Death in the Park (Firefly Junction Cozy Mystery Book 1)

by London Lovett

  “Or I’m weaker than I thought.”

  Nick’s phone rang. He pulled it out of his pocket. “Yes my lovely, precious wife?”

  I decided to nibble a muffin while he finished his call with Emily. They were warm and delicious. “Tell Emi these taste like a warm summer day in the park.”

  “Yes, that was your poetically inclined sister.” He paused. “Just a minute.” He handed me his phone. “She’s got big news.”

  I shrieked. “Is she pregnant?”

  His face smoothed to marble. “What? No.” He whipped back the phone. “Are you pregnant?”

  I could hear Emily’s laugh through the phone.

  “I open your paint can and bring you summer sunshine in a basket, and you give me five new gray hairs.” He handed me back the phone.

  “Delicious muffins, Emi.”

  “Thank you, my sister, the brilliant journalist,” Emily chirruped into the phone.

  “Am I? What did I do?”

  “I was at the grocery store, and Reggie, the cashier, said that all the Junction Times were bought up because everyone was talking about your story on Alder Stevens. I read it. You did a great job, sis. Better than any obituary or eulogy. He and Pauline had lived and worked in the area for so long, a lot of people knew him.”

  “Woo hoo! That’s wonderful. Now maybe Parker will let me have some of the bigger stories. Thanks for letting me know. Your very strong husband saved my morning by opening my paint can.”

  “Only took me one try,” Nick spoke toward the phone.

  “Yes, he comes in handy for things like that. Now tell him to come home. There’s a barn to sweep up and chicken coops to clean.”

  “I’ll tell him. Bye, Emi.” I handed back the phone but didn’t need to tell him the last part of the conversation.

  “Let me guess, Emi wants me to hurry back and clean the coops.”

  I nodded. “And there’s the matter of a messy barn.” I followed him out to the entry and opened the front door. The sky was a cerulean blue dotted with a few puffy white clouds. Newman and Redford hardly glanced up from their nap on the porch steps. “At least it’s a nice day for farm work.”

  “True. Not looking forward to summer humidity though. I’ll see you later. Just let me know if you need any pickle jars or soda cans opened.” He pointed to his bicep again.

  “Those big guns will be the first I call.” I waved to him and headed back into the sitting room. I walked across the tarp and pulled the paint tray off the top of the ladder. Then I turned back around to the paint can. My gasp echoed around the empty room as I stared down at the impossible sight. The lid was securely back on the paint can.

  “It can’t be.” My slightly breathless voice bounced back to me. My hands were trembling a bit as I picked up the can opener. I jammed the tool under the lid and pressed down on it. With a lot of effort, energy and what I was certain was an unladylike grimace, I managed to loosen the lid again. I quickly picked up the can and held it over the tray. A river of velvety pink paint poured out, but before I finished, the tray slid across the tarp. Pink paint puddled on the tarp before I could stop the viscous flow.

  I put the can down so fast paint splattered on my legs. My head spun, possibly from paint fumes but more likely from the series of unexplained fiascos.

  “You haven’t had nearly enough water this week,” I told myself. “You’re dehydrated from the long days. In fact, so much so, that you are talking to yourself, Sunni.”

  I finished my one-sided conversation and headed down the hallway to the kitchen. I went straight to the refrigerator for the pitcher of cold water. I stood at the counter, pouring myself a glass, when I heard a noise behind me. I spun around and watched as the hands on my mother’s favorite wall clock jumped a few minutes ahead.

  Then, as if someone had turned on some magical hologram machine, a tall man appeared. He checked a gold pocket watch he had dangling from a chain connected to his blue silk waistcoat. His dark, semi solid, semi smoky gaze turned toward me. “That has been driving me mad since you put the clock on the wall.”

  “Holy moly baloney,” I muttered.

  “Obviously, you are a fine poet. No wonder you considered my romantic prose, hmm what was the brilliant word you used? Oh yes, corny. By the way does that have anything to do with the vegetable?”

  Thoroughly terrified and confused, I reached back to the knife rack, pulled out a long one and threw it across the room. The blade flew right through the man and plinked off the wall behind him.

  He turned in what seemed like perfectly human movements and looked at the knife on the floor. A dark blue ribbon held his long brown hair neatly in a queue at the back of his neck. “I suppose it’s a good thing I’m already dead.” He turned back to me. “Wouldn’t be the first time a woman threw a kitchen knife at me. Large ceramic vases are much more painful and effective, by the way.”

  The spinning in my head had swirled into a category five tornado. The walls around me blurred as much as the image standing in my kitchen, chatting amicably with me as if we were about to sit down to tea. Actually, sitting down sounded exceptionally good. And I wasn’t going to wait for a chair. My knees gave way, and as my backside fell, a chair scooted, unaided, across the kitchen floor. I landed hard on the seat.

  I covered my face. “You’re imagining this, Sunni. Just take a few good breaths.” With the exception of my thundering heartbeat, the room was quiet around me. I slowly peeled away my hands and lifted my face. Using my feet, I pushed the chair back until my head and the back of the chair smacked into the counter.

  The man glided closer, and gliding was the only way to describe the way he moved. His boots made no sound on the wood floor.

  “If you’ve gotten past the initial shock, then perhaps it’s time to introduce myself.”

  My hand was shaky as I pointed at him. “You’re him. You’re Edward Beckett.”

  “Or you could just introduce me to yourself.” He pressed his hand against his waistcoat and flipped the tails of his cutaway overcoat back as he bowed. “Edward Beckett, the third, at your service.”

  “At my service?” I sputtered. “If part of your service is giving me a heart attack and aging me ten years in five minutes then well done.” I looked him up and down. I was no fashion expert, but it seemed his clothing was from the early nineteenth century and from the looks of it, Edward Beckett was no fashion slouch. “You’re here, in my kitchen, in breeches and a cravat and those tall black boots.”

  He looked down at his boots. “Yes, bad decision on my part to wear my brand new Hessians to a duel. Apparently, they were too hard to get off, so I died in them. Just imagine your worst, most uncomfortable pair of shoes and then imagine wearing them for eternity.” He pointed to the long trailing ends of his cravat. “At least my cravat was untied.”

  My heart rate had slowed and the walls and kitchen were coming into focus, like the impossible image in front of me. My stomach was still leaning toward nausea, but my body was slowly relaxing. “Why are you here? Why haven’t you gone off to—wherever your type is supposed to go?”

  “My type? You mean dead? In answer to your first question. I don’t know. And in answer to your second question, I refer you to my first answer.”

  With blood finally just returning to my head, it took me a second to decipher his response. “So you don’t know why you’re stuck haunting the inn?”

  “Please, I don’t haunt. I reside, inhabit and occasionally bedevil. But haunting is beneath me.”

  For a man who was merely vapor, it seemed a violent death in a duel and centuries trapped in the inn hadn’t chipped away at his arrogance.

  “What do we do now?” I asked. “How can I help you, you know, scurry on? Get to where you need to be.”

  “Well, you’re an investigative journalist. I was hoping you could tell me.”

  “How did you know that?” I regained my land legs, and I stood up from the chair. “Have you been listening in on my conversations, snooping
on my private life?” A blush suddenly warmed my entire face. “Have you been—”

  “Of course not,” he drawled before I could finish. “I wasn’t born in this century. I came from an era where common decency prevailed.”

  “You had an affair with your cousin’s wife.”

  He was not a solid entity, yet his facial expressions moved with each emotion. “Well played. I might be a bit of cad, but I’m not an animal.”

  “No but you’re not human either. Are you? I’m new to this ghost stuff.”

  “I prefer incorporeal being, if you don’t mind.”

  I looked him up and down. He must have been quite dapper in his day. “So now what?”

  “Now that we’ve met each other, there’s something I’d like to discuss with you.”

  “All right,” I said with a good measure of apprehension. “What do you want to talk about?”

  “Cupid Pink?” He stuck his hands into his waistcoat pockets. “I think not.”

  More Cozy Mystery

  I hope you loved the first book of Firefly Junction, Death in the Park. If you have a chance to leave a short review, I’d really appreciate it. Look for the next book in the series this spring. Be sure to join my Secret Sleuths Facebook group and you’ll be the first to know about upcoming books, new covers and sneak peeks!

  Keep reading for a look at the first 5 chapter of Marigolds and Murder ➜

  Chapter 1

  I stepped back to admire my handiwork. I wasn’t exactly Van Gogh, but I had to admit, the tiny flowers I’d painted on the rustic bench were charming. I’d found the old bench at a yard sale and had decided that it would look great under the bay window, still leaving enough room for me to roll out my flower carts and set up my portable ‘specials and deals’ chalkboard.

  Aside from falling in love with the eclectic charm of Port Danby, I’d fallen instantly in love with the small building I’d leased for my shop, Pink’s Flowers. Like every shop on Harbor Lane, it was entirely unique with its Cape Cod shingles and deep bay window. While not exactly traditional for the Cape Cod style, I’d had the wood siding painted a blush pink because … well … it was Pink’s Flowers. The thick window trim and the French door for the entry were painted bright white for a perfectly pleasing contrast. The unusual pink color had drawn a few judgmental glances from neighboring shop owners, but once everything was finished, people seemed to approve.

  I dipped my paintbrush into the bottle of lavender paint, and as I pulled it out, my phone rang, startling me and triggering a small string of calamities. Pale purple paint dripped down my shin. I stepped sharply to the side to avoid more and kicked the paint bottle. It fell over and splashed across my sandal and foot. I flirted with the idea of not answering my phone, but I knew it was my mom. If I didn’t answer, her head would fill with endless terrifying scenarios that might be keeping her daughter from answering the phone.

  Standing with my knee lifted and my purple foot high off the ground, I managed to keep my balance as I picked my phone up off the window ledge. “Hey, Mom, can I call you back? I’ve got a purple foot.”

  “What? Why? Did you bruise it? Are you having circulation problems? Maybe your shoes are too tight.” My mom was highly skilled at dashing off numerous opinions and unnecessary advice without needing to stop for a breath.

  “It’s purple paint, Mom. My shoes and circulatory system are fine.”

  “Well, why didn’t you tell me? You gave me a fright.” I didn’t need to see through the phone to know she was placing her hand against her chest for added drama.

  “I would have told you if you hadn’t jumped right into your list of possible sources and solutions for a purple foot.” I decided to give delaying the call another shot. “Let me call you back.”

  “I’m just calling to see how things are going with the little flower store.” She couldn’t have said the words with more disappointment if she’d punctuated each one with a sniffle. But I couldn’t fault her for that. My poor mom, the eternal optimist and the woman who took huge pleasure in bragging to her book club about her daughter’s successes, had suffered the trifecta of motherly letdowns. In the past few years, I’d quit medical school and walked out on a six figure job in the perfume industry. But the last disappointment was the one that really had the poor woman reeling.

  I braced my free hand against the window ledge to keep my balance. “The little flower store is fine. I open in two weeks. My right leg is getting tired. Can I call you back?”

  “You need better shoes.” I opened my mouth to remind her of the painted foot but decided it would be a waste of breath. “Lacey, have you heard from Jacob?”

  I made sure to huff in annoyance loud enough that she could hear me. “Why would I hear from him? We aren’t together anymore, and mentioning him in every phone call is not going to magically bring him back into my life.”

  Jacob was the third horse in the trifecta. He was like the Kentucky Derby of disappointing blows for my mom. He was rich and handsome and from a good family. Unfortunately, that good family forgot to teach him that if you were engaged to one woman, it wasn’t good to date another woman. Jacob’s family owned Georgio’s Perfume, a multimillion dollar fragrance company, and for one year I had been employed as their head perfumer. I had been born with hyperosmia, or in more crude terms, a heightened sense of smell. Sometimes I considered it a gift, and sometimes it was a curse. In the matter of my ex-fiancé, it had been both. Jacob had hired me because I could detect the slightest aroma and even separate that microscopic odor into its basic parts, a skill that made me highly sought after in the perfume industry. But the man had somehow forgotten that skill when he started showing up wearing hints of another woman’s perfume on his shirts. And whoever she was, she wasn’t even wearing Georgio Perfume.

  “I just worry that you were too hasty in your decision to break it off. Jacob was such a nice man.”

  “He was seeing other women behind my back. How does that make him nice? If you like him so much, give him a call. I’m sure as long as you make sure Dad has new batteries in the remote, frozen entrees in the freezer and plenty of bait in his tackle box, he won’t even notice you missing.” I hopped toward the door of the shop to go inside and clean my foot.

  “Lacey Sue Pinkerton,” she said in her best angry mom voice.

  “Uh oh, the middle name is coming out. I’m in trouble.” I opened the door and hopped clumsily inside. Kingston pulled his sharp black beak out from under his wing. He looked angry about having his nap interrupted.

  “You sound funny. Are you exercising, Lacey?”

  “Yes, Mom, I’m in the middle of an aerobics class.”

  “That’s enough, miss smarty pants.” Apparently we’d moved from middle name use to the good ole smarty pants stand by. I was twenty-eight, but a five minute conversation with my mom and I was back in sixth grade.

  “I’m sorry, Mom. I would love to stay on the phone and rehash all the crummy stuff that has befallen me lately, but I need to get back to work.”

  “Lacey, sweetie, I worry you’ll get terribly bored in a small town like Port Dancy.”

  “Port Danby, and I won’t be bored. I’ll be running a business.”

  “Yes, a flower shop. It’s quite a change from your life in the big city working with important people.”

  “It’s a big change, Mom. And it’s the change I wanted. Besides, I’m looking forward to living in a place where the biggest thing to happen is the neighborhood stray cat knocking over a trash can. There’s something to be said for peace and tranquility.” Her last words had gotten to me a bit. The notion of life moving too slowly in Port Danby had crossed my mind more than once. But I was determined to keep myself and my mind occupied.

  The paint had dried on my foot, caking into a lavender patch on my skin. I lowered the foot to the ground. “I’ll call you later, Mom. Kiss Dad for me.”

  “All right. Call if you need anything.”

  I hung up and glanced around at
my shop. I couldn’t help but smile. It was the first time in my working life that I’d gotten to make all the decisions, and I was pleased with the outcome. Cape Cod exterior aside, I went totally batty trying to decide whether to go modern industrial or Soho chic inside. As is often the case, I couldn’t make up my mind, so I went with both and invented my own Soho Industrial Chic. Practicality played a big part too. I left the exposed brick walls in place for the corner that was home to the steel rolling shelves I’d purchased at a factory sell off. They were the perfect place to store vases, glassware and ceramic pots. A long antique potter’s table took up more than half of the back wall. The deep porcelain basin sink left behind by Elsie, the baker, when she moved her kitchen next door was the perfect place for transferring plants and arranging bouquets.

  For a change of pace, I covered the brick wall on the other half of the shop with smooth plaster and bright white paint. An array of wood crates were nailed, bottom side, to the wall to create geometric cubbies for some of the prettier baubles I had for sale. The center of the store held my prize find, a massive island with a black and white checked tile counter and rows of drawers to keep ribbons, tissue and all the small goodies needed in a flower shop. I’d painted the entire island in black chalkboard paint so I could write labels on the drawers.

  Kingston, my pet crow, fluttered his large wings a few times, vibrating the ribbons hanging from spools on the wall. I grabbed a bag of sunflower seeds from the top drawer of the island and tossed a few into the dish on his perch. He busied himself with the treat as I stroked the silky black feathers on his head.

  “Well, Kingston, the shop is almost ready. I think we’re going to like it here. What do you think?”

  Kingston flicked the empty shells out of the dish.

  “Right, I guess you’ll be happy as long as there are plenty of treats.”

  Chapter 2

  Putting to good use the free trial month yoga class I’d attended, I somehow managed to get my foot into the sink and free of its purple tattoo. Getting it back out took a little more effort. I wrangled my leg away from the basin and patted it dry with a rag.