Sweet Taffy and Murder: Sweet Taffy Cozy Mysteries Book #1 (2 page)

After an exhausting cross-country flight and a frustrating interaction at the car rental office, where she had been annoyed to discover that her pre-booked rental excluded all convertibles and foreign models, Taffy was now driving down the dark Oregon roads in a tiny Chevy Aveo that was little more than a tin can.

She’d been given a preprogrammed GPS with her rental, and it was directing her toward a destination in a small coastal town called Abandon.

Abandon.

As in,
Abandon all hope, ye who enter here
?

It began to rain, harder than Taffy imagined possible. She told herself it was all just a test. She’d be back in New York in no time.

After driving nearly an hour, yawning and straining to see through the rain-splashed windshield, her headlights flashed on a sign for the Castle Rock Resort and Country Club.

Her mood picked up. Had Nana booked her into a posh, ultra-discreet retreat after all?

As she continued driving west, toward the sea, she imagined a deluxe suite with a tub overlooking a picturesque harbor.

She passed another sign. Candy-striped, this one boasted:
Welcome to Abandon, the Sweetest Town on the Coast
.

She then passed the sign for Castle Rock Resort. She tapped the GPS. Either the navigation system was broken, or she wasn't heading to the resort at all. Taffy’s heart sank.

Her directions took her along the coastal road, over a bridge, then back into the trees, down a potholed road, and finally to a long gravel driveway, the kind with grass growing up its middle. She came to a stop in front of a ramshackle Edwardian farmhouse with a wraparound porch.

With the rain coming down in torrents and no lights on inside or outside, it was anything but welcoming. In the light of her tin can’s headlights she could see the paint was peeling, the steps crooked, and one of the posts slightly slanted. She also saw something flickering on the porch near the door. A ragged strip of black letters against yellow plastic. Caution tape.

Was this part of Nana’s prank?

“Impressive,” Taffy said, peering out at the pitch black, streetlight-free night. “You got me to fly across the country, rent a crap car, and spend the night in a spooky, old house. You've really outdone yourself, Nana.”

Taffy reminded herself this was just a test.

She turned off the car, activated her phone’s flashlight app, noting that her battery power was down to five percent, and hurriedly stumbled up the muddy walkway with her carry-on in tow.

Stepping over the leftover bit of caution tape, she tried the front door. Locked. She fanned her phone across the porch until she spotted a potted geranium. Looking under the pot for a key, she accidentally tipped it into the bushes below. A cat howled and tore from the bush. Startled, she teetered on her heels. As her arms flailed for balance her car keys flew into the bushes.

At least she hadn’t dropped her phone. She let its light guide her to a side door. Also locked. There was a cat door, but when she pushed it with her toe it didn’t budge. The window above it was open a crack. She shoved her fingers under the frame and pried it open enough to squeeze a body through. There was no law against breaking into your own house, was there?

She fell into the kitchen, pulled herself up using the long kitchen table, and felt around for a light switch. The switch flipped, but nothing happened. No power.

Taffy spoke to the eerily silent, woodsmoke-scented kitchen. “You got me, Nana. This will scare me straight, for sure. One night in your creepy, haunted house in Abandon, Oregon, and no doubt I’ll transform into the granddaughter you’ve always wanted.”

Taffy woke the next morning to the sound of banging. Her head ached, and she was shivering. For an instant, she thought she was back in the trashy jail cell in New York, but when she pushed away her sleep mask, she found herself under a thin patchwork quilt, inside a granny chic–styled turret room.

The night before, after fumbling up the dark stairs before her phone’s battery failed entirely, she’d dropped into the first bed she’d found. She’d slept fitfully, dreaming of cramped coach seats and tiny cars that drove themselves to hell. Now this relentless banging. She was three bangs away from a full-blown migraine. Annoyed, she crossed to the window to discern the racket.

Outside, parked behind her little Aveo, was a navy pickup truck. Beside the pickup was a heap of firewood. Next to the firewood was a man swinging an axe. He wore a red-checked shirt and baseball hat. Had Nana hired the locals to further aggravate Taffy?

She leaned out the window. “Hey, you there! Stop that! I’m sleeping here!”

He didn’t stop, just kept swinging. He had earbuds in his ears. She waved desperately, but he didn’t look up.

She ran down the house's creaky old stairs, not caring that she was only wearing a short red nightie. She burst through the front door, waving and yelling, “Stop that racket!”

The red must have caught his eye because the axe stilled as he did a double take. Withdrawing his earbuds, he gave Taffy a lopsided grin.

“Good. You’re up.”

“No, I’m
not
up. I’m trying to sleep. Your banging
woke
me up.” She glared at the heap of firewood at his feet.

“I thought you’d appreciate some kindling.”

“I’d
appreciate
some peace and quiet. I’d
appreciate
a good-night’s sleep. I’d
appreciate
a first-class ticket home.”

He looked down at her with that silly lopsided grin as he listened to her tirade. He was thirtyish, broad-shouldered, green-eyed, and quite tall, as if he might have to tip his head to get through some doorways.

Half-dressed and only half-awake, Taffy now felt self-conscious. She crossed her arms over her chest and assessed her situation:
crazy woman in skimpy nightie berating hunky outdoorsman for chopping kindling.

He said, “Are you always this angry in the morning?”

“Only when I wake up on the wrong side of the country.”

“Maybe you need a good cup of coffee?”

“Only if it’s Nespresso.”

The crazy woman in the nightie turned on her heel and pranced back to the front porch.

She was sure the hunky outdoorsman was laughing at her as she stormed away.

Who the heck was he? She turned back at the top step. He’d set down the axe and was climbing into his pickup truck. Good. She’d scared him off. As he turned his truck in her driveway, she saw a sign painted on the truck’s door: Oregon State Parks, and the word Ranger underneath.

The truck bounced away down the driveway.

Taffy sighed. The quiet morning ringing with birdsong pooled around her like a rising tide. She walked through the front door, shut it, and was about to go up the stairs and back to bed when a shape on the foyer floor caught her eye.

She screamed.

Flinging open the front door, she ran out across the porch, skipping over the ribbons of yellow and black tape she had so nonchalantly torn away the night before. It wasn’t a joke. It
was
a crime scene! There was an outline of a body on the foyer floor.
And
a small crimson stain.

Taffy’s breath came in short gasps. She felt sick to her stomach. She’d
slept
in that house. Where someone had
died
. Where someone had possibly been
murdered
. She had to get out of here.

She skittered down the front steps toward the car, and then she stopped. The keys were in the bushes somewhere. She got down on her hands and knees and scrabbled about but couldn’t find them. She jumped to her feet, thinking she should call the police. But her phone was upstairs. And totally dead.
Dead!
She stifled a panicked gasp as she thought of the body that had once lain in the foyer. She was
not
going back into that house. What was she going to do? She started to shiver. Her bare feet were damp with dew.

She’d left her bigger suitcase in the car and one of the doors was unlocked. She yanked out a sweater and a pair of yoga pants, plus socks. She was pulling everything over her nightie when her eye caught the axe wedged in the stump next to the pile of wood. The ranger. Had he…? She looked back at the house…and then at the axe. What if he…?

The chirping birds now sounded ominous.

When she heard the crunch of tires rolling down the narrow gravel driveway her skin prickled with goose bumps. The navy pickup truck was coming back. Her heart started racing. She felt an urge to run through the forest at the back of the house. In her socks. She lunged for the car again and yanked shoes from her suitcase. She shoved one on each foot.

The pickup truck rolled to a stop beside her tiny car. She wouldn’t be able to run fast enough, especially not with the two mismatched heels of different heights wedged painfully over her socks. She teetered backwards toward the woodpile as the burly park ranger opened his door.

She was trapped.

She picked up a piece of wood to arm herself, but it slipped out of her hand, giving her a splinter as it fell. Grabbing the axe handle with both hands, she pulled as hard as she could. She staggered backward when it loosened, and she tripped over the piece of wood she’d dropped.

“Careful with that axe. You could hurt yourself,” he said, walking towards her.

She scrambled out of her sprawl across the woodpile and brandished the axe. “Stay away!”

He furrowed his brow.

She lurched forward. “Get back!”

He shifted slightly to one side and then reached out to grab the axe handle.

“You’re not even holding it right.” He took it from her. “Here let me show you.”

He’d disarmed her, effortlessly, with just one hand.

Taffy turned to run, but having lost one shoe, she lost her balance on the second step and fell, for the second time, on top of the woodpile. “Ouch.”

The ranger stood over her with the axe. “Are you all right?”

She was dizzy with spent adrenaline. She whimpered, “I don’t want to die.”

He set the axe down and reached for her hand. “That’s a good attitude to have in the morning.”

Taffy kicked off her other heel and stood on the grass in her socks as the ranger opened the passenger door of his truck and pulled out two stainless-steel travel mugs.

“It’s not Nespresso, but it should do the trick.”

Taffy stared at the cups. A rich, delicious scent of fresh-brewed coffee wafted toward her.

“Where’d you get that?”

“Just up the road.”

He held a mug out to her.

She reassessed her situation:
Hunky ranger offering her coffee probably wasn’t an axe murderer. Crazy woman wearing yoga pants over her nightie really needed a cup of coffee.

She tentatively took the cup, sipped, and sighed. At least there was a decent coffee shop in this godforsaken edge-of-the-world town. She took another long, hot sip and exhaled with relief.

He pointed at her hand. “You’re bleeding.”

A trickle of blood spiraled along the outside of her palm. When she held up her hand, she saw the splinter gouging deep into the skin of her palm under her ring finger. Seeing the splinter made it hurt ten times as much.

“Let’s go inside and get that cleaned up.”

Taffy turned toward the house and froze. “I can’t. There’s a—”

“Oh,” he said. “That’s my fault.”

She coughed on her coffee.

“I was supposed to clean that up before you got here, but there was some confusion with the key. How’d you get in last night?”

“You knew I was coming?”

He reached into the passenger side of the truck again. “I’m supposed to give you this.”

He handed her an envelope. The same size and color of the other two from her Nana. Taffy grabbed it, smearing blood all over the address.

“We’ve got to get you bandaged up.” He started to lead the way toward the house.

“Hold on. Why do you know who I am but I don’t have a clue who you are?” He’d gone from irritating noisemaker to axe murderer to coffee angel to paramedic and messenger in a few flashes of Taffy’s imagination.

“My name’s Ethan McCoy. I’m the local park ranger. Among other things.”

“Other things?”

He looked at her hand. Blood was now dripping on her sock. He reached for her elbow to guide her toward the house.

“Right now, I’m your doctor. And then I’m going to play housecleaner and get that awful mark up off your floor, which I meant to do yesterday, but the house was locked, and the key wasn’t under the flowerpot like it usually is. How did you say you got in?”

“Climbed through a kitchen window.”

He laughed. It was such a nice sound it made Taffy smile.

Now that she was ninety percent certain he wasn’t going to chop her into bits with an axe, she decided she quite liked this Ethan McCoy. Or maybe it was the coffee working its morning magic.

She followed him across the porch and into the house.

The black and yellow tape fluttered out of their path, and the birds resumed a less ominous chirping.

“It was an accident,” Ethan said as he rifled through kitchen cupboards in search of a first aid kit. “And a damn shame. Janet added a lot to this community. Rest her good soul.”

Taffy could see the edge of the body outline from where she sat at the long kitchen table with a cold, wet tea towel wrapped around her hand.

“What happened to her?”

Ethan set the first aid kit next to a few cleaning supplies he’d discovered in his search. Then he glanced toward the foyer and shook his head sadly.

“She was knocked out by her own bowling ball.”

Taffy pictured an old woman getting knocked over like a bowling pin.

Ethan said, “For a few days it was a questionable death. One of our local deputies got a little overenthusiastic and speculated murder, but Janet was well-loved by everyone. She had no enemies.”

The thought of someone dying, even accidentally, in this house was still intolerably creepy to Taffy.

“How could she have been killed by a bowling ball?”

Ethan removed the wet towel and dabbed iodine on her wound.

“Apparently it rolled off the closet shelf and hit her on the head. Purely accidental. The police found the bowling ball in the corner of the living room.”

He pulled out a pair of tweezers. Instinctively, Taffy jerked her hand away.

“Don’t worry, I’ll be gentle,” he said. “But you can cry if you want.”

“I don’t cry.”

He gave her a questioning look and then turned his attention to the splinter, grabbing hold of it and deftly easing it out. He pressed gauze against the new trickle of blood, and then he stretched a bandage over Taffy’s skin.

Tossing the stained towel into the sink, he said, “That should clean up in the wash.”

“There’s no hot water. No power either.”

“Guess you’ll have to go to the town hall and set up a new account.”

“Will they do that for just a few days?”

Ethan raised an eyebrow.

“Of course, I can’t stay,” Taffy started to explain. “This has all been a misunderstanding. I’ve got to get back to New York.”

“Guess you gotta do what you gotta do.” He looked around the kitchen. “But this is a nice place. A bit of a fixer-upper, but it’s got good bones. I’ve always loved this house.”

“But someone
died
here!”

Ethan seemed surprised by her outburst. He got up and put the first aid kit back in a cupboard. “Look, by the time you get back from the town hall, that outline on the floor will be gone. I’ll make sure of that.”

He pulled out a pot. “Since the power’s out, I’ll stoke up the woodstove and boil up some water to use for cleaning.”

Taffy looked at the freestanding black metal contraption for the first time. “That’s what the firewood is for?”

He nodded. “Offsets the heating bills when the weather starts to cool off, which it will do soon. I knew Janet’s supply was getting low…” His voice trailed off for a second. Then he turned to Taffy. “And I thought the new tenant would appreciate the gesture. But turns out I was wrong about that.”

He winked, and she felt embarrassed by her overreactions earlier.

“I know it sounds crazy, but I thought when you came back up the driveway that you were going to kill me.”

“With coffee?”

“With the axe. I just got so spooked by…” She pointed toward the foyer. “It’s been a stressful few days. Sorry. Just a bad first impression.”

He turned away to put kindling in the stove. “Who knows? Maybe your hunch was right. Maybe the coffee is poisoned and it’s just taking a little time to freeze up your veins.”

Taffy held her breath. Ethan turned back to her with a grin on his face.

“Kidding. Just kidding.”

Then he broke out into that wonderful, deep laugh. Taffy let herself breathe again. His laugh was infectious, and soon she had relaxed enough to join in, laughing at the absurdity of her crazy assumptions. She snort-chatter-laughed along with him, and surprisingly, he didn’t flinch. In fact, their combined laughter seemed like the most natural sound in the world.