Free Tick,Tock,Trouble (A Seagrove Cozy Mystery Book 5) by Leona Fox

in case you haven’t figured it out, never speak ill of the dead. Actually, never speak ill of anyone – at least in public.”
     
    “I understand.” He still wouldn’t look Sadie in the eye.
     
    “Reggie, look at me,” she said.
     
    He looked up reluctantly.
     
    “It’s okay to make mistakes, Reggie, as long as you learn from them. You do not need to be ashamed.”
     
    She hugged him even though she knew it was violating his boundaries. He probably didn’t even know he had boundaries. He hugged her back and smiled ruefully as they parted, which made Sadie feel better. She patted him on the arm and pulled a business card from her bag.
     
    “Here,” she said, handing him the card. “You can call me if you ever need to talk.”
     
    “Thank you.” He bent down and patted Mr. B on the head.
     
    “I appreciate that you came to talk to me. And I’ll think about what you said about doing something with my life.”
     
    Sadie went back to town feeling better about Reggie. Maybe he would turn his life around, but if not, at least he would never cut down a dead woman again. That had to be a plus. Not much of a plus, but still an improvement.
     
    She stopped at the stationhouse on her way home to see if all the loose ends had been wrapped up. Zack was in his office talking on the phone, but he waved her in when he saw her hesitating in the doorway. She sat with Mr. B in her lap while Zack finished his conversation and hung up the phone.
     
    “What,” he asked leaning across his desk, “is up with that watch thing Tamsin left you? I’ve got two men crazy to get their hands on it, and that call was from a third who will give you some outrageous amount of money for it. And I mean outrageous, you could buy a small island in the Caribbean.”
     
    “It’s a long story.” Sadie said. “Would you answer a couple of questions before I tell you?”
     
    Zack leaned back. “Fire away,” he said.
     
    “Hamilton killed Tamsin?” she asked.
     
    “Over that same magic watch,” he said.
     
    “Woo did not kill anyone, but he might have if we’d given him the chance. Come to think of it Sadie, I think you should get rid of it. I don’t want you getting murdered over the dang thing.”
     
    “You might change your mind when you hear the story,” she said, but he just shook his head.
     
    “So here’s the deal.” She set Mr. Bradshaw on the chair next to her where he curled into a ball.
     
    “In the mid-1800s there was this watchmaker named Rumlin. He was known for his beautiful metal work; cut outs, jewels encrusted in the faces and covers of his watches. He was a real artist.”
     
    Zack nodded his understanding and set his elbows on his desk.
     
    “He was in his seventies when he got this strange idea about clocks and time. He either learned black magic or made up some kind of process that embued metal with power over time; some kind of temporal flux. The articles are really vague about that part and I don’t think anyone really knows what he was doing or why. Anyway, he designed twelve watches, each with their own special power. The one you have in the evidence room,”
     
    “Yours,” Zack said.
     
    “Mine,” Sadie agreed.
     
    “It’s the only one that has a face that runs backward. It is supposed to slow time for the people who live in proximity to it. So they age slower and have more time to do things. Only from what I learned it didn’t really do that because the people slowed down, too. They spoke so slowly that normal people couldn’t follow their conversation. They lived longer relative to normal people, but everything about them slowed down, so they didn’t actually have more time, and they couldn’t function in society. They were out of sync.”
     
    “Why would anyone want that?” Zack asked. “There’s no benefit.”
     
    “I think that’s the problem with all the watches. They didn’t function as intended. It’s like there are rules about time and if you mess with