Solid Gold Murder

Book 2: Golden Motel Mystery

by Ellen Byron

Genres: Amateur Sleuth; Female Sleuths; Mystery

Synopsis

Dee Stern’s Golden Motel-of-the-Mountains promises a tranquil getaway for outdoor lovers in the scenic Californian village of Foundgold. But when Dee accidentally triggers a modern gold rush, she suddenly turns her peaceful retreat into a hotspot for mayhem and murder . . .

With the summer season looming, former Hollywood sitcom writer Dee Stern has one small goal—scrubbing her motel’s unflattering moniker as the “Murder Motel.” Dee and ex-husband-turned-business-partner Jeff Cornetta are excited to introduce a family-friendly panning activity complete with fool’s gold just in time for the peak tourist months. Except neither could have anticipated the discovery of a real gold nugget or the ensuing social media frenzy. In a flash, the viral sensation draws grizzled prospectors, wide-eyed adventurers, and trend-chasing thrill seekers to the abandoned mines scattered around the woods . . .

The instant popularity proves great for business, but it also attracts a group of out-of-touch Silicon Valley techies with dreams of striking it rich—again. Dee finds herself particularly annoyed by the insufferably smug Sylvan Burr, a retired CEO who sold his startup before age 30 and won’t let anyone forget it. But things take a sinister turn when Sylvan meets a grim fate at the bottom of a mineshaft, leaving Dee at the center of a deadly mystery that could end her days as a motelier. And while Sylvan had plenty of enemies, Dee suddenly faces adversaries rooting against her own success. Now, with her life and the future of the Golden Motel hanging by a thread, Dee must unearth a minefield of suspects and outwit a greedy killer before she finally digs herself too deep . . .

Release date: July 29, 2025

Publisher: Kensington Books

Print pages: 272

Sample

“We had a wonderful stay. I’d even say the Golden Motel exceeded expectations.”

The compliment came from a woman named Laurie whose family was among the guests at the recently restored motel’s inaugural summer season. “Restored” was a bit of a euphemism. But it went a long way to explaining why the motel still possessed its original décor, down to the 1940s bathroom fixtures. Still, all ten rooms in the Golden’s lodge, and nine out of ten cabins—the tenth currently only a concrete slab, thanks to a murderous arsonist—were up and running, albeit with the occasional nerve-wracking clatter from the motel’s old pipes.

Newly minted motelier Dee Stern placed a hand on her heart. “I can’t tell you how happy I am that you loved your stay with us. I hope you’ll make a visit to the Golden a family tradition.” She smiled at Laurie’s young daughter, Molly. “Until we see you again, here’s something to remember us by.”

Dee reached into a shelf under the reservations desk, built of redwood like everything else at the rustic Golden, and handed the girl a small stuffed bear wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with the motel logo, along with the tagline, Go for the Golden!

The eight-year-old let out a delighted gasp. “Bud!” She took the bear and clutched it to her chest. “I love him. Thank you.”

“We’re big fans of the Bud the Bear cartoons on your website,” her mother said, casting a fond look at her daughter.

“I’m so glad you like him,” Dee said. She had spent a good portion of her childhood doodling at the animation studios where her father, a voice actor, recorded cartoon characters. Dee even toyed with becoming an animator before settling on a career as a sitcom writer–producer—a career she’d literally fled, landing in Foundgold, California, and her current adventure as co-owner, manager, and maintenance worker at the Golden, the village’s sole lodging. Since shedding one unreliable career for another, Dee had begun drawing again, creating humorous depictions of a lumbering local mammal she’d given a more family-friendly name to than his original moniker of Stoney, bestowed on him by workers at an illegal pot farm.

“In fact,” the happy guest continued, “those funny little drawings convinced us to stay at your motel and not in Goldsgone.”

The revelation that Foundgold beat out tourist trap Goldsgone made Dee glow like the fake gold nugget paperweight on her desk. “Goldsgone is wonderful,” Dee said, choosing to be magnanimous, “but we’re glad you chose us.”

“And we’re glad you didn’t live up to your nickname.” Laurie leaned over the desk and whispered conspiratorially, “Murder Motel.”

And just like that, Dee’s glow faded.

“Murder Motel,” Jeff repeated. He made a face. “Great. Just great.”

Dee and her business partner/best friend/brief former husband stood under a canopy of fir trees, cleaning pine needles out of the dilapidated sluice they’d brought back to life. The sluice was a facsimile of the original Forty-Niners’ wooden contraption that utilized water to separate gold from a river’s sandy bottom. A big draw for tourists back in the Golden’s 1940s heyday, the new moteliers were excited to offer guests a chance, once more, to “pan for gold.”

At the moment, however, Dee was focused on griping about her archnemesis, Goldsgone’s Verity Donner Gillespie. Dee and Jeff had nicknamed the pushy woman “Yes-that - Donner,” due to her constant bragging that she was related to the ill-fated members of the eponymously named Donner Party. All the bonnets and gingham skirts in the world couldn’t hide Verity’s ruthless competitive streak, which led her to view Dee’s efforts to promote Foundgold as a threat to her town’s decades of dominance. The shop owner and tourism director also happened to publish the local freebie online and print newspaper. After two murders happened to take place on Golden Motel grounds, Verity gleefully dubbed the place “Murder Motel.”

“She’s determined to make that stupid nickname stick.” Dee gave a pine tree branch caught in the sluice an angry yank. “Dag-nab-it.”

Jeff waved a finger at her. “Ha! Quarter in the jar.”

Determined not to fall into the Goldsgonedian habit of talking like a nineteenth-century miner, Jeff and Dee had turned an empty mayonnaise container into a variation on a swear jar. Instead of dropping a quarter in it every time they let loose with a profanity, they paid up when they used an old-timey word.

“Remind me to pay up when we’re back in the office,” Dee said. “I hope I have change. We may have to do a virtual jar. I wonder if you can send quarters through a money app.” Dee dislodged the branch and tossed it in the woods. Nugget, the large, amiable, mangy mutt she’d adopted from the late motel owner’s estate, galumphed after it. “Verity is totally set on putting us out of business. It’s not like the murders were our fault. We just got stuck being the location for them. We even helped catch the killer. But does she publicize that? Nooooo. Do anything that might help us? Not for a doggone minute. Argh!” Frustrated she’d let another miner word slip out, she followed it with a more au courant curse.

“Howdy, you two!”

The greeting came from Sam Stern, Dee’s dad, who was staying at the Golden while his home in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Studio City was being treated for termites. He walked toward them, negotiating the hill between the motel’s cabins and the sluice. He was dressed to resemble a nineteenth-century miner in jeans, suspenders, a plaid shirt, boots, and a wide-brimmed canvas hat. A woman close to his own age of early seventies was with him. Her straggly gray hair hung long past her shoulders and she wore a dress that not only looked like it was made from old sacks, it was. A man in their age range tagged along behind them. He wore hand-stitched pants and a shirt made from the same brand of flour sacks as the woman.

Dee waved to them. “Hey, Dad. Hey, Ma’am and Mister.” In this case, “ma’am” and “mister’ weren’t appellations, they were names.

“Does your dad’s ‘Howdy’ count for the miner jar?” Jeff asked.

Dee shook her head. “He’s in costume for some reason, so no. The ‘Howdy’ is appropriate . . . marginally.”

Sam and the others reached the sluice and exchanged greetings with Dee and Jeff. “Why the new, but old, look, Dad?” Dee asked.

Sam grinned, revealing a blacked-out front tooth. “The termite guys called to say they’re done tenting my house. But”—he inhaled a deep breath—“you gotta love this mountain air. And the scent of real pinecones beats the plug-in fresheners I use at home by a mile. I thought I could stick around and make myself useful here by playing Prospector Pete and helping guests pan for gold. If it’s okay by you, of course.”

Dee glanced at Jeff to gauge his approval for Sam’s extended stay. He responded with a smile and a nod. “Welcome aboard, Pete,” she said. “Stay as long as you want. But . . . maybe lose the tooth. I mean, keep the tooth, just lose the blackout wax on it.”

Sam removed the wax. Ma’am picked up one of the green plastic miner’s pans Dee and Jeff had purchased for their guests to use. She gestured for the others to grab pans. “You ready for your lesson?”

Pans in hand, her students nodded.

Ma’am dipped the pan into the sluice, scooping up a handful of rocks. She gave the pan a gentle shake, then dipped the pan slightly to drain the water. She washed what remained in the pan two more times. Dee, Jeff, and Sam copied her moves with their own pans. After the last wash, she showed the others her pan. The rocks were gone, leaving flakes and tiny stones that glistened. “See? The big rocks are gone and the little ones, the pyrite—the fool’s gold—are still there. If it was real gold, it’d be easier to keep in the pan because gold is dense. It sinks to the bottom. You’ll have to be careful, especially with little kids. They wanna shake like this . . .”

Ma’am gave her pan a few wild shakes, sending whatever was inside flying. A piece of pyrite beaned Jeff. “Ow.” He rubbed the spot where the stone connected with his forehead.

“Man up,” Dee teased.

“Check your pans,” Ma’am instructed. “If you don’t see any fool’s gold, you shook the pan too hard.”

Dee, Jeff, and Sam checked their pans. Dee held hers up triumphantly. “Got some!”

“Not me,” Sam said.

“I got a couple of flakes.” Jeff pressed his finger to one. “It disintegrated.”

“Fool’s gold does that. Real gold holds a shape more. Fool’s gold also has a duller sheen than real gold, especially once it’s dry.”

Ma’am removed a tiny chunk from Dee’s pan and dried it on her sack dress. She held it up. What had looked like gold in the pan now appeared gray, its luster dimmed.

“I see what you’re talking about,” Dee said.

Ma’am handed the stone back to Dee. She rinsed her pan and set it back on the stack. “So there ya have it. Placer Mining for Dummies.”

“She could have gone with Placer Mining 101,” Jeff muttered to Dee.

Mister proudly applauded Ma’am. “Ain’t she something? My li’l prospecting missus.”

Dee dunked her chunk of pyrite back in the water and it glistened again. “I know some of the local sites use the real stuff. Actual gold flakes. But we can’t afford to. At least not yet.”

“Wouldn’t worry about it,” Ma’am said. “Tourists want the experience, especially the ones with littles. They don’t care if it’s real or not, as long as they’re having fun.”

“That’s a job for Prospector Pete.” Sam snapped his suspenders. “I’m gonna practice panning some more.” He stroked his chin. “You know, there’s an old cabin up by Little Stream in the woods.”

Mister nodded. “Hermit Dan’s. Know his place well. Sitting on the edge of Golden Brook. He passed away around aught five. Nice fella, but kept to himself.”

“That’s pretty much the job description for a hermit,” Dee said.

“I’m going to spend the night there,” Sam said. “Get my prospector on, as you kids would say.” He winked at his daughter.

“Okay,” she said. “But if you can finish your method research and get here early in the a.m., we’ve got guests doing early check-in and I’d love to be able to tell them they can pan in our sluice.”

Sam gave her a salute. “You got it.” He began singing a made-up ditty. “La di dah, la dee dee, it’s a prospector’s life for me!” As he sang, Sam hopped back and forth in a dance that was part jig, part Sailor’s Hornpipe, and all silly.

“Uh, you might want to ratchet it down a scooch, Pete,” Dee said.

“I’ll work on it.”

Sam headed up the hill and into the woods, leaving Dee to hope she hadn’t made a big mistake.

To Dee’s relief, her father showed up the next morning sans blackout tooth. “You look refreshed,” she said as she scrambled eggs for them on the old stove in the one-bedroom apartment attached to the motel that she called home. Like the rest of the Golden, it boasted the original rustic, carved oak furniture. With its pine-green walls and prints of Majestic’s glorious natural wonders, the apartment gave off the feeling of being in a forest glen. “I guess sleeping in abandoned ruins agrees with you.”

“To be honest, I didn’t have the best sleep of my life. I’m pretty sure our bear friend, Bud, was out for a nocturnal stroll. To get myself going, I bathed in the brook, which is more like a river right now, thanks to the spring rains and heavy snowmelt.” Sam patted his curly white hair, still wet from his watery immersion. “Cold as all get-out, but it did the trick.”

A bell sounded from the motel lobby behind the door separating it from Dee’s quarters. She removed her apron and straightened the navy polo shirt, with the motel logo, she wore underneath it. “Guests. Do you have your phone? I’ll text you if they’re interested in panning.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Sam “The Man of a Million Voices” Stern spoke in the reedy twang he’d deemed the voice of Prospector Pete. “You tell them varmints I’m a-dustin’ off muh boots ’n puttin’ on muh hat and pickin’ up muh pan.”

This is going to get old fast, Dee thought as she left Sam to check in the guests.

She entered the lobby through a door in her apartment that connected to it. The new arrivals were divorced dad Paul and his disaffected tween son, Brandon. “We’re on a father-son weekend,” Paul explained as Dee handed him a room key, along with a list of attractions in the area she and Jeff had culled. Paul glanced at the list. “There’s a lot to do around here, right?”

He sounded slightly desperate. Knowing this probably stemmed from the herculean task the man faced of separating his son from his cell phone, Dee sympathized. “Tons,” she assured him. “In addition to the list, we’re happy to make recommendations. Also, big news on our front. Today is the first day you can try out our sluice and pan for ‘gold.’”

Dee added the air quotes to disavow Paul and son of any notion they’d be panning for real gold. She was happy to see that despite this, Brandon glanced up from his phone. Paul noticed too and jumped on it. “Wow! Awesome, huh, son?”

Brandon mumbled something that might have been “whatevs,” but he did seem mildly intrigued. “Why don’t you settle into your room,” Dee said, “and we’ll meet you at the sluice in fifteen minutes?”

“Sounds good,” Paul said.

He ushered his son out the door and Dee texted her father: Prospector Pete, you’re up! She also texted Jeff, then hurried outside and rang the triangle bell dangling from the far end of the motel to summon Ma’am. Given this was the sluice’s debut with guests, she wanted an expert on hand in case anything went wrong.

Fifteen minutes later, the Golden group met up with Paul and Brandon at the sluice. Under the watchful eye of Ma’am, Prospector Pete explained the process of placer mining, sharing what she had taught him with only a few added bits of cheesy miner jargon, to Dee’s relief. He handed a pan to the father, and then the son. “Before you start, I’d love to film this for our website,” Dee said. “You’re our first guests to pan.”

“Fine with me,” Paul said. “But it’s up to my son. Brandon, you on board with it?”

Brandon mumbled something that didn’t sound like no, so Dee slid her phone to video and the panning commenced.

To the motelier’s delight, the event was a success. Paul and Brandon enjoyed the panning process and even joked about one-upping each other with their haul as Sam carefully transferred their findings into tiny glass vials that served as souvenirs.

Paul held up his jar to Dee’s camera. “Look, I found gold. I’m rich!”

Everyone laughed . . . except Ma’am. She stared at the vial. “Lemme see that.”

Puzzled, Paul handed it to her. She gave the vial a shake. Tiny stones floated to the top, while a few flakes sank to the bottom, where they glistened in the sunlight. “Well, hitch me to a wagon and call me a dray horse.”

Dee spoke for everyone when she issued a bewildered, “Huh?”

Ma’am pointed to the flakes, along with a tiny nugget, settled at the bottom of the vial. “This ain’t fool’s gold. It’s real gold.”

“It can’t be,” Jeff said. “I didn’t order real gold for the sluice.”

“Well, it is,” Ma’am insisted. “I seen enough of the real thing in my pans to know.”

“Um, can I have my vial back?”

Ma’am handed it over and Paul shoved it into his jeans pocket. Brandon held out his vial to Ma’am. “Do I have real gold?” he asked, forming the first full sentence he’d uttered since arriving at the Golden.

Ma’am took the vial and shook it. Again, a small, shiny stone rose and golden flakes sank. “You do, son.” She handed the vial back to the boy. Like his father, he quickly shoved it into his jeans pocket.

“How did the gold get in there?” Dee wondered. “Could some have accidentally been mixed in with the pyrite you ordered, Jeff?”

He looked perplexed. “Maybe, but I doubt it.”

“It sure is a mystery,” Sam said.

Her father took off his hat and ran a hand over his still-damp hair. Dee noticed a sparkle on the edge of his sleeve. “Dad, freeze!”

Confusion colored Sam’s face, but he did as ordered. Ma’am carefully studied his shirt sleeve. She gently removed a flake from his sleeve and examined it. “Gold.”

The others murmured various expression of awe and disbelief. “The stream,” Sam suddenly blurted. “When I took a plunge, flakes must’ve gotten on me. Then when I dunked my hands in the sluice, it washed off.”

“That means . . .” Jeff trailed off.

“I heard rumors that the heavy spring rains exposed gold in places where no one’s found it for years,” Ma’am said. “But I thought it was rumors. Sam, show me where you plunged. No one say anything about this until I check out the site and confirm the find.”

Paul grabbed Brandon’s arm and they started running to their car. “Wait!” Dee yelled to them. “Where are you going?!”

“To town to buy mining equipment,” he yelled back. “Best father-son weekend ever!”

“So much for keeping this on the down-low,” Jeff said.

“I wouldn’t worry about them,” Ma’am said. “They’ll wanna keep the secret to themselves so they can mine whatever they can.” She gestured to Dee’s phone. “But you best delete that video.”

“Right. I forgot I was recording.” Unnerved by the momentous discovery, Dee’s hands shook as she fumbled with her phone. “Agh!” she cried out. “I accidentally shared it! I need to get into the site and delete it.” Panicked, she fumbled with her phone. “Argh! I can’t figure out how to do it from the mobile version.”

“I built the site,” Jeff said. He opened the Golden website on his cell. “I’ll do it.”

“You better,” Ma’am warned. “Or you’re gonna start another Gold Rush.”

Jeff stared at his phone screen in disbelief. “Whoa. We just got a booking. Make that two. No, four.” He looked up. “I think the rush already started.”

Jeff was right. The Golden booked up for the next week within minutes. But instead of celebrating, Dee couldn’t shake a sense of foreboding.

“I’m so mad at myself for sharing that video,” she griped to Jeff the next morning. The two were going from room to room, and cabin to cabin, double- and triple-checking to make sure they were ready for the onslaught of guests. “I mean, it’s great we’re sold out. But I keep feeling it’s for the wrong reason: greed. People are only coming to see if they can cash in on the gold.”

“Hey, you did us a favor,” her friend/business partner replied. “And specifically, me. First off, we are sold out, which, greed or not, is a good and very necessary thing for motel finances. And secondly, I’m usually the one doing stupid stuff, like accidentally sharing the wrong thing.” He peered into the cabin bathroom. “Extra roll of toilet paper.”

Dee handed him one from her cart. “We should learn more about the original Gold Rush so we know what to expect. The basics are the same. There’s gold and people want it. Dad was recording a show in New York during fourth grade, so I got their state history and not California’s. Did you know twenty to thirty men died while building the Brooklyn Bridge?”

“No, and now I’m sad. Humane mousetrap, please.”

Dee handed him an animal-friendly trap. “Can you keep an eye on things here for an hour? I’m going to make a run to the All-in-One. Elmira might have a bo. . .