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

didn’t seem like a good time to mention that I was dating someone she’d never heard of,” Kate trailed off. “But… there’s something else but it probably doesn’t even need mentioning really. I’m probably just getting carried away. I shouldn’t bring it up—”

“Kate!”

“He had a thing of gasoline. I don’t know what you call it, like a bottle but it’s shaped like a box, or is it more like a tub?”

“Tim was up here with gasoline?” I interrupted.

“Yeah, and a lighter. I didn’t ask any probing questions about why he had those things, but now that I look down at the earth, all burned like this, it seems that maybe I should have made some enquiries,” Kate shrugged.

“So the clearing was already here, someone just set fire to the ground?” I asked.

“It looks like it, yeah. The rock was already here too, but the burning is weird. Definitely suspicious,” she mused.

“I think we should probably ask Tim some questions then, don’t you?” I pushed.

“Yeah, I agree with Sadie,” Effie announced. She jumped out from behind a tree and Kate almost fell over from the shock of being pounced at.

“Effie!” Kate cried.

“I knew you were up to something. You think you can hide anything from me?” Effie laughed. “Considering we’ve been sisters for so long, you’d think that you knew me better by now.”

“What do you know?” Kate exclaimed.

“I knew you were dating somebody for starters. I also knew that you were up to something when we got here, and you had that weird look on your face. All I had to do was lay in wait until you blurted it all out to Sadie,” Effie said, folding her arms triumphantly.

“Does that mean that there isn’t an issue with the walk-in fridges?” I asked.

“Oh, there is. They are messed up, big time! But this is more important!” Effie announced. “Your freaky boyfriend burned the earth around this rock, and I want to know why. I think we both recognize that Ryder was right about this place; this is a ritual site.”

“You think her boyfriend is performing rituals up here?” I interjected.

“He’s not my boyfriend!” Kate cried out. “We’ve just been out a few times, it’s not serious or anything.” She was now trying to pretend she had never claimed to have been in love with him when talking to me about him earlier.

“Look,” I said, holding out my hands with my palms projected in the direction of each of them. “Let’s just take a minute to calm down and think about—”

“Your boyfriend is performing dark magic!” Effie shrieked. My calming hand gestures hadn’t helped.

“Hey!” I shouted. “We should just ask him, right? Why don’t we ask Tim to give us the perfectly reasonable explanation as to why he had a container filled with gasoline with him on a hike up to this clearing in the trees?”

“He won’t speak to either of you two about it,” Kate grumbled.

“I don’t even want to speak to your little lord of darkness,” Effie sulked.

“Come on, you’re adults. How do we resolve this?” I asked.

“I want to do the movie thing,” Effie said.

“Oh, don’t make me do that,” Kate sighed. “Anything but that, it never works!”

“What movie thing?” I said, looking confused.

“She wants to have me take Tim to a restaurant and have you both at the next booth over behind a couple of big menus so you can eavesdrop. It happened in, like, three of the films we watched last week,” Kate explained.

“Why wouldn’t that work?” I asked.

“Great, so you want to do it too?” Effie grinned at me. Without saying a further word on the matter it seemed as though I had agreed to participate.

How bad could it be?

10

“You guys are really just going to follow me around all day?” Kate moaned.

“You better believe it, missy,” Effie grinned. After some back and forth, it was decided, without any input from me, that we would all go along with the plan to ambush Tim at a restaurant. It was also decided that we would be stopping off at the radio station first too.

It was too early to eat a meal yet, so Kate had sent a message to Tim inviting him out for lunch. We had some time to kill, so Kate figured we should go and listen to some more entries for the Battle of the Bands.

Considering that I was supposed to be some sort of authority figure on the islands, it seemed that the two sisters had little interest in my point of view on the matter. I just followed along as we wandered back down the hill towards the high street.

As we sat down in a side studio at the radio station, Kate emerged from a storage room with a giant plastic tub of cassette tapes.

“How do you guys still have those things here? I haven’t seen one since the 90’s,” I laughed.

“This place is like a time capsule,” Effie said. “I think people assume that cassettes might come back around like vinyl records did.”

“One guy sold his vinyl collection online and made enough to have a pool built in his back yard,” Kate sighed. “Everyone thinks they can make it rich if they hang on to this junk.”

“How many entries have you had so far then?” I asked, looking at the pile of tapes as Kate tipped them out onto a table. “Did you get the name of the good entry we heard the other night?”

“No, that one is still a mystery. There has to be at least forty tapes here and I know we’ve had email entries too,” Kate explained. “It should keep us busy until lunch at the very least.”

“Who’s up first?” Effie asked, digging through the pile.

“How about this one?” I said, holding aloft a cassette with a rainbow drawing beneath the name. “It’s ‘Tide In’ by ‘The Whirlpools’. Cool band name!”

“Eesh,” Kate sighed. “They are the house band for the Italian restaurant on the high street. I will bet you a thousand dollars that this