Stormy Day Mysteries 5-Book Cozy Murder Mystery Series Bundle

by Angela Pepper

I patted the plastic carrier. “Don’t worry about the cat,” I said. “I’ll drive over to the house and take care of this. Then we’ll be even for you getting me the discount on the furniture. It’s the least I can do to repay you.”

  Her nostrils flared as she eyed me with suspicion. A moment passed. I held my ground in silence.

  The ladder squeaked as my employee dusted the upper shelves and pretended she wasn’t listening.

  Finally, Pam emitted a sharp acquiescence. “Fine.” We had a deal. She walked toward the exit, calling back over her shoulder, “I just wish other people would take their promises and obligations seriously.”

  I followed her outside, onto the snowy sidewalk.

  “Trust me with this,” I said. “I can get one little cat to a veterinary appointment.”

  She held up one gloved hand and cut me off before I could bring up my credentials. “Just get the cat. Don’t go snooping around.”

  “Snooping around?”

  She cleared her throat, as though she was about to say something.

  I waited.

  The snow that had begun falling an hour earlier was getting denser. The snowflakes were thick, delicately weighty on my eyelashes. White crystals settled on the top of Pam’s head, like a melting coronet. She was pretty, which was probably what initially drew my father’s eye. In the soft diffuse light of the snowy day, with the feathery decorative collar of her jacket becoming frosted, she reminded me of a regal character in a fairy tale.

  I brushed away the snowflakes on my eyelashes. “Pam, when it’s snowing like this, do you ever feel like you’re a tiny figure inside a snow globe?”

  “No.” Without further comment, Pam turned around and walked up the street, muttering about errands and unfinished business.

  I returned to the store for the pet carrier and my jacket, rolled my eyes at Brianna, and left to fulfill my part of the bargain. I had to chauffeur a cat to the vet. How much trouble could that be?

  Chapter 3

  There’s no place like home, and there’s no street quite like the one you grew up on. For me, it was Warbler Street, named after the small, vocal birds. One Christmas, my sister and I were given a beautifully illustrated encyclopedia of local birds. I loved looking at all the warblers and picking which one I felt the street was named for. My favorite was Dendroica petechia, the Yellow Warbler, a bright harbinger of spring.

  Spring and summer could never come fast enough when I was a kid. I steered the car past the corner where my sister and I had once sold lemonade by the glass on hot, sultry, endless days. Warbler Street was our jungle gym. We’d play until dusk, hiding and seeking, marking the sidewalks with chalk, refusing to come inside until my father threatened to put out an APB and have us arrested.

  Now, the trees and houses seemed to have shrunk. With a blanket of snow over everything, my sunny memories seemed even more precious.

  I parked in front of my father’s house. The interior lights were off. Knowing he wasn’t there, inside the home, gave me an uneasy feeling, like a preview of some future I didn’t want to consider.

  I pulled my phone from my purse and called him. We’d spoken before my meeting with the real estate agent, so while the phone rang and rang, I worried he’d turned off his phone in preparation for surgery.

  He finally answered with a cheerful greeting, his voice colored by his mild Irish brogue. “Talk fast. They’re coming to wheel me away.”

  A lump in my throat road-blocked my words. Hospital noises echoed in the background. Someone asked if he was warm enough or needed a blanket. The mental image of my brave, strong father in a blue-green smock, being wheeled into an operating room, took me by surprise. Painful emotions surged through my chest.

  “You still there?” he asked. “Stormy, you should have seen the look on the old doc’s face when I gave him his gift, a brand new measuring tape. I told him I wanted both legs the same length, or else every anniversary of the surgery, I’ll come to his house and kick him with whichever leg’s longest.”

  “Oh, Dad.” I shook my head and let a laugh ease my pain.

  “Don’t you worry about a thing. This doc has a good sense of humor, and he’s got an excellent success rate. I’ll be fine. What’s going on with you?”

  “I’m parked in front of your place.”

  “The house is still there? Pam hasn’t burned it down?”

  I quickly told him about that morning’s visit and my current mission. “Remind me, Dad, what’s the cat’s name?”

  He chuckled. “There’s no point in naming something that doesn’t come when you call it.” He told me to hang on while he spoke to someone there with him. “Showtime,” he said when he returned to the line. “Thanks for taking care of Pam for me. I owe you one.”

  “Good luck.” I would have told him I loved him, but he was already gone.

  I put the phone in my purse. My chest ached if I held still, so I seamlessly moved on to my next task, grabbing the pet carrier and supplies. Everything would go well, I told myself. He was strong and healthy, plus the orthopedic surgeon had a brand-new measuring tape.

  The cat was sitting on my father’s porch, looking pretty, all long legs, sleek gray fur, and elegant jade eyes.

  I opened the pouch of cat treats as I approached. The goodies had a strong salmon aroma. I blew over the pouch as I shook it, sending the smell to the cat’s sensitive nose. The gray tail swished, but the cat stayed in place.

  “What’s the matter? Cold feet? The snow must be cold on your little toes.”

  The cat yawned, bored with my simplistic patter.

  “Cut me some slack,” I said. “At least I’m not yelling at you, like Pam would.”

  The cat’s eyes narrowed at the mention of Pam.

  “Not a fan? You and me both,” I said under my breath.

  I glanced around, feeling embarrassed about talking to a cat. I saw nobody, but the back of my neck tickled as if I was being watched. I opened the door of the pet carrier, sprinkled a few snacks inside, and got closer to the porch.

  The cat’s dark gray ears twitched. It ignored me and looked off at something else.

  I followed the cat’s gaze over to the neighbor’s yard. A creepy face, pale and round, stared back at me. Startled, I dropped the pet carrier with a clatter. But there was no pale-faced person watching me. Just a snowman. He wore a formal top hat and a jaunty red scarf, like the classic snowman you’d see on a greeting card.

  While I was distracted, the cat whipped past me in a streak of gray, darkly visible against the bright snow.

  I grabbed the carrier and gave chase, stumbling through the overgrown hedge between my father’s yard and the neighbor’s. The cat led me straight to the dapper snowman, scaling its body in bounding leaps. The cat scrambled up, toppling the snowman’s black hat and then taking the hat’s place, right on top of the head. From its new vantage point, about six feet above the ground, the cat surveyed the neighborhood and began licking one elegant front paw.

  Undaunted, I put the pet carrier on top of my head and proceeded calmly. Sniffing the salmon-flavored treats, the cat strolled right into my trap. I closed the cage door and pumped my free hand in a fist.

  I set down the carrier and picked up the top hat. Feeling whimsical, I plopped the hat on my own head and pulled out my phone for a snazzy self-portrait. This would be the perfect image to show my ex I was having a great time and had made the right decision in walking away from everything we’d built. In the photo, I looked rosy-cheeked and happy. The snowman, however, had a crooked grin that made him seem creepy.

  I decided to take a better picture once I’d fixed his crooked grin. I rearranged a few of the pebbles that formed his smile, but that wasn’t enough. It wasn’t his grin that was off-kilter but his whole head.

  Meanwhile, the cat had finished the snacks and meowed impatiently inside the carrier.

  “Just a sec,” I said. “I’m giving this snowman a face-lift, so to speak.”

  I grasped the base of the
perfectly round ball forming the snowman’s head and pushed up. The head didn’t budge. The cat meowed again, sounding irritated.

  “I know we don’t have time,” I muttered to the cat. “But I want my old friends to see that my life is perfect, and a crooked snowman face doesn’t cut it.”

  I gave the snowman three firm karate chops to the neck, through the red scarf. The ball jiggled as it came loose. I grabbed hold and gave it a solid tug up. The snowy ball split in my hands, revealing a core that was definitely not snow. Stunned, I dropped the two hollowed-out halves.

  Sticking up from the upper body was another head, a human head. I blinked in astonishment. This had to be a prank by neighborhood kids. Some clever brat had re-purposed a Halloween costume to give someone a scare.

  But rubber masks usually resemble famous people, not my father’s cranky neighbor, Mr. Murray Michaels. This face was highly detailed. It even had eyelashes. The chill in my hands spread through my entire body. This wasn’t a Halloween mask that looked like Mr. Michaels.

  Frozen inside the snowman was the actual Mr. Michaels.

  I stumbled backward, sucking in air, preparing to run or scream or both. But I didn’t scream, and I didn’t run. Something propelled me forward, slowly. I reached out and gently touched the man’s cheek. The flesh was cold, frozen solid, and he was not just dead but very dead. If there were such a classification as very dead, Murray Michaels would be in that group, along with mummies from Egypt and those cadavers that are plasticized for scientific display.

  His face showed no bruising or marks, and no blood was visible on the surrounding snow. I carefully brushed away some of the snow around his neck, jerking my hand back when I touched something unexpected. It was just the collar of his shirt. I shook my head at myself for being jumpy before leaning in to examine some dark purple lines on his neck.

  Behind me, a man yelled, “Hey, lady! Get away from there!”

  Chapter 4

  I whirled around, and something dark came at me. I jumped back, raising my arms in a defensive posture against what, a split-second later, I realized was just the top hat tumbling off my head.

  The man yelled again, “What’s going on?”

  He stood on the walkway, only fifteen feet away. He wore a blue uniform and looked familiar. I couldn’t recall his name, but I assumed I must have met him through my father. He was reaching under his dark vest, about to pull something from a pocket or holster.

  “Don’t you dare shoot me,” I said.

  “Why would I shoot you?” He made eye contact with me briefly before shifting his gaze to the frozen face I stood beside.

  The man in blue’s jaw lowered slowly, his eyes bugging out at the same speed, as though all his facial features were attached to one control switch. He fumbled the object he’d been reaching for, which wasn’t a gun at all. It was just a phone, and he dropped it in the snow. With a mild curse, he got down on his knees, which were bare. Despite the winter weather, the man wore knee-length shorts with a dark stripe on the outside seam.

  Being the daughter of a police officer, I should have known better and recognized the man’s uniform as that of the US Postal Service, but I’d been so shocked by the discovery of the frozen head. The mail carrier continued to fumble his phone, chasing it clumsily through the snow.

  Without looking up, he asked, “Lady, is that who I think it is?”

  I looked directly at the head, just to be certain.

  “Yes, I believe it’s Murray Michaels. I just saw him two weeks ago, when my father threw a party. Mr. Michaels came over to complain about the noise.”

  I stared at the lifeless face, searching for some clue in the fuzzy memory of our last interaction. Mr. Michaels had been cranky that night, but that wasn’t out of the ordinary for the grumpy loner who never said anything nice to a neighbor, unless he was trying to get a bargain at a yard sale. That night, my father had asked him to come in, but he declined, to nobody’s surprise.

  “Well?” the mail carrier said.

  “I should have invited him to the party,” I said with sadness. “We could have been nicer.”

  “I’m calling the police,” the mail carrier said, locking his eyes on mine. “That is, assuming my phone still works.”

  He didn’t look down at his phone. He stood motionless on the walkway, blocking the exit route to my car.

  A minute passed, and neither of us budged.

  “Go ahead and call,” I said.

  His blue eyes stayed coolly locked on mine. “Maybe you should make the call. Go ahead.”

  A terrifying thought blossomed in the back of my mind. What if this man had yelled at me to step away because he knew the body was there? What if he was the killer?

  The fair-haired mailman was a big guy—tall, with a surprisingly husky figure for someone who walked all day. By comparison, I was much smaller and weaker. My best option was to run. If I stayed, I would need a weapon, but the pointiest thing within reach was the snowman’s nose, down by my feet, and I didn’t think a carrot would do much for defense, even when frozen.

  “You look twitchy,” the mail carrier said. “How do I know you’re not dangerous?” A bead of sweat rolled out of his sandy-blond hair and ran down the side of his round face.

  I replied, “You’re the one who looks nervous. You’re sweating all over the place.”

  He pulled out a kerchief and mopped his brow. “Lady, this is normal,” he said. “I run hot.”

  “That would explain the shorts,” I said.

  Something pulled on my jeans. The young cat, who didn’t sense the gravity of the situation, had reached through the lattices of the pet carrier’s door and snagged the leg of my jeans with sharp claws.

  The mail carrier’s jaw dropped. His eyes bulged again, this time at the plastic pet carrier.

  He demanded, “What are you doing to that poor cat?”

  I picked up the carrier. “We have a vet appointment.”

  “Isn’t that Mr. Day’s cat?”

  “Good eye. It certainly is. Mr. Finnegan Day is my father.”

  He gave me a sidelong look. “And what’s your name?”

  “Stormy.”

  He nodded knowingly, as though he’d gotten the confirmation he was looking for. He finally used his phone, jabbing the screen while his face reddened.

  “Congratulations, lady,” he said to me, holding the receiver of the phone below his double chin. “You’ve just incriminated yourself. This is my route, my street. Mr. Day’s daughter is named Sunny. You got the name wrong, you criminal.”

  “Sunny is my sister. There are two of us.”

  His eyes twitched, but he didn’t soften his glare. He spoke into his phone. “Hello? I need to report a homicide, as well as a suspect.”

  I objected, “Suspect? I’m a witness, same as you.”

  His nostrils flared, and he kept talking. “Yes, the suspect is a medium-sized white woman. She was wearing a top hat when I arrived at the scene, but she’s taken it off now. She’s also kidnapping a cat.” He paused before adding, “No, I haven’t been drinking.”

  I took one more look at Mr. Michaels. This time, I caught details I hadn’t noticed before, including the narrow crescent of one eyeball, visible through relaxed-looking eyelids. He seemed to be on the verge of waking up. My stomach lurched. I pitched forward and tossed up that morning’s muffin and coffee.

  The mail carrier kept talking on the phone, describing the scene and giving dispatch the address.

  Now that I was lighter by the weight of one modest breakfast, the urge to run away hit me hard. My vehicle was nearby.

  My father always taught me to be safe, and if my instincts told me to run, I should run, and never mind the possibility of being rude or hurting someone’s feelings. He always talked about how some attacks happen partly because the victim is too polite to bolt, and while he wanted me to be a polite person in general, it ought to never put me in danger.

  I ran to my car and opened the door. To my surpris
e, I still had the pet carrier in one hand. I placed it on the passenger seat as I scrambled in. A minute later, I was driving, on the run, but from what?

  The cat meowed, demanding to be let out of cat prison.

  I turned the car left and then right, my mind a swirl of paranoia, panic, and bizarre thoughts. I didn’t want to believe a person in Misty Falls had been murdered, so my imagination offered up alternative possibilities. What if Mr. Michaels had been hiding in the snowman to play a prank on someone? What if he’d climbed in there and then had a heart attack? Or fallen asleep and froze to death?

  No, that was crazy. I’d heard of people going through major personality changes in their older years, but I couldn’t imagine a shift that dramatic, transforming a cranky man into a prankster.

  The cat meowed again.

  “I know,” I said. “Today has turned out horrible.”

  I kept driving, my eyes on the road but my mind elsewhere. Who would kill Mr. Michaels? After his brief appearance at my father’s party, there’d been some discussion of the man. He’d been squabbling recently with my father over the property line, which was part of a battle that had been carrying on for the better part of two decades. Pam had mentioned Murray Michaels becoming, in her words, an old nuisance. She said he’d been stirring up trouble with some of the downtown businesses, causing problems at several places, from the costume rental shop to Ruby’s Treasure Trove. He hadn’t been into my gift shop that I could recall, so I didn’t know what the fuss had been. She also mentioned him seeing a woman, a scandalously young woman who worked at the Olive Grove. An old friend of mine worked at the same cafe, so I could ask her about it, or pass the information along to the police.

  The cat meowed again, sounding even less impressed about the interior of the pet carrier.

  “Did you see anything?” I asked. “Did you see this young woman Mr. Michaels was wooing? I think Pam said she was a blonde.”

  There was no answer, but it felt good to talk, even if it was to an animal. The cat meowed plaintively.