Havok Publishing

Category - Mystery Monday

The Normal Festival

On the way to school, Alice told her sister all about her wild adventures in Wonderland.
“Too bad it was a dream.” Her sister shrugged.
But the memories were far too vivid. Could she really have dreamed an entire book’s worth of madness? Alice couldn’t convince herself otherwise. So, after school, she returned

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Sighs of an Unconvinced Detective

“I’m telling you, someone tried to break into my house!”
Aaron sighed. “Ma’am, you said yourself that nothing was taken. And there are no signs of forced entry. Nothing seems out of the ordinary.”
It was the third time this week Ms. Takkenridge had called about a break-in, but they were always false alarms.

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Finding Miriel

Footsteps creak across the upstairs floorboards, and I crack open an eye. Golden sunlight spills through the oversized bay window and across the fluffy white carpet. My tail wags. It’s my favorite time of day—one we never miss.
The air shimmers.
Miriel’s footsteps are no longer above. She’s sliding into her armchair

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Smiles

“Can you get the door, Miriel? Peaches here is a real handful,” Stephanie Brent said to me as she struggled with a little orange tabby. It snarled shrilly and scrabbled at her pink jacket’s collar. Tyler Galaro and his Shetland ponies had already arrived.
We were at Ladbrook Assisted Living—a nice place,

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Up for the Challenge

Miriel prided herself on noticing things others didn’t. Like the way the Grieves girl was concentrating more on a young man jogging through the park than on her chess match with the elderly gentleman in front of her. And the way the jogger, when he passed Greives by, gave a slight turn

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Take Out

You loosen your tie and get out of the car into the blazing heat at the end of a long summer day. It would take too much energy to go home and cook, so takeout it is! Again.
Inside the fast-food joint, the air conditioning barely makes a dent on the swelter. The girl

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Kaelan Ridge Road

“Don’t hitchhike over Kaelan Ridge,” growled the scruffy truck driver as he downed a coke outside the gas station. “No one ever makes it across.”
A rough laugh had escaped Daena’s lips at the old-timer’s warning. He obviously didn’t know Daena Austin.
* * *
“Ethel, we’ve got another drifter.”
A thin smile

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La Famiglia

Ethel limped through the park and sat at her usual table, the chess pieces already arranged on the gray and black terrazzo squares. She handed a footlong drenched in mustard to her informant, with a crisp one hundred tucked against the tin foil, and moved pawn to e4.
“Grazie, la Piccolina,” Sam said,

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Factory Floor

The operational excellence awards leer at me as I creep through the executive suite lobby, a satchel slung over one shoulder of my gray business suit. I pause before a door with the words “Robert Burgle, Undermine Global CEO” before pushing my way inside.
Burgle, a powerfully built man, slouches in an ergonomic swivel

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False Note

I stormed through mahogany doors into our mansion’s library. Due to my limp, my sensible shoes’ wooden heels hammered an uneven beat on the hardwood floor. My older siblings flinched, looked up from their phones, and winced a bit as I scanned their faces. When we were kids, Milton used to call my current

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The Quest That Led to Gouda

“Mama?” a scared, little voice called.
Phezznibbet Maplebark’s ears twitched, his paw closing around the bottom knife in his bandolier. He poked his head around the slimy dumpster that hid him. At the front of the alleyway stood a figure not much smaller than himself. It didn’t appear threatening, so he took a few

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Saving Wildlife… One Squirrel at a Time

If newspaper headlines could scream, this screech would be heard on my home planet.
Cash Reward for Bronx Kids Who Attempted to Kill Squirrel.
What monsters would reward someone for attacking helpless creatures? Earth-Humans, apparently. No surprise. Their cruelty is known throughout the universe.
I was here to stop it. I had to act

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