The Wright Mysteries

I moved before my brain had finished negotiating. The back door to Bookshop Alley was half propped open, and cold night air rushed in, carrying the sharp tang of seawater and something else, metal, wrongness, the kind of smell that makes your stomach do a quick, offended roll. The alley was narrow, brick-walled, and always busy at this time of year, but tonight it had that specific kind of crowd-energy: too many bodies hovering, too many voices lowering, too many people pretending they weren’t staring at the centre of it all.

There, near the side entrance where the shop bins sat, someone had collapsed. A man, at least, he looked like a man, lay on his side as if he’d tried to make a dramatic exit and missed the landing. His coat was rumpled, his holiday scarf bent at a strange angle, and the streetlight above him flickered like it couldn’t decide whether to help.

Pip made a small noise and then blurted, “Oh no no no, that’s a body. That’s an actual body-bod.”

I knelt, careful not to touch anything I shouldn’t. My hands hovered over his sleeve, more from habit than bravery. In the city, I’d learned how to keep my distance from chaos while still getting answers. Here, chaos had arrived with a thump in a place that smelled like paper glue and Christmas trees.

Mrs Gable appeared at the alley mouth like she’d been poured out of the shadow. She wore her expression the way other people wore perfume, strong and unavoidable. Her gaze swept from the man on the ground to me, then to Pip, and finally to my face, as if I’d personally failed to curate the right kind of ambience.

“Energy,” Mrs Gable said briskly, as though that explained everything. “This is terrible energy.”

A couple of locals hovered nearby, murmuring. Barnaby was there, tall, freckled, and attempting to look like he’d never seen anything more alarming than a hardback with a loose spine. Jett stood close to him, hands shoved into pockets, jaw tight. Gwen and Beatrix were whispering as if volume alone could keep catastrophe polite. And Mick, who always seemed to be carrying something, had dropped a stack of flyers onto the ground with a soft papery slap that sounded far too loud.

Senior Constable Dave arrived in a hurry that still managed to look offended. He pushed through the crowd with the authority of someone used to stopping trouble before it decided to become a hobby. His hat didn’t sit at quite the right angle, as if he’d tugged it on while already moving.

“Right,” Dave said, voice firm. “Everyone back. Ruby, step away from him.”

I looked up at him, because of course he’d notice me. In Kestrel Bay, you could trip over gossip and still land in someone’s business. “I’m not, I just, I heard the sound. I came out.”

Pip leaned toward Dave, eyes wide. “He’s dead, yeah? Like, dead dead. Not just dramatic dead.”

Dave’s expression didn’t change much, but the air around him did. “Don’t touch. And no one goes in or out of this alley except me and whoever else we need.”

“Need?” I repeated, because the word made my skin tighten.

Dave glanced at the alley’s far end, where the brick wall narrowed into a kind of throat. “Chief’s on his way. We’ll get it handled.”

Handled. The word landed like a book dropped face-down.

I forced myself to inhale slowly. The alley smelled of wet brick and holiday candles someone had lit earlier, and the faint sweetness of cinnamon from a nearby stall tried to pretend this was normal. It wasn’t. Not with a man lying there and a crowd full of people trying to keep their hands busy so their faces wouldn’t betray them.

Julian moved into view from the side, stonemason, broad-shouldered, hands always a little rough as if they’d been built from sandpaper and good intentions. He’d probably been in the neighbourhood fetching something for a repair. Now he stood with his gaze fixed on the body, like he was trying to measure a crack in the universe.

“Ruby,” he said quietly, and my name sounded different in his mouth. “What happened?”

I swallowed. “I heard a thump. I came out. He was here.”

Julian’s eyes flicked to mine, then to the man’s scarf. “That scarf. It’s not… it’s not one of the regular ones round here.”

Barnaby made a strangled sound. “We didn’t, we didn’t touch him, mate.”

“Good,” Dave said without looking at Barnaby. “No touching. I said it.”

Pip shifted her weight. “But someone’s already touched something, surely. Like… he’s on the ground. Ground happens.”

Dave’s gaze snapped to Pip. “I don’t need commentary from the glitter hoodie.”

Pip gasped, then offended herself into silence. Her cheeks puffed, but she didn’t argue. That, oddly, made me more uneasy. Pip was all mouth when she was nervous.

Mrs Gable, meanwhile, stepped closer to the body with the determination of a woman who would absolutely read the label even if it said DO NOT OPEN. “It’s not just any death,” she declared. “It’s… wrong. Like a book that’s been shelved in the wrong genre.”

“Mrs Gable,” I said, because if I didn’t speak she’d start narrating the killer’s personality traits. “Please back up.”

She sniffed. “I’m not backing up. I’m assessing the energy.”

“Assess somewhere else,” Dave barked. “Now.”

That should’ve been the end of it. It should’ve been all police tape and orderly decisions. But the alley had its own rhythm, and locals know how to keep moving even when they’re pretending not to. As I watched, Stanley, who’d been hovering at the edge, shifted his feet like he was trying to remember where he’d placed his own guilt.

Then I saw it: a paper flyer half tucked under the body’s arm, crumpled and damp at the edges, the ink still bright even in the grime. I didn’t reach for it. I just stared, because I recognised the font. The shop had used it, one of the promotional event flyers we’d printed for the holiday story night.

Pip’s voice dropped. “No way. That’s yours. Like, your flyer.”

Dave’s attention followed mine for a second. His jaw tightened. “Flier?”

I kept my hands to myself, but my mind did the opposite. “It’s from my shop,” I said. “I put those out this afternoon. There was… there was supposed to be a reading. A guest. Something about a, ”

“A magician,” Mick blurted, then immediately clapped a hand over his own mouth as if he’d accidentally typed the wrong thing in a group chat.

Julian frowned. “A magician?”

Mick shook his head hard, too fast. “I didn’t mean, I just, People were talking. I heard, ”

Penny arrived late to the disaster, breathless and red-cheeked from the cold. She looked at the body, then at me, then at Dave. “It’s not a magician,” she said, like she was correcting a misunderstanding in a book club. “It was supposed to be Professor Holloway. He’s the one doing the talk about, about old maps or whatever.”

Prof Holloway, in a tweed jacket that always smelled faintly of dust and peppermint, was nowhere to be seen. That wasn’t unusual; he was the sort of man who could vanish behind a shelf and reappear holding a rare edition as if it had been delivered by fate.

But the flyer in the alley didn’t say Professor Holloway. It said something else.

I leaned a fraction closer, not touching, just close enough to read it properly. The title was clear, the date bold. “Holiday Bookshop Stories,” the flyer proclaimed, and the guest name printed underneath wasn’t Holloway. It was, my stomach tightened, someone else’s.

The name was partially obscured by the crumple, but the first letter was enough to turn my thoughts sharp.

Dave followed my gaze and swore under his breath. “That’s not the flyer we saw when we came in.”

“What?” I asked, and the word came out too loud. The alley hushed around us for a second, like everyone had leaned in.

Dave’s eyes narrowed. “When Penny flagged this earlier, before I got here, she said your shop was hosting Professor Holloway tonight.”

Penny’s mouth opened, then shut again. Her hands fluttered as if she could juggle her way out of trouble. “I, I heard, I must’ve misunderstood.”

“Maybe,” I said carefully, because the alley was full of people who would happily turn my carefulness into evidence of something. “But the flyer in the alley says otherwise.”

Dave looked at me for a long moment. In that look was the whole town’s logic: Ruby Wright, new to Kestrel Bay, city consultant turned bookstore owner, probably too observant, probably too involved. He was deciding whether I was a witness or a problem.

“Ruby,” he said at last, voice low. “You’re going to stay out of this.”

My pulse kicked. “I’m not trying to, I just want to understand. That flyer is mine. If someone altered it, if something’s off, then, ”

“If something’s off,” Dave snapped, “it’s off. Not your job to fix it in the alley with a crowd watching. You call it in. The chief will decide what’s relevant.”

I stared at him, and for a moment I wanted to remind him that I’d spent years managing messy situations with people who enjoyed pretending everything was fine. But this wasn’t a boardroom, and the only thing I’d managed to fix so far was getting a bookstore open.

Pip tugged my sleeve. “Okay, but he’s saying ‘stay out’ like you’re about to run into the ocean to save a sock.”

“It’s not funny,” I muttered, then realised it came out like a plea.

Julian’s hand hovered near my shoulder, not quite touching. “Ruby,” he said again, gentler. “Let Dave do his job.”

“Let the police do their job,” I corrected automatically, because the words mattered. “I’m not, I’m not interfering.”

Dave stepped closer to me, and his voice carried just enough to be heard. “You’re a suspect.”

The alley seemed to tilt. People’s murmurs resumed, but now they sounded like someone turning pages too quickly. My cheeks went hot, the cold air doing nothing to cool the humiliation.

“I’m a suspect?” I repeated, because apparently my mouth had decided it needed to argue.

Dave nodded once, hard. “You’re the owner. Your flyer’s involved. You were here fast. You heard a thump. You came out. And you’re standing too close to the evidence.”

I glanced at the crumpled paper under the body’s arm and felt my mind reach for explanations like a hand reaching for a railing. “I didn’t touch it.”

“I don’t care,” Dave said, and that was the worst part. “I care that people will. So don’t give them more to chew.”

There it was, the decision point, sharp as a paper cut. I could argue until my voice turned into smoke, or I could do the only sensible thing: get the police properly involved and stop looking like I’d been part of the mess.

Chief’s car headlights swept into the alley mouth, bright and sudden, turning brick into gold for a second. The crowd flinched back. Dave moved to intercept before anyone could step forward again.

I forced my voice steady. “Okay. I’ll report it. I already did, I came out when I heard the thump. But I’ll make it official.”

Dave’s eyes flicked to mine. He looked like he wanted to say no again, like he could physically push me away from the truth with his hands.

Instead, he jerked his chin toward me. “Fine. Say it. Then you go back inside your shop and wait.”

My throat tightened. “Wait?”

“Wait,” Dave repeated, and there was no softness in it now. “No investigating.”

Pip’s eyes were wide enough to qualify as a weather event. “That’s… rude.”

Julian looked torn, part protective, part annoyed at the rules. He shifted his stance as if to block me from the crowd’s curiosity.

I stood up slowly, careful not to disturb anything. My knees felt stiff, my palms cold despite the heat in my chest. I walked to the edge of the alley, where Dave could see me clearly, and where the chief’s arrival would have to acknowledge me.

The chief stepped out, heavy coat, serious face, and the particular kind of authority that makes people remember their own names. He glanced at the body, then at the crowd, then at me.

“Ruby Wright,” he said, like he’d already read my file.

I met his gaze. “There’s a man dead in the Bookshop Alley behind my shop. I heard a thump when we’d just opened. The flyer under him is one of mine, but the guest name doesn’t match what people are saying is tonight.”

The chief’s eyes sharpened at the word guest. “Does it?”

“It’s printed,” I said, voice careful. “And it’s here. I didn’t touch it.”

Dave exhaled, like that line was the only thing he’d been waiting for.

The chief’s attention moved to Dave, and then back to me. “You’ll come with me,” he said, “but not to investigate. To answer questions. Then you’ll stay where I tell you.”

My stomach dropped, but at least it wasn’t denial. It was movement, forward, just not in the direction I’d wanted.

Pip’s hand found mine. Her fingers were warm, and somehow that helped. “So,” she whispered, voice shaking with excitement she was trying to disguise as sarcasm, “we’re doing the police thing. But with vibes.”

Julian stepped closer, his gaze flicking to the alley where the body lay under the harsh light. “We’ll figure it out,” he said, not promising, not assuming, just committing to the idea that the truth didn’t get to hide forever.

The chief signalled, and two officers moved in with practiced calm, drawing the crowd back until the alley became a stage with only the right actors allowed.

As I watched them handle the scene, I realised what I’d wanted this afternoon: to open my bookstore, to build a life that felt orderly and mine. What I’d gotten instead was a mystery with my name attached to it, a death right behind my shelves, and a town full of people who’d already decided where my story belonged.

Now I had to earn my place in the investigation, without stepping out of bounds and without losing the only thing I’d managed to build here. My shop. My fragile new normal.

And somewhere under a man’s crumpled arm, my flyer was still waiting to tell me what someone had changed, and why they’d done it in the shadow of my door.

End of chapter one. 39 more chapters and about 100,413 words in the full book.