by Kym Roberts
Cover Copy
Running an independent bookstore in small-town Hazel Rock, Texas, doesn’t sound like a high-risk pursuit. But when a fundraiser reveals a story with a truly killer ending, Charli Rae Warren will need to scramble to sort out the deadly plot…
Sponsoring the literacy drive to benefit the foster care system should be a feel-good endeavor, but one of Charli’s helpers is definitely on another page. Charli’s dad is distracted and keeping something secret, which Charli suspects is a harmless flirtation with an attractive county clerk who offered to lend them a hand. It’s nothing to worry about—until the same clerk winds up dead…
When nosy locals begin pointing fingers, Charli finds herself entangled in a race to uncover the killer’s identity—and to get to the bottom of a shattering family secret that could rewrite her history in alarming ways. Suddenly Charli is facing her worst fears and her childhood nemesis in order to unmask a murderer—before he silences her for good…
The Book Barn Mystery Series
by Kym Roberts
Fatal Fiction
A Reference to Murder
Perilous Poetry
Lethal Literature
Lethal Literature
Kym Roberts
LYRICAL UNDERGROUND
Kensington Publishing Corp.
www.kensingtonbooks.com
To the extent that the image or images on the cover of this book depict a person or persons, such person or persons are merely models, and are not intended to portray any character or characters featured in the book.
LYRICAL UNDERGROUND BOOKS are published by
Kensington Publishing Corp.
119 West 40th Street
New York, NY 10018
Copyright © 2018 by Kym Roberts
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Lyrical Underground and Lyrical Underground logo Reg. US Pat. & TM Off.
First Electronic Edition: May 2018
eISBN-13: 978-1-5161-0658-5
eISBN-10: 1-5161-0658-X
First Print Edition: May 2018
ISBN-13: 978-1-5161-0660-8
ISBN-10: 1-5161-0660-1
Printed in the United States of America
Dedication
For all those fighting the good fight
Chapter One
I knew better than to arrive at a bachelor’s house early in the morning, but I’d been happily oblivious to the possibility that I might look like I was checking up on him—like I wanted to catch him in the act. I should have remembered that key word before I’d decided to surprise him with breakfast from the diner. He was a bachelor.
And the last person on earth I wanted to catch in the act.
Yet there he was . . . standing in his doorway wearing a T-shirt and jeans with his bare feet announcing to the entire neighborhood, make that the entire world, that he’d just rolled out of bed. The situation couldn’t get worse. At least, so I thought. Until I noticed his hair was tussled and Ava James gave him a tender kiss on the cheek—with matching sex-mussed hair.
I stood on the sidewalk, surrounded by the spring fragrance of the wisteria bush growing over the white picket fence around his front lawn, my mouth hanging opening. Our to-go order breakfast was in my hands as Ava turned around and saw me for the first time. She immediately averted her gaze and jammed a pair of sunglasses onto her face. Their endearing moment over, I watched completely dumbfounded as her hand grasped at the neck of her button-down shirt, and her knuckles whitened as she held it together. I did not want to notice the missing buttons on the top of her blouse as she bowed her head in the traditional walk of morning-after shame.
We were all adults. We could handle this. It wasn’t that big a deal. Their age difference wasn’t shocking, nor was their potential of being a couple out of the question. It had just taken me off guard, and that was what I found most disturbing.
At least that’s what I was telling myself.
Ava and I passed on the sidewalk and I tried to establish eye contact through her mirrored lenses. “Good morning, Ava,” I said and smiled at the woman fifteen years my senior.
She mumbled a good morning without raising her head. I wouldn’t have been able to see her eyes anyway, but I didn’t want her to think I harbored a grudge. I didn’t. They were consenting adults. I had no reason to judge them or be upset.
“Are you ready for the literacy drive for the foster care program?” I asked.
Ava nodded but kept walking right past me. “I’ll call you,” she said without looking back.
“Sure thing. Whenever you get a chance, I’m flexible.”
I don’t think I fooled anyone. I wasn’t that flexible about any of this.
I looked up at the door where he stood watching the whole scene unfold. His jaw was tight, and his eyes narrowed as he scanned the street to see if anyone else witnessed their indiscretion. Then his gaze returned to me, and I could tell it wasn’t a proud moment for him. He sensed what neither one of us wanted to admit—he’d just fallen off the pedestal I’d put him on shortly after I’d returned to Hazel Rock, Texas, my hometown of 2,093 people.
That however, wasn’t what I found most disturbing. There was something in his eyes that said, “Don’t ask questions; don’t ask for an explanation.” If I did? My inquiries would be ignored.
I reach the steps with the warm paper bag and two paper cups of sweet tea in my hands. “Are you going to let me in?”
He looked like he had no idea how to handle the situation. That made two of us, but from the look on his face, Ava James wasn’t just a one-night stand—she meant something to him, and I needed to suck it up and accept the fact that the man had moved on. He stood back and held the door open for me to enter, but his gaze followed Ava as she walked down the sidewalk, past Mike Thompson, who had apparently started running to work off a few pounds, or fifty, before she rounded the corner.
“Daddy, you don’t have to keep your love life a secret.”
Bobby Ray Warren closed the door without saying a word, and by the time he turned around, he’d hidden that lost look in his eyes. “I’m glad you brought breakfast. I’m starved.”
If he noticed the shudder he sent through my body with that comment, he didn’t say anything. He grabbed the bag from my hand and walked into his kitchen without another word. I followed him into the perfectly designed kitchen of his old Victorian home. His last girlfriend, who had died the day I return to town a little over a year ago, had decorated and remodeled the century-old home.
Sometimes I wondered if he stayed in the house in memory of her. Today I wasn’t so sure. After all, this was where he laid his head at night; it had his touches just as much as hers. Especially when it came to the industrial coffee station for his Colombian brewed coffee he enjoyed so much. Most mornings he waited for a cup of joe until he got to the bookstore; on the days he didn’t open The Book Barn Princess, he had a cup of fresh brew at home in his state-of-the-art kitchen.
I looked down at the two plastic cups of sweet tea in my hands
and wondered why I’d bought two. Two empty coffee cups were sitting on the kitchen table. I set the tea on the table, picked up the coffee cups, and carried them to the sink.
Dad had just shared a cup of coffee with Ava after their night together—though I really didn’t want to think about his night with Ava. But it was stuck in my brain like the sound of a greased pig squealing in an arena full of kids. Nipping at this end of my brain and screaming at the other, sending it straight through my right lobe into my left, it wouldn’t shut up or disappear.
“So . . . is this the beginning of something new?” I asked.
“Are you planning to bring me breakfast from the diner every morning?”
I rolled my eyes at his attempt to hide what I’d seen. “You know what I’m talking about, Daddy.”
“I think you’re stepping into waters you don’t belong in, Princess.” My nickname rolled off his tongue with more than a hint of irritation.
I searched his face and could see he was dead serious. He wasn’t going to discuss Ava James with me. I didn’t know if that meant they were serious or if it meant they were less than serious. His face was a mask of discretion. He was not going to discuss her with anyone. Ava James had his ear . . . and more.
“You’re right. I’m sorry, Daddy. I was out of line questioning you about your love life. When you’re ready to talk about it, I’m here.”
Dad reached over and squeezed my hand. “Now let’s see what you brought for breakfast. At this point, I’m pretty sure I could eat the bag and think it tasted good.”
We ate our breakfast of eggs, bacon, and waffles made out of Texas Toast while discussing our upcoming fundraiser for foster kids. Ava James had pitched the idea to my dad and he’d been all for it. I was too, but now I wondered how personal that pitch had been.
Ava had been a customer of our family bookstore for as long as I could remember. When I was a kid she used to come in every now and then with Isla Sperry, the old sheriff’s wife. When I was a teenager, she was a dispatcher at the sheriff’s office, working for the same sheriff who spouted scriptures every time I so much as breathed in the direction of trouble. When the sheriff brought me to the station after a wild night of leading a cheer from the top of the town’s water tower, it’d been Ava James sitting at the one-person phone system in the sheriff’s office who tampered down his lecture straight out of 1 Peter 3:3–4.
“‘Women with unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit are precious to God,’” Sheriff Sperry had said.
Ava had turned around and looked at him with one eyebrow raised. “You can’t tell Princess to be quiet and gentle, then turn around and quote John 10:10 to me. Princess is literally stopping ‘the thief who comes to steal and kill and destroy’ by sharing her joy with the world. Remember? ‘Jesus came that they may have life and have it abundantly.’ Princess has life—abundantly.”
At that moment, I’d felt like I had a big sister looking out for me. It was wonderful. I’d never be able to quote scripture in an argument. But Ava could, and she did it effectively.
The sheriff’s authoritarian attitude had turned into a pained expression as he looked between the two of us. Even at my tender age, I knew there was something important hanging in the air between them. And when the sheriff walked down the hallway to his office, I’d dared to complain to Ava about the old coot.
That had been a mistake.
My big sister disappeared. Ava had practically raised her claws in his defense. He’d been like a father to her when she’d aged out of the foster care system. Without him, she wasn’t sure what street corner she would have been sleeping on. It was the last time I’d complained about her boss. At least to her. It also explained why she went to work for Sperry when he became a judge, and it explained her passion for collecting the books we couldn’t sell, to give to foster children every month.
My dad broke into my memories. “When are you leaving for Dallas?”
“Tomorrow evening after I get off at the bookstore. I’m going to stay for the weekend and do a little shopping.”
Dad’s lip quirked. “I hear Mateo has the weekend off as well.”
“Oh?” I began clearing the table to avoid any further comments. The last thing I wanted to discuss with my daddy was Mateo Espinosa. Mateo and I hadn’t told anyone that we were going to a concert in Dallas together. For him, it was a privacy issue. For me it was complicated. We were taking a big step I wasn’t sure I was ready for. During the past month, I’d found myself questioning my intelligence. Mateo was the current county sheriff, and I’d already had one bad relationship with the lead law enforcement officer in town. What if things went south between the two of us?
Would he quote the Bible to me as well? Would he be there every time I went two miles over the speed limit? Come running when I didn’t cross the street at the intersection and tell me I was jaywalking? Or would he focus on first-time offenses I hadn’t been old enough to experience with the old sheriff? Like shake his head at the “wild girl” in town when I came out of the Tool Shed Tavern a little tipsy after a Monday night football game, then arrest me for public intoxication. Those fears were very real . . . to me, anyway.
When my thoughts went in that direction, breathing became difficult, and as the weekend drew closer, those moments of panic seemed to be increasing. I finished clearing the table as my dad leaned back and patted his belly.
“Is Ava still working as Judge Sperry’s clerk?” I asked.
Dad stiffened, the way he always did when I talked about the county judge who used to be my archnemesis. Unlike Ava, my relationship with Judge Sperry didn’t contain fond childhood memories. They consisted of the man who had been sheriff looking for every reason in the world to spout the Bible to me. If I breathed a hint of rebellion, I somehow ended up staring at the gold star on his chest, saying “yes, sir” and “no, sir” before I’d even made a nuisance of myself. It always ended with Sheriff Sperry telling me my evil ways would send him to his grave.
I never quite understood why. Maybe that type of tough love had been a saving grace for Ava. For me, it’d been a pain in my backside and his nickname “the Judge” seemed to fit very well since the man had been evaluating my behavior since I stepped into town at the age of eight.
“Yes, but that may change soon,” Daddy answered.
“Why?”
“Ava said Isla Sperry’s Alzheimer’s has taken a dramatic turn for the worse in the past month. She keeps wandering away from the nursing home and making wild accusations about the people she cares most about. The Judge is thinking about retiring.”
“What? I had no idea she was suffering from Alzheimer’s disease. I’m sorry to hear that. Isla Sperry was always good to me. I hate that she’s going through that.”
Dad cleared his throat, and I could have sworn there was a shimmer of tears in his eyes before he stood up and turned toward the hallway. “Me too. Me too, Princess.”
As he walked down the hallway I couldn’t help but wonder if I was missing something once again, but then his voice turned loud and clear when he said, “I’m going to take a shower. You better get to the store and open it. We don’t want the customers busting down the Barn door.”
We both knew there was no threat of our customers breaking down our doors. We also knew that something was bothering him, and my daddy wasn’t about to talk about it . . . yet.
Chapter Two
I made my way to the Barn and slammed the truck door closed before approaching the store. My lighthearted mood had turned sour. Princess number two greeted me on the porch with a little hop in her step. I couldn’t help but smile.
“You know how to turn my day completely around, don’t you?”
She squeaked, then snuffled my bare leg, tickling my ankle. I couldn’t help but laugh. “You just want breakfast,” I scolded.
My accusation caused her to jump straight up in the air. I
t amused me no end to see our thirteen-pound pink armadillo prance around happily. Princess was unique when it came to armadillos. Her shell didn’t just have a touch of pink at the ridges of her bands, like most armadillos did that were considered pink in color. Princess was pink all over. Almost like she was a combination of a fairy and a nine-banded armadillo. I liked to think we had a lot in common with our mixture of cultures and our names—because of my love for everything pink, Daddy named her after me when he found her as a baby.
I unlocked the door and she scurried in ahead of me, running straight for her bowl in the back storeroom. I followed her and smiled as I emptied the bag of mealworms into the pink ceramic bowl the two of us had made the previous week. Most people wouldn’t understand how an armadillo could help make a bowl, but Princess was the one who had the inspiration for it. She’d chosen the design by chewing up a Jan Fearnley’s children’s book, Milo Armadillo, and forced me to turn what was left into a piece of book art instead of reading material. The inside of the bowl had the cover art depicting a pink armadillo with a backpack. Princess had conveniently chewed Milo’s name out of the title, so no title graced the bowl. Instead, it was as if Princess got to look in the mirror and see a caricature of herself every time she ate, while the script chased around her image on the outside of the bowl.
I placed the food on the floor and she scurried to it, hoping for the best. The scent of the natural product, however, displeased Princess. She huffed, and I could have sworn her beady little eyes glared.
“Sorry, girl. You heard the vet. Cat food is bad for your health. From now on you’re going organic.”
I think she may have growled before she turned around and brushed through the pink velvet curtain that closed off our storeroom.
“Suit yourself!” I called out to her. “But this is the only breakfast you’re going to get. It will be waiting for you.”