Deviled Egg Murder: Book 6 in The Bandit Hills Series
Page 1
TABLE OF CONTENTS
DEVILED EGG MURDER
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
Deviled
Egg
Murder
Book Six in the Bandit Hills Series
By
Blair Merrin
Copyright 2016 Summer Prescott Books
All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication nor any of the information herein may be quoted from, nor reproduced, in any form, including but not limited to: printing, scanning, photocopying or any other printed, digital, or audio formats, without prior express written consent of the copyright holder.
**This book is a work of fiction. Any similarities to persons, living or dead, places of business, or situations past or present, is completely unintentional.
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BANDIT HILLS
BOOK 6
SUMMER PRESCOTT BOOKS
CHAPTER 1
“Excuse me, miss?”
I’m standing atop a four-foot ladder, both hands over my head as I try to tape up a string of cellophane bats in a corner of my secondhand shop when a customer decides that it’s the ideal moment to ask me questions. And I mean I’m standing atop the ladder, on the topmost rung, one rung above the little vector man warning sticker that might as well say, Hey, idiot, don’t go past this rung or you’re going to fall and break your neck.
“Yes, sir?” I ask, daring to smile down at him as I further wobble on the already-wobbling ladder beneath me.
The guy in question has tourist written all over him. He wears a Bandit Hills hooded sweatshirt that he no doubt picked up at Tank’s gift shop. The fact that he called me miss is further evidence that he’s not from around these parts; everyone in town knows me as Cass, Cassie, Cassandra, or “that weird chick that’s always involved in murder cases.”
Yeah, I kind of have a reputation.
The tourist guy, he holds up an item plucked from one of the curio cabinets arranged around Miss Miscellanea. That’s the name of my shop—Miss Miscellanea, the go-to depot for all things secondhand and, lately, supernatural. The item he’s holding is a brass candlestick nearly two feet long, burnished to a high sheen.
The tourist lowers his voice conspiratorially and asks, “Does this item have… a history?”
I climb down from my ladder and whisper, “Oh, yes. That particular candlestick came from a walled-off room in a basement of a mansion that used to stand here in Bandit Hills, where two brothers murdered their younger sister for attempting to abscond with her lover.” I glance over my shoulder and tell him, “Her spirit once haunted these very walls.”
The tourist’s eyes widen and a smile breaks over his face. “I’ll take it,” he announces.
Boom. That’s how you make a sale. And for the record, I didn’t lie to him—not one bit.
See, Halloween is easily the busiest season in Bandit Hills. We do for Halloween what Rockefeller Center does for Christmas—we go all out. Pull out all the stops. Go hog-wild. Whatever you want to call it, Halloween is our bread and butter. The tourists flock into town in droves, hoping for an authentic experience. It’s not that difficult to get around here; Bandit Hills, Tennessee is like Woodstock for the paranormal. Of course, Halloween is when most people crave that spooky stuff.
Our tourism board plans all year just for the Halloween season. No one is excluded, and no one wants to be—not even a secondhand shop owner. This time of year, tourists are looking for something unique, something occult, something creepy, and that’s where Mom came through big-time. My mom is my only employee, and a darn good one at that. She made sure to hit eBay hard and ruthlessly to get in some super-strange merchandise, and the tourists have been eating it up—so quickly, in fact, that Mom’s current full-time job is to get more stuff shipped our way ASAP.
Which leaves me all on my own to decorate, take care of customers, answer tourists’ questions, man the register, and keep Kodiak, my mom’s fearsome Pomeranian, from biting any ankles.
As I ring the tourist guy up, he tells me all about how he and his fiancée are here in the hopes of seeing a real live ghost. I smile and humor him; it’s not that I don’t care, it’s just the same story as every other tourist that rolls into town (also, I really want to point out that live ghost is oxymoronic).
“In that case, you’ll definitely want to spend a night in the motel down the road here. It’s the first building you’ll see on the way into town. Ask for Penny; she’ll make sure you meet our friend Billy.” I give him a wink. Billy is a spirit in Penny Harrigan’s motel that likes to nab guests’ wallets and trinkets and hide them under mattresses and in air vents. Honestly, if anyone wanted a real ghost meet-up, all they need to do is leave their expensive jewelry out in the open.
Another sale made, another happy customer. Like I said, I didn’t lie about the brass candlestick; that really was an item from a mansion in which a young woman was killed. I could have added that the brother who killed her also bronzed her skull, and that the skull made its way into my shop, and that I had an integral role in solving her murder… but that’s a long story, and I have to decorate the shop for Halloween.
I climb back up my ladder, carefully, and finish stringing up the cellophane bats. I really should have decorated a week ago, like everyone else, but I was too busy with… well, if I’m being honest, it was a mix of sheer laziness and actually getting to spend quality time with my boyfriend, Dash. Over the few months that we’ve been dating, we haven’t really gotten a whole lot of time together in which we’re not either working or in the middle of a murder case.
Dash is Bandit Hills’ only private eye (which sounds way cooler than private investigator, in my opinion), and a darn good one at that. The best way to describe him is a nerd stuck in a cool guy’s body. Nobody would believe me that the tall, lean fellow with the well-coifed hair and boyish good looks would go absolutely gaga if I told him I’d play D&D with him or took him to the new Star Trek movie.
For reasons that no one can seem to figure out, there’s been a rash of bizarre murders in the Bandit Hills area in the
past several months, and Dash and I seem to usually find ourselves in the thick of it. Somehow. (It’s definitely not because I’m overly curious and quite good at wheedling my way into situations. No, sir.) Solving murders has kind of become our thing, the way wine tasting or picnics in the park might be other couples’ thing.
“Need a hand there?”
I glance down from my precarious perch and, lo and behold, Dash is looking up at me with a smile. Jeez, I hadn’t even heard the bells on the door chime.
“I got this. Almost finished.”
“Cass, you have like eight customers. Go help them, I’ll finish this.” He puts out a hand to help me down from the ladder, and I take it. What a guy. “You should really think about taking on some extra help for the season,” he adds as he climbs the ladder in my place.
“Halloween’s less than a week away. There’s no time to interview anyone.” He’s right; I should have hired on someone else. Ordinarily Mom and I would be enough to handle things, but she’s currently in the back office, clack-clacking away on a keyboard as she outbids teenagers for black candles and dried monkey carcasses. You know, stuff people want.
I put on my biggest smile and glide around the store, helping customers and answering questions (the usual, like where’s the best place to get a burger? and where in town did the most people die?) and once I’ve gotten everyone taken care of, I take a seat on my stool behind the register for a quick breather while Dash hangs a fake skeleton, one of those anatomy-class deals, from a noose in the center of the store.
Of course, as soon as I sit down, the chime on the door rings out to announce a newcomer.
A bizarre aroma hits my nose first, and then a zombie shuffles in.
CHAPTER 2
“Mmm… Brains…” Bonnie mutters as she shambles in holding a steaming tray in front of her.
Bonnie owns a boarding ranch on the outskirts of town, but recently she turned to a new passion, cooking, and opened Bonnie’s Bodacious BBQ right next-door to my shop… which is awesome, because it means I get to be a taste-tester whenever she concocts something new.
What I mistook at first as zombie makeup is actually some kind of red jelly or jam smeared on her cheeks, and she has deep dark bags under her eyes.
Because we’re friends, I tell her candidly, “Bonnie, you look pretty terrible.”
“Nonsense,” she says. “I feel great! I mean, I haven’t been getting as much sleep as I could be, but the shop’s been a huge success. Can’t stop now!” She laughs a little, her eyes a bit too wide.
My first instinct is to suggest that she hire on some help (hypocritical of me, I know) but I also know she won’t do it. Bonnie’s newfound culinary skills came largely from a handwritten cookbook that I found in a box and gave to her without a second thought. It turned out that the recipes inside were nothing short of masterpieces, and as a result, Bonnie won’t let the book out of her sight for anyone—not even her son Steven.
“Anyway,” she tells me as Dash floats over, interested, “I’ve got something for you to try.” She lifts the aluminum foil off the tray and I recoil in disgust—even though the smell wafting off of it is magnificent, there appears to be a dozen small brains on her tray. “I had Steven make me a muffin mold that looked like brains, and then I smothered them in currant jam for the… you know, gore. Here, try one!”
I pick one up and take a bite. As usual, Bonnie’s food is spectacular. Her corn muffins taste more like biscuits, buttery and flaky and just melt-in-your-mouth goodness. The currant jam—which I identify as the substance smeared on Bonnie’s cheeks—is a solid balance of tangy and sweet, with just a little bit of spice, something like red pepper flakes, perhaps.
“It’s delicious,” I tell her around a mouthful. “But I’m not going to sugarcoat it—these look super gross.”
“Thank you!” Bonnie gushes. “That’s what I was going for.” At my confused expression, she elaborates. “I’m catering the Halloween party down at the old sanitarium tomorrow night. That’s where they’re doing the big haunted house attraction? They’re having a big party there? This isn’t ringing any bells, isn’t it? I told Dash about it just yesterday.”
I turn to Dash, who looks away sheepishly, and I snatch the rest of his flaky brain right out of his hand. “Now you have to watch me eat this and think about what you’ve done,” I tell him.
“Hey!” he cries out. “You know why I didn’t tell you about it.”
Bonnie must sense her moment to exit, because she backs toward the door with her tray. “Well, I’ll leave you kids to it. Hope to see you tomorrow!” She exits hastily, no doubt to cook up a frenzy of, I don’t know, severed fingers or something.
I stare Dash down accusingly as I finish off his muffin-brain. Of course I know why he didn’t tell me about the party, and it has everything to do with the sanitarium. See, even though Dash was born and bred in Bandit Hills, he’s not very comfortable with the paranormal. He’s like Scooby to my Velma—when I say, let’s go check it out, he’s all, ruh-roh! and already trying to run away.
A short while back, I dared him to spend a night in the old sanitarium, which is not only spooky as all get-out, but is very legitimately haunted, as we experienced firsthand. I imagine he has no desire to ever step foot in there again.
“I’m not going,” he says plainly, as if reading my mind.
“There’s gonna be lots of people—”
“Nope.”
“And Bonnie’s food—”
“Uh-uh.”
“And cool costumes—”
“No way, Jose.”
“Fine.” I shrug. “Maybe Xander Cruz will take me instead.”
Dash narrows his eyes. Xander is just a friend, but he’s a ridiculously handsome friend, and Dash is keenly aware of the opinion of the female population of Bandit Hills toward him. He opens his mouth to say something, but the door chimes again and in walks a customer. Or so I think.
The woman is in her mid-twenties, or at least looks it, with wavy auburn hair and too much eye makeup. (Kids these days call it smoky eye. I call it raccoon impersonation.) She wears tight black leggings and a gray sweater cinched with a big black belt. I immediately pick up on an air of confidence that’s hard to miss; she strides in and looks around like she’s trying to decide whether or not she wants to buy the place.
“Hi. Welcome to Miss Miscellanea,” I tell her. “Can I help you find something?”
“I certainly hope so.” She smiles, revealing dazzling teeth. She puts out a hand and I shake it, confused. “I’m Sarah. This store is absolutely charming! Very rustic chic.”
I blink a couple of times. I don’t know what rustic chic is, but it doesn’t sound much to me like a great thing to be. “Uh, thank you. I think.”
“Excuse me for saying,” Dash steps up beside me, “but you look really familiar.”
“Oh, you probably recognize me from a commercial I did a few months back, for that law firm that handles hit-and-run cases? You know…” She puts her hands on her hips and takes on an expression of mock-woe. “‘My insurance won’t cover me. How am I ever going to pay for this?’”
Dash snaps his fingers and grins. “Yes! That’s exactly it.”
Me, I’m totally lost. I don’t watch a lot of TV, and furthermore, I still have no idea what she wants.
“Always nice to meet a fan,” Sarah gushes. She touches Dash’s arm. “Are you the owner?”
“No, that would be me,” I tell her, smiling as sweetly as I can under the circumstances.
“I see! I should have known. This place definitely has a woman’s touch.” She’s laying it on pretty thick, and in that moment, I have a good idea what Sarah wants. “Well, I was wondering if you were looking for any help during the Halloween season. I’ve been all over town, and no one seems to be hiring right now.”
“Huh,” Dash says. “As a matter of fact, she is—”
“Quiet, you,” I shush him. “Sarah, you’re not from around here, are you?”
“I’m sorry, the what?”
“Scream Queens. The actresses hired to play victims in the haunted houses? Here, watch this.” She puts her hands on her cheeks and before I can say anything, she sucks in a breath and lets out an earsplitting, soul-piercing, genuinely-terrifying scream.
Then she smiles again.
“Bravo!” Dash says, clapping.
“Wow. That was… loud,” I say, my ears still ringing.
“Thank you. Unfortunately, I’m doing it more for the exposure than the pay… I’m not making enough to cover my expenses. So, are you looking for part-time help?”
I hesitate, probably for a bit too long. On the one hand, this Sarah seems a bit full of herself. I’m not sure how well I can tolerate having her around, even part-time. On the other hand, Dash is right; I could really use some help.
“Dash, sidebar,” I say. We retreat to a far corner of the shop.
“What’s the problem?” he whispers. “You needed help, and help arrived. This is fate.”
“It’s coincidence. She seems a little… I don’t know… vain.”
“That’s ridiculous. Besides, it would only be part-time.”
“Fine. I’ll hire her on if you take me to the Halloween party tomorrow night.” I smile.
He doesn’t. “Cass, that’s not fair!”
“Life’s not fair.”
“I don’t even have a costume.”
“You’ll think of something.”
He groans. “Fine. We’ll go to the party. But I don’t want to stay all night, and—”
“Deal!” I head back to Sarah, who inspects the gaudy costume jewelry I keep in the glass case up front. “Sarah, you’ve got yourself a part-time job. Welcome aboard.”
She shakes my hand with both of hers. “Oh, thank you! You won’t regret it, Miss… uh, what’s your name?”