Book 5 - Sinister Sunday (A Tabitha Chase Days of the Week Mystery Paperback) ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 4.5 (195 ratings)

Tabby is thrilled that her sister Pepper will be able to stay a while in Crystal Cove. However, after Tabby finds her another houseboat to stay in, both sisters are awoken to a stabbing within the marina.

On top of that, while continuing her medical studies at the local hospital, Pepper is privy to a strange object they find within the stabbed victim while trying to save him. The patient ultimately dies, but the questions raised cause Tabby and Pepper to retrace their steps through the previous week looking for answers.

Will their memories hold the key to solving this murder, or will it once again require a little magic? Grab your copy now to find out!

I woke with a start to my cat, Sherlock, pawing at my stomach. After almost a year of living in Crystal Cove, Oregon, I still wasn’t used to sharing my living space with an animal. I’d inherited the cat, and the houseboat I now lived aboard, from my late Aunt Lizzie, who had left many oddities in her wake, including the miniature eyeglasses that were now askew on my cat’s tiny face. As I reached out to adjust them, the sound of men yelling startled me. Frank, the marina owner, stayed across town in his home at night, and the only other person in the marina at the moment was my sister Pepper, sleeping in the next houseboat.

In an instant, I grabbed for my phone from my nightstand and punched on her contact, knocking Sherlock off me with my quick motion. She must have heard the noises, too, because she picked up, sounding fully alert, and said, “Do you hear that?”

“Yeah. I wanted to make sure you were okay.”

She let out a quick frustrated groan. “Don’t worry about me, Tabby. I’m worried about them! I called 911, but I’m hearing threats, and what if one of them goes into the water?”

Something in her tone reminded me of the time when we were kids and she fell out of a tree in our yard and broke her arm in an effort to save a yowling cat. She was twenty-five now, almost twenty-six, and yet I still felt the need to pull her back from her immediate and sometimes thoughtless crusades to save the world. Before I could calm her and tell her the water really was not that deep, she said, “I’m going to try and chase them off.”

“What? No, Pepper…!” I shot out of bed because she wasn’t answering me. For all I knew, she was already down the stairs, out the door, and across the gangplank. Thankfully, my pajama pants and long-sleeve shirt were warm enough that I didn’t have to take time to grab a jacket. In fact, I didn’t even bother with shoes.

I got out the door just as Pepper’s door slammed shut and she shook her fist toward two shadowy figures. “You’d better get out of here! The police are on their way!”

It was too late to keep my baby sister inside and safe, so my only other option was to let these loud men know that she was not alone. “Don’t even think about coming near us! My husband is just grabbing his gun!” It was the first excuse that came to mind, and thankfully it worked because one of the two figures at the end of the dock took off at a run toward shore.

The other man slumped onto the wooden dock boards.

“Go on now, get out of here!” I yelled again, but the man didn’t move, and Pepper turned back to me, lit by the solar light next to her on the wharf’s post.

“Tabby, I think he’s hurt!”

I jogged to try to catch up. “Be careful, he might be faking an injury to get you close.” The only part of my sister that was bigger than her brain was her heart. Even though I wanted with everything in me to keep Pepper out of harm’s way, it didn’t take a brain surgeon to realize this fight would be futile. If someone was seriously injured, Pepper wasn’t going anywhere except to his aid. She ignored my words and picked up her pace toward the slumped man.

By the time I got to them, it was clear the man was truly hurt. Pepper cleared out of the light of the moon to study him as he let out a guttural moan. She reached for his hand, which was clutched to his stomach, and that’s when I saw a black and silver handle protruding from his midsection. Her hand searched his wrist, for his pulse, but I could only stare at his hand, which was covered in blood.

“An ambulance,” Pepper said, her voice instantly calm and in control. “Call for an ambulance, Tabby.”

The unfamiliar man moaned and turned his head toward Pepper, looking like he was pleading for help. He had several days’ worth of stubble, growing too unevenly to become a full beard.

Without thinking, I’d brought my phone with me, and I quickly jumped into action, following orders. By the time I was done with the 911 operator, Pepper had more instructions for me.

“I need towels, something clean to apply pressure and stanch the bleeding,” she told me.

I raced back to the Lady of Fortune, and returned with a stack of towels within a minute. My spectacled cat had beaten me out the door this time, and paused at the intersection of the docks before sniffing at them, and then heading toward shore. In that time, Pepper had removed her university hoodie and was using that to apply pressure around the knife.

Now only in a thin T-shirt, she let out a shiver, and I wrapped my biggest towel around her shoulders.

My other towels didn’t get used before the ambulance arrived, and as the paramedics moved in to take over, Pepper listed off his vitals and the details of his stab wound. While this took place, I ran back inside to grab Pepper one of my jackets, just in time, too, because when I returned to the dock, the man had already been loaded into the ambulance, and it appeared Pepper was going with them.

“They got a call about a bus accident, just out of town,” she told me, stepping into the back of the ambulance in her sleep sweatpants and reaching for the jacket I’d brought her. “They’re going to need my help.”

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