The Readaholics and the Falcon Fiasco

Book 1: A Book Club Mystery

by Laura DiSilverio

Genres: Amateur Sleuth; Cozy Mystery; Female Sleuths

Synopsis

Amy-Faye Johnson’s book club, the Readaholics, enjoys guessing whodunit in mysteries like The Maltese Falcon. But when a murder happens in their midst, they discover that solving crimes is harder that reading about them…

Amy-Faye has always loved her idyllic Rocky Mountain town of Heaven, Colorado. Her event-planning business is thriving, her fellow book-obsessed Readaholics are great, and her parents live only a few blocks away. But lately her hometown has felt a little less heavenly. First, she agrees to plan a wedding without realizing the groom is her ex-boyfriend. Then, Ivy, one of her fellow Readaholics, dies suddenly under mysterious circumstances.

The police rule Ivy’s death a suicide by poisoning, but Amy-Faye and the remaining Readaholics suspect foul play. Amy-Faye soon discovers that Ivy was hiding dangerous secrets—and making deadly enemies. Taking a page from her favorite literary sleuths, Amy-Faye is determined to find the real killer and close the book on this case. But finding the truth could spell her own ending…

Release date: April 7, 2015

Publisher: Berkley

Print pages: 336

Sample

PRAISE FOR THE NOVELS OF LAURA DISILVERIO

OTHER MYSTERIES BY LAURA DISILVERIO

Acknowledgments

Chapter 1

The white suit was a bad idea. I knew it when I bought it at the outlet mall, but it was 75 percent off and the A-line skirt disguised the extra ten pounds that tend to cling to my thighs. I knew it when I put it on, but the forecast was for an unseasonable ninety degrees in Heaven, Colorado—the temps didn’t usually climb into the nineties until July in our little Rocky Mountain hollow on Lost Alice Lake—and the white linen made me feel crisp and cool. With my copper-colored hair twisted into a chignon, an aqua camisole under the jacket, and nude pumps, I was the image of chic professionalism as I set out to meet my new client. Until the kitten.

It sat at the corner of Eden and Paradise, underneath the four-way stop sign, a tiny ball of bedraggled gray fluff. It had rained hard the night before and the kitten’s damp fur convinced me she’d been caught out in it. My windows were down so I could enjoy the rain-washed and still cool air, and I heard a plaintive mew as I waited for a pickup to cross the intersection. The kitten put a paw in the gutter as the truck caromed into a pothole and almost drowned it with a tsunami of muddy water.

“Get back on the sidewalk, kitty,” I ordered. I didn’t see a collar.

She mewed again and looked at me with big blue eyes. It was my turn to go and I rolled slowly into the intersection. I didn’t have time to rescue stray kittens. The bride-to-be was expecting me at nine o’clock sharp at the Columbine, the most upscale B and B in Heaven. Someone else would stop for the kitten; its owner was probably combing the neighborhood for it this very minute. I’d come this way on my return trip to the office and if she was still here, I’d bundle her up and take her to the humane society. I flat out couldn’t do it now.

On the far side of the intersection, I hit my brakes and pulled over with a gusty sigh. Slamming my door harder than necessary, I stalked across the street and looked down at the kitten, who tilted her head back and stared at me, unblinking.

“Come on, then,” I said, scooping her up. She didn’t weigh much more than a wet washcloth, and I carried her balled in my hands, my arms outstretched, to protect my suit from the muddy droplets dribbling off her. She squirmed when we reached the van. Yes, a van. It wasn’t the sporty convertible that would have reflected my personality better—I mean, a van doesn’t exactly say hot, single, young thirties professional like an Audi TT does—but I’d ended up hauling potted plants, tubs of crystal, and even peacocks for my event-planning business too often to consider a smaller vehicle. With a harried glance at my watch, I put her into an empty champagne box and moved it to the front seat, tossing The Maltese Falcon, the book my Readaholics were discussing tonight, into the back. Pulling a yoga top from my gym bag, I tucked it around the kitten, who didn’t seem to object to its ripe smell. I couldn’t keep thinking of her as “the kitten,” so I mentally christened her Misty. There’s a law, I’m pretty sure, that requires that all gray cats be named Smoky or Misty.

Hurrying around the van, I climbed back into the driver’s seat, flashing a bit of thigh at a young man who honked and grinned as he drove past. I inspected my suit, relieved to see not a speck of mud or one long gray hair. Ha! I’d foiled the forces of the universe that direct their energy at smirching white suits. I hit the gas. The B and B was only two blocks away and I pulled up right at nine.

“Mew.” Misty had her front paws over the box’s top and her head peeked out. She looked around curiously.

“Don’t—” I started as the box wobbled.

I put out a hand and caught the box as it toppled toward my lap. Whew! Another bullet dodged. Misty slumped into a corner as I righted the box. “Mew.”

“Don’t get snippy with me,” I said. “You’re the one who tipped the box over.” I slewed my lips to the side. I couldn’t leave her in the van, even with the windows open. My meeting might go two hours and it would be hot enough to melt asphalt by the time I got back. With another sigh, I tucked the expandable leather folder that held my notes into the box and hefted it. “Kittens are to be neither seen nor heard at important business meetings,” I told her sternly, mounting the six stone steps leading to the Victorian B and B’s double oak doors. The building dated from the late 1880s, when the town was incorporated, and Sandy Milliken and her husband, transplants from the East Coast, had spent beaucoup bucks fixing it up.

I nudged one door open with my hip, cradling the box in the crook of my elbow. The foyer, graced with wide-plank oak floors, Laura Ashley fabrics, and a Tiffany chandelier, murmured of history and the expensive restoration. It smelled like lemon furniture polish and bacon. Misty apparently liked the latter scent, because her tufty head appeared over the box’s rim, tiny nose working. “After we’re done here,” I promised her, “I’ll find you some tasty kibble.”

Pushing her gently back into the box, I headed toward the patio, where I was supposed to meet my new client, a Madison Taylor. I didn’t think she was a local girl, but I’d been happy to agree to plan her wedding when she called me out of the blue last week. It wasn’t unusual to have out-of-town weddings scheduled in Heaven. Brides liked the idea of being married in “Heaven,” and the crafty town council had built a lovely wedding gazebo by the lake when they renamed the town fifteen years ago. It used to be called Walter’s Ford, but Walter was only a footnote in the town’s history, and folks didn’t seem to know if “Ford” referred to a Model T or a water crossing no longer in existence, so our elected officials went with a name they thought would attract more tourists and business development. I’d been a sophomore at the time and there’d been something of a kerfuffle when our football team suddenly became the Heaven Demons, but that was resolved by the students voting to adopt a new mascot: the Avengers.

The clinking of cutlery and the splashing of a small fountain drew me toward the patio, where I knew breakfast was served on nice mornings. Wrought-iron tables spaced a gracious distance apart dotted the flagstone patio, which was surrounded by lush greenery and flowers: lavender, hostas, lemon trees, and oleanders in pots, and daylilies just beginning to bloom now that we were into May. They bobbed as flurries of wind, left over from last night’s storm, gusted across the patio. A trio of cement goldfish spurted water into a basin six feet in diameter, attracting a sparrow, which sat on the rim. It got a shower whenever the wind blew the fine spray the fish were sending up. Only two tables held guests finishing their eggs, bacon, and Sandy’s award-winning cranberry-carrot muffins. Sandy herself refreshed their coffee cups from a steaming carafe. I set Misty’s carton in an unobtrusive corner behind the open French doors, extracted some papers from my expandable folder, and arranged it atop the box to keep her inside.

“Stay put,” I told her. She blinked at me. I took it for agreement. Rising, I smoothed my pristine skirt, put a smile on my face, and moved to meet my client.

“Here’s Amy-Faye now,” Sandy said to the petite blond woman sitting closest to the fountain. The motherly Sandy filled an extra cup for me and I gave her a grateful smile. “Amy-Faye, this is Taylor Madison. She’s been telling me all about the ‘Heavenly’ wedding she wants. I’ve told her you’re the gal can make sure every detail is perfect.” She gave a half wink before responding to a request for more marmalade from the older couple at the other table.

“Well, I’ll do my best to put together your dream wedding,” I said, holding out my hand to the blonde. I knew she was a New York City lawyer, but she looked dainty and unthreatening, more of an angelfish than a shark. In her late twenties, probably. She was no bigger than a minute, with a heart-shaped face, a straight nose, and strong brows that winged up at the ends. She would look ethereal in clouds of white tulle, or maybe a strapless satin column dress, if her taste was as modern as her name. She rose with a smile and shook my hand, hers slim but strong.

“Actually,” she said, “it’s Madison Taylor. I get that all the time. Two last names, right? I don’t know what my folks were thinking. Call me Madison.”

“Amy-Faye Johnson,” I said. “Pleased to meet you.”

We exchanged a few pleasantries about the weather and how beautiful Heaven was before Madison’s voice took on a more businesslike tone. “I always assumed I’d get married in Manhattan since that’s where I live, but when Doug suggested we get married in Heaven, I figured why not? My family would have to travel from Wisconsin to New York, anyway, so they might as well come here instead. And Colorado is so . . . refreshing this time of year. New York’s all smog and noise and humidity.” Her smile invited me to applaud her reasoning. “So I was thinking a morning wedding, with six bridesmaids in carnation pink, followed by a brunch reception . . .”

She’d lost me at “Doug.” No, it couldn’t be. I began taking notes and offering suggestions, but half my mind worried at that “Doug.” There were lots of Dougs in the world. I didn’t even know if her Doug was from Heaven or just thought it would be a romantic place to get married. We discussed caterers, florists, and photographers; her three-year-old twin niece and nephew, who would make an adorable ring bearer and flower girl; the pros and cons of an outdoor reception by the lake; and the sticky etiquette of how to involve both her father and stepfather in the wedding. Routine stuff. She didn’t say why they were marrying in such haste—three weeks was barely enough time to organize a garage sale, never mind a wedding—but I didn’t feel I could ask. Her groom’s last name never came up and it was driving me crazy. Doug who? I wanted to shout.

When we segued into a discussion of my fees and contract, I couldn’t help myself. “Where did you get my name?” I asked.

Madison smiled. “Doug’s mother, Elspeth Elvaston. She said you were the best event planner in Heaven, a real perfectionist, and that you’d gone to high school with Doug. She said if anyone could pull this wedding together on such short notice, you could.”

Multicolored lights blinked before my eyes and it was suddenly hard to breathe. “You’re marrying Doug Elvaston?” My Doug? My former boyfriend and the reason I came back to Heaven after college in Boulder? “I . . . I didn’t even know he was dating anyone.”

With a girlish laugh, Madison leaned forward. “We met in New York—I’m sure you know he’s been spending a lot of time there on a class-action case—and it was kind of a whirlwind thing. Lots of long hours of legal work turned into romantic dinners and walks in Central Park, a weekend at a little B and B on the Hudson.” She tucked a strand of silky gold hair behind one small ear. “I knew he was the one for me almost from the moment we met. He said it was the same for him, that he’d never felt this kind of connection with anyone before. You know how it is when you can finish each other’s sentences, when you can share a joke just by meeting someone’s eyes?” She fairly glowed.

I felt nauseated. Her total lack of self-consciousness told me Doug hadn’t even mentioned my name to her. How was that possible? We’d had an on-again-off-again relationship since our junior year in high school. Yeah, we’d been in an “off” phase for almost two years, but I hadn’t realized Doug considered us totally off, get-married-to-someone-else off. I’d been so sure that we’d eventually get back together—

“That silly kitten’s going to fall into the fountain if it’s not careful,” Madison said, looking over my shoulder.

I spun in my chair. Misty had managed to clamber onto the fountain’s low rim and was stalking the oblivious sparrow. Her concentration was total, her gaze fixed on the bird, her tiny body taut as she moved forward in a slow crouch. Predator mode. How had she gotten out of the box? Caught up in the planning, and obsessing about Doug, I’d completely forgotten about her. I scraped my chair back.

“A cat!” The older woman at the other table sounded like she’d found a cockroach on her plate. Her husband remained semicomatose, even when she said, “William, you remember how I told Mrs. Milliken that I was allergic to cats and she assured me—”

“She’s mine,” I apologized, moving toward the fountain. “That is, I brought her. Come here, Misty.” I held out my hand. She ignored me. Big surprise. We’d had a cat when I was growing up and he’d turned selective hearing into an art form. I was reaching for her when a powerful gust of wind drenched me with water from the spitting fish.

The chill surprised me. “Oh!” I shivered, told myself it was only water, and plucked the disappointed kitten from the fountain’s rim as the sparrow flew away. Careful to hold her at arm’s length again, I deposited her back in the box and repositioned the folder. “Just a couple more minutes,” I told her.

“Mew,” she complained, her look saying she could be breakfasting on tasty sparrow if I hadn’t interfered. Fat chance. She was so light the sparrow could probably have carried her away without much effort.

I hurried back to Madison, apologizing to her and the other couple as I went, and explaining about rescuing Misty from the roadside.

“Really, it’s okay,” Madison said, laughing, signing my contract, and handing over a deposit check. “My law firm tried a ‘bring your pet to work day,’ but it didn’t work out too well. One of the partners brought his pit bull and it got hold of my paralegal’s ferret. Not pretty.”

I hated that the woman Doug wanted to marry instead of me was so dang nice. I wanted to be able to tell him he was making a horrible mistake, but it didn’t look like he was. She was younger, thinner, and more successful than I, and a decent human being, to boot. At least my suit was as sharp as her gray slacks topped with a navy linen blazer. We shook hands again and her eyes widened. I thought she was going to say something, but then she shook her head the tiniest bit and told me she looked forward to working with me. We made an appointment to meet at my office on Thursday. “I know you’ll make our big day perfect.” Her smile outshone the sun.

Unable to choke out an assurance, especially since I was wondering if I could engineer a disaster that would stop the wedding—food poisoning? a tornado? the wedding gazebo burning down?—I nodded and turned away, eager to leave before I embarrassed myself by crying.

The old gentleman at the next table was staring at me, looking a lot livelier than he had earlier. He gave me a once-over and I wrinkled my brow. What was the old guy—? I followed his gaze and saw that the fountain water had rendered the white linen of my skirt totally see-through. I could distinctly make out the lacy pattern of my undies. Really? This morning wasn’t miserable enough already? I flushed and fought the urge to run for the door, knowing Madison had noticed, too. I grabbed Misty’s box, held it low enough to provide some coverage, and walked with as much dignity as I could muster to the van.

Leaning my forehead against the steering wheel, my arms hanging limp, I looked sideways at the kitten in her box on the passenger seat. “This day has got to get better, right?”

“Mew,” Misty agreed.

Chapter 2

“You’ve adopted a kitten?” my best friend Brooke Widefield asked, arriving early for the Readaholics meeting. She followed me into my small galley kitchen, where margarita fixings waited.

“Not exactly,” I said, salting the margarita glasses’ rims. Our book club discussions tended to be livelier when we imbibed a bit. It was amazing how insightful we got after a margarita or three.

“Looks like a kitten to me.” Brooke bent to pat Misty, who was twining between her ankles. “She’s adorable.”

Yeah, so adorable I hadn’t been able to leave her at the animal shelter where Brooke volunteered. I couldn’t keep her, though—my schedule was too erratic, unfair to pets. I was hoping our friend Lola Paget, who owned a plant nursery, might need another cat. I remembered her mentioning that one of her cats had gone to the Great Catnip Patch in the sky a few weeks back. I explained all this to Brooke as I mixed the tequila, triple sec, and sweet and sour in the blender, added ice, and pulsed it.

I poured us each a glassful. “Unless you want her?” I watched Brooke cradle Misty against her cheek. They looked like a magazine ad—Brooke with her Miss Colorado beauty queen complexion, curtain of mink brown hair, and green eyes, and the kitten a powder puff of gray fluff since I’d bathed and combed her when we got home.

“Troy would have a hissy,” she said, reluctantly putting the kitten down. “You know how he is. It’d be great if you could place her rather than turning her over to the Haven. We’ve already got more cats than we’ll be able to adopt out.”

We drifted into the sunroom, furnished with wicker chairs upholstered in bright floral cotton. Celadon-colored ceramic tile covered the floor. Floor-to-ceiling windows looked out to the front, side, and backyards. It was my favorite room in the small house, which was 99.9 percent the bank’s and .1 percent mine. Moving in two months earlier had made me feel very adult. There’s nothing like a mortgage to separate the kids from the grown-ups. This was the first time I’d hosted a Readaholics meeting in my new house. When I formed the group four years ago, we’d originally met in the library but had switched to meeting in one another’s homes when it became clear that six of us were going to be the group’s mainstays (and library patrons complained about our “too lively” discussions). Misty followed us and pounced on the trailing branch of a spider plant with clearly vicious tendencies. She subdued it with much scratching and hissing and then settled on one of the low windowsills to keep an eye on the front yard.

I set out a plate of petits fours left over from a luncheon I’d organized for the Episcopal Women’s Thrift House the day before, and a bag of tortilla chips with salsa. Martha Stewart, eat your heart out. Gulping down a third of my margarita, I told Brooke about my appointment that morning. She laughed when I mentioned my transparent skirt.

“That wasn’t the worst part, though,” I said, steeling myself. “Madison—the woman I met with, my client—is marrying Doug. Doug Elvaston,” I clarified when Brooke didn’t gasp or faint or say, “Oh, my heavens!”

“You knew it would happen one day,” she mumbled into her margarita glass.

I narrowed my eyes at her. “You knew!” I breathed.

She looked up and shook her head vigorously, hair swishing her shoulders. “Not to say knew. Elspeth Elvaston might have mentioned to my mom that Doug was seeing someone. In New York.”

“You knew and you didn’t tell me, didn’t warn me. You know how I feel about him.” This was traitorage on a monumental scale, even worse than when she’d chosen to go to CSU after I was accepted at CU.

Setting her glass down with a click, she said, “C’mon, A-Faye. You guys called it quits two years ago. Time to move on. He obviously has.”

Youch. “Calling it quits is our favorite activity. We broke up before senior year of high school and got back together for prom, and then after our sophomore year at CU because I was doing the semester abroad in Italy that fall and didn’t want to be tied down, and then three times our senior year.” I ticked them off on my fingers: “When Doug thought he was getting that internship in Los Angeles, and then when Giancarlo from Italy came to visit me over spring break, and then—”

“I was there for all the drama the first time,” Brooke said. “I don’t need to relive it.” Before I could reply, the doorbell rang and I rose to let in Ivy Donner. Wearing a shirtwaist dress in a graphic brown-and-cream print, she’d obviously come straight from her job as assistant to Heaven’s chief financial officer. Her brown hair was gelled into a spiky pixie that gave her a gamine look and accented her doelike brown eyes. She’d graduated with Brooke and me, gone to the local community college and then immediately into city government. She liked fast reads with lots of action.

“You got a cat,” she announced, gaze going directly to Misty, who had followed me to the door. Before I could explain, she asked, “Mind if I make some tea?”

Ivy was an inveterate tea drinker with a different herbal blend for every occasion—sleeplessness, anxiety, a cold. All her brews smelled like algae on Lost Alice Lake on a hot August afternoon. “Water’s already boiling.” I led her into the kitchen. “Help yourself.”

“Love the tile backsplash,” she said, pouring boiling water into the mug I’d set out. Mug in hand, she hugged me. “Sorry. It’s been a lousy day. A lousy stinking couple of weeks, as a matter of fact. I took a personal day today—couldn’t stand the thought of the office. Had some legal business to attend to.”

“I know the feeling.” I hugged her back, thinking she felt stiff and tense. I got an acrid whiff of cigarettes and wondered if she’d started smoking again. I hoped not. She’d worked hard to quit two years earlier.

She broke away and followed me into the sunroom, greeting Brooke with an air kiss. “This book is pure genius,” Ivy said, waving her copy of The Maltese Falcon. “Hammett has it exactly right about men. They’re scum, all of them. Even our so-called hero, Sam Spade, is having an affair with his partner’s wife and ditches Brigid at the end.”

“She was a murderer,” Brooke pointed out.

Ivy flipped a dismissive hand. “He had no loyalty. He was all about saving his own skin. Coward.” She sank into a chair, took another sip of tea, and glowered.

“Do you think he was getting back together with Iva at the end?” Brooke asked as the doorbell rang again.

I let in Lola Paget, a compact woman with espresso-colored skin, a short Afro, and wire-rimmed glasses. She’d been a year ahead of Brooke and me at school and gone off to Texas A&M for a chemistry degree before coming back to Heaven to rescue the family farm by turning it into a plant nursery specializing in flowers and flowering shrubs. I was pretty sure she supported her grandmother and her teenage sister, who lived with her. Her parents had died in a drunk driver–caused accident when she was fourteen. She tended to prefer more literary mysteries.

“You got yourself a cat,” she said in her slow, deliberate way. “Here, puss-puss.”

Misty trotted right over and sniffed at Lola’s work boots delicately. “Mew.”

“She can be yours,” I said, lifting the kitten and placing her in Lola’s work-roughened hands. I explained how I’d gotten her and why I thought Lola might want her.

“That’s very thoughtful of you,” Lola said. “It’s true Tigger-cat passed on last month. She was a fine mouser. Do you think you could catch mice, puss?” She put her nose down close to Misty’s.

“Mew,” Misty affirmed.

“You’d better come home with me, then, and have a go at it. Thank you.” Lola smiled at me. She had a naturally somber aspect, didn’t smile much, but when she did, it lit up the room.

I let go a big breath, not realizing how worried I’d been about the kitten’s fate if Lola didn’t want her. “You’re very welcome,” I said. “Soda’s in the fridge.”

Lola set down Misty, who trailed her into the kitchen to get a soda.

“Hey, Lo,” Brooke called. “What’d you think of the book?”

Lola joined us in the sunroom, pulled a coaster from a stack to put her Coke can on, settled herself, and looked around before replying. “This is a lovely room, Amy-Faye. The plants look happy here.”

That was a huge compliment, coming from Lola, who had helped me pick out the plants at Bloomin’ Wonderful. I beamed.

“There were lots of villains,” Lola observed, turning to Brooke. “Too many for me to keep track of. There were Gutman and Joel Cairo and that Thursby fellow and that boy with the guns— Did he have a name?”

“Wilmer Cook,” Ivy supplied.

“And Brigid, of course. Spade was no great shakes, either. I can’t say I took to anyone in the whole book . . . What’s the point of a mystery with no good guys?”

“Amen, sister,” Ivy put in, nodding as if Lola had vindicated her.

“Your door’s unlocked—anyone could walk in,” came Maud Bell’s voice from the foyer.

“In here,” we chorused.

Maud strode in, crackling with energy, as always. Around sixty, she was six feet tall with a sinewy build—a lanky greyhound of a woman with a sharp nose, shrewd blue eyes, and a surprisingly ribald sense of humor. Her weathered skin testified to her summer and fall occupation as a hunting and fishing guide. In the winter, she did computer repair and Web site design, making use of the computer science degree she’d earned four decades ago at Berkeley, where she’d really majored in activism, she liked to say. When she turned fifty, she gave up “marching to the beat of corrupt corporate honchos’ bongos,” as she called it, to get back to nature in Heaven. Her hair was an au naturel mix of silver, white, and iron, and she wore her usual camouflage pants with a dozen pockets, henley shirt, and hiking boots. She smelled faintly of pot, which was not unusual, even before Colorado legalized it. Her favorite reads were spy thrillers and the like, which made total sense since she spent more time posting on her conspiracy theory blog, and trying to bring conspiracies to light, than she did at her paying jobs.

“Froufrou.” She gave the margaritas a disparaging glance, disappeared into the kitchen, and returned with a beer. “Damn clever fellow, that Hammett,” she commented, sitting. “Nice place, Amy-Faye. Feels like you. Conspiracies within conspiracies, everyone on the take or ready to betray someone else—it read like the front page of the Washington Post or the New York Times.” She took a long swallow of beer. “Where’s Kerry?”

A knock at the door answered that question. I went to open it, Misty at my heels. Kerry Sanderson, a Realtor and Heaven’s part-time mayor, marched in. She was familiar with the house already because she’d found it for me. She’d spent months helping me locate just the right property and walking me through the legal and financial wickets of first-time homeownership, and I would always be grateful. She immediately noticed Misty.

“Cute kitten,” she said, “but do you really think you have time to take care of a pet? What with your schedule being so erratic, and you having to take on even more events now that you’ve got this mortgage—”

I smiled. Vintage Kerry. At forty-eight, she had a teenage son, a grown daughter, and a grandbaby, all of whom lived with her. She’d been the first to join the Readaholics when I came up with the idea of a book club, back when I still lived in my tiny apartment and we held meetings in the library. She came across as brusque and efficient and managing, but her comments on the books we