Snowflake Bay Cozy Mysteries Boxset 1

by C Farren

  She laughed, remembering the years of her childhood when she’d really thought her dad was Santa Claus. Those were happy, innocent times. Wick often got carried away during the holidays, whether it was Christmas, Halloween, or Thanksgiving.

  “And are you going to be one of my elves this year?” he asked.

  He always asked, and she always said no. Her life was terrible enough as it was without prancing around like an idiot in green stockings for the whole world to laugh at.

  “Maybe next year,” she told him. They both knew it was a lie.

  They talked a bit about what she’d been up today, which didn’t take long, and then her dad hung up to feed the dog and get dinner ready. By now Wren was tired and not really into reading, but she needed to update her friend Miranda on tonight’s date of doom. She desperately needed to talk to someone about it. Keegan was on a night shift at the sheriff’s office. She’d tell him about it over coffee tomorrow.

  She opened her laptop and connected to Miranda. Her friend lived in Lake Como, Italy, and was probably just getting up to take the kids to school. Wren bet she’d been dying to know how her date went all night.

  Miranda’s brown hair, freckles and pretty face popped up on the screen. Wren missed her a lot. They’d grown up together, but Miranda’s family had moved to Italy when she was fifteen. They’d kept in touch through letters, email, and now Skype, but it just wasn’t the same. Wren hadn’t been in the same room with her since she’d visited Italy four years ago.

  “Haven’t you gone to bed yet?” Miranda joked. She had a very mild Italian accent now, which Wren still found hard to get used to. It just reinforced the fact that her best friend was a world away.

  “I’m not really sleepy,” said Wren

  Miranda grinned and said, “Go on! Tell me how the date went!”

  Wren considered telling her the truth, but it made her cringe over how she’d overreacted to the hint that Cedric might want marriage in the future. They’d been through a lot together, and Miranda had stuck by her through thick and thin, but over this she was deeply embarrassed.

  “It went okay.” The lie was poison on her tongue. She hated lying to her best friend. “It wasn’t something out of a romance novel, but we got on really well. We’re going out again tonight.”

  “That’s great!” Miranda declared. “I really am pleased for you.”

  They laughed and then the topic turned inevitably onto Miranda’s twin daughters, Esme and Ella. They were the apple of her friend’s eye. The girls were undeniably cute and she loved them to bits but it only cemented the fact even further that Wren had nothing.

  “Esme and Ella want to know if their godmother is coming to their sixth birthday party in February,” Miranda said. “I told them she was very busy and probably wouldn’t have the time.”

  “I’d love to come, but I can’t afford it at the moment.”

  Wren couldn’t afford anything at the moment. Pretty soon she’d have to cancel her Wi-Fi and she loathed doing that. She knew she needed a job but she was not going to do any old crap again, especially after working at the terminally boring tourist office for so many years. There was something out there, a vocation or job or career that was perfect for her. She just had to find it.

  “Beppe will pay for your airfare,” said Miranda. “He owes me.”

  “He said he wouldn’t pay after last time...”

  Miranda looked away from the screen for a second. There was a brief flicker of sadness on her face. “Like I said, he owes me. You’re coming whether you like it or not.”

  Wren tried not to cry as she thanked her. It was such a generous thing to do, and it perked her night up considerably. She couldn’t wait to be with her best friend face to face again. It would be just like old times.

  “You could bring your new boyfriend as well,” Miranda suggested.

  Wren smiled politely. “Sure. I...I could do that.”

  Miranda started talking about something else, but by then Wren had already tuned her out. The brief delight of seeing her friend again had been soured by the fact that she was lying to her. She had no boyfriend and she never would.

  I will die alone, with only a cat to eat me after I’m dead.

  Chapter 2

  “WAKE UP!”

  Wren ignored the bossy voice. She didn’t want to get up just yet. What was the point? She had no job and no life. When you had nothing, you clung onto what you did have, which were leisurely lie-ins, bad hair days, and cutting out pictures of attractive movie stars from magazines and sticking them in a picture book. She did have her trip to Italy to look forward to, but even that was tinged with dread because of all the lies she’d spun about her so-called boyfriend.

  I could hire an actor to play my lover.

  “Do I have to tip you out of bed?” the voice demanded. “I will do it you know. I’m not just a pretty face.”

  Wren opened her eyes, startled to find a woman in her bedroom. The woman was small, slightly chubby, but very pretty, with frizzy blonde hair down to her shoulders. She wore large framed red spectacles and she carried a clipboard in her hands. Aside from the white baggy dress she wore the only other distinguishing feature about her was her angel’s wings.

  “You look like an angel,” Wren said dreamily.

  She laughed. “That’s because I am an angel.”

  “Did I suffocate in my sleep?” Wren demanded. “I’d always imagined I’d die by suffocating in my sleep.”

  The angel’s white, creamy wings pulled back inside her body, and she said, “Hmm. You’re quite dark this morning.”

  The angel wrote something down on her clipboard. Wren closed her eyes, willing this apparition to go away. Maybe I’m so lonely and so pathetic that I’m imagining things now. Pretty soon I’ll be howling at the moon and buying lotto tickets.

  “It’s time to get your life into shape,” shouted the angel, directly into her ear. She had a voice like an elephant marching band. “Get your lazy ass out of bed!”

  Wren ignored her. She wasn’t real. Angels didn’t exist.

  “I will not take no for an answer,” the so-called angel screamed. “I have never taken no for an answer and I’m not about to start now.”

  “Would you take ‘get lost’ for an answer instead then?” Wren said.

  The angel pulled the covers back, grabbed hold of Wren’s arm, and pulled her out of bed. She landed on the floor and felt one of her Kermit slippers touch her mouth. It tasted like feet.

  Wren jumped to her feet, a little exasperated now. “What is it you want from me?”

  The angel smiled sweetly. “You don’t think I’m a hallucination?”

  “Perhaps not,” Wren conceded. She was thoroughly wide awake now. “Though the jury’s still out on that one. I’ve had a very bad decade.”

  “Then we can begin.”

  The angel nodded her head and vanished in a flash of feathers. Wren picked up one of the feathers, gloriously soft and white, but it disintegrated in her hands like it was made of cobwebs.

  “Hello?” Wren called out.

  The angel appeared to have gone. Or maybe she’d never really been there. Am I still asleep? Am I dreaming?

  Wren’s cell phone rang. She reached out to her bedside table and grabbed it. It was her mom. What was she doing calling so early?

  “Mom?” she said, concerned. She rubbed her eyes, finding bits of sleep the size of tennis balls. “What is it?”

  Dot sighed theatrically. “I’ve killed your father.”

  Wren sighed too. She’d obviously found out about the gambling. They’d probably been arguing all night. Those two could argue for the Olympics.

  Wren sighed again and asked, “He told you?”

  “I came back from my...friend’s house last night and decided to go online and order a nice holiday. I’ve always wanted to go to Paris. I’m not that keen on the French, but I suppose it can’t be helped. I dated this French exchange student at school once. He cheated on me with my best frien
d.” Dot appeared thoughtful for a moment. “Of course, my card was declined and I phoned up the bank and was told our joint account had no money in it! At first, I thought that maybe my identity had been stolen. You remember my friend Delilah? A fat Russian gentleman called Petro stole her identity and opened up a cigar shop in Moscow. Poor Delilah was arrested and everything.”

  Wren waited for her mom to get her breath back. When Dot started on a topic she could go on forever without stopping to even breathe.

  Dot laughed. “Delilah and I can laugh about it now. Well, I can. She still breaks into tears whenever it gets brought up. Now, where was I? Oh yes. Your father is a scoundrel. I hate him. I wish I had killed him.”

  Pots and pans started clanking downstairs, and then some type of glass smashed. Wren hoped the cat wasn’t jumping around the kitchen counters again. She liked to cause a mess when she could.

  “Perhaps you and Dad should have a serious talk,” Wren suggested. “Or maybe just a normal talk where you don’t argue all the time.”

  “We did have a serious talk,” said her mom. “Well, I talked and he sat there cowering like the coward he is. The thing is...”

  There was another crash downstairs. That did not sound like the antics of a mischievous cat. Was she being burgled?

  “Mom, I have to go,” she said, fearing the worst. “Talk to you later.”

  “But...”

  She hung up and put on her dressing gown. There was no way she was going to confront a burglar in her nightie. If she was murdered she didn’t want to be examined by the police in moth eaten nightwear. It would be so embarrassing would.

  Wren grabbed a pink polka dot umbrella out of the umbrella stand in the hallway. She and Keegan had bought it from a small village while on one of their regular drives up the coast last year. It had sheltered them from quite a bad rainfall if she recalled.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Wren cried out.

  It was the crazy angel. She had half demolished her kitchen. Pots and pans were strewn across the floor and most of the fridge’s contents were on the table. All the cupboard doors were wide open, and one of them was even half off its hinges. The angel herself was busy whisking eggs in a glass bowl using a fork.

  “I’m making breakfast,” the angel answered. She regarded the messy kitchen and shrugged, as if destroying Wren’s house was of no consequence. “I think that’s perfectly obvious, even to someone with bed hair as bad as yours.”

  “I do not have bad bed hair!” Wren screamed.

  Wren looked in the mirror on the wall and almost cringed. She looked like she’d been bungee jumping after being dragged through a hedge backwards and mauled by big cats.

  She tried to control her breathing. She didn’t think she’d ever felt such rage in all her life. She would’ve preferred burglars.

  “Why are you making my breakfast?” Wren asked.

  “You don’t eat healthy enough,” the angel replied. “Do you like omelets?”

  “I prefer my oatmeal thank you very much. Besides, eggs give me gas.”

  The petite apparition ignored her, continuing to whisk away as if Wren weren’t even in the room. She marched over to the angel and snatched the fork out of her hand. The angel looked up at her with eyes so venomous Wren was a little scared.

  “Give me that fork back,” the angel demanded.

  Wren held the fork up out of the angel’s reach. “Tell me what you’re doing here first.”

  The angel stood to face her, but her eyes only reached Wren’s chin. She may have been short, but she was about as intimidating as a pit-bull.

  “I’ve been sent to sort your life out,” the angel explained.

  “My life doesn’t need sorting out,” Wren said.

  The angel crossed her arms. “Really? You have no job and no lover. You have no life. Your cat may be very cute but that hardly constitutes a meaningful relationship.”

  “It does to me,” Wren said defensively.

  “The people upstairs obviously think something is wrong or otherwise I wouldn’t be here.”

  Wren didn’t want to argue with her, but she had no choice.

  “I’m going to Italy in February,” Wren said smugly. “People who don’t have lives do not go to Italy.”

  “And who did you tell your friend you were going with, hmm?” said the angel, her smugness equally as smug. “Face it, sister, your life is a train wreck and a car crash combined and it needs sorting out pretty quick.” She smiled giddily. “Do you like bacon bits in your omelet? I bet you do! I’ll add them in anyway, just to make sure.”

  Wren wanted to scream in frustration. The angel was making a mess of her kitchen. One look at the eggshells on the floor and Wren’s decision was made for her. She marched over, grabbed the bowl out of the woman’s hands, and tipped the contents into the sink. The angel looked at her like she’d just gunned down her mother.

  “That was cruel,” snapped the angel. She looked like she was going to cry. At the moment Wren didn’t care. She just wanted rid of her.

  “Get out,” Wren commanded, sounding a lot like her mother when she was in one of her moods. “Get out before I call the police!”

  The angel looked at her with quivering lips. “But I’m here to help you.”

  “I don’t need any help,” Wren insisted.

  The angel’s sad face was enough to thaw even the hardest of hearts. Wren ignored her, and with a pop and a bang the strange visitor was gone.

  I must’ve drunk more than I imagined last night.

  IT TOOK WREN HALF AN hour to clean up the angel’s mess, though Gracie did her bit to help by licking up the spilled eggs on the kitchen tiles. Wren still didn’t believe what he eyes had seen. The angel was obviously real, and yet she still couldn’t admit to herself that it had actually happened. It would mean the universe was far bigger than she ever imagined it could be.

  Gracie sat by her feet and looked up at her with adorable eyes. Wren picked her up. “You saw her too, right?”

  Gracie meowed. She took that as a yes.

  THERE WAS A TEXT MESSAGE waiting for her on her cell after she’d gotten out of the shower. It was from Cedric. She was going to ignore it, but figured she at least ought to read what it said. The message read, “Maybe we can try again some time? Call me.”

  Wren deleted the text. There was no way she was going on a date with Cedric ever again. She still couldn’t believe she’d actually gone out with him in the first place. She must’ve been mad and desperate.

  There was a frantic knocking at the front door as she dried her hair.

  “I’m coming!” she shouted, rushing down the stairs as fast as possible. “I’m coming!”

  She opened the door to find her dad. His cheeks were red and his eyes tired. He’d probably spent the night sleeping in his garden.

  He sighed and hung his head in shame. “I need to ask you something.”

  She let him in and told him to sit down while she made them both a cup of coffee. Wren wasn’t in the mood for this right now. What with the date and the angel, her life was getting complicated enough. The last thing she needed was to get involved in her parents’ marriage. That always led to disaster. She’d suggested once that they get a divorce and they didn’t speak to her for a month.

  “There you go.” She handed him a mug of hot coffee. “Tell me if you need more milk.”

  He drank some and sighed happily. “You could always make tea and coffee perfectly. Why is that?”

  Wren shrugged. “It’s a gift.”

  “What did you put in it? Nutmeg?”

  “Just a dash.”

  He drank some more coffee while she waited for him to get to the reason why he was here. Not that her father needed a reason to visit her, but usually he always had ulterior motives.

  Gracie jumped on his lap and he stroked her back. Her fur was wet. She’d obviously been for a run around in the rain. Wren always liked the smell of wet cat for some reason. It reminded her of spring storms.
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  “Has Mom thrown you out?” Wren asked him, sitting at the table.

  “I wouldn’t blame her if she did,” said Dad. He took a sip of his coffee and sighed with pleasure. “I did something stupid and I’m not proud of it. I was sure I was on to a good thing.”

  “You have to stop this,” she advised him. “Please.”

  He looked at her sharply. “Do you think I’m an addict?”

  “I think possibly you’re on your way to becoming one.”

  It looked like she was going to become involved in her parent’s marriage whether she liked it or not. Those two stubborn old fools never listened to advice, but she was going to give them some anyway. Maybe they’d take notice, or maybe they’d ignore her. It was up to them.

  “You need to talk to her,” Wren told him. “You need to sit her down and really talk to her. You can explain your problem. I’m sure she’ll listen.”

  “What problem?” he asked. He looked confused.

  Wren sighed. This was like pulling thorns from a rose stem. Until her father realized he had a problem there would be no telling him. In the meantime, she had an appointment she had to keep.

  “Stay here until I get back,” she ordered.

  He continued to stroke the cat as he said, “Fine. It’s comfortable here.”

  She left him to it as she headed back upstairs and got dressed. While she didn’t have a job or a life or a boyfriend, she still had commitments, even though those commitments could drain even the sanest man of their soul. The unemployment office beckoned...

  Chapter 3

  The local unemployment office was a building constructed in the seventies, made from concrete and hopelessness. It was drabber than a mental asylum and just as mentally exhausting. Once you entered its grey confines, your spirits were sapped and your confidence battered like a car stuck on the train tracks. It was, literally, hell on earth.