Deviled Egg Murder: Book 6 in The Bandit Hills Series

by Blair Merrin

  Uh-oh.

  Just then my cell rings. It’s Phil.

  “Um, this is going to sound weird, but the amulet thing is not here at the station.”

  I groan. “That doesn’t sound weird at all,” I mutter. Sure enough, the stone amulet sits in my glass display case, the same place it was that morning when Dash grabbed it and put it on. “Never mind, Phil, just come down here as soon as you can.”

  I set my phone down and retrieve the amulet from the case. Somehow just holding it feels eerie. It’s much heavier than I expected it to be, even made from stone. I stow it in my purse, which is now quite full, thanks to the book and the amulet.

  “Will you please tell me exactly what’s going on?” Mom asks.

  “I will, I promise—” Just then the shop phone rings, interrupting me.

  Mom sighs and answers with a pleasant, “Thank you for calling Miss Miscellanea, how can I help you?” She furrows her brow and holds the receiver out to me. “It’s for you.”

  “Yes?” I say into the phone, impatient.

  “I’d like my book back,” Sarah says calmly on the other end.

  “No way. I know what you did, and soon the cops will too.”

  “You don’t know anything.”

  “Then tell me,” I say. “Explain to me why Sally had to die.”

  There’s a long pause. I hear a dog bark in the background. Then Sarah says, “If you don’t give me my book back, bad things are going to happen. You haven’t seen anything yet.”

  She hangs up.

  “I’m sorry, Ma, I gotta run again.” I heft my now-heavy purse onto my shoulder and head for the door. I’m certain that in that pause, in the background, I heard Penny’s dog Duke bark.

  * * *

  I’m halfway to the motel before I realize that I forgot my cell phone on the display case at the shop, and I curse. Phil is supposed to meet me at the shop, and I neglected to tell Mom where I’m going. Great.

  I pull into the motel less than five minutes after my phone call with Sarah, but her van is not in the lot. I pop into the front office.

  “Penny, have you seen Sarah?”

  “She was here a few minutes ago, but she just left. Why do you—”

  “Sorry, gotta go, no time to chat!” I hurry back out to the parking lot before I realize that I don’t know where to go. Where could she have gone? Back to the shop, maybe? If that’s the case…

  “Hey, Cassie.” I turn instinctively at the sound of my name and see Carl waving to me from the open door of his motel room.

  “Carl! Sarah was just here. Did you see her? Did you talk to her?”

  He chuckles at my urgency. “Calm down there. Yeah, she was just here. She told me you’d be coming by, and that you had the amulet.”

  I freeze. My brain skips like a bad CD player. “Wait—what?”

  “The amulet. Do you have it?”

  “Carl, how do you know about the amulet?”

  He smiles at me like I’m a crazy person. “Uh, because I was wearing it the other night and somehow lost it. She said you found it, and you were bringing it back to me.”

  Oh no.

  CHAPTER 16

  “Carl, I need you to tell me everything that you remember about last night concerning the amulet. Leave no detail out, okay?” This time I pace his motel room as he sits in the corner armchair, looking baffled.

  “Cassie, I don’t understand what’s gotten into you. What’s the big deal?”

  “Just… please. It could shed some light on what happened to Sally.”

  Carl sighs heavily. “Fine, fine. Let me see, uh… me and Donovan were making sure that everyone was in place, all the actors for the Scream Asylum. Everyone was ready, except Sarah. Donovan went to look for her, while I waited in the foyer. But then she showed up there, and said she’d wait with me for Donovan to come back. She gave me the amulet and said it would be cool if I wore it to show that I was the official tour guide.”

  “And did you put it on?”

  “Yeah, of course. It’s a cool amulet.”

  “And then what happened?”

  “Um… let me think… uh…” The longer Carl stalls, the bigger the pit in my stomach grows. “Well, I don’t remember everything, but I dropped the amulet somewhere. Anyway, Sarah came into the foyer and told me that everyone was ready, and that I should go get you and your boyfriend, because you guys had left the party.”

  And that’s when he came to retrieve me and Dash from the hallway.

  I take the amulet out of my purse. “Here, Carl.” I hand it to him. “Will you put it on?”

  “Why?”

  “Just… to see how it looks on you.”

  “Everyone in this town is so strange,” he murmurs. He slips the amulet over his head. I watch him carefully; for just a split second, his eyes go vacant and a small shudder runs through him. Then he smiles wide at me. “See? Looks good. Happy now?”

  “Not even a little,” I mutter. “Carl, tell me about Sally.”

  “Oh, Sally.” His smiles disappears, replaced by utter woe, and he breaks down sobbing. “Sally! My Sally, she’s gone forever!”

  “You loved her.”

  “Of course I loved her!” he snaps. “There was no one else in the world for me! It was always Sally!”

  “And Donovan—”

  “Donovan didn’t deserve her!” he shouts angrily. “I did! I was always there for her!” We switch places; he stands and starts pacing quickly, and I take a seat on the edge of the bed, not wanting to be too close to him. “But she wouldn’t have me!”

  “Carl,” I say gently, “what else do you remember? What happened last night when you put on the amulet?”

  He puts both his hands to his temples and squeezes. “I… I can’t remember.”

  “Did you see Sally?”

  “No. Yes! I went to her. I wanted to talk to her in private. The room, with the altar, no one was using it. We talked in there. I told her… I professed my undying love for her.”

  “And…?”

  “And she—she rejected me.” Carl hangs his head, looking like he might start sobbing again, his fists balled at his sides.

  “And then?”

  “No,” he says forcefully. “I can’t remember any more than that.”

  “Carl, you have to try to remember—”

  “I can’t!”

  “Isn’t it obvious?” I turn sharply toward the new voice to find Sarah standing in the doorway to Carl’s motel room. “After that, he killed her.”

  “No, I didn’t!” Carl shouts, his eyes wide in terror. “I would never!”

  Sarah shuts the door gently behind her. “You did, Carl. You killed Sally.”

  “Noooo!” he wails, slumping to the floor in a heap. “I didn’t. I didn’t.”

  Sarah kneels beside him, like a mother calming a child with a tantrum. “You did, Carl. You killed her with the knife I left there.”

  I stand from the bed. “You didn’t kill Sally… you just forced Carl into it.”

  Sarah smoothes Carl’s hair as he sobs in a fetal position on the floor. “I didn’t force anyone into anything. I gave him the amulet. I placed the dagger in the room, and I suggested that Carl should talk to her.”

  “But you knew that with the amulet, he’d be irrational, and that Sally would reject him.”

  “Well, yeah, I knew that.” Sarah rolls her eyes.

  “But why? Did you really hate Sally that much?”

  Sarah stands suddenly, angry. “Of course I did! Donovan was mine first, and she took him from me. And I was okay with that… as long as she treated him right. But no, she turned out to be all about the money. She was going to leave him when she found out he was going bankrupt. Such a shallow, superficial excuse for a woman! She was going to break his heart and leave him broken and alone.” She shakes her head. “He doesn’t deserve that.”

  “So instead you make him a widower? How does that make sense?”

  “I love him,” she says simply. “I
’d rather see him grieve than question his own worth for the rest of his life.”

  “All of you—and I mean all of you—are certifiably insane,” I tell her. “And that’s coming from a woman who talks to ghosts.”

  “You wouldn’t understand,” she says scornfully. “You, with your perfect little shop, and your perfect little boyfriend, in your perfect little town.”

  I almost snort; my life is far from what I would consider perfect. But then again, compared to these people…

  “Why would you tell me all this?” I ask her. “Even if you didn’t kill Sally, you’d still be an accessory.”

  Sarah laughs. “Come on, Cassie. A cursed amulet? No one is going to believe you, and you have no proof. Carl here is going to forget all of this as soon as he takes off the amulet.” She holds out her hand. “I’ll take my book back now.”

  I sigh. “Alright.” I reach into my purse, but instead of taking out the book, I take out a tiny silver box, small enough to fit in my palm.

  “What’s that?” Sarah asks.

  “This is a digital tape recorder. I used it once before to get a witch to confess to murder. It’s been recording since I got here.” I had hoped, upon arrival, that I’d find Sarah here and coax a confession out of her—which, in a way, worked according to plan.

  The part that doesn’t work for me is Sarah clucking her tongue and pulling a long, thin dagger with runic letters inscribed on the blade from her own handbag.

  “I’d really hoped it wouldn’t come to this,” she tells me. “I actually liked you quite a bit.”

  CHAPTER 17

  “It’s part of a set,” Sarah explains, examining the blade of the dagger. “I’m sure you saw the other ones in my van, but this one is my favorite. It’s also the knife that Carl here used to kill Sally.”

  From his spot on the floor, Carl moans.

  “What, you’re going to kill me too?” Somehow I find my voice, even with the threat of the dagger hanging heavy in the air.

  “Me? No,” Sarah says. “Carl is going to do it.”

  “I am?” he says timidly.

  Sarah kneels beside him. “Carl, you love me like a sister, don’t you?”

  He nods emphatically. “Of course I do.”

  “And if you don’t do this, you’re going to go to jail for a long, long time. She knows too much.”

  “But I…”

  “Shh.” Sarah strokes his hair again. “It’s okay. Once you take off the amulet, you won’t remember anything, and we can all be happy again. I promise.” She hands the dagger out to him. He hesitates, but he takes it and stands.

  “Don’t listen to her Carl!” I shout at him. “She’s using you to save herself!”

  “I’m sorry, Cassie,” he says, stepping toward me.

  “She made you kill Sally! That wasn’t your choice!”

  “I know. But she’s right; I love her like a sister. And I have to do what’s right.”

  Carl raises the dagger high above his head… and then he drops it to the floor.

  “What are you doing?!” Sarah screeches.

  In the next instant, Carl lunges at her, tackling her to the ground.

  At the same time, the door to the motel room suddenly splinters open and Phil bursts in, his pistol drawn.

  For a moment he’s flabbergasted by the scene: Carl atop Sarah, pinning her down, and me standing near the bed with my hands in the air.

  “Nobody… move… a muscle,” he says.

  * * *

  It’s actually not as hard as one might think to convince the sheriff of a place like Bandit Hills that a cursed amulet was responsible for a murder. Unfortunately for Carl, when he took off the amulet, he did not remember anything, but the fact that he had a big blank spot in his mind (from chatting with me amiably in the room, to suddenly being sprawled on the floor shouting about “what’s right”) gave him enough pause to at least listen to a supernatural explanation.

  There was also the fact that I have the whole thing recorded.

  Poor Carl. He had to learn all over again that he had actually been the one to kill Sally. He didn’t want to believe it, but he admitted later that as the police played back my recording, snippets of his memory came flashing back, and even though he was under the influence of an artifact imbued with some sort of dark magic, he confessed and went quietly. Poor guy.

  Sarah was arrested as an accessory to murder, for conspiracy to commit murder, and for assault (as it turns out, she was the one who clocked Donovan in the back of the head, just before giving the amulet to Carl).

  She eventually confessed to the whole thing. She’d been planning it out for more than a month leading up to the grand opening of the Scream Asylum. The big wrench in her gears was Donovan dropping the amulet outside and Dash getting involved.

  Sarah refused to tell the police anything about the amulet or how it had come into her possession. I still had her book, so I asked Xander to translate the rest of the information on the page that had the drawing of the star and the eye. Turns out that a few centuries ago, a practitioner of dark magic called upon a demon called Mara (or at least that’s how it translates to English), an otherworldly entity also known as “the tempter,” and imbued the amulet with some of her power. At least that’s how the story goes. I have to admit, I had a bit of a hard time believing it, even if it doesn’t seem like the leap from ghosts to demons is a big one. On the other hand, I’d seen what the amulet could do firsthand.

  The dagger, the recording, and the amulet were all admitted into evidence, and thankfully, the amulet stayed put. It didn’t reappear in my shop anymore. I don’t have an explanation for how that happened, but that’s Bandit Hills for ya. I’d like to assume that it was Sally reaching out to me, as spirits are wont to do. Sometimes they’re not quite as… vocal, than others. All that really matters is that the amulet is safely locked away, and hopefully will stay that way.

  Donovan left town quietly two days after Sarah and Carl were arrested. I can’t imagine what he’ll do now, after his wife was killed and his two supposed best friends were the murderers, but I really hope that he picks up the pieces. All I know for sure is that the Scream Asylum is no more. In fact, all of the ghastly props and machines were just kind of left behind, with our tourism board promising to do something with them by next Halloween. In the meantime, I guess the sanitarium will be spookier than ever.

  Phil released Dash from the holding cell the first chance he got after arresting Sally and Carl. Of course I made sure that I was there. I never saw Dash smile wider, and I never got a hug longer or tighter than when he was able to step out of that police station.

  “Are you okay?” I asked him. “How was your time in the big house?”

  He stared wistfully into the distance. “I’m a changed man, Cassie. I’m institutionalized now. I don’t know if I can survive on the outside.”

  “You were in jail for like ten hours.”

  His grin dissipated and he looked me right in the eye. “Seriously though, I can’t thank you enough for what you did. I said it before, and I’ll say it again: You’d make one heck of a private investigator.”

  “I think I’ll have to pass,” I admitted. “It’s way too stressful. I’ll have to stick with running my own store almost singlehandedly, thanks.”

  “Well, how do I make it up to you then?”

  “You can start by buying me dinner at Bonnie’s place.”

  “Sounds great. I want to hear this whole sordid tale. Oh, wait, they take your wallet when they lock you up. Let me go get that.”

  “Step on it, man! I’m starving.”

  Less than ten minutes later we parked in front of the shop and tugged on the door to Bonnie’s Bodacious BBQ… to find it locked.

  “Weird. She should be open. And the lights are on.” I knocked on the glass front door until Bonnie, looking somewhat cross, appeared from the kitchen in the back. She softened a little when she saw it was me, and opened the door just a few inches.

  �
��Sorry, guys, I’m closed tonight,” she said quickly. She looked terrible; the bags under her eyes were deeper than ever, and her skin was sallow and pale. “Xander finished translating those recipes in the back of my cookbook, so I’m working on some new stuff.”

  “Yeah? How many are you trying?” I asked her.

  “All of them,” she said curtly, and closed the door again, leaving me and Dash to stare at each other blankly.

  “That was weird.”

  “Super weird.” I was a little worried about Bonnie, and mentally made myself a note to talk to her son Steven in the morning. “Come on, let’s go to Tank’s.”

  On the car ride to Tank’s Diner, I casually mentioned, “You know, Halloween is still a few days away. We have some time to plan something fun.”

  “No, thank you,” Dash said. “I’ve had my Halloween fun. I’m looking forward to a nice, quiet holiday, sitting out in front of the shop and handing out candy, if you don’t mind.”

  “Not at all. That sounds lovely.”

  We drove on in silence until we got to the diner. I suspected that Dash was thinking the same thing I was. Halloween was still a few days away; there was still plenty of time for more craziness to occur. This is, after all, Bandit Hills.

  THE END

  Table of Contents

  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