“Thanks, Ms.—Thomas, isn’t it? Come on up, then.” She knows I’m no EMT, he thought. Well, small town. I’ll keep her away from the others, now.
“My husband’s up there,” Kate said. “He’ll show you where to go.”
Twenty minutes later, Dan came down to the assembled group, followed by Nessa Thomas. He’d examined the body and made a preliminary cause-of-death judgment—suffocation with the pillow, and the deceased hadn’t fought much if at all. He’d call for the copter after he’d finished interviewing everyone.
“Well,” he said, “I’ll tell you all now. Mr. Carver has been murdered.” He watched carefully and noted that each seemed appropriately shocked—although one, of course, wasn’t. The large-breasted girl in the corner shrieked. The blonde in the black dress stood up. “We’re leaving now, George,” she said. “If we have to walk.” Dan shook his head. “No one will leave,” he continued sternly. “I’m with the Sheriff’s Department. My name is Daniel Russo. I’m going to talk with you, one by one, in the kitchen, and when I’ve finished with each I want you to go upstairs to the room where you spent the night. If you’ll all cooperate, this shouldn’t take too long.” He tried to keep glee safely out of his voice. He’d dreamed of being in just such a situation.
The first several interviews were interesting; he’d already talked with McGraw and Nessa upstairs, so he had an idea what he’d be dealing with. “I didn’t do it!” the bosomy girl cried. “I liked Mr. Carver—he was cute! And,” she added, “neither did Stanley. Do it. He was passed out even before Mr. Carver!”
“I understand he hadn’t drunk as much as he pretended. Why was that?”
She bowed her head. “I don’t know.”
Stanley, next, had an answer for this. He didn’t want to talk—to Terry Carver or anyone. “If I got real drunk, I wouldn’t have to. And I didn’t like Carver. And I’ve got a juvie record. But hell, I wouldn’t have killed him.”
The big white man, Leary, was remorseful. “I don’t remember a goddamned thing after Shirley and his wife left. But I’m pretty sure I couldn’t have got up and done anything like that….” His wife, coming into the kitchen next, admitted she’d been angry at Carver. “But I don’t go around killing people I’m mad at, for God’s sake. If I did, this town would be littered with bodies.”
Mrs. Shirley, a writer of very boring mysteries, said approximately the same thing. “He did insult my last book in front of everyone. But really, one doesn’t murder one’s critics.” Had she met Carver before? “No—well, yes, he came to one of my signings. And we, well, met a few times after that. But really….”
Her husband had a theory. “It’s that big black man,” he said. “Terry called him ‘bro.’ Made him furious.”
And Damon echoed Margaret. “Yes, he made me angry, I’m afraid. But if I killed every fool I met, I wouldn’t have time to do much else.”
Dan was interviewing Kate McGraw when a tap came at the door and a little girl stuck her head in. “Mom,” she said, “Jake told me I should tell you what happened in his room last night.”
“Later,” Kate said. “Right now I’m talking to Mr. Russo.”
“No, let’s hear this,” Dan said. “What did happen, honey?”
The girl shuffled her feet. “Well, Jake was asleep, but I wasn’t. I was in the bottom bunk. I heard someone out in the hall, and then this woman came in and tiptoed right over to the bed. I said, ‘What do you want?’ and she jumped a mile. She turned around fast and tiptoed right back out again.”
“Was it that blonde woman? Mrs. Shirley?” Dan asked. He’d already made up his mind about the murderer; he knew about Marilu’s affair with Carver, and he guessed that she’d known they wouldn’t be able to get far down the road when she insisted they leave. Moreover, the victim in her first stupid book had died by suffocation with a pillow.
But the little girl shook her head.
“No. It was the other one—the one with red hair. I saw her good in the nightlight.”
* * *
They were all gone at last—Terry first, horizontally, then the Learys, Margaret handcuffed, in the big sheriff’s wagon. She’d confessed, tearfully but defiantly, after Dan Russo called her back. Then, two by two like the animals leaving the ark, the others. Kate sank down on the couch with a turkey sandwich in her hand and Mack beside her.
“You owe me a night on the town,” she said. “And one other thing.”
“What’s that?” Mack asked, his arm around her shoulders.
“Next year—it’s the Lotus Garden.”
The Guests at Our Table This Year
Lisa Wagner
Lisa is a homeschool teacher who lives with her family in Georgia. Inspired by her son who has nut allergies, Lisa set out on a mission to create recipes for her family that were not only nutritious but healthy and allergen-free. Today, nearly everything she makes is from scratch. Untreed Reads published Lisa’s Valentine’s Day–infused vegan cookbook From Lisa With Love in January of 2013.
Toni Goodyear
Toni is a former journalist and winner of the North Carolina Press Association Award for feature writing. Other past careers include market research, public relations, ghostbusting (yes, really), managing data for clinical trials, and teaching university psychology. She holds a Ph.D. in psychology from UNC Chapel Hill. A short story, Heart Surgery, is scheduled to appear in Triangle Sisters in Crime’s new anthology, Carolina Crimes: Tales of Lust, Love, and Longing. She has just completed her first cozy mystery, Trouble Brewing in Tanawha Falls, the first of a series set in a craft brewery in Carolina’s Blue Ridge Mountains.
Lesley A. Diehl
Lesley retired from her life as a professor of psychology and reclaimed her country roots by moving to a small cottage in the Butternut River Valley in upstate New York. In the winter she migrates to old Florida—cowboys, scrub palmetto and open fields of grazing cattle, a place where spurs still jingle in the post office, and gators make golf a contact sport. Back north, the shy ghost inhabiting the cottage serves as her literary muse. When not writing, Lesley gardens, cooks and renovates the 1874 cottage with the help of her husband, two cats, and, of course, Fred the ghost, who gives artistic direction to their work. She is author of several short stories and a number of mystery series including a microbrewing series, a rural Florida mystery series, and her most recent The Eve Appel mystery series. Lesley’s other titles with Untreed Reads include Angel Sleuth and Mother Gets a Lift, and her stories appear in both The Killer Wore Cranberry and The Killer Wore Cranberry: A Second Helping.
Elizabeth Hosang
Elizabeth Hosang is a Computer Engineer who wants to be a writer when she grows up. She has been writing stories for fun, if not for profit, for over ten years. While she has several unfinished novels in various stages of development, lately she has been working on short stories. She enjoys mysteries, science fiction and urban fantasy and has stories in all of these genres. In 2012 she made the short list for the Audrey Jessup short story contest. Elizabeth also appears in the Untreed Reads anthology Moon Shot: Murder and Mayhem on the Edge of Space.
Barb Goffman
Barb Goffman won the 2013 Macavity Award for best mystery short story published in 2012. That award-winning story, “The Lord Is My Shamus,” was recently republished in her collection of crime-fiction stories, Don’t Get Mad, Get Even (Wildside Press, April 2013). The collection includes all her award-nominated stories, plus five new ones. Barb has been nominated multiple times for the Agatha, Anthony, and Macavity crime-writing awards, as well as once for the Pushcart Prize. She works as a freelance, crime-fiction editor. Like Lesley A. Diehl, Barb also appears in both The Killer Wore Cranberry and The Killer Wore Cranberry: A Second Helping.
Herschel Cozine
Herschel Cozine has published extensively in both children and adult publications. Work by Herschel has also appeared in Alfred Hitchcock and Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazines, Sherlock Holmes Magazine, Wolfmont Press Toys for Tots Anthologies
and Woman’s World. His story, “A Private Hanging” was a finalist for the Derringer award. Herschel has published numerous short stories with Untreed Reads, and his Nurseyland Crimes will be combined into a collection along with new stories. He also appears in The Killer Wore Cranberry: A Second Helping.
Barbara Metzger
Barbara is a New York Times bestselling author. Her novels, mostly set in Regency-era England, have won numerous awards, including the Romance Writers of America RITA, the National Reader’s Choice Award, and the Madcap award for humor in romance writing. In addition, Barbara has won two Career Achievement Awards from Romantic Times Magazine. She has over 20 titles published by Untreed Reads in ebook format, and work has begun to bring these to the audiobook format in 2013.
Big Jim Williams
Jim has written for Western Horseman, Suspense, OverMyDeadBody, Orchard Press Mysteries, Writers’ Journal, WritersWeekly, Texas Livestock Weekly, Radio World, Frontier Tales, Rope & Wire, Cardroom Poker News, SNIPLITS, Floyd County Moonshine, and other publications. Anthology credits: Wolf Creek: Book 9, A Wolf Creek Christmas (Western Fictioneers); Dead or Alive (La Frontera Press), At Home & Abroad: Prize-Winning Stories (Joyous Publishing), Murder To Mil-Spec (Wolfmont Press), and The Last Man (Sword & Saga Press). His radio play, A Close Encounter of the Confederate Kind, produced by San Francisco’s Shoestring Radio Theatre, was broadcast on over 100 NPR stations, and also produced and aired by The Electricity & Radio Museum, Bellingham, WA.
Randall DeWitt
Randall DeWitt’s short stories have appeared in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine and an anthology published by Level Best Books. His story “The Cable Job” won the 2013 Derringer Award for flash fiction.
Sarafina Gravagno
Sarafina Gravagno has been employed in the Financial Services industry for over twenty years. She is the published author of several fiction and nonfiction short stories, many of which were drawn from her eclectic Irish/Italian family. She currently lives in obscurity in northern Illinois.
Laird Long
Laird pounds out fiction in all genres. His writing credits include: Hardboiled, Thriller UK, Damnation Books, Bullet, Robot, The Dark Krypt, Albedo One, Baen’s Universe, Space Westerns, Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine, Plan B, and stories in the anthologies F/SF, The Mammoth Book of New Comic Fantasy, The Mammoth Book of Jacobean Whodunits, The Mammoth Book of Perfect Crimes and Impossible Mysteries, The Big Book of Bizarro, and Action: Pulse-Pounding Tales. From Untreed Reads, Laird appears in the original The Killer Wore Cranberry as well as the mystery/sci-fi short story anthology Moon Shot: Murder and Mayhem on the Edge of Space.
Rhett Shepard
Rhett Shepard grew up in North Carolina, and attended college in Virginia and upstate New York. Since her graduation from the University of Rochester and her marriage to the love of her life, Rhett and her husband have lived in southern California, the Caribbean island of Trinidad, and now New York City—thankfully, writing is a career that travels well. She also writes inspirational fiction as Maggie Adams.
Warren Bull
Warren Bull has won a number of awards including Best Short Story of 2006 from the Missouri Writers’ Guild and The Mysterious Photo Contest in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Warren is a lifetime member of Sisters in Crime and an active member of Mystery Writers of America. His writing credits with Untreed Reads include the short story collections Murder Manhattan Style and Killer Eulogy and Other Stories.
Lee Hammerschmidt
Lee Hammerschmidt lives on the fringe of Portland, Oregon. His work has appeared in Big Pulp, Gumshoe Review, 10Flash, Stealing Time, Page Forty-Seven, Short-Story.Me, Strange Mysteries, Chicken Soup for the Soul and more.
Sharon Daynard
Sharon Daynard has crossed paths with a serial killer, testified before Grand Juries, and taken lie detector tests. Her short stories have appeared in magazines and anthologies in both the United States and Canada. She is a member of the New England chapter of Sisters in Crime.
Mary Mackey
Mary Mackey is the author of twelve novels. Her works have made The New York Times and San Francisco Chronicle bestseller lists, sold over a million and a half copies, and been translated into twelve foreign languages. She is also the author of six collections of poetry including Sugar Zone which won the 2012 PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Award for Literary Excellence, and Travelers With No Ticket Home, which will be published by Marsh Hawk Press in Spring 2014. She lives with her husband in Northern California and is related through her father’s family to Mark Twain.
Mary Patterson Thornburg
Mary Patterson Thornburg lives in Bozeman, Montana, with her husband, Thomas. Her fantasy novel A Glimmer of Guile will be published by Uncial Press in the spring of 2014.
The Killer Wore Cranberry Page 18