Pumpkin Spice Sacrifice Read online

  Pumpkin Spice Sacrifice

  MURDER IN THE MIX 3

  Addison Moore

  Hollis Thatcher Press, LTD.

  Contents

  Books by Addison Moore

  Book Description

  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

  A Note from the Author

  Books by Addison Moore

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Books by Addison Moore

  For up to the minute pre-order and new release alerts ✦Follow Addison on Amazon http://amzn.to/2kkfzSt

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  WEBSITE http://addisonmoore.com

  Mystery

  Little Girl Lost

  Cutie Pies and Deadly Lies (Murder in the Mix 1)

  Bobbing for Bodies (Murder in the Mix 2)

  Pumpkin Spice Sacrifice (Murder in the Mix 3)

  Gingerbread & Deadly Dread (Murder in the Mix 4)

  Romance

  Just Add Mistletoe

  3:AM Kisses (3:AM Kisses 1)

  Winter Kisses (3:AM Kisses 2)

  Sugar Kisses (3:AM Kisses 3)

  Whiskey Kisses (3:AM Kisses 4)

  Rock Candy Kisses (3:AM Kisses 5)

  Velvet Kisses (3:AM Kisses 6)

  Wild Kisses (3:AM Kisses 7)

  Country Kisses (3:AM Kisses 8)

  Forbidden Kisses (3:AM Kisses 9)

  Dirty Kisses (3:AM Kisses 10)

  Stolen Kisses (3:AM Kisses 11)

  Lucky Kisses (3:AM Kisses 12)

  Tender Kisses (3:AM Kisses 13)

  Revenge Kisses (3:AM Kisses 14)

  Red Hot Kisses (3:AM Kisses 15)

  Reckless Kisses (3:AM Kisses 16)

  Hot Honey Kisses (3:AM Kisses 17)

  Shameless Kisses (3:AM Kisses 18)

  Value 3:AM Kisses Boxed Sets

  3:AM Kisses Boxed Set 1-3

  3:AM Kisses Boxed Set 4-6

  3:AM Kisses Boxed Set 7-9

  3:AM Kisses Boxed Set 10-12

  The Social Experiment (The Social Experiment 1)

  Bitter Exes (The Social Experiment 2)

  Chemical Attraction (The Social Experiment 3)

  FREE with Kindle Unlimited!

  Low Down & Dirty (3:AM Kisses, Hollow Brook1)

  Dirty Disaster (3:AM Kisses, Hollow Brook 2)

  Dirty Deeds (3:AM Kisses, Hollow Brook 3)

  FREE with Kindle Unlimited!

  Naughty By Nature

  FREE with Kindle Unlimited!

  Burning Through Gravity (Burning Through Gravity 1)

  A Thousand Starry Nights (Burning Through Gravity 2)

  Fire in an Amber Sky (Burning Through Gravity 3)

  FREE with Kindle Unlimited!

  Beautiful Oblivion (Lake Loveless 1)

  Beautiful Illusions (Lake Loveless 2)

  Beautiful Elixir (Lake Loveless 3)

  Beautiful Deception (Lake Loveless 4)

  FREE with Kindle Unlimited!

  The Solitude of Passion

  FREE with Kindle Unlimited!

  Someone to Love (Someone to Love 1)

  Someone Like You (Someone to Love 2)

  Someone For Me (Someone to Love 3)

  BOXED SETS

  FREE with Kindle Unlimited!

  Spitfire Kisses Boxed Set

  Breakers Canyon Boxed Set (Books 1-3)

  Lake Loveless Boxed Set (Books 1-3)

  A Totally ‘80s Romance (Books 1-3)

  3:AM Kisses, Hollow Brook (Books 1-3)

  3:AM KISSES (Books 1-3)

  Just Add Mistletoe (Christmas in Gingerbread, Colorado)

  Young Adult Romance

  FREE with Kindle Unlimited!

  Melt With You (A Totally ’80s Romance 1)

  Tainted Love (A Totally ’80s Romance 2)

  Hold Me Now (A Totally ’80s Romance 3)

  Paranormal Romance

  (Celestra Book World in Order)

  Ethereal (Celestra Series Book 1)

  Tremble (Celestra Series Book 2)

  Burn (Celestra Series Book 3)

  Wicked (Celestra Series Book 4)

  Vex (Celestra Series Book 5)

  Expel (Celestra Series Book 6)

  Toxic Part One (Celestra Series Book 7)

  Toxic Part Two (Celestra Series Book 8)

  Elysian (Celestra Series Book 9)

  Perfect Love (A Celestra Novella)

  FREE with Kindle Unlimited!

  Ephemeral (The Countenance Trilogy 1)

  Evanescent (The Countenance Trilogy 2)

  Entropy (The Countenance Trilogy 3)

  Ethereal Knights (Celestra Knights)

  Season of the Witch (A Celestra Companion)

  Celestra Forever After (Celestra Forever After 1)

  The Dragon and the Rose (Celestra Forever After 2)

  The Serpentine Butterfly (Celestra Forever After 3)

  Crown of Ashes (Celestra Forever After 4)

  Throne of Fire (Celestra Forever After 5)

  Copyright © 2018 by Addison Moore

  Hollis Thatcher Press, LTD.

  This novel is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to peoples either living or deceased is purely coincidental. Names, places, and characters are figments of the author’s imagination. The author holds all rights to this work. It is illegal to reproduce this novel without written expressed consent from the author herself.

  All Rights Reserved.

  This eBook is for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this eBook with another person, please purchase any additional copies for each reader. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return it and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Copyright © 2018 by Addison Moore

  Created with Vellum

  Book Description

  My name is Lottie Lemon, and I see dead pets. Okay, so on occasion I see a dearly departed human, too. And, unfortunately for me, that horrible scenario is playing out right this minute. Worse yet, that good-looking ghost just so happens to look just like my friend, Everett, and it refuses to leave his side. I’m petrified of losing Everett, so much so that I too refuse to leave his side, which of course doesn’t exactly bode well with my newly minted boyfriend, Noah Fox, who is just as comely as his surname suggests. After two horrific murders just took place in our small town of Honey Hollow, I’m ready to put the last few months behind me, but when I come across another gruesome discovery, my entire world comes crashing down on me once again.

  Lottie Lemon has a brand new bakery to tend to, a budding romance with perhaps one too many suitors, and she has the supernatural ability to see dead pets—which are always harbingers for ominous things to come. Throw in the occasional ghost of the human variety, a string of murders, and her insatiable thirst for justice, and you’ll have more chaos than you know what to do with.

  Living in the small town of Honey Hollow can be murder.

  Chapter 1

  I see dead people.

 
Okay, so more often than not, I see dead pets, and, believe you me, they are not a good omen for their previous owner—which is where I usually spot the fuzzy little phantasms. They seem to appear just before something horrific is about to befall the aforementioned previous owner, and up until just a few months ago, that never involved a fatality. However, after Merilee Simonson, my old landlord, and Hunter Fisher, my old good friend, both met with an untimely demise, I’m beginning to see a homicidal trend brewing here. And trust me, I’m the last person on the planet who wants to see a homicidal trend percolating in the cauldron of life—especially after I was the number one suspect in Merilee’s death. Not that there are many dead bodies lying around in our tiny corner of Vermont. Honey Hollow is known more for its fall splendor, which we’re smack-dab in the middle of. And it’s as homey and cozy as its name suggests.

  But, at the moment, I’m not looking at a long-deceased precious creature. I’m looking at a warm-blooded, very much alive and full of mischief, Himalayan, who happens to belong to yours truly. Pancake was gifted to me over a year ago by my best friend’s grandmother, Nell. She had a hard time deciding between two cute kitties and brought them both home, citing she would keep the one I didn’t choose. Of course, I couldn’t resist. I took one look at those big silver-blue eyes and fell instantly and madly in love. I named my sweet angel—a far too generous moniker, considering I’m staring down at a pile of down feathers floating in a five-foot vicinity—Pancake and Nell named hers Waffles.

  “Pancake Lemon, I am going to gift you a middle name, so I can scold you properly. If you keep this up, I’ll be forced to give you two—or three.”

  He glances up at me, bored from the sofa. That butter yellow fur looks almost silver with the sunlight streaking across his back. His nose and the tip of his tail have a bit of a coffee-colored stain to them that just adds to how handsome he really is.

  “Oh, stop it, Lottie.” Lainey breezes in with an oversized box in her arms marked bedroom. Lainey is my older sister, and even though the Lemons adopted me when I was just days old, Lainey and I still manage to share the same caramel waves and light hazel eyes. “Pancake wasn’t responsible for the feathered carnage. I may have done that. The darn pillow snagged on a loose nail on the railing. Everett is fixing the culprit right now.”

  No sooner does she breeze right past me than the sound of a hammer dealing out a couple of hearty blows echoes through my new rental. Pancake looks to the door with pure boredom before closing his eyes for his evening nap.

  “Sorry, buddy.” I give his head a quick scratch. “I should have known you weren’t capable. It would take far too much energy to make the place look like you got into a fight with a canary—and won.”

  Keelie grunts her way inside, hoisting in the last of the dining room chairs, her blonde curls bouncing with every charged step. Keelie Turner is as perky and adorable as her name suggests.

  “I see how it goes.” She scoffs my way. “We do all the work while you snuggle up with the cat.” She blows Pancake a kiss. “How about we trade places, Lot? I’m zonked.” Keelie and I have been fast friends ever since pre-school. Nell is her grandmother, and so she’s always felt like a bit of an aunt to both Pancake and Waffles.

  Nell Sawyer owns half of Honey Hollow. She owns the Honey Pot Diner, where Keelie works. And she happens to own the Cutie Pie Bakery and Cakery, where I’m more than happily employed. It’s been my dream for as far back as I can remember to have a bakery of my own, and the fact Nell has given me complete charge of the place makes me feel pretty damn lucky.

  Noah strides in and gifts me a crooked grin, his biceps bulging to mouthwatering degrees as he sets a box marked just stuff down onto the dining room table. Noah Corbin Fox is a private investigator that recently moved to Honey Hollow, and I happened to run into him at his office. I may have thought he was a loan officer and tried my best to wrangle some finances from him for the bakery. As it turns out, Noah ended up gifting the bakery the appliances it needed with the money left from his father’s estate. Apparently, his father was a swindler, and Noah wanted nothing to do with the money.

  He strides my way and wraps his strong arms around my waist. His lids hood low on cue. “Hey, beautiful.” Noah dots my lips with a kiss, and every last part of me melts like chocolate sitting over a double boiler hungry with heat. Noah has expressive green eyes and a naughty crooked grin that makes any and every female in a five-mile radius do a lust-filled double take. He also has a face that looks as if God spent a millennium chiseling it to perfection, and when he smiles at me, I feel as if we’re the only two people in the world. Of course, he has both brain and brawn going for him, hot and heavy. There is no contesting the fact that Noah Fox is all man. He’s brilliant, and reliable, and will most definitely make the perfect husband one day.

  My lips twitch with a smile of their own. Noah and I have only just begun our journey together, considering we met in September and it’s just now November, but I’d say yes in an impulsive second if he popped the question. He’s insanely gorgeous and sincere to a fault. And his best trait by far is that he’s extremely protective of my safety. I may or may not have gotten involved with an open homicide investigation that he was working on a few weeks back and almost got myself killed in the process, but that’s all in the past.

  “I can’t thank you enough for helping.” I brush a careful kiss over his lips and linger. I’d much rather be doing exactly this than hauling a mountain of boxes into my new living room.

  Someone clears their throat from the door, and we look over to find Essex Everett Baxter, the honorable judge who happened to side in my favor when my landlords hauled me to small claims court back in September. Everett was just filling in that day. He usually sees much meatier cases, which involve full-blown juries and require harsh sentencings that lead to lengthy prison stays. It sounds terribly exciting—as long as I’m on the right side of the law—and one day I fully intend to pick his brain about it. Everett and Noah used to be stepbrothers back in high school when Everett’s mother was married to Noah’s swindler of a father. And as fate would have it, some of the money that was given to me for the bakery just so happened to be swindled from her. I didn’t know it at the time, and Everett apparently gave his green light to the endeavor.

  Everett is younger than you might expect for a judge. He’s thirty-two, and Noah is thirty-one to my twenty-six. We all went to dinner at the Honey Pot last night after we did an initial haul of boxes and clothing. Turns out, Everett’s closet is just as full as mine. But that doesn’t say a lot, considering the fact the wardrobe of a baker is pretty basic. After dinner, we talked at length about our lives. I told Everett about my adoption—Noah already knew that part, but I kept mum on the New York debacle that occurred during and post my college years at Columbia.

  Last month, when Noah mentioned that a couple of homes were for rent on his street, Everett came with us to check them out. He liked the one next door so much he bought it. Noah lives across the street, adjacent to my cute little white clapboard house with its white picket fence porch and cheery red door. It’s so homey, I feel like I’ve lived here for years, and already I don’t ever want to move.

  “That’s it.” Everett lands the last box onto the dining room table. He nods over to Keelie and Lainey who both just plopped onto the sofa next to Pancake. “Thanks for everything, guys. You didn’t have to help me move, too. Helping Lemon would have been more than enough.” His lips pull back with a temporal grin. Everett doesn’t smile much, has little to say, and seems to be made up of pure testosterone. His hair is dark, his eyes are a glacial blue, and he wears a suit just about every day of the week—with the exception of this one. Apparently, women have been falling all over him for eons, and now that I’ve had a chance to witness the debauchery firsthand, I can honestly say it’s not a pretty sight. One day I fully expect to see a knock-down, drag-out brawl in his honor. Everett admitted that he’s not the relationship type, and he has an entire string of exes to prove i
t. “I’ll see you guys soon.”

  “Oh no, you don’t!” I pull both Everett and Noah along as I herd everyone into the kitchen. I wanted to sleep here last night, but Lainey wouldn’t hear of me staying in an empty house with nothing more than an air mattress and my sweet cat. Lainey was nice enough to let me live with her for the last few months after the Simonson sisters gave me the boot. “We’re going to make a toast,” I say, pulling the champagne flutes from a box and setting them over the creamy marble island that’s been vying for a coveted position in my heart ever since I laid eyes on it. And, believe me, this baby has gotten it.

  Keelie opens the fridge and groans. “You’re missing a key ingredient, Lottie. No champs.”

  “Sorry,” I say, reaching for the fruit-flavored seltzer water and distributing it evenly into five glasses. “I’ll make it up to you next time.” I give a sly wink to Noah because I plan on making it up to him far sooner than that.

  Lainey helps disperse the flutes, and soon we’re lifting our arms.