Hallow Haven Cozy Mysteries Bundle Books 4-6

by Mara Webb

  “Fire away,” he grinned. What a creep.

  “You said she has a boyfriend,” I began.

  “Lies!” Fleur shouted.

  “Let me finish,” I sighed, casting a glance her way. “You said she has a boyfriend, what makes you think that?”

  “I followed her one night,” he said. “She’d been sneaking out of bed at strange hours and talking in a hushed voice on the phone for weeks, then all of a sudden I would wake up to the sound of our front door clicking shut. I would fall back to sleep again but wake up at sunrise and she was always back in bed.”

  “She was leaving the house after dark?” Fleur asked.

  “Yes, and at first I thought nothing of it. I trusted her, so why would I jump to the worst-case scenario. It’s called catastrophizing, I watched a psychology video about it,” he smiled, looking at me as if seeking approval. I said nothing. “Anyway, one night I followed her.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “Why wouldn’t I?” he replied.

  “You said she’d been leaving the bed for weeks, so why all of a sudden did you decide to get up and see where she was going?”

  “A friend of mine said that Holly had been spotted walking with a man at night, they’d been meeting up and sneaking off to the woods together. There is a spot on the far side of the island that used to be a lover’s meet-up, it’s got a view over the sunset and teenagers would go up there to kiss under the stars. That’s where Holly went,” Curtis explained.

  I had a thousand questions about that. Were male children born here? If so, what happened to them? How come there were only a handful of adult men on this island? These were questions for another time.

  “So, you followed her, then what?” I asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, I assume you caught her with this other man. So did you confront her about it?” I pressed.

  “No.” He shook his head and ran his hands through his hair slowly, as if buying himself time to respond. “I couldn’t bring myself to say anything, because then I would have to acknowledge it and admit to myself that it was real.”

  “You found out your wife was having an affair and then shortly after that she disappears,” Miller summarized. “You can surely see what this looks like.”

  “Enlighten me, sheriff,” Curtis sneered.

  “You’re a proud man, you take you status on this island seriously. I’ve seen you around the place a few times and you hold your head up high, you like to think of yourself as important,” Miller said.

  “I am important. I’m a carpenter,” he replied.

  “Right, and you make all sorts of things for the community which gives you purpose. You also place a lot of value in your marital status,” Miller added.

  “There aren’t that many men here, I was matched with my wife and—”

  “You use it to lord it over everyone else,” Fleur interrupted. “You think you’re so much better than everyone else.”

  “Well, there are hundreds of women here and far less men, so yes, I am a big deal,” he smirked. I rolled my eyes again. This island may be off balance, but generally speaking the whole planet was about fifty percent female, yet there were many men that acted as if they were a rarity. This guy clearly thought he was a gift to humanity.

  “The thought of your wife cheating on you, that’s a huge knock to the ego,” Miller continued.

  “I think you’ve killed her,” Fleur yelled. “You wanted to be with someone else, whoever that woman was that just ran out of here. You wanted to get rid of my sister so that you were free to do whatever you wanted.”

  “Let’s not jump to conclusions,” Curtis said, holding up his hands defensively. “I didn’t hurt Holly. You are free to hate me, I’m not going to stand here and pretend I’m a perfect husband, but I’m not a murderer.”

  “Do you know the name of the guy you saw her with?” I asked.

  “Len Altman,” Curtis replied, his face screwed up as if the name itself left a bad taste in his mouth.

  “There’s no way she was seeing Len,” Fleur said. “I don’t believe you.”

  “That sounds like your problem. I know what I saw.”

  “Where can we find him?” I asked.

  “I have a pretty good idea,” Miller said. “Look, you’re not off the hook, not by a long shot. I’ll be back for you before this day is out, I’m sure of it.”

  “Under who’s authority? You can’t make arrests here, Sheriff,” Curtis smiled. “You’ll be married tomorrow, so I’d spend some time thinking of a new profession.”

  “What about me?” I asked. “I’m the peacekeeper, that holds weight here like it does everywhere else in Hallow Haven.”

  “True, but I’ve heard a rumor that you won’t be troubling us for much longer, if you know what I mean,” he laughed.

  “Is that a threat?” Miller snarled.

  “No, of course not,” Curtis said with a chuckle. “But it’s May Day and a sacrifice is to be made tonight. Feel free to waste your final hours looking for my wife, Sadie, but come tomorrow morning it will all be over. Miller will be getting dressed for his wedding and you… well you won’t be of this world.”

  “We should go and speak to Len,” Miller said. He reached to take my hand and guided me back out of the house, shepherding Fleur as he went.

  I didn’t want to think about the fact that people kept bringing up this sacrifice ceremony. It was important to remember why we needed to hurry, obviously, but everybody here seemed a little too comfortable talking to me about my untimely death.

  When we got outside it was clear that Fleur was flustered.

  “Okay, so Len works as a baker. It’s getting to lunch time so he is probably rushed off his feet right now, but by the time we get there it should be okay to grab a few minutes with him to ask some questions,” Miller explained.

  “Baker?” I asked. “How did you get to know this place so quickly?”

  “I figured if I knew the lay of the land that I could find a way out of here,” he shrugged. “It also gave me something to do, I needed distracting.” Miller was the kind of guy that would ask the waiter’s name at a restaurant and remember it when he ate there again. I just didn’t seem to be able to hold onto information that way.

  “Does he work at the bakery where you usually saw Holly waiting in line?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” Fleur said. “I just don’t think that she was hooking up with Len, she wouldn’t.”

  “Is it so hard to imagine? You’ve met Curtis, right? I’d have been looking for a way out too if I was married to that guy,” I smiled.

  “But Len was mine,” Fleur sighed. Miller gave me a wide-eyed look. “He’s a widower and it all hit him really hard, but he’s been flirting with me for months and I knew that any day now he was going to ask me out and we would be married.”

  Okay, so everyone on this island is nuts. For some reason I’d thought Fleur was one of the normal ones, but clearly, I was wrong. I didn’t even think getting married was such a big deal, but it seemed to be purpose of life over here. Miller had barely been on the island for a week, and he was engaged to a stranger. Kane had done the same thing.

  The look that Miller was giving me was letting me know that he was now concerned that Fleur was a suspect in her sister’s disappearance. Fleur wanted to be married and had decided that Len was the guy that would give that to her.

  Holly already had a husband, so if Fleur had known about her sister trying to take away her chance at marital bliss, then she might have done something she shouldn’t have. Was all this effort looking for Holly just a performance so that we wouldn’t suspect her?

  12

  Miller insisted that Fleur walked ahead of us as we made our way back towards the hustle and bustle of the town square. I took this to mean that he didn’t want either of us to have our backs to her in case she decided to attack.

  Did she know that we thought she was a suspect now?

  As much as I was focused on
the issue at hand, I couldn’t help but think about the fact that we were approaching a crowd of people on this island that all seemed perfectly calm about the idea that I was going to be sacrificed. In movies they usually lock up the person they are planning to offer up, so I was at least grateful for this amount of freedom.

  The bakery was surrounded by people eating in the street, but it looked as if the lunch time rush had come to an end. Most of their customers had been served and the line inside was short. We dutifully waited our turn to speak to Len.

  “Listen,” Miller began. “I think it’s best that we speak to him alone.” He was looking at Fleur as he spoke and using a soft tone of voice. “Some people get overwhelmed when faced with a lot of people, it can make them less likely to tell you the truth.”

  Had he made that up?

  “So, you think I should wait outside?” Fleur asked.

  “Yeah, that would be great,” Miller smiled. Kudos to him, it actually worked. Fleur stared longingly in Len’s direction, but he was too busy serving the few customers ahead of us to notice. She walked outside and sat on the curb facing out into the square.

  “What are you thinking?” I asked him.

  “I think that we’ve gotten tangled up in a huge mess, that’s what I’m thinking,” he smirked.

  “Oh? What makes you think that? The fact that you are marrying a stranger in less than twenty-four hours? Or the whole ‘sacrifice Sadie’ thing? Or the love-triangle that now has four people in it, one of whom is missing?” I teased.

  “Take your pick.”

  “Good afternoon, how can I help you folks?” Len grinned, beckoning us forward.

  “Hi Len,” Miller said. “I was hoping we could speak to you in private.”

  “Oh? What’s this about?”

  “It would be best if we took this somewhere else,” Miller insisted. Len looked at both of us, trying to assess what was going on. I’d never met this man before, and it seemed to be a huge issue to be wandering around with a woman you weren’t married to on this island.

  It was like some old, Victorian-England society with scandal and… oh dang, wasn’t this what that show Bridgerton was like? Kate would probably love it here.

  Len gestured that he would be back in a minute, wandered through the kitchen doors and called for his assistant to come to the front. When he returned, he was joined by a young man in an apron.

  “Come this way,” Len said. We followed him through a door that led up a flight of stairs into a small apartment space above the bakery. There were paintings on the wall of ocean vistas, the sunlight from outside shining directly into the kitchen area and highlighting a vase of flowers on the counter. Please, have a seat.” Len gestured toward a sofa and Miller and I sat down facing the armchair that Len was lowering himself onto.

  “Thanks, Len,” Miller smiled. “Do you know why we are here?”

  “Well, if I had to guess, I’d say that she is Sadie Alden. I know you were the sheriff back on the main island, you bring it up almost every day,” Len chuckled.

  “He is the sheriff,” I corrected. I didn’t like the use of the past tense, it was as if Miller would never come back to his previous life, like he was trapped here.

  “Right, sure,” Len winked. I rolled my eyes. “Anyway, I guess you’re here because you’re doing some sort of peacekeeper stuff, solving mysteries or fighting crime. Am I close?”

  “Do you know Holly?” I asked. Len, who had been standing when I’d asked the question, slumped down further into the armchair and let out a long breath.

  “Yes. Is she okay?”

  “We were hoping maybe you could tell us,” Miller said.

  “Her husband is under the impression that you two are an item,” I added. “He said he followed you out to some lover’s spot on the cliffs.”

  “Look, I don’t know what he’s told you, but it’s not a crime to want to be happy,” Len sighed. “Holly and I had a connection, if she left Curtis then he could marry someone else. It’s not like he doesn’t have options, that man has been chasing women his entire life, he’s deplorable.”

  “We’re not here because you’ve been dating Holly,” I said. “I mean, not really. Fleur came to us because she hasn’t seen her sister in days, Curtis told us to come here because he thought she was with you.”

  “I haven’t seen here either. We don’t see each other every day, it was supposed to help keep prying eyes off us, make sure we don’t slip into too much of a routine that we would get caught. Clearly that failed,” Len sighed. “We spoke on the phone at night in the beginning, but I didn’t know Curtis had found out.”

  “How did you end up together?” I asked.

  “I have been married before, my wife and Holly were friends. When my wife died, Holly was there for me, she was a great source of comfort and support, especially when it came to helping take care of my son. He’s the one in the apron downstairs, he’s a good kid… Anyway, things just evolved over time.”

  “Do you have any idea where she might be?” Miller pressed.

  “If Fleur hasn’t seen her, then I’d put my money on Curtis having done something. If he knew about us, then…” he sat forward in his seat, edging closer to us as he spoke. “I don’t know what he’s capable of. But I know he has a cabin, I’d check there.”

  “Cabin?” Miller furrowed his brow. “What cabin?”

  “Oh, he didn’t mention that?” Len blew air out of his nostrils as he shook his head. “I have a map of the island in a drawer somewhere, let me get it.” He stood up and walked over to a wooden piece of furniture by the living room window. He pulled open drawer after drawer, until eventually finding a folded piece of paper that prompted an ‘ah hah!’ and he came back to join us.

  He unfolded the map on the coffee table and used a pencil to point at the center.

  “We are here,” he said, pointing at the town square. I was surprised by how large the island seemed, so much of it appearing to be wild and uninhabited. He drew a line that followed the roads of the town, quickly moving out to a housing area and to a wooded section that surrounded a small pond. “He goes fishing there, built himself a small cabin too. He’s a carpenter, I don’t know if that qualifies him to also be an architect.” He rolled his eyes.

  “How often does he go out there? Who else knows about it?” I asked.

  “At least once a week,” Len replied. “Everyone knows about that place, that man loves to brag. If Holly is alive, and I pray that she is, then she might be hiding out there to get some peace.”

  “Len, it’s been days…” Miller said, reaching over to place a comforting hand on Len’s.

  “I know,” he sighed. “But I have to have hope.”

  Len folded the map and handed it to Miller.

  “I have to ask, because it will drive me crazy if I don’t, how come there aren’t that many men on this island?” I asked. “You have a teenage son, right?”

  “Yeah, I don’t actually know,” Len shrugged. “Not a lot of boys are born here, that’s why the female population likes to recruit husbands from other places.” He patted Miller on the back by way of example. “Thank you for looking out for Holly, I hope she’s okay.”

  “So do I,” Miller smiled.

  I didn’t share their optimism at this point, but maybe I was being too pessimistic. Maybe there was a chance that Holly had just excused herself from society for almost a week and gone to live in a cabin in the woods by herself without telling her husband, sister or secret boyfriend. Yeah, the more I thought about it the more convinced I was that we wouldn’t see Holly alive again.

  I briefly wondered why Len wouldn’t have gone looking for her himself, if he knew about the cabin then why wouldn’t he check there?

  We got back down into the bakery and through the glass I could see that Fleur was still sat on the curb outside. As we walked out into the sunshine, she spotted us and stood up.

  “Well, is she in there?” she asked.

  “No, but we might ha
ve a lead,” Miller replied. “I think it’s best if Sadie and I just carry on by ourselves. If we find anything then we will come and speak with you, but if Holly is looking for help then you would most likely be the one she would call. You should get home in case she is trying to get hold of you.”

  “Good point!” Fleur agreed. “Okay, well I’ll go home and wait, but if you find any more clues about where she is—”

  “Yes, we’ll let you know,” Miller interrupted. Fleur hurried away from the town square and down the street in the direction of her house. As she disappeared around a corner, I became aware of how many people were now looking at me.

  “I feel like a piece of meat in a butcher’s window,” I whispered.

  “We should get out of here,” Miller replied. He didn’t grab my hand, not in front of all these people, but pointed down a small side-street and began walking quickly away from the stares of the islanders.

  “Should we follow them?” one woman asked loudly.

  “No need, there’s no escaping,” another replied. I wished I hadn’t heard what they’d said, but I still had a few hours left before I would need to invoke some powerful magic to get Miller and I safely away. Miller had heard them too and grabbed my hand so that we could run together.

  No one was chasing us, but it still felt as if we needed to get away from everyone else as quickly as possible. We carried on running until the cobble street devolved into a dirt path through a sun-soaked field. Wildflowers burst from the soil among tall grasses, butterflies fluttered from one colorful bloom to another, and the rest of the world felt a million miles away.

  About forty feet to the left of us the trees began, the path ran parallel to the edge of the wood until it crossed a small bridge ahead of us, before twisting into the trees on our right. We stopped running. Miller looked back towards the cobble road and, after assessing that it was free of pursuing feet, kissed me.

  I wanted to bask in this feeling, but now was not the time. I smiled against his mouth, then pulled back. “We’ve got work to do!” I smirked.