Nothing To Croak About (Silver Hollow Paranormal Cozy Mystery Series Book 3) Read online

  Once her cousins had done as she’d asked, Issy closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and clenched her fists tight before unfurling them at the whirling energy. “Novisio!”

  The glowing ball dissolved, the items contained in the tiny maelstrom falling to the floor moments before Deputy Deidre Clawson raced into the room. DeeDee took in the scene then the three Quinn cousins, her expression suspicious. “What’s going on here, ladies?”

  Brimstone yawned and stretched, giving his front paws a few more licks before heading calmly for the door, as if he hadn’t just been chased by the miscast energy ball. “Since you all have things under control, I’ll just be going now.”

  He darted outside before anyone could stop him.

  Silver Hollow Sheriff Owen Gleason charged inside, wearing one of his trademark Hawaiian shirts again, instead of his official uniform. He tipped the brim of his baseball hat to the Quinns. “Howdy, ladies. Mind telling me how you three managed to show up at another crime scene? You gals seem to be magnets for trouble these days.”

  Issy glanced toward the door again, half hoping Dex might walk in next. Even though she knew his real job was to investigate paranormal activity for the FBPI, she knew he sometimes used his FBI credentials as an excuse to get involved in Silver Hollow police activity.

  She turned back to face the crime scene and found Ember watching her with a smile.

  “What?” Issy asked.

  “Nothing.” Ember’s knowing grin widened. “Looking to see if a certain agent is on the case?”

  “No.”

  “Looks like the EMTs are too late,” DeeDee said as an ambulance pulled up outside. She knelt beside Adele and felt for a pulse. “She’s dead.”

  A loud croak issued through the open door as a stretcher was wheeled in and Ursula Lavoie, the medical examiner, followed in behind it. Issy was surprised to see Ursula out during the day. Being a vampire, she liked to spend the daylight hours sequestered in the underground morgue and rarely visited crime scenes. Today, she wore a black jacket with the biggest hood Issy had ever seen. Ursula pushed the hood back, revealing porcelain-white skin, jet-black hair, and delicate features. She nodded at Issy and her cousins, then bent down to inspect Adele.

  DeeDee pulled the Quinns aside. “Is there anything I need to keep from Owen?”

  Their sheriff was human and had no idea about the paranormal community living under his jurisdiction. Issy glanced over at Adele as the EMTs gently loaded her onto the gurney, then back at the deputy. DeeDee, a werewolf shifter, had made it her duty to keep Owen in the dark about all things paranormal. Ursula helped by neglecting to mention some of the more paranormal aspects of the various deaths. Not that they wanted paranormals to get away with murder, but the community just preferred to deal with them on their own.

  “No,” Issy said. “We just stopped by to make sure she was okay.”

  “See? We brought gifts and everything,” Raine added, pointing toward the plants and chocolates sitting on Adele’s counter.

  “What about all this stuff on the floor?” DeeDee nudged a bobby pin with the toe of her shoe. “What’s all this about?”

  “We think Adele tried to cast a protection spell after she’d been injured,” Ember explained, her tone low. “Because of her compromised state, the casting went awry and formed an energy ball that gathered all these things inside it, like a mini-tornado.”

  “Once I banished the spell, all the stuff fell out,” Issy said.

  The EMTs wheeled Adele’s body from the room just as a second officer showed up. Issy hadn’t seen the guy before, so he must’ve been new to the force. Given the recent rash of crime in the tiny village, it seemed the Silver Hollow Sheriff’s Department was expanding.

  Owen walked over and held out a bunch of evidence bags to DeeDee before snapping on a pair of latex gloves. “Ursula says Ms. Brundage died from blunt force trauma to the head. You and Officer Dunlop process the crime scene initially until the CSIs get here. Make sure you dust all these knickknacks for fingerprints.” He hiked a thumb toward the shelves full of crystal balls in the living room then frowned at the items scattered on the kitchen floor by the energy ball. “This place is a mess. Going to be hard to tell what’s part of the struggle and what’s just clutter. I’ll have a look around and see if I can find the murder weapon.”

  “Yes, sir,” DeeDee called as Owen headed outside, then handed a pair of gloves and several evidence bags to her underling. “Start in the living room, Dunlop.”

  “Got it, Deputy Clawson.” The guy all but saluted before taking off into the other room.

  “We’ve got to be careful around Owen,” DeeDee said, once the guy was out of earshot. “He’s become way more dedicated ever since the Pettywood incident last month.”

  Raine met Issy’s gaze then looked away fast.

  “I found something!” Owen yelled. He walked in with a heavy tree limb about the size and shape of a baseball bat. Dried blood caked one end of it. “I’m guessing it came from her stash of walking sticks. There’s a whole container of them by the front door.”

  Issy looked to where he was pointing, and sure enough, there were walking sticks and what looked like regular tree limbs in a metal stand. She must’ve missed those in her haste to get inside earlier.

  “How are you guys doing?” Owen asked.

  “I put Dunlop on the living room, sir,” DeeDee said.

  “Okay, then.” Owen walked into the next room and stood, hands on hips, staring at the ransacked bookshelves lined with scrying balls. Issy gave DeeDee a what-do-we-do-now look. Owen wrinkled his nose. “Wasn’t Adele some kind of fortune-teller?”

  “Um, yes,” Ember said before Issy could stop her. “She used her crystal balls to tell someone’s future.” Issy gave her a stare. “Oh. Well… at least that’s what she said.”

  “Right.” Owen nodded. “Yeah. I’ve heard folks around here talk. Some of them really believe all that crazy hocus-pocus too.” He snorted. “I bet not all of them like what she told them either.”

  “I suspect that’s true,” Issy said.

  “Hmm.” Owen picked up one of the balls in his gloved hand. “These things valuable?”

  “Not terribly,” Issy said. For those without the gift of foresight, they were nothing but pretty glass objects. “A hunk of polished rock crystal maybe worth a few bucks.”

  “Not worth killing over then?” Owen held the scrying ball in front of his face so his image was distorted.

  “Probably not.” Issy met DeeDee’s gaze. Maybe Adele’s gift had gotten her murdered.

  “Too bad about her son, Scott.” Owen set the ball back on its stand then made a slow trek around the perimeter of the room. Everything in the place was shabby—from the secondhand furniture to the worn rug and the outdated TV. “And now Adele. Doesn’t seem like this was a robbery. Doesn’t look like she had much.”

  “So why kill her and ransack the place then?” Officer Dunlop asked as he bent to look inside a cabinet. He hiked his gloved thumb toward the bookcase. “Especially if those crystal balls aren’t worth anything. From the looks of this place, that’s the most valuable thing she had.”

  “Perhaps the murderer wasn’t looking for something of monetary value.” Owen brushed past Issy on his return to the kitchen. He stood over where Adele’s body had been minutes earlier. Blood still stained the floor, and DeeDee had placed various markers to show where pieces of evidence had been found. “Adele might have been killed because she surprised her attacker. Though I’m not sure how they got in. There’s no obvious signs of forced entry, but her door is old and the casings already marked up, so someone could have jimmied the lock and those marks would be indistinguishable from what’s already there.”

  Ember opened her mouth, but Issy gripped her arm to keep her quiet. None of them had mentioned the door being open when they’d arrived, and it was probably best to keep that to themselves for now, until they knew exactly what they were dealing with here.

  Owen cont
inued. “I’d say Adele Brundage probably saw something in one of her visions of the future and someone else didn’t like it. They mostly likely didn’t want her to tell anyone else about it either. So they came here and silenced her for good.”

  3

  Dex Nolan sat on the back deck attached to his quaint little bungalow, sipping his beer while a trio of toads hopped across the lawn. Gordon, his pet bearded dragon, dug his tiny claws into Dex’s shoulder, watching the toads with great interest. Little guy probably thought they’d make a tasty snack.

  “Hey, buddy,” Dex said, tugging gently on the leash around Gordon’s neck to distract him. “Best find something else to eat. Those things will give you warts.”

  The lizard flicked his tongue out to graze Dex’s cheek and raised his front paw, as if waving hello. Considering he’d never expected to have a pet, bachelor Dex had quickly become best pals with Gordon.

  “How about some pizza, huh?” Dex laughed when Gordon cocked his head to the side as if he understood the question. “No to pizza, huh? You’d probably prefer a few juicy grasshoppers, eh? Or maybe some flies?”

  Sirens raced by in the distance, and Dex frowned toward the far side of his yard, closest to the street. “Wonder what’s going on, buddy. Sounds like quite a ruckus.”

  He set his beer aside and stood. While spending a lazy afternoon around his new house was nice and allowed him to finally get some of those boxes unpacked from when he’d moved in a few months ago, sitting on the sidelines wasn’t Dex’s style. He preferred to be in the thick of things. It was why he’d taken this job in Silver Hollow, after all. Well, that and a certain feisty strawberry-blonde who’d been ignoring him for the past two months.

  With a heavy sigh, Dex headed back inside and set Gordon on the perch in his vivarium. Honestly, he understood now why the FBPI would want an agent at this location full-time, given the strange occurrences around these parts, but that didn’t help keep his mind off Issy Quinn or that weird night at Enid Pettywood’s.

  Or maybe he should say miserable night. He’d failed to protect Issy from whatever the heck that thing had been that attacked her, so he couldn’t blame her for not wanting to talk to him. Honestly, he’d gotten lucky that he’d only suffered the silent treatment. The last time he’d failed to protect someone put in his charge, a child had died.

  He walked into his kitchen and tossed his empty beer bottle into the recycle bin. And yeah, afterward, he’d done his duty and filled out all the Bureau’s required reports, telling them lightning had been responsible for the damage to the Pettywood house, when deep down he knew what had happened in that house was not due to any electrical storm.

  Before coming to Silver Hollow, he’d never been a believer in the paranormal. He had taken the job with the FBPI mainly to assuage his guilt over that kid dying, then later had decided to stay on to be closer to Issy. Now, though, after what he’d seen that night at Enid’s—the glowing malevolence in Raine Quinn’s eyes, the way the demon had shifted before his eyes from human to something dark and evil, the sparks and power that had flown from its fingertips and rendered him paralyzed and injured Issy in the process…

  A shudder ran through him. Well, now that whole situation had made him seriously consider that there really might be forces greater than he could see at work here in Silver Hollow. That perhaps the paranormal and magic weren’t silly old fairy tales after all.

  Distracted, Dex headed toward his bedroom for a shower. Surprisingly, the thought of real ghosts and ghouls and things that went bump in the night didn’t disturb him nearly as much as he thought it would.

  Maybe his time in the FBPI hadn’t been a total waste after all.

  As he flipped on the shower and got out a towel from the linen closet by the door, he couldn’t help but worry, though, about his sworn duty to bring in those he suspected of possessing these strange, magical powers. Issy and her cousins hadn’t just been there during the incident at Enid’s. They’d been active participants in all the events and seemed to be mixed up in the paranormal happenings in the community. Which meant eventually Issy’s and Dex’s purposes would cross.

  Stepping under the steamy spray, his frown deepened. If it came down to it, could he arrest Issy or any of her cousins for suspected paranormal behavior? No, Dex didn’t think he could. He’d met them, spent time with them, knew them all to be decent people.

  Arresting them seemed wrong.

  Dex soaped up and scrubbed down fast, then dried off and changed clothes, pulling on a fresh pair of jeans and a T-shirt, wanting to be comfortable on his day off. Then he padded back out to his kitchen to see what he might fix for dinner. Cooking for one was kind of a drag, but he did the best he could.

  While he stared into his fridge, the conflict between his personal feelings and the duties of his job circled in his mind. Really, if he played his cards right, he wouldn’t necessarily have to arrest anyone—as long as he didn’t write his reports to show any paranormal involvement in the cases he investigated, no one would be the wiser. He’d be able to protect Issy and her cousins and all the other good people he’d met here in Silver Hollow.

  Yep. Sounded like a plan.

  Now all he needed was official clearance from his boss back at headquarters to work on every case that passed through the Silver Hollow Sheriff’s Department.

  Dex set aside the loaf of bread and packet of lunch meat he’d pulled from the fridge and picked up his cell phone from its charger instead. Hitting the speed dial button, he rested his hips against the edge of the counter and waited for his old partner and new boss, Stan, to answer.

  “Stanley Judge, FBI.”

  Wincing at the guy’s clipped tone, Dex forced a smile. When it came to apprehending suspected paranormals, good old Stan gave new meaning to the word gung-ho. “Hey, Stan. It’s Dex.”

  “Dexter Nolan. How are you?” Stan’s tone became less abrupt, if no less formal. He and Dex might’ve been partners, but they’d never really been close friends. “Tell me something’s finally happening down there in Silver Hollow.”

  Used to thinking fast on his feet, Dex remembered what he’d heard while out on his deck. “I think maybe there is. Sirens raced by here about half an hour ago. Sounded like a couple squad cars and maybe an ambulance. I was hoping you could do me a favor and call Owen’s office. If he’s got a new case, then I’d like to be his coinvestigator.” He took a deep breath. “In fact, considering what we’re dealing with here in the area, it might be in our best interest for you to give him a blanket order to involve me in all of his cases from here on out. That way we won’t miss an opportunity to capture any paranormal activity going on around here.”

  “Wow.” Interest sparked in Stan’s voice at last. “I like your initiative, Agent Nolan! Reminds me of myself when I first started out with the Bureau. If things are truly getting exciting, maybe I should come there for a while too. We could get the old team back together.”

  Crap. Not what Dex had in mind. “Oh, well. I might’ve gotten ahead of myself there a bit. Honestly, I don’t know what’s going on at this point. Only that I heard sirens. Could’ve been a jaywalker for all I know.” He forced a laugh that sounded fake even to his own ears and prayed Stan would back off.

  “Oh.” Disappointment and annoyance zinged through Stan’s tone. “In that case, I’m far too busy to make the trip over if there’s nothing going on. I’ll call the sheriff, and you get the scoop. Make sure you call me back, though, if it’s anything paranormal. I’d love to haul a couple of those degenerates into Area 59 for questioning.”

  The mention of the Bureau’s top-secret interrogation facility made Dex’s stomach cramp. He’d never been there himself, but the rumors of the torture and heinous deeds performed on the poor prisoners there made Gitmo seem like a walk in the park. If Issy or her cousins ever ended up in the place…

  He shook his head and glanced over at Gordon in his enclosure, his racing pulse quieting. Stan had given him the okay to work on Owen’s cases. T
hat was a step in the right direction. From there, Dex would find a way to keep Stan away from Silver Hollow and things would be good.

  “Will do.” Dex exhaled in relief. “Thanks, boss.”

  “No problem. Keep up the good work, Agent Nolan.”

  He hung up before Dex could respond.

  Dex smiled, tossing his phone back on the counter, feeling better than he had in weeks.

  Finally, he’d have a new case, something to keep him busy and involved. And hey. If he happened to run into a certain Issy Quinn while on the job, you’d hear no complaints from him.

  4

  “Well, that took forever,” Issy said as she climbed in behind the wheel of Brown Betty once more. The pickup sputtered a few times and belched out a stream of noxious exhaust then chugged to life as her cousins got in on the passenger side.

  “I can’t believe Owen pawned us off on that new deputy,” Ember groused. “Poor DeeDee kept giving me apologetic looks from across the room.”

  “Yeah, that Dunlop’s a little too Barney Fife for my tastes,” Raine said.

  Issy carefully backed down Adele’s driveway and out onto the dirt road once more. “So what do we do now? We can’t just let Owen handle things. DeeDee can only cover up the paranormal aspects for so long.” She took a deep breath and stared out the windshield. “Isn’t there someone else living on this road?”

  “Yes. Mr. Crandall,” Ember said. “Ornery old hermit, from what I recall. He lives in a tiny cabin near the entrance to this road.”

  “Great.” Issy started slowly forward. “Maybe we should pay a visit to him while we’re here.”

  Raine rolled her eyes again. “Sounds like a perfect end to a less-than-stellar morning.”

  They neared the end of the dirt road, where it intersected with the main highway leading into Silver Hollow. Issy squinted through the thick trees on either side of them. “Are you sure he still lives here? I don’t see anything.”