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

I knew I hadn’t imagined it, because Miller saw something lurking beneath the surface too. Maybe I was still on edge from having seen something watching me from the trees earlier, or the creepy note that had been left on my bed. Maybe Miller could help me find a therapist after all this, because otherwise I would be the one that couldn’t sleep.

When we made it back up to the guesthouse, we saw a man standing out front with two spades. He had them leaning against his hip as he took frantic gulps from a thermos but lowered it when he saw us coming.

“Herbal tea really calms my nerves,” he smiled. “Honey said there was a…” he gulped, “dead body underground in a…” he gulped again, “bunker.”

“Are you gonna be alright to dig?” Miller asked.

“Sure. It’s just a skeleton, right?” He laughed awkwardly, then lifted a trembling hand to tip the thermos upright to swallow the last of his tea. “Honey, could I get some hot water? I brought six back-up tea bags.”

“Sure thing,” she agreed.

“We’ll get started,” Miller said. “I assume that’s why you brought an extra spade.”

“I own two spades and I don’t take my eyes off ‘em, not even for a second!” the man announced. “Not with those rotten treasure hunters skulking around. They’d take my spade in a heartbeat and use it to go digging up all sorts of things. If there are more secret bodies buried around this island, I’d rather they stay a secret, know what I mean?”

“I guess,” I shrugged.

“What you don’t know can’t frighten you so much that you cry in the shower!” he grinned. He followed Honey into the house, and I turned back to Miller.

“Nerves of steel, that guy,” I smirked, pointing towards the house. “We’re gonna be left alone to do this, aren’t we?”

“Oh, sure. If that guy even has one look through the bunker door, he might have a heart attack,” Miller replied. “Grab a spadie, Sadie!” he rhymed, laughing to himself.

“Just you wait until I find a word that vaguely rhymes with your name. It’ll be over for you then, let me tell you!” I teased back. I picked up the spade and followed Miller to the dug-up lawn behind the house. I had quickly realized that a word that rhymed with his name was ‘killer’ but given that we were about to recover a corpse it seemed inappropriate to say it out loud.

Miller jumped down into the pit first and suggested that I use the spade like a cutting knife to hack away at the edges of the pit so that we could make the whole thing bigger. As I did that, he was heaving the soil from the pit out onto the growing dirt pile on the grass.

There was probably a more efficient way to do it, and certainly my magic would speed things up if I knew what I was doing, but I was too nervous to try. I had considered asking Honey to use her magic, but she seemed determined to avoid coming anywhere near the digging site. I noticed her and the man that owned the spades had perched themselves onto the porch of the house and were watching us work.

“Can you see how big the door is? How much more do we need to move before we can open it?” I asked. I was sweating profusely and didn’t know how much more I could handle.

“I think you can stop now, I just have to move a few more spadefuls of dirt, then I think we can get in,” Miller shouted up. I gladly threw my spade onto the grass and sat down for a minute as I waited for him to be done. The sound of rusted door hinges rang out and I knew he’d opened the door.

I leaned over the edge of the pit and watched Miller descending a short ladder into the bunker below. A sudden swell of bravery took hold of me and I elected to follow him, despite the squeals of protest from Honey and the spade man.

When I got into the bunker, I could see the size of it better. There was probably enough space for a dozen or so people to be in here, but it would be a tight squeeze. Non-perishable food lined the walls on shelves and piles of blankets were teetering at one end of the room. I wasn’t sure why you would need blankets in here, the whole place was like a hot tin can.

Miller was standing over the skeleton and patting himself down, looking into his own pockets for something. He found a pen and used it to lift the jacket of the victim open without touching it with his bare hands.

In a regular world he would be doing that to prevent contamination so that scientists could check the body for DNA. That wouldn’t be happening in Hallow Haven on account of not having those kinds of facilities. He was using a pen because touching an old dead body is gross, plain and simple.

Even in the limited light, I could see that there were things in the dead guy’s jacket pocket. It was bulging out in places as if stuffed with something. Miller carefully used the pen to retrieve a folded document and we both realized at the same time that it was a passport.

“Why would he have a passport?” I asked. I’d been told many times that folk in Hallow Haven never travelled anywhere outside of their own islands. Miller opened it and scanned the pages for a name.

“Robert Barton,” he read.

Somewhere above us I heard a scream and then a thud. The spade guy was now leaning over the edge of the pit and looking down at both of us.

“Help, Honey just fainted!” he yelled.

6

Miller and I scrambled back up the ladder, and sure enough Honey was lying flat on the grass by the dirt pile. The spade guy was fanning her with one of the