Ornamental Danger: a holiday short story (Working Stiff Mysteries)
Read Ornamental Danger: a holiday short story (Working Stiff Mysteries) Online
Authors: Kerri Nelson
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What critics are saying about
Kerri Nelson's books:
"Nelson's novel (
Courting Demons
) is full of fun. Readers will love the hilarity and underlying danger that pushes the story forward."
-
RT Book Reviews
"Kerri Nelson offers up a lot of fun and wild magic in
Courting Demons
!"
- Linda Wisdom, Bestselling author of
Demons are a Girl’s Best Friend
"I was so into the book (
Falsify
), I even gasped out loud once... It will definitely keep readers turning the pages to see what will happen next."
-
More Than A Review
"(
Miss Taken
) Is an electrifying romantic adventure that crackles with danger and sizzles with sensuality! Don’t miss this debut!"
-
Roxanne St. Claire, National Bestselling Author of
The Bullet Catchers Series
and RITA Award Winner
"I was pulled in (to
Double Take
) from page one…the story will restore your faith in love. An entertaining read that will leave the reader wanting more."
-
Book Wenches Reviews
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ORNAMENTAL DANGER
by
KERRI NELSON
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Copyright © 2014 by Kerri Nelson
Cover design by Lyndsey Lewllen
Gemma Halliday Publishing
http://www.gemmahallidaypublishing.com
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Dedication & Acknowledgements:
To my hubby and my oldest daughter, Brooke, who spent the better part of one evening trying to help me come up with the plot on this one. I totally didn’t use any of those ideas, but the brainstorming session was hilarious and a time that I won’t soon forget. Yay Christmas lights and fruit cake!
With thanks to Beth and David who own the real Smith-Byrd House in Prattville, Alabama. Thank you for hosting me for an author event and for allowing me to use your home in this novella. I will definitely be back. There is no stopping me. Seriously, you’ve been warned, I will be back for more delicious scones and tea.
"I'm wearing my new sweater dress to the Christmas party, so I hope they have the AC cranked, or I'll just melt!"
—
Ms. Lanier's Christmas Wardrobe Malfunction
"
Now
who's gonna bring the hooch to the Christmas social?"
Ms. Lanier stood over the body of Verna Strength and shook her head with obvious concern. I stared in disbelief at my elderly neighbor who seemed to have misplaced her concern.
"
That's
what you're worried most about right now?" was all I could manage to say as I fanned myself in the early December heat wave which was not all that uncommon here in central Alabama.
"Heck, yes. She made the best General Lee's Eggnog you've ever tasted. Now, she's done gone and taken the recipe with her. Stingy old thing would never share with any of us." As she spoke the words, her head pivoted back toward the former hooch-bringer's kitchen doorway.
Amazingly, I knew what she was thinking and reached out for her arm before she could make a move. "Leave it. This is no time to be rifling through this poor woman's kitchen in search of a recipe."
She turned her puppy dog eyes up at me in mock hurt. I returned her expression with a frown.
She shrugged. "I've already looked for it anyway. I don't think she even had it written down—she was suspicious like that, ya know? Stingy to the last minute."
"Ladies." The voice of Ty Dempsey sounded from the hallway, and we both turned in unison to greet him.
His eyes met mine and lingered for a moment more than I was comfortable with. I scratched an invisible itch that had suddenly surfaced on my bare left arm in response.
"Well, Captain Dempsey has arrived on the scene." Ms. Lanier grinned up at him. His well over six-foot stature cast a shadow over her four-foot-nothing frame, but he seemed to return her smile with nothing less than full-on boyish charm.
"Yes, ma'am. Sorry to see you under these circumstances. I know you and Ms. Strength were good friends."
I watched his tanned arm reach out and offer a comforting touch to Ms. Lanier's shoulder. And my eyes followed his forearm, thick with sinewy muscles.
Sigh.
Here I was standing over a recently deceased little old lady, and all I could think of was how fun it might be to watch Ty cut the grass with his shirt off. Well, it was December, and I doubted he'd be strutting around bare-chested despite the warm holiday season, but the memory of just such a vision tickled my brain, and my stomach countered with a little rumble.
Ty and I'd had a little romance back in high school, but things had been more than strained since I'd returned to town after a decade-long absence. My renewed attraction to him was probably just a sign that I needed more of a social life than Ms. Lanier and my other senior citizen neighbors could provide.
"Well, yeah, I've known her since…well…since forever. But we weren't that close really. She was kind of a jerk, if you ask me."
I cleared my throat. Ty cast a glance my way, and I offered a small smile in return.
"So, you ladies found her like this?"
We both nodded. But then I added, "Well, Ms. Lanier called me and told me that she'd found Verna's cat wandering around in her yard and was worried when she couldn't get Verna to answer the door…so we found our way in to check on her…"
"You
found
your way in?" His eyebrows rose at my choice of words.
"Yeah…yes. And we found her here…like this. I checked for a pulse, but I can see that rigor mortis has already come and is starting to fade so she's been dead at least eighteen hours." I couldn't stop myself from analyzing the scene from a medical standpoint. I was almost a doctor anyway. I'd come all but one semester short of completing med school just a few months ago.
"What a minute…you're not answering my question, Mandy." Ty broke my little trip down medical lane.
"What question?"
"He wants to know how we got in the house, dear. Yadda yadda…I crawled through the kitty door. It is no big deal."
My mouth dropped open, and I was pleased to see that Ty had a similar response going. Only, he still looked attractive.
"You did
what
?" Ty rolled his eyes, and I followed the movement.
Ms. Lanier hadn't told me how she'd gotten in. Only that she'd found Verna and that I needed to come over immediately. She'd let me in the back door, and we'd found the body and called the cops. I'd assumed that she'd had an extra key to the house.
"I'm agile like that. I could be one of those cat burglar types. You know like that hot little blonde named Parker on that show
Leverage
? I love that show." Ms. Lanier became temporarily distracted by the mention of one of her favorite shows, and her eyes darted over to the television sitting nearby which was tuned in to the mid-day soaps.
"Wait a minute." Ty tried to get back on point. "Have you touched anything? Other than the kitty door and the body? How did all these books get off the shelf and onto the floor?" He gave me a you-should-know-better-than-this-after-finding-a-body-just-a-few-months-ago glare.
I shook my head. But Ms. Lanier put one scrawny finger up to her mouth and squished the lower lip in and out. "Well…"
"Ms. Lanier, you know better than that. What if this is a crime scene? You could have tampered with evidence." Ty gave her a verbal wrist slap.
My throat tightened a little at the mention of yet another possible murder in Millbrook. The sleepy little community just north of the state's capital city had barely started to recover after a huge scandal concerning the mayor this past summer.
"Awe. This ain't no crime scene. It is obvious as the day is long that she tripped over one of these four dozen rugs she has all over the floor and broke that crystal vase thingy in the process. That Scrooge-like heart probably gave out. This ain't no crime scene, sonny."
I shuddered at the thought of this poor old woman falling and dying here all alone. It hadn't been that long since I'd lost my own elderly aunt. I studied the body more closely, and for the first time since entering the premises, I noticed the shiny object lying near the lifeless body of Verna Strength.
"We don't know anything yet. We don't know if she fell accidentally or if she was attacked. You can't just rule things out because she was old. And…that's
not
a vase," Ty confirmed as he squatted down and examined the tip of the crystal object with one gloved finger.
Ms. Lanier shrugged, and the tiny rumble that had started in my stomach earlier began to roil with more force.
"What is it?" I asked, although I was somewhat afraid to hear the answer.
"That's the Millbrook Mistletoe Smackdown trophy awarded for best holiday decorations. I believe she's won this five years in a row."
"Oh, crap on a stick. It sure is… Well, I declare." Ms. Lanier now seemed to have a renewed interest in Captain Dempsey's theory that foul play might be involved.
I knew nothing about this coveted award, but I did know one thing about Millbrook. Nothing was ever as simple as it seemed.
Could this be yet another murder?
Ty pulled out his phone and began to make calls. I rubbed my arm, now covered in goose bumps despite the heat.
Ms. Lanier put her hand on her forehead and rubbed the heel of her palm around in circles. "What a headache. Now the contest committee will have to try to get one of those suckers ordered to be delivered before the Christmas Eve Festival. You know the winner gets to keep that for the entire year, and now it is smashed to smithereens. I can't believe that old bitty took both the trophy and the eggnog recipe with her. "
"Have a holly golly Christmas…"
—
A Millbrook Christmas Carol
"What's it worth to ya?" Coach Milo Mulder said, to yet another customer at the What's-Worth Christmas Tree farm. When it came to making a few bucks, he was the world's best haggler that I'd ever seen. Folks knew to expect it when they came to buy from him, but since he owned the only such farm in the county—he had the upper hand.
I tuned out the ongoing price negotiations and returned to my conversation with Penny Dempsey.
"Aren't you going to go down to the station and see what Ty has turned up on Ms. Strength?" she asked as she leaned against the counter.
"Uh, that would be a world of
no.
" I was standing behind the counter trying to untangle an unforgiving bundle of Christmas lights and waiting for the delivery of fake snow to arrive. Only a couple more hours, and my shift at the farm would be over.
"I'm sure Ty would give you a little update, and maybe you could ask him over to dinner while you're at it." Penny's voice was hopeful yet firm. I knew that tone, and I wasn't falling for it. We'd been friends all our lives, and after a big senior year fall out, we'd finally come back together in a truce-based friendship that was growing more solid every day.
"Penny, he's
your
brother. Why don't you just ask him about the investigation?" I ignored her not-so-subtle comment about asking him out to dinner. She'd been pushing for us to resume our old high school flames for the past few weeks. I'd figured that the holiday season had gotten to her and made her all nostalgic, but knowing her—she had an ulterior motive.
"No can do. We promised each other that we'd keep our professional lives separate. Now that he's running the police department, he says I have to dig out my own headlines with no help from him. It's his new policy on running a clean department."
I looked up from the clump of lights that I seemed to be making worse with every twist and turn and gave my friend a knowing smile. "That's a good policy, Pen. The department took a huge hit after all that Mills family scandal business. Ty probably shouldn't rock the boat after his new promotion. Even if you are his favorite newpaper-owning sister."
She gave me a dead-pan glare. "I'm his
only
sister."
I giggled. "Are you gonna stand there and chat all day, or are you gonna get that display set up before the snow gets here?" The voice of my latest boss rudely interrupted our chat.
The Coach stared down his sizeable nose at the two of us, and I couldn't help but feel as if we were back in Geometry class once again.
"How are sales this year, Coach?" Penny broke the awkward moment with a smart question. If there was one thing Coach Mulder was interested in talking about, it was money.
He shoved his hands deep into his jeans pockets and turned his head to spit out some brown juice that I knew to be either from chewed tobacco or dipped snuff. I couldn't really tell the difference, but I knew the stinky smell nonetheless.
"Not bad. Considerin' the heat this season, we've had a steady flow of business. Be sure you give us a little write-up in the Mile, wontcha?" He offered Penny a brown-toothed grin.
Ick.
Penny returned the smile. But I knew there was absolutely no chance she would give him free advertising in The Mainstreet Mile. Selling ads was how any newspaper made money. Besides that, neither of us held any fondness for the former high school football coach who had spent our entire sophomore year trying to flunk us out of Geometry because we'd failed to make it as varsity athletes of any kind.
"Mandy, I've got to make a run out to Marbury. Do you think you can manage that delivery while I'm gone?"
I nodded. Anything to get him out of here so I could finish my shift in peace.
"Alright. Well, I want that display finished by the time I get back, ya hear?"
I nodded again, and he squinted his eyes at me as if he wasn't sure he could trust me. Then he headed toward his rusty, blue Ford, letting out another spit or two along the way.
We watched in silence.
Penny let out a sigh. "He's still the same old fart he was back then, but I think he might be shrinking a little bit."
We both laughed. It was good to hang out with my old friend. There had been a time when I thought we'd never recover from our past. But that was slowly fading away. Being with Penny made me feel almost normal again.
As Coach Mulder drove out of the lot, a shiny silver BMW pulled through the gates off of Highway 14.
"Oh, boy, here comes your buddy. This is my cue to leave." Penny extracted her keys from her slacks pocket and twirled them around her finger, catching them in the palm of her hand.
"Uh, Penny. You aren't going to leave me here with her, are you?"
Penny gave me a wink and then a finger twirl wave as she ducked under the banner that was starting to sag at the tent's entrance. "See you later, chica."
"You owe me dessert…" I called out after her and thought I heard a small chuckle as she hopped into her car and pulled the door closed.
I took a deep breath and pasted a smile on my face as a leggy, bottle-blonde stepped from her latest new car and jittered up to the counter. Her mile-long acrylic nails preceded her arrival by several inches.
"Allyson Harlow, what can I do for you?" I croaked out through gritted teeth.
"Mandy, oh, Mandy…love what you've done with your hair." She scrunched up her nose as she motioned to my long half-and-half locks. I'd had my hair color changed from red to dark brown a few months ago, and what was supposed to be a temporary color had somehow failed to wash out—something that my friend and hairdresser Sundae Giddings wouldn't admit to messing up. And instead of risking another color issue, I was letting it grow out the old fashioned way. It made for an odd look, even pulled back in a ponytail as I was currently wearing it.
"Did you come out all this way to chat about hair color, Allyson? Or can I sell you a Christmas tree or perhaps some decorations? We have an adorable cardboard reindeer that would look great in front of your trailer."
The jab felt mean even as the words passed my lips, but it was more than well-deserved. Allyson had lost more than one sugar daddy in the past few months, and other than her dealer-plated BMW, she had little in the way of luxury items in her life. Including the facts that she'd recently had to take a job at the local car dealership schlepping out cars to those more fortunate and had been forced to moved back in with her mother at the King Henry Commons—a local RV park.
She returned the taunt by blowing me a kiss and then pointing to my worn out work boots. "Is the goose poop included in the price of a tree, or does it cost extra?"
I inspected my footwear to discover that I was, indeed, standing in a pile of bird crap. Coach Mulder had a pen of poultry on the property that he sold for holiday fixin's. Only, half of them escaped on a regular basis and left their calling cards all over the place.
I dropped the strand of lights on the counter and tried to ignore the current state of my footwear for the time being.
"It costs extra, but for you—I'll box it up for free."
She made a tsk-tsk sound with her tongue and then smiled. "No need to be catty. I'm here bearing good news."
I winced at the words. If Allyson Harlow considered something good news, I knew I was going to hate it.
"Okay. Let's hear it." I braced my hands on the sides of the cash register and waited.
"Why, you've been selected by the Festival committee to be our annual Glitter Queen at the Christmas Eve Festival this year." Her smile grew wider as the words passed her plump lips. "And you know what that means…"
Yep. I knew what that meant. Hours of public embarrassment and potential death threats were in my near future, and there was nothing I could do about it short of leaving town.
Suddenly the goose poop wasn't looking so bad.