Juniper Holiday was so excited about hosting Crescent Cove’s creepiest, scariest, most fright-inducing haunted house for this year’s Halloween party, she’d called her nearest neighbor, Fedora Layhee, to show up before the horde of guests arriving this evening… just to make sure everything exceeded even the stingiest expectation.
She loved all things Halloween and was an avid horror fan. If anything was amiss, Fedora would know.
As the wealthiest patron on the east side and also possibly the west side of Crescent Cove, Juniper found special delight in hosting the biggest, best celebrations the Cove had ever seen. To get an invite to one of her “shindigs,” as she called them, was coveted among all the Covians. Everyone wanted to see what Juniper Holiday would think up next, and she made it a goal to always surprise them.
This year, she’d commandeered her own guesthouse to create the Haunted Hangout, a haunted-house feature that would be in addition to the main party going on in the mansion. It was going to be an absolute fright. She’d even borrowed a real coffin from the town mortuary to lay out the dead in style. Fedora was currently inspecting this coffin under the watchful eyes of the three resident cats, Ludo, Loki, and Finn. Finn sat atop the casket, his luminescent green eyes watching their every move. Ludo was sniffing Fedora’s shoes with her dainty pink nose, and Loki sat in the corner, grooming his fluffy black tail.
Fedora struggled with the latches then pushed up the top, causing Finn to jump to the floor. “Oh my, how realistic! And it’s not just the makeup, either, although whoever is responsible for that has done a remarkable job. Look, Juni. Feel this skin! See what I mean? So cold! And the veins, and the translucence of her skin… It’s so pallid. I love it!”
In front of the open coffin, Fedora turned to Juniper and squealed with obvious excitement then clapped her hands together in quick succession, a wide smile on her face. “Oh, Juniper, you’ve outdone yourself this year. She really looks dead!”
Juniper peered over Fedora’s shoulder at the coffin, blinked, did a bit of a double take, then pushed her way forward. She’d hired an actress named Dorella Smith to pose as a corpse who would jump up and scare people at opportune moments, but Juniper had no idea she’d already arrived. She’d play the part perfectly, though, with her eyelashes that looked like spider legs,
four-inch-long black fingernails, and pasty white skin, and that was even before makeup. Juni had also hired a makeup artist to enhance her ghoulish look.
Juniper brushed her brown curls out of her eyes and nudged Fedora to the right. She wanted to look at the finished product. “Move aside so I can get a closer look.”
Juniper gasped. The makeup artist had done a fantastic job. The body didn’t even look like Dorella. Wait, maybe it wasn’t Dorella.
“Dorella?” Juniper waited for an answer, but there was nothing, not even an eyelash twitch.
Juniper had a very bad feeling about this. She reached out and touched the body. “Darn! I think she’s really dead!”
“Oh!” Fedora’s eyes went round. “Oh, dear. Juni?”
Ignoring the woman, Juniper tightened her lips and sighed. “If that’s who I think it is, she’s not even supposed to be the one in there.”
Juniper leaned closer to the body, her eyes narrowed, as she studied the ghostly corpse. There was a row of scratches along her left cheek and what looked like a bruise on her neck. But what happened to her, and how in the world did she get in the casket? Juniper was sure the casket had been empty earlier that afternoon when she met with Randy at the funeral parlor to pick it out. “Tori? Tori, come here.”
Turning, she waved her goddaughter over. Tall, slim, and blond, Victoria Cooper had lived with Juniper exclusively for the past ten years. Her parents, killed in a car crash, were once Juniper’s dearest friends. After their deaths, Juniper had taken Tori in and treated her as she would have her own daughter. Tori was an adult now, but she and Juniper were as close as hot dogs and mustard and loved residing in the same house. And the mansion was plenty big enough.
“Tori, call 911. Send everyone waiting outside back up to the main house then wait here for the detective to arrive. Looks like the party will have to be contained in the house.” Juniper surveyed the elaborate decorations that had taken days for her to put up in the carriage house. “Such a shame too. It looks fantastic in here.”
Victoria frowned. “Is something wrong?”
Juniper pointed at the coffin. “This is not the corpse I hired for this evening’s festivities and not an actor a’tall. I believe this
lady is Hannah Peterson from the Peterson-Jakes Mortuary and Funeral Home in town.”
“Oh my God, you mean she’s actually dead?” Fedora squealed and simultaneously jumped away from the coffin as far as her sixty-year-old legs would allow. Her eyes closed, and she visibly swallowed. “Oh, I touched a dead body—a real dead body! Juni, I think I might be sick.”
“It’ll be all right, Dora,” Tori said. Still, she turned to her godmother with eyes gone wide. “You can’t leave me here with all your guests arriving and a... a dead body! Where are you going, Juni?”
Juniper had already fished her keys from her purse and was headed out the door to the garage. “You’ll be fine, Tori. You and the others can keep the guests busy at the mansion until I return. Turn on some music,” she said, giving a wave of her hand. “People love to dance.” Victoria pulled away from a now-trembling Fedora and followed her godmother from the guesthouse to the spacious six-car garage on the other side of the fountain in the center of the wrap-around drive. “But where are you going?”
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