Snowflake Bay Cozy Mysteries Boxset 1

by C Farren

  She told him what had happened and he sighed with annoyance.

  “I’m sorry if my friends being murdered or almost murdered inconveniences you so much,” snapped Wren.

  “Investigating murders is what caused so much trouble for Fiona,” said Brock.

  Wren shook her head, angry. “Don’t give me that. Fiona makes up her own mind on what she wants to do.”

  She didn’t add that he was partly right. If Wren had stayed out of the murder investigation business then Fiona would never have used her untrained angelic powers so much.

  It was her choice, though, right?

  “I hope you know I’m not helping you,” stated Brock grumpily.

  “Fiona never told me you were such a miserable, unhelpful angel,” said Wren. “So what use are you anyway? Why are you even here if not to help me?”

  Brock was genuinely perplexed by her question.

  “Well?” she demanded.

  “I really don’t know,” said Brock. He looked like a kicked puppy. “Your life seems, while not perfect, almost sorted out. You don’t really need an angel anymore.”

  “You have a point. Why are you still here then?”

  “Maybe I am supposed to help you with this investigation.” He brightened up considerably and grinned, showing off his spectacular dimples. “Yes! That’s it! You’ve got yourself a partner now. Let’s get to it. Where to first?”

  Chapter 7

  Wren was flummoxed for a moment. This wasn’t a murder investigation just yet. It would be different than before, but the basics were the same.

  “I’m not going to be able to talk you out of this, am I?” Wren asked.

  “Of course not,” Brock replied. “This is what I was went here to do!”

  Wren tried to look on the bright side. At least she had some muscle should someone try to kill her again.

  “We need to look into Maureen’s life,” said Wren, thinking. The half-eaten remains of her putrid éclair were sitting on a plate in front of her. “We need to find out if she has any enemies.”

  “What about Keegan?” asked Brock. “You can’t forget about him.”

  “You almost sound concerned.”

  Brock shrugged. “I suppose I am a little. He seems to care about me, so it’s only fair I look for him now he’s missing.”

  “If we find out who wants Maureen dead, I’m sure it will lead to Keegan, if indeed someone has kidnapped him.”

  She took a pen out of her purse, though she had nothing to write on.

  “Here,” said Brandon, passing her a white paper napkin.

  Who would want Maureen dead? Who are her enemies?

  “For a start there’s...” She thought for almost a minute and came up blank. “Dear me. I’m stumped. I know hardly anything about Maureen. I know her birthday is on 15th January, but that’s only because she had me sign a card to her from her cats.”

  Maureen had just turned fifty-one years old. She didn’t look it.

  “We need to talk to her,” said Brock. He picked up Wren’s discarded éclair and ate it. He smiled, enjoying it. “Only she knows what enemies she has. Maybe she has too many and is embarrassed to talk about it.”

  “I was about to suggest that,” said Wren. She was already starting to resent his interference. “Let’s go.”

  MAUREEN WAS TALKING to someone in her cubicle when they arrived. Wren held Brock back, wanting to listen in on the conversation. It was a little on the unethical side, but snooping was great for investigations.

  “How are you doing, Sweetie?” a voice asked. It was a woman.

  That was the worst attempt at sincerity ever.

  “My neck is a little sore but I’ll live,” said Maureen. “You have bags under your eyes. You haven’t been sleeping.”

  “I’ve been worried about you,” said a man. “We both have.”

  “Javier had school or he would’ve come,” said the woman. “He sends his love.”

  “I thought he was suspended?” Maureen asked.

  Wren grimaced. Her friend really didn’t know how to filter herself.

  “He’s learned his lesson,” said the woman. She sounded like she was trying to hold back her anger. “Anyway, we have something to ask you.”

  Brock made to open the cubicle curtains but Wren grabbed his hand. It wasn’t time yet.

  “We’re a little behind on our rent this month,” said the man. He at least sounded more genuine than the woman now. “Is it okay if we pay double next month?”

  “Not really,” said Maureen. “You signed a contract.”

  “You know we can pay,” said the woman. “We just have more outgoing expenses this month than we anticipated for.”

  “I’m sorry. No.”

  Things went quiet again. Wren broke it by pulling back the curtain and announcing her presence.

  “Hey Maureen,” Wren announced, all smiles. “How you doing?”

  The man and woman were in their early forties. She recognized the man as the one who was clearing the snow in front of Maureen’s apartment building before Christmas. He was achingly handsome with dark Latino features and a grey goatee. The woman was tall and thin and wearing a red kitten wig that didn’t suit her complexion. She was wearing a lot of make-up, perhaps too much. It reminded her of her ex-friend Penny, who wore a lot of concealer so nobody would notice the acne scars on her cheeks.

  I don’t like them.

  “Wren, this is Jose and Pilar Aguilar,” Maureen introduced. Jose smiled, but his wife looked like she’d sucked on a lemon. “They live in my building.”

  “Nice to meet you,” said Wren, trying to be gracious. “I’m so happy that Maureen has so many people that care for her.”

  “We’re like one big happy family,” Pilar stated.

  You’re so false you make me sick.

  “Anyway, we better go,” said Jose. “Lots of things to do!”

  Pilar put her hand on Maureen’s shoulder. “We’ll talk about this later, okay?”

  The two of them smiled like crocodiles about to pounce on a bird and quietly left. Wren pulled the cubicle curtain behind her closed.

  “You can’t let those people treat you like that!” said Wren, trying not to raise her voice. “They were clearly manipulating you so they didn’t have to pay the rent.”

  “I know that,” said Maureen. “I’m not stupid.”

  “Then why do you put up with it?”

  “They’ve lived with me for a long time. I’m used to them I suppose.”

  Wren wasn’t sure that was such a great answer. If she were Maureen, she’d get rid of them. Nobody talked to her like that and got away with it.

  “Can we talk?” Wren asked, sitting by the bed.

  “You want to know if I have any enemies,” said Maureen. When Wren nodded she said, “I already told Keegan all this. I don’t have any enemies.”

  “You must have one. Somebody is trying to kill you.”

  “I’ve thought and thought about this but I just can’t think of anybody who hates me enough to want me dead. I know some people don’t like me, but not because I did anything to them. People don’t like me just because I’m me.”

  She had a point there. Wren hadn’t liked Maureen for a long time, mainly because she was rude and honest and it irked her. It wasn’t until she’d gotten to know the real Maureen that they’d become friends.

  “What about a former client at the unemployment office?” Wren asked. “You have power over people’s lives. You could cut someone’s unemployment checks off and leave them with nothing if you wished.”

  “I’ve never cut anyone off,” Maureen revealed. “Not once. I’ve actually gotten into trouble with that.”

  Wren rolled her eyes. “Really? You always threatened to cut me off.”

  “I never would have done it. My clients meant something to me. I knew they needed the money.” She shrugged. “Some of them may have been scammers, but for the most part I didn’t want to let people down.”

  “Y
ou really are the kindest person in the world. We really don’t deserve you.”

  Maureen shrugged again. Wren didn’t want her to change, but she shouldn’t let people take advantage of her, especially her so-called neighbors. She was better than that.

  “What about your black book?” Wren asked.

  “I still can’t find it,” said Maureen. She looked genuinely upset about this. “I move its hiding place every now and then, and I moved it just before I got pushed down the well. I need to remember where I put it!”

  “You do realize that you might have overheard something that someone didn’t want you to know?” Wren realized the scope of this and how big her job had just become. “There could be a lot of people who want to shut you up.”

  Everyone in town was a potential suspect.

  Wren shook her head. The potential was mind boggling. They had to stick to what was immediate, the people who had genuine conflicts with Maureen.

  “There might be someone,” Maureen whispered. “They were in my book, though not a lot.” She looked uncomfortable for a moment. “My boss at the unemployment agency didn’t like me. He got upset when I told him he had halitosis on a regular basis, and I think I might have inadvertently destroyed his marriage.”

  That sounds like a motive for murder in my book.

  “What did you do?” Wren asked, trying not to sigh.

  Maureen continued. “Mr. Barr invited a client into his office. It was six months ago. When she came out I noticed things, like the top button of her blouse was undone and she looked flushed. I asked her if she’d had sex and she stormed off. I noticed Mr. Barr had his zipper undone and I asked him the same.”

  Wren nodded. It was obvious where this where this was going.

  “And then Mrs. Barr came in to see her husband a day later,” said Maureen. She took a sip from a glass of water. “She asked me if I’d noticed anything strange going on with her husband, and I told her what I saw. After that Mr. Barr was really angry with me and the word around the office was that his wife was divorcing him. It was all my fault.”

  “It wasn’t your fault Mr. Barr was having an affair,” said Wren.

  Maureen didn’t add anything else, but at least it was something to go on for now. She had a suspect at last.

  “What happened to Mr. Barr?” Wren asked.

  “He still works at the unemployment office,” Maureen answered. “He took great delight in making me redundant. He was very smug.”

  Wren was about to inquire further when Maureen started snoring. She’d fallen asleep in a matter of seconds. She was like one of her cats.

  “Sleep well,” Wren whispered. “And I’ll find out who tried to kill you.”

  Wren took a deep breath and headed to the coma ward. She visited Cedric every now and then, just to make sure he was still exactly where she’d left him. That’s what she told herself anyway. She wasn’t sure why she came really.

  “This man tried to kill you?” Brock asked. “This man tried to shoot you and you come and visit him?

  She nodded as she watched a nurse check Cedric’s vitals. She scratched at her arm and wrote something down on a clipboard.

  “Why do you come here then?” said the angel.

  She shrugged. “You wouldn’t understand.”

  The nurse smiled and at her and continued her rounds. The patient in the next bed was someone new. They hadn’t been there two weeks ago. Their head was wrapped up in bandages like an Egyptian Mummy.

  “He’s new,” said Wren.

  The nurse eyed her warily before saying, “He came in the other day. Car crash. Poor thing will probably never wake up.”

  The nurse’s tag said she was called Ginger. Was that a nickname because of her red hair, or was it her real name?

  “I recognize you,” said the nurse, smiling. “You’re Maureen’s friend.”

  “I think I’ve seen you around her building,” said Wren. “Ginger, right?”

  “I’m the head nurse of the coma ward.”

  “It must be difficult keeping watch over all these people.”

  Ginger shrugged. “They need constant supervision.” She walked up to Wren and said, “Did Maureen mention the barbeque we’re having? I told her to invite you.”

  Wren took her eyes off Cedric. He was never going to wake up.

  “She hasn’t mentioned it,” said Wren. “She’s probably been a little busy.”

  “Oh yeah,” said Ginger. “She got strangled, right? There are some seriously disturbed people out there. Maureen is as gentle as they come.”

  Ginger had lived in Maureen’s building for a long time. Maybe she’d seen something?

  “Have you seen any strange people hanging around the apartment building?” Wren asked. “Someone who didn’t have any right to be there?”

  The nurse looked thoughtful for a moment. “Not really. No, wait a minute. I saw a woman taking photographs of the building last week, but when I asked her what she was doing she said she worked for Google Maps. She left soon after.”

  “What did she look like?” Brock asked.

  Wren liked his tone. It was very commanding and detective-like.

  “Very plain looking,” said Ginger. She smiled at Brock, obviously only noticing now how exceptionally attractive he was. She even batted her eyelashes a little. “She had her hair bunched up under a red cap. I couldn’t tell what color it was.” She looked at Wren and then back at Brock again. “Are you investigating Maureen’s attack?”

  “We might,” said Wren, not wanting to give anything away just yet. “Or we might just be asking a few questions.”

  “I hope they find out who did this and lock them away for a long time,” said Ginger.

  Wren looked across at Cedric, stuck forever in a coma. She thought about Becky, stuck on her island. Neither of the killers she’d gone after had gone to prison, though justice of a sort had been served. She was determined that this time things would go the right way.

  Chapter 8

  Fiona did the only thing she could think of to do upon being presented with such a divisive element of her past. She ran.

  “Fiona!” Dan called. “Fiona, stop! Please!”

  She stopped at the door and looked back. The other patients in the waiting room were trying very hard not to look at her. An angel with one wing stared at her. She growled at him and stormed through the door.

  “Fiona!”

  She slammed the door and headed for the perch on the landing, ready to take off and fly home to her apartment and pretend she’d never seen him. Yet she couldn’t do it. It had been so long. How many times had she thought about him and what could have been over the decades? He entered her mind a lot more than her husband had ever done.

  She looked over the perch into the clouds surrounding the building, down below into the bustling streets of Golden. All she had to do was fly away and she’d never see him again.

  Fiona took a deep breath and turned around. He was standing there, smiling. Even under his new demonic guise he was still the handsome man she’d once known.

  “Dan, how have you been?” she asked, giggly. It was like she was having a crush for the first time.

  This is silly. I’m a grown woman.

  His horns were shiny, reflecting the sunlight.

  “I’m a demon,” he stated. “Obviously.”

  His British accent was still there, but now it was deeper, like he’d smoked sixty a day for a hundred years. Demons generally had rough, gravelly voices. She’d met a demon once who could only communicate through grunting.

  “Aside from that,” she said.

  He looked down at his hands. His fingers were more like claws now, ending in wicked looking nails. He could really hurt someone with those.

  “I got shot in a training exercise and died,” he admitted. “A bullet straight to the heart.”

  She nodded. “After the war?”

  “1950.” He paused before saying, “I found your body you know, in the wreckage of that house.
I wish you’d listened to me and not gone haring off like that. You knew how dangerous it was. There were bombs falling all around us and...”

  “I was a nurse. People needed me.”

  “I needed you. We could have had a life together. We could have been happy.”

  Did he think she hadn’t gone over that night a million times since then? Did he not think she wished things were different? First and foremost, Fiona was a nurse. If someone needed her, someone she could help, then she’d do it, without hesitation. Being blown up by German bombs meant nothing to someone with her dedication to healing.

  I could’ve had a happy life. I could’ve been with the man I loved.

  “It never would have worked,” she insisted. “You were married with children. So was I. How could we have been happy knowing we’d betrayed so many people?”

  “We could’ve made it work because we loved each other,” said Dan.

  He might have been right. They might have been happy. It was too late now.

  If given another chance what would I do? Would I be with my husband and my son, or would I leave them to be with Dan?

  There was no point pondering on what could be. She’d made her choice. She knew what the answer should be. It would be selfish of her to abandon her infant child. The decision wasn’t so straightforward. The love she’d felt for Dan had overridden all her senses. Even now she still wasn’t sure what decision she would’ve made if she hadn’t been killed.

  “It all feels so long ago now,” she admitted.

  “I still remember that day I took you for afternoon tea at the Ritz. You loved it with the little China cups and the clotted cream and the strawberry jam and scones. You got a bit of cream on your nose and I wiped it off with my finger. You laughed and the waiter gave us such a snooty look, as if saying poor people like us shouldn’t be there, but you stuck your tongue out at him. You defied him and I loved you for it.”

  She smiled shyly. That day felt like it was yesterday. When she sipped her tea and stared into Dan’s eyes over the table it was like her future was with him and nothing could tear them apart.