A Grave Halloween in Lost Haven Read online

  A Grave Halloween in Lost Haven

  BOOK TWO OF THE LOST HAVEN COZY MYSTERIES

  Penny Plume

  A GRAVE HALLOWEEN IN LOST HAVEN

  Book Two of the Lost Haven Cozy Mysteries

  by Penny Plume

  A GRAVE HALLOWEEN IN LOST HAVEN

  Copyright © 2018 Penny Plume

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN

  978-0-9983933-9-1 Paperback

  978-0-9983933-8-4 eBook

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system without prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  All characters in this compilation are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Created with Vellum

  The Lost Haven Cozy Mysteries

  The Last Resort in Lost Haven

  A Grave Halloween in Lost Haven

  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

  Thank you!

  About the Author

  1

  The decapitated head gazed flatly out at the late-October world, seeing nothing and completely ignoring the flies crawling over its stiffening flesh and peeking out of its gaping mouth.

  The tongue lolled, exhausted from being so very dead.

  The milky eyes did not see Jenna Hooper, Belma Winkle, and Lawrence Donald staring back at them with a mixture of disgust, pride, and simmering envy.

  The ears could not hear what they said through the plate glass display window.

  For they-just like every other part of the head, were not only deceased—they were also made of chocolate.

  “It looks so real,” Jenna said. “I’m horrified.”

  Belma blushed. “Oh, sweetie. Thank you so much. Do you think it’s too soon? You know, after the whole…”

  She mimed conking herself on the head, a reference to the June bludgeoning murders of Ingrid Gallagher and Harrison Kavanaugh.

  Jenna said, “I think it's fine. Everyone knows what Halloween means around here.”

  “It’s incredibly offensive,” Lawrence said. “Not because of the dead people, who cares about that? It’s offensive to me as a food artist. I can totally see the spatula marks right there, just above the slice through the neck.”

  “Those are where the killer slipped and made extra cuts,” Belma said. “Dummy.”

  Jenna noticed something else about the severed head, but decided not to mention it.

  Lawrence, squinting and tilting his head this way and that for perspective, decided otherwise. “Is it supposed to look like me?”

  “What?” Belma said. “Of course not. Jeez Lawrence, not everything is about you.”

  She nudged Jenna, gave a tiny nod and mouthed, “It’s totally him.”

  Jenna clamped down on a grin and pulled her thick sweater tighter against the morning chill.

  She loved October in Lost Haven.

  The fiery leaves, showing off so very briefly before drifting to the ground to form huge piles for the children—and some adults—to dive into.

  The local restaurants switching their menus from light summer fare to the denser, endlessly and unfairly more delicious comfort foods like the smashed sweet potatoes with butter, cinnamon and honey at the Lakeside Grille, the shockingly heavy frosted pumpkin donuts from Baker’s Cousin, and the root beer and clove-glazed ham at Sidesaddle.

  And of course, another highlight was the terrifying and intensely competitive haunted attractions that opened their creaking doors every year in the hopes of making everyone in town wet their pants. They even had tally boards at the ticket booths, proclaiming nightly and seasonal totals. No names were associated with the marks, of course, but everyone knew if their wet pants were up on that board. It would be completely unacceptable if it weren’t so ridiculously fun.

  But Jenna’s favorite part of the Halloween season in Lost Haven was the transformation of Main Street and the entire downtown area from a quaint, artsy town on the coast of Lake Michigan into a haunted village strewn with cobwebs, cornstalks, and leering Jack-o-Lanterns. You couldn’t turn around without bumping into a bristly spider or stumbling into the clutches of a grinning skeleton.

  It was delightful.

  The Main Street shops engaged in a (mostly) friendly contest of who could create the best Halloween window display, and so far Belma’s severed Not-Lawrence head was setting the bar very high.

  Belma turned from adoring her work and scowled at the real Lawrence. “Is yours ready yet?”

  “No, my dear. Quality takes time. But good for you—it’s nice to have speed when talent is lacking.”

  “Can you give us any hints about it?” Jenna asked.

  Lawrence contemplated for a moment. “It will probably be the most amazing thing you’ve seen in your entire life.”

  “I like the confidence,” Jenna said. “But you haven’t seen mine yet either.”

  Lawrence and Belma glanced at the new Welcome Shoppe, which after three months of construction (when two had been promised) was nearly, almost, just about done.

  “Let me guess,” Lawrence said. “It’s a pile of sawdust covering up wads of used masking tape.”

  Belma shook her head. “No, it’s an empty paint can with Styrofoam construction worker cups inside, all of them half-full of cold coffee. How old are they? It’s a mystery.”

  “Enough,” Jenna said. “You’ve torn me out of my Halloween bliss and brought me back to reality, where I have to go make sure the finish carpentry and caulking is actually being done. Ideally, done right, but at this point I’ll settle for done.”

  “Finish carpentry?” Belma said.

  Lawrence frowned. “Caulking?”

  “You don’t want to know,” Jenna said. “My new Welcome Shoppe is being haunted by a handyman. He won’t go away. I need an exorcist.”

  “Have you tried showing him your new book collection?” Belma asked.

  “You know what?” Jenna said. “Lawrence, that is your head in the window.”

  Belma gaped. “Jenna!”

  “I knew it!” Lawrence crowed. “This is a disgrace. You got my eyebrows all wrong, and the earlobes are a total dumpster fire. Go get your spatulas, let me show you how it’s done.”

  “That’s exactly what your stupid earlobes look like, and I used actual dumpster fire photos to sculpt them.”

  Jenna left them to holler and snarl at each other and headed toward her eerily silent Welcome Shoppe.

  No hammers pounded.

  No brooms swept.

  No screw guns turned.

  It was time for an exorcism.

  Jenna took a brief moment to stand outside and admire the progress on her new shop. It was a quick, necessary cheer-up before entering into the stress and drama of actually finishing the dang thing.

  It was two stories, the facade made almost entirely of glass to bring in the sunshine, show everyone outside how inviting and cozy it was inside, and let those inside enjoy the view of Lilac Park. Well, Lilac Park when it wasn’t being systematically turned over to exhume the residents of the Sanctuary Cemetery, but that process did have a certain Halloween allure.

/>   In the summer, the reading nook on the second floor mezzanine would even provide glimpses of the Lost Haven Marina with its towering sails and obnoxious yachts mingling in the sparkling water.

  But the main attraction for nearly everyone who wandered in was at the back of the first floor: a winding staircase that led down into the past, into Sanctuary. At the bottom of those stairs, patrons could see the original Welcome Shoppe being painstakingly reclaimed from the dune sand by the Lost Haven Restoration Society.

  The plan was to eventually dig out all of the Sanctuary businesses and allow customers to move through the Main Street shops above and below, climbing up and down to see how much things had changed—and how much they had not.

  The restoration progress was constantly being halted to bring in structural engineers to stand around looking at beams, walls, and trusses, knocking on studs and making notes in their tablets. This was irritating to the owners and customers alike, but acceptable. No one wanted Sanctuary’s Main Street to collapse and bring Lost Haven down with it.

  Well, perhaps Bart Kavanaugh and Sherri Lander did, but they were both in prison for murder, so it didn’t matter much.

  Jenna gazed at her new shop: the wall of glass, the plush couches beckoning from the mezzanine, the driftwood archways accenting the high ceiling.

  She still couldn’t quite believe it was hers.

  After the whole Lost Haven Resort mess and murders, the town had a sizable budget and contracted crews and machinery sitting unused. And with the discovery of buried Sanctuary and the tourism potential it unearthed, the town council and Lost Haven Credit Union began passing out money and loans like the free samples in the Welcome Shoppe.

  The new building went up shockingly fast, a blur of construction workers, concrete mixers, and the occasional crane truck, then one day it was there, 95% done and close enough to open for business with apologies for the mess.

  The monthly loan payments still made Jenna cringe, but this had been her best summer at the shop by far, and the fall and winter seasons would bring in entirely new batches of tourists. She’d even been debating on whether or not to replace her old coffee pot with an espresso machine off the reading nook.

  It was expensive…

  Do it! You and everyone who comes in will love it.

  McTavish might raise an eyebrow at her invasion into café territory…

  He raises an eyebrow at everything nowadays. But let’s run it past him anyway.

  The thought of the new machine hissing and sending fresh coffee smells through the shop made her slightly giddy.

  Then she walked through the wide, double glass doors and remembered why she’d needed the cheer-up.

  The reason her shop was still at 95% done.

  Stinking Jimbo Gelderson.

  Jenna smiled as she entered, just like she did every time. The heavy, elegant doors were hers. The shiny new hardware on them was hers. The “Pardon Our Dust!” sign just inside the entrance was also, unfortunately, hers.

  The smile faltered when she realized the sign had dust on it. Not construction dust. It was the normal, everyday, sitting-in-one-spot-too-long dust. People had been pardoning her dust for far too long.

  “Jimbo!” she called.

  “Yah!” His response came from down the spiral staircase.

  Jenna walked the length of the shop, trying to stay upset despite her lovely new hardwood floor and the long display case along the left wall that also served as the check-out counter. She passed the new shelves on her right, huddled in the middle of the floor under a milky plastic tarp. They would eventually be spread out and augmented with end caps and display tables, but not until the work was finally done.

  So, in fifteen years?

  She peered over the railing and found Jimbo turning a small screwdriver on the post at the bottom of the stairs. His white fluffy hair matched his spotless t-shirt and painter’s jeans. How he never got them dirty was a complete mystery—though it was possibly because he never did any actual work.

  Jenna said, “What are you doing down there?”

  “Railing was a might bit loose.” He finished with the screwdriver and looked up at her, blinking like an owl behind his heavy glasses. “Don’t want anyone taking a spill down here, do we? Them Chicago folks are just looking for a reason to sue.”

  Jenna’s jaw tightened. “Okay, thank you for fixing that.”

  It was perhaps the most infuriating part about working with the man. He would do a million tiny things—oiling hinges and picking at water spots on the display glass—that were certainly helpful but amounted to zero progress at the end of the day. He was getting paid by the project rather than the hour, so thankfully he wasn’t wasting her money.

  Just her time.

  All of it.

  “Jimbo, did you get the baseboards and trim for the mezzanine windows in?”

  “Oh, goodness no.” He trudged up the steps, turning in a tight circle as he rose. “Gotta let the wood sit a bit more, get used to her new home before I put any nails through her. Wood’s gotta breathe, Jenna.”

  She imagined choking him with a piece of wood. The irony would be so delightful.

  “We were almost ready to go,” Jimbo said, “then the big rains hit the past few days and the humidity got us back to square one.”

  Jenna frowned.

  Rain affected baseboards? Then what’s the point of having them inside?

  She let it go.

  He either knows exactly what he’s doing, or he’s loony. Either way, he won’t budge.

  “How about the new toilet?” she asked. “That doesn’t need to breathe, right? I mean, why would it want to?”

  “Ha! Nope, ol’ Johnny don’t need to breathe.”

  “So that can go in today. Even now.”

  “Well…”

  Jenna gripped the railing and prayed the bolts would hold. If they came loose and Jimbo lost another day with his bucket of wrenches, she might just burn the whole place down again.

  “Gotta finish the grout first,” he said, “then put those baseboards in before the throne takes its rightful place.”

  “So, the grout then. Today.”

  “Well…”

  Jenna spent the day welcoming customers and tourists, showing them where to find the driftwood picture frames among the crowded shelves, and refilling the fall treat samples and tiny wax paper apple cider cups.

  She featured four of the local cider mills, and each had their own secret recipe of apple blends and cider extraction techniques. The competition was almost as fierce as the Main Street Halloween displays, but both of those were amateur hour compared to the Lost Haven haunted house rivalry.

  The three most popular haunts had a morbid presence in the Welcome Shoppe, each vying for the cash and screams of locals and tourists. There was a vintage, bloodstained electric chair from No Sanctuary; a fake steel hatch on the floor with motorized zombie fingers reaching through from Ghost Ship; and a real coffin with a not-real corpse inside leaning against the wall from the Lost Haven Morgue.

  Jenna was giving the hatch a light cleaning and having a hard time determining what was actual dirt and what was painted on when Jay Cabo came in. Even with the new double doors in place, he filled the entrance at 6-foot-5 and 240 pounds. The extra-large green smoothie cup looked like a shot glass in his hand.

  He stood inside the doors, frowning at the entire collection of haunted items. “I still don’t get it.”

  “You don’t have to get it,” Jenna said. “You just have to go with us.”

  “Paying to have people scare you.” He shook his head. “You know, people used to pay me to not get scared.”

  “Bodyguards never get scared?”

  Cabo thought about it for a moment. “Scared is the wrong word. Vigilantly concerned.”

  “That is a terrible band name. And you’re still coming tonight.”

  “It’s that big of a deal?”

  “Uh, yeah. Jay Cabo, this is your first Halloween in Lost H
aven, so questions like that are permitted. But there are some things you’ll need to know before you set foot in any of these haunted houses.”

  “Jenna, I don’t need to know about all the gossip, who’s cheating on who, and the small-town rivalries. I’ll just go, have a terrible time, and we’ll call it a night.”

  Jenna ignored him and presented the electric chair.

  “First, we have No Sanctuary. An intriguing name now that there actually is a Sanctuary, but I digress.”

  “You digress a lot.”

  “Don’t distract me. Come sit in the bloody electric chair.”

  Cabo frowned again.

  “Seriously,” Jenna said. “It’ll be worth it.”

  He sighed and crept toward the heavy wooden chair, watching it from the corner of his eye even though he was walking straight toward it.

  “What are you doing?” Jenna asked.

  “What is it going to do? That’s what I want to know.”

  “Oh my…Jay Cabo, you’re a scaredy-cat!”

  “Wrong. I told you—I’ve been trained to be wary. I’m being wary.”

  “You’re being a big baby. Here, watch.”

  She dropped into the electric chair and kicked her feet up, doing a little dance to show how harmless it was.

  All while counting in her head: One…two…three…

  She pulled herself out before she got to four.

  “See? Your turn.”

  “So if nothing happens, why should I do it too?”

  “Because it’s fun.”

  “You know what I do for fun? Squats and overhead presses.”

  “Yeah, that’s a whole other thing we need to talk about. Right now we’re discussing how to properly navigate the complex social structure of Lost Haven’s haunted attractions. Without wetting your pants, ideally.”