Little Holly Homicide, page 17
part #1 of Georgiana Germaine Holiday Series
LITTLE HOLLY HOMICIDE
GEORGIANA GERMAINE HOLIDAY
CHERYL BRADSHAW
CONTENTS
Untitled
Untitled
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
Untitled
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Books by Cheryl Bradshaw
Little Holly Homicide
Georgiana Germaine Holiday Series, #2
By New York Times & USA Today
Bestselling Author
CHERYL BRADSHAW
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, businesses, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used in a fictitious manner. Any similarity to events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
First US edition December 2025
Copyright © 2025 by Cheryl Bradshaw
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted, given away or re-sold in any form, or by any means whatsoever (electronic, mechanical, etc.) without the prior written permission and consent of the author. Thank you for being respectful of the hard work of the author.
“The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, we must think anew and act anew.”
Abraham Lincoln
1
Coastal fog curled along the eaves of the Honeywell house, softening the roofline and muting the quiet street below. Holly Honeywell stood in the doorway, her fingers wrapped around the tarnished knob as she breathed in the frigid air. The house had sat empty since her mother Celia’s death a month before, and yet it felt alive in ways Holly couldn’t explain, memories lingering like shadows waiting for her return.
Holly stepped inside, closed the door behind her, and the scent hit her first—lemon oil her mother used when she was cleaning. At twenty-two, Holly never thought she’d lose her mother so soon, or that her death would uncover a deep-rooted secret.
Two weeks earlier, while sorting through the house, Holly had opened a shoebox buried at the back of her mother’s bedroom closet. The plain box filled with a stack of documents soon rattled her entire world when adoption papers were discovered at the bottom.
Holly had built her entire life on the belief that Celia was her biological mother. The papers shattered that belief with one brutal truth. Soon after she’d started searching for answers, growing desperate for one that made sense. So far, all roads had led to closed doors and dead ends. The agency that handled her adoption was no longer in business and hadn’t been in some time. And the people in her mother’s life claimed they didn’t know she’d been adopted.
A few days before, when she’d stopped by the shuttered adoption agency, she had a feeling she couldn’t shake. A feeling like someone was watching her. But when she turned, looking up and down the street, no one was there. At first, she dismissed it, but then it happened again when she was speaking to Roxy, one of her mother’s closest friends.
It was as if someone knew she’d been digging into her past.
If her mother had concealed the adoption, what else had been kept from her? The thought weighed on her as she eased out of her shoes and lay her coat across the sofa. She glanced at the Christmas tree in front of the living room window and the presents resting beneath it, presents her mother didn’t live long enough to see her open.
Holly pressed a hand to her hip and sighed. She had torn through every room in the house during her search to find answers, and only one place remained untouched—the attic.
The floor groaned under her feet as she made her way to the end of the hall. She reached up, gripped the latch, and pulled until the attic stairs dropped to the floor. She climbed the narrow steps and stepped inside. Boxes filled the space, stacked in uneven towers beside clothes her mother hadn’t worn in years, and a tired old dresser that had been pushed against the far wall.
She moved to the dresser and pulled open the top drawer. Socks and scarves lay folded beside a small journal with softened corners. She turned the pages and found her mother’s recipes written in her familiar hand. The drawers below offered much of the same, only more dead ends that led her nowhere.
A cold draft brushed across Holly’s neck, and she froze. The house had always been drafty, but something about the movement in the air made her skin crawl. She leaned toward the attic’s opening, glancing below. The hallway stretched before her, the same narrow space she had walked through thousands of times, but today it felt smaller and darker somehow.
Thinking she was being dramatic, Holly swished a hand through the air, trying to sweep away the unease building inside her. She had locked the front door when she arrived. She had checked the rooms. She was alone.
Wasn’t she?
Half an hour later, emptyhanded and drained, she climbed down the attic steps and sealed the latch. She turned toward the living room, surprised to see her shoes had shifted. One lay crooked, tipped as though someone had stumbled over it.
Her fingers tightened around her cell phone, and for a moment, she considered making a call. Then a soft sound broke the silence.
Not a creak.
Not the house settling.
The sound of footsteps.
Holly spun around, her voice shaky. “Hello?”
There was no answer.
She backed away from the sound, her heart pounding hard in her chest. Her heel struck something, and when she looked down, she saw a small, framed photograph on the floor—her mother holding her as a baby.
How had it fallen off the wall?
Two things out of place made it clear she wasn’t alone, and she bolted toward the front door. She reached it and grabbed the lock, her fingers trembling. A figure moved behind her, and Holly gasped, turning so fast, the room seemed to spin around her. A hand seized her arm, and she felt a shooting pain in her shoulder. She wrestled from side to side, trying to fight her attacker off.
“Who are you?” she screamed. “Why are you doing this to me?”
Holly jerked back, and as her attacker’s hand smacked against the side of her face, she fell to the floor, her bruised cheek pressed against the cold hardwood. Her gaze drifted toward the photograph, to her mother’s face smiling back at her as if everything was calm.
But it wasn’t calm, and Holly feared it might never be again.
Blood pooled along her gumline as she tried to focus on the figure hovering over her. A shadow filled her vision, broad shoulders blocking the light.
“Please,” she pleaded. “Please, don’t hurt me.”
The shadowy assailant lowered to a crouch, close enough for her to feel warm breath on her skin. She pressed against the door, trying to push herself upright, but a hand clamped down on her shoulder, forcing her back.
The attacker reached into their jacket, producing a gun, and Holly’s breath stalled. She pressed her palms to the floor, knowing she had nowhere to go, and nothing left that could save her.
“Please, just talk to me,” she said. “Why are you here? What do you want?”
The gun’s barrel leveled at her chest, and her attacker leaned in close, gripping her arm once again as they delivered the final words she’d ever hear in this life. “You should have left the past buried where it belongs.”
2
I brushed a few crumbs from the bottom of my office drawer and set my half-finished mocha down on the corner of my desk. Luka, my Samoyed, pressed his nose against my knee, his white fur glowing in the morning light. He always sensed when I dove into a task that bored me, which explained the slight pout in his eyes.
“Trust me,” I said, “I dislike this as much as you do, but we’re a little light on cases right now.”
As I continued to rearrange things in the drawer, he perked up, his ears stiff and alert. His gaze shifted toward the office door and then it opened. A young woman stepped inside. Her long red hair framed her face in loose waves beneath the knit beanie on her head, and she wore a thick charcoal parka over a pair of dark, ripped jeans.
Her eyes swept the room until they landed on me.
She took a moment to catch her breath, then said, “Hi, I’m Wren Fairfax. I’m looking for Georgiana Germaine.”
“You’ve found her. Come in. Take a seat.”
She closed the door behind her, and then crossed the room with quick steps, her coat flaring around her legs. Luka rose, his tail wagging as he waited to see if she’d give him a pat, but she brushed by him without acknowledgement.
Maybe she wasn’t a dog person. But given Luka was one of the most fetching dogs around, few had ever resisted his charms.
Wren pressed a hand to her chest. “Sorry if I’m a little out of breath. I rushed here. I took a bus, then another bus, then I walked through town, and here I am.”
Her voice was tense and unsteady, and it seemed like she was fighting to keep it together.
She plopped down in one of my office chairs, smiled at Luka, and then fixed her sights on me. “I hope you don’t mind m
I crossed my arms and leaned back. “It’s fine. What can I do to help you?”
She took a long, shaky breath. “I’m Holly Honeywell’s roommate. I mean to say, I was Holly’s roommate. I’m guessing you’ve heard what happened?”
“Bits and pieces.”
What I knew was that Holly had been murdered a few weeks earlier. Chief Foley and Detective Whitlock of the San Luis Obispo Police Department were on the case, but from what they’d told me, so far the leads were few at best.
Wren attempted to say something more, then stopped, her fingers dropping to Luka’s fur. She stared at him for a long moment, then flicked a tear from her eye. “Holly called me about a week before she died. She sounded stressed, and she wasn’t the type of person who got that way often. I told her to come home, but she said she needed to stay.”
“Where’s home?”
“I suppose Holly considered Cambria her home, since she grew up here, but we were in college together at Bellmont Pacific University in Huntington Beach.”
“Did you know Holly before college?”
She shook her head. “I’m from Salinas, a couple of hours from here. The reason why I’m here … well, it’s because I feel awful about what happened, like I’m to blame for Holly’s death somehow.”
“What makes you think it was your fault?”
“When Celia died, Holly’s mother, she asked me to go with her to Cambria, but I had a few big tests coming up, so I didn’t. I figured checking in with her every day would be enough. I had no idea she’d … she’d …”
I leaned forward. “Wren, listen to me. There was no way you could have known what was going to happen. None of this is your fault.”
She shook her head. “Holly trusted me, and she didn’t trust most people. Now she’s gone, and I don’t know who took her life or what drove them to do it. I want answers, and I don’t want to wait forever to get them.”
“I understand.”
“I came here because I need help. I need someone who knows how to solve murders, and I hear you do. One of the girls I go to school with found out what happened to Holly, and she told me about you. And since the police won’t tell me anything, I was hoping you could help.”
“Who’s the girl?”
“Bronte Remington. You investigated her sister’s murder, and you caught the guy who did it.”
“Ahh, yes. I remember the case well.”
“What do you think? Will you help me?”
“Before we discuss me taking the case, I need to know more about Holly and why anyone would want to murder her.”
Her voice thinned, stretched tight with fear and grief. “I might know why. Holly was going through some things in her mother’s house, and she found this old shoebox in the closet. Inside were adoption papers. When she read them, she realized the woman who raised her, the woman she thought was her biological mother, wasn’t. She was her adoptive mother.”
“Are you saying Holly was never told she was adopted?”
“I am.”
I reached for my notebook and flipped it open, the pen cool between my fingers. “Start from the beginning. I want to know everything.”
3
Wren gripped the arms of the chair as if she were using it to maintain her balance. Luka shifted closer to my leg, his tail low, eyes fixed on her. He’d always been hypervigilant, capable of sensing a stressful situation even when no words had been spoken.
“Where would you like me to start?” Wren asked.
“From the moment Holly’s mother died.”
Wren nodded, shifting in the chair. “Celia was out on her back porch watering her flowers one morning, following her usual routine. She lost her footing on a step and went down hard, striking her head on a large rock she used as a hiding place for a spare house key.”
“I talked to a couple of my friends at the police department after it happened. They ruled her death an accident.”
“Sure seems that way. When the police called to let Holly know what happened, she packed a bag and left for Cambria right away. She was devastated, a complete mess.”
“I can imagine. What can you tell me about their relationship?”
“They were close. Holly spoke to Celia almost every day. When Celia died, I started to see a darker side of Holly’s personality, a side I had never seen before.”
I crossed one leg over the other. “Tell me more about that.”
“Holly was always the fun, cheerful one in our friend group, the one who didn’t seem to have a care in the world. After her mother died, she was much different. As if losing Celia wasn’t hard enough, she was shocked to find out she was adopted.”
“I take it Celia never mentioned the adoption to Holly?”
“She didn’t. Holly had no idea.”
“What about the father?”
“There was a man in Celia’s life when Holly was little, Lenny Cutler. Celia was married to him for a short time, but they split up when Holly was a toddler. Holly told me she remembered almost nothing about him. When Holly grew old enough to ask about her father, Celia said he had been nothing more than a one-night mistake. She claimed she didn’t know his last name or anything else about him.”
Based on what I had gathered so far, Celia came across as someone who was guarded, a woman who may have never planned to tell Holly about her roots or about the adoption.
But why?
Why keep it a secret?
“Were there any names on the adoption paperwork?” I asked.
“Other than Holly’s name, no. But a few areas on the papers she found had been blacked out.”
Blacked out—even more secretive.
I tapped my pen on the desk. “How did she take the news about the adoption?”
“Holly was shaken. She felt like the narrative she’d been told her entire life was a fabrication, and she started questioning everything. She located the adoption agency, but it had closed down. It was like it existed one day, and the next, it didn’t.”
“What’s the name of the agency?”
“Cherished Connections. It was in San Luis Obispo.”
“Where are the adoption papers now?”
“I have no idea.”
“Other than you, who else did Holly talk to about the adoption?”
Wren gave the question some thought. “She contacted Celia’s closest friends, the people her mother trusted most. None of them knew about the adoption.”
“Can you give me some names?”
Wren glanced out the window as if trying to remember. “Let me think … Okay, there’s a woman named Chelle who went to school with Celia, and then another woman she used to work with a long time ago named Roxy. Sorry, I don’t know either of their last names.”
“That’s all right. You’re doing great.”
“Oh, and there’s something else you should know. In the last week of her life, Holly thought someone was following her. The first time, she was standing outside the adoption agency. Then it happened again when she was leaving Roxy’s house.”
“Did she ever see anyone?”
She shook her head. “It was more of a hunch, a sense that someone kept their eyes on her. She couldn’t prove it, but she wondered if word had begun to spread around town that she was searching for her biological parents.”
A tear trailed down Wren’s cheek, and she flicked it away.
I opened a desk drawer, removing a tissue and handing it to her.
“When Holly told me she thought she was being followed, I begged her to leave town and return to school,” Wren said. “She said she couldn’t yet. She needed me, and I should have been by her side. If I had been, maybe she’d still be alive.”
