Potluck and Pandemonium

Book 1: A Sweetwater Springs Southern Mystery

by S.C. Merritt

Genres: Christian Suspense; Small Town & Rural; Amateur Sleuth; Cozy Mystery; Culinary Cozy Mysteries; Female Sleuths; christian cozy mystery; female sleuth; amateur sleuth; culinary cozy; small town suspense; cozy series; senior sleuth; southern humor

Synopsis

Recently widowed Glory Harper needs a fresh start. After the investigation into her husband's suspicious death in Texas stalls, she decides that the best way to begin moving forward with her life is to pull up stakes and head back home to Alabama. But when Glory stumbles over a body in the graveyard during a church picnic, she finds herself at the top of the suspect list. Which isn't surprising since the murder weapon is engraved with her initials. Looks like this murder has her name written all over it.
Glory decides to put her mystery-solving instincts to work and “help” her brother, a detective on the local force, prove her innocence. But when his new boss, the hunky Hunt Walker, steps in and takes over, Glory can't seem to stay out of hot water. And it's getting hotter by the minute!
Can Glory find the killer before another dead body is found?
This fun, southern cozy mystery is full of lovable characters and a small town you can't help but fall in love with.
And, don't miss out on the great recipes at the end of the book!

Release date: January 2, 2020

Print pages: 182

Sample

PROLOGUE

I jerked the steering wheel to the left as that irritating grinding noise roused my wandering mind back to reality. I guided my Honda off the grids on the shoulder of the interstate back into the lane and tried to clear my mind. It was beginning to rain again, so I clicked my wipers into high gear and glanced in my rearview mirror to make sure I was still being followed. My brother, Jake, who had generously used a couple of his vacation days at work to come to Texas and help load and move me back to Alabama, was currently behind me in a rental truck. It hadn’t been an easy decision for me, but it was definitely the right one.

Thirty years ago last September, my husband and I entered into married bliss and promptly moved to Buckhead, Texas, a very small suburb north of Dallas. Eighteen months ago, I became a widow. We loved our little town, but after Dave’s death, I was thrown for a loop. I wasn’t sure about anything anymore. I had always been a bit of a worrier. You know, one of those crazy people who drives down the road and imagines scenarios like: what I should do when I top the next hill and someone is heading toward me in my lane? What does the ditch look like on my right? Is there a tree I need to avoid? Could I keep the car from flipping if I ran up that embankment up ahead? Well, without Dave there, it really started getting out of hand. Every time the phone rang, I would imagine bad news. After a while I had to make a decision. I knew it was time for a fresh start and I needed to get back home.

Dave was an accountant. Just a regular, hard-working, certified public accountant. He got his degree from the University of Alabama, just like me. Except my degree, is in Interior Design. We were in love and had big dreams. He took a job right out of college with a small firm in Dallas named Johnson & Fredrickson. He had offers from larger firms but he decided to go with a smaller one so he could spend more time at home when we decided to start a family. As it turned out, that took about a minute since I ended up getting pregnant on our honeymoon.

Nine months later, our daughter, Macy, was born and I stayed home with her until she skipped off to Kindergarten. Dave was still plugging away at debits and credits when I decided to see if I could remember anything I learned in college and started working part time as a designer with a local interior design firm. Dave worked a few late nights every month, just like most accountants do when he had to close out the books from the month before and periodically, he would have to travel to meet with clients who weren’t local. We loved every minute of our lives together. We had great friends and a great life. Everything was perfect. The years passed and Macy grew up and went off to college and just like that, we were empty-nesters. Dave gradually started traveling more so I started working more hours to fill the time.

One night, when Dave was working late at the office, there was a knock at the door. I dragged myself out of my comfy recliner where I was enthralled in a rerun of Murder, She Wrote, placed my Diet Coke on the side table and shuffled to the door. I peeked through the glass and fear immediately rose in my throat. I didn’t recognize either of the men standing on the porch, but I had a feeling it was bad news. I inched the door open.

“Can I help you?”

“Mrs. Glory Harper?” One of them asked.

“Yes.”

“My name is Officer Grady Bonner with the Buckhead Police Department. May we come in?”

I backed away from the door and let them step inside.

“Mrs. Harper, I’m sorry to have to tell you, but your husband, David Harper, has been killed.”

I sucked in a breath and felt myself about to faint as my knees buckled. One of the men caught me and eased me over to a chair to sit down. This couldn’t be happening.

“What happened? Was it a car accident?”

“No ma’am. I’m afraid his body was found in a parking garage. In Reno, Nevada.”

“What? That’s not possible! He works in Dallas. He would have told me if he was traveling for work today. I’m sure you must have the wrong person.”

But he didn’t. I asked them more questions, but either they didn’t know the answers, or they weren’t allowed to tell me. Looking back now, I’m pretty sure it was the latter.

The next weeks and months were a blur. After the funeral, it took me months before I could even open the door to Dave’s home office. The men from his firm had come immediately to pick up his work laptop and any client files he had brought home, so the rest of it sat just as he left it.

The one thing I did do was stay in touch with the police about the investigation. If they didn’t call me at least every other day, I called them. Detective John Bridgestone was the man in charge of the case.

“Detective Bridgestone, this is Glory Harper again. Do you have any new leads on Dave’s case?”

“Hello, Mrs. Harper. No, we are still trying to piece together what little bit of evidence we have. You know that the security cameras in the parking garage had been disabled and there were no other witnesses, so it’s going to be a slow process.”

“What about fingerprints? Did you check his body or his car for those? Maybe the killer touched him. What about fibers? Were there any pieces of clothing or fibers off fabric that your men found?”

“No ma’am. Since it was on an outdoor level of the garage, the wind would’ve carried any of that type of evidence away immediately.” I could hear him blow out a long, irritated breath.

“His wallet was empty except for his driver’s license, so we are pretty sure it was a random mugging, Mrs. Harper.”

“What about the fact that he was in Reno, Nevada, and he never even mentioned to me that he was going out of town when he left that morning. Surely that must have something to do with it.”

“I don’t want to speak ill of the dead, Mrs. Harper, but I think maybe you need to reconcile yourself to the possibility that he may have been in Reno to see another woman. That’s why he didn’t tell you he was going out of town.”

I disconnected the call and sat down on the edge of the bed. The phone dropped to the floor at my feet as I just stared into space, numb to everything. I knew deep in my heart that Dave was not unfaithful to me. Our love was strong and enduring. Built on faith and trust. He would never do that to me. I know he was a man who wasn’t perfect. It can happen to anyone, but if there was nothing else in this world that I knew for sure, I knew that Dave Harper loved me.

After about six months of having essentially the same conversation every week, the phone rang. When I saw Detective Bridgestone’s name scroll across the screen, my heart raced. He never calls me. I am always the one to call him. They must have a break in the case! Something that will finally give us some closure and find justice for Dave.

“Hello, Detective Bridgestone.” I answered, trying to steady my breathing.

“Mrs. Harper,” he said matter-of-factly.

“Do you have good news? Do you have new leads?”

“I know this is not what you have hoped to hear, Mrs. Harper, but we have made the decision to declare it a cold case and shelve it indefinitely.”

My heart sank. After all these months, he finally said the words I was dreading. I knew it was coming sooner or later.

“And Mrs. Harper – I know you are not happy that we have stopped the investigation, but I hope you will let this go. I would advise you to move on and above all, do not continue asking questions on your own. I really can’t say more than this, but it wouldn’t be safe. I’d hate for anything to happen to you.”

“What do you mean... not safe? I thought you said this was a random robbery gone wrong? Surely you don’t think some thug robber from Reno, Nevada, is going to come looking for me all the way to Dallas, Texas. Is there something you aren’t telling me, Detective?”

“I’ve already said too much, Mrs. Harper. Just leave it alone or I’m afraid you’ll regret it.” The phone line went dead.

I got up and walked down the hall to Dave’s office. I grasped the doorknob, took a deep breath and turned it. The air in the room smelled a little stale after months of being closed off, but I could have sworn I could still smell Dave’s cologne. Macy had given him a bottle of his favorite last Christmas.

I sat down at his desk and opened drawer after drawer. I thought it was odd that the detective had never asked to go through Dave’s office. They never once asked to see any of his files. I knew there had to be something in here that could give me some kind of clue about why he was in Reno. I searched for an hour and all I found were files related to our personal finances. Paid bills files, copies of Macy’s college payments, binders full of instructions and owner’s manuals for every appliance in the house. But nothing related to his work. Where was his briefcase? I’m sure he had it with him, but it was never found. How odd that they would take everything except his driver’s license. A mugger would have taken the whole wallet and not take the time to just remove the cash. And a robber also wouldn’t have thought to wear gloves so they wouldn’t leave fingerprints on the wallet. None of it made sense, yet the police had just given up. The more I thought about it, the more I was convinced that someone put pressure on them to shut down the investigation. But who? And why?

The next morning, I brought in several boxes I had saved from grocery deliveries and began boxing up everything in Dave’s desk and labeling carefully. I had just pulled out the last file from the bottom left drawer when I accidentally knocked a pen off the desk into the drawer. The sound it made caught my attention. It was a hollow sound, not like a solid oak drawer at all. I reached into the drawer and tapped on the bottom. The base of the drawer shifted away from the wall of the drawer. I used the pen to pry up a false bottom. Hidden underneath was something that would change my life forever.

There in the bottom of the drawer were four large brown envelopes. I spread them out on the desktop. The first envelope I opened contained several US Passports with Dave’s picture, but different names. I opened the passports one by one.

Steven Goldsmith from Wyoming.

Matthew Green from New York.

William Brotherton from Kansas.

The last one flipped open and it wasn’t a passport. It was an ID badge for Special Agent, David Harper for the FBI.

I sat there stunned. Like I was living in a nightmare and couldn’t wake up. Was this real? Was my husband a secret agent for the US government and I didn’t know it? How long had this been going on? How long had he been lying to me? I looked at the issue date of the ID card. Ten years? He’d been lying to me for ten years? And what on earth did the FBI need an accountant for?

I picked up one of the other envelopes. Written on the front was the name Salvatore “Big Sal” Cardinelli. I opened it up and found copies of what looked like ledger pages and computer printouts of bank records along with a computer flash drive. Pictures of a short, squatty little man with a cigar in his mouth walking out of a restaurant in some big city. Maybe New York City?

The writing on the second envelope said Frank “The Fixer” Fishetti. It held the same type of papers, another flash drive and snapshots, but these were of a paunchy, middle-aged man with a greasy black mustache. He had on a dark suit, a fedora balanced on his bald head and a blonde bombshell on each arm. They looked to be in Vegas, maybe. The women had on showgirl costumes with beads dangling from any place that had enough fabric to sew a bead on to.

I flipped over the last envelope and stopped. The name written on it was Glory. I pinched open the clasp on the last envelope and inside was a stack of money. I slowly pulled out the stack banded together with a paper band. Ten thousand dollars in one-hundred-dollar bills. It was clear now, that he must have been helping investigate illegal accounting practices like money laundering and embezzlement. There was no mistaking the names on the envelopes were connected to organized crime. I held the envelope upside down and tapped it. A white piece of paper folded in half floated out onto the desktop. I picked it up and opened it.

My Glory Bug, if you’re reading this, it must be because I’m gone. I’m sorry for all this has probably put you through but I want you to know one thing, I have loved you forever and I always will.

I know how much you love your TV sleuths, but please don’t try to dig any further into this. It’s much too dangerous. Hold on to these envelopes and keep them safe. If you ever find someone that you would trust with your life, maybe this information will help bring justice. Use this cash (don’t worry, it’s clean money) along with the insurance money to start over. Maybe back in Alabama. It’s home. Kiss my Macy for me. I’ll see you again someday. Love, Dave.

I almost laughed as I wiped away the tears rolling down my cheeks. Dave knew me better than anyone and he knew how much I love a mystery. He knew I would be torn between wanting—no, needing to find justice and closure for us and needing to move on like he wanted me to. It’s not just Dave’s case, though. Something deep in me hates to see crimes go unpunished. I have to admit it’s still a daily struggle to consciously put the past behind me and live in the present, looking forward to the future. But I was willing to give it my best shot.

The rain had slacked up again and I was getting hungry. I hoped Jake would want to stop somewhere in Mississippi for a nice, greasy burger and fries. I reached over and adjusted the satellite radio station to Seriously Sinatra. As Frank belted out Fly Me to the Moon, I smiled. A new life was ahead. Dave wanted it and I needed it.

Alabama, I’m coming home.

CHAPTER ONE

“Oh no, I think we should have left the house earlier. We may not get a parking space,” my daughter, Macy, said looking at the sea of cars parked around the church as she turned into the parking lot.

“You can probably find a spot over there on the far side of the graveyard”, I directed, pointing as we both gawked at the floral explosion outside. Worshipping the dead. That’s what my Granny always called it, but it was known in the south as First Sunday in May, or Decoration Day, and it was a big, big deal. For most small country churches in Alabama, the first Sunday in May is the biggest weekend of the year with lots of family reunions and graveyard cleanups on Saturday. In a lot of small communities, the tradition has continued and grown to enormous, if not outlandish, proportions in some cases. By Sunday, it usually looked like the botanical gardens exploded outside the church. It’s all capped off by the highlight of the weekend which is a special church service, followed by all-day singing and dinner on the ground. Over the years, dinner on the ground had become more of lunch on picnic tables, but it’s always the site of massive amounts of the best home cooking you will find anywhere. My mouth watered just thinking about all the good desserts we would have to choose from spread out along the endless rows of tables under the shade of the huge trees in just a few hours. I had always had a tendency to carry a few extra pounds so I tried to be careful not to go crazy at these events, but I decided that I’d worry about that next week. A couple of extra laps around the neighborhood with my pup, Izzy, should take care of it. At least that’s what I hoped. In the words of a true southern belle, Miss Scarlett O’Hara, “after all, tomorrow is another day”, right?

There were quite a few more arrangements scattered around the graveyard than when we finished the cleanup at our family gravesite yesterday.  I smoothed down the front of my new coral dress and checked for lipstick on my teeth in the mirror on the car’s flip down sun visor.

“Mom, I’ll let you out here, so you won’t have to traipse through the graveyard in your heels,” Macy offered.

“Thanks, Sweetheart! I’ll drop our food for the potluck off in the fellowship hall and meet you in the sanctuary.”

Pausing in the doorway to the sanctuary, I glanced across the congregation and saw Momma’s head craning around trying to find us. She spotted me and waved me over. I weaved my way around all the people who had been visiting in the aisle and were now scurrying to find a seat with their family members.

“Do you know how many people I had to knock off of this pew to save these seats for you?”

I laughed. “Momma, you’re not serious!”

“No, but I had to tell a little white lie that you were gone to the ladies’ room. It’s a wonder I didn’t get struck by lightning for lying in the Lord’s House.”

I watched as the choir filed into the choir loft. My sister in law, Kelly, sat on the front row with Linda Jenkins next to her on the end of the row. On a regular Sunday, the choir usually wore robes, but on special days like today and maybe Easter, the choir voted to go robeless. Most of the ladies had new dresses and it seemed like such a waste to cover them up. I noticed Linda didn’t have a new one. I had seen her wear that pretty floral print many times. Kelly mentioned to me once that Linda said her husband, J.R. didn’t see the need for a new dress. In his opinion, they were a waste of money because “you don’t get your money’s worth out of a fancy Sunday dress.” I glanced around and didn’t see my brother, Jake, anywhere and then I remembered he said he was on duty at the police station this morning. Jake was a detective for the Sweetwater Springs Police Department. Macy squeezed in beside me and Momma just as we were all instructed to stand for the first hymn. What a Friend We Have in Jesus. One of Momma’s favorites.

Kelly waggled her fingers in a little wave and smiled from the choir loft. I waved back and immediately noticed Linda’s eyes grow wide. I watched as a panicked look came over her face when she looked toward my right. Following her gaze, I noticed J.R. standing two rows in front of us, on the other end of the pew. Next to him was a man I didn’t recognize.

It was a very nice service. The choir did a bang-up job on the special songs they had been practicing. Just as Pastor Dan was closing out his sermon, I noticed the man next to J.R. slip out the side door toward the restrooms. The offertory music began and J.R. stood to help pass the offering plate. As head usher, he was in charge of taking the donations, placing them in the bank bag and dropping it in the secure locked drawer in the counting room back in the church office after the offering was taken.

As the pianist played a rollicking arrangement of When We All Get to Heaven for the offertory, her wig bobbing back and forth to the music, I leaned over to tell Macy that Momma and I had agreed to help Martha Jean Wilson set up the food on the picnic tables. We slipped out the back to make sure everything was ready for the rush that was about to come when the “amen” was said.

Martha Jean had an order to everything. That’s why she was always put in charge of these things.

“I’m surprised Martha Jean isn’t passing out table maps of where each type of food is supposed to go,” I whispered to Momma. “Heaven forbid that a dish of green bean casserole should end up mixed in with the lemon lime congealed salads.”

Momma giggled. “Where should we put our purses and Bibles? I would hate for them to get trampled or get something spilled on them.”

“Let me have yours and I’ll take them to the car. They should be safe from dirt and potato salad in there. Macy had to park on the other side of the graveyard, but it will only take me a couple minutes to walk them out there.”

I gathered our Bibles and purses and carefully picked my way through the graveyard, sidestepping to keep from stepping on graves. As I was ogling all the enormous flower arrangements throughout the gravesites, I stopped in my tracks.

“What is that over there? Is that a shoe poking out from behind that tree?”

“Hey, kids!” I called. “You don’t need to be out here playing hide and seek around these graves. It’s not safe, not to mention it’s disrespectful.” I waited for a response or a giggle, but the shoe didn’t move. Just silence. “Hey! Did you hear me?” I raised my voice a little louder as I moved closer and rounded the tree prepared to grab a mischievous little boy by the sleeve. But it was no mischievous boy. It was a man. His glazed over cold eyes told me that he wasn’t moving anytime soon. J.R. Jenkins was dead.

I screamed for anyone who was within earshot. “Help!! Somebody come out here quick!!” Momma came running around the side of the church. “Momma, get somebody, quick! Call Jake! I think J.R Jenkins is dead!”

I looked down at J.R. He was sitting there, pretty as you please, leaning up against a big tree in the middle of the graveyard. Except for the fact that his white dress shirt and blue tie were covered in blood, you could have put a glass of sweet tea in his hand and you would’ve thought he was sitting in the shade and enjoying the day. Lying next to the body was something I recognized immediately. It was a letter opener. My letter opener. The one I kept on my desk in the church office. It had my initials engraved on the handle. It had been a gift from Pastor Dan when I started the job at the church a few months back.

I stared at J.R.’s chest, waiting to see the rise and fall of breathing, but I was pretty sure there was none. I probably could have tried to find a pulse, but my hands were shaking so much, and I didn’t think I should disturb the body. The music stopped inside the church, which meant that the service was probably over. Any minute people would come pouring out of the doors on the other side of the church to be first in line at the picnic tables. My heart was racing, and I felt like I was going to be sick as I tried not to look down at J.R.’s body. Finally, Momma burst out the back door of the church followed by Joe Bryan, who was on the church security team.

“Glory, honey, are you alright? What happened?”

“I don’t know. He was just . . . there . . .” I stuttered, pointing down at the body.

Momma stopped in her tracks, staring down wide-eyed at the gruesome sight in front of us.

She wrapped her arms around my shoulders to try to stop both of us from shaking.

“Why don’t you just go sit down and take it easy until Jake gets here,” Momma instructed as Joe called 911.

“No, I’m fine,” I confirmed. Even as my head was still spinning, I felt a responsibility to help as much as I could.

The security team recruited several church members and posted them in sort of a semicircle to serve as a barrier trying to keep the people back from the scene until the police got there. It was like herding cats, but Pastor Dan was finally able to convince everyone to go back inside the church and wait until the police said it was okay for them to gather their belongings and leave.

“Make sure you don’t let anybody touch anything!” I yelled. “This is a crime scene.” I had seen enough mystery shows to know not to touch the letter opener. “Don’t let anyone go near my office either!”

“What’s your office got to do with anything?” Momma asked.

“Because it’s probably what they call a secondary crime scene.” I pointed at the letter opener. “If that turns out to be the murder weapon, then the killer had to have been in my office.”

Momma looked at me like I was crazy, grabbing my arm and pulling me over to the side. “You sound like Jessica Fletcher! Don’t you think you should just let Jake handle all this? It’s not another one of our mystery shows. This is the real thing.”

“Momma, this man was killed with MY letter opener, probably from MY office!” I whispered. “I’m just gonna keep my eyes and ears open for any clues I can pass on to Jake.”

Several of the Sunday School ladies had gathered around Linda Jenkins over next to the back entrance to the church. Someone had pulled out a few folding chairs for them and they were comforting her as best they could. I walked over to them, offering my sympathy.

“Linda, I just don’t know what to say. I’m so sorry about J.R.”

“Thank you,” Linda whispered through sobs that for some reason struck me as sounding a little manufactured. “I just don’t know how I’m gonna go on without him. Who on earth would do such a terrible thing? Everyone loved J.R.” Linda dragged out her words and sobbed dramatically.

“I’m sure the truth will come out, Linda. We just have to have faith,” I assured her, but in my mind the wheels were turning. I don’t know who would want J.R. out of the way, but I was about to do my best to find out.