Killer Spring Fling

by Mollie Bryan

  It would work out for her. Viv had to believe the cops would find her family and all would be well for her. Other than that she was dead.

  A carriage led by two white horses passed by. The driver tipped his hat to Viv.

  She turned down the street and went by Feathers and Fans, where a few people were hanging up a banner advertising their Spring Fling sale. The store carried fans and other things made of feathers, as well as masks and parasols.

  “Nice banner,” Viv called.

  “Thanks,” Sadie Hartwell, the owner of the store, said as she stood back and surveyed the sign. She tucked her wispy gray hair behind her ears. “Does it look straight to you?”

  Viv eyeballed it. “The right is a little higher than the left.”

  “You’re right! Thanks, Viv.”

  “No problem. Do you need some help?”

  “Always.” Sadie grinned. “But I think we have this covered.”

  Sadie was a friend of Libby’s and had been over to the house for lunch a few times. She had a wonderful, self-deprecating sense of humor.

  Viv continued down the street. This part of the town didn’t allow cars. The fumes destroyed cobblestone, and cars were not quite authentic. So walking here was a pleasure. No honking horns, no looking both ways before you cross. Or smelling exhaust fumes.

  Viv turned the corner and walked toward Mourning Arts, still closed after its owner met an untimely death about six months ago. His wife would reopen during the Spring Fling. Viv had a part-time job there, for one day, before Stu died, and the place was closed. So far, her stay in quaint Victoria Town had not been so quaint.

  It was a sweet town with its gaslit streetlights and preserved Victorian architecture. And it was a bustling tourist destination—Victoriana was as popular as ever. Viv didn’t like the frilly, over-the-top Victorian stuff, but she loved mourning jewelry and the darker side of all things Victorian.

  She instinctively reached for her lover’s eye pendant and shivered in the cool spring air. The scent of roses tickled her nose. She turned the corner and headed back to Sweet Victoria’s B & B, as she was certain it was almost time for supper.

  A group of teenage girls went by her—one had the exact shade of blond hair as the poor woman she’d found that morning. Viv shuddered.

  Maybe she’d feel more settled about things as time went by. Once the police found the dead woman’s family, maybe then Viv could put these horrible images behind her.

  In the meantime, the Spring Fling was around the corner and she was here to help Aunt Libby with the cleaning and preparations. She failed in getting her the Blue Topsy. She was determined not to let Aunt Libby down. Not again.

  Chapter 4

  Back at the B & B, soup and homemade bread awaited her. The scent was almost comforting enough to vanish any thoughts of the body she discovered earlier. Almost.

  “I’ve just gotten in the stickers I want for the gift bags. Can you help me with that tonight?” Aunt Libby said as she sat at the table. “I think that’s the last. Now, I just need to focus on food.”

  Viv drew in the veggie soup’s scent and dunked her spoon into it.

  “Tomorrow, I’ll make several loaves of English marmalade tea bread. That’s always a hit.” Libby sliced off a piece of bread. She slid the butter over to her and lathered the bread with it. “Excellent thing we made the rosemary cookies and lavender scones already. I’ll take them out of the freezer tomorrow morning.”

  Viv blew on the hot soup and brought the spoon to her mouth. She took another spoonful, then another. It was as if the nutrients from the vegetable seeped into her through each delicious spoonful. She listened to her aunt prattle on about paper doilies and embroidered cloth napkins.

  The delicate pink roses on the bottom of the soup bowl showed as Viv finished her soup. She reached for bread to sop up the juice. “Why would there be crystals next to a body?”

  Aunt Libby dropped her spoon with a clunk. “What brought that on?”

  Viv’s face heated. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to say that out loud.”

  “Let’s not talk about it. It’s the only way you’ll heal.”

  “But—”

  Libby held up her hand. “Especially not at dinner.”

  Viv agreed. But her thoughts lingered on those crystals. And the mirror, fan, and wooden box. If the young woman killed herself or died by natural causes, what did the objects mean? If she died at another’s hand, why’d a killer surround her with objects? Was it a part of some sick ritual? Did the killer take photos of his creation? She shivered.

  “Have more soup.” Libby must have noticed the shiver. “The doctor’ll be here in an hour.”

  Yes, Victoria Town was a place where the doctors made house calls. It was definitely a throwback town—and Viv was glad for it. She liked knowing a doctor would come quickly if needed, in case Libby wasn’t feeling quite right but didn’t want to go to the hospital or urgent care center. She’d had a heart attack last year, and had recovered, but still Viv worried.

  Between thinking about Aunt Libby’s heart attack and that poor dead woman, a wave of sickness came over Viv, and she dropped her spoon.

  “Are you okay?”

  She drew in the air. “Yes, but I just lost my appetite. I’m sorry. I’m off to lie down.”

  Aunt Libby’s jaw tightened as she nodded. “Splendid idea. Now, go upstairs, I’ll send the doctor when he gets here.”

  As soon as Viv’s head hit the pillow, she drifted off into sleep. Who knew finding a dead body would make you so tired—and sick?

  She dreamed she was falling and rolling, and when she stopped, she found herself in the graveyard. She struggled to see. But it was dark and foggy.

  She lay there on the ground in the darkness and mist. Her eyes felt heavy, as if fighting sleep. She struggled to keep them open. “What am I doing here?” In the dream she sat up and blinked.

  As her eyes adjusted, her heart sped. Her sight landed on the group of crystals first. They sparkled against the grass. Soon, she noticed objects around herself: A hand mirror, a wooden box, the crystals, and a red fan. “What the hell?” she said to the wind.

  In a strange dream mesh of truth and fantasy, she wondered what it could possibly mean?

  Anger swelled in her. A young woman with her whole life ahead of her. What went on here? She tried to reach for the wooden box, but her arms were heavy. Moving was like moving through heavy water. Why couldn’t she move? She thrashed around until she awakened in her canopy bed. She batted her eyes as she tried to remember her whereabouts.

  It was a dream. Just a dream.

  But tears slipped down her cheek. She brushed th away as a rapping sounded at the door.

  “It’s us. Me and Dr. Rogers,” Aunt Libby said as she opened the door.

  “What’s this?” Aunt Libby said as she motioned to her bed.

  Viv’s bed was a tangled mess. She smiled. “I was dreaming and thrashing around.”

  “Nightmare?” The doctor asked.

  Viv sat up as Aunt Libby tried to untangle her. “I suppose you could call it that.”

  “You’ve suffered a trauma. Your brain is working it out for you. Let’s make sure you don’t get stuck there,” the doctor said.

  “What can I do about that?”

  “It’ll take time,” he said. “In the meantime, I’m here to check over your vitals, make sure you’re a healthy specimen, as Libby likes to say.” He smiled in her direction.

  After he examined Viv, the doctor gave her a prescription for sleeping pills. “Only to use if you can’t sleep. Let me know if her appetite doesn’t increase.”

  Hello, I’m right here, she wanted to say, but didn’t have the strength.

  “In the meantime, what can we do to help?” Aunt Libby said to Viv.

  “I think I’ll feel better once we know what happened to that poor woman.”

  Libby and the doc exchanged glances.

  “We all will,” the doctor said, frowning.

/>   Chapter 5

  Viv indulged with a sleeping pill that night. She’d not get any sleep otherwise. So, she woke up later than usual and still groggy. She was tempted to lie in bed awhile, but she’d planned to help Aunt Libby with her baking today. She slipped on a pair of jeans and a T-shirt and headed for the kitchen and coffee.

  The kitchen appeared like a bomb had gone off in it, with surfaces covered in flour, baking pans scattered everywhere—cookies still on them. Aunt Libby shut off the mixer and lifted her chin. “Coffee is over there. Be careful. It’s a mess.”

  No kidding. This was so unlike her aunt. She preached cleaning-as-you-go to protect against an overwhelming mess at the end of baking. Viv’s hands went to her hips as she took in the scene.

  Coffee first. Then she’d tackle the kitchen and help with the baking. The coffee was fresh and hot. She breathed in the bitter scent. She took a few sips of her coffee and reached for a lavender scone, planning her mode of attack. First, she’d clear the scones off the pans and get started cleaning so they’d at least have the table as a workspace.

  Aunt Libby poured batter in a bread pan. “Is that the English marmalade tea bread?” Viv asked.

  Aunt Libby nodded.

  Viv bit into the scone, so perfect it almost made her eyes water with joy. “So good, Aunt Libby!” She chewed more. Libby turned around and beamed.

  But something was wrong. Viv couldn’t put her finger on it, but Libby was not herself.

  Libby opened the oven door and slid in the pans of unformed sweet bread. Then she poured herself a cup of coffee and sat next to Viv.

  “We’ve had news.”

  Viv continued eating her scone. “News?”

  “About the young woman you found.”

  Viv’s heart beat hard against her ribs. She set the scone down. “What? Tell me.”

  “She’s Eliza Hartwell.” Libby’s voice cracked. “Granddaughter of Sadie.”

  “Sadie? Your friend who owns Fans and Feathers?”

  Libby nodded, looking much older than her fifty-five years. “It’s horrid.”

  They sat in silence.

  “She was nineteen. Had been missing a few days, but the police...insisted she was a runaway and didn’t treat it as a missing-person case. She was...troubled.”

  Viv swallowed her coffee. “Troubled? What does that mean?”

  “She dabbled in drugs and men. You know what I mean.” Her aunt lifted the cup to her mouth with a slight tremor.

  Viv mulled that over. “Are you saying because she was into drugs the cops made a judgment about her and didn’t even look for her?”

  Aunt Libby’s jaw firmed. “That’s exactly what I mean.”

  So typical. If you were a “good” girl from a “good” family, the police treated your missingness differently. Viv’s stomach soured.

  “Nothing is as cut and dried as it seems,” Aunt Libby went on. “I’m sure there’s more to the story.”

  Viv wanted the complete story. Evidently, she had a sad life. Viv wanted to make sure her death wasn’t completely in vain. “Does anybody know cause of death?”

  Libby shrugged. “I’ve not heard, for sure. It may be poisoning. ” She brushed away some invisible crumb. “Something wrong with the scone?”

  Viv glanced at her half-eaten scone. “I just lost my appetite. I’ll eat the rest later.” Learning the name of the victim, Viv’s fingers itched with the desire to find out more. The first place to search was the computer. But first she needed to help Aunt Libby, distraught by her messy kitchen.

  The sweet bread scent filled the room as it baked. Viv stood and cleared off the table, while Aunt Libby finished her coffee.

  “Life is so strange. And unfair. That poor girl.” There was a winsome note to Libby’s voice.

  Viv scooped the scones off the pans into the plastic containers.

  “Right?” Viv said. “I can’t get her off my mind.”

  “It must have been an accident, Who would hurt her? I can’t think of anybody in Victoria Town capable of such a thing.”

  Viv opened her mouth, then shut it. She didn’t want to go there. People murdered people every day. She shuddered as she thought about what she’d learned about murder when she researched her boss’s death. A friend or family member committed most murders. Husbands. Boyfriends. Girlfriends.

  “Did she have a boyfriend?”

  Libby shrugged. “I imagine she did.”

  “It’s weird how love can turn into murder.”

  Libby gasped. “The things you say sometimes!”

  Viv finished stacking the scones in the plastic bins and set it aside. “Sorry, Aunt Libby. Should I wash up these pans next?”

  Aunt Libby sat down her coffee cup. “Splendid idea.”

  The coffee break perked Libby up and before she knew it, Viv and Libby had the kitchen clean while waiting on the bread. When Libby pulled the bread out of the oven, Viv almost swooned from the delicious, sugary scent.

  Libby pulled out all four loaves and set them on the counter to cool. They looked like edible puffy orange pillows. Viv wanted to shove her face right into one. Or two.

  Hmmm. Maybe her appetite was increasing. She went back to her scone and finished it as she waited for a bite of the bread.

  Chapter 6

  That night, sleep didn’t come easy. She’d hoped not to take the pills the doctor had given her, but she gave up. Every time she closed her eyes, she saw Eliza’s face.

  She decided to study Eliza head on Maybe if she pieced together her life, her death would be easier to handle. To process. Also, maybe she could help find answers about her death. Perhaps help find who killed her. She didn’t want to get her hopes up. She knew the police must be working hard to find her killer.

  “Eliza Hartwell,” she keyed into her laptop. A string of posts and links lit the screen. A drug arrest last year. A car accident the year before. She scanned the list for one good thing—or maybe good wasn’t the right word—maybe “different” thing in the list of incidents. She clicked over to the next page.

  Wait. What’s this?

  The high school awarded her for best computer skills. Interesting. What happened that she didn’t further her education? An award such as this might mean she was talented and could’ve had an impressive career.

  Which prompted Viv to think of herself. She’d done all the right things. Where was her “gaming career”? She’d assumed she was on her way with her first job out of college. The next thing she knew, the company went bankrupt, and she was one of the first people laid off—and they used her record as a hacker against her to not give her a severance pay. Even though her hacking was for a good cause, allowing college students to afford their education, she hadn’t been able to land another gaming job.

  But maybe Eliza wasn’t into the gaming aspect of computers—maybe it was something more commercial, like cyber security, or coding. Her stomach roiled—she’d never know, would she?

  The words blurred on the computer screen. She blinked to fight against the blur—but the sleeping pills had their way. She slapped shut her computer and slipped back into her creepy canopy bed. Lord, she wished her aunt would’ve put her in another room.

  But beggars can’t be choosy, she reminded herself. She was broke, owed student loan money, and was supposed to be helping her mom out with money too. Since her stepdad died three years ago, leaving them with next to nothing, Viv’s mom had been working two jobs trying to make ends meet. Viv used to send money to her weekly. But she couldn’t do that now. The last thought before she fell asleep was for her to reach out to Stu’s widow to see if she could have her part-time job back at Mourning Arts. It was awkward...but so what?

  She dreamed of the cemetery, tops of tombstones poking out of mist, and the Blue Topsy flower, finding a whole hillside full of them. Oddly enough, when she woke up the next morning, she felt better than she had since she found Eliza. Tomorrow was the Spring Fling. She was bound and determined not to ruin it for her aunt, alrea
dy upset by the turn of events.

  She untangled herself from her quilts and went downstairs to offer help—and get coffee. Yes, she needed plenty of that.

  When she walked into the kitchen, it surprised her to find Aunt Libby sitting at the table with a police officer.

  “You’re up! Good morning!”

  It was as if it was an ordinary thing to greet your niece with a police officer at your table eating scones and drinking coffee. She knew he was a cop, even though he wasn’t dressed as one. She could always tell. It was more than the clean-shaven look and closely cropped haircut. It was the posture of a man. The way he sat straighter than most. The way his eyes darted around, observing each movement. Her heart raced. She wondered where good ol’ Willoughby was.

  “Good morning,” she muttered, heading to the pot of coffee.

  “This is Officer Andy Jacobs, he’s a new cyber-specialist with our police force. The chief sent him. He’s down with the flu.”

  Viv finished pouring her coffee. “Nice to meet you.”

  “Actually, I’m in training. I’m learning the cyber ropes, so to speak.” He looked too young to be a cop, at closer glance. And he even wore a diamond stud, which somehow made his gray eyes even more gray.

  “Sit down, dear.” Aunt Libby gestured at an empty chair. “Officer Jacobs was just telling me he thinks our Eliza was involved with someone online.”

  Interesting. She sat down.

  He cleared his throat. “Your aunt tells me you’re quite the expert.”

  Viv drank her coffee. “I’m a game designer.”

  “Computer games, right?” He said leaning forward, hopeful.