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

“Is everything okay?” I typed, hitting send.

“I’ll come to you. Someone should escort you home when you’re done,” he replied. I couldn’t help but feel excited at the thought of seeing him. I tucked my hair behind my ears and struggled to hide the smile on my face as I daydreamed about him holding my hand back on Wilmore.

“There is no way you are smiling at the line, put yourself in a garbage bag and sit on the sidewalk with the rest of the trash,” Kate laughed. “Which hottie just sent you a message?”

“I think it’s Sheriff hottie,” Effie smiled.

“Oh I know, I could sense it. I just wanted her to spill the beans,” Kate grinned.

“The song is ending,” I pointed out.

“Oh shoot,” Kate said, spinning her chair round and fiddling with buttons. “Well that was another entry all right, sure was longer than some songs.”

There was a huge pile of tapes on the desk beside Kate and she grabbed one from the top and stuck it into a machine that immediately began playing it. She hit pause quickly and read the handwritten note tucked into the cassette case.

“This song is… I can’t read this very well. I think it says ‘Nobody’, but I could be wrong. Anyway, here you go!” Kate hit play and turned to speak to us again. The impish look in her let me know she was about to say something sassy about Miller coming here so late at night to escort me home. She opened her mouth to speak, but the singer on the tape was singing with the most beautiful voice and it stopped her in her tracks.

‘Another day of watching you smile at him, you can’t know the pain that I’m swimming in,’ the voice crooned. It was easily better than the others. It was such a good melody too; it had completely pulled me out of the thoughts of Miller and I was immersed in the sound coming from the speakers.

Scott ran up to the glass of the studio door and gave Kate a huge thumbs up, mouthing who is this? To her as she shrugged.

“This isn’t about lettuce or garbage bags. You might have a real contender here!” Effie whispered.

“Any chance this is Ma—?” Kate said.

“No,” Effie snapped. “He couldn’t sing like this. This is someone really special. I bet this guy has a nose ring and tattoo on his chest of a giant stag or something.”

“Is there no name?” I asked.

Kate shook her head. Something about this sounded so familiar, like déjà vu almost. I hadn’t heard much local music since I arrived, and I didn’t know any singers around here. There was no way for me to recognize the voice, but it felt as though I did somehow. My witch intuition was pulling me to this song, I could feel it. Who was the singer?

8

Miller burst through the door and looked at the three of us. “Jeez, I thought an animal was being attacked in here!” he gasped. The good song had ended, and we were now listening to a woman of questionable talent try to hit the highest note possible while singing about her ex-husband. I’d had my hands over my ears since the start, but Kate was tapping her foot along as if she was enjoying it.

“No, the only thing being attacked is my respect for my sister,” Effie teased. “If she likes this, then I have serious doubts about her taste in anything.”

“Don’t yuck my yum!” Kate sassed back.

“Did you wanna stay until the show is over?” Miller asked me.

“This is the last song I’m playing tonight,” Kate said. “I have a segment where I read out letters that people have written to their pets, so that is gonna be the next ninety minutes at least.”

“No wonder you’re on in the middle of the night,” Effie laughed.

“I’ll head home now then,” I said. “If you need my opinion on the record, I’d say that it sounds like that woman still loves the guy and that maybe her singing was the reason he moved out.”

Effie laughed as Miller and I walked out of the studio. Kate and Effie lived together, so they would be travelling back home with each other. They would be fine. When Miller got me back home, I would be alone in the house. I wasn’t sure if I was worried about Ryder’s discovery in the clearing but being by myself still seemed scary.

“I still haven’t found Jake,” Miller said once we were outside the building. He closed the door to the radio station behind him and stepped closer. I couldn’t see him all that well due to the dim light from the main street only just reaching us in the alley. This was a really spooky place to be at this time of night.

“Who would take a dead person?” I asked. I felt his arm reach out behind me, guiding me towards the light. He wasn’t quite touching me, but it was close enough that I felt giddy.

“I don’t know,” he answered. “Maybe his wife?”

“Jake was married?”

“Yeah. I haven’t been able to get hold of her today. It’s on my list of jobs for tomorrow, first thing,” he said. “Although people here love to talk, so she might have heard about it through the grape vine already.”

“Miller, we can’t let her hear it from other people,” I said, stopping in my tracks. “You need to make sure she knows and that we are looking into what happened.”

“It’s late…” he said, looking up at the sky. “What if we wake her?”

“You don’t think she’s already awake with worry?” I scoffed.

“Good point,” he nodded. “I just hate this part of the job so much and I was hoping to wait until we had more information. I know that’s dumb, but if I have to tell someone that their husband just died, I don’t want to be unable to answer any questions when I’m asked. We don’t have any leads, we don’t have a