“Wrong place, wrong time—that’s the story of your life,” Mom sighs. “Remember when you were seven and happened to be standing under the exact tree where Mrs. Hinkelstein’s cat had been stuck for three days? And you thought it was raining kittens.”
“That was different. The cat lived.”
“And you were covered in scratches for weeks!”
Winnie steps between us, ever the peacemaker. “Mom, Hattie didn’t cause any of this. She’s just a magnet for unusual situations—like making it rain both cats and corpses.”
“That’s one way to put it,” Mom mutters.
“Another way ispublic embarrassment,” Neelie adds under her breath.
“I heard that,” I say.
“Good! Then maybe you’ll finally do something about it.” Neelie glances over her shoulder. “What if someone important saw you? The governor’s wife is supposed to be here today and Stanton is performing her facelift next month.”
“Good grief,” I moan. “Heaven forbid your fiancé loses a paying customer because his future sister-in-law witnessed a tragedy.” My voice drips with enough sarcasm to fill a maple syrup bottle.
“Oh, never mind. This feels hopeless.” Mom grabs both Winnie and Neelie by the elbows. “We should go. We shouldn’t be around all this death and chaos anyway. Besides, we havetwoweddings to plan.”
Ah yes, the weddings. Winnie recently got engaged to her handsome beau, Fitz Willoughby, sole heir to a billion-dollar fortune and Willoughby Hall, a one-hundred-and-eleven-room mansion that he and Winnie have restored and are utilizing as the biggest B&B in all of Maine. The wedding planning has consumed every waking moment of my mother’s life for the pastthree weeks. And, well, Neelie is supposedly engaged, too, but not even my mother is in a hurry to plan that wedding.
“But Hattie—” Winnie begins, only to be tugged away by Mom’s surprisingly strong grip.
“Will be fine,” Mom finishes for her. “She always is.”
I watch them disappear into the crowd with Winnie casting concerned glances back at me and Neelie already on her phone, probably texting Stanton about the latest Holiday family embarrassment. I’ll admit, it’s a doozy—a dead doozy but still a doozy.
“Your mother is a force of nature.” Clarabelle chuckles as she waves them off.
“Like a hurricane,” I agree.
“More like a tornado,” Peggy says. “Comes out of nowhere, spins everything around, and leaves you wondering what just happened. But she loves you like a mama should, and that’s all that matters. Despite what they might think, you, Hattie Holiday, are one lucky young lady.”
I glance down at poor Vivian Maple and think otherwise myself. After all, I had the last dance before the Grim Reaper whisked her off her feet—permanently.
We drift toward the yellow caution tape where a crowd has gathered, united in that morbid fascination that draws humans to disaster like moths to a flame. And among the onlookers, I spot a couple of familiar faces—Meredith with her vintage cat-eye glasses, Autumn with her honey-blonde ponytail, and Oliver pacing nervously at the edge of the cordoned area.
Thank goodness, the witch is dead,a thought cuts through the ambient noise of the crowd, sharp as a knife.Someone like her deserved what she had coming.
I freeze, trying to identify the source. The problem with catching random thoughts is that unless I’m directly facingsomeone, their mental voice can sound oddly androgynous to me. If that was a man or woman, I certainly can’t tell.
One less backstabber in the world. Good riddance to that bag of trash.
There goes another thought, equally as venomous, equally impossible to pinpoint in the sea of faces surrounding the crime scene, and this time I gasp.
Boy, some of these people really hated Vivian Maple.
I scan the crowd desperately, seeking any sign—a smirk, a too-casual stance, anything to indicate who might harbor such hatred for the dead woman, but I’ve got nada.
She didn’t just die. I made sure of it.
My head snaps up, hoping to see who let the lethal thought slide.
It wasn’t a natural death or an accident but a deliberate murder? So, Vivian was right. Shewaspoisoned!
I search the crowd again, but the faces have become a blur—they’re all wearing the same expression of horrified fascination. But somewhere on the grounds the killer stands among us, watching their handiwork unfold, and I have no idea who it might be.
Somewhere in this sea of pumpkin-spice-loving festival-goers hides a killer who just turned Brambleberry Bay’s fall celebration into a recipe for death.
