A/N Thank you PerryLovesDella for beta checking. Any remaining errors are because I went back and tinkered some more.

Return to Castle Cove

Chapter 2

Pouring himself a refill on his coffee, Mort brought it back over to his desk.

It had been a quiet shift. It had been more than a week since their last murder and he was all caught up on paperwork. He was just waiting on the relief shift.

Off to the side, Mort spotted the book Adele - worried that the store would run out - had made him promise to pick up for her on his lunch break.

Half curious, Mort reached for the book and flipped open to the first page of the latest work by Cabot Cove's second most famous author.

Overwhelmed by her newly found success, Sable was desperate for a bit of the comfort of something, anything familiar. Returning home to Castle Cove for the first time in years, Sable discovered that while some of the people and places were the same, others were less recognizable, and many just gone.

Coming up the coast, she discovered the old Coast Guard lighthouse was one such casualty - burnt to the ground in recent years as part of an intricate land swindle.

The local diner by the bus depot had changed hands and names more than once since she had been gone.

The old inept sheriff too was gone, having been replaced with - Sable would soon discover - a younger somehow even more inept sheriff.

Mort rolled his eyes yet he continued reading.

So many changes but one constant that still remained was her dear, sweet, but oh so very, very old former English teacher, K.C. Feather.

K.C. Feather had always been something of a hypochondriac, but since her retirement from teaching and her husband's unexpected death she had become something of a shut-in and -

Mort snorted and shook his head at the idea of Mrs. F. of all people as a shut-in.

- she had become something of a shut-in and her neurosis had begun to spiral out of control.

Mrs. Feather might as well have had the local physician, Dr. Valiant, on retainer - certainly she had him on speed dial.

It was well known throughout the town that Dr. Valiant, was stopping by on a regular - almost daily - basis for house calls.

Seeing her old mentor again, Sable was concerned about her deteriorating mental well being. Sable was so concerned, that rather than return to her own family estate on the outskirts of town, she moved in with her beloved old teacher in an attempt to cheer up the frail old woman.

It was while staying at the Feather residence that Sable had her first encounter with the incompetent new sheriff, a ruggedly handsome man with pronounced yet not bulging in an offputting way biceps, smouldering chocolate brown eyes and a perpetual come hither -

Beginning to have serious doubts about giving it to Adele, Mort lowered the book to look around to make sure no one was watching, witnessing him reading this tripe. The Sheriff's Office was deserted.

Skipping ahead, getting to the part where the inept sheriff first makes an arrest for the town's latest murder, Mort exclaimed. "Oh come on! I didn't arrest K.C. Feather! I only had Lloyd - Floyd -" Mort corrected himself rather than use the novel's deputy's name. "- pick her up and bring her down to the station because she doesn't drive!"

Again shaking his head, Mort reached for the drawer in his desk with the aspirin. Twice the recommended dose later, he began flipping ahead to see if the story got any better.

That's when he found Chapter 14 - more specifically page one hundred and seventy-two.

tbc