Ditched 4 Murder Read online

  Outstanding Praise for DITCHED 4 MURDER by J.C. Eaton!

  “J.C. Eaton has a sure hit with the second in the Sophie Kimball Mystery Series. A plot that twists and turns combined with an engaging cast of characters, this cozy mystery keeps you turning the pages.”

  —Brenda Whiteside, author of the Love and Murder Series

  Outstanding Praise for BOOKED 4 MURDER by J.C. Eaton!

  “You’ll chuckle all the way through this delightful romp through Sun City West, as Phee and her mother unravel the mystery behind the sudden deaths of several book club members. It’s so cleverly written, you won’t guess the perpetrators until the very end.”

  —Mary Marks, award-winning author of the Quilting Mystery Series

  “Booked 4 Murder is a witty adventure that will leave you laughing out loud. Join Phee as she tussles with her wily mother, a cursed book, and a host of feisty retirees in this entertaining and charming cozy.”

  —Stephanie Blackmoore, author of the Wedding Planner Mystery Series

  “Booked 4 Murder, set in an Arizona retirement community full of feisty seniors, is a fast-paced mystery with a mother/daughter pair of sleuths who will keep you laughing until the last page. It will also make you think twice before choosing your next book club selection—THE END—might come sooner than you think. . . .”

  —Kathleen Bridge, author of the Hamptons Home and Garden Mystery Series

  Books by J.C. Eaton

  The Sophie Kimball Mysteries:

  BOOKED 4 MURDER

  DITCHED 4 MURDER

  And coming soon:

  STAGED 4 MURDER

  Ditched 4 Murder

  J.C. Eaton

  KENSINGTON PUBLISHING CORP.

  http://www.kensingtonbooks.com

  All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.

  Table of Contents

  Praise

  Books by J.C. Eaton

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Teaser chapter

  KENSINGTON BOOKS are published by

  Kensington Publishing Corp.

  119 West 40th Street

  New York, NY 10018

  Copyright © 2017 by J.C. Eaton

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.

  If you purchased this book without a cover, you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher, and neither the Author nor the Publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”

  Kensington and the K logo Reg. U.S. Pat & TM Off.

  ISBN: 978-1-4967-0857-1

  First Kensington Mass Market Edition: December 2017

  eISBN-13: 978-1-4967-0858-8

  eISBN-10: 1-4967-0858-X

  First Kensington Electronic Edition: December 2017

  To all of our family members who’ve lived in Arizona since it was a territory, thanks for telling us to move out here because “the dry heat is hardly noticeable.” You wound up giving us the playground for our mysteries. And to our family members in Florida, sorry, folks, we already knew about the humidity and palmetto bugs in your neck of the woods.

  Acknowledgments

  We are so fortunate to have such an amazing “behind the scenes” crew of family and friends who have given generously of their time to read our drafts, offer their words of wisdom, and pounce on us every time they see a typo or, worse yet, the wrong homonym. Ellen Lynes, Susan Morrow, Suzanne Scher, and Susan Schwartz, you are the best!

  When our computers malfunction or Word becomes persnickety, we can’t call upon Beth Cornell, Larry Finkelstein, or Gale Leach fast enough. Thanks, guys, for keeping us in the twenty-first century.

  Of course, none of this would be possible if it wasn’t for our agent, Dawn Dowdle, and our editor, Tara Gavin, who worked tirelessly with us every step of the way. We don’t even know how to begin to express our gratitude for their willingness to take on this husband and wife team who couldn’t even agree on what color to paint our living room, let alone collaborate on our Sophie Kimball Mysteries. Somehow, they helped us get it done, and we are forever in their debt. And to the amazing Kensington staff, especially Robin Cook, who suffered through all of our typing blips and blunders. Thanks, everyone!

  Chapter 1

  Peoria, Arizona

  “Listen to your mother for once, Phee. Hold off on turning on that air conditioner. You should wait as long as you can so you don’t pay a fortune to those utility companies.”

  “Maybe you can put it off, but you’ve been living out here for at least a decade. Your blood’s probably as thin as water. Mine’s not.”

  “Well, it won’t thin out unless you put it to the test.”

  “I’m not going to sweat to death to prove a point,” I said. “I’ve only been out here a few months and my blood’s as thick as sludge. Heavy Minnesota sludge. Or have you forgotten what it’s like back there?”

  “Forgotten? I can’t even look at a Norman Rockwell holiday card without shivering. Trust me, honey, you’ll get used to the heat.”

  This, from the woman who installed a small, portable air conditioner in her back bedroom for the dog.

  It was a conversation I’d had a few days ago with my mother, Harriet Plunkett, and it was a typical one for us. Very little had changed since then. Until the murders. But I’m getting ahead of myself. I stood at the thermostat debating whether or not to break down and turn on the air-conditioning like I did every summer back in Mankato, Minnesota. But this wasn’t summer. It was late April. April in Peoria, Arizona, and approaching ninety-five degrees. The ceiling fans in my small rental casita could only do so much.

  I made the move to Arizona so I could handle the bookkeeping for a friend of mine, Nate Williams. He was a retired police officer from Mankato who started his own private investigation firm near Phoenix. Nate convinced me to take a year’s leave of absence from my job in accounts receivable at the Mankato Police Department and move to a place where I’d never be bothered with snow or ice again. All he had to do was remind me of the Super Target incident the winter before and he knew I’d jump at the chance to move to Arizona.

  The humiliation of opening my car door, taking a step, and falling face first on the icy pavement still appeared in my nightmares. The worst part was being unable to stand and having the two twenty-something guys from the car next to mine hoist me up and plop me back into the driver’s seat. Worse yet, they kept calling me “ma’am.”

  “Ma’am.” When did I become a “ma’am”? I was only in my forties. And I can still pull off a two-piece at the beach. Maybe if it wasn’t winter and I didn’t have a bulky coat and long scarf covering up my figure, they wouldn’t have used tha
t awful word. And why did I tell Nate about the stupid incident in the first place? It gave him leverage. Leverage he used to talk me into moving near my mother in Arizona. I still remembered every word he said.

  “Come on, kiddo. You don’t want another icy parking lot incident, do you? You’ve got nothing to lose. Your daughter’s teaching in St. Cloud, your ex-husband has been off the grid for years, and nothing is holding you back. Besides, you’ll love the area. And, you’ve got the advantage. You’re already familiar with it.”

  “I’m familiar with my mother’s small retirement community. And it’s a wacky one at that. Or have you forgotten?”

  “How could I possibly have forgotten about the Sun City West’s book curse and all those unrelated deaths that scared everyone in a fifty-mile radius of the place? We can thank your mother’s book club for that.”

  “So, now you want me to live there? Near all of my mother’s friends? The same batty crew from Booked 4 Murder? That’s the name of their club, you know. I think my mother thought it up. Anyway, those women had me chasing all over the place a year ago to find a nonexistent killer. That’s where you want me to live?”

  “Not there. Near there. You’re much too young to think about retirement communities.”

  “If that’s your way of buttering me up, you need to do better.”

  He did. Nate Williams upped my salary, helped rent out my house to a young police officer and his family, and paid for all of my moving expenses. He also helped me find a fabulous casita in Vistancia, a multigenerational community in Peoria, not too far from Sun City West.

  Now I was standing in front of my thermostat wondering how I could have been bamboozled into relocating to an area where a hundred and three degrees was described as “warm.” As my fingertip reached for the button on the thermostat, the phone began to ring. An omen. An omen telling me to wait another few days and save on my electric bill.

  Unfortunately, it wasn’t a sign from another realm; the caller ID made it clear it was my mother. I massaged my right temple and stared at the phone. My mother was calling to moan and groan about the latest disaster in her life—my aunt Ina’s wedding. As if I didn’t get an earful yesterday. At least it wasn’t as bad as the day before, when my mother went on a tirade insisting Aunt Ina was trying to take over the book club. That was a one-sided conversation I could’ve done without.

  “Your aunt Ina will drive us all to the brink with her endless lists, her obscure authors, and her constant need for attention. Be happy you’re an only child.”

  An only child who gets 100 % of Harriet Plunkett’s complaints.

  “We’ve told her time and time again we like to read cozy mysteries. Maybe a British whodunit once in a while, and what does she suggest? I’ll tell you what she suggests—mysteries translated from godforsaken languages like Hungarian or Romanian. Romanian. That’s a language, isn’t it? Well, one thing’s for sure, reading those things would be like watching a Swedish movie with subtitles. We’d be snoozing before they even found a body.”

  “Um, yeah, well . . .”

  “And one more thing—she suggested having us arrive in the attire of the day, according to the book.”

  “Huh? The what?”

  “Oh, you heard me. She wants us to dress up like the characters in the book according to when that book was written. Honestly, the library committee would have us locked up if we arrived to our meetings looking like we stepped out of another century. Even Shirley thought it was extreme, and she goes for all that new age stuff. Then Ina goes and says it’s no different than the Red Hat Society. No different? We’d be known as the lunatic fringe ladies.”

  The phone was now on its fourth ring and I had to make up my mind. In a moment of weakness I picked it up. I should’ve pushed the thermostat button instead.

  “Phee! It’s about time you got home. You never worked so late when you were in accounts receivable. This new accounting job is really eating up your time. Anyway, I just wanted to give you the latest on the wedding. Your aunt Ina decided to wear white. White. I honestly don’t know what’s come over my sister, but all of sudden she’s acting like she’s twenty instead of seventy-four. And white! She’s not supposed to wear white. This is her second marriage. Before I forget, your cousin Kirk and his wife are flying in from Boston. I wonder what he has to say about this. . . .”

  Finally, a pause. My mother actually paused, and I could say something.

  “I’m sure Kirk is thrilled for his mother. Look, Aunt Ina was always a bit eccentric. It was Uncle Harm who kept her in line all those years and even he could only do so much. I say if she wants to wear white, let her wear white. It’s not like there are any rules or anything. So, are all the other arrangements made? The invitation wasn’t too specific.”

  “Not too specific” was an understatement, even for me. The invitation was a coiled message written on a small, round piece of parchment paper. It reminded me of an enchantment bowl I had seen once in the ancient cultures section of the Art Institute of Chicago. Unfortunately, we didn’t have a docent on hand to explain my aunt’s invitation. It read:

  It took my mother a half hour to figure out the 14th of Sivan was a date on the Hebrew calendar that coincided with May 28. Then another half hour to complain.

  “Who writes a date like that? At first I thought Sivan was Aztec or maybe Incan. Possibly Tibetan. Finally I dredged up the Jewish calendar from the Sinai Mortuary, and lo and behold—it was Hebrew.”

  I took a breath as my mother continued to vent about my aunt.

  “The arrangements? You want to know if the arrangements were made? Oh no, that would make it too easy for the rest of us. And her husband-to-be seems just as ‘fly-by-the-wind’ as she is. He’s a musician, you know. Plays the saxophone. Worked for years in one band or another on cruise ships. Divorced three times. Three times!”

  As much as I hated to admit it, my mother was right about my aunt Ina. Every family has one member who, shall we say, “dances to their own drum,” but in Ina’s case, she’s been pounding on the entire percussion section ever since I’ve known her. My aunt Ina had never grown out of the “hippie phase,” as my mother referred to it. With the gauzy wide skirts she wore with peasant blouses and fetish necklaces, Aunt Ina had a style all her own. At seventy-four, she still braided her long gray hair and wrapped it on top of her head like the old German women did in the eighteenth-century paintings. Only they didn’t put flowers, ribbons, or bits of tinsel in their braids.

  I was picturing Aunt Ina with a floor-length gown and white tinsel in her hair when my mother continued to complain.

  “And when does she pick to get married? When? One of the hottest weekends in the valley—Memorial Day! She picks Memorial Day. That’ll cost your cousin Kirk a fortune on airline tickets. And that’s not the worst of it, Phee. Not by a long shot.”

  “Why? What do you mean?”

  “You said the invitation wasn’t specific. Well, here’s specific for you—they’re getting married at dawn in the Petroglyph Plaza in the White Tank Mountains.”

  “The Petroglyph Plaza? You mean the old Indian ruins in the state park?”

  Even I was getting concerned. This was extreme, even for Aunt Ina.

  “Oh yes. We can all sweat to death as we schlep up the mountain. And I emphasize ‘death.’ Who’s going to come?”

  “Mom, the White Tank Mountain Park is a few minutes from your house and we can drive straight up to the path that leads to Petroglyph Plaza. It’s only a quarter-mile walk from the parking lot to the ruins.”

  “A quarter mile? What’s the matter with you? I’m not walking a quarter of a mile because your aunt has lost her mind. And what about the book club ladies? They’re not about to get winded either.”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake, Mother. All of you walk farther than that when there’s a good sale at Kohl’s. Besides, I’m sure they’ll arrange for golf carts or something.”

  “You know your aunt Ina and details. We’ll be lucky if they
remember to bring water.”

  I took a few slow breaths, something I’d learned in a Tai Chi class once, and answered before my mother could continue. “Don’t worry. Aunt Ina will have all the arrangements made. Do you know why she picked that spot?”

  “Seems she and her future husband wanted to get married where they met. We’re just lucky they didn’t meet on some footbridge that could have collapsed and sent us all into a creek.”

  I tried to change the subject before my mother took everything to the extreme. “So, where are Kirk and Judy staying?”

  “Your aunt reserved some godforsaken place near the mountain. Called it quaint. What was it? Oh yes, ‘The Cactus Wren.’ And they want all of us to stay there for the weekend.”

  “It sounds nice, Mom. A quaint little bed and breakfast overlooking the White Tanks.”

  “Quaint! Don’t you know what that means? It means no air-conditioning, no cable TV, forget about a mini-fridge and a microwave, and we’ll be lucky if they stick a fan in the room. There’s only one thing worse than quaint, and that’s rustic. Thank God she didn’t pick rustic. That means no electricity and an outhouse!”

  I quickly changed the subject. “I’m sorry your granddaughter can’t make it. Too close to the end of the school year.”

  “Well, Kirk and Judy’s daughter, your cousin Ramona, can’t make it either. The navy isn’t about to grant her leave and fly her back from Qatar because her grandmother has discovered eternal bliss.”

  I tried not to laugh, but the whole thing was pretty darn funny. “I’ll take lots of photos and post them on Facebook. That way Kalese and Ramona can see the wedding ceremony. Did Aunt Ina mention who was catering the affair? I mean, it isn’t just the ceremony, is it? You talk to her all the time. What’s going on?”