The Halloween Heist: A (Ghostly) Paranormal Cozy Mystery: Evangeline Moon Reporting, #3

By K.J. Emrick and S.J. Wells

It's Halloween in Verdant Falls and Evangeline Moon is reporting... This time, it's a puzzling art theft that has her attention.

When a masterpiece depicting Ichabod Crane's harrowing escape from the Headless Horseman is stolen from the local art museum, Evangeline's curiosity is piqued.

 

As she begins her investigation, a surprising twist emerges: buried secrets intertwine with the stolen artwork.

 

As the tension mounts, Evangeline finds herself accompanied by a new spectral ally, a ghostly manifestation of the very artist whose painting was stolen.

 

However, a foreboding encounter with a mysterious stranger casts a shadow over her investigation. The stranger warns her to stay away from the Falls and demands she mind her own business.

 

Of course, she has no intention of doing so!

 

In a world where art, intrigue, and the supernatural intertwine, Evangeline navigates her way, piecing together the haunting puzzle of the stolen masterpiece.

 

Will she be able to locate the stolen painting or will it be lost forever?

 

If you like the Darcy Sweet Paranormal Cozy Mysteries then you will love Evangeline Moon!!

• Language: English
• Publisher: South Coast Publishing
• Release date: Sep 29, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223841951

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

Being a reporter had been Evangeline Moon’s dream job ever since she had been old enough to hold her plastic Barbie microphone and pretend her stuffed animals were a television audience, hanging on her every word. Every day, she gave them the news from all around the house. She would report on how the dog had tipped its bowl over, causing a spill that had soaked her mother’s sneakers. Or, how her grandmother had tried to make her chocolate chip pancakes using carob chips again.

In this reporter’s opinion, a very young Evangeline Moon had told Bugsy Brown Bear, no one in the world likes carob chips. My grandmother is obviously trying to poison me. Updates at bedtime…if I’m still here!

Now, sitting behind her desk at WPKT Pocket News, she smiled at the memory of her younger self. Thankfully, she hadn’t lost that flair for the dramatic. Thankfully her grandmother hadn’t actually been trying to kill her. She was alive and well and thirty-five years old. She had started her dream career as a reporter here in Harding City. Even better, thanks to some high-profile investigative reporting on her part, she was practically famous. Well. Locally famous, anyway.

Here’s your iced chai latte, Eva, a friendly voice said from just over her shoulder.

Evangeline—Eva to her friends—set her pen aside and spun around in her padded desk chair, gratefully accepting the cold plastic cup of milky brown, aromatic goodness. She inhaled the aroma of what had become her favorite mid-morning pick-me-up before taking a delightful sip. The cinnamon and cardamon in the chai tingled her taste buds, blending wonderfully with the bitterness of the black tea and the sweetness of the milk and sugar.

That’s so good, she crooned, beaming an honest smile of thanks for the person who had brought it to her. I swear, Lilly, ever since you introduced me to this stuff, I can’t get enough. It’s like my kryptonite. If everyone in the world could drink this once a day then I think we could finally achieve world peace!

Lilly Akers, WPKT’s new intern and office gofer, bobbed her head to acknowledge the compliment, making her blonde ponytail swing. She was only just out of college, twenty-two and eager to take on the world. There had been another intern here when Eva was first hired but he had moved on to a permanent position at a bigger news studio. The position had hardly been advertised for half a day when Lilly had jumped at it. Hiring her had turned out to be a very smart choice. She showed up to work every morning ten minutes before anyone else, in her jeans and casual ruffled tops, ready to hit the ground running.

Eva respected that kind of ambition in any person, intern or otherwise. She remembered all too well how hard she had to work to get where she was. She couldn’t be jealous that Lilly was so full of drive that she put the Energizer Bunny to shame. Youth was for the youth. Maturity was for those who were happy with their lives. Like her.

Besides. She wasn’t old. No lines around her crystal-green eyes, or anywhere on her oval face, really. Not that the camera could see. She wasn’t even middle-aged yet. She was just…mature.

Do you need any help from me? Lilly asked suddenly. Her deep blue eyes were hopeful. I’ve got nothing much to do for the next hour.

Eva knew that wasn’t true. Hank Harmon—the station’s manager—had a long list of duties for Lilly to perform every day. Most of it was busy work—like getting everyone their coffee order. Other work was more important, like pulling research for current stories that were in development. She hardly ever had five minutes to herself while she was here. Even so, she was constantly looking to do more, learn more, contribute more. Honestly, she really did remind Eva of herself when she was just trying to break into the business.

Pushing her shoulder-length auburn hair away from her cheek, Eva considered. Maybe there was something… I’m just writing up the last part of my on-air script for this one story. She waved a hand at the papers spread across her desk, and the neatly typed paragraphs on her computer screen. I’ve got to do this part by myself. Tell you what, though. It would be helpful if you could get me something from the WPKT archives.

Sure thing! was the quick answer. What are you looking for?

Um. Anything we have on the early years of Verdant Falls.

Lilly regarded her request with a strange expression, one that wrinkled the freckles across the bridge of her nose. She would be familiar with every story in the works here at Pocket News, and none of them were even remotely connected to Eva’s request.

It’s for something new I’m working on, she lied, hoping the gofer would just leave it at that and not ask her any other questions. It’s, um, background research.

Okie, Lilly said, beaming to be put to work, even if it was a little suspicious. I’ll pull folders as soon as I can and bring you whatever information we have. Be back soon.

Eva took another long drink from the cup, closing her eyes at the pure deliciousness of it. She’d never had a chai latte before moving all the way up here from Pittsburgh, but Lilly had recommended it and on a whim, she’d tried it. She was glad she did. Usually she was a coffee sort of girl, and didn’t want anything to do with tea, but this…this was glorious!

Fueled by caffeine, her fingers flew over her keyboard as she finished up the final touches on her story for Monday’s broadcast. Bigger news agencies had people who wrote the scripts for the reporters. WPKT was a relatively small outfit, one of several owned by a big conglomerate, which meant Eva did most of her own writing. She did her own investigating, too. Actually she preferred it that way. This job was so much bigger than she could have imagined. Every day was a challenge. Every story was important. Some of her colleagues didn’t get that—colleagues like their anchorman, Jack Darling. That guy never met a story he didn’t like, as long as the story made him look big and important. If there was something in it for him, he was all over it. Otherwise, well…other people could do the ‘small’ stories.

Which was probably why he had handed this particular assignment off to her.

She didn’t mind, so much. This story was about a new flagpole the city was putting up in Centennial Park. Not exactly an Earth-shattering piece of news—even more so for the bored Department of Public Works employee she had interviewed to get all the details. It was still news, and she would put her all into this story just like she would with anything else.

With just a few more taps the story was done, and she sent it off to Hank for him to review before settling on the lineup for Monday’s broadcast. There. Done.

Just like that, she had nothing to do.

Her next assignment was supposed to be an interview with the local performance group about the fundraiser they were doing for repairs that were sorely needed to their theater. Another piece that was strictly a human-interest story. Once again, not a big news piece. Not something that would get picked up by the national outlets and make her name a household word. That didn’t bother her. In her experience, if there was time for small, feel-good news stories, it was because there were no natural disasters to report on. No crime waves. No untimely deaths.

Give her feel-good human-interest stories all day long.

She started making notes for herself, things she could ask and then follow-up questions based on the possible responses to her initial questions. Good reporting started with good questions. Good questions came from good information. So, she kept thinking, and typing, and thinking some more…

Then her mind started to wander.

It had been three weeks now since her last big report—a murder that had landed quite literally on her doorstep. That investigation and eventual arrest had taken her on an emotional rollercoaster but it had ended as well as could be expected. She had found the strength, in the end, to give the camera a straight face and a smile despite the sadness in her heart. Not that it had been all sad. There was humor in the story and in her memories, too. Like one of those cozy mystery books that she liked to read so much.

It was the strange event that had happened afterward that filled her thoughts now.

A man had walked right up to her door, to her house in the middle of nowhere in the town of Verdant Falls—miles and miles from Harding City. Miles from anywhere, actually. This man had taken it on himself to tell her she needed to mind her own business. To stay out of things that didn’t concern her. He told her…what were his words?

Oh. Right.

There are things going on in this town that you won’t ever comprehend, Miss Moon…I bring you this warning. Stay away from the Falls, and the things going on there…best for everyone if you just let them be, and not get involved again.

Take the warning.

Those words had bothered her ever since. They bothered her now, in this very moment.

It was even stranger considering how far her house was from anything else, and the man hadn’t driven to find her. He had no car. He’d walked to her front door. He’d walked away from her house, too, and down the road.

Verrick Hascoll. Where had he come from? Where had he gone? And why had he been so serious about warning her to stay away from the Falls?

By the Falls he meant, of course, Verdant Falls. The town had been named after that waterfall, and the river it spawned, and the hot springs that were not too far away from where the water splashed hard and frothy onto the rocks below. It was a beautiful place, and there certainly were people out to ruin it. She had learned that during her investigation into that murder. She wasn’t one of them, however. She loved spending time there. Those waters lived up to their name. Verdant, meaning beautiful and green and full of life. Whenever Eva went for a swim there she felt totally refreshed. It was as if the fountain of youth was real, and it was hidden in the forests out there, only known to a handful of locals and a few lucky outsiders, like her.

But why had Verrick Hascoll threatened her to stay away?

All of these questions swimming through her brain were what had prompted her to send Lilly off on that errand, to pull any information WPKT had on the town of Verdant Falls. She only knew so much about her new home. She couldn’t imagine there was anything that important there. What secrets did he think she would find?

Of course, she had her own secrets she was wrestling with. Secrets that had started when she moved to Verdant Falls, taking up residency in Heathcliff House. She still wasn’t sure how it had happened, but ever since she’d moved in, she had started seeing ghosts. A lot of them. It seemed like more and more every day!

So far, it had only happened at her new house. Thankfully she didn’t see them everywhere she went. Seeing them wandering around the halls outside her bedroom, or in the kitchen, or the bathroom was weird enough. Taking a shower with a face staring at you from the mirror was not an experience she wished to repeat.

She had laid down some strict rules for her ghostly house mates after that. Mostly, that meant they stayed out of both her bedroom and the bathroom. She didn’t care how friendly the ghosts were, none of them needed to see her in her pj’s—or in anything less! A woman needed some privacy, after all. The ghosts all seemed to be agreeable to their arrangement. She even considered a few of them to be friends. Some nights they sat down together to watch Netflix and eat popcorn. Since they couldn’t actually eat, it meant more popcorn for her.

Which was odd, since their favorite show seemed to be The Great British Baking Show. They simply loved that Paul Hollywood.

She couldn’t think about it too hard or it would make her head spin, and it had nothing to do with the caffeine in the chai!

So, she put her focus back on the story of the theater troupe. It wasn’t long, however, before she found herself thinking about the dark and mysterious Verrick Hascoll again. Although she had spent a good amount of her free time trying to discover who he was, she’d come up empty. That was when she’d gotten the idea to dig into the origins of Verdant Falls, its founding, the people who used to live there, anything like that. She hoped Lilly was successful in digging up something. Any clue she could find at this point would be welcome.

The reporter in her was hooked on a story that seemed to be a complete mystery. She simply could not let it go. There had to be something special about that waterfall, and the hot spring. Maybe the whole area? Was there gold buried under the land? Was it the conjunction of mystic ley lines—not that she really understood what that meant? Was there a portal to another world behind the falls?

Was she simply getting ridiculous with her guesses?

She didn’t know, but she wasn’t going to let it go until she found the answer. No matter how long it took. After all, there was a reason why she was a famous news reporter now.

Well. Locally famous.

She was still working on making it more than that. Given enough time, she knew she would be up there with the likes of Walter Cronkite and Connie Chung. Until that day, she had iced chai latte, and good friends—some of them ghosts—and a career she could be proud of. Oh. And she also had lots of mysteries to keep her life interesting.

When she went to take another sip of her drink, she was disappointed to find it was already empty. With a sigh, she tossed the cup expertly through the air to have it land in the recycling bin. Every little bit helped when it came to saving the planet.

She pulled on the shoulders of her white blouse so it would sit better. She clicked the heel of her shoe against the base of her chair. The rest of her day stretched in front of her, and Eva realized she was back to not having anything to do. The interview with the performing troupe was set. The segment for tonight’s show had already been taped in the building’s studio suite. She had nothing on her calendar. What was she going to do to occupy herself?

On her desk, her little alarm clock made its cuckoo noise to tell her it was the top of the hour. It was a plastic clock in the shape of a birdcage, and every hour the door of the cage would flip open and the bird would fly out, make its sound, flap its wings…and then get pulled back inside to wait for the next hour when it would do it all again. At the bottom, under the time, were printed the immortal words of Maya Angelou, "I Know Why The Caged