Free Poisoned Pin: A Cozy Mystery (Brenna Battle Book 2) by Laney Monday

worn-to-supreme-softness T-shirt, and pulled on my fuzzy socks, then plopped on the couch next to Blythe and put my feet up on the coffee table.
    “Ahh!” she cried, holding a nail polish brush delicately in one hand.
    “Sorry. Did I mess you up?”
    “Not too much,” she said. But she put the brush back in the bottle and opened the remover.
    I picked up my laptop from the table, careful not to shake the couch this time, and got online. Blythe and I had had a little talk with Riggins, after our judo lessons were over and our Battlers had gone home. Harvey had given him an earful about all the strange goings-on at Reiner House—unexplained noises, and the latest to set him off, a note he claimed was left on his mirror, written in toothpaste. Warning Harvey to “watch out.”
    “Watch out” wasn’t quite a clear threat, and though Riggins offered to have a look, Harvey had already washed the mirror.
    “I think he’s been reading that Small Town Hauntings site or something,” Riggins had explained. “It’s all in good fun to some people, but for someone like Harvey, it becomes real.”
    I looked up the website and found it was a sort of ghost story reporting site covering small towns across the United States. And whaddaya know? The most recent entry was on Bonney Bay:
    Breaking! More news on the wrath of Moira, Reiner House’s most deadly spirit in residence. According to sources, today the only remaining (living) resident of Reiner House discovered a warning written on his bathroom mirror in toothpaste.
    Harvey’s name was abbreviated to H “to protect the innocent,” but it was clearly his story. The story he’d just told Will Riggins last night. The article went on to recap the death of Derek Thompson, and to link to a report they had published the day before, entitled “Moira the Murderess?”
    Was Will right? Could Harvey have gotten his story from the website? I had a hunch it was more likely to be the other way around. Harvey still had a flip phone; I’d seen it. I also hadn’t seen any sign of a computer in his house. Harvey just didn’t strike me as the type who’d be active online, even if he did have a computer. I recalled the rolled-up newspapers I’d seen sitting on the porch. Sure, it was possible he kept up with the site, but it didn’t seem to fit with Harvey to me. But then, would Harvey pass information along to an online reporter if he wasn’t aware of the site?
    Someone in Bonney Bay was passing information along. How else would the writers even know about Derek’s death, for example? It hadn’t made the TV news. The tragedy had been reported in the local online paper, the Bonney Bay Blaster , but only as a sudden and tragic death. As far as the police were concerned, he’d died of natural causes. Unless that site kept some serious tabs on Bonney Bay, someone had tipped them off, and Moira was taking the blame. Someone who either believed Reiner House was haunted, or who had an interest in others believing.
    Someone who might be up to no good. Someone who might be responsible for Derek’s death? I couldn’t help thinking it. I couldn’t shake my hunch that something wasn’t right. The death of such a young man never feels right, but something was just off. If there was a killer, could the killer and the ghost story-feeder be the same person? Why would a killer think a ghost made the best fall guy? The best alibi?  
    Unless he was crazy. Crazy Harvey.
    No! My gut churned in a visceral reaction against that possibility. But what other possibility was there?
    Was I letting myself get too influenced by Harvey, and by the strange and unsettling events since my arrival in Bonney Bay? Maybe Riggins was right and Derek had passed away, plain and simple. Maybe I should just focus on my business and get on with my life. Had Derek been been right? Was I just feeding into Harvey’s craziness? But Derek was dead . I couldn’t let it go until I was sure that was the best way to help