Sinister Strawberry Waffle: Book 3 in The Diner of the Dead Series
TABLE OF CONTENTS
SINISTER STRAWBERRY WAFFLE
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
Sinister
Strawberry
Waffle
Book Three in the Diner of the Dead Series
By
Carolyn Q. Hunter
Copyright 2016 Summer Prescott Books
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SINISTER STRAWBERRY
WAFFLE
Book Three in the Diner of the Dead Series
PROLOGUE
Bill Merrill had just finished filling out the last dregs of the day’s paperwork when the phone rang. Debating whether he should answer the call or not, he stared at the phone. It was, after all, already past six, and the office at Merrill and Macklin’s Landscapes and More had technically been closed for over an hour.
The phone continued to ring.
I’ll just let it go to voice mail, the business owner decided. It had already been a long, hard day, and his only wish now was to head home, eat dinner, and fall asleep in front of the TV.
Grabbing the manila folder off the desk—the last bit of the day’s paperwork—he walked across the small mobile office to the filing cabinet. The double wide trailer made for a small work space overall but was sufficient for the company’s needs. This setup also made it easier to remain stationed next to the storage warehouse where Merrill kept all the equipment, tools, and gardening supplies he used in his business.
The phone finally stopped ringing, beeped, and then transferred to the answering machine. The sound of Merrill’s voice echoed back from the machine. “You’ve reached Merrill and Macklin’s Landscapes and More. Neither Merrill or Macklin are available to take your call at the moment. Please leave your name, number, and a short message and we will get back to you as soon as possible. Thank you for your patronage.”
Merrill laughed a little at himself. The answering machine sounded overly professional and formal—nothing like he actually felt or acted in real life.
The phone beeped again and then the message began. He paused to listen.
At first, there seemed to be no one on the line—just empty silence.
He expected the line to click and whoever it was to call back another day.
Then, noticing the faint labored breathing, he realized the person on the other end sounded tired, labored—sick even.
Dashing for the phone Merrill almost answered it, but the voice on the line cut him off before he could get there.
“Bill . . . Merrill . . .” the voice strained. “Do not . . . sign the contract . . . for The Waffle diner.”
The landscaper’s face, worn with deep lines from age, twisted in confusion. “What?”
“Do not . . . sign . . . with Sonja Reed.”
Stomping across the office Merrill threw the file in his hand down on the desk.
With a clean swipe, he picked up the phone from its cradle. “Who is this?”
The line went dead and Merrill looked at the phone in his hand. Don’t sign the contract for The Waffle diner? Why not? Sonja Reed was one of the nicest and most upstanding young women Merrill had the privilege of knowing. She deserved his services just as much as any other person in Haunted Falls. He replaced the phone in its cradle.
Looking at the file tossed on the desk, where it had fallen open, he read the paper on top. It was a contract, the one he had just finished filling out before the phone call came in—it was made out to Sonja Reed, owner of The Waffle diner.
CHAPTER 1
The Colorado mountainside was dressed in a thick shroud of fog, the trees nothing more than blank, darkened figures standing among the gray light. All details of the normally green foliage appeared washed out, as if filtered through a poor quality camera lens.
Wandering, bewildered, her bare feet sinking into the cold soft earth, Sonja shivered in her white tank top and yellow plaid sleep shorts. A low breeze brushed the exposed skin, and the frigid mountain air prickled against her arms and legs.
“Hello?” she called, stumbling along. Her voice seemed to catch in the heavy fog and stop dead in the air.
A drop of rain touched her bare shoulder, running down her arm until it dropped off into the dirt.
“Oh no,” she whispered.
The rain came on quickly, coating the trees and earth in a wet sheen. Running now, Sonja desperately tried to find shelter. She couldn’t remember how she’d gotten out here, and had no idea where she was. Face twisted in worry, and clothes already beginning to soak through, she darted back and forth between the rocks and trees searching for some sign of life, for the light of a building.
Her feet began to sink further into the wet earth with each fresh step. Mud caked onto the soles of her feet, hanging there as clumps, before sliding off again and plopping to the ground.
“Hello?” she bleated again, feeling helpless.
Shivering uncontrollably now, she pushed onward. Her soaked clothes clung to her skin, enveloping her in a damp cold which seeped right down into her bones. A faint noise caught her attention, barely audible above the heavy rainfall. It sounded like fresh earth scraping against metal.
“Hello?” she inquired a third time, stepping into a small clearing.
The figure of a man was bent down, his legs partially hidden in the ground, as he shoveled piles of heavy wet di
rt up and out of a deep hole. A thick brown coat was wrapped tight around his body, the collar pulled up over his neck. A ratty baseball cap obscured his face.
“Excuse me? I need help,” she murmured tentatively, stepping close to the hole.
Stopping dead in her tracks Sonja felt the cold reach her heart, piercing it like an icy dagger. There was a woman in the hole, all pale skin and muddy hair. Sonja knew instantly that she was dead. Heart thundering, she backed away from the hole. The grave digger turned slowly to look at her. The brim of the ball cap moved upward revealing his face.
Sonja’s mouth went dry and her throat hoarse. “D-Dad?”
Her father smiled wickedly. A blood-curdling shriek erupted from the hole, breaking through the gentle hum of the rain. The pale corpse sat up in its grave, its claw-like hands grabbing the man by the coat. Screaming like a child, the undead corpse’s grip firm on his lapels, her father slowly began to sink down into the ground.
“Dad!” Sonja cried.
Her eyes widening in fright, she reached out a hand and tried to tear her father from the woman’s grasp, but it was no use. Before her very eyes he slipped through her fingers and sunk into the muddy earth, disappearing into its wet abyss.
* * *
Sitting bolt upright in bed, Sonja realized she was at home. Her whole body shivered and her skin glistened with a sheen of cold sweat. The window near her bed stood open, the cool mountain breeze wafting in and chilling her damp skin. Another nightmare. Ever since she returned to her hometown of Haunted Falls, she had been having them, and they seemed to be getting worse. Leaning forward, she rested her head in her hands.
While unpleasant, the nightmares were entirely understandable. Since moving back to the small mountain town, Sonja had been involved as a witness in two harrowing murder cases. Worse than that, she had experienced several terrifying encounters that one could only explain as being of the “supernatural” variety. Skeptical at first, she was quickly beginning to believe that ghosts truly did exist—a strange fact she wished she could forget.
The one thing Sonja didn’t understand was why her absent father continually appeared in her nightmares. She had seen him only once in the last four years, just a few weeks earlier. He came and went like the wind without an explanation of why he had abandoned her and her mother or where he was going.
Standing up from her bed, the shadow of many restless nights under her eyes, Sonja moved across the room, knowing that she wouldn’t be getting back to sleep tonight. Flipping the switch on the coffee pot first, she headed to her antique oak desk, powered on her computer and opened the Word document that held her unfinished book manuscript. The dreams that she had left behind in New York when she returned home to Haunted Falls still beckoned to her, taunted her. She may never see anything that she wrote get to a bestseller list, but she still yearned to give her dream a try. The frustrated but tenacious writer decided she would escape into a world of her own making, and write until the morning sunlight chased the remaining shreds of darkness from the sky.
CHAPTER 2
Sonja arrived at The Waffle Diner and Eatery early on Monday morning. The nightmare from the previous evening had faded with the rising sun, almost as if it had never happened at all, and she was ready and excited for a new day at the diner.
The grand opening of the iconic town diner had been three weeks ago, and she still had tons of work to catch up on. While she’d had surprising success so far, the eager young owner still spent hours of her time, as well as money from weekly profits, sprucing the place up here and there. Redoing the somewhat ragged-looking landscaping outside the diner, as well as the neglected parking lot, was the next step.
When Sonja had originally taken over and reopened the diner, Vic and Alex, the father and son team who had cooked for the diner for years before it closed, were now back in the saddle again. They helped to cut the overgrowth back, which helped, but didn’t solve the problem brown spots and uneven plant growth. Sonja had decided it was time to enlist professional help to make the exterior of the diner as inviting and beautiful as possible.
“Good morning,” she sang out, walking in the back door to the kitchen area.
“Hey, Sonja,” Alex replied from where he stood over the grill, getting it warmed up for the morning's barrage of pancakes, eggs, bacon, and sausage.
“How are Alison and that precious baby Cynthia today?” she asked.
“Ally’s fine. A little tired,” he admitted. “Cynthia is wide awake and as happy as I’ve ever seen her.”
Alison and Sonja were best friends, had been for over twenty years, and were now also co-owners of The Waffle. Most days, the gals worked side by side at the diner—along with Ally’s father-in-law Vic, who was the head cook.
Alex and Alison had a sweet little baby girl together. Both parents worked at the diner, but they traded off shifts in order to take care of Cynthia. Today was Alex’s turn at the diner, and his first shift running the grill on his own, without Vic lending a hand.
Mondays tended to be slow traffic days, so Sonja decided to only assign one cook to the grill. On busier days the kitchen could be packed with up to three cooks, Sonja included. She usually prepared the waffle orders personally, since they were the diner’s trademark specialty, and had two other cooks manning the grill—although Vic was entirely capable of handling the grill alone during a rush.
Surveying the grill and surrounding area, she double-checked to ensure that Alex had gotten everything properly set up for when they opened in fifteen minutes.
“Do you think you can handle it?” she asked, only half-teasing.
“Heck yes, I’ve got this – it’s genetic,” he grinned, twirling a spatula.
“I’m sure Vic was very thorough,” Sonja chuckled.
The Waffle was really quite the family affair. Vic and Alex were father and son. Vic had worked as a cook in the diner since the day it was built over fifty years earlier. Alex was married to Alison, and Ally’s father had owned and managed the diner before he passed.
Sonja could have easily felt left out if it weren’t for her close-knit relationship with Ally and the rest of the diner clan. Sonja and Alison had been best friends since they were kids, so everyone considered her as much a part of the family as anyone else. She couldn’t have asked for a better staff.
“Yeah, you could say that,” Alex sighed, “Dad tests me on every little detail. I don’t think he always trusts me to remember things.” He rolled his eyes.
Alex took his dad’s stern instruction in stride, just going with the flow. He was as good natured as Vic was, so they worked well together.
“Ally is lucky to have you,” Sonja smiled, happy for her friend.
Alex blushed a bit at the compliment, but covered it with a chuckle.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Just keep that thing up and running,” she grinned, letting him off the hook and pointing at the grill. “We have customers coming.”
* * *
As predicted, before the doors even opened, a small crowd of customers had gathered outside. Many residents of Haunted Falls had already grown accustomed to having their breakfast at The Waffle Diner and Eatery every morning. The lineup of regulars so far included local businessmen grabbing a bite before heading into the office, construction workers looking for an early morning energy boost, school teachers getting their first dose of coffee for the day, and busy moms who stopped in with hungry toddlers in tow. Add in a sprinkling of tourist traffic, and it was apparent that The Waffle appealed to almost everyone who lived in or visited Haunted Falls.
Sonja thanked her lucky stars, and her mother for teaching her how to cook, that coming up with intricate and tasty menu items seemed to be a pretty marketable skill.
“Another Strawberry Shooter,” a perky waitress in the signature black and red uniform called out, placing a new order slip on the order wheel.
“Got it,” Sonja replied, pulling the slip off.
“You’re n
ot leaving very many for me,” Alex observed, pretending to be bored.
“Don’t worry,” Sonja replied. “You’ll have plenty to do. Besides, you’re over the grill. This is a waffle order.” She pointed at the order slip.
He straightened up and gave her a mock salute with his spatula. “Right, I’ll be ready.” He tried to twirl it like his father always did, but it slipped through his fingers, clattering to the floor. “Oops,” he shrugged, embarrassed. “I still haven’t figured out how dad does that.”
“Just make sure you’re watching those hash browns while you practice,” she shook her head at his antics.
“Oh.” He quickly turned and flipped the perfectly browned shredded potatoes over. Thankfully, they weren’t burnt. “Thanks for the heads up.”
Working with Alex in the kitchen was vastly different than working with Alison or Vic. Vic was an experienced and talented cook, and Alison knew all the ins and outs of the kitchen. Alex, on the other hand, struggled a bit when he had to balance orders and making quality food on his own. The problem had little to do with his cooking skills. In fact, he was notably better than Alison and almost on par with his father in that regard. The real issue was that Alex was sort of a daydreamer, who was easily distracted, so trying to keep him on track with all the orders proved a little difficult from time to time.
Sonja tried to help him where she could, and taking complete charge of all the waffle orders was one way she could do that. Overall, he seemed to manage things fairly well. It was just during a rush when he became a little flustered.
Alex’s occasional blunders in the kitchen weren’t the only issue, however. It seemed that ever since he and Ally had been a couple, there was an inexplicably awkward tension between him and Sonja. The two of them had known each other since they were in grade school and never felt strangely around each other. Sonja had no idea what was making him behave so oddly. If she had to guess she would say that Alex was simply being careful, cautious even, of not getting too emotionally attached to any other woman—even if it was just in simple friendship.