Back Room Bookstore Cozy Mystery Boxed Set: Books 1 - 12 Read online

  “That actually sounds lovely,” Monica said, knowing she was going to have to keep an eye on him until the potion started to wear off.

  She wound up sitting in the passenger’s side of the patrol car, feeling a little nervous as she had never been in a vehicle before. And Brian wasn’t making things any better. He was looking at her and talking the whole time, clearly quite confident in his driving abilities, and for half the drive, he was driving with his knee while he looked at a map on his phone. “Let’s see, I’m thinking I want to go speak to Lauren. I think she’s set up in the next town over in her truck today…” he was saying as Monica gripped her seatbelt nervously as he occasionally swerved into the other lane.

  By the time they were out of Bankstown, Monica’s heart was beating a million miles an hour. Brian’s confidence boost was making him a terrible, inattentive driver. “Whoa!” he suddenly cried out, pointing out the window. “Check it out! The Mega Burger Challenge!” he practically wailed, and he jerked the steering wheel, causing the vehicle to spin out slightly. Monica screamed as the car stopped perfectly in the parking space, jerking slightly as it did so.

  Monica took a deep breath, her eyes wide with terror. “Mega what?”

  He pointed. “It’s about time for lunch,” he said. “Little early, but I’ve always wanted to try this.”

  “What is it?” Monica asked, staring at the burger joint they had found themselves outside of.

  “It’s called the Mega Burger Challenge,” he said. “It’s this ridiculously large burger, and if you eat the whole thing, you get your lunch for free and your picture up on the wall! Let’s go!” He was leaping out of the car, and Monica hurried after him.

  “Brian, don’t you need to go interview Lauren?” she asked.

  “I’m just taking an early lunch break,” he said, waving her off slightly. “She’s not going anywhere. She’s got her taco truck set up today for the next several hours.”

  The next thing Monica knew, she was sitting across from Brian and looking at him with absolute disgust as he wolfed down a burger larger than a bowling ball. She had ordered a salad, and she was glad, because there was no way she could eat something even remotely greasy watching Brian eat like that. “I’m going to be sick,” she muttered, but she supposed eating a giant burger was not the worst thing that he could get into while high on confidence potion.

  Before too long, Brian was chomping on the last bit of the burger, and half the restaurant had gathered around to cheer him on. Monica felt herself slowly sinking down into her seat in embarrassment as the group of rowdy burger joint clientele chanted “Me-ga-bur-ger! Me-ga-bur-ger!” to cheer Brian on as he continued shoveling food into his mouth.

  Brian plopped the last of his burger into his mouth, chewed it up, swallowed, and then opened his mouth for the burger joint’s Mega Burger judge to take a look. “We got a Mega Burger champ, folks!” the man shouted, and the restaurant cheered.

  “Come on, get in the picture with me!” Brian exclaimed, pulling Monica to the Mega Burger Champion photo station. He held up a peace sign, and Monica frowned as the picture was taken. Brian wanted to wait for them to print the photo so that he could see it hanging up on the wall.

  “Would you look at that! Didn’t realize how photogenic I was!” Brian exclaimed, and the patrons at the burger joint all laughed.

  Monica looked at the picture, and she hated the thought that it was going to be hanging up in public for all to see. There was a slight smirk on her face, but it was blatantly obvious that she was an unwilling participant in the photograph. Brian didn’t seem to notice. He cleaned himself off, and soon the two of them were off.

  After what felt like an eternity of more dangerous driving, they finally wound up near Lauren’s taco truck. It was long past lunchtime, so Lauren was seated on a table set up in front of the truck, enjoying a late lunch while she didn’t have any customers. She smiled when she saw Brian and Monica approaching. “Hey, you two!” Lauren said. “What are you guys doing all the way out here?”

  Brian smiled. “Other than becoming a Mega Burger Champ?” he cried out proudly.

  “Eww,” Lauren said. “You didn’t…”

  “He really did,” Monica said, shaking her head.

  Brian laughed and plopped down at the little table. “I wanted to ask you about Darren,” he began. “Mind if we chat?”

  “Sure,” Lauren said.

  “I’ve been informed that the two of you have bumped heads a bit in the past, that he even vandalized your taco truck?” Brian questioned.

  Lauren snorted slightly. “Gosh, I almost forgot about that. That was years ago,” she said. “Yeah, he was kind of a jerk back in the day. I told him he was never going to make it as an actor, and it had been meant as a sort of joke, but he got really offended. I knew he was the one who did it because the dope chose to spray paint a giant clown face on the side of my van. I called the cops about it, but it’s not like a clown face is real evidence, so they weren’t able to prosecute him for it. Eventually, though, he started feeling pretty guilty about the whole thing. He reimbursed me the money it cost me to have the truck repainted and apologized for the whole thing.”

  “So, you two didn’t have any sort of long-lasting feud after that?” Brian asked.

  “I mean, we weren’t exactly friends, but we were cool,” Lauren said. “I think he was still feeling pretty guilty about it even recently. He would always come to my taco truck at local events instead of any of the other food trucks just to support my business. We weren’t buddies by any means, but I appreciated the support even if it was just out of guilt. I know he wasn’t a fan of my tacos.”

  “Well, that’s just wrong because your tacos are awesome,” Brian said. Monica sat nearby listening in for several more minutes. Brian asked Lauren a lot of questions, but eventually, she had to get back to work as customers started showing up.

  Brian and Monica returned to the patrol car, and Monica had to mentally brace herself for more of his crazy driving. “Sweet!” Brian cried out as he looked at his phone. “Chief tells me I got the go-ahead to go investigate Darren’s home. See if there is any evidence that might lead us toward a possible suspect.”

  “So back to Bankstown?” Monica asked.

  “Back to Bankstown!” he said, jerking the vehicle out into the road.

  Monica grumbled under her breath as he continued swaying through traffic in a way that was making Monica glad she had eaten something light for lunch. Eventually, they were pulling up to a large apartment complex. Brian parked the patrol car, and he hurried around to open the passenger’s side door for Monica, offering her his hand to help her stand. “My lady,” he said, grinning.

  “Oh, thank you,” Monica said, smiling slightly.

  They headed into the apartment complex’s office building, where a man was lounging around behind the counter. “Officer Brian,” Brian introduced himself, explaining to the man why he was there. The man nodded, saying he could let them into Darren’s apartment.

  “It’s a shame what happened, really,” the man kept saying as they walked toward Darren’s building. “Darren was a good tenant. Always paid on time, which is really saying something because I know he doesn’t get a regular paycheck doing what he was doing. Good man, really. Not a lot of noise. Never got a complaint about him from any of my other tenants, and believe me, that is quite rare. I got a lot of grouchy complainers. Darren just got along with everybody. Really is a shame, really.”

  Darren lived in Apartment Building C, room number 106, the first floor. “I sure hope you folks can find something,” the man said. “I wanna know what happened to my best tenant.”

  “Believe me, so do we,” Brian assured the man. “And don’t worry, I will. I’m certain that we are going to find out what happened to Darren very soon.”

  “I wish I had your confidence,” the man said as he unlocked the door for them.

  Believe me, Monica thought, you really don’t.

  8

>   The landlord left as quickly as he could, and Monica couldn’t blame him one bit. As soon as they got inside the apartment, Brian had started talking on and on about what an amazing cop he was. “It runs in the family, you know?” he had been saying, much to Monica and the landlord’s annoyance. “But it’s more than that, really. It’s not just good breeding. It takes a lot of work to get this good. I would know. I’ve been doing this for a while now, and—”

  Monica wasn’t sure how much more of the overly confident Officer Brian she could handle. She realized very quickly that she much preferred the timid officer who came into the bookstore each day to get a cup of coffee as an excuse to talk to her. “Why don’t we split up, you search one end of the apartment and I’ll search the other?” Monica suggested.

  “Excellent idea, Monica!” Brian exclaimed. “Although, are you sure you can handle yourself? I mean, you’re not quite trained as I am in something like this. Would you know what to even look for?”

  Monica frowned. “I think I can handle myself just fine. You search the living area and the kitchen, and I’ll go check the bedroom.” She dipped out and closed the bedroom door behind her, sighing heavily. I should have known that you can’t give mortals the same dosage of potions, she silently scolded herself. I really hope that confidence juice starts to wear off really soon. I don’t know how much more of this I can stand.

  She began searching the bedroom, but she soon found that Darren was a bit of a minimalist. There really wasn’t much to his room… No junk lying around. No computer. Nothing. The man’s sock drawer was a bit too organized for her liking. Who organizes their sock drawer? They were organized both by color and style. His underwear drawer was just as uncomfortably impressive. She opened his closet, which seemed to be the only unorthodox part of the bedroom—this was where he kept all of his goofy clown costumes, balloons, and any other performance and job-related materials. Most interestingly, though, was the guitar.

  “Well, looks like Darren was a musician,” she said pleasantly, picking up the guitar. It looked well-loved, and the strings were clearly worn in quite nicely. “Interesting,” she said, placing the guitar on the bed as she continued digging through his closet. She found a notebook sitting on the closet floor, which she flipped open and found that it was completely filled. She sat down on the bed, notebook in her lap, and began to sift through it. It was all original music. Most of it was actually very well written, and Monica was finding herself to be quite impressed by his lyrical abilities. “Oh, I love this one,” she said to herself as she read another song.

  She flipped the page and began reading another one of Darren’s songs, feeling sad that someone with such artistic talent was now gone. As she began reading the latest song, something about it started to sound quite familiar. “Wait a second…” she said under her breath. “I’ve heard this song…” She thought back to the festival. “That’s right!” she exclaimed, realizing that the song had been sung by the band that had played at the event.

  She scurried out of the room where she saw Brian popping a DVD into Darren’s television. “What are you doing?” she asked.

  “I found some sort of home video,” he said as the DVD started up.

  Soon they were watching a video of Darren. He was in the apartment, guitar in hand, and he began to play. The sound of the guitar was simply magnificent. “Whoa, he’s pretty good,” Brian said. “I bet I could play better than that, though.”

  “I’m sure,” Monica said with an eyeroll. She showed Brian the notebook. “I found this in his closet. He wrote that song that the band played at the festival.”

  “I think this is the song,” Brian said, nodding at the television.

  Monica recognized the chords and rhythm. It certainly sounded like the same music. But then, Darren started to sing. It was dreadful. “Oh, geez!” Monica yelped, covering her ears in horror.

  “Holy crap,” Brian said unpleasantly, his face scrunching up uncomfortably at the sound coming out of Darren’s mouth as he sang for his home video camera.

  “Turn it off,” Monica insisted, and Brian very promptly turned off the television. “I wonder what this means?” she asked, holding up the notebook of original songs. “This is the song that the band sang at the festival, and that was the same song in the video.”

  “The band did a better job than Darren,” Brian said with a frown. “Although, I bet I could do better.”

  The next thing Monica knew, Brian was singing to her. Her face turned red as he danced about the apartment like he truly believed himself to be some sort of incredible superstar. He switched from one of Darren’s songs, saying it didn’t do his incredible voice justice, and chose a song by Louis Armstrong: A Kiss to Build a Dream On.

  “Give me a kiss to build a dream on, and my imagination will thrive upon that kiss,” he began, suddenly grabbing Monica by the hand and twirling her around. “Sweetheart, I ask no more than this—a kiss to build a dream on. Give me a kiss before you leave me, and my imagination will feed my hungry heart. Leave me one thing before we part—a kiss to build a dream on.”

  Monica bit her lip, trying her best not to start laughing at Brian. Truthfully, the singing wasn’t half-bad, but she could only imagine how he was going to feel when the confidence potion wore off and he looked back on how ridiculous he had acted that day. He was going to be quite embarrassed of himself. But at the moment, he was under the influence of the potion. He continued singing and twirling her about in the dead man’s apartment. “And when I’m alone with my fancies, I’ll be with you weaving romances, making believe they’re true. Oh, give me your lips for just a moment, and my imagination will make that moment live. Give me what you alone can give—a kiss to build a dream on!”

  Upon that last note, Brian decided that the moment was right to attempt a kiss. He puckered his lips and leaned forward, and Monica responded quite promptly. She stomped his foot, causing him to yelp in surprise, and gave him a quick shove back. “How dare you!” she shouted, and the man fumbled over backward.

  Monica watched in horror as Brian fell back, banging his head on Darren’s coffee table and knocking himself out. He flopped over, landing face-down in the carpet. “Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me,” Monica said under her breath. She knelt and attempted to shake Brian awake. “Wake up, you big oaf,” she said, but he didn’t move. She made sure that he was breathing, but now she was unsure of what to do.

  Monica thought for a moment and then peeked outside, noting that no one seemed to be around. She glanced back at Brian. “I guess…we should probably…go?” she decided, heading over to him. “Brian, I need you to get up,” she said, attempting to sit him up. When she did, he flopped over, landing on his side. He sounded like he was starting to snore. “This isn’t good,” she said.

  Monica decided she needed to get Brian out of there. She stood by his head, scooping him under his arms from behind and began dragging him out of the apartment. “Ugh, you’re heavy,” she grumbled as she managed to pull him over the threshold. It took her a while to get him through the parking lot, and when they came to one of the parking lot’s speedbumps, she fumbled backward and dropped Brian on his head again. “Oh! Sorry!” she exclaimed when she heard him grunt.

  She glanced over her shoulder and spied the patrol car, realizing she was almost there. She opened the back door of the passenger’s side and attempted to lift him up and throw him back into the car. Brian flopped down in the back seat, sprawling out as Monica opened the driver’s side door. “Oh, dear,” she said as she sat down in the driver’s seat. She felt that she needed to get back to Back Room Books. Perhaps her sister could help her with some sort of memory charm to make Brian forget all about what had taken place at Darren’s apartment?

  Monica put the car in drive, and it began to roll across the parking lot. She saw another car up ahead and slammed on the brakes in surprise, causing Brian to fall out of the back seat and onto the floor. “Sorry!” Monica yelped. “This is not good. This is not good,” she
kept saying as she rolled the car into the road and headed back to town.

  She drove very cautiously, afraid of what would happen if someone discovered she was driving in a cop car with the driver of said car passed out in the back with quite possibly a mild concussion. Eventually, though, she arrived outside of the bookshop. “Thank goodness,” she said under her breath, jumping out of the car and running inside.

  Her sister was sitting by the counter chatting it up with Abigail, since no one else was in the shop. “Hey!” Monica yelped.

  Mona stared at her. “Okay, what did you do?” she asked, obviously having heard the alarm in her voice.

  “Um…” Monica muttered. “Okay, so… Brian is knocked out in the back of his patrol car…which I drove here…”

  “Bwahaha!” Abigail cackled, jumping down from the counter. “I’m out,” she declared, heading up to the loft, most likely to take an afternoon nap.

  Mona crossed her arms, staring at Monica with a disappointed expression. Mona exhaled deeply. “Okay… Let’s go get him,” Mona said at last, and the two of them hurried outside where Brian was curled up in the floorboard of the patrol car, his body contorted in a way that made him look like a soft pretzel.

  The two sisters quickly dragged Brian inside and plopped him down on one of the lounge chairs by the coffee station. “He’s out cold,” Mona said.

  “Can you do something?” Monica asked. “I don’t know any spells for something like this.”

  “I mean, I probably could, but it’s best to let him sleep it off,” Mona said. “He’s got a knot on the back of his head. They say that’s better because it means its swelling out instead of in. I can’t believe you drove here in his car.”

  Monica shook her head, feeling quite disappointed in herself. Mona said she had to go back to her side of the shop, but she promised to check in soon and see how Brian was doing. Monica decided to brew a cup of coffee, a treat for herself after the rough day she’d had so far. The smell seemed to be just what Brian needed, because he started to blink his eyes open once the coffee started to brew. “Ugh…my head,” he said, sitting upright.