Murder Sucks (The Vampire Mysteries Book 2) Read online

  Murder Sucks

  The Vampire Mysteries - Book 2

  Lyra Barnett

  Twysted Tomes Publishing

  Contents

  1. The Night Before

  2. Blood and its Attractions

  3. The Breakfast Table

  4. Police Tape and Baking

  5. The Band-Aid

  6. Music and Flash-bulbs

  7. The Guild

  8. Black Eye

  9. The Pub

  10. The Hangover

  11. A Strange Affair

  12. The Murder Weapon

  13. Mistakes

  14. Unrequited love

  15. The Dinner

  16. Getting on with it

  17. Opening Day

  18. Disappointments

  19. Friend & Wine

  20. Another Day

  21. The Key

  22. Confrontation

  23. Exposed

  24. All Change

  Also by Lyra Barnett

  Chapter 1 of Murder With High Steaks

  Copyright © 2017 by Lyra Barnett

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, without prior written permission.

  Twysted Tomes Publishing

  www.LyraBarnett.com

  Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.

  1

  The Night Before

  I stood in the middle of the shop and turned around slowly. It was perfect. I had managed to negotiate with the Reeds, the previous owners of the small sweet shop I was now going to run, to buy all of their large glass sweet jars along with the shop. After days of cleaning and scrubbing I had managed to get them all sparkling and they were now full of their sweet multi-coloured contents, and the effect was dazzling.

  I turned once more to make sure I had taken it all in before doing a last scan of the floor to check I hadn’t missed anything. Everything seemed to be neat and tidy, which wasn’t a surprise bearing in mind how many times I had gone over the place in preparation for tomorrow. I sighed and put my hands on the back of my head. I still couldn’t believe it. This place was mine. Well, ok, not mine as such, but I would be running it.

  Sandra Carter, the wonderful, larger than life owner of the famous (well, within twenty miles that is) Whole Latte Love Café, had retired and left my best friend Betty running the café and me running the sweet shop she had purchased with her recent inheritance.

  I pictured her now, her rather large figure clad in something that had a vague resemblance to a bathing suit, lying on the deck of the round the world cruise she had embarked on, and realised I wasn’t even jealous. I laughed to myself. Even a world cruise didn’t appeal to me as much as running this place and finally having something to focus on in life. And this is only the beginning, I thought as I began to gather my things.

  To start with, I had just decided to reorder from the Reed’s previous supplier and fill up on a basic stock. Admittedly I may have ordered a few more tubs of the apple sour bombs and the cherry fizz sticks than was strictly necessary, but a girl had to treat herself once in a while.

  I stuffed my sunglasses and purse into my handbag and stepped out into the night air and locked the door behind me. Despite the late hour, the air was warm and had an energy which suggested a storm was brewing. I turned and began walking down West Street which was quiet other than the distant sounds behind me from the Stump & Well pub, where it sounded as though singing had broken out. For a moment, I was almost tempted to join them, but then I remembered tomorrow and the early start I was planning before the grand opening at midday.

  I looked to my left as a metallic clang rang out and I saw Brian Walden closing up Melon Cauli, the amusingly named fruit and veg shop he owned. I checked my watch again, ten o’clock. Pretty late to only just be closing up, I wondered if he’d been doing a stock take. When I looked back I saw a woman approaching, too far away to make out any details. As she saw me, she quickly rushed across the road to the green and crossed it to East Street, the second of the twin highstreets that Stumpwell boasted.

  Something was making the hair on the back of my neck stand on end. I could feel my incisors slide slightly from their hiding place deep within my gums. My vampness was kicking in. I instinctively reached not my pocket for my phone and realised it wasn’t there. Damn it. I had left it back at the shop. I turned around and began to make my way back when someone ran into me, clattering my right shoulder.

  “Hey!” I shouted as the figure dashed off. A young man whom I didn’t recognise from the small glimpse I’d had before he’d dashed away.

  I swore under my breath and made it back to the shop. I swore again as I fumbled to get the key in the lock by the dim light of the street light, it was becoming that kind of evening. My vampness was now raging, my teeth almost fully descended. I looked around but the streets and the green which lay between them were empty.

  Finally the key slotted into the lock and I quickly moved inside and shut the door behind me.

  What was wrong with me?

  I turned to look for my phone, but instead my gaze was drawn downwards. In the middle of the floor, covered in an avalanche of strawberry fizz lollipops was a young man. The pool of blood which framed his head told me he was very much dead.

  2

  Blood and its Attractions

  The police arrived pretty quickly bearing in mind the time of night. It was only twenty minutes before a bleary eyed Constable Pearson arrived and began taking down my statement outside the shop. The mousy faced Pearson had been in briefly, but on seeing the body had backed out of the door quickly muttering that we should really wait for DCI Marsh before looking around the murder scene. I was pretty sure from the shade of green she had turned and the way her nose was twitching that it was the sight of the body and its dark pool of blood that had really made the decision for her.

  DCI Marsh… I had hesitated for around ten minutes before calling the police. I wasn’t keen on seeing James Marsh again. Although, I realised as I thought it, that that wasn’t quite true. I did want to see him again, quite a lot. It was just that I wasn’t sure if he’d want to see me.

  “So, you were in the shop getting everything ready for tomorrow, and then you left and locked up.”

  “Yes,” I said impatiently. I had already been through this once and for some reason it annoyed me having to say all of this to Constable Pearson again and not James.

  “And you’re sure you locked the door are you?” She looked at me as though she dealt with fools like me all the time. People who thought they had bolted the door, or shut the window, but had really left them wide open as an open invitation to any passing burglars.

  She surely can’t have forgotten that I had almost single handedly solved a case for the tin pot police station that she came from just a few months ago?

  “Yes, I’m sure I locked it. And no, no one has a key to the place other than me and Betty.”

  She made a show of looking down at her notebook and flicking back a page.

  “And this would be Betty Haddock would it?”

  “Yes.”

  She frowned and looked up at me, her small features screwed into what I guess she thought of as an inquisitive look, but reminded me more of a constipated mole.

  “And this would be the same Miss Haddock who was implicated in the poisoning earlier t
his year?”

  I clenched my fists at my side. So not only did she remember the previous murder, she somehow still thought Betty was something to do with it! She really shouldn’t be pushing my buttons like this so soon after I’d had the scent of blood in my nostrils. I fought the instinct to dive at her throat with my teeth bared, and took a deep breath.

  “I need to have a walk around a bit, get some fresh air,” I said, striding off and ignoring her shouting after me to not leave the area as they’d need to talk to me further.

  I wandered over onto the green which ran down the middle of the two highstreets of Stumpwell and sat on a wooden bench. What was I going to do about tomorrow? I checked my watch. Midnight. In roughly ten hours, the Stumpwell brass band would turn up and begin to play some cheery music while the Gazette took pictures of me standing next to the shop. I hadn’t really wanted to do the whole big grand opening thing, but Betty had insisted. More importantly, so had Sandra, and as owner, she called the shots. Even if she was over a thousand miles away on a boat somewhere. Wait, was it a boat or a ship? What was the difference? Who knew?

  I sighed and turned my thoughts back to the grand event that was now certain to be a disaster.

  Although I wasn’t really keen on the whole idea, it was my parents who had really been panicked over the opening event. As vampires, it was pretty crucial to keep a low profile unless you wanted people turning up with pointy sticks and cloves of garlic around their neck (not that garlic actually does anything to us, well not much more than a stick of gum wouldn’t cure). I had told them that they worried too much, and promised not to smile with my fangs out for the photo. Mum had laughed, while dad had raised one eyebrow while trying to look stern and not laugh too.

  I looked up as a car’s headlights swept across the grass in front of me as it rounded the corner onto West Street. I watched it move slowly down the road until it stopped in front of Constable Pearson’s patrol car and the tall figure of DCI James Marsh stepped out. Something fluttered in my chest as I saw him move across to Pearson and begin talking with her in a low voice that I could barely hear from where I sat. They moved off towards the shop as I rose and began to walk over. Talking to James couldn’t be avoided, I just needed to get it over with as quickly as possible. What I needed was a short, precise conversation that meant I could leave all this mess to them and get home to my bed. A conversational Band-Aid that needed to be ripped off pronto.

  James had stepped inside the shop with Constable Pearson waiting outside by her car, presumably because she didn’t fancy seeing the body again.

  “You can’t go in there,” she said, scampering over as I headed for the door. I picked up my pace and reached it before her, opening it as I replied.

  “It’s my shop,” I said before stepping in and shutting it behind me.

  “Hello Felicity,” James said turning over his shoulder to look at me. He was crouched over the body at the head end, his feet just inches from the edge of the pool of blood.

  “Hello James. I locked up the shop at roughly eleven thirty and then began to walk home. I then realised that I had left my phone in the shop, and so had turned back to get them. When I returned, I found that the shop door was closed but unlocked, and that this man was dead in here on the floor. Only Betty and I have keys. I am now going to go home and get some sleep, but I will be back first thing in the morning to sort out when I can get all this cleaned up and actually open. Ok?”

  He frowned at me and rubbed his eyes with his hand. I saw suddenly how tired he looked, how disheveled. He looked like he had literally just rolled out of bed. Another flutter ran through my chest.

  “Are you ok?”

  This was not what I was expecting him to say, but then, what had I expected him to say? I had just walked into an active murder scene and blurted out my statement before announcing I was off to bed.

  “I’m fine, other than… you know.” I gestured at the body which lay between us.

  “Well, yeah,” he said standing up. “It’s fine, go home and get some rest. Pearson says she’s got your statement, but you’ll need to be back here first thing, or at the station.”

  “Don’t worry, I’ll be here. It’s supposed to be the grand opening.”

  “I know, I was going to come. Are you sure you don’t recognise him?”

  My mouth opened and shut for a moment. He had been going to come to the opening?!

  “I don’t think so, though it’s a bit hard to tell with all the…” I looked down at the body and the halo of blood which surrounded the battered head. A mistake. I felt an animal rush pour through my body and my incisors shot fully from their hiding place as my hand instinctively shot to cover my mouth.

  James shot up and moved to me, placing his hand on my back and guiding me out of the door.

  “Are you ok? Do you need some water?”

  “I’m fine,” I said, keeping my hand firmly over my mouth, “just the sight of the blood…”

  “Don’t worry, Pearson here isn’t any better and she’s supposed to be a trained officer.”

  “Supposed to be?!” Constable Pearson said, folding her arms in annoyance. I saw James’ mouth turn into a smile as he looked at me.

  “Are you sure you’re ok?”

  “I’m fine, I just need to go home if that’s ok?”

  “Of course, Pearson here will drive you home.”

  “No, I’ll walk, honestly. I need the fresh air.”

  “You can’t walk back on your own, there’s a killer out there.”

  “Oh, I’m sure they’re long gone from here by now. Probably the safest time to be out.”

  He didn’t like the idea, but I ignored his protests, making sure to keep my mouth either shut or turned away from him and made way down the road towards home.

  3

  The Breakfast Table

  I woke the next day full of energy and feeling pretty damn amazing considering the late night trauma. Getting home and downing three pints of chilled cow’s blood had clearly put some pep in my step. I climbed into the shower and made a mental note to be better at getting my daily intake than I had been. A vow I regularly made and regularly broke. My dad said it was because I still wasn’t ready to embrace who I was. He may well have been right. I mean, who wants to be a slave to the red stuff?

  Breakfasts had become an event since our house guests had moved in. The zombie, the banshee and the vampire known as Reg Shaw, Mrs Bard and Damien Pound respectively, had all contributed their own unique peculiarities to the occasion. Reg Shaw regaled everyone with various meandering stories, all of which seemed to feature wood of some kind at the heart of them. Mrs Bard’s stories on the other hand were anything but dull, though she never got to finish them before my dad interjected to change the subject, his ears a deep shade of red. Damien Pound was the least potty of the three, but he had another problem entirely. Betty Haddock, my best friend from forever, was also staying at the house, and the two of them were what could only be described as ‘sickeningly in love’.

  They mooned at each other, got embarrassed when one asked the other to pass the butter, and generally caused enough sexual tension to curdle the milk in my cereal every morning. The strangest part of all this is that nothing had actually happened between them. For months they had been flirting and exchanging furtive looks across the dinner table, and then going on with their lives as though they weren’t living under the same roof with the person they adored. It was all a bit puzzling.

  When I had questioned Betty on what the holdup was, which I had done frequently over the last few months, she had become upset and asked me what the hell I knew about men. This was slightly hurtful, as all truthful remarks are.

  Today’s breakfast was different. The second I walked into the room I could tell that they had been talking about me. The sudden silence and six pairs of eyes turning to me was a bit of a clue.

  “Felicity, are you ok?” my dad said standing up and moving round the table to me and taking my hand.


  “I’m fine, what’s going on?”

  “We heard about what happened at the shop,” Betty said also standing up and moving towards me. “Your mum had the radio on this morning. Did you… find the body?”

  “Yep,” I said moving past them and sitting at an empty chair on the huge oak dining table. “Making a bit of a habit of it aren’t I?”

  Everyone seemed to relax at my attitude and soon everyone was tucking back into their breakfast. Mum insisted on providing a full cooked breakfast plus a range of cereals and preserves for the racks of toast which sat in a row down the center of the table. I had tried to explain to her that the idea of having house guests was to actually bring some money in and not spend it all on food, but she had looked at me like I was talking another language.

  “Is the opening going to be ok today?” Betty asked. I helped myself to a sausage as my mum brought over two eggs and dropped them onto my plate.

  “I hope so. I’m going down there straight after breakfast to see what’s going on.”

  “Felicity, I really think you should cancel the opening,” my dad said in a serious voice, which in his case was his normal one.

  “Why? I’ve been leading up to this for months!”

  “I was uncomfortable enough with you calling those journalist types in as it is, now there’s been a murder! Who knows what they’ll print, what they’ll start digging around in.”

  “I don’t think their first leap from a murder is going to be ‘this shop must be owned by a vampire’ is it?” I said in a voice that I felt slightly embarrassed of immediately. I sounded like a petulant child answering back to their parent. Which let’s face it, I was.

  “It never pays to bring unnecessary attention onto the family, Felicity.”

  I chewed my bacon furiously, I knew he was right, but I still didn’t want to hear it. I looked to Betty for support, but she was talking to Damien while looking at something in the newspaper. I knew I’d have no chance of breaking through that spell.