The Bookstore at Holiday Bay: Once Upon a Mystery

Book 1: The Bookstore at Holiday Bay

by Kathi Daley

Genres: Amateur Sleuth; Animal Cozy Mysteries; Culinary Cozy Mysteries

Synopsis

A new series by USA Today Bestselling Author Kathi Daley featuring a cozy gathering of friends with a touch of romance and a pinch of mystery.

My name is Lou Prescott. I was born in South Carolina but spent most of my life in Northern Minnesota. Since the death of my husband, I've found myself at loose ends, so when my niece offered to sell me the quaint seaside bookstore she owned in Holiday Bay, Maine, I jumped at the opportunity to restart my life somewhere new.

My journey to date has been a bit rocky but my rescue cat Toby and I are making it work. The first thing we did after settling in was make a few additions to the bookstore including a coffee bar and pastry counter, as well as a cat lounge with a rescue and adoption feature. This allows Toby and I to match his buddies from the street with their perfect human.

So far, my favorite part of my new endeavor is a reader group who meets on Tuesday nights.The murder mystery book club started off as a typical read and discuss type forum but quickly segued into an actual mystery club when a member of our group was found dead. When it became obvious that the death of our friend and neighbor wouldn't be easily solved, the bibliophiles who'd gathered decided to exchange their reading hats for their sleuthing hats and pitch in.

 

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Release date: June 27, 2023

Publisher: Kathi Daley Books

Reader says this book is...: entertaining story (1)

Sample

  Chapter 1

 

 

 

I bought a bookstore.

It’s not as if I’d planned to make this huge purchase at this point in my life. In fact, if you’d told me a year ago that shortly after my sixty-second birthday, Louise Prescott, Lou to most, would move halfway across the country to a new home, new business, and new community of friends and neighbors, I’d have said you were crazy. Of course, if you’d likewise told me a year ago that I was destined to become a widow at the ripe young age of sixty-one, I might have realized that sometimes the need for change isn’t so much about the crazy as it is about the grief.

“I think we should move the coffee counter to the open space along that back wall so the area near the picture window can be used for seating,” I said to my new business partner, Velma Crawford. Velma had recently lost the business she’d loved and nurtured in a fire, bringing her a different type of grief. Velma’s grief, as mine had for me, had prompted changes I was sure she’d never seen coming. Rather than rebuilding the diner where she’d spent so much of her life up to this point, she’d accepted the buyout her insurance company offered, married her live-in partner, Royce Crawford, bought a motor home, and headed out on a journey across the country. When the happy couple returned to Holiday Bay after nearly two months away, Velma decided it was time to go back to work. She’d heard I was looking to take on a partner interested in opening a coffee and pastry bar inside the bookstore, and the rest, as they say, was fate.

“I agree,” Velma said. “It’d be ideal if folks could settle in with a good book, an excellent cup of coffee, and an unbeatable view. I’ve been thinking that perhaps we should consider adding a gas fireplace or stove in the corner on the far side of the picture window. Doing so would create a cozy setting on a snowy winter day.”

I glanced toward the large picture window that looked out over the bay. It was a sunny day today, with temperatures climbing into the mid-seventies, but I could imagine the snowy scene Velma seemed to be describing. “I like that concept. In fact, I love most of the ideas we’ve come up with, including the proposal for a cat rescue right here in the bookstore.”

Velma chuckled. “I was wondering how long it was going to take for Hazel to convince you of the wisdom of her plan.”

I smiled. “Initially, when Hazel suggested that we have a designated area where cats from the local rescue could be showcased, I wasn’t sure how the idea would work in the real world. I’ve done my research, however, and I think that as long as we maintain both a cat-friendly area for those who want to mingle with our feline friends and a cat-free zone for those who are allergic or prefer not to be bothered, we’ll be fine.”

I picked up the orange rescue kitten Hazel Hawthorn had dropped off at the bookstore a few days ago. At the time, she’d assured me that she only needed me to watch the kitten for a few hours while she rounded up a foster home. I’d been reluctant to commit, but I’d agreed after a small amount of persuasion on Hazel’s part. Of course, that was three days ago, and I still had the kitten. Velma, who’d known Hazel a lot longer than I had, apologetically informed me that it was unlikely that the cat woman of Holiday Bay had ever planned to come back for him.

Not that I minded. Not really. Lou Prescott was no pushover, and the fact that Hazel had pulled a fast one on me should have had me steaming from the ears. But Velma assured me that Hazel was a sensitive woman who likely realized that I needed the kitten as much as he needed me and decided to take matters into her own hands by getting the two of us together.

“So what do you think, little guy?” I held the kitten up and looked him in the eye. “Should we commit to having a cat rescue in the bookstore?”

The kitten batted me on the nose and then struggled to get down. He was the independent sort who I could already see wasn’t going to want to spend a lot of time cuddled up on my lap. Some people might find this to be a negative, but I was a busy woman, so I was okay with a kitten who was as self-reliant as I was.

“Perhaps we can build a separate lounge where the cats can hang out,” Velma suggested. “I’m not sure how that would look exactly, but this is a large space with quite a few rooms and closets that, to this point, have been used for storage. If we move things around a bit, perhaps we can make it work.”

“I think we can,” I agreed as I set the kitten on the floor. “I guess I should name the little guy if he’s going to be a permanent resident.”

“I’ve always been fond of Toby,” Velma suggested.

I rolled the name around in my mind. “Toby. I like it.” I glanced at the kitten. “So what do you think? Does Toby work for you?”

The kitten totally ignored me, which wasn’t really surprising. I didn’t suppose Toby cared what his name was going to be. I sent him a look intended as a welcome, and then I turned and glanced at the clock. “The women for the Tuesday night book club meeting will arrive soon.” The Tuesday night book club was a group of mystery-loving women who seemed more interested in discussing current events than the book of the week.

“I ran into Hazel yesterday, and she shared her plan to invite Gwen Harbinger,” Velma informed me.

“I’m not sure I’ve met Gwen yet.”

“She’s a nice woman. I guess she’s around our age, maybe a few years younger. Gwen recently lost her husband.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“Young man, too,” Velma continued. “I don’t know his exact age, but I’m guessing he was in his late fifties or early sixties.” She paused. “He worked a fishing boat in the area for years. Big guy. Seemed like the invincible sort.” She made a sound that sounded like a snort. “In the end, I guess none of us are as invincible as we’d like to believe.”

I smiled. “Oh, I don’t know. I feel pretty invincible.” I glanced at the reflection of the petite woman with long white hair in the large picture window. “Well, maybe not as invincible as I once was,” I altered my statement as I considered the changes that had taken place in the past few years.

Velma laughed. “I get it. I was standing in my pretty little bathroom, brushing my teeth a few weeks ago, and it suddenly hit me that I no longer recognized the woman in the mirror staring back at me.” She touched a hand to her short gray hair. “Not that there’s anything wrong with the woman I’ve become; in fact, I like her just fine, but it was somewhat unsettling to suddenly realize that I just don’t look like me anymore.”

“I get it,” I said. “I’ve had the same experience in the past where I just stand in my bathroom staring at the white-haired woman in the mirror and wondering about the dark-haired girl I’d once been.”

“It’s a sobering experience,” Velma agreed. “The reality is that the change to our bodies, like many of the other changes in our lives, is a slow process that sneaks up on us as the years fade one into another.” She paused and then continued. “I know there are those who spend a lot of money to fight the natural progression of things, but it seems to me that accepting these changes with courage and grace is the real key to happiness as our lives evolve. And I’m not just talking about the physical changes such as weight gain and gray hair. I’m talking about larger life changes as well.” Her voice grew soft. “For me, it was losing the diner. I guess I never realized how much my sense of self was all wrapped up in that building and that business. Not until I lost it, that is. After the fire, I knew there would be financial fallout to consider, but I truly didn’t understand the emotional toll this major change in my life would have on me.”

Given the dramatic changes that my life had undergone after my husband’s death, I knew just how true that statement was. A year ago, I was living my perfect life. Perfect husband, perfect home, and perfect community of friends and neighbors. Not only was I about as happy as a sixty-one-year-old retiree can be, but I was motivated and enthusiastic for the future I’d been working toward. And then, in the blink of an eye, the man I planned to live out my life with died. It hadn’t been expected. He hadn’t been sick or frail. He hadn’t suffered symptoms of any sort before the heart attack that took his life. With Gus’s death, my happy life dissolved in front of me. I’d been in shock for so long that I’d barely noticed the passage of time, but once I had returned to the living, I found that all I had left were the ashes of what could have been, what should have been, and what would never be.

“Do we have snacks for the meeting?” I asked, shaking off the melancholy I felt seeping into my veins.

“Marnie and Cricket volunteered to bring pastries, so all we need to provide tonight is coffee. I’ll make a pot now.” Velma offered.

Marnie and Cricket Abernathy were sisters who’d moved to Holiday Bay from the south this past fall. They’d opened a flower shop named All About Bluebells and seemed to be doing quite well for themselves. Marnie was a voracious reader and often voiced her opinion that our group might actually want to discuss the book we’d all agreed to read, but Cricket was all about the gossip. Even though I’d purchased the bookstore on the bay from my niece, Vanessa Blackstone, I had to admit that deep down inside, I sided with Cricket. As far as I was concerned, the best part about the Tuesday night book club meetings wasn’t the books but the kinship and the conversation.

“I’ll head into the backroom to set up the chairs,” I offered while Velma made the coffee.

After retrieving twelve chairs from one of the storage closets, I neatly arranged them in a circle. As I prepared the room for our book club meeting, I thought about the women who would fill those chairs. Velma and I would take seats on opposite sides of the large circle. Neither of us was a huge reader, which was interesting given our current status as bookstore owners, but we liked to appear engaged and involved for those club members, such as Marnie, who really were here to discuss the book.

Marnie and Cricket generally sat to my left. It wasn’t as if we had assigned seating, but the southern sisters tended to show up a good twenty minutes before anyone else, and since, as the first to arrive, they had their choice of seats, I could understand why they’d choose chairs that looked toward the window with a view of the bay. If the conversation lagged, at least there was something to look at.

I enjoyed my relationship with Marnie and Cricket. Even though I was a good thirty years older than the lively pair, we originally hailed from the same part of South Carolina, which created a bond that might not otherwise have existed. Not that we’d all lived in South Carolina at the same time since I’d married and moved to Northern Minnesota before either sister had even been born, but the bond that was forged by a common history and tradition made us sisters of the most important kind.

I stood back and looked at my circle of chairs. Bonnie Singleton had mentioned that she might bring a guest this evening. Gabby Gibson was the new dispatcher assigned to the Holiday Bay Police Department. I’d previously met her and was anxious to deepen that relationship, so I hoped it would work out for her to attend.

Bonnie’s sister, Beverly Singleton, had likewise invited a guest to the group. Alice Farthington was a recently widowed kindergarten teacher from the local elementary school. She was only twenty-eight, which, in my opinion, was much too young to be a widow. Everyone seemed to agree that fate had been unfair to this young woman who’d suffered the loss of her mate so early in life. Of course, I’d learned long ago that fate didn’t seem to care about what was right or wrong, fair or unfair. Fate simply was.

I liked to think I’ve mostly learned to live with my own grief. Most of the time, those around me aren’t even aware of the hole in my chest where my heart used to live. People say that I’m strong. They say that I’m brave. They say they admire how I’ve been able to move on, but the truth of the matter is that the face I show to the world is a lie, and beneath that façade is a broken woman who is simply trying to get through each moment as it fades into the next.

After a bit of consideration, I decided to add two additional hardwood folding chairs to the mix. Not that we’d necessarily need them, but it was good to have them just in case our part-timers all decided to attend. Shelby Morris only showed up about fifty percent of the time. She loved to gossip and tried to make it when she could, but she had a restaurant to run, and while Tuesday evenings generally weren’t busy, allowing her to get away, there were weeks when she needed to be at the Bistro at Holiday Bay to oversee things.

Georgia Carter was another part-timer. She helped run the Inn at Holiday Bay that Abby Sullivan owned and often got held up when things were busy. I enjoyed spending time with Georgia when she made it to the meeting. She was a hoot and a half and seemed to keep everyone laughing. Georgia was responsible for several new recruits, including Emma Brown, a recent widow after nearly fifty years of marriage. Emma had moved to Holiday Bay after meeting a man named Joel Stafford. Joel was a retired history professor and would make an excellent addition to our book group, although so far, the group was comprised entirely of women. Single women, I clarified as it occurred to me that every woman in our group, with the exception of Velma, was either widowed or had never married.

Once the chairs were arranged, I headed back toward the front of the bookstore, where I could hear Velma chatting with Cricket. Marnie was arranging a platter of pastries which were both colorful and delicious looking, while Velma and Cricket discussed the changes that had been taking place in the community. After Velma’s Diner burned, Velma sold the land to a developer who sold the land to a man who wanted to open a brewery. The brewery would require a much larger space than the diner had occupied, so the developer needed to buy the businesses on either side of the diner. The dress shop had been relocated, and the secondhand jewelry and electronics store had closed. Both buildings had been torn down, and construction of the brewery had already begun.

In addition to the brewery, other new businesses were sprouting up around town. Desperate for Donuts was now a pizza parlor with the best thin-crust pies I’d ever eaten, and the curio shop on the corner now housed a psychic, who most folks seemed to think was the real thing.

“I really am grateful to Shelby for hiring all my displaced help,” Velma was saying to Cricket as I walked up behind them. “Knowing that my staff is being taken care of has given me peace of mind.”

Cricket reached for a cup of freshly brewed coffee. “I know you’re grateful to Shelby, but everyone knows you did Shelby a favor by sending your displaced employees to talk to her. The Bistro has been slammed all summer. That new rooftop seating area is the hottest hot spot that Holiday Bay has seen in a very long time. Most days, there’s a waiting list to get a seat up there.”

“The view from the rooftop is pretty great,” I agreed. “Velma and I went up for a late dinner and a drink last week, and we simply couldn’t get over how perfect it was to listen to the waves below while looking up into the starry sky.”

“Shelby told me that they’d planned to have live music on the roof during July and August, but it’s been so crowded that she’s thinking they might just skip it,” Velma informed us.

“The music they had playing over the stereo system was nice and not as loud as live music would be. It’d be a shame to drown out the sound of the waves,” I added, looking up from my conversation with Cricket as Georgia walked in with Emma. I smiled and gave the women a wave just a split second before Bonnie and Beverly Singleton wandered in with Gabby Gibson and Alice Farthington. Changing course, I headed in their direction. I tried to speak to each individual who attended a book club meeting, but that didn’t always work out. This week, I felt that if I needed to choose, it really did seem the most important to greet Holiday Bay’s most recent widow as well as Holiday Bay’s most recent resident.

“Gabby, Alice.” I smiled, reaching out to touch each woman briefly on the arm. “I’m so happy the two of you could make it.”

“I’ve been trying to get out and meet everyone since I’ve been here,” Gabby said. “It’s been a challenge with Colt keeping me so busy, but I’m doing a fair job so far.” She referred to Police Chief Colt Wilder as she looked around the room. “Looks like a fair number of folks are here whom I haven’t met yet.”

Bonnie took her arm. “I’ll take you around and introduce you.”

Beverly had wandered off as well, leaving me alone with Alice.

“So I understand you teach kindergarten at the local elementary school.”

She nodded. It appeared the girl was shy, or perhaps she felt overwhelmed after allowing Beverly to railroad her into attending tonight.

“I know this group is a lot to take in.” I took her hand. “Come with me. I’m going to introduce you to Marnie Abernathy. Have you met Marnie?”

“I know who she is, but I haven’t met her. Although I do know Shelby, the woman she’s talking to.”

“That’s perfect. I’ll introduce you to Marnie, and then the three of you can chat until we begin.”

“Will you begin soon?” she asked.

I looked at the clock on the wall. Technically, we should have started fifteen minutes ago, but we liked to wait for everyone to arrive. The only two who hadn’t yet arrived were Hazel and Gwen. Perhaps they had become involved in a discussion concerning Gwen’s recent loss after Hazel stopped by her home to pick her up. That would be understandable. I remembered those first months after my Gus died. I was such a mess that my friends had been afraid to visit for fear of saying the wrong thing or, even worse, not having anything to say. But the reality was that there was nothing anyone could have said to make the situation either harder or easier to handle. I’d lost the love of my life, and the only thing that would ever ease my pain was the long slow journey through the middle of it.

“It looks like we’re missing two members,” I said to Alice, “but I think I’m going to go ahead and suggest we retire to the backroom where the chairs are set up. I’ll walk you over to Shelby and introduce you to Marnie before I start rounding everyone up.”

As I’d predicted, Marnie and Alice got along fabulously. The women both had a thoughtful and responsible side and tended to be more introverted than extroverted. Marnie and Alice appeared to have merged into a lively discussion of books they’d both read in the past, which sent Shelby across the room to a corner where Georgia and Emma were chatting with Velma and Gabby.

“Have you heard from either Hazel or Gwen?” I asked Velma after heading toward the corner where she was holding court.

“No. Not since this afternoon when Hazel called to let me know that Gwen had agreed to come this evening. I hope they’re okay.”

“It seems likely Gwen needed to talk when Hazel arrived to pick her up. I remember times after Gus passed away when a mood would hit me just right, and I cornered one of my unsuspecting friends. I suspect they’ll wander in later. I’m going to go ahead and start ushering everyone into the backroom.”

“That’s a good idea,” Velma agreed. “I’ll grab the coffee pot and head in that direction.”

As it turned out, neither Hazel nor Gwen had shown up that evening. Everyone in attendance seemed to have a wonderful time. Marnie seemed grateful that, as she had, Alice, Emma, and Gabby had actually read the book we’d gathered to discuss. Georgia had likewise read the book in its entirety, and the Singleton sisters had each read half the book, making for a fairly lively discussion. The book we’d read for this week’s book club meeting was a mystery with lots of twists and turns that I really enjoyed. Next week, our selection was a widely held romance with a touch of suspense.

“I’m going to call Hazel and find out what happened,” I said after the meeting broke up, and almost everyone began tidying up the room and putting chairs away.

“Don’t bother,” Gabby said, taking her cell phone out of her purse for the first time since turning it off once the book discussion had begun. “I have a message from Alex.” She looked up and looked me in the eye. “Gwen Harbinger has been found dead.”