Murder in the Mix Boxed Set 28-30: Cozy Mystery Addison Moore (the reading strategies book .txt) 📖

Valentine’s Day is just around the corner and so is my baby. It’s time for my birthing classes to begin, but something earth-shattering has happened to someone I love most and I can’t seem to focus on anything else. That is, until something goes very wrong at the Love Your Selfie Soiree thrown by Cormack and Cressida and someone ends up dead. Now I have two things to keep me up at night long before the baby ever arrives. Love is in the air and so is murder.

Lottie Lemon has a brand new bakery to tend to, a budding romance with perhaps one too many suitors, and she has the supernatural ability to see the dead—which are always harbingers for ominous things to come. Throw in the occasional ghost of the human variety, a string of murders, and her insatiable thirst for justice, and you’ll have more chaos than you know what to do with.

Living in the small town of Honey Hollow can be murder.

Lottie

My name is Lottie Lemon, and I see dead people. Okay, so rarely do I see dead people. Mostly I see furry creatures of the dearly departed variety who have come back from the other side to warn me of their previous owner’s impending doom. But right now, I wish I were seeing anything other than what I’m seeing now.

“Everett!” I shout as I thread my way through a thick crowd of reporters, right here in the Ashford County Sheriff’s Department. “Noah!” I riot out his name, but I can’t see either one of them.

A body blocks my path and I look up to see Detective Ivy Fairbanks glowering at me with those judgmental eyes. Her red hair is knotted up so tight, she’s just given herself an inadvertent facelift. Ivy is Noah’s partner here at the homicide division. Noah, whom I’ve led right to the slaughter with my harebrained schemes more than once.

It’s my fault they’ve arrested him.

It’s my fault they’ve arrested Everett, too.

“You’ve done this, haven’t you?” Ivy spits the words out with fury.

“I get it, you’re angry,” I say, trying to step around her, but she blocks my path at every turn. “But you’re not half as angry as I am with myself. Out of my way, Ivy. Nothing is going to stop me from getting to them.”

Her hand lands just shy of my chest, and I cease all movement.

“You had them move that body, didn’t you?” she grits the words out through her teeth.

All of the events that happened last month run through my mind like a nightmare that swirls like a hurricane. And it is still very much storming in my world.

It’s true. We moved Florenza Canelli’s body, right after we stole it from the morgue. It was upon Florenza’s request—or more or less her ghostly threats—but who in their right mind is going to believe us?

It was the first time the victim came back as the ghost set to help me winnow out their killer. It’s usually the ghost of a loved one who helps me solve the case—a furry family member at that. But Flo was as relentless in death as she was in life. She promised that if we didn’t move her body—long enough for her to buy enough time to communicate some good sense into her friends and family in an effort to keep them from making her look like a coffin clown—her words, not mine—she said she’d destroy my bakery, ruin Everett’s career, and stand by silently while a major turf war broke out between warring mob families.

Anyway, we agreed—I agreed on account she promised to help stop the mob massacre on the horizon if we spared her a bad hair day in the pine box, and we complied. Everett left the final decision to me, and I left it to Noah.

But I’m not blaming Noah.

I’m the one who put the wheels in motion. Me, the only one the Ashford Sheriff’s Department didn’t arrest for the debacle.

I should confess.

The baby in my tummy gives a sharp kick as if it were protesting the thought, and I buck as my hands land over my bourgeoning belly. My poor sugar cookie has no idea what a mess I’ve already made of its little life.

“Good grief.” Ivy pulls me to the side by the elbow. “How far along are you with this mystery child of yours?”

“Eight months,” I pant. “I have to see them, Ivy.” By mystery child she’s alluding to the fact I’m still not sure if either Everett or Noah is the baby’s father. “And who knows what will happen to the baby if I don’t see them right now? Out of my way. I need to see Noah and Everett, and not even that weapon glued to your hip can stop me.”

Her gaze drifts down my swollen body and her eyes squeeze shut a moment.

“Come with me.” Ivy navigates us through the screaming crowd of reporters as a sea of bodies press against us the closer we get to the nucleus of this disaster. The shouting, the questions lighting up the air, the flash of a dozen cameras, it’s a dizzying effect that I can’t seem to escape. I’m not sure if I deserve to.

Ivy yanks me through a white door, and I hear the solid click behind us as it seals us into the processing area. The air is cooler, the lights are brighter with far less bodies to contend with, and thankfully, two of those bodies happen to be the right ones.

“Noah, Everett.” Their names come out in a whisper as I watch the carnage with disbelief.

Everett looks right at me just before a bright light ignites as they take his picture. He’s standing in front of a striped wall that marks off his height, and he looks every bit the criminal they’re making him out to be.

His cobalt blue eyes siren my way with serious intent, and it feels