Murder in the Mansion Read online

  Table of Contents

  © 2019 Tegan Maher

  Dedication

  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

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Thank You

  Connect with Me

  Howling for Revenge Preview

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  About Tegan

  © 2019 Tegan Maher

  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.

  Dedication

  To Dustin, as always. And to Ahab and Dog, for being an ever-present source of love and laughs. Dogs are a girl’s best friend!

  Finally, to Regina Welling, for being there, and for making me the most awesome covers ever!

  CHAPTER ONE

  "WHAT DO YOU MEAN SHE bought the whole east side?" I asked, my gaze shooting to Coralee's in the mirror in front of the barber's chair I was sitting in.

  Coralee nodded, her blonde hair wobbling as a cohesive unit. "Just what I said. Marybeth up and bought most of the east side of Keyhole Lake."

  Marybeth owned Fancy's, or favorite dive bar. She was a tough woman with biker's tattoos and an attitude sharpened from spending two decades behind a bar slinging cheap beer to tight-fisted ingrates. She was also kind and generous, at least when she wanted to be.

  And apparently, she was rich, too. Even though the east side was the darker underbelly of Keyhole Lake, if there was such a thing, property still wasn’t free.

  Belle, the former owner of the Clip N Curl—the establishment where I was currently getting clipped, curled, and caught up on the latest gossip—hovered behind me, her ghostly form shimmering just a bit.

  "Now Coralee. Don't go blowin' it out of proportion. She only bought the mansion, Tassels, and a few of the houses. Oh, and the pawnshop. I think she was only interested in it because the tattoo parlor is in the same building and she's been datin' Kenny, the artist, for years."

  I scrunched my face as Coralee ran a comb through my mass of wet hair, then cringed when she hit a snag.

  "Sorry, sweetie," Coralee said, pulling a face. "I'm tryin' to be gentle. It's just ... you have enough hair for three people."

  I waved her off while trying my best not to move my head. "Don't worry about it. I know it's a hot mess. I'm one of the most powerful witches in the country, and can't even figure out how to manage it. Now, back to Marybeth. Where'd she get the money to buy all that? I know Jim's been in jail for over a year. Is he gettin' that desperate for money?"

  Back a couple of years ago when the powers that be in Keyhole Lake were crooked as a dog's leg, Jim Simpson was a slumlord and a sleaze bag. He owned most of the wrong side of the tracks. In our case, the saying was literal as well as figurative—the east side of town was separated from the rest of us by a set of railroad tracks. That's where Tassels, which was the local "gentleman's club,” a shady pawn shop, and most of the low-income housing tracts were located, and he'd ran it with a slime-covered iron fist.

  Once the sheriff—the biggest pig of them all—was murdered, Hunter Woods had taken over and made it his mission to clean up the town. He'd done a fine job of it, and I'm not just saying that because he's my boyfriend.

  She snorted. "As if. It's not like Jim's ever gettin' out. Not after they got him for accessory to Cheri Lynn's murder. No, from what I understand, he lost the house and Tassels to the feds once they tallied up how much he owed them for a decade of taxes. The rest, he's been tryin' to sell, but it went to the county for taxes. Now that everybody's out from under his thumb, not a soul was willin' to get back in bed with him."

  "All of it went to the county?" I hadn't put much thought into what would happen to all of his holdings once he was behind bars, but he didn't have any family that I knew of, and all his friends were either dead or in jail with him.

  Belle scratched her chin and looked thoughtful. "I guess so. Far as I know, he don't have two nickels left to rub together. Not after he paid his lawyer."

  "So the bottom line is that he lost it all." I shot a satisfied grin at the ladies in the mirror. "Good! It's not nearly as much as he deserves, but I'd say Karma's doin' a fine job with what she has to work with."

  Jim was a predator who’d done a lot of harm in the years he'd been allowed to do as he pleased, to people who could do the least about it. After all, it wasn't like the folks living in his crap houses had the cash to just up and move. I knew a lot of them, and many were good people stuck in sucky dead-end jobs just doing the best they could to survive.

  Of course, there was a fair share of ne'er-do-wells, as my Aunt Addy called them, too, and that's probably where Marybeth would have the most problems. She’d have a hard time not throwing the baby out with the bath water. If anybody was up to the task, though, she was. She had just the right balance of spine and heart to straighten out the mess Jim had left behind.

  "Is it already official?" I asked as Coralee globbed a baseball-sized ball of mousse through my hair. "She'd mentioned a few months ago that she was buying Tassels, but I haven't heard anything since then. I thought maybe she'd given up on the idea."

  Belle shook her head. "Oh, no. She didn't give up on it. I think that’s all she planned to buy in the beginning, but once she started lookin' into it, everything just snowballed."

  "I'd say so," I said. "Why'd she buy the mansion? She just remodeled her house, so it's not like she needs a new one, and that place is huge."

  "I'm not sure," Coralee said as she scrunched my hair. "My guess is she's gonna fix it up and sell it, maybe."

  I bobbed my head side to side. "Wouldn't be a bad idea. That'd give her the cash she's gonna need if she plans on turning the rest of the places around."

  "Yep," Coralee agreed. "And I bet she sells the building with the pawn shop and tattoo parlor to Kenny, so that'll be one place she won't have to mess with."

  "So basically just the mansion and the houses, then." Marybeth didn't strike me as the landlady type, and I had to wonder why she'd have picked them up. The resale value on them wasn't exactly fabulous.

  "And Tassels," Belle added.

  I flapped a hand. "Yeah, but we already know what she's doin' with that. She's handin' it over to her daughter."

  Belle nodded in agreement. “Yeah, that’s what I’d heard, too.”

&nb
sp; "Betty Sue Gravel was in here the other day," Coralee said in the tone she reserved for the juiciest of gossip. "She had to get her roots touched up. Anyway, you know how she has that cleaning business? Grace Murphy—that's the realtor who's handlin' the mansion and the rest of the real estate—hired her to spiffy up the place, and she said it had been gutted. The chandelier and appliances are gone and so is all that fancy furniture he left in there. Looks like kids have been partyin' in there, too. Graffiti on the walls, and the bathrooms were disgusting. Oh, and the wood floors are all scarred up and damaged. Some of the walls even have holes knocked in ’em."

  "That ain't all, either," Belle said, crossing her arms over her ample bosom and adopting the solemn expression she used when she was about to deliver the gossip gospel. “I was over at the Cat a little bit ago and heard a couple girls talkin'. Apparently, Marybeth gave Grace the what-for the other day for tackin' almost four grand onto the askin' price, claimin' miscellaneous fees and expenses.” She put the phrase in air quotes. "Seems Grace was tryin' to double dip, and when she couldn't itemize those miscellaneous items, Marybeth told her she'd pay the agreed upon amount and not a penny more or the deal was off."

  I curved one side of my mouth into a wry half smile. Knowing Marybeth, that may have been what she meant, but there was no way the actual verbiage was that polite. I almost laughed at the visual—Grace tended to be a bully, and I'd have paid money to watch Marybeth take her down a peg or two.

  "Grace shoulda known better than that," I said. "Marybeth's not exactly known for being a doormat." I'd personally seen her break up bar fights between roughnecks with nothing other than her bare hands. She’d been called a lot of things over the years, but never a shrinking violet.

  Too bad Marybeth didn't give her a fat lip. That girl's had it comin' for years.

  "You can say that again," I replied, nodding, and Coralee tilted her head at me, confusion scrawled across her face.

  "Say what again?" Belle asked.

  I glanced back and forth between them in the mirror. "Coralee said it was too bad Marybeth didn't give her a fat lip."

  Coralee raised her brows at me, and apparently it was Belle's turn to look confused. "No she didn't. You feelin' all right?" She swooped over and put her face close to mine, studying me.

  "I didn't say it," Coralee said, her gaze speculative. "But I sure did think it."

  "Wait, what?" I said, turning toward her.

  "I said I only thought it." Her gaze was a combination of concern and caution. "So how did you hear it?"

  I sighed and rubbed my temples. I'd always had the power of telepathy, but it had been limited. I'd never really been able to hear thoughts beyond those that were sent to me, and even then, it wasn’t technical mind reading—think of it as having a consensual mental conversation.

  When Shelby was in her terrible teens, I’d sometimes try to read her mind to find out what she was up to, but even then, I could only pick up bits and pieces, and I had to put a ton of effort into even doing that.

  I suspected I knew when it had happened, but I wasn’t sure how it had.

  Coralee knew me like the back of her hand, though, so she recognized the resignation on my face. "What? C'mon girl, spill."

  I turned the chair so that I was facing them rather than just looking at them in the mirror.

  "Ever since we battled it out with Leticia’s daughter and her cronies, our powers have been wonky. Mine and Rae's. We think it has something to do with Shelby blowing out so much of that angel magic. Even though it wasn't directed at us, we were in the path."

  Belle thought about that for a minute. "Sorta like one red sock turnin' the rest of the laundry pink?"

  That was about as close a comparison as I could think of. "Exactly like that. We think her magic amplified all of our powers, especially the ones we were using at the time. And I was right square in Katrina's head, so I guess it makes sense."

  "Is it permanent?" Belle was stroking her chin and studying me the way she always did when she was turning something over in her mind.

  I shrugged. "We have no idea. We haven’t really told her we’re having issues yet, but she researched angel magic or whatever you want to call it ad nauseam after the attack. She couldn’t find so much as a whisper of it ever happening before, and she has access to all the resources of the witches council. There's no precedent as far as she can find."

  Coralee narrowed her kohl-lined eyes at me. "What am I thinkin' right now?"

  Scowling, I held out my hands. "Coralee, I'd rather not get in the habit of crawlin' around in your noodle. Or anybody else's for that matter. Especially since I don’t know how to turn it off. It’s like mental breaking and entering."

  "Don't think of this particular time as an invasion of privacy. Think of it as learning to respect other people's privacy."

  Coralee’s mind was nimble, but I could usually keep up. She had me stumped this time, though. "Say what? How is my reading your mind—which is a terrifying prospect by the way—not gonna be an invasion of privacy?"

  "What just happened was a total accident, right? You tripped into my head without meaning to."

  Belle must have caught onto what she was thinking faster than I did, and I was supposedly the mind reader. "Yeah," she said to me. "You was as surprised as we were. Do like she says, then do me."

  Arguing with the two of them was like spittin' in the wind, so it would be easier to do what they said sooner rather than later. I closed my eyes and focused as best I could. Nothing. I opened my eyes and stared into her eyes, just shy of saying something like, "You're getting sleeeeeepy ..." I felt ridiculous, so I looked away.

  Coralee tilted her head at me. "What did you pick up?"

  I shook my head. "Nada. Now, explain your rationale."

  “Maybe you have to be touchin’ me,” she said, holding out her hands.

  I sighed and took them. Arguing with her was about like arguing with a stump, so in the interest of getting it out of the way, I did as she said. Still nothing.

  She heaved a put-upon sigh and shook her head, scowling. I love her like she was my own, but sometimes she needs to use that pretty head for somethin' besides a hat rack.

  "Hey!" I exclaimed, glowering at her. "That was mean."

  She looked at me, a little nonplussed. "What was mean?"

  "I do use my head for somethin' besides a hat rack! It's not my fault I can’t just pick your thoughts out of thin air on command."

  She rolled her eyes. "Now you can hear me, though I don't know why it got your knickers twisted. It's not like I wouldn't have said it out loud. But that's exactly why you need to learn to do it on purpose. So you can learn not to do it accidentally. After all, a girl can only give a perm so many times before it becomes second nature. When I'm doing things out of habit, my mind wonders." She winked at me. "My mind strays to Buddy sometimes.”

  I shuddered. Buddy was her long-term boyfriend, and she wasn't shy about the fact that they liked to get ... creative. So she made a valid point. As much as I loved her and the rest of my family—blood and extended—there were things I positively did not want to hear. Telepathic TMI was not on my Christmas list.

  I needed to learn to control it before I overheard something I couldn’t un-hear.

  CHAPTER TWO

  I WAS LOST IN THOUGHT when I pushed through the door to Brew4U, my cousin Raeann's coffee shop, a few minutes later.

  "Hey!" she said from behind the counter. "Your hair looks great."

  "Thanks. It was getting out of control," I said, pulling away from my thoughts as the heavenly scents of coffee and pastries washed over me. My stomach rumbled.

  Rae furrowed her brow and took a closer look at me, probably because she picked up a weird note in my voice. We'd been as close as cheese and crackers for so long that she knew me inside out, so I shouldn't have been surprised that she picked up on my discombobulation now.

  "You okay? You look a little off-kilter."

  Levana was cleaning the espre
sso machine, and the only other people in the place were a couple of women sitting at the back bistro table, deep in conversation.

  "Not really," I said, motioning for her to follow me as I went behind the counter. Levana had once lived in another time, way back when witches were closer to the earth, magic was richer, and wars between covens were more prevalent. It was possible she'd heard of other incidents similar to ours.

  "Hey, Noelle," she said, then paused, her bar towel in hand. "What's up? You're aura's a little scrambled."

  "Yeah, I imagine it is." I lowered my voice and made sure the women were still absorbed in their own conversation. "I just read Coralee's mind. Accidentally. I didn't even realize at first that she'd thought it instead of said it out loud."

  Horror crossed Rae's face. "Oh, no. Please tell me it wasn't something dirty she was thinkin' about Buddy."

  I laughed. "No, thank the goddess. Trust me—I wouldn't be here for coffee if that had been the case. I'd be at the Cat doing shots of tequila and searching the internet for brain bleach."

  "Ferreal," she replied, solemn. "But now that we know you're not scarred for life, how did it happen? You were just sitting there and picked up on what she was thinking? Were you wondering what was goin’ through her head, maybe?"

  "Nope." I filled the porta filter with espresso and fitted it into the machine. "I was just sitting there talking to them about Marybeth buying up the east side, and one of her thoughts trickled in. Then she made me try to do it on purpose, and I got nothin'. Then a few minutes later when I couldn’t perform on command like a trained circus monkey, it happened again." I scowled. "She was actually thinking about me at that point. She said—or thought, I guess—that she wished I'd use my pretty head for somethin' besides a hat rack." I put her words in air quotes.

  Levana giggled. "Well, coming from Coralee, that's not so surprising. The only thing that's moderately shocking is that she thought it instead of just saying it aloud."

  "True," Rae said, "but it's not good that you weren't trying, then when you did try, you couldn't do it."