Hallow Haven Cozy Mysteries Bundle Books 1-3 by Mara Webb (books to read fiction .txt) 📕

you are in line for the British throne, too! All that stands between you and the crown are about eight million people!” Meredith cackled.

“Wow, so your coronation could be any day now then!” I smirked.

“Is that how you speak to royalty?” Miller replied, sticking out his pinky finger as he lifted his soup spoon to his mouth.

The radio was playing in the kitchen and I could just make out the sound of Kate’s voice, it was an ad for the Battle of the Bands competition.

“Are you going to enter? I bet you have an artist’s soul,” Meredith said.

“I’m probably going to skip it this year,” Miller smiled. “Are you entering?”

“Of course! I have only ever written one song and I have submitted it every year, but my talents are obviously too potent for the listenership of The Trident radio station. I am available for private bookings, though. My style is a mix of folk music and hair metal,” she said.

I almost chocked on my soup trying to suppress a laugh, but it seemed that she wasn’t joking. “I’ll keep it in mind,” I smiled.

“You own the café on the beach now, don’t you?” she asked. I nodded. “Well I would be a perfect booking for a place like that. My music aids digestion.”

“Sure,” I hummed.

The phone started to ring, and Meredith stood up to deal with it. The music on the radio was the only sound now as Miller and I finished our lunch, neither of us able to talk about Meredith being a hair-metal singer.

“It was naïve to trust someone wicked like you, but I did and look, now I’m wicked too,” the voice crooned from the radio.

“Who is this?” I asked.

“Maybe it’s Meredith singing down the phone,” Miller laughed. “They might have called her up to offer her a record deal and skip the rest of the contest all together.

“Sadie, it’s for you,” Meredith called from somewhere in the house.

“Okay!” I called back, giving Miller a confused look. He stood up to follow me to the phone. Who even knew we were here? Effie? Maybe something was going wrong at the café, or it was just the lunchtime rush and she needed me to help out.

“Hello?” I said, taking the handset from Meredith.

“Oh thank goodness,” Kate said down the phone. “I’ve been running all over the place like a headless chicken trying to find you. Effie said you had left the main island and hadn’t come back, and she couldn’t remember where you’d gone! I’ve called three other islands trying to find you!”

“What’s going on?” I asked.

“I need you guys to come back. I think something bad has happened,” she replied.

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah, it’s not about me. Look, someone called into the radio station and then… I don’t know how to explain it…” she sighed. “I think they got hurt. It sounded like someone smashed a window and then a gun shot rang out. I’d gone into the studio to promote the competition; I did a live ad. Someone called right after and I answered the phone. We need to find them.”

“We’re trapped out on Wilmore,” I said. “We have to wait for a boat to—”

“There’s a boat pulling up to the shallows,” Meredith said.

“I called the police station and asked them to bring you back immediately,” Kate added. “If someone is injured then we need to find them.”

“Okay, I’ll get to the boat now,” I assured her.

“I’ll meet you at the marina.” She hung up.

“Come on, we have to get on the boat,” I informed Miller. We hurried out of the front door. “Fitz!” I yelled. He came bounding out of the trees covered in spiderwebs and rain. “Time to go.”

“Dang it, I thought we had more time!” he complained.

“We’ll come back, I’m sure,” I said. “Meredith, once this is dealt with, I’ll help the police with the search, okay?”

“Thank you, Sadie. And Miller, you can call anytime about absolutely anything. I’m a great listener,” she winked.

“Jeez,” I muttered. We climbed into the speedboat and the police officer at the controls quickly started up the engine again. In a matter of seconds we were racing back towards the main island and the café was coming into view.

Kate was standing on the sand by the marina. I could see her brightly colored hair before I could see the rest of her, she stood out like a beacon on a dark night. The sun bouncing off her emerald green bangs reminded me of the landing strips at an airport.

“I have an address,” Kate shouted before the boat was at a complete stop. The storm had mostly blown over by now, the grey clouds in the sky were no longer firing rain down from above. “I looked up the number in the phonebook.”

“You guys still have phonebooks?” I asked.

“Yeah, this place isn’t quite as modernized as the rest of the world,” Miller smiled.

“It’s not far, come on,” Kate urged. I hadn’t seen her panicked like this before. I wondered what exactly she had heard that was making her so frantic. She didn’t know for sure that the sound she heard was a gun, right?

We followed her along the beach, climbing up a dune on unsteady feet and pulling ourselves up into an alley that acted as a shortcut. We stopped at the last building on the high street, the road began to twist up onto the mountain path on our right.

‘The Guitar Yard’ was a two-story building with a glass front, or at least the glass had been there. Something had smashed through the front door and there were shards from the windows all over the sidewalk.

“This is the place?” I asked.

“Yeah, whoever called me was in this building,” Kate said. She had heard broken glass on the call, it must have been from the windows.

I walked forward and pushed open the door. It wasn’t locked. Guitars of every color hung from the walls, books of sheet music lined the display in front of the cash register and a few