Poisoned Pin: A Cozy Mystery (Brenna Battle Book 2) by Laney Monday

dining duo.
    Jacinda Peters said, “Forgive me, but I couldn’t help overhearing. You’re Brenna Battle, the Olympian, and you’re new in town. And you and I have something in common.”
    “Are you new in town too?”
    “No, I’m just visiting. I’m a fairly frequent visitor, actually. I heard you talking to Paul about the ghost stories.”
    “Yeah, they’re—”
    “Absolutely intriguing! Can you believe how active the spirits have become? I’m sure you heard a man is dead because of them.”
    “Well, yes. I was there.”
    “You were there ?”
    “When Derek Thompson passed away. Is that what you mean?”
    “That’s exactly what I mean! Don’t tell me you saw Moira in action! How horrible for you!”
    But she didn’t look like she thought it was horrible at all. Sure, I guess you could say her expression was horrified, but her eyes were all lit up. She was enthralled. Entranced. Mesmerized. Horrified and loving it. I swallowed back a sour taste.  
    I guess it showed, because she placed her hand over mine and said, “I’m so sorry. It’s just, I’ve been studying these phenomena for years. Decades. If you witnessed a spirit acting on the physical world in such a profound way, to actually take another from this world into hers, well … that would just be absolutely ground-breaking, you see?”
    I slid my hand out from under hers. “I … I’ve never seen Moira. Harvey, Derek’s uncle, the owner of Reiner house, he called me and told me Derek wasn’t breathing. I was just a block or two away. Whatever happened to him was already done by the time I got there. I did CPR for a while.”
    Jacinda said, “You have touched death!” in a hushed, reverent voice. For a moment, she looked white as death. I wasn’t so sure about that banana split anymore.  
    “Um, do you think we could talk about something else?” Hey, I might be lousy at subtlety, but occasionally I nailed the direct approach. “How about your book?”
    “Oh! Of course. Well, the first one came out two years ago. I’m working on number three in my series now.”
    Paul showed up with his friendly smile and a giant dish heaped with bananas, ice cream, several different syrups and fudges, peaks of whipped cream, nuts, sprinkles, and not one, but three cherries. Clearly, it was the sort of dish that was meant to be shared. The kind most women would never attempt to finish on their own. But I wasn’t most women. I was up to the delicious, mountainous challenge. I thanked Paul and dug in, nodding as Jacinda filled me in on her literary achievements. I didn’t pay much attention.
    Then a few key words jerked me out of my sugar trance. “Bonney Bay … powerful spirits inhabiting Reiner House.”
    Wait a minute! Ghosts? Her books were about ghosts? Not just about ghosts, but based on so-called true ghost stories? And her work in progress took place in Bonney Bay? So that’s what she’d been getting at. That’s what we had in common. Maybe I shouldn’t have made her change the subject after all.
    “So, your new book … does it have anything to do with Moira?”
    “It has everything to do with Moira.”
    “So what’s Moira’s story?”
    “Moira’s life story?”
    I plucked a cherry from a sea of melted goodness surrounding the remains of my ice cream. “Sure.”
    Jacinda rested her chin in her hand and dove in. “Charles Reiner, one of the earliest residents of Bonney Bay, made it big. He hired the best architect he could find—Solomon Jones, who designed some of the most prominent homes in Seattle, to plan his dream house. It was a gift to Moira, who’d married and believed in him when he had nothing. When he was just a penniless dreamer. Just days after their home was completed, Charles packed up his wife, Moira, and their three children into the car, another new toy of his, a symbol of his success. They planned a family drive along the coast, complete with a picnic lunch. He headed back into the house to get the picnic