Juniper Bean Resorts to Murder (Happily Ever Homicide, #1)

by Gracie Ruth Mitchell

To those who fear that death is the end: the stars do not cease to exist when the sun rises, and we do not stop praising their light.

Well, the world—or at least Autumn Grove—is my oyster. So watch out, oyster. Juniper Bean is coming for you.

“Did you break my car?” I freeze in place at the sound of a woman’s voice coming from behind me. My current position couldn’t look more suspicious. “I think I might have,” I say, not moving. My head is pounding now, but I make myself go on. “I nudged your tire with my foot and the whole bumper just—” But I break off when the woman behind me starts to laugh. “I’m just kidding,” she says, her voice full of amusement. “It falls off all the time. I have some super glue in my trunk.” Then she laughs again.

Just think—this key was separated from Aiden Milano’s buns by a mere one or two layers of fabric, depending on whether he goes commando. My seventeen-year-old self would be over the moon.

Then, because I don’t know what to do with that look he’s giving me, I break eye contact and round the car, getting in without another glance at him. When I look in the rearview mirror as I’m leaving the parking lot, though, he’s still watching me go—and the sedan that followed me here is gone.

I think we all think about weird things sometimes, but we’re never sure exactly how weird other people are, and we don’t want to give ourselves away for fear that we’re the strangest one in the room.

We all keep the dead in our own ways; they never leave us. Not really. The parting of life from a body can never erase memories or teachings or likenesses.

I don’t know how it’s possible to miss someone and resent them, to love them and hate them all at the same time. To be glad they’re gone and simultaneously wish they were still here. The human brain is little more than three pounds and can be held in two cupped hands, but the emotions it produces are so big, so nebulous and tangled. And sometimes those tangled emotions feel like thorny brambles that I’ve stumbled and fallen into, scraped knees and scarred palms that constantly remind me of the past. How much of that past do I keep? How much do I let go? And how do I separate the two?

“Wow,” I say when Aiden emerges from around a corner. He’s lost the blazer, but he’s still in full professor mode, even at home. “This place is nice.” Then I smile at him. “Do I get a tour?” He raises one brow as he passes by me and moves into the kitchen. “Sure, if you do it yourself.” I shake my head while also forcing myself not to sniff in his general direction to see what he smells like. “A tour needs a tour guide. That’s a basic rule.” “They’re called self-guided tours, and I hear they’re all the rage,” he says dryly, pulling a glass from one of the cabinets.

“Hey…what?” he says. His voice is flat, his expression unperturbed. One hand is tucked casually into his pocket; the other holds a book. He looks for all the world like a man who did not just let his new roommate fall down the stairs—and yet there’s a flicker of wicked amusement in his eyes as he stares down at me.

I’ll adapt to my surroundings. And then I’m going to do it. I’m going to write a murder mystery. And if the gruesomely killed victim happens to be a hot young professor named Aiden? I won’t lose any sleep. Well, all right. Maybe a little, because I struggle with bouts of insomnia. But I won’t lose much.

“The tenant now living in the loft once tried to kiss me. When she was underage, Caroline.” “Wow,” she says. She’s silent for a moment, and then she says, “This must be fate, right?” I shift in my seat, remembering with uncomfortable clarity that Juniper said the same thing. “It’s not fate,” I say. “There’s no fate.” “Well, if it’s not fate, what is it?” Caroline says. “Is she pretty?” “No,” my mouth says. Maybe, my brain says.

“Do you want to open it?” I say, passing the envelope back to her. “Kind of no?” she says. Her face twists up as she goes on, “I mean, it’s kind of sketchy, right? What if it’s anthrax or something? Hang on.” Her eyes narrow on me. “This isn’t from you, is it? Did you send me anthrax?” My lips twitch at this. “I did not, no. I don’t think I have access to anthrax.” “Because you had no problem letting me plummet to my death yesterday on those stairs,” she points out. “I feel like if you’d plummeted to your death, you wouldn’t be yammering so much right now,”

We’ve moved from the kitchen to the living room, where he’s sitting in a straight-backed chair while I’m lounging on the couch. I don’t know why anyone would choose to sit when they can sprawl, but to each their own.

I silently thank the inventor of flannel pajama pants and white t-shirts for his or her impeccable service to our nation before tearing my eyes away. I think Aiden probably would not appreciate being stared at.

“I know I’m devastatingly good-looking, but please stop staring at me,” he says flatly without looking up, and I jump. “I wasn’t staring at you.” I was. I totally was.

“You realize you look like dark academia personified?” “I don’t know what that means,” he says, his voice musing. He turns the page and continues to read. “Tweed blazers and stacks of books and a bust of Shakespeare,” I say. “All you need is a little skull and a typewriter—” But I break off when Aiden looks at me for the first time this morning. My eyes widen. “Stop it,” I say. “Do you have a skull and a typewriter around here somewhere?” “My sister gave me a skull,” he mutters as a faint flush works its way into his cheeks. “It’s not real.”

“I don’t make a face.” “Yes, you do,” I say, grinning at him. “You walk around looking like someone who’s just checked the weather and discovered it’s supposed to rain for the next week.” “I love the rain,” he says blankly. Of course he loves the rain.

“When?” I say quickly. “What kind of phase? What kind of earring did you wear? Are there pictures? Can I—” “There are probably a few photos buried at my parents’ place,” he says musingly. Then he looks up from his book, his gaze finding mine. “But you’ll never see them.” I will see those pictures if it is the last thing I do. I will run a long con on his mother if it means I get a glimpse of straight-laced Aiden wearing an earring. “I can hear the wheels turning in that brain of yours,” he says, sounding distracted once more as he looks back down at his book. “The earring isn’t even the best part.” I all but choke on my own spit. “What’s the best part?” I croak. I am a rabid dog, salivating for this information. “What’s the best part, Aiden?” He looks up at me, his hand pausing halfway through turning the page. A spark of something devilish enters his eyes as the corner of his lips twitches. “There are tattoos,” he whispers. “Tattoos?” I squeak. No answer; he just steps into his room and then nudges me out, back through the doorway. Then he closes the door in my face. “Aiden,” I say, pressing my cheek to the door and knocking hard. “Tattoos? Plural? Tattoos plural?” Faintly, from the other side of the door, I hear him laugh. I roll my eyes, but when I go to the kitchen to eat the scones I saved from Grind and Brew, I’m smiling too.

He leans against the door frame, folding his arms. Why is that so attractive? It’s just leaning. There’s nothing sexy about leaning, is there? I take a step back, trying to get a better look at the full picture he presents. He’s changed out of his pajamas, sadly; gone are the t-shirt and plaid pants, replaced by jeans and an oatmeal-colored cable-knit sweater.

Ha. I may not be seventeen anymore, and he may not be my tutor anymore, but Aiden Milano is still dreamy.

My mouth waters as I dig something warm and wrapped in foil out of the bag. I unwrap it with numb fingers, pulling aside the silver paper to reveal the most delicious-looking sandwich I’ve ever seen. I see egg and sausage and bacon and cheese in there, and the bread is grilled and buttery. Part of me wants to eat it nice and slow, to savor every bite, but the other part of me is really hungry. I wolf it down, bite after delicious bite of cheesy egg and meat, and when I’m done, I lick every single one of my fingers. Then I sigh happily. “That good, huh?” the boy asks. “Yeah,” I say, feeling suddenly shy. “Thank you.”

“Thank you,” I say again. “That was the best sandwich I’ve ever had, and I was having the worst day ever.” “You want to know what my mom always says?” the boy says. I nod. I want to know anything he wants to tell me. “She always says you’ll never come across anything in life that’s too difficult for you. Never more than you can handle.”

This evening, I think both my parents are wrong. Because I don’t know what any higher powers are thinking, and I don’t know what kind of faith they have in me, but I cannot handle Juniper Bean wearing that dress. And no matter how patient I am, I don’t think it’s going to get any easier.

Juniper has just appeared at the top of the stairs, though, and Caroline is already snapping picture after picture, like she’s a proud mom sending her little girl to prom for the first time. She gushes on and on about the dress, and Juniper replies modestly that it’s just something she wore to a wedding one time—which I think probably ended up making the bride look dull in comparison.

It was my sincere hope that I wouldn’t find Juniper attractive this evening. I was counting on the fact that maybe part of me still viewed her as that teenager who tried to kiss me all those years ago. But no matter how I used to think of her, it seems that my mind is now very clear on one fact: Juniper Bean is no longer a teenager. She’s a grown woman, and she’s beautiful.

I’ve never seen a dress like the one she’s wearing, but I wouldn’t be opposed to seeing another sometime. It seems to fit her perfectly—a corset-looking top in deep red leading to a frothy, voluminous skirt in some sort of pink fabric that reaches just past her knees. There’s a sheer overlay on the skirt in the same red as the top, dotted with little pink flowers. The whole thing is held up by two ribbon straps, each tied in a delicate bow over her shoulders. It’s those bows that have my thoughts trying to stray. Because the problem with tied ribbons is that my mind automatically pictures untying them—a very unhelpful mental image in this scenario. So I direct my attention elsewhere, noting Juniper’s easy smile as she chats with Caroline, who’s still taking pictures.

“That dress,” Caroline says, and I swear I can see hearts blooming in her eyes. “It’s gorgeous.” “It makes me feel like an autumn flower fairy.” “To the car, flower fairy,” I say grumpily.

“Oh, Aiden,” Caroline says, rushing over to me. She reaches up and pinches my cheeks. “Are your feelings hurt because we didn’t tell you how handsome you look?” she coos in a high-pitched voice, like she’s talking to one of her four-year-old daughters. “You’re so handsome. Such a big, strong boy—” I swat her hands away, and she cackles as Juniper laughs along. Once a big sister, always a big sister.

And even though we need to leave, even though there’s an ominous, creeping sensation slithering across my skin, I can’t make myself stop her. For whatever reason, it sounds like these are promises Juniper needs to make, and though I don’t understand half of what she’s talking about, I find myself filled with a grudging respect for my pink-haired roommate.

We keep our dead, and our dead keep us. We remember them, and they in turn find us at the moments we don’t expect—a flash of memory on a summer’s day, a snippet of an old favorite song, a long-lost photograph unearthed.

This is sounding more and more dangerous by the second. And I am clearly insane, because my mind starts running through all the things she could mean by distraction, and most of them involve the two of us in compromising positions. My stupid brain. I don’t want that kind of relationship with Juniper. I don’t want any kind of relationship with Juniper.

“I hate you so much.” “I know,” Juniper says soothingly from where she’s standing over me. “Lift your left foot a little bit more?” I comply, glaring at her. “So, so much.” “I know,” she says again. “It will all be over soon, okay? Now I’m going to try to drag you by the ankles.”

As it turns out, the research help Juniper needs is figuring out how her female killer would move a body. And guess who was stupid enough to agree to be that body?

“Okay,” she says, taking a deep breath. “Ready?” “No.” She ignores this. “Here I go.” She heaves, and with a decent amount of force, she begins pulling me. I slide slowly along the hardwood floor as she moves backward, her face screwed up with concentration. Despite her efforts, though, I continue to move at roughly the rate of a migrating ice cap. I think I’d rather be the ice cap.

She stands up while I lie face down in the middle of the floor, re-evaluating all my life choices.

I’ve been staring at her, I realize, my eyes glued to the dancing pumpkins and the little crease in her forehead and the curve of her jaw. I yank my gaze away.

Juniper’s not like any other woman I’ve ever known. She’s unpredictable, defying logic at every turn and laughing the whole time.

My head is dangerously placed right now, for one, pressed up against parts of her that are too soft, parts of her I should not be getting familiar with.

She smells like citrus.

“Sorry,” I say, forcing a laugh. “Guess that got pretty dark, huh?” Ugh. This always happens. I always open my mouth, something weird pops out, and whoever’s nearby gets scared away. To my immense surprise, though, Aiden just shrugs. “Not really,” he says. “Even so…” He gets to his feet, yearbook in hand, and heads in the direction of his bedroom. But as he passes me, he looks down. Then, in a voice so matter-of-fact it can only be the truth, he says one thing: “I’m not afraid of the dark.”

I smile, my fingers pausing in the middle of typing. Aiden is a strange one. But I bet he wouldn’t run away from me even when he saw how my main characters kept killing each other. It’s like he said—he’s not afraid of the dark.

And there’s a little bit of darkness in all of us. I’m convinced that’s true. We couldn’t shine so brightly as human beings if we never knew the shadows.

I sigh, leaning back in my desk chair and staring at the sloped ceiling. I’ve never heard of a group of friends naming themselves something as ridiculous as Elites in real life. That’s the kind of thing that happens in high school rom coms from the nineties. The clique of popular girls with the impossibly thin eyebrows and butterfly clips in their hair might have a name like that.

But I’m here. I’m alive. And I’m going to do great things in this life of mine. I don’t need to leave a huge legacy; I don’t need to change the world. But I’m going to make my little corner of life a really excellent corner.

And look—I’m only going to say this once. No man has a right to look that good in sweatpants and a t-shirt, okay? When I lounge on the couch, I look like a sloppy starfish. Spread eagle, inelegant, unladylike bordering on indecent. I become part of that couch. But Aiden just looks like he’s modeling for any number of companies. The sweatpants industry could use him for sure, as could the publishing industry, and the furniture industry may as well just hire him now and then keep him on retainer. Ridiculous. Absolutely ridiculous.

“Can I help you?” he says, cocking one eyebrow at me. He looks faintly amused, like maybe he’s noticed me checking him out. Whatever. I will not be ashamed. “Yes,” I say. I hurry over, my sock-clad feet slipping across the wood floor, and sit on the couch next to where he’s lying. “Make yourself comfortable,” he mutters, scooting further into the couch so that I have more room. “I will, thank you,” I say primly.

“But if you can’t find her today, you’ll find her tomorrow?” “Yes.” “Tomorrow morning, do you think?” “Yes.” “Can you call me when you find out who she is?” I say. I know I’m being obnoxious—when I’m trying to read and someone interrupts me, I usually want to smack them—but I need to know. I need to know who this girl is.

sake.” I point to his impassive expression. “Do something with your face, so that I can figure out what you’re thinking. You either look disapproving or completely neutral all the time, and I never know what’s going on in your head. It’s stressful.”

“You have so many complaints about my face,” he murmurs, amusement sparking in his eyes. “I’ve always been told it’s a handsome one.” “It is,” I admit. Then I grin. “Why do you think my seventeen-year-old self tried to kiss you?” Aiden snorts. “Cut it out. Don’t flirt with me, Juniper Bean.” “I wouldn’t dream of it,” I say, still smiling. I pause, then go on, “Well, actually, I might have dreamed of it a time or two, but I would never flirt with you in real life—”