The Very Killer Caterpillar (A Paranormal Cozy Mystery) (Magical Bookshop Mystery Book 3) Read online

  The Very Killer Caterpillar

  Samantha Silver

  Blueberry Books Press

  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

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Red Velvet Cupcake Recipe

  Also by Samantha Silver

  About the Author

  Chapter 1

  I was like, ninety percent sure I was going to die today.

  Why on earth had I ever agreed to this?

  I was currently standing on the very top of a ten-thousand-foot-high mountain, staring deep into the valley below, with two planks of wood strapped firmly onto my feet, which were enclosed in hard plastic boots that were quite frankly, impossible to walk in. Anyone who complains about walking in heels has obviously never walked in ski boots.

  Ok, so maybe I wasn’t exactly at the very top of the mountain. In fact, I was at the very top of the magic carpet, a slow-moving track that took beginners up to what I had to admit was a pretty mild slope, so they could learn how to ski.

  But still, it felt like I was taking on the world right now. Even getting here had been a struggle: the first time I got on the magic carpet I hadn’t been used to the movement and fell over into the snow. I let out a scream, and then watched as one of my skis, which had come off in the fall, continued to make its way up the magic carpet while I lay in slushy early-May snow, regretting every decision I’d ever made that had led to this moment.

  Not to mention, some snow had definitely gone down the back of my brand-new snow pants.

  Luckily, Chase Griffin, the local chief of police and the man who had insisted that I do this, darted up the magic carpet and retrieved my ski. He didn’t look like he had any trouble walking in ski boots. Darting back over to me, he held out a hand and pulled me out of the snow. I resisted the urge to pull a face; after all, I was closer to thirty than twenty, I probably shouldn’t be having a tantrum every time something minor went wrong in my life anymore.

  So, after helping me get back into the ski binding, and a second attempt at getting on the magic carpet, I managed to stay on my feet for the whole ride up.

  Of course, I fell off again when I got to the very top and had to get off, but at least this time my ski stayed where it was and I was able to get up on my own.

  “We’re really lucky,” Chase said as we stood at the top of the hill. “Sapphire Mountain is one of three places in North America that’s high enough and gets enough snow that it can stay open through the summer. It’s the middle of May, almost all the ski resorts in the country are closed now.”

  “Lucky really doesn’t feel like the descriptor I’d go with right now,” I muttered as I dropped one of the poles I was holding onto the ground, then fell over again trying to pick it back up. I had to say, my respect for anyone who could go more than ten feet on a pair of skis without falling over was rising.

  I could tell Chase was trying to hold back his laughter.

  “Don’t worry, you’re going to be fine. Remember, always make sure your skis are in a pizza shape. French fry makes you go fast, pizza slows you down. We’re just going to go across the hill, slowly, and then when you want to turn, reach around with your hand, it will rotate your shoulders and make you turn down the hill.”

  Chase gracefully slid across the snow on his skis, put them in the pizza shape, and made a perfect C-shaped turn across the hill before looking up at me expectantly. “See? It’s not so bad. Now you try!”

  Using my poles, I carefully pushed myself across the hill. As the skis began to pick up speed, I was pretty sure I was starting to go way, way too fast. In reality, I was probably barely going five miles an hour, but seeing as I had no idea what I was doing, it might as well have been fifty.

  I let out a squeal as I began to move down the hill. “Turn your arm!” Chase shouted out, and I did as he said, and all of a sudden my body was turning! I had no idea what was happening, and I closed my eyes in fear until I realized that I was stopped. When I finally opened them, amazed that I was still alive, Chase was standing a few feet away, grinning at me.

  “See? That wasn’t so bad, was it?”

  I had to admit, adrenaline was now coursing through my body at the rush of cheating death–or at least cheating an inelegant fall into the soft snow–and I laughed.

  “That was… kind of fun, really,” I replied, and Chase grinned.

  “I knew you’d love it! Or, more accurately, I hoped you’d love it. Skiing is awesome. Come on, do you want to try another turn?”

  “Not really, can we just leave it at this?” I asked, looking down at the hill. It was only maybe a hundred feet long, but from here that looked like an eternity. Chase laughed.

  “Only if you want to walk the rest of the way down. Come on, let’s finish this one run, and then we’ll go get a cupcake.”

  “Ooooh, bribing me with cupcakes, that’s a low blow,” I said, wanting to shake my fist at him but not trusting myself to stay upright if I did. I could see the pink sign from my cousin Cat’s cupcake shop from here, and my mouth began to drool just at the thought of them.

  “Well, let’s see it,” Chase said. “Follow me.”

  The next two turns down the hill went just as well as the first one, and by the time I did my third turn on skis, I actually managed to keep my eyes open the whole way through! As I made my fourth turn, though, something went horribly wrong.

  I wasn’t entirely sure what happened, but somehow, while doing the pizza, the tips of my skis got crossed. One ski went over the other, I lost my balance, and the next thing I knew I was hurtling toward the ground, letting out a shriek of terror. I hit the snow, the sudden coldness hurting more than anything I did to myself, and I looked up, wiping the snow from my goggles, to find Chase grinning at me.

  “If you ain’t fallin’, you ain’t haulin’” he told me. “Don’t worry, it’s normal to fall.”

  “If I’m ever doing anything that remotely looks like ‘haulin’’ on skis, don’t worry, I’ll be fallin’ soon enough,” I replied as I started to get up. I struggled to get my ski, one of which had fallen off, back on and Chase came over and gave me a hand. His strong hands holding me upright while I struggled with the ski made me blush. No, this was a friendly date. I had made that much obvious when Chase had offered to teach me how to ski. I was absolutely, in no way in the market for a man.

  That didn’t mean I wasn’t human, though.

  A good thirty minutes later, I had made it most of the way down the hill, with only a few more crashes to my name. To his credit, Chase was ever the encourager, telling me I was doing fine, that I could take my time and that there was no rush. And by the time I got toward the bottom, I was even starting to feel good about my skiing. Maybe a few more runs and I’d actually be able to go up a chairlift and try a real big girl run on the real mountain.

  A few minutes later, however, and I realized just how overly optimistic I’d been.

  I was getting ready to link together three turns in a row, to finish off the day. Chase was at the bottom of the hill, about thirty feet away, looking up at me. The fi
rst turn went well, but then as I went to do my second turn, something happened.

  I still don’t know what it was, but it was like I caught an edge or something. All I knew was that instead of doing a pizza turn down the side of the hill, suddenly I was french frying my way down toward Chase, picking up speed like there was no tomorrow.

  I let out a scream as Chase tried to get out of the way, but I was going too fast. I pummelled straight into him and we went flying in a giant jumble of arms, legs, bodies, poles and skis.

  When I finally re-opened my eyes, I was looking up into the bright May sun, wondering if this was what heaven was. Then, as I blinked a few times and came to, I had a look at the damage. Both my skis were off, I’d lost a glove somewhere and my hand was freezing, sunk deep into the soft May snow. More snow had gotten into seemingly every single corner of my body; I was pretty sure I’d just gone up a cup size, there was so much snow in my sports bra, and my goggles had fallen off my head and were now hanging limply off the helmet strap at the back of my head.

  I looked over to see how Chase was doing. “Are you all right?” he asked.

  “Yeah, how about you?” He looked down at his leg.

  “Um, to be honest, I’m not totally sure. It’s hurting pretty badly.”

  Oh no. I really hoped I hadn’t just injured the local police chief by being awful at skiing. I stood up and helped Chase get up as well. As soon as he put pressure on his leg, he winced.

  “That’s not good,” I muttered.

  “It’ll be fine, don’t worry,” Chase smiled at me, but I could tell he was just putting on a brave face. That was the face of a man who needed to go to the hospital.

  Since we were at the bottom of the hill, I helped Chase over to a nearby bench and grabbed the bundle and skis and poles; it took me a lot longer than I wanted to admit to figure out how to put the skis together, but when I had finished I leaned them against a metal rack designed to hold skis and snowboards, and made my way back to Chase.

  “So how do we get to the hospital from here?” I asked him, and he smiled.

  “Well first we put our normal shoes back on.” I went and got our shoes from the nearby row of lockers where we’d left them, and with a bit of difficulty on my part Chase and I both managed to take our ski boots off.

  “Ahhhhh,” I said blissfully when I finally removed those torture devices from my feet. “Hello again, old Nikes, my old friends. I’m never going to complain about you again,” I said to my running shoes as I put them on, and Chase laughed.

  “Ski boots aren’t supposed to be that bad,” he said.

  “The guillotine isn’t supposed to be that bad compared to an axe, it still doesn’t make it ok,” I replied. “Come on, let me help you. Do you think you can walk to the hospital from here?”

  “Definitely,” Chase nodded. “It’s like, three hundred feet from here, and it was designed for people who hurt themselves on the slopes. I think I’ll be ok,” he said as he limped forward. I carried both sets of ski boots while we slowly made our way along one of the side streets to the local Sapphire Village Medical Center. It was small, kind of a cross between a medical clinic and a hospital–it had a couple of rooms to do X-Rays, and even a basic operating room, but was essentially designed to take care of minor on-hill ski injuries, with anybody needing anything more complicated being taken either by ambulance or by helicopter to the larger hospital in Portland.

  Great. Thanks to me, the local police chief was out of service. And I still sucked at skiing.

  Chapter 2

  I stayed with Chase as he waited in the emergency room for about twenty minutes before being called in.

  “You can go home, you know,” he told me. “Don’t feel obligated to stay with me. I’m sure I’m fine. The doctor’s just going to tell me to walk it off.”

  “Don’t be silly,” I said. “This is my fault. The least I can do is hang out for a while. Besides, I think I was promised a cupcake.”

  Chase laughed, and the way his eyes lit up when he did made me smile. “Well at least you have your mind set on it. Listen, why don’t you go grab us both some cupcakes and sneak them in here for me.”

  “Sure,” I said, smiling, but as I got up to leave the doctor came in. I sat back down again; after all, if Chase was about to be discharged I might as well wait. He asked Chase about the injury, how it had happened, where it hurt, and then moved the injured leg around, twisting from time to time.

  “Ouch!” Chase said at one of the movements. “That one hurts a little.”

  The doctor nodded. “All right.”

  A few minutes later, we had a diagnosis: a grade 2 MCL tear.

  “You’re looking at about two to four weeks before it heals completely,” the doctor told Chase. “For now, the main thing is reducing the inflammation and swelling. I recommend wearing a brace on the knee to prevent any sideways movement, and regular physiotherapy.”

  I winced as I heard all of this. I felt really bad, after all, if I hadn’t crashed into Chase he’d be fine.

  “All right, thanks doc,” Chase replied with a smile.

  “You shouldn’t be out of action too long, but you won’t be able to chase down any criminals, not that it’s a regular occurrence here in Sapphire Village,” the doctor told him with a smile.

  He left, and a nurse came in with a brace and instructed Chase on how to use it. Just as we were leaving, Chase’s phone rang. He picked up and I listened for a minute while he nodded. When he hung up, his face was grim.

  “I’m going to have to get a rain check on those cupcakes,” he said. “Someone’s been found dead in one of the condos nearby.”

  “Oh no!” I said. “That’s awful.”

  “Well, sadly, it’s the reality of life when you’re a cop. Alexander Gordon was a biology professor at one of the colleges in Portland for years; he retired here a few years ago. I’ve heard he’s been involving himself in some stuff with the local college.”

  “Oh, there’s a college here?”

  “Yeah, it’s actually a branch of Oregon State. They mainly do sciences here: geology, biology, the sorts of things that are more suited to the mountain than the city.”

  “Where’s the campus?”

  “Just outside of town, if you take the turn-off to go to Lakeside Park there’s a road off there that leads straight to it.”

  “So where do you need to go now?”

  “Just a few blocks from here. I’ll talk to you later, ok? Thanks for staying with me here at the clinic, but I told you I’d be fine.”

  “A grade 2 tear that means you’ve now got a giant metal brace on your knee doesn’t sound like ‘fine’ to me,” I replied, raising my eyebrows. “This is my fault, the least I could do was listen to how badly I hurt you.”

  “Well, I had fun, anyway.”

  “Did you really, or are you just being polite? Because I feel like listening to me complain while watching me take an hour to get down the hill wouldn’t really be that fun.”

  Chase laughed. “Oh no, trust me, your commentary on the day was the best part.”

  I laughed. “All right, I’m going to go to Cat’s. Should I get you a cupcake and bring it over?”

  “Sure,” Chase grinned. “Anything with chocolate on it, please!”

  He reached into his wallet and pulled out some cash, but I waved it away. “Please, I got this. It’s the very least I can do. Really. Plus, Cat’s going to insist I take them for free, anyway.”

  “All right, well, thanks!” he said, smiling brightly. He pointed to a set of condos about a block away. It was a low-rise building, four stories high. The bottom floor had a number of small retail shops, with the apartments above.

  “I’ll be in there. Bear’s Paw is the name of the building, the entrance is just between those two doors. Apartment 312.”

  “Cool, see you soon,” I said with a smile.

  Making my way toward the cupcake shop, I was suddenly filled with dread. Not about the cupcakes–no, those were abs
olutely delicious. But rather, facing Cat, the owner and my cousin.

  “Oh my God!” Cat exclaimed when I finished telling her the story about our date. She wiped a tear of laughter from her face, leaving a small streak of icing under her eye. I decided not to tell her, since she was obviously about to make fun of me.

  Cat was tall and pretty, with purple pastel colored hair, and a fashion sense that could be politely described as “unique”. Today she was wearing a black dress with a princess neckline with a white cat pattern, and blue leggings made to look like a tangled ball of yarn.

  “Stop it, it’s not funny, I actually hurt him!” I insisted.

  “That’s hilarious! I can’t believe the chief of police took you on a date and you took out his knee!”

  My face reddened with embarrassment. “Oh shut up,” I finally muttered, unable to come up with any other kind of clever retort. I had no defense; as much as I hated to admit it, Cat was right. I had maimed the local chief of police, and the guy every single girl in town wanted to be with.

  “Anyway, our date got cut short, he got called to the scene of a death.”

  Cat laughed. “Are you sure someone’s actually dead? Or did he just make it up to get away from you?”

  I stuck my tongue out at her. “Well he gave me a name, and an apartment number. I’m going to get him a cupcake to go.”

  “Oh, who was it?” Cat asked, her face sobering as she realized it was the truth.

  “Ummm, a retired biology teacher,” I said, trying to remember the name. “Gordon Alexander? No, Alexander Gordon.”

  “Ah, I know him,” Cat said. “Well, knew him, I guess. He seemed pretty nice, he lives like a block or two from here, right?” I nodded, and Cat continued. “He’d come in and have a coffee a few times a week. Always polite, seemed like a nice guy. I think he was pretty into science.”