

  “Am I disturbing you?” Violet asked. Her voice jolted Ellie out of her concentration and caused her cat, Godiva, to hiss. Surprisingly, cats had never liked Violet.

  “Oh!” Ellie exclaimed. As she returned the book to the counter, the false cover slipped and Violet saw the symbols from within revealed.

  “You’ll want to hide that better,” Violet said.

  Ellie’s cheeks flushed and she slid the book into a drawer below the till. “What can I get for you?”

  “Americano, black. What are you doing with that thing, anyway?”

  Ellie looked around the space and then leaned in to Violet, dropped her voice to a whisper. “It’s my homework. I’ve started night school.”

  “Magic night school?” Violet asked.

  Ellie’s cheeks flushed in answer.

  “Good for you,” Violet said.

  “You really think so? It feels a little silly, at my age.”

  “Nonsense. You’re still a baby. What does the cat think about it?”

  Ellie glanced down at Godiva, who scowled up at them both. “Oh, she doesn’t think anything about it. She’s only a cat, Violet. She’s not a familiar.”

  Violet raised her eyebrows and shook her head as Ellie passed her drink over. “Is that so?”

  Ellie watched as Violet wandered across the coffee shop to a seat by the window, then glanced down at Godiva. She was just a cat.

  Wasn’t she?

  2

  Rufus Wellington stood ankle deep in the mud with a grin on his face. The Big Top never failed to make his pulse spring into life.

  “You’re not sweating, I see,” the intolerable voice called across from the biggest trailer on the site.

  “Supervising!”

  The other man, mug of tea in hand, frowned. Dusty Windbanger was a man’s man. He wore his jeans straight legged and his shirts flannel. His gun collection was only surpassed by his whisky collection and his disdain for other, less manly, men.

  “It’s going to be quite the show,” Rufus called over as he approached the trailer. “Almost sold out every night.”

  “Of course,” Dusty shrugged. “I’ve been telling you to do a tour here for years.”

  “Hmm,” Rufus tried to look past Dusty into the trailer, but the man took up all of the doorframe. “Have you seen Glory?”

  Dusty didn’t try to hide the sneer. “You think your niece is in here? You’re more deluded than I thought!”

  Rufus offered a low-strength smile. Being near Dusty seemed to suck the manliness from him at the best of times, but even more so as he stood there, back in Mystic Springs. He’d vowed never to return. Another promise to himself that he’d broken. And Dusty knew as well as Rufus did that Glory could have been anywhere.

  “Try the Top,” Dusty suggested. “Not everyone avoids the hard work like you do.”

  Rufus fought the temptation to make some comment back about whether standing in the doorway of the trailer counted as hard work, and trudged through the mud to the big top. They’d have to lay boards across the field, of course, to create a walkway before opening night. He’d leave that to the young guys, the ones who loved any chance to show off their muscles for the local girls.

  It hadn’t been like that in his day, he thought, back when he was a boy and had fallen under the spell of the circus. Or perhaps he’d been naive even then. His time had been filled with practicing magic tricks, although there had been a girl. Of course there had been a girl.

  Violet.

  His cheeks flushed with shame at the thought of her, but there was no time to dwell.

  Glory burst out of the tent, her hair in those ridiculous dreadlocks, bare legs splattered with mud. He noted that she was finally wearing the cowboy boots he’d bought for her last birthday.

  “Nice place, hey?” She said.

  “You’ve been into town?”

  She nodded. She always went to explore a new town before anyone else was awake.

  “You behaved?” Rufus asked.

  “Of course I did,” she said, but he noticed the feather earrings and didn’t think he’d seen them before. Better not to ask.

  Glory was no more genuine fortune teller than he had real magic, but she’d had some brushes with the law in her youth. She knew a tell when she saw one. A flash of longing, a twitch of recognition, she saw it all and used it to give readings that left her clients begging for more.

  She was their main attraction, and Dusty was terrified she’d move on to bigger and better things, but she showed no interest in that. She accepted interview requests as long as they gave a shout out to the circus, but had turned down the chance to host her own cable TV series as it would have taken her away from the Big Top.

  Her loyalty was nothing to do with Dusty, and everything to do with Rufus. The uncle who had taken her in as a baby when her parents had died. She would never desert him.

  Rufus swallowed and loosened his shirt a little.

  “They were on the sidewalk,” she misunderstood his discomfort and flicked one of the feathers dangling from her ears. “Still in the packaging. It was meant to be.”

  “Sure,” he said. He was a coward, but that was nothing new. “I’ll leave you to it.”

  **

  Glory dressed the part for her clients.

  She always wore a pair of cowboy boots, but the rest of the outfit was a costume. Fancy dress. She stepped into the long, flowing skirt and set up the space.

  She draped the star-patterned cloth over the small coffee table and placed the crystal ball on top. She turned off the main lights and set up the vintage lamp in the corner of the room. A dim light crept out from the tassels of the lampshade. Finally, she played a mystical playlist on her phone on a volume so low the client would wonder if they were imagining it.

  No sooner had she finished staging the scene than there was a knock at the door.

  “Enter!” Glory called. Even her voice transformed when she slipped into work mode. She was an actress and the trailer was her stage. The audience was a little smaller than she’d ideally want, but the work was fun.

  The client was a small woman with wild red curls and a face dotted with freckles.

  Glory looked her up and down and made several mental notes. The woman was nervous, her shoes were good quality, and there was no ring on her wedding finger.

  “Sit, child,” Glory commanded, even though the woman seemed to be a similar age to her. “Your name?”

  “Eleanor Bean,” the redhead said as she lowered herself into the chair across from Glory. Glory noted the awkwardness of the first name on the woman’s tongue, logged it.

  “Do you have a question for me?” Glory asked.

  The woman took a deep breath and began to fiddle with her hands. Nails bitten to the quick, fingertips blackened as if scorched. Curious. “It’s silly coming here,” she began. Glory was used to people not asking a question when she prompted them to. They wanted to tell their story. Glory had decided that the majority of people came to a fortune teller because they lacked the courage to see a therapist. “I don’t even know what I expect you to tell me.”

  “Let me begin,” Glory said. She reached her hands out so they hovered above the crystal ball. With her left foot, she pressed the button on its lead, and the ball glowed iridescent shades of purpl
e and blue as a light mist pored from its base.

  The crystal ball trick served two purposes. It offered a little of the dramatic, a little of the fun that Glory relied on as much as air, and it also revealed how open the client was to believing.

  Most clients at least allowed a sharp intake of breath, and the more unguarded would even clap or laugh out loud. Two people had instinctively pulled out their cell phones to film the experience (she pressed the button again when that happened, and said the technology interfered with the magic), one had asked if they should call the fire brigade for the smoke, and her favourite had been the young punk rocker who had fainted and bashed her head open on the table!

  Eleanor Bean, however, simply offered a polite lopsided smile and shifted a little in her seat.

  A non-believer, then. Or a want-to-believer. Everyone wanted to believe deep down, but something prevented them. The question for Glory was what was stopping Eleanor.

  “I see you living a life of service, Ellie,” Glory said. She felt the woman snap to attention. She’d guessed the nickname correct then - good. It was clear from the moment she introduced herself that she never went by the name Eleanor. “I see you feeding people; their bodies and their souls?”

  “I guess,” Ellie said with a shrug. She was indifferent to her career - for Glory always skirted each town they arrived in and had of course seen Screamin’ Beans Coffee House. The woman and the business must be linked, although the blackened fingertips weren’t from cooking. She felt confident of that.

  “You yearn for more,” Glory allowed her voice to sing-song. It was a stock line. Even the people who didn’t know they yearned for more believed they did once she made the suggestion. Human nature was all about being dissatisfied with your lot in life. Ellie became so still she was barely breathing, and Glory knew she had her. She was disappointed in a way. She’d expected the redhead to be cynical a little longer, make her work a little harder for it. “You’re at a crossroads in your life. One path is comfortable and safe, while the other is exciting. Sparks fly.”