Cottage on Gooseberry Bay: A Sister Thing

Book 16: Cottage on Gooseberry Bay

by Kathi Daley

Genres: Culinary Cozy Mysteries

Synopsis

USA Today Bestselling author Kathi Daley brings you a heartwarming mystery series about finding answers and fostering hope while building friendships and embracing the magic of life by the sea and small town holidays.

Ainsley Holloway had come to Gooseberry Bay to find answers about her past. She’d come to find an explanation for the dreams that haunted her after the death of the cop who’d both rescued and raised her. And she’d come to identify the family she couldn’t remember but knew in her heart she’d once belonged to.

Ainsley hoped that by finding these answers, she’d also find healing. She hoped that once she’d resurrected the memories buried deep in her mind, she’d find peace.

The Cottage at Gooseberry Bay is a series about, not only finding answers, but finding hope.

It’s a series about family and friendship.

It’s a series about shared holidays, festivals, and celebrations.

It’s a series about shared heartbreak and hardship.

And it’s a series about the bond that can be forged amongst strangers when tragedy binds two or more individuals with a common goal.

In book 16 in the series, Ainsley goes on a stakeout with Parker only to have their effort take an interesting turn when they uncover something totally different than what they were after.

Meanwhile, Ainsley is excited for her sister Avery's upcoming visit, Josie is getting her catering business off the ground, and Winchester Academy is closed for the summer giving Ainsely and Adam some much needed time together.

 

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Release date: August 6, 2024

Publisher: Kathi Daley Books

Print pages: 138

Reader says this book is...: entertaining story (1) escapist/easy read (1)

Sample

Chapter 1

“Chips?” My good friend, Parker Peterson, tilted the bag of Doritos ® Nacho Cheese Tortilla
Chips she’d been eating from in my direction. The two of us were on a stakeout, and Parker had
been eating junk food almost the entire time we’d been sitting in front of Wendell Houseman’s
apartment building.
“No, thanks,” I answered, bringing my binoculars to my eyes for another look. This stakeout
had turned out to be even more boring than I’d anticipated.
“There are onion and garlic chips if you prefer potato chips to tortilla chips,” Parker informed
me.
I wrinkled my nose. “Really, I’m fine. The donuts you brought filled me right up.” I turned
and looked at the woman who was actually one of my very best friends despite the fact she often
acted in a way I really didn’t understand. “Is this how you always eat when you’re on a
stakeout?” Parker, an investigative reporter for the local newspaper, always made a point of
being in the thick of anything happening in Gooseberry Bay and wasn’t a stranger to stakeouts if
it meant getting her story.
She shrugged, crinkled the now empty bag of Doritos ® , and then tossed it onto the floorboard
of the passenger side of my SUV, where several candy bar wrappers and a Twinkies ® box had
already been discarded. “Not always,” she answered. “But today, I happen to be particularly
annoyed with Sawyer, and being annoyed makes me want to eat,” she said, referring to her boss
and sometimes lover, Sawyer Banning.
I loved Parker like a sister, but if her response to being annoyed was to eat junk food
nonstop, I was surprised she didn’t weigh five hundred pounds. Parker was a caring person and a
good friend, but she was also the sort to become easily annoyed.

“I’m beginning to think this guy has settled in for the night,” Parker said as she opened a Diet
Pepsi ® . “If he was going to meet up with his contact as the intel I received indicated he planned
to do, it seems like he would have headed out by now.”
I didn’t necessarily disagree with that. We’d been sitting in the same spot for hours, and the
only sign of life we’d seen was a single light go on and then off again in one of the upstairs
apartments. When I’d first opened Ainsley Holloway Investigations, I’d promised myself that I
wouldn’t take any cases that required long hours of sitting around waiting for something to
happen. I’d mostly stuck to that, but Parker had asked for my help with this case, and the truth of
the matter was that I owed her, so I decided to make an exception to my rule and take on the case
she was so interested in.
“It does seem that you may have received a bum tip.”
“Do you want to go?” Parker asked.
I really did want to go, but I also hated to give up. The mission seemed meaningful to me. A
new drug dealer had set up shop in the area, and it was a well-known fact that the particular type
of drug that was making the rounds had led to a handful of hospitalizations and at least one
death. “Let’s give it twenty more minutes, and then we’ll go,” I suggested. “We’ve made it this
far, and I’d hate to drive away just as the guy finally decides to head out.”
“My source indicated that this guy meets his contact on Mondays. Today is Monday, so he
should have a meet-up planned. But I figured the guy would have gone wherever he planned to
go by now. I guess we can wait until next Monday to make our move.”
“I might be heading to Seattle next week if Avery finally shows up as she has been
threatening to do for weeks,” I informed my friend.
Parker adjusted the binoculars she’d lifted to her eyes. “It must be hard to have someone in
your life who’s so unpredictable.”
I just looked at her and rolled my eyes. Parker wasn’t as unpredictable as my super spy sister
tended to be, but she did tend to march to the beat of her own drummer, which resulted in her
changing course and heading off in a direction other than the one she’d originally been traveling
in at the drop of a hat.
“So, as far as you know, is Avery still planning to buy a condo in Seattle?” Parker asked
about my sister, Avery Carmichael.
We’d talked about this the other day, and nothing new had happened since then, but at least
Parker had introduced a new topic to help pass the time. “As far as I know, she’s still planning to
look at condos while she’s in the area. Carmen has a bunch picked out, but I suspect Avery
knows exactly what she wants and will narrow things down without actually looking at all of
them.”
“It would be fun to have a condo in a resort-type complex with a bar and restaurant just steps
away, but condos on the water are expensive, and your sister is hardly ever home. I can’t help but
wonder if it will really be worth it.”
I took a moment to consider my answer. “Avery inherited a lot of money, the same as I did.
She can afford it, and I honestly think she plans to spend more time in the area than she has in

the past.” I didn’t mention the fact Avery had been looking into a job in the area the last time
we’d spoken since I wasn’t sure that was something she wanted me to share.
“Have you heard how Josie’s job went the other night?” Parker referred to our friend and
peninsula neighbor, Josie Wellington as she changed the subject again, but I knew she was trying
to fill the void created when the man we were here to tail failed to make a move, so I decided to
go with it.
“I spoke to Josie yesterday, and she told me her job went very well. She said the customer
was happy, and she came away with a bunch of new referrals. Josie’s on another job today, which
required an overnight stay. I think Hudson went with her.” I referred to Josie’s boyfriend, Hudson
Hanson.
“I wasn’t sure that Josie made the right move when she quit her job at the bar and grill and
started her own catering business, but she seems to be doing really well,” Parker admitted.
“It does seem as if Josie’s business has been a huge hit,” I agreed. “Josie has always been a
good cook, and now that she’s doing her own thing and can let her imagination run wild, I think
Josie is already making her mark in the local food culture.”
“Those Italian chalupas she came up with are pure genius,” Parker said.
“They really are exceptional.” I sat forward just a bit. “It looks like our guy is finally on the
move.”
Parker turned her body to get a better view of the tall, thin man dressed in all black as he
made his way to his equally nondescript white van. The man, who didn’t appear to notice us,
climbed into his vehicle and pulled away. I waited a few seconds and then started my SUV and
followed. Since my SUV was black and it was a dark night, I figured we wouldn’t stand out as
long as I hung back and kept my headlights on low.
“Maybe you should turn your headlights off,” Parker suggested.
“I thought about doing that, but if the guy notices me, having the lights off will look
suspicious. Hanging back far enough so we don’t draw his attention is our best option.”
The man we were following pulled into the loading and unloading area near the marina. A
second man was in a boat tied up to the dock. The man we’d been following got out of his van,
opened the back doors, and then both men began unloading boxes from the boat and loading
them into the vehicle. I couldn’t see what he was loading, but since the man we were following
was a known drug dealer, I suspected it was drugs being loaded into the van.
After several trips, the man in the van closed the back doors, got into the driver’s seat, and
started the engine. We followed him to a warehouse just north of town. The man drove into a
secure lot through a locked gate, for which I assumed he already had the entry code, and then
headed to the back of the lot, where he stopped in front of the third garage-style door in a line of
ten such doors. He went in through an entry door on the side of the building, and a minute or two
later, the larger door rolled up, and the man returned to the van and drove it inside. The door then
rolled down behind the vehicle. A few minutes after the door rolled down, the man exited the
building through the same side door he’d used to access the facility. He crossed the paved lot and
then climbed into a black truck that he’d apparently left there ahead of time. I suspected there
was only one way in and out of the lot and that that single access would be the security gate.
Realizing that if the man noticed my SUV sitting outside the fence, he might get suspicious, I

started my vehicle and drove away. Once I was well out of sight of the storage area, I pulled over
to the side of the road.
“So what do you think?” I asked Parker.
“I think the boxes that were loaded into the van most likely contain drugs, but I also think
that there really isn’t any way for us to verify that at this point since it’s unlikely that anyone will
let us in to have a look around even if there is someone on the property. I could call Deputy
Todd, but he isn’t going to have probable cause to search the place unless we can provide him
with proof of some sort.”
“We could break in,” I suggested.
Parker nodded. “I was thinking the same thing.”
“We’ll need to do some additional surveillance. I didn’t see any security guards, but that
doesn’t mean that there might not be some in the warehouse.”
“Yeah. The guards might do hourly rounds or something like that.”
I looked at my watch. It was getting late, and I’d left my dogs, Kai and Kallie, with my best
friend, Jemma Hawthorn. “If we’re going to do this, we’ll need to take our time so as not to get
caught. Jemma has the kids, so I need to call her to let her know that I’m going to be even later
than I anticipated.”
“Since you need to call Jemma anyway, have her see if she can pull up blueprints for this
place. It would help if we had an idea of where all the access points to the main building might
be.”
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll ask Jemma.”
Jemma was a computer whiz who had proven to be particularly adept at hacking into
whatever site we needed her to hack into in the past. As I expected she would, she assured me
that she was happy to help us with our late-night B&E activity if it was going to help us take
down the group who’d been flooding the area with illegal drugs in the past few months. After she
sent us the blueprints, Parker and I agreed that the side door the van driver had used for access
was the easiest way to get inside. We assumed it would be locked and maybe wired into a
security system, but it didn’t appear the building had an alarm.
Being fairly adept at lock picking, I grabbed my tools, and Parker and I climbed the gate. The
side door was easily accessed, and once inside, we found the van we’d been following right
away. Most of the stalls were empty, but there were a few other vehicles I would have liked to
check out if we’d had more time. When Parker told me that she’d received a hot tip on a new
drug ring that had set up shop in the area and that she had plans to get the skinny on the man who
seemed to have moved into Washington State more than a year ago, I was sure that tracking the
man was the sort of thing she should leave to the cops. Parker, however, was the stubborn sort,
and once I determined that her mind was made up and that she had no intention of letting it go, I
agreed to help her as long as we took our time and were careful.
“The van isn’t even locked,” Parker said after opening the back door.
“I guess the guy who dropped it off figured it was safe here in the warehouse.”

Parker jumped up into the van and slit open the first box. She pulled back the flaps and
looked inside. “Crabs. This box is full of crabs.”
“I thought you said you had intel that there was supposed to be a major drug delivery
tonight.”
“That was the intel I received, and drugs were what I was expecting.”
“Someone’s coming,” I said as I heard the gate at the front of the property begin opening.
“Grab the open box and close the door. We need to hide.”
Parker grabbed the open box of crabs and then closed the back door. We managed to make it
most of the way to the side door when we heard the garage-style door closest to the van begin to
open. Sliding beneath another large van parked closer to the door, Parker and I held our breath as
a sleek black car drove into the parking stall next to the vehicle that had just been dropped off.
I reached over and put my hand over Parker’s mouth to prevent the gasp I was sure was
coming when two men got out of the car. The tall and burly man who was with Sawyer opened
the back door of the van we’d followed to the warehouse. He looked inside, opened one box as
we had, and then closed the door.
“Everything looks as promised,” the burly man said. He reached under the wheel well, where
a magnet box with a key had been hidden. Then he climbed into the van while Sawyer returned
to the car the men had arrived in, and both men backed out, closed the door, and then left the
facility.
“What the…” Parker spat as soon as the men left.
“What on earth is Sawyer doing with a drug dealer?” I asked.
“I have no idea, but I intend to find out.”
We scooted out from under the van we’d been hiding beneath.
“We should go,” I suggested. “You never know when someone else is going to show up.”
Parker agreed, and we headed out through the side door we’d used to enter the building. We
ran toward the gate, climbed over, jogged down the street to the location where I’d left the SUV,
climbed inside, and then just sat there while I suspect we both struggled to catch our breath.
“So, what’s the plan at this point?” I asked Parker.
Knowing Parker, there was no way she would let this go. I figured she’d head over to
Sawyer’s and confront him immediately, but instead of reacting with rage, it appeared she had
fallen into a deep state of contemplation.
“Parker,” I said.
She still didn’t speak.
“I know this is shocking, but we should decide what our next move is. What do you think?”
“I’m not sure,” she eventually answered. “Let’s go over to Sawyer’s place and see if he went
home or was heading to another location. Once we know that, I guess we can figure out the rest.”

I really did need to get home, but I didn’t want to leave Parker alone when I was sure she had
to be minutes away from a breakdown, so I texted Jemma and filled her in. She offered to let Kai
and Kallie stay overnight so I could stay with Parker as long as needed.
“I know what we saw,” I started after I’d finished my text exchange with Jemma. “But there
must be more going on than would meet the eye.”
“My eyes saw the man I have been sleeping with for the past year and a half picking up a van
full of crabs. The same van,” she emphasized, “where I expected to find drugs. What on earth
could possibly be going on?”
“Maybe the crabs were hollowed out, and the drugs were inside the crabs,” I suggested. “Or
maybe the drugs were stacked beneath a layer of crabs. It wouldn’t be a bad way to transport
drugs, especially in an area where crabs are harvested.”
“Yeah, I guess that does make sense,” she acknowledged. “We never actually picked up a
crab to check for tampering, and they weren’t on ice as they should have been if they were for
eating.”
We pulled up in front of Sawyer’s home and just waited. Waited for what I wasn’t sure but it
did seem as if Parker needed some time to think things through.
“The garage door is open, and Sawyer’s car is inside,” I said. “He must have come back here
as we suspected he might,” I said. “I know your instinct is to go inside and demand an
explanation, but since we don’t have any idea what’s actually going on, maybe we should dig
around a bit before you speak to him.”
Parker was staring at the house, but at this point, she hadn’t gotten out or responded.
“It’s late, so I doubt Sawyer will go out again. Maybe we should just put a pin in this whole
thing and then talk about it again in the morning.”
Parker turned and looked at me. “Yeah. I do need time to process this. It’s too bad we didn’t
bring the open box of crabs with us so we could have at least tested out our ‘drugs inside the
crabs’ theory.”
“I guess we can go back for it.”
Parker looked at the house. I was pretty sure she was trying to decide if it was more
important to go and fetch the box or to confront Sawyer. While I waited for Parker to figure out
what she wanted to do, Sawyer exited his house, got in his car, and pulled away.
We followed him as he returned to the warehouse where the crabs had been stored after being
removed from the boat, went inside, and came back out a few moments later. He then drove to
another warehouse. When he arrived, he parked his car, got out, and then, once again, he went
inside.
“Now, what do we do?” I asked.
“I’m really not sure,” Parker admitted. “Maybe we can get closer. I’m not suggesting we
confront Sawyer, but maybe we can see what’s happening. There are additional cars in the lot. It
looks as if he’s meeting someone who is already inside.”
I was about to agree to Parker’s plan when Deputy Todd pulled up. He was alone, which was
odd, but his presence did give me hope that maybe Sawyer had been working for Todd rather

than the man we suspected of being a drug dealer. Maybe Todd’s presence here was proof
Sawyer was actually a good guy.
“Maybe we should just wait here and see what happens,” I said. “My SUV isn’t likely to be
noticed from our current position, and we don’t want to mess things up if Deputy Todd is in the
middle of a sting.”
“Don’t you think that if Todd was here to bust a group involved in a drug ring, he would have
brought back up?” Parker asked.
It was odd that he’d come alone.
“I’m going to try to get closer,” Parker said. “You stay here with your cell phone ready to call
nine-one-one if things go south.”
The idea was one I really hated, but I eventually agreed to Parker’s plan since I knew her
well enough to know I wouldn’t be able to talk her out of doing what she’d already clearly
decided to do.
“Take your cell phone and text me with updates,” I said.
Parker agreed and had just opened the car door to slip out when we heard gunshots coming
from the warehouse.
“Get back in the car,” I said, having no idea who’d been shot and who might come running
out of the building.
“Call nine-one-one,” Parker said.
I did and then helplessly watched as she ran from the car toward the building. ...