Death Is On The Menu

Book 2: Reckless Camper Cozy Mysteries

by Libby Howard

Genres: Animal Cozy Mysteries

Synopsis

Sometimes campers arrive with a deadly amount of baggage.

Accepting a cabin reservation from the Mason brothers didn’t seem like a big deal—especially as they were returning guests enjoying their second vacation at the campground. But it seemed the previous year these campers did more than just hike and fish. Tales of their drunken behavior, and a mysterious incident have Sassy concerned even before the men arrive.

The Masons start off their vacation with a bang—a loud, rowdy, bang. When one of them turns up dead after a heated argument with the local coffee shop owner, Sassy’s friend finds herself the primary suspect in the murder.

With her friend in trouble, Sassy jumps in to investigate, and discovers there are more secrets to the Mason brothers than anyone ever expected.

 

Read more

Release date: February 28, 2022

Publisher: Debra Dunbar LLC

Print pages: 226

Sample

I sat on the couch, rolling quarters into little packets, my bloodhound Elvis sleeping beside me. I envied the hound his nap but as afternoon activities went, counting and packaging up coinage wasn’t all that bad.

Campers needed quarters to operate the laundry machines at the campsite. It had completely slipped my mind that people would need change. I’d dropped the ball on a few other things during our first two weeks as well, but things at Reckless Camper Campground were finally starting to come together. Mom and I were getting ready to welcome our third week of guests. The roof on cabin six and the porch on cabin three were fixed. The weather was warming up now that we were at the end of April, and so far our guests had posted some very nice reviews online.

Yes, that hole in my living room ceiling was still there, but at least it was now covered by a blue plastic tarp. The tarp was unsightly, a constant reminder that Mom and I were cutting it close financially with this new business venture. Better a hole in the ceiling of the owner’s house than one of the cabins where our paying guests were staying, though. I planned on getting it fixed just as soon as we had saved up a little cushion of money—a rainy-day fund in case something needed emergency repairs. Once we had that financial cushion, then I’d feel safe spending the money on the living room ceiling.

Although with our income flying out the door in expenditures, my ceiling wasn’t likely to be fixed until sometime next year.

Mom walked in, the screen door making a “clap” noise as it shut behind her. Coming over to the couch, she handed me a stapled bunch of papers. “I’ve got our list for Thursday’s confirmed arrivals. Ten of the twelve cabins are full. There are six camper trailers coming in, and we’ve got eight tent camping reservations. You want the good news?”

“Yes, I do,” I exclaimed, thinking she’d already delivered the good news as far as I was concerned. Those reservations put us at nearly sixty percent full—twice what we’d been at the last two weeks. This meant we’d only have two cabins empty, six trailer spots empty, and twelve tent camping spots empty. For this time of year, that was amazing. The tent camping would pick up in the next couple of weeks. If I could keep the cabins and the camper sites as close to one-hundred-percent occupancy as possible, then we’d turn a profit in our first year even with the repairs and start-up expenses.

Well, we’d turn a profit as long as the mower kept running, and no more trees fell on cabin roofs, that is.

“The good news is that all of those guests—all of them,” Mom emphasized, “are staying for the whole week. Thursday to Thursday.”

I squealed, jumping up from the couch to give Mom a hug.

Our first two weeks of guests at the campground had all been long-weekenders, checking in on Thursday or Friday and leaving on Monday. Guests staying a whole week meant more money—which we desperately needed.

But it also meant we’d be frantically cleaning cabins, maintaining camping sites, and doing repairs during a tight four-hour window between check out and the next batch of guests checking in. Tuesday and Wednesday were usually the days we could come up for air, but that brief break would be ending and probably wouldn’t return until late fall with the last of the foliage viewing campers.

“I was hoping to have more tent and RV reservations this week,” Mom said as I took the papers from her.

“They’ll pick up soon,” I told her.

I’d been running ads on social media targeting backpackers as well as RV and hiker clubs on the East Coast. Mom had been the brilliant one who’d ensured we were listed on over a dozen hiking and camping apps. It had only been three weeks, but so far it looked like most of our reservations that weren’t returning guests were coming from an app named BigfootingIt, followed by one named ParkNGo.

“Len’s records show some walk-in tent campers this time of year,” Mom explained. “Looks like people tend to make reservations in the summer, but in the spring, the campground gets some last-minute guests. So I’m hoping we get a few more over the weekend.”

I hoped so too.

“Think it’ll be the same with the RVers?” I asked.

Mom held up their hands. “No idea. Maybe people haven’t un-winterized their campers yet? It doesn’t look like Len ever had a lot of guests with campers or RVs. From the last two years of reservation records, it seems like the campsite appealed more toward people with tents, or those who wanted to rent cabins.”

I grabbed the stack of papers and flipped them over to write a quick note on the back. Maybe I could hit the social media ads with some additional spend, or come up with a giveaway or special gift to encourage more RV and camper guests. We had ten spots for those folks, and I wanted those spots full this year. So many of our costs were fixed, and the only way for us to make money was to be at close to maximum capacity during the peak camping season.

Finances were a worry that had been keeping me awake at night. The expenses to run this place were more than I’d expected, even though I’d analyzed the former owner’s financials in detail. We needed to make more money. And we had to do it without raising the camping fees, because charging more would put us out of the competitive range for the area and would only result in less reservations.

We couldn’t raise rates until we had more to offer campers to justify the added costs. But we couldn’t upgrade without more money. It was a vicious cycle and just thinking about money soured my previously good mood. We were working out the kinks. The guests loved staying here. But if we couldn’t make this place profitable, Mom and I were destined to always live with a blue tarp covering the hole in our living room ceiling.

Or worse.

I stood, sticking the list of reservations under my arm and gathering up the rolled coins. “I’m going to drop the quarters off at the office, then take Elvis for a quick walk around the campground.”

Mom gave me one of those looks that said I wasn’t fooling her at all. “Sassafras Louise, you are not going to work today. You’ve already inventoried and restocked the camp store, cleaned the bath houses and the laundry, and made sure the canoes and kayaks are up on the stands and ready to rent. We’re prepared for our guests who aren’t going to start arriving until tomorrow. This is supposed to be your day off.”

I wanted to reply that when you owned a business, you never really had a day off, but Mom was right. I was exhausted, and if I didn’t make some time to recharge and relax, then I’d burn out. And I couldn’t afford to burnout.

But we were so tight financially, and this first few months, this first year, of business was so important. We needed good reviews. We needed guests to rave about how enjoyable their vacation was here.

“I just want to make sure everything is in order for tomorrow,” I explained to Mom. “Once we get everyone checked in, then I’ll take some time off.”

Mom shook her index finger at me. “No. Just no. I know you, and you won’t take the time off. You’ll come up with a million reasons why you need to be here doing this or that. Sassy, you bought this campground to fulfill a dream, not work yourself into the ground.”

Mom was right, but old habits died hard. I was throwing myself into this business just as I’d done with my job in the corporate world, and that wasn’t what I’d hoped for when I’d bought this place. I’d wanted a change. I’d wanted to give guests the same experience here that I’d had as a child, but I’d also wanted to recreate that experience for myself every day for the rest of my life.

My cancer diagnosis had been a terrifying wake-up call. No one expects to be confronting their mortality in their fifties and I was not ready to leave this world. There were so many things I hadn’t done, so many things I’d put off as something I’d do later, when I retired.

Then one cold rainy day I sat in a doctor’s office wearing a flimsy paper gown and contemplated that I might be out of time. There might not be a retirement. There might not be a future. I swore then that things would be different if I was given the miracle of more time. Seeing the sale listing for Reckless Camper Campground, the idyllic vacation spot of my childhood, only a week after I’d been told I was cancer-free had seemed like a divine portent.

I’d sworn things would be different, but here I was, obsessively fixated on the business and completely ignoring the beauty and enchantment that surrounded me.

“When Austin gets here after school, he can do a quick sweep of the camp sites, and make sure the piers are clean,” Mom continued. “You need to go for a hike. Or better yet, go into town, check out the stores, and have a nice lunch and a cup of coffee. Take a book with you.”

My books were still packed in boxes, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to read about hummingbird migration or the geological structure of the Appalachian Mountains, but there was no arguing with Mom when she was like this. And she was right. I needed a break. And a walk through town with an al fresco lunch sounded amazing.

Mom took the rolls of quarters from my hand, and pointed toward the door. With a laugh, I gave in, picking a random book off the shelves that flanked the fireplace, and grabbing Elvis’s leash.

“Come on, boy. It’s a nice day. We’ll take a car ride and walk around the town. Then we’ll sit outside The Coffee Dog where I can enjoy a cappuccino and read and you can look majestic.”

My bloodhound jumped up from where he’d been snoozing on the couch, energized by the words “ride” and “walk.”

Elvis called shotgun, so I hooked the seatbelt onto his harness for safety and headed to town, my hound drooling all over the leather seats and dashboard of my SUV.

Reckless had a population of about three thousand, which actually made it the second largest of the towns flanking Savage Lake. Derwood, home to the grocery and big-box stores, had nine thousand residents, where tiny Red Rock clocked in at barely a thousand. The town of Savage, our rivals in everything tourist and cultural, trailed us by only a few hundred, and from what I’d learned at last week’s community meeting, they were determined to oust us from our “second-largest” status. Savage was not only recruiting new residents, but trying to pass some legislation to expand the town limits, hopefully scooping enough of the rural residents to push their numbers higher than ours. Helen Jeffries, aka The Bird, was determined Savage would not succeed.

The Bird scared me. She was a stork-like woman who I guessed to be about three hundred years old and probably a former schoolteacher—the kind of schoolteacher who rapped your knuckles with a ruler for talking in class then assigned you a ten page essay. Within days of arriving here, I’d needed to provide a plan for the coordination of campground events with the town festivals. I’d based most of it off what the former owner of the campsite, Len Trout, had done in the past, and had help from my neighbor, Lottie Sinclair. Still, The Bird had returned my plan covered in red ink, with a scathing paragraph of criticism and demand that “I submit something more acceptable within the next two days”.

I hadn’t worked as hard on my Master’s thesis as I’d done on that revised plan. Even then, I’d received only a grudging “this will do for your first year.” 

Parking my SUV, I snapped the leash on Elvis, grabbed my tote, and headed down the street, twisting around to push the button on my key fob and lock the car. Nobody locked their cars in Reckless, but it was a habit that was hard to break, especially since I’d previously lived in a town with a whole lot more than three thousand residents.

It was a short walk down one side of Main Street, then back up the other side, so I stopped in a few places that would allow Elvis to accompany me inside. We stood in the lobby of the community center, looking over the bulletin board where I’d placed a few flyers for some of the campsite activities, trying to encourage the locals to participate. Some events like the sunset-on-the-dock paint-and-sip, the chili cookoff, the trail 5k, and the kite festival would be a bigger hit with a larger audience in attendance. Plus, if I could get the locals to shell out a few bucks here and there to attend fun events at the campground, it would take some of the financial pressure of the guest side of the business.

Besides, I wanted the campground to be a place the locals enjoyed coming to, not just vacationing folk with their RVs and tents.

Pulling a flyer out of my tote, I hung up the announcement for the First Annual Reckless Camper Campground Disco Mountain Bike Race, tentatively scheduled for early September. Hopefully I could get enough entries to pull this one off. I hadn’t decided what the overall race winner would receive yet, so I’d kept it vague for now.

Leaving the Community Center, I checked out the specials menu at the Chat-n-Chew, then stopped in Bait and Beer to make sure Bobbi Benjamin would be coming by to stock the camp store later this afternoon.

That done, I contemplated heading to Ruby’s Place for lunch, but ended up walking to The Coffee Dog instead. I tied Elvis to an iron hitching post on the brick patio, and went inside. The owner, Sierra Sanchez-Blue looked up and smiled as she saw me.

“Hey, Sassy. You here for business, or a cup of coffee and a pastry?”

“Both.” I made a quick decision to forego lunch for something sweet instead, and pointed at the bear claws in the pastry case. “I’ll take one of those to eat here, and a dozen of them delivered to the campground Sunday morning. They look amazing.”

She beamed. “They are amazing, if I do say so myself. Cappuccino? Whole milk with a sprinkle of cinnamon on top?”

I’d been in town less than a month and she already knew me so well.

“Yes, please. I’ll sit outside. Also, can I get one of those doggie cookies for Elvis?” I watched as she put an artfully decorated dog cookie into a little bag marked with bones and the shop’s signature logo.

“How are things?” I asked as she rang up my purchase.

I saw Sierra’s daughter, Flora, daily as she was the one who dropped off the deliveries before heading to school. She was also the one who came by to pick up orders after her classes had finished. Like my new handyman, Austin, Flora attended Reckless High School.

Sierra rolled her eyes as she handed me my change and went to put my bear claw on a plate. “That girl of mine is gonna be the death of me. Five college acceptances. Five. All those applications and essays and application fees and you know what she does? She decides she wants to take a year off and work with me instead. Deshaun and I pushed her to at least accept one with a delayed entry, but then she tells us she doesn’t know if she even wants to go to college. SAT prep, years of AP classes, all those trips to tour campuses, and now this. I’m ready to strangle the girl.”

I made a sympathetic noise. “My son, Colter, had doubts as well during his senior year. He thought he could make just as much money without the degree, and honestly I’m not sure he was wrong, even though he did end up going and getting his degree. College has gotten insanely expensive, and in some fields you can have a wonderful career without a degree.”

Sierra narrowed her eyes. “You’re not helping here, Sassy.”

“Sorry.” I laughed. “As a woman with an MBA, I probably don’t have room to comment, but I think kids need time and space to consider their options before we shell out a hundred grand of their savings, our savings, and borrowed money to a four-year college.”

Sierra grimaced. “When did universities become so expensive?”

“About fifty years ago,” I drawled. I’d been paying my graduate loans off until recently myself and didn’t wish that debt on any young person.

“Maybe I can convince her to be an electrician or a plumber instead,” Sierra said as she handed me the plate with the bear claw. “Those vo-tech schools are a third of the price of a four year college.”

“And electricians make some serious money,” I added.

Sierra sighed. “I’m just worried she’s going to spend the next twenty years living with her dad and me while she tries to ‘find herself.’ I’m all for Flora exploring her inner journey, I’d just like her to have a viable career before she’s thirty.” 

“Flora’s a smart girl,” I assured her. “She’ll make the right decision.”

“I hope so.” Sierra waved toward the door. “I’ll bring your cappuccino out to you when it’s ready. It’ll give me an excuse to pet Elvis.”

“He’ll love that.” I headed out the door with my bear claw and my dog’s treat, finding a table before I untied Elvis and brought him over. As expected, he scarfed down his biscuit then eyed my pastry with his sad hound-eyes.

“That look doesn’t work on me,” I lied, pivoting my chair so I could eat without experiencing the mournful stare. It didn’t help. I knew he was still watching every bite I took. Glancing over, I saw the slow tail wag, and the line of drool that accompanied his intense gaze.

“Fine.” I laughed and broke off a piece of the pastry for the dog. “But that’s all you’re getting.”

Thankfully Sierra came out then with my cappuccino and distracted Elvis long enough for me to finish my treat. As she made a fuss over the hound, I pulled the reservations lists out of my bag along with the flyers.

“Do you mind hanging a few of these up for me in the coffee shop?” I asked as Sierra gave Elvis one final ear scratch. “I’d love it if some of the locals came out for our events.”

“First Annual Reckless Camper Campground Disco Mountain Bike Race,” she read with a laugh. “I’d pay to watch that. How the heck are you merging disco with mountain biking? That’s the weirdest thing I’ve ever heard of.”

“I’ll admit that I stole the idea from the rec center in Roanoke.” I held up my hands. “It’ll either flop or be a big hit.”

She shook her head. “I don’t get it. Do they get off their bikes and dance at stopping points on the race? Is there disco music along the route? Costume contest for the mountain bikers?”

“Yes.” I laughed. “Seriously. The Roanoke one is just a mountain biking race, but I’m taking this disco thing way too far. And now I’m terrified no one will enter and I’ll be stuck with fifty tiny mirrored-ball keychains, and a dozen Bee Gees posters.”

“You are insane.” She took a couple flyers and waved them at me. “But I like you and it’s in my interest as well as the town’s to make sure Reckless Camper Campground is a success, so not only will I post these up, but I’ll convince my husband to enter. The man never throws anything away. I know he’s got some wide-collar, pastel satin shirts somewhere in the attic.”

I bounced with excitement at my potential first entry. “Deshaun mountain bikes?”

She nodded. “He’s with a club. And he’ll force them to enter as well. What are the prizes? Besides disco-ball keychains and Bee Gees posters, that is.”

“Pet rocks,” I told her. “And I’m thinking of having macramé plant hangers, round lens, orange-tinted sunglasses, and fondue sets for the winners.”

“Heck, I might put on a velour dress and mountain bike for a fondue set.” She chuckled. “It sounds fun, Sassy. I’ll do everything I can to make sure you get lots of entries.”

“Thank you. I really appreciate it.” My eyes actually teared up. I hadn’t been here a month, but people in Reckless had been so welcoming and supportive. Sierra wasn’t just a business associate, she was a friend. And I truly appreciated the loyalty of a good friend.

She waved my words away. “No problem. Enjoy your cappuccino.”

Sierra went back into the shop. Elvis plopped down at my side with a sigh, and I sipped my coffee, trying to read the book I’d grabbed before leaving home. It was about tulip mania, a speculative craze in seventeenth century Holland that reminded me a lot of the Beanie Baby fever of the late ’90s. Admittedly, some of the tulips in the pictures were really beautiful, but I couldn’t imagine throwing a fortune, or even a hundred dollars at them. I set the book aside after a few chapters, but it had inspired me enough that I made a note in my scheduler to get some bulbs to plant this coming fall.

Then I picked up the reservations list Mom had given me with a twinge of guilt. I was supposed to be relaxing, but tulip mania just wasn’t doing it for me, and I wanted to see who our guests were this week. Were they adults? Any families with children? How old were the kids? I’d just take a quick look, make some notes and when I got back to the campground, I could tweak the planned activities.

I needed this campground to be a success. I needed to make sure we had enough money coming in to cover more than just our operating expenses.

The little voice in my head informed me that this was supposed to be a fun adventure, and here I was turning it into a stressful business enterprise. That voice said I should relax, enjoy my coffee and the sunshine and time with my hound, and leave all the work for later.

I hadn’t bought this campground to throw myself back into the corporate sixty-hour workweek. This was supposed to be my new life, my dream. And dreams included time for friends, family and…what had Sierra called it? Self-discovery.

But as I’d always done, I ignored that voice and got to work.