Death at the Museum Read online

  Death at the Museum

  Firefly Junction Cozy Mystery #11

  London Lovett

  Wild Fox Press

  Death at the Museum

  Copyright © 2021 by London Lovett

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Murder at the Pumpkin Patch

  About the Author

  Chapter 1

  I see we're having guests. You're bringing out the fine china," Edward mused.

  I laughed briefly at the stack of chipped and cracked plates in my hands. "This is hardly fine china."

  "Clearly." He picked out three oranges from the fruit bowl and began to juggle them.

  "Oh, I see, a little ghostly sarcasm, or, more precisely, a little snobbish ghostly sarcasm. I assume you dined on imported porcelain, gold leafed and each one hand-painted to perfection."

  "Naturally, the Becketts weren't barbarians, after all."

  I set the dishes down on the cart. I'd realized after hosting several dinner parties for my sisters and their respective partners that the dining room was an impractical distance from the kitchen. Lana had lent me her spare cart for the time being, and I'd added rolling carts along with good china to the growing list of items needed before opening the Cider Ridge Inn.

  I turned toward the silverware drawer. "I've got news for you, Mr. Snooty Pooty, those dishes you dined on were probably teeming with lead."

  I looked pointedly his direction to see if I'd caused any sort of surprise or alarm. The oranges circled through the air, his hand barely touching the fruit as his own between worlds energy moved the solid fruit around as if weightless. He regarded me indifferently with his unearthly blue gaze. His image was especially sharp and, admittedly, devilishly handsome in the dusky sunlight streaming through the kitchen window.

  "Is there a problem with consuming lead?" he asked in all seriousness.

  "You're right. Probably not something you have to worry about anymore in your present state." We'd spent so much time together and he was such a constant presence in my life that I occasionally forgot he was not from this century. Even though he was no longer a living, breathing human being, he'd retained what I could assume was every ounce of his personality and soul. It was hard not to speak to him as someone who might be alarmed or even the slightest bit adversely affected by the thought of consuming lead. And, while he could dish out sarcasm and passive aggressions better than anyone I knew, he also didn't take perceived insults well. The oranges spun faster, angrily and his mouth turned down at the corners.

  "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have brought up your—your state."

  "You just did it again. It's not a state. It's a level of existence."

  A laugh shot from my mouth before I could stop it. "You're like those politicians who create some horrible law to add more pollutants to the air and then call it the clear skies initiative. You can sugarcoat with the best of them."

  "Once again, you're speaking in light-minded, nonsensical terms, so I'll retreat to my dungeon while you entertain your guests."

  Another laugh. "The upstairs is hardly a dungeon, and is that possible even? I thought dungeons were generally below ground. Besides, Ursula and Henry have done a spectacular job up there. It doesn't even look like the same house."

  The oranges slowed to a melancholy tempo to go with his now sad expression. I'd hurt his feelings again.

  I walked over to him. On occasion, I could get close to enough to feel his aura, a sort of cool, static-charged air that surrounded him. "I'm sorry, Edward. I know it's hard to see the old house, the house you knew so well, being erased and replaced with fresh paint, floors and trim. Sometimes I forget how attached you are to this place."

  The oranges stopped their flight and hovered midair in front of him. His bold blue gaze glued to my face, and his dark brows lowered. "I'm not attached to this house. It is a source of great pain, both physical and mental. Every day that I woke up in this house reminded me of my family's disdain for me and how I'd disappointed my father. It reminded me how my dissolute nature ripped me from my family's fortune and good name. That same debauched nature sent me to an early grave." It was so rare for him to be contrite, I waited patiently for some kind of punch line or retraction of all that he'd said. But none came.

  "Edward—"

  Edward vanished, his cool, static-charged aura swept away with him. The oranges popped up and fell to the ground.

  "Now you're just ruining good produce," I chided.

  "Sunni?" a hesitant, deep voice asked from behind.

  I spun around. Lana's boyfriend and my coworker, Dave Crockett, stood looking about as dumbstruck as a person could look. Fortunately, he managed to hang on to Lana's casserole dish. "Dave? You're here. I mean, of course you are. I've been expecting you guys." My heart pounded, and my mind raced trying to figure out how much Dave had just witnessed. It would not be the first time I had to make excuses for the seemingly gravity-resistant produce in my kitchen.

  I rushed toward him. "Here, let me take that from you." He put up no argument as he stood stock-still, feet frozen to the spot in the middle of the kitchen floor. His gaze stayed riveted to the place, the empty space now, where the three oranges had frivolously danced about before falling to the floor.

  I leaned down and took a deep whiff. "Hmm, macaroni and cheese. Lana's specialty. I'll put it in the oven to warm. Can I get you a drink?" I could hear the edge of hysteria and nerves in my tone, but I couldn't seem to stop myself. His reaction, or, more aptly put, non-reaction, as in standing as still and quiet as a statue, assured me he had seen plenty.

  "How did you do that?" he finally sputtered out.

  "Do what?" I placed the casserole into the oven. "How is the weather out there?" It was a silly question considering it was a typical early summer evening with nothing remarkable to mention. Nothing more clever or engaging came to mind because I was too busy trying to formulate an excuse for flying oranges and talking to myself.

  "Those oranges"—he pointed hesitantly at the fruit as if they might jump up and fly at him. "They hovered in the air, then lifted up before dropping." He looked up at the ceiling. "Is it some sort of trick? Who were you talking to?"

  My hands shook as I frantically busied myself with the silverware. A forced laugh croaked from my dry throat. "Not sure what or who you're talking about. I dropped the oranges, and was scolding myself for ruining good produce." I released a steadier breath for the first time. As far as I was concerned, my response was a perfectly reasonable explanation for everything. I laughed again. It sounded
like one of those laughs used in polite society when someone else thought they'd said something amusing. "Unfortunately, being alone in this big, empty house is conducive to a lot of one-sided conversations. I'm certain I've seen the dogs exchange eye rolls when I'm going on about something to myself." I was talking airily, hoping the humor would catch on. It did not.

  Instead of chuckling along, or, better yet, confessing to also talking to himself (after all, who doesn't?) Dave took several unsure steps toward the three oranges on the floor. Two had rolled toward the kitchen cabinets, and the third, more rascally one, had wedged itself beneath the stove.

  Dave stooped over and picked up the two easy to reach oranges. He turned them around in his fingers, examining each one as if it was a fine stone. He looked up at the ceiling again. "No strings or wires, so it wasn't a trick."

  I laughed again but stopped short realizing my laughter was only making me sound more nervous, as if I was hiding something. "I'm not sure what kind of fruit you buy, Dave, but, I assure you, when I drop my fruit, it doesn't need a wire or string. I was holding too many at once, and the rotund, little buggers just fell out of my grasp. When I tried to grab for the first escape artist, the other two quickly followed." I glanced toward the window. "Where's Lana?"

  A moment of silence followed as Dave continued to mentally process what he'd seen. He finally looked up from his thoughts. "Huh? Oh, Lana, right. She's out in the car. A client called just as we pulled up. She needed to clarify some details for an event. Though, now I really wish she'd walked in here with me." He rubbed his temple. "Sunni, I saw those oranges defy gravity just before falling to the ground. You weren't holding them. They were—they were floating."

  My entire body tensed. It was worse than I thought. Dave had seen the fruit dangling midair. I had no choice except to deny everything.

  I handed him the basket of silverware, so I could move him out of the room. It was my desperate theory that a change of scenery would wipe the incident from his memory or, at the very least, push it to the back of his mind where it could eventually be whittled down to a mere odd blip in his day.

  Reluctantly, he trudged behind me down the hallway, the silverware making its tinny music as it rattled in the basket. "I don't understand anything I just saw, Sunni," he said as we neared the entryway.

  Lana was just putting her phone in her purse. "Any of what?" she asked. "What did I miss?" Lana's eyes were bright with enthusiasm. "Or is this journalist talk?" she chided.

  Dave looked my direction. While he'd spent most of winter wearing gray sweaters and slacks, he'd finally brightened up his wardrobe with summer colors. Tonight's blue shirt could almost have been classified as gray but it was cheerier. Only nothing in his expression said cheery. He was dead serious about the current topic. My only sense of relief came from knowing full well that my sister, Lana, was the last person to engage in a conversation about unexplained occurrences. She had an explanation for everything, and this time was no different.

  "Well, Lana," Dave said succinctly, "your sister's kitchen seems to have some sort of dimensional hole. I saw three oranges hover in midair before bouncing up and falling to the ground. It was as if a section of her kitchen had no gravity."

  Lana laughed. "A dimensional hole? I told you not to drink so much coffee in the morning. It leaves you lightheaded."

  I shot Lana a conspiratorial wink to let her know I was on the same pragmatic page as her.

  "Lana, I'm telling you I saw it," he insisted as Lana, no longer interested in his story, took hold of the silverware basket and carried it into the dining room. Dave marched behind. "I wish I'd had my phone ready for a picture," he continued.

  I'd come to terms with the loss of my lead reporter position at the paper. Dave had proven to be worthy of the job, and I was just as glad to spend less time on the paper and more time on my future business. The fact that Dave had saved my life once and that Lana was quite enamored with him was the extra nudge I needed to accept him as a coworker and friend. However, he could occasionally get on my nerves. This evening was one of those occasions.

  It was hard to blame him for his persistence. He was, after all, a journalist, and he had witnessed something that had no reasonable explanation. Something told me, he was not going to let up on the subject easily. Only, another little birdie told me my sister was going to insist that he drop it, and probably sooner rather than later. Thank goodness for Lana's propensity for practicality.

  Dave had taken to pouting with arms crossed and a duck-billed mouth while Lana and I set the table. She ignored his sulky mood and launched into a rant about her current client insisting there be live swans at her wedding reception.

  "I told her, Rhonda, swans are beautiful in paintings or floating on a lake, but in the middle of a wedding reception they are winged terrors. They also tend to poop a lot."

  I took the linen napkins from the basket. "You sound like you know this from experience," I noted. "Have you done the swan thing before?"

  Lana shook her head once. "No, but I've been to a park with geese. I figure they can't be too far off from swans." She glanced over at Dave and sighed. "Are you really going to ruin the whole evening because you thought you saw oranges flying through the air?" (My sister could be a touch brutal on occasion.)

  Dave forced a grin. "No, you're right. I'll wait until people with more pliable minds join the party. I'm sure Emily and Nick will be far more interested in my story."

  The tension in the air was instant. Redford and Newman had trotted into the dining room but just as quickly spun about and trotted out.

  Lana still held the forks in her grasp but managed to place both fists on her hips. "Are you saying I'm not open-minded just because I don't think there's a portal to another dimension in my sister's kitchen?"

  "You say it like that to make it sound outlandish," Dave offered weakly in his defense.

  "Outlandish was your word not mine." Lana returned to her fork task only she placed each utensil down harder than necessary.

  "Mind like a steel trap," Dave muttered and pretended to engage himself with the weed patches outside the dining room window.

  Lana laughed. It was that harsh big sister laugh I remembered from my youth, the one she used when I'd done something stupid and she wanted me to know, in no uncertain terms, that it was, indeed, stupid. "You do realize that mind like a steel trap is a compliment. It means that I grasp information and hold—"

  Dave spun around. "Exactly," he said sharply. "You learn something is a reality, like gravity, for example, but if something comes along to plainly contradict that reality, you refuse to believe it. You shut that trap door for good. Sometimes reality isn't what it seems." He had softened his tone, seemingly realizing that the harsher one wasn't going to get him anywhere except disinvited from the evening.

  "Plainly contradicting reality?" Lana asked. Unlike Dave, her tone had not softened but then she knew she would never be disinvited from the inn.

  While I'd relied on Lana to dissuade Dave from any notion that something strange had happened in the kitchen, the entire, contentious conversation had gone on too long. We'd all looked forward to a nice dinner.

  I clapped once loudly. "Enough talk of falling oranges and steel traps. Emily, Nick and Jackson will be here any minute. Let's get ready for a pleasant evening."

  Chapter 2

  Sleep had eluded me. The night had gone smoothly enough. Dave brought up the floating oranges to Nick, Emily and Jackson. Nick and Emily had heard tell of enough inexplicable occurrences at the inn that they easily and laughingly passed it off as just another one of those odd events at Cider Ridge Inn. Jackson had found a secret moment to flash me a brow lift and concerned smile about the whole thing. We were never alone for long enough to talk about it, but he had previously, on more than one occasion, warned me that I needed to be prepared for the same kind of incidents to happen when there were guests at the inn. After all, it wasn't as if Edward was going anywhere, and, in every sense of the word, i
t was his home too. I couldn't ask him to stay holed up in a closet or unused bedroom for eternity.

  That dreadful thought prodded me out of bed for a glass of warm milk. With any luck, it would lull me to sleep. Monday morning meant an early staff meeting, and Prudence didn't tolerate tardiness, unless of course your name was Dave. He could saunter in anytime within the first half hour of the meeting, and she wouldn't do more than give him a sweetly disapproving grandma's scowl.

  Unlike me, the dogs slept soundly. Neither of them broke the rhythm of their snores as I pulled on my slippers and robe and headed out to the kitchen for my sleep elixir. I wasn't entirely sure what had kept me tossing and turning. Dave had reluctantly dropped the subject of the flying oranges by the time we'd all sat down for the meal. The rest of the evening had gone well considering the bumpy start. As much fun as we'd had, I was just exhausted enough to welcome everyone's departure, including Jackson's. He had an early call in the morning. But the exhaustion had vanished once I dropped into bed, and after trying every sleep doctor trick in the book, I'd decided to go with the tried and true glass of milk.

  Not wanting to shock eyeballs that had spent the last hour in a dark bedroom, I flipped on the dim light beneath the cabinets. I turned toward the refrigerator and spotted a solemn looking Englishman sitting on the kitchen counter. His tall black boots swung gently back and forth, reminding me of a kid sitting on a too tall chair. Only there was nothing else about the image in front of me that said kid. Edward was all man. It was easy to imagine him, in his day, alive and cocky and confident as he strode along a path or rode his horse across a pasture. Only this evening the confidence he normally exuded had taken back seat to an altogether more insecure state of being.