Literally Murder (A Pepper Brooks Cozy Mystery Book 2) Read online

  Literally Murder

  A Pepper Brooks Cozy Mystery

  Eryn Scott

  Kristopherson Press

  Copyright © 2017 by Eryn Scott

  Published by Kristopherson Press

  All rights reserved.

  www.erynwrites.com

  [email protected]

  Facebook: @erynscottauthor

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  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Cover by Paper and Sage Designs

  Created with Vellum

  To my readers. You are LITERALLY the best!

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Also by Eryn Scott

  About the Author

  1

  The walkways of Northern Washington University were crowded but quiet as my roommate Liv and I walked through campus that morning, the first day of spring quarter.

  The last quarter of our senior year.

  Students were up and moving, but it was early and even Liv—a self-proclaimed morning person—was silent as she shuffled next to me. Everyone was still coming off their spring break vacations and most likely missing the glorious feeling of sleeping in—I know I was.

  "Find out who the celebrity judges for this year's Spring Sing competition will be before any of your friends!" someone yelled.

  Correction: almost everyone was quiet.

  A guy holding copies of The Frond, Northern Washington University's tongue-in-cheek periodical, stood in the middle of the main walkway yelling headlines. Liv grimaced as his voice cracked, reaching an ear-busting pitch.

  Pursing my lips, I ignored him. The Frond wasn't real news. It was all hype, sensationalized rubbish.

  "Are there dead bodies in Campus Creek? Be in the know!" he shouted right as we passed by.

  My feet froze on the spot. So did Liv's. Our eyes met.

  "Watch it," someone said, almost running into us.

  I blinked. "What did he say?" I asked Liv.

  "I gotta hear about this," she said and grabbed my hand as she pulled me toward the newspaper peddler.

  Scuttling across the busy foot traffic—I stepped on three feet, was yelled at twice more, and made zero friends—we cut over to the newsboy along with a few other interested parties. He was screaming about another headline, but handed Liv a paper when she shoved money in his direction.

  I looked over her shoulder as she paged through the stories. We glanced at each other warily after page three. A story about a body should've been on page one, shouldn't it?

  Another student stood next to us with his own copy, having also been enticed by the words "dead body." He scoffed as he flipped the thing over. "You guys lying about content to sell these?" He looked just about to shove it back in the face of the guy selling them.

  "Page five," was all the response we got.

  Liv flipped to page five. The title at the top read: "What Will it Take?" As I scanned the text, I realized it was a story complaining about the water quality—or apparently a lack thereof—on campus. At the very bottom of the page, the reporter quoted someone named Sam Delaney as saying, "At this point, it would take a body floating in Campus Creek for any of the administration to pay attention to water quality here on campus."

  "That's it?" the guy next to us asked, incredulous.

  I scoffed at the newsboy. "You should be ashamed."

  Liv nodded and shot him her own disappointed look, mumbling something about "dirty business tactics."

  With that, we spun away, running into another person and stepping on two more feet.

  But even though the journalist's use of the word bodies had only been hyperbolic, my heart still thrummed in my chest. For some reason, it felt like dark clouds gathering on the horizon, announcing a storm. Looking up at the bright blue spring sky, I shivered off the feeling as Liv tucked the paper into her bag.

  Liv and I fell into step with the other students again as we turned toward the business building.

  "I wonder if I could make it home to get..." I looked up, counting in my head. "Like thirty more minutes of sleep before my first class."

  Liv had insisted we wake up early for our ceremonious "last first day of classes" ever. We'd been randomly paired as roommates during our freshman year and had walked to our first classes together every quarter so far. The only problem this time was that her first class started an hour earlier than mine. It hadn't seemed like that big of a deal when I'd agreed to wake up early with her. My droopy eyelids and constant yawning were making me doubt my decision.

  Liv chuckled. "What are we going to do with you? How are you going to make it without me?" She clicked her tongue once as she hooked her arm with mine.

  My chest tightened at her question even though she didn't say "...in a few months, when we graduate and I leave town," the words still hung between us.

  After graduation Liv would be going off to work at some huge conglomerate in Seattle while I would enroll in graduate courses here at NWU.

  Even though both of us were excited for our new adventures, there was an accumulating sense of sadness and dread around being so far apart.

  As if reading my mind, Liv said, "Three hours is nothing, really."

  I nodded, but I wasn't so sure.

  Alex, my almost-boyfriend, had moved three hours away for almost five months and while we'd talked and texted and emailed throughout that time, things had been decidedly different when he'd come back last week.

  I mean, sure, he'd been busier than the dialogue in a Hemingway novel, starting at the local police station right when he'd returned. And now I was beginning my last quarter of undergrad. I started to doubt that we would ever take things further romantically than that first kiss we'd shared so many months ago. Maybe I'd missed my chance. Maybe I was doomed to stay in the friend zone with Alex forever, no matter how much I wished we could be more.

  Thinking about Alex brought another problem to mind, because unlike Alex, Liv's move was permanent.

  Possibly to cover up her own set of worries, Liv glanced down at the book I was holding because it wouldn't fit in my stuffed-to-the-seams messenger bag and scoffed. "I still can't believe you took another class from him."

  I glanced down at the compilation of Ernest Hemingway's short stories that Professor Evensworth had recommended for early reading. Tipping my head to the side, I said, "It's actually not bad. I mean, Evensworth's still dead wrong about Steinbeck, but Hemingway's okay. Plus, if I want to work with him, things are going to have to get way less awkward."

  My goal, after getting my master's degree, was to get a job teaching here at NWU in the English department, just like my late father. Which meant, if Evensworth was going to be my colleague, I needed to get him to stop hating me so much. And my first step was to stop talking so much about British literature and visit the dark side of American lit.

/>   "We're calling him Evensworth now?" Liv cocked an eyebrow.

  I smirked and said, "Most of the time. I need to start practicing. I'd hate to slip and call him Evilsworth in the middle of a department meeting."

  Liv and I giggled at the picture.

  "Okay. Well here's me." Liv stopped in front of the business building. "You really going to try to go back to sleep?" she asked, shoving my shoulder playfully.

  Sighing, I shook my head. "No, I might as well head to the library. You know... when in Rome." I shrugged.

  Liv chuckled. "Rome's a place, not a time of day."

  I held up a finger. "It can be when that time of day feels like a foreign country you've never visited."

  Ignoring my comment, she said, "Or... you know, I'm not your only friend who gets up this early." The statement was followed by an eyebrow waggle as she peeled away from me. "Happy last first day," she called over her shoulder and then headed inside.

  My stomach fluttered. She was right. Alex was an equally early riser.

  Liv, unable to see why the two of us still weren't a couple, had been pushing me to make something happen. And before you start agreeing with her, it wasn't as selfless as it sounded. Liv desperately wanted to have a double date couple which didn't include one of Carson's jock friends.

  To be honest, even though I wanted something to happen between me and Alex, I wasn't sure this was the best timing. We both had a lot on our plates right now.

  But regardless of the indecision surrounding him in my mind, seeing Alex always made me feel better, so I pulled out my phone. Scrolling through my texts, I found his name and started to type.

  "Where are you right now?"

  Immediately after I sent the text, Alex began to respond. I giggled when his answer came through.

  "In an alternate universe, apparently. The Pepper I know would never be up this early. Wait... are you sleep texting?"

  "Harhar. Nope. Last first day. Walked Liv to class, but have some time to kill."

  "BS?"

  I snorted out a laugh. Alex wasn't telling me he didn't believe that I'd waked Liv to class. BS was his nickname for Bittersweet, the local coffee house.

  "It's a date, Valdez."

  I sighed. If only typing it could make it true, but I still had no idea where the two of us stood. Were we just friends? Did he think of us as more?

  I headed toward the coffee shop. Pulling in a lungful of fresh air, I decided maybe this whole early rising thing wasn't so bad after all. The campus grounds crew must've beat even me up this morning, because the sweet, earthy smell of grass permeated the morning air and diagonal patterns had been freshly cut across the lawn.

  I loved these spring days when the sun was up way before me. The Pacific Northwest was green and mountainous—perfection, if you asked me. But every once in a while, the dark, gloomy winters did start to get inside your bones, making everything feel cold and wet. The way spring popped up in bright chartreuse amidst dark evergreens always felt like a fresh start. As the warmth of the sun wrapped itself around my bare arms, I felt myself thaw.

  I crossed Main Street into downtown Pine Crest and approached the cute, freestanding building which housed Bittersweet. The bell attached to the door let out a lively note as I entered. Between the smell of the coffee and the sweet confections, I was close to heaven.

  Then I spotted Alex in the corner. He was spread out across the small, worn couch, two coffee cups sitting in front of him on the wobbly table. My lip quirked up in one corner as I watched him for a moment, engrossed in his bent paperback, one hand running through his messy dark hair, body reclined and feet kicked up like he was on his couch at home.

  The sight of him made me feel warm. It was such a difference from when we'd first met last fall. We'd had a bit of a rocky start, to say the least.

  Alex glanced up as if he heard my thoughts about him. A grin spread across his face and one of his eyebrows lifted. He kicked his legs down off the couch and made room for me to sit next to him.

  "Morning, Pepper," Nate called from behind the register as I walked past him, pulling my attention away from Alex for a moment.

  The man towered behind the quaint counter, leering down on customers as they stepped up to order. Even at this early hour, there was already a small lineup in front of him.

  "Nate." I waved at him.

  Like Evensworth, I was trying to call Nate by his name instead of the nickname my sister, Maggie and her friends had coined for him. The name "Naked Newt" wasn't even all that accurate anymore. He'd gotten the nickname because of his propensity for streaking in high school, but I hadn't heard of him doing anything of the sort in years. The guy did, however, have the disposition and vocabulary of a serial killer, so the broad smile he wore as he waved at me made me tip my head in question.

  Bypassing the line, I headed straight for Alex.

  "Morning." My whole body relaxed as I plopped down, ducking out of my school bag and setting it on the floor next to me.

  "It is." Alex nodded with a sly grin, running into me with his shoulder. Then he handed over the coffee he'd preordered for me.

  "Nate seems in good spirits today." I motioned toward the usually broody barista.

  "Yeah, he really does. Wonder what's up with him." Alex sighed, then wrapped an arm around my shoulders, the weight of it grounding me in the most lovely way. "First last day," he said, shaking his head.

  I really didn't want to think about it, however. I knew I should be happy I was almost to graduation, but the pain of knowing Liv was leaving was too much to talk about right now. So I changed the subject.

  "Like it?" I motioned to the sad and strangled paperback sitting on the coffee table.

  He picked up the creased copy of The Sun Also Rises and nodded. "I like his style."

  "You mean, the pages of dialogue?"

  "Without so much as a tag or break."

  "Yeah."

  "I do find myself losing who's talking sometimes."

  "I like to think it's keeping my brain on its toes."

  "I like the thought that your brain has toes."

  "Stop it. You know what I mean."

  "I bet your brain toes move around while you read, like your feet toes."

  Blushing at his mention of one of my abiding childhood reading habits, I shook my head. "Did she read this one?" I asked.

  Alex's gaze cut to mine. He nodded.

  His mom had loved the classics, had read as many of them as she could, keeping a journal of her thoughts on each one. Since she'd been killed in action almost a year ago, he'd been on a quest to read everything she had. I'd taken up the challenge with him over the past few months when he was away at the academy. After reading the woman's notes on the books I'd finished from her list so far, I was quite certain I would've loved her.

  When I'd told Alex I was taking Evensworth's class this quarter, he'd offered to read some of the books with me, to keep me company as I had done with his list from his mom.

  Alex's hand landed on my knee and I jumped, pulled from my musings.

  "Well, I'd better get to the station." He raised his eyebrows.

  I gave him a salute, not entirely sure if that was correct.

  Chuckling, he squeezed my knee and stood up. "See you around, Brooks."

  I waved, settling back into the cushion and the warmth he'd left behind. This was what it had been like with Alex since he'd gotten back. It seemed like I only got bits of him, like reading poetry when what I really wanted was a novel, possibly even a series.

  Oh well, I thought, pulling out my own copy of The Sun Also Rises. As Hemingway wrote, "Worry never fixes anything."

  2

  After lounging in Bittersweet while I read and finished my coffee, I packed up my bag and headed toward my first class, Evensworth's Topics in American Writing.

  Once inside, I wound through the students milling in the hallways and found my way to my first class. I plopped into the back row. A groan rose in my throat as I watched Reuben Cross
walk through the door, spot me, and shoot a deranged smile my way.

  Last night, I'd made the mistake of joining him at Green Accountant, a particularly good studying spot in the NWU library. I wanted to outline my essays for my graduate program before I got too caught up in my classwork, and I worked exponentially better at that table than any other in the library. When I'd noticed the spot was already occupied, I'd asked if he wouldn't mind sharing.

  We'd closed down the library together that night, but I'd made some great headway on my essays. Now, however, the sacrifice of getting my work done didn't seem worth it, seeing him enter the class. Sitting next to him yesterday seemed to have convinced him we were now best friends and needed to sit together all the time. He slid into the seat next to me.

  "Morning, Pepper." He tipped his head toward me.

  "Hey, Rueben." I fiddled in my bag, trying to appear too busy to chat.

  "I am so tired." He yawned.

  When we'd parted ways after the library he'd been on his way to stock shelves at the local grocery store, a part-time job he worked for a few hours a night, four days a week. He said he didn't usually get home until one or two in the morning.

  "I bet," I said, pulling out my copy of The Sun Also Rises. I tried to bury my nose in that, but—

  "It's so great to find someone else who gets Papa Hemmy," Reuben said leaning close so he was almost reading over my shoulder.

  He smelled disturbingly like sweet pickles. I bunched up my nose and buried it deeper into my book.

  "It's why I took this class," he added, undeterred by my lack of eye contact. "Dr. Evensworth lets you choose what American author you use as your focus for term papers. Other professors always want me to try out new authors, but Evensworth doesn't ever get sick of reading about Hemingway, just like me.