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

“Boy, it’s like you’re cursed, Lot. On the bright side, as soon as you set foot in the courthouse, there might be a huge fire and the entire place could burn to the ground.” She chuckles to herself as she takes off.

“It’s not funny,” I call after her.

“Aw, come on, Lot Lot.” Carlotta links her arm through mine. “It’s kind of funny. Actually, it’s darn right hilarious. Everything you touch practically turns to stone—stone-cold dead. Get it?” She gives my ribs a quick pinch. “Now let’s go confront the Canelli girls. Cadillac needs me more than ever.”

“Who’s Cadillac again?”

“Cat—my bestie. She got a fancy new ride, and they honored her with the nickname. The mob takes their nicknames very seriously. It’s as if God Himself issues the whatchamacallit ordinance.”

“Fine, I’ll go with you. But something is amiss.” A mean shiver runs through me as I take a quick look around at the masses of people huddled and whispering amongst themselves.

“Carlotta, did you happen to see a ghost?”

She gasps. “Why no, I didn’t. How are we gonna hunt down Angel Face’s killer if we don’t have a supernatural ball of fluff to help us out in the endeavor? Wait a minute. Maybe she never had a pet? I bet she was allergic. I bet she had a hot Italian stallion to keep her warm at night. Once that sexy specter shows, I’ll gladly trap him in my bedroom for you. In the name of the investigation, of course.”

“I guess it could be a person. Did you see anyone suspicious?”

“I saw a weird guy wearing nothing but a trench coat who asked me if I wanted to see his watch collection in the men’s bathroom stall.”

“What? Please tell me you didn’t take him up on his offer.”

“Of course, I did.” She looks affronted that I even had to ask. “It was just Harry. I didn’t recognize him what with the dim lighting and that fedora covering half his face. So I took a quick ride on the mayor express and hightailed it out of there. What a freak.”

I pluck my arm free from hers and grunt.

As it turns out, Mayor Harry Nash is my biological father. I found this little genetic tidbit out a few years back. We’re as close as we can be. He’s been hot and heavy with Carlotta for a couple of years now. But all those years ago, when I was conceived, he was still married to Chrissy Nash. It was Chrissy and Mayor Nash’s union that produced my two half-sisters, Kelleth and Aspen, and a half-brother, Finn. We’re all about the same age.

And ever since Mayor Nash and Chrissy divorced, he and Carlotta have enjoyed a bizarre relationship in which escapades such as this one are the norm. I know this firsthand because Mayor Nash is always at my house plotting and implementing his freaky moves.

I do a quick visual sweep of the vicinity in search of a supernatural phenomenon of any kind but come up empty.

“I can’t believe we’re missing a ghost,” I say, incensed. “What exactly is going on here?” A breath gets caught in my throat. “You don’t think I’m losing my powers, do you?”

“What about me?” Carlotta bleats. “You’re not the only transmundane around here. I’ve got dead-ray vision myself, you know.”

She’s right. Both Carlotta and I are transmundane, further classified as supersensual, which means we can see through to the other side. But we don’t typically see ghosts willy-nilly—with the exception of the fab four who haunt my mother’s B&B. Usually the ghosts that come back are here to help solve the homicides of their loved ones.

“Hey”—Carlotta’s eyes bug out—“maybe that sugar booger in your belly has something to do with this supernatural mishap? Maybe it sucked all the ghost seeing ability right out of both of us?”

“That’s not what happened.” I brush off the ridiculous idea. “It can’t even see me yet. How’s it going to see a ghost? And I’d hate for my sweet sugar cookie to get involved with something so grisly right out the gate. Believe me, I’ve already made peace with the fact this sweet child is going to have a supernatural ability or two to deal with. Grandma Nell gave it to you, and you passed it down to me. I don’t see how this baby will be exempt from it.” A thought comes to me. “Maybe it won’t be supersensual like us. There are other powers that fall under the transmundane umbrella. Just last month I discovered Serena Taylor is a beguiler.” Serena Taylor is a woman Cormack and Cressida hired to put a pox on me a while back. Something to do with the fact I was hogging their men and they wanted to make sure I was hexed from ever succeeding in love with both of them, and oddly, the very opposite happened. I guess Serena isn’t too good at beguiling me or anyone else to do her bidding.

But I’m only familiar with a few powers that fall under the transmundane umbrella, and those are visionaries, or sibylline, people who have a glimpse into the future, telesensual like my friend in Maine, Bizzy Baker, who can pry into other people’s minds—and read the minds of animals, too. How I wish I had that. And it was just last October I learned about the beguilers. One of this country’s most notoriously cursed families had an actual pox placed on them by one of these beguilers, a woman by the name of Iona Canterbury. And even though Iona is long deceased, she wasn’t all that pleased that I was meddling in the homicide investigation of one of the Hearst family members. And, well, because of that, the curse sort of fell on me, too. That night, not only did my home burn to the ground, but so did Everett’s—right along with the Hearst mansion.

“Hey?” I say with a note of surprise. “Maybe the Hearst curse has something to do with the fact there isn’t a