Relentless: Three Novels (17 page)

“Yes, I will give her a call and we’ll head down there before she opens the bakery.”

Brad gave his wife a strange look as Nikki hung up the phone.

“What was that all about?” he asked.

“I asked Detective Don Allen, our old friend from high school, to look into my mother’s murder. He agreed and he has some information for me.”

“Was that him on the phone?”

“Yeah, but I need to call Tara and see if she can meet me at the police station.”

“Okay, I’ll go home and start sorting through the garage and get the yard sale ready for the morning.”

“You’re the best.” Nikki kissed her husband.

“Time to go home, Katie,” Brad yelled at his daughter.

“Brad, don’t yell inside the McDonald’s.”

He laughed, embarrassed. “I think I need sleep a lot more than you do.”

“You and me both. Sleep? What is sleep?” she quipped.

* * *

Nikki met Tara outside the police station. Tara looked like she had had a rough night. Nikki could tell she hadn’t showered that morning because she wore her long auburn hair on top of her head in a bun, a hairstyle that her sister only wore when she hadn’t washed her hair that day.

Tara gave Nikki a long hug before they walked into the police station.

“This is absolute torture,” Tara complained. “It’s not just that I have a hangover.”

“Don’t say you know anything, that’s all I ask,” Nikki said.

Tara gave her a strange look. “Fine.”

As the women walked in, they found Detective Allen at the front, making coffee. The lady who made the visitor badges wasn’t even there yet.

“Perfect timing, I just made a fresh pot of coffee.” Don handed each one a coffee cup and then poured the coffee into them. “Follow me into my office. I have some really good news.”

Nikki and Tara smiled at each other as they followed Don into his office. Don motioned for them to sit down.

“It looks as though the Matthews man, the lawn care man you were talking about, was Jeffrey Matthews. He’s deceased, but I paid his son, Jimmy Matthews, a visit a couple of hours ago and we had quite an interesting conversation.”

“What did he say?” asked Tara excitedly.

Nikki pasted an innocent, interested look on her face. She noticed Tara picked up on that and she did the same.

“Well, he had some sort of plumbing issue with a septic tank backing up and got out the backhoe to dig up his yard and he stumbled across…well, there’s no nice way to say it. He found bodies. He called me right away and let me just say, your case is solved.” He paused for effect, as if he had done the detective work that had led to the solution of the crime. “Your former neighbor, Jeffrey Matthews, was the killer of your mom and your dad, too.”

“Our dad?” Tara asked, wide-eyed.

“Your dad, or what’s left of him, is probably the victim in the back yard, but I feel confident that dental records will prove it was him.”

“Oh my God,” said Tara. “What did the son say?”

“He was twelve when it all happened. What could he say? He didn’t have any inkling that his father was…” Again the detective paused for effect and Nikki wanted to scream. “His father was apparently, the River Killer.”

Now Tara’s jaw did drop. “Are you sure?”

“Oh, yeah. There are enough bodies in that yard to fill a cemetery. We have other evidence, too, evidence that I can’t talk about to you ladies because…well, you have been through enough.”

Nikki felt a little sick. Whether it was the lack of sleep or everything else, she was just about at the end of her rope. “Thank you, Detective. I don’t feel so well. I need to go home and hug my family.”

“Understandable,” Don said.

Tara said, “I need to go open my bakery. Thanks for everything, Don. Gotta go.”

Nikki thanked Don and walked with Tara out to the car.

“It’s finally over,” Tara said. “Thank God!”

“Yeah. Do you wanna come over? We’re having a yard sale,” Nikki said.

“Sis, I would rather be alone today.”

“I thought you were going to open your bakery.”

“Nah, it’s my day off. Get it together, Nikki. You don’t even know what day it is.”

“Lack of sleep. Thanks, sis.”

“Give Katie a kiss from me. We had fun together the other day. I wouldn’t mind babysitting her again.”

“I’m sure I can arrange that. I’ll see you and Don for the barbeque at our house on Saturday.”

“Yay, something positive,” Tara said.

The sisters hugged.

Nikki nodded and waved goodbye at her sister as she climbed into her car and headed home. She knew she had a lot to do to get ready for the yard sale. Maybe someone would buy that haunted toy telephone that had started all of this mess.
This wonderful, painful, freeing mess.

Chapter Fifteen

After spending the whole afternoon and most of the evening preparing for the yard sale, the last thing on Nikki’s mind was making dinner. She decided to order a pizza for the three of them. Brad looked exhausted. Neither one of them had slept that previous night and both were beyond tired. They watched as their young daughter danced around the living room in a ballet outfit to her favorite songs from
The Nutcracker Suite
.

She’s like a little dancing sunbeam,
Nikki thought.

She turned her eyes back to her husband. Nikki could feel Brad’s uneasiness and she hated seeing him like this. It was completely out of his character to appear so vulnerable. Nikki put her hand on his shoulder and gave him a light massage, hoping to try and ease some tension. He gave her a tired smile and took her other hand in his and kissed it. Her heart melted. If they only ever had this moment in time, it would have been worth it.

After the pizza arrived and they ate, they decided to make it an early night and go to bed. Nikki set her alarm so she wouldn’t oversleep. They had a busy day ahead of them.

Nikki awoke in the middle of the night, and she felt as if someone had been watching her while she slept. She glanced around her room and found her sleeping husband. She shrugged at the thought and rolled over to the other side of her body. But she rolled over onto something. As soon as she realized it was the toy phone she was laying on, it started to ring.

Brad woke up out of a dead sleep. “What’s that?” he asked.

Nikki picked up the phone as it rang and showed it to her husband. Brad grabbed the phone angrily out of her hands and answered it. “What do you want with us?”

“Hello, Brad. It’s Grandpa.”

“This is not my grandfather, he died years ago. Now, leave us alone.” Brad hung up the phone. Just as he hung up, the phone rang again. He looked furious at the phone and threw it across the room. The phone fell out of the cradle and they could hear a small child’s voice. It sounded familiar, then they both knew exactly whose voice it was.

It was Katie’s voice. “Daddy, Mommy, help!”

They both leaped out of their bed and ran to Katie’s room.

To their surprise, she was fast asleep.

“I bet it was that malicious Jeffrey Matthews trying to scare us with the toy phone!” Nikki whispered.

“I can’t handle this anymore,” hissed Brad. “I’m burning it!”

“No, what if it just makes things worse? After all, the phone is so magical that even after I threw it through the window of my old house, it appeared in the back seat of the vehicle next to Katie.”

“What could be worse than getting awakened in the middle of the night by calls from dead relatives? Or some evil entity pretending that your daughter is now dead and is also a spirit on the phone.”

“We’ll get rid of it the right way tomorrow at the yard sale and everything will be okay. It will be someone else’s burden.”

Brad grabbed his sleeping daughter out of her bed. “Katie’s sleeping with us until then. I don’t trust the haunted toy phone and I sure don’t want her talking on it. What if someone evil called her and said something that scared her?”

“Say no more,” Nikki agreed and they headed to their own bedroom with Katie.

“Mommy, why do we have to get rid of my toy phone?” asked Katie sleepily.

“Because it’s not working properly. We will buy you a play cell phone.”

“Can it be a Hello Kitty play cell phone?”

“Yes, it can be a Hello Kitty one.”

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome, Princess. Go to sleep.”

“In your bed with you?”

“Yes,” Brad said.

“Yay,” Katie said and snuggled down between them.

Brad fell asleep with his arm over Katie’s back.

* * *

It was already after noon and the toy phone still hadn’t sold at their yard sale. Nikki was starting to get worried that it might not sell. Then a little old lady got out of her car and walked over to the phone. “How much for the phone?”

“A quarter,” Brad yelled from across the yard.

The old lady handed Brad a quarter and left. Brad ran over to his wife.

“Did you see that?” he said in a very cheery voice. “It sold.”

Nikki was so happy that she burst out into laughter.

“I think we should just put the rest of the stuff back in the garage and let’s celebrate.”

Brad agreed and they cleaned up the yard sale leftovers before heading out to dinner.

They had a fantastic fancy dinner with the money they had made off the yard sale. When they returned home, they let Katie play out in the back yard as they held hands on the patio and watched the sunset.

“Everything is over now,” said Nikki. “Really over.”

“For us, it is. I imagine that your new half-brother is going to have his yard and house torn up for quite some time.”

“I’ll call him tomorrow and check on him, see how things are going. I imagine he will be able to sell our old house for a lot of money, now that the River Killer is involved. And his parents’ house for that matter. He was behind on the mortgage, but he should get offers on it from people who are interested in that sort of infamous history.”

“I didn’t think of that, but you are probably right, Nikki. I hope this horrible thing will turn into some big real estate deal or a book deal for him or something.”

“It should be highly fictionalized to avoid the complete truth,” Nikki said.

“Good thought. I truly wish him well. After all, he saved you and Tara.”

Nikki nodded. “He was, indeed, a brave young boy. She and I wouldn’t even be here if he wasn’t there for me when we needed him.”

Brad raised his wine glass to his wife and said, “To us, my love, and to Katie. And to Jimmy.”

She raised her glass to his.

The doorbell rang and Brad jumped up to answer the door. It was Tara.

“Hi!” Brad said in surprise.

Tara followed him out to the patio where Nikki was watching Katie.

“Hey, Tara,” said Nikki. “What are you doing here, girl?”

“Hello, everyone. I brought something cute for Katie.”

Katie ran over to her aunt. “Aunt Tara, you brought me something?”

“Hi, sweetie. I sure did. Today, Auntie Tara bought you a present at a yard sale. Now you can get rid of your other one that doesn’t work right,” she said with a wink to Nikki.

Tara opened her big Louis Vuitton bag and pulled out the old toy telephone.

The End

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MRS. HONEY PICKLE

by

Lindsey Stiles

Mrs. Honey Pickle

Published by Lindsey Stiles

Copyright © 2012 by Lindsey Stiles

All rights reserved.

Ebook Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Mrs. Honey Pickle

Wish One:

“I wish I never had a little brother.”

Mrs. Honey Pickle had been a fairy godmother for as long as she could remember. Throughout her long career, she had helped more than one million children with their problems by granting them their special wish. Mrs. Honey Pickle loved her job, and loved all the little children who she had helped along the way.

Mrs. Honey Pickle lived alone with her small dog, Buzzy, in a small house up in the sky just in a magical suburb of the galaxy, located just off the planet Mars. Even though she lived by herself, she was never really alone. She had her magic computer that let her see and hear all of the children in the world who needed a wish granted. And, she had Buzzy, of course, who was the best talking dog in the neighborhood, and he was her best friend, too. There were so many wishing children out there that sometimes, it was hard for her to decide on one. Mrs. Honey Pickle would discuss the problems and wishes of the children with Buzzy and they would come to a conclusion on which one to choose for a one-wish adventure. Today, Holly Anne Peterson caught their attention. Holly Anne was a fifth grader at Mount King Elementary. She had long auburn hair, big green eyes, and the most beautiful smile. Holly Anne was well-liked by the other children in her class and was an honor student. Her only problem in life was her little brother, Bobby.

Bobby was eight years old and in third grade; he lived to make Holly Anne’s life miserable. Whether it was pulling the heads off of all of her dolls or throwing live spiders in her hair, Bobby was always busy thinking up ways to bully sweet Holly Anne.

Having a rambunctious brother herself, one who she didn’t see too often, Mrs. Honey Pickle saw Holly Anne’s busy little brother to be quite an ongoing problem. In fact, Mrs. Honey Pickle had a lot of sympathy for Holly Anne, because her own brother had also wrecked a lot of her dolls while she was growing up, and had once left a frog in her bed, pranking her that it was really a prince. She fell for it, too. So, she and Buzzy talked it over and they decided that they would grant a wish to Holly Anne. Although they knew what her wish would be, they had to let Holly Anne speak for herself. After all, those were the rules of the fairy godmother wishes.