Roses and Revenge

When the Georgio's Perfume crew, including her ex-fiancé Jacob, show up in Port Danby for a photo shoot, Lacey is taken by surprise. But their unexpected arrival is nothing compared to the shock of what happens next. With Valentine's Day just around the corner, Lacey 'Pink' Pinkerton finds herself caught up in another unexpected murder mystery.

Something wasn't quite right about the school cafeteria. Yes, it was filled with my classmates. Although some of them were faces I'd never seen before. And yes, they were noisy and sharing potato chips and spilling their juice boxes. But the white laminate tables had been replaced with my mom's walnut dining set and instead of benches, the kids were standing and dancing around on antsy feet. And no one was wearing shoes. Strangest thing of all was that I had somehow managed to sit myself next to Francine Thomas. I never sat next to her. As I liked to tell my mom, Francine was the most annoying kid in the world, and she always hogged all the good crayons.

"Hey Lacey, hey Lacey." Now she was trying to talk to me, and she must have been eating a tuna sandwich because her breath smelled just like fish. "Hey Lacey." Her long round finger shot out, and she poked me in the chest. Again and again, she poked me. Apparently, she was still highly annoying. Her face moved closer to mine. When did she grow whiskers? I rubbed my nose as she tickled it. She poked my chest again as she pressed her face really close to mine. But instead of saying my name, a low purr rolled out of her tiny, whisker covered mouth. Another poke but this time something sharp stabbed my skin.

My eyes popped open. Francine's face melted away, and I was staring into the amber eyes of my cat, Nevermore. He was deep in a purring trance as he kneaded my chest with his paws.

"Let me guess, Never. You're hungry?”

My question excited him, causing the cat to get his claw caught in the fabric of my flannel pajamas. I reluctantly pulled my arms out from under the warm covers and unhooked the claw.

I stared up at my cat as he sat comfortably on my chest. "I can't feed you if I can't get out of bed."

Nevermore stood up, stretched his back, sticking his claws in me once again for good measure before leaping off the bed and heading out, tail straight up in victory, to the kitchen.

My radio alarm turned on with a splash of an old disco tune. "Too late," I said to the radio as I shut it off. "The cat beat you to it again. Sure wish you and Nevermore could sync up."
I lowered my feet directly into the slippers I'd placed under the bed the night before. I literally stepped into the fuzzy slippers and out of the fuzzy slippers every day so that in between getting in and out of bed, my feet were swaddled in them. One thing I'd discovered about my first winter in my wonderful new hometown of Port Danby was that it stayed bone-chillingly cold throughout the entire season. There were plenty of sun-filled days, but the coastal air was perpetually glacial.

I wasted not a second of leftover warmth from my bed and wrapped myself quickly in my thick, plush robe. I'd finally figured out the timer on my coffee machine. As the rich aroma of coffee washed over me on my short journey down the hallway, I decided it had been well worth the three hours of poring over the insanely confusing directions.

I stopped at Kingston's six foot tall cage and pulled off the sheet. The artificial darkness kept my crow from belting out heart-stopping, ear drum splitting caws at the first light of dawn. I'd forgotten to cover the cage once or twice and each time I'd woken to a sound that nearly sent me straight up to the ceiling. Most days though, I was the one startling Kingston awake by yanking off the dark cage cover and 'turning on the lights'.

Kingston turned his bleary black gaze up at me with a look that reminded me of a grumpy teenager being woken for school. I reached for the coffee can filled with peanuts I kept stored under his cage, and he perked right up. His long black wings stretched out. He flapped them back and forth to shake out the sleepiness.

I opened the cage and he walked to the exit to grab a peanut from my fingers. But the peanut dropped and Kingston startled and flew back inside the cage as a loud truck roared past the house. It must have been hurtling at fifty miles per hour along Myrtle Place. The only thing past my street, Loveland Terrace, was Maple Hill and the Hawksworth Manor, a dilapidated, deserted mansion that was the site of a horrific family murder at the turn of the last century. The manor was frequently visited by tourists on weekends, but it was Monday and it wasn't open for visitors during the winter weekdays.

I considered it both cool and mildly disturbing that the town's main claim to fame, other than an ivory sand beach and quaint downtown, was the site of a terrible, brutal murder. The crime, which had long since been deemed a murder-suicide perpetrated by a jealous husband, was something that had sparked to life the mystery solving side of my brain. The clues that I'd found did not add up to a murder-suicide, and I was determined to find out what really happened up on Maple Hill.