Page 1 of Be A Detective, They Said. It’ll Be Fun, They Said

Chapter One

“Hey! There’s my pretty-pretty princess!”

My daughter, Olivia, rushed across the shiny gymnasium floor of her school to her auntie Nina, throwing her arms around the vampire’s legs.

Nina squatted and scooped her up, planting kisses on her tiny cheeks.

“Look, Auntie Nina! I made cupcakes! Cupcakes! Cupcakes! Cuuupcaaakes!” my sweet girl bellowed at the top of her itty-bitty lungs, her chocolate curls dancing in the winter sun when she tipped her head back and yelped for all to hear.

No one was as excited about this school bake sale as my Olivia.

Nina gave her a playful poke in her tummy. “You did, Miss Ma’am, and now you’re breaking Auntie Nina’s eardrums.”

Olivia was my expressive child. Dramatic, theatrical, excited about everything—little, big, made no difference to my baby. Everything was to be celebrated. She was larger than life and nothing like myself or her father when we were children, but her exuberance, her zest for being alive, made my life a brighter existence.

Nina called Olivia her little jalapeno. Hot and spicy, like a real kick in the pants.

Olivia planted return kisses on her auntie’s cheeks, squeezing Nina’s neck until her heart-shaped face turned pink from the effort. Then she bracketed my beautiful friend’s face. “I love you so much! Thank you for coming to the bake sale. Mommy said you would, even if you can’t eat cupcakes. But you would if you could, right?”

Nina smiled at Olivia, love in her eyes, giving one of the multicolored ribbons around her pigtails a tweak. “You bet I would. I’d eat ’em all up. Gobble, gobble, gobble!” she said, blowing raspberries against Olivia’s neck, making her giggle hysterically.

I’m so grateful for my BFFs Nina and Marty. I’d been a bit panicked when they’d texted to see if I wanted to have breakfast with them earlier this morning, and maybe do a little shopping until I had to pick up my children from school.

When they’d heard the president of the PTA, Neerie Lincoln (aka my PTA nemesis), didn’t show up for the most important bake sale of the year—the bake sale where we raised money to put on the winter carnival for next year—they’d dropped everything to come and help me.

Yes. I’m a PTA member. I’m sure it comes as no surprise to anyone, but I love being involved in my children’s lives. However, I usually acted as secondhand man, I didn’t run the show.

As if Neerie Lincoln would ever let anyone else take charge, anyway. She was, as some called her, a Karen.

I don’t necessarily approve of using a perfectly good name to describe someone who makes regular visits to the principal’s office to complain about the most innocuous of offences, but as Nina said, if the shoe fits…

And it fit Mrs. Lincoln like a glove. If anyone could set my teeth on edge, it was Neerie. She was so difficult, Nina often asked me if I wanted her to wrap Neerie’s signature high pony around her neck and squeeze tight.

She made everything about how valuable she was to us.

Anyway, Neerie, at the height of the Paranormal School for the Gifted bake sale, was a no-show. No one appeared to be able to reach her today, and her daughter, Tamlin, couldn’t provide any information as to her whereabouts. Her aunt Naida had dropped her off at school this morning when the doors opened and sped away without explanation, declaring she’d be back in a bit.

Of course, the onus to take over everything—from the organization of where each donated item went on the tables (don’t get me started on how cranky Elsa Franks could be if her Bundt cakes didn’t get center stage) to the handling of money—was left to me.

Me, who had zero clue where to start because Neerie used me as more of her gopher than anything else. She had zero interest in any of the fundraising ideas I’d presented. It was Neerie’s way or the highway.

Thankfully, my BFFs sensed my panic in my return text and came to my rescue. We were between investigation and OOPS jobs, due to how quiet things had been as of late, though during that downtime we were still trying to learn more about being better investigators.

And right now, I was relieved we were on a mini-break, because never was I so glad to see two people with a little time on their hands in my life as I was Nina and Marty.

Well, maybe that’s a stretch. We’ve been in far worse situations (see Nina coming close to death and my almost drowning) than an errant PTA president shirking her duties, but I was a bit frazzled until they arrived.

“Mom?” A small hand tugged at my skirt.

I looked down to find my son Sam, my oldest. His pale green face looking up at me with a seriousness that made him appear eighty instead of his actual eight.

Half zombie, half human, recently tested for the paranormal version of Mensa due to his high academic achievements, defines my precious boy. The only zombie here at the school—and one of very few zombies in the world with a fully functioning brain, due to his half-human nature—Sam had been the beginning of my journey into motherhood.

We adopted him when he was an infant and quickly became embroiled in a fight to keep him safe from some dark forces I almost can’t speak of to this day.

I ran my fingers over the frown wrinkles on his forehead. My sweet boy, as opposed to his sister, took things very seriously. He was all logic and statistics—at eight, mind you.

We hear, from his biological mother’s best friend, Sal, someone we consider part of our family, that Sam’s mother, while funny and friendly, was also quite logical and very good with numbers. Sam’s aunt Sal told him stories about her all the time, and we treasure our time with her. In all ways possible, we honor his biological mother Samantha’s memory.

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