Fatal Fog Read online

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Other Books by Linnea West

  About the Author

  Copyright

  Chapter One

  It all started shortly after Maggie Ferndale’s 30th birthday when she woke up surrounded by a magical fog that changed her life.

  Maggie had lived in Grimwood Valley almost her entire life. There had been a short stint in her early adulthood where she had left home and tried to explore the world. But she got a bit older and as her anxiety skyrocketed, her mother Esmeralda had convinced her to move back into her childhood home to help with whatever the family business was. All she knew was that her mother didn’t have an actual job and very mysterious things tended to happen in Grimwood Valley.

  The town itself wasn’t much to sneeze at. While the population sign on the edge of the town said there were 10,000 people, it felt much, much smaller with everyone living practically on top of everyone else. The town was compact because it had to be. On one side was the river, wide and swift, which overflowed the bank every year in the spring. On the other side were the forest-covered bluffs, dark and foreboding. It wasn’t the kind of forest anyone wanted to take a casual hike into. Everyone stayed out unless they absolutely had to go in, which wasn’t often. Many balls and kites had been lost to the forest.

  Overall, Grimwood Valley was a cozy small town that felt like there was always something happening just under the surface. Maggie wasn’t one for small-town politics, but she felt that maybe what she was missing was just sticking her nose into everyone else’s business. She kept to herself, feeling butterflies in her stomach any time she heard a bit of town gossip that didn’t sit right. Even though everyone else was okay with it, it just didn’t feel right to her. Then again, Maggie had always felt a bit out of place, like she was constantly standing just a few feet to the left of where everyone else was. That all changed when she woke up on her thirtieth birthday.

  Coming down the rickety stairs of the old two-story home that she shared with her mother, Maggie felt different. It didn’t help that when she came into the kitchen, her mother was sitting at the kitchen table with a mysterious smile on her face, her hazel eyes flashing.

  “Happy Birthday Darling,” Esmeralda sang to her, pushing a cup of coffee in front of her spot. “How are you feeling this morning?”

  Maggie plopped down into the chair and took the steaming mug into her hands. She took a large sip of the hot liquid and immediately felt more energized. She wasn’t sure how her mother did it, but no other coffee in the world could wake Maggie up as this coffee could.

  “I’m feeling like I’m officially an adult,” Maggie said. She drummed her fingers on her coffee mug as she tried to make her voice stop quivering. “And I’ve been wondering if that means I have to find my own place soon.”

  Esmeralda drew in a sharp breath and quickly leaned forward to grab Maggie’s hand with her own. Her face looked like Maggie had suggested they make a plan to rob the Grimwood Valley Community Bank. Her hand was smooth and cool and Maggie tried to focus her attention on that instead of the thought of independence. Even though her mother was getting close to senior citizen age, she had no wrinkles to speak of which gave Maggie great hope for her own future.

  “Maggie, that is a terrible idea,” her mother said, a frown appearing on her face. “I need you here. Things are changing and there’s so much for you to learn.”

  “I can do my own laundry and cooking, Mom,” Maggie said with a nervous laugh. “I just feel like I’m entering a new decade of my life where I am definitely an adult. It feels like I’m not supposed to live with my mom anymore. Besides, how am I supposed to attract a mate while I live here?”

  Maggie laughed again, trying to cover up her anxiety, but her mother’s face was serious. Esmeralda’s hazel eyes were locked on her daughter’s face, searching for something. Finally, she let go of Maggie’s hand and took a drink of her own coffee. Maggie popped up and opened the old phone booth door that led to the pantry. The shelves inside were a mish-mash of food, spices, random pots and pans, and occasionally, a sick animal that her mother rescued and brought home to rehabilitate. Today, Maggie grabbed a box of cereal and crossed the kitchen to get a bowl and spoon.

  “You aren’t going to do anything drastic, right?” Esmeralda said, her eyes wide. “It’s just that soon you’ll see why you need to stay here and I don’t want you to move out in a tizzy before that happens.”

  “Well I wasn’t planning on running out on my tab in the middle of the night,” Maggie said with a laugh.

  She filled a bowl with sugary cereal and set it on the table as she passed by on her way to the fridge. Her mother scowled a bit at her choice of breakfast. Esmeralda had always believed in whole foods and warm breakfasts. Sugar Pops cereal didn’t tick either of those boxes, but Maggie didn’t really care. She’d been thinking about having this conversation with her mother for a few weeks now and she had been hoping it would go more smoothly. It wasn’t that she really wanted to move out, but she felt like society was starting to look down their nose at her for being a grown woman living in her childhood home.

  “I was going to head into downtown today and I’d like you to come with me,” Esmeralda said. “I’m going upstairs to get ready. I’d like to leave within the next hour, so finish your Cavity Pops and get dressed.”

  With a swirl of her shawl, Maggie’s mother swept out of the room. Maggie shoveled a giant bite of sugary cereal into her mouth and chewed. There was so much in her mouth that milk dribbled out the sides and the crunching seemed to echo through her brain. But Maggie didn’t care.

  Maggie had always thought that by her thirtieth birthday, she would have some sort of fabulous job. She had no idea what that fabulous job would be, but she didn’t think it would be hanging out with her mother all day. Maggie had always envisioned something like being a personal assistant to some high-powered business person that she would travel the world with. Or maybe a journalist, although she wasn’t sure any newspaper would hire her considering she hadn’t really finished her degree. But if nothing else, she had considered being a flight attendant.

  No matter what the job was, Maggie had always envisioned traveling the world and discovering new places and things. Grimwood Valley felt so small and closed off sometimes that Maggie wanted to burst out of there and never look back.

  But the butterflies in her stomach kept her holed up at home. It was hard to travel the world when she was nervous to just go to the corner store. Leaving the house required preparation time, both for Maggie to make sure she looked alright and also to mentally prepare for any and all interactions she might have. She would run through what to say in her head, coming up with an anecdote about the weather for any of the older folks that were inevitably shuffling around town. Maggie had also practiced a little smile and wave combination for anyone she went to school with who might seem to recognize her. It was brief and followed by her hurrying away, leaving the other person assuming Maggie was very busy.

  Her mother insisted that there was more to the small town than meets the eye. She always urged Maggie to look deeper, but all Maggie saw were small-town politics and gossip and it did nothing to quell the feelings inside of her. That always made Esmeralda harrumph and tell her that one day, she’d be able to see what Esmeralda saw.

  For now, Maggie finished up her cereal and headed back up to her bedroom. She wasn’t sure what sort of errand she and her mother were running. It always seemed like Esmeralda had a list of odd jobs to get done, but she never seemed to be paid by anyone. When Maggie would ask how she kept the bills paid, her mother would just shrug mysteriously and tell her that she would understand one day. It was just another thing on Maggie’s list of things to be worried about.

  Maggie slipped into a pair of jeans and her favorite red and black flannel shirt. She braided her shoulder-length brown hair and put on a dash of makeup. This was her standard outfit, suitable for fall or winter in Minnesota and looking polished enough to be respectable. Right now, it was her armor against the world.

  Maggie went back down the creaky stairs and ran into her mother. Esmeralda was dressed in her usual costume-like outfit. She was normally a mishmash of layers which made sense on a Minnesota October day like today but didn’t make sense in the middle of a hot summer.

  Esmeralda’s long black skirt had a handmade lace shawl tied over one hip and a big, puffy white blouse was tucked into it. Over that she had a handmade gray sweater and a big flowery scarf. On top of the thick black curls that Maggie had unfortunately not been blessed with, a black headscarf was tied jauntily on one side. She looked like a fortune-teller
who was about to set up shop.

  Everyone in town joked that Esmeralda was a witch and she laughed right along with them which had horrified Maggie as a child, but now she loved that her mother was in on the joke. She hoped that one day she would be as self-assured as her mother was.

  “Ready? Let me just get my cane,” Esmeralda said.

  Grabbing her cane out of the front closet, the two women headed out the front door. Maggie was never sure why her mother carried a cane. She didn’t need help walking and it didn’t seem like it would be strong enough to help her defend herself in any sort of a fight, but she insisted on carrying it everywhere. It was a dark, smooth cane made out of reddish cherry wood. It was beautiful, it just didn’t seem necessary. Esmeralda stopped in her tracks on the porch and turned around, shuffling back into the house.

  “Wait, I forgot something,” she said, sticking one finger up in the air as she went.

  A moment later she returned, clutching something in her hand. She grabbed Maggie’s hand and pushed something small and smooth into her hand.

  “These are a family heirloom that I refashioned for you,” Esmeralda said. “Whenever you wear them, they will do their best to ward off the bad spirits.”

  Maggie opened her hand to reveal a pair of earrings with wooden fern leaves hanging from them. The leaves looked to be hand-carved and Maggie marveled at the level of detail on them. She wasn’t sure they would keep away bad dates, dead-end jobs, or everyday nerves, but she appreciated the sentiment from her mother. She quickly punched them through the holes in her ears.

  “Thank you, Mom,” she said. “They’re beautiful.”

  Offering her elbow to her mother, the two women stepped off of the front porch and into the chilly wind of the October day. Their house was the only one on the block, which was unusual considering every other block had numerous houses smashed almost right next to each other. The rest of their block was full of trees and plants, mostly vegetables, fruits and herbs that her mother planted. There was a trail that ran through the wildlife and led to the backyard of their house, but no one dared use it besides Esmeralda. Even Maggie found it a bit creepy.

  As a child, the other kids at school used to tease Maggie that she lived in a haunted house and that was why no one else wanted to live close to her. It had gotten to the point where it made Maggie cry as she fretted about what the other children thought, but her mother had just laughed at it all.

  “Children can sense that we are different,” Esmeralda had said. “You just tell them that you are special and that’s why we get a whole block while they only get one house.”

  It had made Maggie feel a little bit better, but she still hated that everyone thought of them as different. Maggie just wanted to fade into the background at school, to be the girl that everyone knew but didn’t pay much attention to. It had been her biggest dream and through sheer determination, she had mostly accomplished it.

  She hoped the same thing now as an adult, although it was much more difficult when she was usually escorting her tiny, witchlike mother around town. Together they walked down the sidewalk toward Main Street. It felt like a typical fall day, but Maggie’s stomach was full of butterflies. It felt like something was waiting just around the corner for her.

  Chapter Two

  Grimwood Valley was set up like most small towns in Minnesota. There was a Main Street that ran right through the middle of town and centered on it were most of the town’s businesses. Mrs. Evelyn McGillicuddy ran a cafe on the corner next door to Mr. Ned Johnson’s book and hobby store. Both of them seemed to be stores that were plucked right out of the 1950s if it weren’t for the modern selections of books in the bookstore.

  There was another space run by Mariah Brank a schoolmate of Maggie that had an ever-changing assortment of products depending on what multi-level marketing schemes she was involved in at the time. Right now it appeared that she sold some sort of nutrition shakes along with stretchy leggings. Maggie had once wondered out loud how she managed to make the steep downtown rent with her shaky inventory when Esmeralda had pointed out that Mariah’s father Lou Brank owned the entire building and Mariah probably didn’t pay anything in rent.

  Several other longtime staples lined the streets like the shoe store, the bank, and the flower and gift shop. Most of them had been around as long as Maggie was alive and had been run by the same families just as long. There had been quite a scandal a few years when the owner of the shoe store had decided to retire and his son didn’t want to take over. They had found another townie to buy and run the store, but it had been the talk of the town for months while the decisions were all up in the air.

  It was a Monday morning, so Main Street was relatively quiet. Most people were at work or school and only a few mothers with young children, and senior citizens were shuffling about downtown to get out of the cold autumn wind. The only other out of place people were the town’s two police officers, Officer Chris and Officer Wes. The two men looked very similar, sometimes so similar that they could scarcely be told apart if they were wearing their officer hats low enough. Both of the men wore their dark hair in close-cropped cuts and besides their police uniforms, they were forgettable looking, often blending in with the other townsfolk. They were both standing next to a telephone pole on the corner and as Esmeralda and Maggie walked by, she could overhear them arguing about a sign that someone had stapled to the post.

  “I just think that something this divisive should be construed as graffiti,” Officer Chris said, tapping his finger on the piece of paper.

  “Just because you weren’t given the lead in the town play, it doesn’t make it divisive or graffiti,” Officer Wes said.

  Officer Chris scowled at his partner before saluting Maggie and her mother as they went by. Officer Wes, not to be outdone, whirled around and practically bowed in reverence to them. It was all Maggie could do to not roll her eyes at the two. They managed to get things done, but mostly Officers Chris and Wes spent their time in useless arguments like that one.

  As they got further into downtown, Maggie always felt a little weird when she realized that she was probably the only woman her age that wasn’t either working or tending to children at this hour. She felt like she needed to change that by finding a job, but she wasn’t exactly sure how or if her mother would even let her. Maggie didn’t have time to worry about it right now because headed straight toward her was a high school acquaintance. Maggie’s stomach started to churn as she realized her ‘smile and wave’ routine wasn’t going to cut it in this situation.

  Jill Whitney was trying to wrangle what seemed to be a set of toddler twins and a preschooler all the while wearing a newborn strapped to her body. She was gritting her teeth as she held on to two little wrists and directed the oldest child to hold on to the strap of her bag. Maggie wasn’t sure how Jill was maintaining her composure in public.

  “Oh hello Maggie,” Jill said, brightening up when she noticed Maggie and Esmeralda coming toward her. “It’s nice to see a familiar face while I’m out and about. Usually it’s just me and the kids. Where are you headed? Maybe we’re going the same way and I can have some adult company for once.”

  Maggie actually had no idea where they were headed. When she turned to her mother, Esmeralda gave the slightest nod of her head which apparently meant they were headed wherever Jill was going. Maggie scowled slightly at her mother before turning back to Jill.

  “Oh we are going all over this morning,” Maggie said. “I’m sure it’s probably nowhere that you were planning on going. Where are you headed anyway?”

  “We were just about to attempt some breakfast at the Syrup Pot,” Jill said giddily. “My husband says I need to try to spend more time out of the house and that sounded like a wonderful idea until I had promised these guys pancakes so I couldn’t back out and then found myself with three feral children while we were on the way to breakfast. All of a sudden, it doesn't seem like such a great idea.”

  Maggie suddenly realized that the three children were quiet. She panicked and looked around to make sure they weren’t headed into traffic when she realized that her mother was busy entertaining them with magic tricks. She pulled a quarter out of each child’s ear and instructed them to use them to get a quarter’s worth of jelly beans from the ancient machine in the entryway of the Syrup Pot Cafe.