Shot Cross Buns Read online

  © 2019 Tegan Maher

  Table of Contents

  Copyright Page

  Shot Cross Buns

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Thank you!

  Sweet Murder

  Connect with Me

  Other Books by Tegan Maher

  About Tegan

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, in any form, by any means electronic or mechanical, including but not limited to photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system currently in use or yet to be devised.

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual people, places, or institutions is entirely coincidental.

  This ebook is licensed for your personal use and may not be re-sold or given away to others. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase a copy for that person. If you did not purchase this book, or it was not purchased for your use, then you have an unauthorized copy. Please go to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting my hard work and copyright.

  Chapter One

  I stepped out onto the porch of my cabin and stretched my arms over my head, pulling in a deep breath of clean country air. The sky was clear, the birds were chirping, and the weather was perfect for a jog. Or as perfect as it could be for such masochism. Let’s be clear—I run so I can eat cheesecake, not because I enjoy it, though it is a good time to think. Bear, a Leonberger I’d adopted shortly after moving to town, fell in time beside me, tongue lolling.

  I’d moved to Mercy, Georgia from Florida a couple of months ago, and was still adjusting to the slower pace and eccentric synergy of life in a small town. Leaving a big city and coming to a small, rural community had been a bit of a test, but I was managing. Despite the vast differences—or maybe because of them—the place was beginning to grow on me. It felt like home. I was glad to trade the rat race for gossipy neighbors, though a couple all-night carry-out places would have been nice.

  I focused on building a breathing rhythm—three steps to inhale, four steps to exhale—as I jogged past the run-down lodge I’d purchased with the lion’s portion of my divorce settlement. It wasn’t the grand place I’d been expecting, but it was going to be. Granted, it needed a lot of work but I didn’t mind that, especially considering I had plenty of new friends to help me.

  After I’d gone my first half mile, I realized Bear wasn’t beside me, and I hadn’t seen him since a couple minutes after we’d left. Unlike me, he wasn’t worried about burning as many calories as he could in three miles, so he often took off in one direction or another to chase squirrels or explore scents. I didn't worry too much because we were way out in the boondocks away from traffic or neighbors and he always came back, but he’d been gone longer than usual this time.

  I slowed a little and wiped my forehead on my shirt sleeve, then glanced toward the trees to my left. I didn't see hide nor hair of him. A little niggle of worry slithered down my back and I came to a stop, dust poofing up from under my running shoes. "Bear," I called, my gaze running along the edge of the woods. "Come here, boy."

  I waited, hands on my hips as I let my breathing return to normal. "Bear," I called again, drawing my brows together.

  The bushes rustled as he came plowing through the brush to the tree line, tail wagging and tongue lolling. He gave one deep bark before he turned and ran off again, his fluffy tail waving at me as he disappeared into the trees.

  I tapped my foot, irritation coursing through me. "Bear, get back here!" I huffed as I marched after him. I had no idea where he had gone, just the general direction. "Crazy dog," I mumbled to myself. Of course he picked one of the more difficult areas to traverse. There were rocks everywhere, tree branches scraped at my arms, and brambles and thick bushes made it impossible to chase him in a straight line.

  My toe caught on a root and I face-planted onto hard earth, scraping my knees and elbows. I growled and pushed myself to my feet, wiping myself off and swearing like a well-educated sailor. I closed my eyes and took a couple of deep breaths. Once my blood pressure dropped out of the red zone, I opened my eyes. "Bear," I barked as I resumed my journey, noting that the soil was changing from loamy to mushy. I must have been getting close to the lake that adjoined my property.

  Hiking through this stuff made me appreciate the manicured lawns, well-trimmed hedges, and carefully kept sidewalks of my former hometown. This was getting ridiculous—I was almost to Mercy Lake. I had half a mind to leave him and let him find his own way home.

  I called to him again as I entered a clearing that opened up to the lake a hundred yards or so away. I turned in a slow circle, looking for any sign of him. Two sharp barks came from my left and I spun toward it, ready to give him what for. He was at the base of a huge oak tree, pacing and staring at something on the ground in front of him. I picked my way closer through the weeds that separated us, and a patch of bright orange fabric caught my eye. Likely, somebody had dropped a backpack or some other item in the middle of the forest in the excitement of the hunt.

  As I got closer and could see past the grass, I realized it wasn’t a pack or hunting vest—it was a man lying on his side.

  I didn't know if he was injured or sleeping, so I stopped several yards shy of him. The last thing I needed to do was disturb some homicidal drifter without giving myself at least a little bit of a head start. "Sir,” I called leaning forward on my tiptoes to get a better look. “Are you all right?"

  The man didn't answer. He didn't even move.

  "Sir," I said a bit sharper as I drew closer to him.

  Nothing. His back was to me as I knelt down carefully and reached out to shake his shoulder. Even though I barely touched him, he flopped over onto his back, his right arm landing with a thump in the soil at my feet. I fell onto my backside, covering my mouth with my hand as I gasped.

  There was no need to check for a pulse. The small round hole in his forehead and the sightless eyes staring beyond me at nothing told me he was well beyond needing CPR.

  "This is not happening again," I whispered to myself, squeezing my eyes closed for a couple seconds. He was still there when I opened them, not that I expected Murphy to cut me any slack at that point—he was perched firmly on my shoulder, it seemed. I scrambled to my feet, glancing around. I didn’t see anybody, but that didn't mean anything. We were in the woods for heaven’s sake—there were plenty of places to hide.

  I slipped my phone out of my fanny pack, hoping that for once the mountains weren’t blocking the single cell tower on my end of town. No such luck. I clipped a leash on Bear and scrambled back to the trail as quickly as I could go without breaking my neck, glancing at my phone every few paces to check for signal. I was almost back to the lodge before a single bar flickered onto my screen. I stood stock still and dialed nine-one-one, sighing as I did.

  The sheriff was not going to be happy I’d landed smack-dab in the middle of another crime scene, but there wasn’t much I could do about it.

  Chapter Two

  "NINE-ONE-ONE, WHAT is your emergency?"

  I closed my eyes and shook my head. Of course it was
Linda. I didn't understand how the biggest gossip in town had landed a job as the town emergency dispatcher, but far be it for me to question whoever made that call. If there was a method to that level of madness, I didn’t want to know it.

  "Hey, Linda,” I said, trying to think of a way to get the sheriff there without giving her any grist for the gossip mill. “This is Toni. Is the sheriff handy?"

  "Oh hey, Toni. Sure thing, but he’s in the bathroom. What seems to be the problem?"

  I cringed as I realized I would have to answer her question. There was no way around it without flat-out lying. I cleared my throat. "I found a body out here in the woods."

  I heard Linda's sharp intake of breath. "A dead body?"

  I rolled my eyes, wondering what other type of body would be hanging out in my woods. "Mm-hmm." I managed. “Dead as a hammer.”

  "Oh, honey, that's awful,” she drawled, and I could almost see her flapping her hand. “You really seem to be a magnet for that kind of thing, don't you?"

  I frowned as I held the phone away from my face and looked at it. What was that supposed to mean? I brought it back to my ear, but before I could say anything, she asked, "So who is it?"

  I frowned. “I’m not—”

  “Hang on a sec, Toni,” she said, cutting me off. I could hear her talking to someone in muffled tones. Hopefully she was sending the sheriff my way rather than putting me on hold to share the scuttlebutt with her fellow dispatchers, if Mercy even had more than one.

  “Okay, I’m back,” she said a few seconds later. “The sheriff’s on his way.” She lowered her voice. “Now, who’s the stiff?”

  I took another deep breath. Who knew I’d need deep breathing techniques more in this small town than I ever did in the city? I racked my brain trying to think of where I’d seen the man before. His face was vaguely familiar, but the bullet hole was about the only facial feature that had jumped out at me.

  “I’m not sure,” I said.

  “Oh,” she replied, disappointment tingeing her tone.

  “I’m sure the sheriff will know,” I said, anxious to get off the phone. “I’m gonna hang up and go wait for him.” I figured it would be best to end the call before she had a chance to ask me for any more details. The last thing I wanted was for her to come up with the wrong ID based on my description—that had hot mess written all over it.

  It only took the cavalry fifteen minutes or so to get there, but it felt like hours. I’d taken Bear up and put him in the lodge then taken a seat on the front porch to wait. When a cruiser rolled to a stop in front of the house, I stood and straightened my shirt, tucking my phone into the back pocket of my yoga pants. I offered Gabe, Mercy’s sheriff, a tentative wave.

  He nodded as he walked toward me, shaking his head. “Toni,” he said, brow raised. “So you’ve lived here, what, two months now or so?”

  I nodded. “Something like that.”

  “And in those two months, you’ve stumbled across two dead bodies. I’m pretty sure that’s a record, considering we average a murder a decade or so.”

  I rolled my eyes. “It’s something of a personal record for me, too. Believe it or not, I hadn’t found a single dead body in my entire life before I moved here.”

  The sheriff grunted. “So where is it? He? She?”

  “He.” I pointed in the general direction of where I’d found the body. “That way, almost to the lake.”

  He looked in the direction I was pointing and nodded. “And how do you know for sure he’s dead? You didn’t touch anything this time, did you?”

  I cringed and chewed on my lip as I nodded, but I knew I had to say something. He’d need to know the guy wasn’t on his back when I’d found him. “Sort of.”

  Gabe sighed and shook his head. “What did you do?”

  I shrugged one shoulder. “I thought he was sleeping or something, so I just shook him a little bit. You know—to try to wake him up.”

  The sheriff closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose with his right thumb and forefinger. The last time I’d found a dead body, my now-bestie Dee had been standing over her, murder weapon in hand. It had nearly landed her in prison. “Anything else I need to know?” he asked.

  “Nope. When he flopped over and I could see he was dead, I took off and called you. Oh, and Bear’s technically the one who found him, so there will probably be dog prints around him.”

  “Okay,” he said, turning toward the road. “That’s not as bad as smearing prints all over the murder weapon like Dee did last time, I suppose. Why don’t you take me to him and we’ll see what’s what.”

  Ah, nuts. I’d really hoped he could just do that without me, but I supposed I couldn’t just leave him to it. After all, I’d found it and it was my land, which made it my responsibility. Sometimes being a rational, responsible adult sucked.

  Chapter Three

  ONCE I’D LED HIM TO the body, he’d told me I was free to leave. There was a murderer on the loose, though, and I didn’t feel right leaving him out there alone even if he was armed to his eye teeth and plenty savvy about what went on in the woods. He didn’t have eyes in the back of his head, and I didn’t want him to have a hole in it, either, so I refused to hang him out to dry no matter how much a hot cup of tea and a heaping helping of denial sounded to me. I waited until two deputies and the coroner showed up. I didn’t envy them, having to haul that man out of there. It was hard enough walking through that area when you didn’t have to pack anything with you.

  I went back to the caretaker’s cottage, my temporary home until I could get the lodge up and running. After I changed into some jeans, I made a cup of chai tea and curled up on the sofa my hands wrapped around the warm mug. It wasn’t cold outside, but I couldn’t seem to get warm. Shock, I supposed.

  I’d just settled onto the couch and pulled my feet underneath me when the air shimmered several feet from me and a human shape began to form. Maisey, Mercy Lodge’s original owner and current ghost, materialized in front of me. She’d taken to appearing slowly rather than popping in all at once ever since I’d dumped an entire cup of scalding hot tea in my lap when she’d caught me unaware. She still forgot sometimes, but I thought it was nice of her to put in the effort most of the time.

  We’d first met when Dee and I had inadvertently put her nose out of joint by ripping down the hideous cabbage rose wallpaper in the great room. Apparently, she’d picked it herself and despite it being stained and tattered, she’d still had a soft spot for it. Though to be honest, I don’t think it was the wallpaper per se. I think she just had a problem with strangers making changes to her house without even asking for her input. To be fair though, it wasn’t like Dee and I had thought to shout requests for permission into the ether just in case the original owner was still around a couple centuries after the house had been built.

  That was a mistake we’d remedied as soon as she’d made herself known, though. We’d come to a compromise—she could have input on the redecorating in exchange for knocking off the spooky shenanigans she’d been pulling in an attempt to scare us off. After I’d wrapped my head around the existence of ghosts, it hadn’t taken me long to recognize her value. She was good company, at least when she wasn’t being cantankerous. She did tend to be a bit of a helicopter haunt though, and we’d had to discuss some boundaries. For example, our nearest neighbor was a super nice guy who also happened to be smoking hot. He and I had fallen into a casual flirtation and were working our way toward more at our own pace. Unfortunately, we weren’t getting there as fast as she figured we should, so she tended to pop in when he was around and point out his strengths. And by that, I mean she appreciated his fine physique as much as I did, and some of her comments tended to be of the eyebrow-wagging variety. Who knew little old dead ladies could be lascivious?

  Since he didn’t know she existed, I’d asked her to keep the commentary to a minimum after I’d slipped up and rolled my eyes at one of her comments. He’d caught me and thought the gesture was in response to
something he’d said, and that just wouldn’t do. She’d agreed ... in exchange for my promise to bump renovating the gardens to the top of my list. Her husband had built what I had to admit was a gorgeous garden behind the house, complete with walking stones and a unicorn fountain. He’d ordered her exotic roses from around the world every year for her birthday, and miraculously enough, most of them had survived the overgrowth of weeds and nearly a century of neglect. It was a deal I’d been happy to strike.

  Since there hadn’t been a woman in the house for nearly forty years, she’d had no idea it was now okay for women to wear pants. As soon as she discovered that, she’d traded her day dress for a pair of bibs. It was a slight improvement for her, though the rest of her fashion taste ran toward the gaudy. Since she was outdoorsy and hats were as much a part of an outfit as underwear, she almost always had on her floppy hat, though the color of the dahlia on the brim changed colors on a daily basis. She also liked galoshes, mainly because they came in so many different colors, and she didn’t give a rat’s furry behind whether they matched her outfit or not. According to her, she was both dead and widowed, which meant she had the luxury of wearing whatever she wanted, fashion be damned. It wasn’t logic I could argue, especially considering my choice of clothing ran toward a pair of jeans and whatever t-shirt or sweatshirt came out of the laundry basket first.

  When I’d blown most of my divorce settlement on what I thought was a grand old house, sight unseen, I’d imagined a place that would provide me with the peace I needed to get my life back on track. Little did I know then, my haven was rundown to the point of being ramshackle and haunted by an old woman who was only six felines away from crazy cat lady. At least she wasn’t stuffy, unless I forgot to use a coaster or mentioned tearing down walls. Then it was on.

  Once Maisey materialized and got a good look at me, a frown marred her soft features. “Holy horse hockey, girl, you’re paler than I am. You’re not getting sick are you?” She made to mother me, forgetting for a second that she couldn’t actually lay the back of her hand on my forehead. Thankfully, she remembered in time to keep from passing her hand through my head, because I was already having trouble staying warm. If you’ve never had a ghost pass a part of them through a part of you, just try to imagine what it would feel like if an ice cube could sink right through your flesh and you’ll have a good idea. Not pleasant on the best of days.