The Prune Pit Murder Read online

  And dear Abby, she’d been on the verge of getting her life back. Most of her journal entries had been filled with hope for a new life with her ex-husband. She had still loved him, and the fact that he was getting help for his anger issues had made her want to give him a second chance.

  I was glad Annie would spend the rest of her life in a cell. She’d taken the life of a young woman who had a lot to live for, and if she’d had her way, she would have had four more victims, Jane, Opal, Nadine, and myself.

  As it was, I was ready to move on. I’d missed the first week and a half of classes. Dr. Cramer said he wouldn’t dock my grade, seeing as how I had an excuse from a doctor and the sheriff, and my other professors had said as long as I could get caught up, they wouldn’t count the absences against me, either.

  Nadine, Buzz, Reggie, Greer, and Parker were planning a homecoming party for me tonight. The hospital had made me stir crazy, so I was giddy with excitement that I was finally getting out. Even so, with all our secrets, I had a feeling the evening was going to be an interesting night of reveals.

  Parker picked me up from the hospital with Smooshie and Elvis in the back of his truck. I cried out in surprise when Smooshie scrabbled over the middle console to occupy the space of my lap.

  “Smooshie!” Parker said. “No.”

  “I’m fine,” I said, wrapping my arms around her warm body. “I’m better than fine.” Goddess, I’d missed her more than I had thought possible. Parker had brought me videos and pictures, but nothing was as good as the real thing. “You smell like corn chips,” I told her. “It’s making me hungry.”

  Parker laughed. “You’re always hungry.”

  “That’s the truth.”

  I’d snuggled into Smooshie, her presence making me more calm than I had been all week, so I didn’t notice until we were driving out of town that we were driving out of town. “I thought we were all meeting at your house.”

  “We are,” he said. “My house is on 1031 Northwest 400 Road.”

  That was my address.

  I stared at Parker, who had a satisfied expression on his face and amended my thinking. “That’s our address,” I said out loud.

  He chuckled. “It sure is.”

  “What are you planning?”

  “You’ll see.” And that’s all he’d tell me on the subject for the ten minutes it took to pull into the driveway.

  Buzz’s car and Greer’s truck were parked out front. The lights were all on in the house. Not the trailer. The house.

  “Buzz and my dad are cooking,” Parker said.

  “That’s great. Are we eating on the floor?” I asked. I opened the door and slid out, Smooshie jumping just past me. Elvis got out on Parker’s side.

  “We made arrangements,” Parker said as we walked up the steps. “Close your eyes.”

  “You want me to break another arm?”

  He positioned himself behind me on the front stoop and put his hand over my eyes. “Be a sport.”

  “I always am.”

  I let him guide me inside, a flutter of excitement fueled my anticipation. Parker dropped his hand.

  We were standing in the foyer, where I could see both the kitchen and living room. A beautiful hand-sanded golden oak table with six twisted oak chairs sat in the center of my large kitchen. The living room had a brown pit set with a square golden oak coffee table with storage, and two matching end tables. A television stand was set up across from it, and there was a large TV sitting on top.

  Everything had been stuff that I’d wanted. Like the sofa. I’d mentioned to Reggie a few months back, when she’d taken me shopping to get herself a new lamp, that I’d want something like that when my house was ready. I gave her a sideways glance, and she grinned. The kitchen table had been when Greer had talked me into going antiquing with him.

  Everything they’d put in the house, down to the throw rug in the living room, had been something I’d said I’d wanted or needed. I was at a loss for words.

  “Oh, Lily,” Nadine said. “Don’t cry. If you cry, I’ll cry.”

  “Me too,” Reggie agreed.

  “You guys love me,” I said. “You really love me.”

  “Rein it in, Sally Fields,” Greer said. “Before this party turns into a therapy session.”

  “How did you guys do all this?” I asked. “It’s everything!”

  “We’ve been buying stuff and putting it in storage for months, just waiting for your house to be ready,” Parker said.

  “Our house.”

  He grinned. “Ours.”

  Reggie and Nadine shuffled me into the living room. The guys brought in drinks for us.

  Greer stood behind the couch where Reggie sat and put his hand on her shoulder. “I’d like everyone to sit down for a minute,” he said. “I have something I’d like to say.”

  Oh my gosh, my heart picked up a beat. Let the reveals begin!

  Parker sat next to me. I took his hand and held my breath.

  Greer cleared his throat. “I.…we, Reg and I, we want to share with you.” He rubbed his free hand through his hair, a nervous gesture I’d seen more than once from Parker. “Ah, hell. I’ve asked Reg to marry me, and she said yes.”

  Parker’s fingers squeezed mine. The breath whooshed out of me. Nadine and Buzz were already offering congratulations, and I was grinning wide, but Parker had remained quiet.

  I looked at him. “Are you okay?”

  Parker nodded then got up and went to his father. He smiled. “Congratulations, Dad. I’m happy for you.” They hugged, and I cried.

  I joined Nadine with Reggie as she put on the ring, finally able to wear it. We oohed and ahhed for a few minutes. Before Nadine said, “Since we’re telling each other stuff. Buzz and I have some news of our own.”

  “Are you two engaged, also?” Reggie asked excitedly.

  “No,” Nadine said. “Better. We’re pregnant!”

  There was a chorus of cheers all around.

  “That’s amazing,” I said. “Are the babies okay after last week?”

  “Babies?” Reggie said. “As in more than one?”

  Nadine laughed. “As in three,” she said. “Our California trip wasn’t a vacation. We went to see a fertility specialist. He was able to implant five fertilized eggs. We lost two of them, but three have taken. And I’m past the first month, so it’s a good sign.”

  “It sure is,” Reggie said. She hugged Nadine tight. “Whatever you need, I am here for these little ones.”

  “Same,” I said. “I can’t wait to meet my little cousins.”

  “You mean nieces or nephews, Auntie Lily,” Nadine said. “You and Reggie aren’t just my best friends. You’re my family. My kids are going to love you the way I do.”

  The men were all handshakes and bro hugs in the background. There had been so much good news tonight, it seemed like as good a time as ever to come clean with Reggie and Greer.

  “Uhm,” I said when there was a momentary lull in the conversation. “Buzz and I would like to share something with you all as well.”

  Nadine and Parker knew what was coming next, and they nervously took their positions beside us.

  “Greer. Reggie. You guys might want to sit down for this.” I didn’t know what I was going to do if Greer freaked out.

  Reggie took Greer’s hand. “Come on,” she said. They sat down. “Go on, Lily. We’re ready.”

  I wasn’t sure the best way to approach this, but Nadine has suggested we start with a fictional introduction, so I said, “Have you ever seen any shows about werewolves, vampires, witches, that kind of thing?”

  “Reggie made me watch that Underworld movie. She loves all that paranormal mumbo-jumbo,” Greer said. “Is that the kind of thing you mean?”

  “Yes, that’s, well… That’s sort of the idea.”

  Greer’s eyes widened. “Did you guys write a book? A movie script? Are you getting a movie made?”

  “Let her talk,” Reggie said.

  “We didn’t write
a book or movie,” I told him. “But those ideas, they come from somewhere. You know, a type of reality that exists, but not usually in the way it’s portrayed.” Though, like in Underworld, there were a lot of politics in the shifter and witch world. “What I mean is, the myths are often based on real life.”

  “Are you a vampire, Lily?” Greer asked. “Because, I’ve seen you in the sun. You didn’t go up in flames.”

  He joked because he was uncomfortable. I’d seen Greer do it in other situations where he felt confused or conflicted.

  “No worries.” I smiled. “I’m not a vampire. However, Buzz and I are different from other people.”

  “Different how?”

  Wow, this was a much harder conversation than I had imagined. I mean, I couldn’t just blurt it out, “hey, I turn into a cougar sometimes,” and shifting without an explanation would probably give him a heart attack.

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake,” Buzz said. “We’re therianthropes, Greer. Reggie. Shifters is a more common term. We’re part human, part animal. Cougar, to be exact. It doesn’t change who we are fundamentally. It just means that every once in a while, we’re furry and run around on four paws.”

  Greer’s brows dipped. His frown deepened. Then he laughed. “You almost had me going there for a minute! Fur and four paws.”

  “Greer,” Reggie said. “I think you need to listen to them.”

  Buzz sighed. “Seeing is believing.”

  “Don’t be scared, Dad. It’s really pretty neat, once you’re used to the idea.”

  “Scared?” Greer stared at his son. “Of what?”

  Buzz took his shirt off as his body began to shift and morph, hair sprouting across his skin as his human self became beast.

  In seconds, a large tawny cougar with a copper-dark muzzle stepped out of Buzz’s jeans, its long tail curling around Nadine’s leg.

  Greer and Reggie both gasped, but they didn’t run away screaming. I took that as a good sign.

  “I knew it,” Reggie finally said. “I just knew it!”

  “How?” I asked.

  “That night you flew ten feet through the air to tackle Rachel outside the bar. Your eyes were glowing green, and even with a major rush of adrenaline, I didn’t think any regular human could leap that high or that far and land with the grace you exhibited. Then last week with that car, and the fur, of course, and claws, and let’s not forget the fangs,” she said quickly in one rambling breath. “I guess it just confirmed what I had already suspected.”

  “There’s a mountain lion in the living room,” Greer said dully.

  “Uh oh,” Nadine said. “I think he’s in shock.”

  Buzz picked up his jeans with his teeth and loped off to a more private location. He came back a few minutes later.

  “Well, do you have any questions?”

  “How many people know about this?” Greer asked.

  “In Moonrise, only the people in this room,” Buzz said. “And that’s the way we’d like to keep it.”

  Greer nodded. “And Lily? You can do this too?”

  “Yes.”

  “All the time,” Parker said. “She likes to take Smooshie on runs through the woods.”

  His dad’s eyes bulged.

  “Please, don’t help, babe,” I said.

  “And what about Nadine. Are your babies going to be, you know, shifters?” Greer asked.

  “No," Buzz said. "The doctor we saw has perfected a technique so that shifters and humans can mate, but the offspring are always human.”

  Greer nodded in my direction. “And you, Lily? Are you and Parker going to have children?”

  I didn’t want to have to explain that I had a witch grandparent that made me different from Buzz. Parker and I were fated. We had each other’s scents. He could get me pregnant. But the truth was, neither of us wanted children. We had a whole rescue of furry babies that needed our love and attention.

  “We won’t be,” I said.

  “We’re happy, Dad. I love my life with Lily. She’s the only one for me. And we both love you. All of you, so we wanted to be honest about our lives. I hope you can be happy for us.”

  Greer got up again. “The roast is done. Why don’t we go eat and we can talk more? I don’t really understand all this, but I’m open to hearing you. Besides, everything sounds a little less crazy on a full stomach.”

  As if cued, my belly growled. I didn’t know what would happen next, but my circle of family in Moonrise was getting bigger and stronger.

  Parker put his arms around me. “You okay?”

  “Uh hmm,” I said, leaning my head back against his chest. Smooshie trotted in an rammed her head between my knees.

  “She missed you,” he said.

  “I missed her, too.”

  “How do you like the house?”

  “It’s more than I ever expected. It means so much, Parker.”

  He pressed his lips to my ear. “Wait until you see the bedroom.”

  I curled my palm against his cheek and looked around. Our family was talking and laughing in the kitchen. Elvis had flopped on a large dog bed at the end of the foyer, and Smooshie was beating me with her tail. All was right.

  “I can’t believe it,” I told Parker.

  “What?”

  “I can’t believe I’m finally home. I made it.”

  Parker wrapped me tighter and kissed my cheek.

  “Welcome home, Lily.”

  The End

  Paranormal Mysteries & Romances

  By Renee George

  Witchin’ Impossible Cozy Mysteries

  www.witchinimpossible.com

  Witchin’ Impossible (Book 1)

  Rogue Coven (Book 2)

  Familiar Protocol (Booke 3)

  Mr & Mrs. Shift (Book 4)

  * * *

  Barkside of the Moon Mysteries

  www.barksideofthemoonmysteries.com

  Pit Perfect Murder (Book 1)

  Murder & The Money Pit (Book 2)

  The Pit List Murders (Book 3)

  Pit & Miss Murder (Book 4)

  The Prune Pit Murder (Book 5)

  * * *

  Peculiar Mysteries

  www.peculiarmysteries.com

  You’ve Got Tail (Book 1) FREE Download

  My Furry Valentine (Book 2)

  Thank You For Not Shifting (Book 3)

  My Hairy Halloween (Book 4)

  In the Midnight Howl (Book 5)

  My Peculiar Road Trip (Magic & Mayhem) (Book 6)

  Furred Lines (Book7)

  My Wolfy Wedding (Book 8)

  Who Let The Wolves Out? (Book 9)

  My Thanksgiving Faux Paw (Book 10)

  * * *

  Madder Than Hell

  www.madder-than-hell.com

  Gone With The Minion (Book 1)

  Devil On A Hot Tin Roof (Book 2)

  A Street Car Named Demonic (Book 3)

  * * *

  Hex Drive

  https://www.renee-george.com/hex-drive-series

  Hex Me, Baby, One More Time (Book 1)

  Oops, I Hexed It Again (Book 2)

  I Want Your Hex (Book 3)

  About the Author

  I am a USA Today Bestselling author who writes paranormal mysteries and romances because I love all things whodunit, Otherworldly, and weird. Also, I wish my pittie, the adorable Kona Princess Warrior, and my beagle, Josie the Incontinent Princess, could talk. Or at least be more like Scooby-Doo and help me unmask villains at the haunted house up the street.

  When I'm not writing about mystery-solving werecougars or the adventures of a hapless psychic living among shapeshifters, I am preyed upon by stray kittens who end up living in my house because I can't say no to those sweet, furry faces. (Someone stop telling them where I live!)

  I live in Mid-Missouri with my family and I spend my non-writing time doing really cool stuff...like watching TV and cleaning up dog poop.

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