Page 12 of Ghosts, Ghouls, and Growls
Heath Cullen is dead.
CHAPTER 6
“Get your lazy rear in gear and fight me like a man,” Macy shouts at the body lying prone with his vacant eyes staring at the navy sky, because apparently, my sister believes death is just another form of selective hearing that can be overcome with sufficient volume and aggressive motivation. And maybe a swift kick to the cookies.
The moonlight casts eerie shadows across Heath’s face, making him look like a wax figure in one of those horror museums—realistic but unmistakably lifeless. Or like a department store mannequin that’s given up on retail and embraced the Goth lifestyle.
The air has turned colder behind the haunted house as the scent of caramel apples and funnel cake wafts over from the midway as the Halloween festival rages on, clueless to the real-life horror that seems to be unraveling. The festival sounds seem miles away now, replaced by Macy’s angry voice and the soft whimpering of a terrified dog.
Fudge cowers behind my legs with his little vampire cape dragging in the dirt like a defeated superhero who’s just discovered that his nemesis is actually mortality itself. His button eyes are wide with confusion and fear as he stares at his motionless owner.
Poor little thing doesn’t understand why his human won’t get up,Fish mewls with her devil horns now completely askew.
Should we tell him?Sherlock gives a little somber bark.
“Fish, Sherlock, would you please take Fudge back to the cottage?” I whisper. “He shouldn’t see this.”
On it,Fish responds, circling around the small white Westie.Come on, short stuff. Let’s go raid the treat jar. Your human is... sort of indisposed.
Fish herds both dogs away with surprising efficiency, and they disappear into the artificial fog just as Macy delivers another kick to Heath’s body—this one in a location that would have him singing soprano if he were alive to feel it. Hint: it’s in the aforementioned cookies.
“Would you stop?” I swat at my sister’s arm. “The last thing I need to tell Jasper is that I found you kicking the corpse.”
“What corpse?” She narrows her eyes at me before looking down and doing what I can only describe as corpse math—adding up the knife plus the blood plus the unnerving stillness and arriving at a conclusion that her brain apparently didn’t want to accept on the first try. Her blue eyes widen to the size of those plastic pumpkins the kids are hauling around, and she lets a scream rip from her throat that could wake the dead—ironically not the dead among us.
A series of footfalls thunder in our direction, and suddenly I’m in the arms of my big, strong husband, and have I mentioned he’s handsome to a fault? Not even a corpse could stop me from pointing that out, because priorities.
Jasper Wilder is the kind of tall, dark, and devastating that makes women walk into lampposts, forget their own names, and occasionally commit minor traffic violations while rubbernecking. His dark wavy hair always looks like he just stepped off a movie set, and those light gray eyes could melt polar ice caps, which, frankly, might be contributing to global warming.
Every female within a ten-mile radius seems to develop a mysterious case of the vapors when he’s around—with the exception of my sister, because, well, he’s her brother-in-law. Thank goodness for small favors.
“Bizzy, what’s happening?” Jasper searches my face with concern etched across his perfect features.
I glance down at the deceased, prompting my husband to drop to one knee and quickly check the man for a pulse.
“Geez.” Jasper jumps to his feet. “Bizzy, what did you do?”
“Me?” My voice squeaks in protest like a rusty hinge. “She’s the one who was here with him first.” I’m quick to out my sister because family loyalty only extends so far when a homicide is on the table. “And if that isn’t bad enough, she was kicking him, too.”
Macy’s mouth rounds out as she looks my way with the indignation of someone who’s been betrayed by her closest ally.
“Way to throw your own sister under the bus—or in this case, the hearse,” she snips. “What happened tosisters ride or die?I’ll help you bury the bodiesand all that good stuff?”
“I’m pretty sure that pact didn’t includeactualbodies,” I hiss back because there’s a significant difference between hypothetical criminal conspiracy and standing over someone who’s been recently stabbed to death. “That was more of a metaphorical support system.”
More footsteps hustle in our direction, and before I can continue my sisterly betrayal, Georgie and my mother—the pumpkin and the bee—are on the scene, while Jasper calls the incident in on his phone to the sheriff’s department with the weary efficiency of someone who’s done this too many times before.
“Who’s burying bodies and where?” Georgie pants as she looks left then right, her pumpkin costume making her resemble an overexcited jack-o’-lantern that’s about to tip on its side and roll toward the sea.
But my mother looks straight down and lets out a yelp that could compete with the haunted house sound effects currently going off at far too high decibels. “Oh, please tell me you didn’t find another body, Bizzy.”
“Nope,” I say with all the cheerfulness I can muster, which all things considered isn’t much. “This one is all Macy.” A sigh heaves from me. “I’ve trained her well. It looks as if she’s ready to take over the family business of discovering corpses in inconvenient places.”
Mom gasps and swats my arm. “Don’t you dare joke around! Your sister is nothing like you. One body-finder in the family is quite enough.”
“I prefer the termamateur sleuth,” I correct her. “It sounds a lot less like I’m running a morgue.”
“Well, at least we know where to look when someone goes missing,” Georgie chimes in, adjusting the stem on her hat. “Just follow Bizzy around for a day or two, and voilà, mystery solved!”
