Killer Classics

Book 5: Book Barn Mystery

by Kym Roberts

Genres: Amateur Sleuth; Cozy Mystery; Female Sleuths

Synopsis

Small-town life in Hazel Rock becomes a Texas-size crime scene when murder takes a page from Charli Rae Warren’s book club’s latest mystery . . . Charli takes great pride in running one of the few independent, family-owned bookstores in small-town Texas. She vets everything carefully, with an eye to the eclectic tastes of the locals. That includes the Book Barn’s weekly book club selection. This time out it’s a mystery whose characters bear a striking resemblance to local citizens, including Charli’s friend Sugar . . . who’s the prime suspect when her real-life nemesis is found dead in a hotel’s water tank. With help from her pet armadillo Princess, Charli campaigns to clear Sugar’s sweet name—literally—when the up-for-election mayor becomes a killer’s next target. Murder and politics make scandalous bedfellows as Charli discovers that fiction may be fatal, but reality could be just as deadly . . . “A well written, fast-paced cozy mystery that has well developed and likable characters with good humor and a bit of romance.” —Fresh Fiction on Perilous Poetry “An electrifying tale.”—Fresh Fiction on A Reference to Murder

Release date: December 4, 2018

Publisher: Lyrical Press

Print pages: 190

Sample

Chapter 1

“Sugar did it.”

Sugar’s mouth dropped open, and her eyes nearly popped out of her head at Reba Sue’s accusation.

“Sugar didn’t kill anyone,” Leila argued. “The woman traps scorpions at the bar and releases them outside.” Leila shuddered, her round body jiggling from head to toe. “Stupid critters belong under a boot heel.”

Reba Sue, however wasn’t backing down. “We’re not talking about Sugar killing a pest that could sting her,” she insisted. “We’re talking about a gold-diggin’ woman dying after she made a move on Sugar’s man. I’m telling you, any woman would kill Maddie after what that good for nothin’ tramp did. And Sugar is no different.”

My best friend Scarlet joined the argument. “As usual, you’re barking up the wrong hemline, Reba Sue. Liza Twine killed her.” Scarlet ticked off the points of her argument on two well-manicured, red nails. “She had motive and opportunity.”

Liza Twaine scoffed. Her purple nails drummed on the surface of the hand-milled, ten-foot-long table the women of the Mystery Moms Book Club were gathered around. It was like a personal nail war going on between the two of them. “What could I possibly have against Maddie?”

The rest of the book club members in the loft of my family bookstore, the Book Barn Princess, began arguing back and forth. More names were thrown into the hat as potential suspects to the murder.

Rolling my eyes, I put my index finger and thumb together, raised them to my lips, and let loose a whistle loud enough to bring the rafters down. The argument stopped cold turkey. All twelve women turned as one to look at me.

“May I remind y’all that you’re talking about characters in a book—not our very own Sugar who is sitting right here.”

Sugar’s lips pursed, and her chin bobbed toward her chest in a silent thank you for me giving her redemption.

“And…” I raised my hand to Maddie sitting on the opposite side of the table. “Sugar brought Maddie as a guest to our book club today. I hardly think they’re at odds.”

We all looked at Maddie, who had the same features as Sugar. Both in their twenties with blue eyes and long, blond hair, the two could have been sisters. Instead, they had both fallen for the same man, five years apart. Maddie was the ex-wife in the relationship, while Sugar was the current girlfriend.

“I would hope that Sugar or Liza Twaine wouldn’t dream of trying to kill me.” Maddie flipped her blond hair over her shoulder.

Daisy coughed and said something under her breath that wasn’t fit for print. “Well, I’ve finished the book, and I can tell you that—”

Every member of the Mystery Moms Book Club’s voice rose to stop Daisy, our eldest member, before she could give away the plot. Most of the women hadn’t finished the book since I’d just sent out the recommendation the previous day. In fact, we weren’t even supposed to be discussing Woman Scorned until next week. Yet the book had grabbed their attention, and their responses had been passionate. Between the loud noises, squeals, and inappropriate phrases, I truly hoped we didn’t have any tourists shopping on the lower lever of the store. Any outsiders would think we were plum crazy. Anyone who lived in the tri-county area would know it was just book club Wednesday.

Daisy’s husband Jessie cleared the air of animosity. “That’s my wife,” he said with sarcasm dripping off every word.

All the women began to laugh…with the exception of Daisy. Her scowl deepened as she directed it toward Jessie. She obviously didn’t care for her husband talking about her in that tone. Especially when it was so close to the line she was famous for using when talking about him. That’s my husband was the most commonly used phrase in Hazel Rock thanks to Daisy, and it had multiple meanings. It could mean, get your grubby paws away from my man, or this old coot is going to get an earful when I get him alone. The possibilities were endless—until Jessie applied the phrase to Daisy.

I was betting that would be the first and last time he tried it.

“Doesn’t anyone else find it creepy that the author used real people from our town to write a murder mystery?” I asked.

Reba Sue dismissed my concern. “He changed the names.”

“Changing Sugar’s name to Candy isn’t much of a stretch,” I argued. “Not to mention killing off Maddie—I mean Pattie, isn’t very nice if he’s angling it about real people.” The author had changed Maddie’s name, to Pattie in his book and her death hadn’t been pleasant.

“That’s because he was smitten with Sugar. The way my husband used to be with me.” Daisy glared at Jessie sitting across the room reading a copy of Rodeo Times. As a retired rodeo star, Jessie loved to catch up on what was going on throughout the circuit with the monthly newspaper.

Jessie lowered the paper and winked at Daisy. “I still am, darlin’.”

Daisy’s frown disappeared, and a twinkle appeared in her eyes.

“Nathan Daniels wasn’t smitten. He was obsessed with Sugar,” Leila interjected.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“He came into the bar every night and watched her. If Sugar wasn’t scheduled, he’d turn around and head out without having one beer. He claimed she was inspiring his next best seller.” Leila’s nose scrunched with distaste. “I think he was one creepy man.”

Mateo Espinosa, the county sheriff who’d kept silent throughout the entire meeting while he leaned against the railing with his chiseled arms folded across his chest, frowned. His brown uniform wasn’t the most appealing, but the body that filled it out made up for the putrid color. Tall and muscular, he had dark hair and dark eyes that put him in the Sheriff McDreamy category. “Why didn’t someone say something to me?”

Leila shook her head, her curls jiggling in time with her body. “Sugar never complained. Not once. She said it was fine if he looked, as long as he didn’t touch. I had Joe watching him whenever he came into the bar.”

Joe and Leila Buck owned the Tool Shed Tavern. It was where everyone went on Monday, Thursday, and Sunday nights during football season. When it wasn’t football season, they offered the only live entertainment in town every Friday night. The bar had been a staple in town long before my family had moved to Hazel Rock, Texas.

Mateo looked at Sugar. “You should have said something.”

I knew Mateo better than most people in Hazel Rock. He was irritated that he missed something everyone else knew about. I could tell by the creases forming in his brow. Right now, he wasn’t happy with the possibility of someone stalking Sugar.

And, like Mateo, I wasn’t comfortable with it either. “Changing the name of the Tool Shed to the Tool Shack for his novel wasn’t exactly a stretch of the imagination,” I said.

“Nor is Eliza Blain that far of a stretch from Liza Twaine. From what I’ve read so far, he’s depicted me as a desperate reporter who’d stop at nothing to get a story. Including murder.”

No one argued with Liza. If anything, a few heads nodded in agreement with the author’s description of her. Which was enough to tick Liza off from here ‘til Tuesday.

“Whatever.” She huffed. “I have a deadline to make.” Liza got up and stomped down the steps in her four-inch, purple stilettos.

“See you next week!” I called down to her. Her response was mumbled too quietly for me to hear before she disappeared behind the swish of the sliding front doors.

Daisy continued the discussion. “Luckily, Nathan Daniels doesn’t write true crime stories. If he did, his book would have left one of us dead, one of us widowed, and one of us locked up. The last thing we need is trouble.”

“This town could use a little trouble,” Jessie said from behind his newspaper.

The silence echoed as we waited for Jessie to explain himself. Even Daisy seemed shocked by her husband’s comment. The sound of Daddy ringing up a sale downstairs traveled to us, and I felt momentary relief that at least something was going right this morning, since the book club was turning out to be a bust. When Jessie let his comment fester as he turned the page of his newspaper, his wife finally responded for all of us.

“You’ve done lost your mind Jessie; none of us are young enough to stir up anything anymore.”

Several of the mystery moms nodded in agreement, but Mateo just grinned and looked in my direction.

“I know you’re not thinking that I’m a troublemaker,” I leaned over and whispered in his ear.

“I’m thinking your name is synonymous with trouble.”

Before I could respond my daddy made his way up the stairs. In his late fifties, he was lean and fit with enough gray in all the right places to make him look distinguished. His plaid shirt, jeans, and cowboy boots were pretty common in Hazel Rock, especially for the men of his generation.

“Has Cade moved in?” he asked me. “His stuff is scattered everywhere.”

Mateo’s left eyebrow rose a quarter of a centimeter. No one noticed it. Except me.

Jessie laid his paper in his lap. “And the trouble begins.”

Daisy smiled at her spouse as she swiped the air in his direction. “That’s my husband.”

I laughed at my father’s question, but it sounded more like a nervous cackle. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

The members of the Mystery Moms were intrigued. They saw the opportunity to get the answers to a question that had plagued the citizens of Hazel Rock for over a dozen years. Would the town princess and her hero, Hazel Rock’s current mayor, get back together, or not?

We would not.

Mateo uncrossed his legs as he leaned against the post at the top of the steps. We’d been quietly dating for the past several months. For a small town, it was amazing that our relationship had never filled the rumor mill with yards of material. No one teased us, and no one asked us about it. They just let us be, and that was the way I liked it. But it looked like Daddy had opened a can of worms that was going to start the rumor mill grinding at full speed.

Mateo snuck a peek in the opposite direction of the front door. Again, no one noticed his reaction to the conversation. But I’d recently found I could read him like a children’s novel, and by turning his back away from the front door, Mateo’s actions told me he was more than a little bit interested in where Cade Calloway had left his “stuff.” Mateo always watched the front door. The last thing he was comfortable doing was turning his back to any door, yet apparently not knowing about Cade’s things sprawled across the tearoom downstairs made him even more uncomfortable.

The wicked woman in me took pleasure in his insecurity. It was the biggest reveal to date as to how much it would bother him if Cade and I got back together.

Which we were not doing. Cade was my ex-high school sweetheart, for Pete’s sake. There were too many years under that particular bridge. I glanced at the boxes of Cade’s stuff that had overflowed into the loft. Hopefully everyone would continue to think they were used books I needed to put out for sale. Cause if they didn’t…

“Can we talk about this later?” I asked under my breath as Daddy approached me and gave me a kiss on the cheek.

“Is that why we had to meet up here instead of in the tearoom?” My best friend Scarlet asked.

Scarlet was the last person I expected to lead the charge into private matters of my heart, or to stir up the trouble that was beginning to brew. My best friend knew what the women were like when they smelled blood—they’d grab hold of the gossip, shake it one way, and if nothing came out, they’d shake it the other way before tossing it in the air for the next mystery mom to try her luck at ferreting out the answers.

“I saw them huddled together at the back door of the Barn this morning. They were real cozy-like,” added Reba Sue. She’d had her eye on Cade for the past several years, but a couple months back she’d realized she didn’t stand a chance. It wasn’t my fault. Reba Sue lost Cade to the same woman everyone lost Cade to—his career.

Unfortunately, I was pretty sure she hit record on her phone to get the scoop on the town mayor. I had no doubt this conversation was going to make it to Liza Twaine’s in-box at the local TV station. Cade was not going to be happy.

“It’s not true!” I screeched with a nervous look in Mateo’s direction. His brow was wrinkled, but he didn’t say a word, and his dark Latino eyes lost their expressiveness.

Fuzz buckets. I couldn’t tell what he was thinking now, but I knew it couldn’t be good. The problem was that I’d been sworn to secrecy, and breaking Cade’s trust was the last thing I wanted to do.

“Let’s get back to the reason why we’re here—we were talking about next week’s mystery, Woman Scorned by Nathan Daniels,” I said.

Daisy Mahan rescued me. “I knew the killer from page one.”

“So did I,” added Scarlet as she reached for the pitcher of tea in the middle of the table.

“You haven’t even finished the book,” Reba Sue protested. Tall with a little too much makeup, her complaint was loud and impatient. She rolled her eyes when everyone looked at her. “What? She hasn’t. None of us have.”

“Well, I have, and I didn’t know who the killer was until the last chapter of the book,” added Jessie.

“Of course, you didn’t,” Reba Sue mumbled. “But you’re not a member of the Mystery Moms, are you?”

Daisy bristled, sat up a little straighter, and glared at Reba Sue. “That’s. My. Husband,” she ground out between her dentures.

Reba Sue ignored her. “I’m telling you, Sugar killed her.”

Jessie rolled his eyes at her accusation. “You make it sound like the victim died of diabetes, not a bullet in the head.”

“And you make it sound like a joke,” Reba Sue accused.

Reba Sue and I had never been friends, and like Jessie, my eyes rolled when she compared the killer in Nathan Daniels latest mystery novel to our very own Sugar McWilliams. Sugar was as sweet as her name implied and worked as a waitress at the Tool Shed. In her spare time, she worked part time at the Barn. She was responsible. She took care of her boyfriend’s children better than their moms. Sugar was not a killer…and we were arguing about a fictional murder.

“Good grief, Reba Sue. You sound like you really believe Sugar killed someone,” Leila said.

Reba Sue began skimming through the book in front of her. “Listen to his description: A voluptuous blond, Candy’s breasts were the size of—”

It was my best friend who shut her down this time. “We get the picture, Reba Sue. We’re all reading the novel.” Scarlet Jenkins could have been the voluptuous killer Nathan Daniels was describing in his book, except my best friend barely reached five foot, and she had a shimmering flow of red hair, not “sun-kissed blond tresses cascading over her shoulders to tickle the tops of her…”

If someone described Scarlet like that…bless his heart, because it wouldn’t be beating in his chest for very long.

“You’re right. I don’t know why I didn’t see the similarities between Candy and our Sugar before now,” said Betty Walker, the owner of Bluebonnet Quilt Shop. Betty wasn’t the eldest of the group, but her blue hair which looked like a helmet sitting on top of her head, didn’t quite go with her skin tone. It made the veins in her face more visible, and I suspected her bobble-head effect was just one of several identical wigs she chose to wear in public.

“Of course, there are similarities, that’s what Nathan Daniels is known for—creating characters who are relatable and believable.” Scarlet took a sip of her sweet tea and looked around the table, daring anyone to argue.

This was the wrong group to dare.

“So, you agree that he based the characters on the real people of Hazel Rock?” I asked as I moved to the table and sat down across from Reba Sue.

“There’s a baker named Hans, for Pete’s sake,” Betty chimed in.

“He makes wedding cakes. Does your Franz make wedding cakes for people around the globe?” Scarlet asked.

“No, but he makes world-renowned pastries,” Betty argued.

Franz made some mighty fine goodies, but I hated to tell Betty that her beau wasn’t world renowned.

Daisy wasn’t about to be left out of the argument. “The name of the town is Greenstone and the mayor’s name is Wade. Did you guys know our mayor was stepping out with Candy…I mean, Sugar?”

Maddie’s head swiveled in Betty’s direction.

Sugar had had enough. “I am not!”

“Lord have mercy, you ladies have lost your minds in this heat!” Daisy’s husband sat in the corner fanning himself with his cowboy hat.

Daisy gave another eye roll. “That’s my husband.”

The women started arguing across the tables, each with their own opinion about Nathan Daniels’s fictional town mirroring our own Hazel Rock. I leaned toward Scarlet. “Cade’s not seeing Sugar, is he?”

She gave me a look that said I had gone plum crazy if I believed that.

Daddy chose that as his cue to exit and headed for the stairs. He hadn’t planned on staying longer than an hour while I managed the book club meeting since it was his day off. I had no doubt there were a few fish with his name on them waiting for him in the river.

Reba Sue took offense to Jessie’s interruption. “Hush up, you old coot. This is serious business.”

Every other word being hurled across the table dropped to the floor in one beat of silence. The Mysteries Moms looked at Reba Sue who had no clue she’d just committed a crime against society. Specifically, we all knew better than to insult Jessie Mahan in front of his wife, Daisy. And Reba Sue had done it several times.

Reba Sue looked at all the women staring at her. “What?” she asked. “He’s not even a mystery mom.”

All eyes darted to Daisy, who slowly stood up, every joint in her body creaking in slow motion as it echoed throughout the loft.

Jessie was the first to recognize the threat. “Now, Daisy. She didn’t mean nothin’.” His knees groaned as he got up and approached the table, but no one paid him no mind.

Especially Daisy. She was too busy seeing red—or in this case, blue—the blue blouse that was showing off Reba Sue’s cleavage.

“That’s. My. Husband.”

Everyone but Reba Sue winced with each word. She was oblivious to the threat standing before her in the eighty-some-year-old body. She dismissed the elderly woman as easily as if she were a just another woman trying to get some attention.

“Daisy, you know darn well the man is a menace,” Reba Sue said, and then took a sip of her tea like she’d made a comment about the weather.

And just as I thought Daisy was going to reach for a handful of Reba Sue’s perfectly coiffed blond hair, Reba Sue let out a horrible noise that could compete with a herd of screeching cats on a hot tin roof. She pushed her chair back from the table with so much force, the table drove into Dais. . .