A Pilgrimage to Death

by J. J. Cagney

  “You going out tonight? To celebrate closing the case?” Evan asked.

  “Yeah. With Jeannette of all people. I promised her a beer once she closed the drug operation. Seems like Regina probably won’t get any jail time, not with Carole’s confession up on the mountain that she’d killed Anna Carmen and the rest. And, from what we can tell, Regina wasn’t aware of the lengths her mother went—or that Carole had killed Ernesto. She’s fully cooperating with the DEA.”

  “Good,” Evan said. He cleared his throat. “That’s good.”

  Sam nodded, but his chest still felt hollow. “Fewer criminals roaming the street.”

  Evan dipped his head to his chest. “For the moment, anyway. I thought after your words with Jeannette . . . I guess I was wrong to assume you’d broken it off.”

  Sam paused in fixing his suit’s collar. Not every day he wore a suit to the office. Not every day he closed a big case and met with the mayor, chief, governor, and the regional head of the DEA.

  “Jeannette and I are definitely over. I can’t trust her.” Sam shrugged. “Plus, after closing this one—even with blowing her cover—I’m sure she’ll get a plum assignment somewhere bigger than this town.”

  “Huh,” Evan said, eyeing Sam with less pleasantness. “Well, I’m going to swing by Cici’s place. She invited me to dinner.”

  Sam held Evan’s gaze even though he knew he should turn and walk away.

  “It’s not like that. I just want to make sure she’s handling the last couple of weeks all right,” Evan said.

  Sam shoved his hands into his pants pockets and refused to take that bait.

  “You do what you need to do,” Sam said. “I’m off to see Jeannette.”

  He headed down the hallway, but Evan’s voice carried toward him.

  “Tell her congratulations for me,” Evan called. “And Cici, too. I’m sure Cee will be the first in line to forgive Jeannette her deception and hug her into the strange little family you two have developed.”

  Sam stopped. He turned to face the other man, his chest aching with the need to shout.

  “What do you want, Evan?”

  Evan stepped in close enough for his chest to brush Sam’s. They were almost eye-to-eye, but Sam took great pleasure in the fact he was about half an inch taller.

  “Same thing you did,” Evan said, his voice quiet. “Maybe same thing you still do. I want the truth.”

  Evan’s lips quirked up.

  “All of it. And a happy ending for Cici wouldn’t hurt, either.”

  A Heritage of Death, Book 2 in A Reverend Cici Gurule Mystery Series is available October 23, 2018. Get your copy now.

  * * *

  An unconventional pastor. A brutal murder. To solve the case, one reverend will look for help from beyond the grave…

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  Reverend Cecelia "Cici" Gurule dreams of a bruised and bloodied woman who looks alarmingly like Cici. She'd like to pretend the dream is a nightmare and nothing more, but there are too many coincidences in her waking life to write it off. Like the baby that turns up on her porch--a baby that disappeared weeks before.

  * * *

  Cici and Detective Sam Chastain race to find the woman, but the killer finds her first. As the trail grows cold, Cici's only chance to solve the mystery before she becomes the next target may be a clue left by her ghostly twin.

  * * *

  A Heritage of Death is the second novel in a compelling female sleuth mystery series for fans of Ruth Ware and Gilly MacMillan. If you like convention-shattering heroines, vivid Southwest settings, and a touch of the paranormal, then you'll love Alexa Padgett's twisty mystery.

  * * *

  Buy A Heritage of Death and hold on tight for a white-knuckle thrill ride today!

  Thank You!

  Dear Readers,

  Thank you for choosing and reading this book. If you enjoyed it, I’d be grateful if you’d write a short review and post it on your favorite book site. By taking a few seconds to leave a review, you not only help out your favorite authors, you help new readers find them as well—a total win-win!

  * * *

  And, thank you so much for your support! To hear about new books and get an exclusive freebie, sign up for my newsletter here.

  Acknowledgments

  As always, thank you, Chris. Your unwavering support and love shine through in all you do for the kids and me. I couldn’t ask for a better man, and I’m thrilled to wake up with you each day. You’re also the best movie date a gal could ask for.

  To Lisa Bateman and her husband Joseph Bateman, who put up with my slew of questions—and even my follow-up questions!—with humor and tons of knowledge. You made this book much stronger for sharing your expertise. Thank you.

  To William Elias, who shared his expertise as a former police officer to make sure I had Sam’s job description and time-frame on the force correct. Your expertise helped shape this manuscript—thank you so, so much.

  To my family, thank you for your patience with my dream—and letting me hang out in my head way too often.

  To Allyson Lindt, Ja’Nese Dixon, and Candace Osmond, who read this novel and cheered me on. Thank you so much! I can’t tell you how much your encouragement means to me.

  To my AuthorLab writing pals: You keep me on task and keep me motivated. I love your commitment and passion. I love reading your posts and stories. And I love how diverse our group is.

  LERA ladies and gentlemen, thank you for being so supportive, for making me love writing again, and for sharing your knowledge so freely. You are the best.

  To Heather Myers, thank you for seeing the big picture—and loving this book as much as I do.

  To Nicole Pomeroy, thank you for being so detail oriented. I can’t tell you how much I enjoy working with you because I know my books are so much better after your edits.

  To my Divas, especially Lisa Bateman—you kicked ass with the eARC’s and I can never thank you enough.

  To Emma Rider, this cover is gorgeous. Thank you for sharing so much of your beautiful self in it.

  And to my readers and reviewers, I would not be where I am today without you. I cannot thank you enough for sharing your time with me.

  About the Author

  J. J. Cagney is the mystery/thriller pen name of USA Today bestselling author Alexa Padgett. Her debut mystery, A Pilgrimage of Death, was named to Kirkus Reviews' 100 Best Books of 2018 and Goodreads Best Mysteries of 2010s.

  * * *

  Cagney holds a bachelor’s in international marketing and spent part of her twenties as the marketing director for an elite sports management firm. And, yes, she did her requisite stint with a dotcom back in the that early 2000s, first as a marketing coordinator and then as a content manager. She’s penned work for a variety of websites and magazines, and she worked as a literary agent for Irene Webb Literary.

  * * *

  She lives in northern New Mexico with her husband, children, about a million fish, and their Great Pyrenees, Ash. Kirkus Reviews called Cagney's latest mystery, An Artifact of Death, "An exhilarating entry in a thoroughly enjoyable series."

  Sneak Peek at A Heritage of Death, Book 2 in A Rev. Cici Gurule Mystery Series

  An unconventional woman. A brutal murder. To solve the case, one reverend will look for help from beyond the grave…

  Cici Gurule wants to pretend her dream is nothing more than a meaningless nightmare. But the bruised and bloodied woman looked alarmingly like her. When a baby turns up on her porch--a baby who was reported missing days before--evidence points to a connection with the woman in Cici's dream, and she can no longer ignore the nighttime vision. Cici and Detective Sam Chastain struggle to follow the garbled evidence, but the killer scores his victim first. Worse, a message pinned to the victim's blouse states, "You're next."

  Now, it’s a race against the clock to keep the baby safe and find the murderer before his trail goes cold. Cici's only chance to solve this mystery, before she becomes the next victim, means choosing be
tween her faith and believing a message left by her ghostly twin.

  A Heritage of Death is the second novel in a compelling female sleuth mystery series for fans of Ruth Ware and Gilly MacMillan.

  * * *

  Chapter 1

  Cici

  Our earthly joys are almost without exception the creatures of a moment... ―Rousseau

  Gasping as she woke, her body drenched in sweat as her heart tried to pound out of her ribs, was not one of Cici’s favorite past times. It was, however, the fastest route she knew to insomnia.

  Her dead sister, Anna Carmen, had never sent this type of nightmare before. Cici wished she hadn’t now. With a trembling hand—residual adrenaline—Cici pressed her palm flat to her stomach, willing her diaphragm to unclench, to allow her lungs to inflate fully. Anger built, frustration at her sister’s death, sure, but also at Anna Carmen’s decision to flit in and out of Cici’s life, unable or unwilling to help Cici solve some of the big questions she wanted answered.

  “Weeks go by with nothing from you, and this is what you send me?” Cici gasped, still trying to slow her heart rate, to focus her mind. But all the emotions jumbled together, unable to coalesce around any one of the sensations Cici lived in the dream.

  The depictions from those somnolent moments tricked her mind: she’d touched, smelled, felt. Her body still hummed from her experience.

  The freckles created an incongruous comparison, but…the long dark hair, the winged black brows, and the swollen flesh that drowned out the woman’s proud cheekbones remind Cici of her twin, Anna Carmen.

  With a sharp bite of recognition, Cici realizes that means the woman looks like her.

  Before she can process the revelation, an article fell out of the battered woman’s front pocket. With shaking hands, Cici plucked the small plastic ring from the blood-soaked denim, shuddering.

  A pacifier.

  Plucking the baby’s Nuk from the pock-marked, reeking asphalt freaked Cici out even more than the similarities in their features. That jarring fear for the baby—what baby? Whose baby? That’s what ultimately woke Cici from the nightmare Anna Carmen’s soft voice deep in Cici’s head insisted she watch.

  Since her death a year before, Anna Carmen seemed to be reaching from beyond the grave, trying to impart knowledge to Cici that would help her—imparting information focused on finding Anna Carmen’s killer.

  This dream, though, had nothing to do with her dead identical twin or Anna Carmen’s death. Nor did it have anything to do with any case Cici had read about in the papers. Which meant….what?

  A shiver of unease slid over Cici’s sweat-cooled skin.

  Bad. The dream portended something terrible to come, meaning Cici needed to touch base with her friend and a Santa Fe police detective, Samuel Chastain.

  “I don’t remember you being so selfish when you were alive,” Cici grumbled at the cool, silent room. “That’s what this is—selfish. You want attention? I’d love to lavish you with attention, Aci. I tried.” That damn lump lodged itself in Cici’s throat. “I wanted to but you shut me out.” Cici slammed her eyes shut and pressed her forehead to her knees, compressing her lips together tightly so the next words wouldn’t leak out: Why can’t you leave me alone?

  Cici didn’t mean that. She loved her sister—wanted her alive, next to her more than her next breath. Yet, that wasn’t too be.

  As a reverend, Cici understood that this desire to lash out at her sister was a form of grief—an unhealthy one she needed to contain.

  And…who knew if her sister’s spirit lingered? Cici still had no idea how this whole communicate-with-the-dead thing worked.

  Not well, anyway.

  “I miss you,” she whispered into the room. She opened her eyes, blinking because the sun now crested over the eastern horizon, and streaks of golden and pink light flashed into the indigo sky. Mona, one of her Great Pyrenees pups, laid her white muzzle punctuated with a delicate black nose on the rumpled bedclothes, her dark eyes full of a patience only dogs seemed to expend.

  Cici pet Mona’s silky ears before she climbed out of bed and stared out her window, eyeing the day. There, she pictured her identical twin as she’d last seen her: long, dark hair brushed back from the pale brow, hazel eyes closed as if in sleep and her black lashes brushing high cheeks. Her nose straight if a tad long, jaw delicate. She’d worn a pretty pink Chanel suit—Cici hadn’t known she’d own such an outfit.

  Not her favorite memory of her sister, but it was the one she revisited most often.

  Cici missed Anna Carmen, always would. Acceptance of the hole in her life—in her heart—proved harder yet to manage.

  A ride on her Harley might shake the melancholy and wake her up, get her going.

  Cici showered and dressed after letting her dogs outside. Once she’d fed them both and ensured they had plenty of water, Cici slipped on the gloves and jacket between sips of coffee, then the helmet. She hesitated next to the bike, its body still scratched from last month’s frantic trip through the barbed wire.

  She slid on the helmet, tucking her long hair back before straddling the seat. She revved the engine. Cici’s smile grew and her body relaxed as she took to the lightly-trafficked streets. Her sister had been right about the relaxation of riding the motorcycle.

  Cici needed to do this more often.

  Her phone vibrated in her pocket. She pulled it out.

  “Hello?”

  “Reverend Gurule? This is Jan Knowles.”

  “Blessings, Jan. What can I do for you?”

  “I’m sorry it’s so early.” A long pause followed by a gurgly sigh. “I wanted to wait. I should have waited. It’s just…well…I…I…I found out last night I have cancer. St-stage f-four.”

  Cici swallowed against the bitter acid biting up the back of her throat. Much as she loved the work she did, helping her congregants in her United Church of Christ family find faith and meaning in their lives, she detested this human suffering that punctuated the happier, sweeter moments.

  “I’m glad you called me, Jan. Are you at home?”

  “Yes,” Jan’s voice turned watery.

  “You’re off of Paseo, right?”

  Jan gave Cici her address, and Cici said, “I’ll swing by now. Mind putting on a pot of coffee? If it’s not too much trouble?” Cici asked.

  “Yeah.” Jan heaved that deep soul-shuddering sigh into the phone, as many previous congregants had before her.

  Starting a pot of coffee was something positive Jan could do—the task familiar, comforting, and Cici found helped people reorient their lives a little.

  “Thanks, Reverend.”

  Cici replaced her helmet and restarted the engine. Time to start her day.

  ***

  I need to talk to you about a dream I had.

  Cici pressed the send icon and continued to frown down at her phone. Much as Cici wanted to brush off the dejection and worry that plagued her throughout the day, especially after comforting Jan and getting her to call her estranged older brother, Cici didn’t. She took comfort Sam didn’t call—not that he would ask her to an open crime scene—should he be at one. Even Cici knew that’s not how police actually worked.

  But she waited, breath baited, for Sam’s return call. It didn’t happen. Not that Cici would have had time to talk—she was without a church secretary until the board found a decent replacement. Unfortunately, no qualified candidate had stepped forward yet, meaning Cici handled most of the office tasks plus her regular duties.

  Busy didn’t entirely cover her current schedule.

  Sam’s reply came through hours later, though Cici didn’t read it until her late lunch break: I’ll come by tonight.

  Cici finished her day close to six and locked up the building as the last stragglers from yoga chattered out the doors and to their cars. She drove her Harley home and parked it in the single stall garage tucked on the backside of her small adobe home. She opened the connecting kitchen door to find both her dogs waiting, tails waggi
ng, for her. While she hugged and pet them, she talked about her day. After letting Rodolfo, who was still healing from his surgery, out for a short jaunt in the yard, she clipped on Mona’s and hit the uneven sidewalk for a couple of miles of walking and sniffing. Cici just walked though Mona insisted on sniffing each inch of the path and its surrounding foliage.

  Sam hadn’t arrived when they returned home. Cici pondered another shower to rinse off the faint layer of city grit from riding the Harley and her walk. No, that wouldn’t relax her. Still unsettled from the dream and Jan’s situation, Cici pulled on her black leather jacket and was just grabbing her gloves when Sam knocked on the front door.

  She set the gloves on the counter and padded toward the door, Mona circling her legs and emitting high-pitched whines.

  “Hey,” Sam said from her porch. He didn’t step up yet to hug her—as he used to do before the opioid case last month.

  Cici missed the easy camaraderie they used to share, but was unsure how to push past the awkwardness of their post-kiss reality.

  Anna Carmen’s voice rang through her head: Fake it till you make, Cee. With a mental shrug, Cici decided to take her sister’s bad advice. It wasn’t as though she had a better idea.

  Cici opened the door wider, sure Mona would only scamper over the Sam and not bolt down the street. Mona proved Cici right, waggling right up to Sam and licking his hand as she shoved her face against his leg.

  Sam reached down to pet the dog, his eyes swept the neighborhood.

  “I ordered a pizza,” he said. “Sausage, mushrooms and green chile on whole wheat. Should arrive in the next twenty minutes.”

  Cici’s favorite combination. She smiled. “Thanks”.