The Expectant Detectives

Book 1: Expectant Detectives Mystery

by Kat Ailes

Genres: Amateur Sleuth; Animal Cozy Mysteries

Synopsis

For Alice and her partner Joe, moving to the sleepy Cotswold village of Penton is a chance to embrace country life and prepare for the birth of their unexpected first child. He can take up woodwork; maybe she'll learn to make jam. But the rural idyll they'd hoped for doesn't quite pan out when a dead body is discovered at their local antenatal class and they find themselves suspects in a murder investigation.

With a cloud of suspicion hanging over the heads of the whole group, Alice sets out to solve the mystery and clear her name, with the help of her troublesome dog, Helen. However, there are more secrets and tensions in the heart of Penton than first meet the eye. Between the discovery of a shady commune up in the woods, the unearthing of a mysterious death years earlier and the near-tragic poisoning of Helen, Alice is soon in way over her head.

Can she and her friends - with the hindrance of Helen - uncover the truth before tragedy strikes again . . . or her waters break?

Release date: January 9, 2024

Publisher: St. Martin's Publishing Group

Print pages: 384

Sample

CHAPTER 1

FOR MY BOYFRIEND’S thirtieth birthday I thought I’d go all out and surprise him with a pregnancy. I mean, I surprised myself too, but it was a broadly good surprise, so Joe and I decided to roll with it. And if you’re going to do a thing, you may as well do it properly. So as responsible soon-to-be parents we thought we’d better leave the hive of criminal activity that is London and opt for a safer, more wholesome life in the country. This despite the fact that, in nearly ten years in London, the most heinous crime I’d ever witnessed was a bunch of teenagers running out without paying in a Pizza Express. The metropolitan criminal underworld aside, with neither of us earning a six-figure salary, if we stayed in London we’d be living in a (barely) converted garage and our baby would be sleeping in a drawer. London was out. We were Moving to the Country™.

Our destination was the quiet market town of Penton, nestled among the picturesque Cotswold Hills. As far as it’s possible to tell via Google, Penton gave off a certain vibe that I would vaguely describe as “posh hippy.” When picking our future home, this was something I felt I could get on board with, as despite being neither posh nor hippy I have, more or less successfully, masqueraded as both at various points in my life.

I was ready to embrace the patchouli oil. Maybe I would buy a dream catcher.

As we rolled our cumbersome rental van through the ancient byways of the Cotswolds, I could barely move for the assortment of car snacks wedged around me. I had prepared for the three-hour journey with all the diligence of an excessively snack-oriented Everest expedition. Or so Joe said. But at nearly nine months pregnant, I was taking no chances. If I had to be chronically uncomfortable, radioactively overheated and need to pee every five minutes, then I wasn’t going to add “hungry” to the mix. I opened a pack of Skittles with a contented sigh. I was also wearing my dressing gown because I’d forgotten to pack it, and TLC had just started playing from my Spotify “moving” playlist. If it weren’t for the Rolo that had dropped down my cleavage and was slowly melting, just out of reach, I would have had to say life didn’t really come much better.

I shared this happy thought with Joe, who merely grunted. He seemed a tad stressed. To be fair, I wasn’t driving. Nor had I contributed much to packing the precipitous mound of possessions hovering behind our heads, waiting to take us out with an incautious emergency brake. Being heavily pregnant gives you a get-out-of-jail-free card for lifting anything heavier than a sausage roll. I had directed the packing from the sidelines, occasionally sneaking items back out of the charity shop box when Joe wasn’t looking. This was why I was currently sitting with a glittery blue Virgin Mary piggy bank nestled, ironically, between my pregnancy bump and crotch. I knew if I let it out of my sight Joe would gift it to Goodwill faster than you could say “Hail Mary.”

I peered out of the van window at the countryside flashing past. It was … green. Definitely very green. More so than even Hampstead Heath, which I had previously considered to be pretty damn rural.

“Do you think they have chicken shops in the country?” I asked Joe nervously.

“You probably have to kill and pluck your own.”

I nodded sagely. That sounded about right.

At this point Joe took a corner, braked rather abruptly and the Virgin Mary jabbed me sharply in the crotch. I was about to complain when I realized why he had stopped. We had arrived.

Spread out below us was our new home: Penton. Nestled snugly in the valley like the slightly over-warm bag of Rolos wedged alongside the Virgin in my lap. It was small, perhaps a thousand houses running along the valley floor and a handful more clinging to the hills that rose either side. A dense woodland ran along the crest of the hill opposite, the trees hazed with the almost fluorescent green of oncoming spring. Fields sprawled along the valley sides, liberally dotted with assorted livestock. The golden light of early evening gave it the sort of glow I had previously always put down to light pollution.

Joe hauled on the handbrake until he almost gave himself a hernia. Penton, apparently, didn’t do flat. We sat silently for a while and surveyed our new homeland, holding hands across the mound of semi-demolished snacks.

“Nice,” Joe said eventually.

“Mm-hmm,” I sniffed, a familiar welling sensation behind my eyeballs.

Wordlessly, Joe rummaged through the empty Monster Munch packets to dig out a reasonably clean McDonald’s napkin and passed it over, giving my hand a squeeze. Admittedly, it didn’t take much to set me off these days—commercials for rehoming dogs, the mere mention of Adele—pregnancy hormones are extremely soggy, it turns out. But, in this case, I felt it was deserved; Penton Vale was rather beautiful.

Never one to miss out on an emotional moment, from the back of the van came the unmistakable sound of the dog being sick, probably over our most precious possessions. The handbrake gave an ominous groan and we set off again, down the winding road and through the heart of our new home.

It took us perhaps three minutes to trundle our van the length of Penton high street and find ourselves heading fieldward again. With alarming rapidity, the trees began to close in.

“I don’t think there are anymore houses.” Joe squinted up the darkening road ahead of us. It looked suspiciously rural.

I checked my phone. “Stop!”

Joe’s sudden braking catapulted the Virgin Mary across the dashboard. It really hadn’t been her day.

“Google Maps thinks we’re here.” This was the level of my navigation skills.

“I can’t see anything.”

“Well, Google can’t be wrong.”

“Says who?”

“I don’t know. God?”

We reversed, slowly and painfully, and eventually found the house. In our defense, it was easy to miss, what with the Sleeping Beauty–esque creepers all but obscuring it from view. It looked like nature was trying to reclaim it—and doing a pretty good job. It was built of crumbling stone, moss and peeling paint, held together by ivy and hope. The chimney pot looked like an endgame of Jenga. I didn’t fancy its chances in a strong breeze. The house appeared to be about a thousand years old and definitely infested. I’m not sure what with—spiders, mice, ghosts, take your pick. I made a mental note to call Rentokil, and possibly a priest.