Broom for One More

by Morgana Best

  “It must have all seemed mysterious to you,” Max said.

  I could barely breathe, so I simply nodded.

  He watched me for a moment, and I hoped he didn’t want me to speak before he did. I remained silent. Finally, he spoke. “He works for Internal Affairs, but keep that just between us.”

  “Internal Affairs!” I said in a voice louder than I should have. I looked around me, but luckily no one appeared to have heard.

  Max lowered his voice. “Yes, he’s from Internal Affairs and he’s been investigating everyone at our police station,” he said in little more than a whisper.

  “But why was he following you around?” I asked him.

  “Well, he is investigating me as well as everyone else,” Max said. “He’ll probably be here for another week. The only reason he’s not here now is that there’s a security guard at the entrance to the retirement home, and he probably doesn’t want to explain who he is.”

  “He seems to have taken a big interest in you,” I said, worried that Max was doing something crooked or untoward in some way.

  Max smiled. “He doesn’t suspect me of any wrongdoing as such, I’m sure; it’s just one of the old bylaws.”

  I was incredulous. “He suspects you’re drinking coffee illegally?”

  Max’s face turned a bright shade of red. “Goldie, there’s another old East Bucklebury bylaw you probably haven’t heard about.”

  “Another one? Is it as crazy as not being able to drink coffee or be in possession of coffee in town?”

  Max nodded. “Yes, I’m afraid to say it is.”

  “Well, what is it?” I asked him.

  “It does seem a little silly.”

  My patience was wearing thin. “Out with it, Max!”

  “A police officer who is a resident of East Bucklebury is not allowed to date anyone who is also a resident of East Bucklebury,” Max blurted out.

  I sat stock-still as his words sank in, doing my best to school my features into a neutral expression, although many people had told me that I would never make a poker player. Finally, I said, “But that’s crazy!”

  Max readily agreed.

  I sat silently, processing the information. Did this explain why Max had not shown any overt interest in me? It was against the law. Maybe he really did like me, after all? A police officer, especially one whose station was currently under investigation, could hardly date someone from East Bucklebury, or drink coffee in town for that matter.

  I looked up to see Max staring at me.

  “You have a plumbed-in coffee machine in your house, and it’s illegal to own a coffee machine or drink coffee in East Bucklebury,” he said.

  I nodded. “Yes.” He wiggled his eyebrows, so I said, “I’m not sure where you’re going with this.”

  “I shouldn’t say this as a police officer, but those are some really silly old bylaws. My point is that there is a way around everything.”

  A thousand butterflies went crazy in my stomach. Did Max mean what I thought he meant? I held his gaze for a moment, and then looked down at my five inch stilettos. Maybe Detective Max Greyson did like me, after all. I clutched my sides.

  Persnickle broke the moment by stealing a plate of food from the table. I was alerted to the fact by a resident calling out, concerned.

  I rushed over. “Persnickle, you naughty wombat!”

  The resident hurried to reassure me. “It wasn’t his fault. I was just worried that it might be bad for him.”

  “No, it was one of Athanasius’s lemon tarts, and they’re safe for wombats to eat,” I said, much to the resident’s relief.

  This was where it had all started, Persnickle eating something he shouldn’t have, resulting in me taking him to the vet, only to find the vet’s dead body.

  My friends had rallied around me. In my life, I hadn’t had many close friends despite living in a major city with a population of over four million people.

  Yet here I was in the small, coastal town of East Bucklebury with a population of just over fifteen hundred people, and I had formed close friendships in the short time I had been here.

  I knew that no matter what happened, I was happy here. This was my home.

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  Next Book In This Series

  Broomed for Success (Sea Witch Cozy Mysteries, Book 4)

  Also by Morgana Best

  Witches’ Brew (Witches and Wine Book 1)

  Pepper Jasper does not believe in the supernatural.

  Pepper moves from Sydney to the cozy town of Lighthouse Bay, answering a desperate plea from her aunts to help with their failing Bed and Breakfast business.

  She discovers her aunts are more eccentric than she remembered, the Bed and Breakfast does not serve breakfast, and the cottages for lease have strange themes. And what’s more, within minutes of her arrival, she stumbles across a dead body.

  Pepper soon has her hands full, contending with a murder mystery, irritating guests including the enigmatic Lucas O’Callaghan who is convinced every woman wants to fall into his arms, and her aunts, who are hiding more than one dark secret.

  Who or what lurks in the forbidden room at the end of the dark corridor?

  Why do the aunts insist she drink copious quantities of special label wine?

  Find out what awaits Pepper Jasper at Mugwort Manor.

  Miss Spelled (The Kitchen Witch Book 1)

  Amelia Spelled has had a bad week. Her boyfriend dumps her when she inadvertently gives him food poisoning. Her workplace, a telecommunications centre, fires all their staff as they are outsourcing offshore, and she is evicted due to smoke damage resulting from her failed attempts at baking. Amelia thinks her luck has changed when she inherits her estranged aunt’s store, two mysterious cats, and beautiful Victorian house.

  Yet has Amelia jumped out of the frying pan into the fire? To Amelia's dismay, the store is a cake store, and she discovers that her aunt was a witch. To add to the mix, the house has secrets of its own.

  When a man is murdered in the cake store, will Amelia be able to cook up a way to solve the crime? Or will her spells prove as bad as her baking?

  A Ghost of a Chance (Witch Woods Funeral Home Book 1)

  Nobody knows that Laurel Bay can see and talk to ghosts. When she inherits a funeral home, she is forced to return from the city to the small town of Witch Woods to breathe life into the business. It is a grave responsibility, but Laurel is determined that this will be no dead-end job.

  There she has to contend with her manipulative and overly religious mother, more than one ghost, and a secretive but handsome accountant.

  When the murder of a local woman in the funeral home strangles the finances, can Laurel solve the murder?

  Or will this be the death of her business?

  Christmas Spirit (The Middle-aged Ghost Whisper Book 1)

  Prudence Wallflower tours the country, making live appearances. She connects people with loved ones who have passed on. However, her reputation as a clairvoyant medium is failing, and even Prudence has begun to doubt herself. She has never seen a ghost, but receives impressions from the dead. This all changes when the ghost of a detective appears to her and demands her help to solve a murder. Prudence finds herself out of her depth, and to make matters worse, she is more attracted to this ghost than any man she has ever met.

  Live and Let Diet (The Australian Amateur Sleuth Book 1)

  NON paranormal cozy mystery

  Sybil Potts moves to Little Tatterford, a small town in the middle of nowhere in Australia, seeking to find peace and quiet after the upheaval of her divorce.

  Although
the town is sleepy and nothing has ever happened, her arrival coincides with a murder in the property adjacent to her cottage. Sybil soon finds she is at odds with the attractive Blake Wessley, the exasperated police officer who is trying to solve the murder.

  After Sibyl narrowly misses becoming the next victim, she turns her attention to the suspects. Is it the English gentleman, Mr. Buttons, who serves everyone tea and cucumber sandwiches, or her landlord, Cressida Upthorpe, who is convinced that her fat cat, Lord Farringdon, speaks to her? Or is it someone else entirely?

  Sweet Revenge (Cocoa Narel Chocolate Shop Mysteries, Book 1)

  NON paranormal cozy mystery

  Requires a sense of humour!

  Narel Myers was given the ironic name Cocoa Narel by the cruel popular kids in high school, as she was far from elegant and was obsessed with chocolate. The truth of the matter was that her love of eating chocolate had caused her to become excessively overweight. Some years later, a car wreck leads to her undergoing extensive plastic surgery on her face and body. Now that she is medically unable to gain weight, she decides to indulge her love for chocolate by opening a designer chocolate shop.

  When people who bullied her at high school are murdered one by one, she becomes the prime suspect. Will she be able to prove her innocence when the police think she’s out for revenge?

  Will Carl, her best friend, stop flirting with the police long enough to help her find the real killer?

  * * *

  SERIES BY MORGANA BEST

  Witches and Wine (A fun, quirky cozy mystery series!)

  1) Witches’ Brew

  2) Witches’ Secrets

  3) Witches’ Charms

  4) Witches Magic

  5) Witches’ Spells

  * * *

  The Kitchen Witch

  1) Miss Spelled

  2) Dizzy Spells

  3) Sit for a Spell

  4) Spelling Mistake

  5) Ex-Spelled

  6) The Halloween Spell

  7) Spellcheck

  8) The Halloween Love Spell

  9) Spell It Out

  * * *

  Sea Witch Cozy Mysteries

  1) Broom Mates

  2) Broom With A View

  3) Broom For One More

  4) Broomed for Success

  * * *

  The Middle-aged Ghost Whisperer

  1) Christmas Spirit

  2) Ghost Hunter

  3) There Must be a Happy Medium

  * * *

  Witch Woods Funeral Home

  1) A Ghost of a Chance

  2) Nothing to Ghost About

  3) Make the Ghost of It

  4) Ghost Stories

  5) Ghost Blusters

  * * *

  And Morgana’s non-Witch Cosy mysteries:

  Cocoa Narel Chocolate Shop Mysteries

  1) Sweet Revenge

  2) The Sugar Hit

  3) Murder Sweetly Served

  4) Chocolate to Die For

  * * *

  The Australian Amateur Sleuth

  1) Live and Let Diet

  2) Natural-Born Grillers

  3) Dye Hard

  4) The Prawn Identity

  5) Any Given Sundae

  6) The Last Mango in Paris

  * * *

  AUDIO. Most of Morgana’s books are currently on Audio.

  PAPERBACK. All Morgana’s books are available in Paperback.

  Excerpt from Witches’ Brew

  Witches Brew is the first book in the Witches and Wine series

  One discount pack of hipster lace briefs, one large caramel almond latte, one plane ticket from Sydney to Lighthouse Bay. That’s all I had to show for my life, or to be precise, that’s all I could afford after I sold my old car.

  I was about to do what every girl dreaded—move back home to the relatives. I had no choice. My degree in Classical Literature hadn’t exactly prepared me for the workplace. I’d worked as a temporary waitress, as a barista, selling tickets at a cinema, anything I could get, but the jobs were few and far between. I had done plenty of spells to get permanent jobs, but nothing ever worked. I’d wished more than once that I was like a Hollywood witch who could wave a magic wand and make things happen, instead of being a normal everyday woman who practised traditional witchcraft.

  “It’s only until you get back on your feet,” I said aloud, and then averted my eyes as the taxi driver shot me a quick look in the rear view mirror. I had no idea how I would cope with moving from the big city to the tiny beachside town of Lighthouse Bay, a move made all the worse by having to live with my elderly aunts. To say they were as mad as hatters was putting it mildly. Still, their Bed and Breakfast business in the Jasper family ancestral home was crumbling, as no doubt was the house itself—if my memory served me correctly—and they had offered me a partnership in the business. They said they needed young blood.

  The taxi driver didn’t make conversation, which suited me just fine. I looked out the window at the narrow, winding road leading from the township of Lighthouse Bay to Mugwort Manor with dismay. This was a far cry from Sydney. Had I made the wrong decision? Had boredom ever killed anyone outright? I shook my head. No, I truly had no other options. I had been living on instant noodles, and had become so ill from lack of good food that I even had to take a daily iron supplement. I would have to put my best foot forward.

  I directed the taxi driver to take me to the main house, not the cottages that my aunts rented out to paying guests. The driver deposited my suitcases on the side of the road and then drove off, leaving me standing there.

  Mugwort Manor loomed before me, looking quite Wuthering Heights but without the doom and gloom. Well, maybe a little gloom, but there were certainly no English moors around here. The Australian sky was bright and blue, the air salty, yet the landscape in front of me betrayed no sign that the sea was nearby. The dark dormer windows seemed threatening somehow, as if some arcane creature was watching me through hooded eyes between the ancient drapes. Jasmine and ivy clawed their way across the face of the house, clinging to every fissure they could find.

  Trees hung over the pathway, almost as if they wanted to tear at guests. The undergrowth was thick enough to conceal any manner of creature. In fact, was that a menacing growl I heard?

  “Stop being fanciful,” I said aloud. I had grown accustomed to talking to myself. I figured whoever said that talking to oneself is the first sign of madness had not lived alone for any length of time. Or maybe they were right.

  The house looked the same as when I had last seen it some five years earlier, just before I lost my parents. I had been raised in the northern suburbs of Sydney, and only after my parents went missing while on sabbatical in Kyrgyzstan had I regained significant contact with my aunts. My parents’ estate was tied up in all sorts of legal entanglements, and my lawyer said they would not be declared dead for another two years. I didn’t want them declared dead at all; I hoped they would somehow turn up. The Australian government was not looking for them. No one was, and I myself did not have sufficient funds to go to Kyrgyzstan. Even if I did, I wouldn’t know where to start. The situation was entirely hopeless.

  At any rate, my parents had done their best to avoid The Aunts, as they called them, and had never told me why.

  I uttered a few choice words and then struggled up the moss-covered flagstone path to the front door of Mugwort Manor.

  A fresh sea breeze picked up my hair. I flicked the few strands out of my eyes and inhaled the heady scent of jasmine. Although Sydney was also on the ocean, the air was nowhere near as clear nor as fragrant as the pristine air of Lighthouse Bay. Mugwort Manor was close to the beach, a beautiful beach which stretched along the east coast of Australia. One section of beach was patrolled, and frequented by surfers, while the remaining, longer section was a designated off-leash dog beach. I was looking forward to long walks on the beach to preserve my sanity.

  I paused as butterflies welled in my stomach, warning me of an upcoming even
t. I’d had this precognition since childhood, a foreknowledge that served to warn me both of something good happening and also something bad. Unfortunately, my life had been full of more bad somethings than good somethings. I had no idea what this was signalling, but given my track record, I supposed it wasn’t going to be good. My right eye twitched. That always meant something bad was heading my way.

  I decided not to ring the doorbell and alert my aunts until my belongings were sitting nicely outside the front door, otherwise I was sure mayhem would ensue. They were not the most organised people in the world. With that in mind, I stacked my suitcases out of the way. My aunts were likely to charge out the door and fall over them. Aunt Dorothy, for one, was clumsy and short-sighted. Just as my hand reached for the brass doorbell, I realised I had left my handbag by the road.

  I gingerly walked back down the uneven flagstones—they were an accident waiting to happen—being careful going downhill given that it had obviously rained recently, and heavily. That wasn’t unusual for these parts. Lighthouse Bay wasn’t in the tropics, but in summer, thunderstorms were common most afternoons.

  I retrieved my handbag from on top of a clump of kikuyu grass and turned to go, hesitating as the sound of a powerful engine roared behind me. As I turned, a silver Porsche screeched to a halt and splashed mud all over me.

  A tall, dark, and strikingly handsome man jumped out of the car, presumably to apologise. At least, I think that’s how he looked through the mud in my eyes. I gingerly wiped it out and then removed the mud from my mouth as well. The man was now standing in front of me. It was all I could do not to drool: that strong jaw line, eyes that brought to mind the colour of Homer’s ‘wine-dark sea,’ his muscular body, the way he exuded raw masculinity.