by Raven Snow
“Felonies and Felines”
Supernatural Witch Cozy Mystery
Harper "Foxxy" Beck Series Book 4
Raven Snow
© 2016
Raven Snow
Disclaimer
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner & are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Cover images are licensed stock photos, images shown for illustrative purposes only. Any person(s) that may be depicted on the cover are models.
Digital Edition v1.01 (2016.06.01)
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Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Authors Note
Books by Raven Snow
Chapter One
"I'm gonna boogie oogie oogie till I just can't boogie no more," I told my bouncer Jeb.
As per usual, he endured the funk I brought to the room with a menacing frown on his face. It was for the proprietors of my disco skate, the Funky Wheel, so I didn't let it bring down my good vibes— as if anything could. Still, I told him almost every shift that I wouldn’t fire him if he lost the frown. Hell, most of the time, I offered him a raise to smile— just once— on the job.
"Miss Harper−"
"Foxxy," I reminded him, fixing my neon green wig in front of the mirror behind the concession stand.
"Right." His face contorted in confusion, though it was hard to get the full effect from a whole foot below him. I was, after all, considered a very tall woman. "Weren't you supposed to be somewhere else tonight, Miss Foxxy?"
"Where else would I be?" I asked with a grin, skating off to turn on the sound system.
The purple carpet was a relic from when my father had bought the Funky Wheel, which was formerly a church. It was lumpy under my skates, but matched the violet half walls that closed off the skating rink from the dining area.
I pressed a fresh piece of duct tape to the peach dance floor, covering up an uneven scratch mark made the night before. Glowing luminescent under the disco lights, the tape would keep for a month or two. I didn't like to look further ahead than that, anyway— bummed my good vibes.
"Where's Stoner Stan?" I called out to my bouncer.
He shrugged and said the same thing he said every night: "I'm sure he'll be here just as soon as he can."
The men's bathroom door opened then, punctuating my employee's word. Copious amounts of light smoke rolled out of the small space and, along with it, Stoner Stan. He had a lot less hair than he'd had when my dad had first hired him— which I knew from pictures— but his eyes were just as red and dazed.
Some days, I wished I could've met my dad just once, if only to ask him why he hired the guy.
Stan shuffled over to his spot by the hot dog machine, watching the overcooked wienies go around and around. "Took a bathroom break, man."
"Your shift hasn't started, Stan," I told him, starting up the pizza oven. "The Wheel hasn't even opened yet."
"Slept in the bathroom. My mom was being mega uncool about me eating all the lunchmeat without replacing it."
"That is mega uncool."
Another of my staff members had seemingly slipped in right under my nose, and I almost jumped out of my skin when I walked in on her in the office area.
Amber was a sweet teenager who usually went around with her head in a book and her glasses slightly askew. Today, however, she was sporting an expensive, new look that could only be described in one word: black. Black makeup, black clothes, and her pink glasses had been replaced with ones with little skulls on them.
“What do you think?” she asked with a grin. “Ace picked it all out.”
Ace. The new boyfriend. One I didn’t approve of, though I’d never let Amber know that. It’d been a while since I’d been a teenager, but I still remembered the allure of forbidden love. I wasn’t looking to start a Romeo and Juliet reenactment.
Besides Edward’s— I refused to call him by anything but his birth name— bad news attitude, horrible smoking habit, and lack of attendance at Waresville High School, he was also a warlock. And not a particularly moral one.
Saving myself a hard answer, I gestured to my colorful tank top and short, pink disco shorts. “I prefer tie-dye.”
Pulling down the sign on the window that said “Keep on keepin’ on— just somewhere else,” she said, “You should try something that wasn’t all the rage in the 70s.”
The nerve of kids these days.
With a bang, the front doors flew open, and I heard my best friend, Oliver Belafonte, announcing himself to the empty room. Sparing one last troubled look at Amber, I rolled out to greet him.
He’d donned a pink cape over a white suit for the night. The effect was shocking with his creamy dark skin. He was just as tall as me, but far thinner, which didn’t seem fair somehow. I’d told him as much at one time or another.
“Yes, admire me, darling,” he said, folding his cape around himself like Dracula. “I’m in rare form tonight.”
His New Orleans accent was thick as honey, and it was mostly for effect. Sure, he was born and raised there, but I’d heard him with varying degrees of the accent— mostly to attract potential lovers.
I grabbed him a pair of rental skates from behind the counter and tossed them to him. Scrambling, he desperately tried to keep the dirty material away from his white suit, looking a bit like he was doing some perverted kind of chicken dance.
Jeb pursed his lips from the door— his own style was as dark as Amber’s new look. “I’ve never seen you without a cape, Mr. Oliver.”
Putting an arm around his waist, I rolled my friend toward the concession stand. “That’d be like seeing me in a suit.”
“I shudder at the thought,” Oliver said, teetering dangerously on his wh
eels. “Aren’t you supposed to be doing something? Not much point in having me over to watch if you’re going to be here, dear.”
As good as friend as Oliver was— he even ran my Grandma’s magic shop across the street— I was a little wary about handing my baby over to him. Even if it was only for one night.
While I showed him how to work the ovens, he asked, “Shouldn’t you be off with your beau? He has the night off.”
I raised my eyebrow, wondering how Oliver knew that my boyfriend, Detective Wyatt Bennett— and the man who would be very miffed with me if he knew I was here— was off for the night.
“I have my sources.”
“Still nailing that secretary down at the police station, huh?”
“So crude.”
“So true.”
Stoner Stan chose that moment to look up from the hot dogs. His already huge pupils dilated even farther when he got a good look at Oliver and his cape.
“Whoa, man, are you like a magician?”
Exchanging looks, Oliver and I went back to my demonstration. As a matter of fact, Oliver was a warlock— just like that ne’er-do-well Edward Nelson. It was a wonder that he and I got along so well, because I was a non-practicing witch.
In the magic world, that was a bit like being a lame duck.
The regulars started piling in— all decked out in their skates and bellbottoms. I smiled and waved at a few of them, noting their outfits with a smile. Though my father had set up the Wheel to be costumes only, I allowed the teenagers who were too cool for the funk to skate because I was just so nice, and, well, the money didn't hurt either.
Oliver, trying to grab a can of sauce off the counter, slipped and dissolved into a puddle of disgrace of the floor. He immediately tried to get up, reaching for anything that would hold him, but his wheels got the better of him and back he went to the floor.
Leaning back, I watched the show with mild interest, grinning at the naughty words pouring from his mouth. "Now, now, this is a family establishment. Keep it holy."
He spit at me, struggling to stay on his feet like a dog on ice. "You have marijuana in the bathroom!"
"I really don't want to hear that," a voice said behind me.
I spun and grinned at a very put upon Detective Bennett. Wyatt's lips twitched despite himself; he couldn't stay mad at me. I was too adorable.
Rolling into his arms, I ran my finger through his brown, military-cut hair. Eyes the color of a frozen pond looked down at me, unamused to find me with my dancing shoes on.
"Isn't there something you're supposed to be doing?"
I slapped myself on the forehead, starting toward the dance floor. "You're so right! It's conga line time."
Grabbing me around the waist, he dragged me back against his chest, heat burning through the light material that covered my body. I shivered, and I was sure he noticed.
"It's not conga time; it's packing time."
"Objectively," Oliver said from the sidelines, "that doesn't sound like as much fun."
Wyatt shot him a look that had the other man falling silent— but not before shooting me a cheeky grin. My man frowned down at me, clearly weighing my perky resistance to packing against what he knew about me. When his face softened, I knew he'd hit the nail on the head. He always did.
"There's no rush, you know." He shrugged, carefully nonchalant. "You can keep living in your loft above this place. Just seems silly when you spend all your time over at mine."
"I said I'd move in with you, and I will," I said grumpily.
And I would, no matter how it made my stomach shrivel into a cold, little ball. I was used to being on my own, to relying on myself. Moving in with Wyatt shouldn't have felt like a big step with all the time I spent over there, but it did. It felt very... final.
He took my wrist and wheeled me out of there, not giving me a chance to change my mind or say goodbye to my friends. I waved forlornly, smiling when Oliver made a little heart symbol with his hands.
The night was blisteringly hot, even though the sun had set hours ago, but what else could you expect from Florida? Even in a creepy town like Waresville, we were still constantly sweating bullets. A sheen immediately broke out on Wyatt’s forehead, but, having originated in Miami, I was made of sterner stuff.
From the outside, the Wheel didn't look very funky at all. Originally a church, the white siding and schoolhouse feel made a lot of people drive past it, never seeing the neon pink sign I had out front. As with most churches, there'd been a lot of heavenly windows— which just didn't mix with disco lights. My father had painted over them with a deep blue that twinkled in spots that had been scraped over the years, making them look like the night sky.
For almost a decade, this place had been my home. I'd never forget the letter I'd gotten when I was just nineteen, saying that a dad I'd never met had died and had left me a disco skate. It was, weirdly, one of the happiest moments of my life.
Though I was an old pro in skates, I pulled them off before we went up the iron stairs in the back that led to the entrance to my loft. In an attempt to stall, I wiggled my toes through the open spaces in the design in the stairs.
Wyatt made an exasperated noise when he opened my "front" door. "You haven't packed one thing, have you?"
"Not so." I said, "My purse, if you'll note, is right by the door— all ready to go."
"Thank god for small mercies." He pulled one of the flat boxes from under my bed, assembling it and tossing clothes from the ground into it. His expression of abject horror made me giggle. It was a far cry from his bedroom where everything was organized by color and degree of ironing— even the jeans and t-shirts, though I'd only seem him out of a suit a handful of times. And that was usually when he wasn't wearing anything.
"I've never put away laundry in my life. Sure you still want me to move in?"
"Less sure every minute," he said. "Grab a box."
Chapter Two
A couple hours later, the truck Wyatt had borrowed for the ordeal was filled with boxes— most of them containing brightly-colored shorts and wig care products. Jeb watched from the door as we pulled away, keeping one eye on Wyatt and one on the patrons inside. His wariness was understandable, as Detective Bennett had been the one to lock him up for a murder he didn’t commit less than a year ago.
Luckily, I’d been there to solve the case and set the record straight. Whenever I brought up that point to Wyatt, though, he got all grumbly about me involving myself in police matters. Then, we’d fight about the Waresville police force’s inability to put the right person in jail. That was always fun.
When we pulled up to Wyatt’s cozy, Victorian-style house, a newly eleven-year-old boy ran out to meet us. He was a carbon copy of his dad, though his hair was longer and his body lanky from the growth spurt he’d just gone through.
Despite him being a pain in the butt most of the time, Cooper was one of my favorite people in the whole world— which meant a lot from a girl who didn’t really like kids. They were loud, messy, and didn’t appreciate the classics. Luckily, of those three things, only one was true for Cooper.
He put his hands on his hips. “You’re late. Weren’t you supposed to be packed, Harper?”
The resemblance between father and son didn’t stop at the physical.
Wyatt’s mother, the chosen babysitter for the night, brushed past us on the way to her car. She was a refined woman who wore her years well, and her greeting to me was a lot cooler than the one her son received. Being on the receiving end of her dislike had me freezing like a deer in the headlights, but I recovered quickly. Mothers typically didn’t like me.
Turning back, I realized Wyatt was watching the exchange between his mother and me with a frown on his face. Before he could fully think about interfering and trying to fix things in that infuriating way I loved and hated, I shoved a heavy box at him.
“Why don’t you two carry in my things?” I called over my shoulder as I went into the house. “I’m just beat.”
&nb
sp; “My dad doesn’t need help to lift anything,” Cooper said, his chest puffing out with pride as it always did when the phrase “my dad” came into play.
“That’s right, buddy.” Wyatt chuckled. “But maybe you can give me a hand anyway.”
A quick “You got it, Dad” was all he said, and then the kid was moving like a man on a mission, carrying boxes bigger than him past me and into the living room. I watched with mild interest, thinking about the leftover pizza I knew they had in the fridge.
I came back into the kitchen a few minutes later to see Cooper struggling with the biggest box in the bunch, waddling in like a penguin, his face turning comically red. I felt bad then. What kind of parent doesn’t help their kid in a situation like this?
Plopping the piece of pizza down on the top of the huge box he was carrying, I said, “There you go. For strength.”
After getting myself another piece of pizza, I curled up on the couch and watched as my boys went through the boxes, trying to make sense of the disorderly and dirty junk I called my life. Their expressions of mixed terror and confusion were priceless. I was going to turn their neat, little lives upside down.
Maybe this moving in thing wouldn’t be so bad, after all.
______
The next morning, Wyatt dropped me off at the butt crack of dawn because he had to get to work and I needed to pick up my hideous, orange bug. I waved him away before he could wait for me to see if it would start— she was a car who liked to provide a little mystery to those around her. He’d grumble if he were late, even if it was his own fault.
Just as Wyatt disappeared around the corner, I noticed something funny about the door heading into the Funky Wheel. The closed sign was up and the blinds drawn, but the front door didn’t seem to be latched at all.
Déjà vu.
Frowning, I dialed Jeb. He answered on the third ring with a sleepy greeting, and I immediately felt horrible. The man worked two jobs back-to-back; he didn’t need me disrupting what little sleep he could get.