Scrappy Summer Page 6
“What kind of cookie is that?”
“It’s just a sugar cookie. Have one. There’s a few on a plate there on the counter. I made a batch and froze them. Lizzie and I will decorate them later. I might make pumpkin bread tomorrow.”
“Pumpkin? Mmm.” Jon had fallen in love with pumpkin since he moved to the States. He’d never had anything pumpkin in France. He bit into the cookie.
“Delicious,” he said, sitting down at the table.
“I have a gingerbread cake in the oven.”
“Ah, that’s what I smell,” he said, clapping his hands together.
Just then the phone rang, and Beatrice answered.
“Hi, Mama,” Vera said. “How’s it going?”
“Fine here. Just baking up a storm, getting ready for Christmas. How’s the cruise?”
Vera didn’t respond right away. Beatrice’s psychic antenna went up.
“What’s wrong?”
“It’s nothing, really. Please don’t worry too much,” Vera said and then told her about Sheila falling and the mild concussion.
“Oh, dear,” Beatrice said. “She could be able to still make some of those engagements, right?”
“We hope. She’s missed a couple already. She had an appointment with an editor of a design magazine. Had to cancel.”
“Well, now, that sucks,” Bea said. “How did she fall?”
“What do you mean?” Vera asked, her tone a bit forced.
There was more to the story. Bea was sure of it. Did someone push her?
“I mean, I’ve known her as long as I’ve known you, and she’s been a runner for a long time. How did she fall?”
“She tripped. That’s all.”
“What did she trip on?”
“Oh, Mama, damn you. She tripped over a dead body. Someone was killed on this ship. We’re on a cruise ship with a bunch of designers, drunks, and at least one murderer. Did you really need to know all that?” Vera said without taking a breath.
“Humph.”
“Okay, so I know you’re sitting there thinking you told me so, that cruises are nothing but trouble. But I’ll tell you what. I’m determined to have a good time. No matter what.”
Bea laughed. She hated cruises, and Vera knew it. No point in arguing with her. There never was.
Bill, Vera’s ex-husband, walked into the house with their daughter, Lizzie, who was staying with Beatrice and Jon.
“Grammy!” Lizzie ran up to her and wrapped her arms around Bea’s legs.
“Is that Lizzie?” Vera’s voice softened. “Please put her on.”
“Okay, but you be careful. You hear me?”
“I’m always careful, Mama.”
“Yeah right,” Bea said. That’s why I’ve had to bail you out of jail, take you to see a shrink, and pull you out of the river as you dumped your wedding photos in it, standing in your bare feet in the cold Cumberland Creek River. You’re so careful.
As if she didn’t have enough on her mind, now she was worried about Vera and the others being out in the middle of God knows where with a killer. Beatrice bit her lip. She had a bad feeling about this.
But at the same time she had to admit a certain satisfaction. She’d told all of them not to go. You heard nothing but bad things about cruises these days. Accidents. Disappearances. Rapes. Now a murder. She was certain it was not the first time a murder was committed on a cruise. But her only daughter was on this one.
“The people on this cruise are some of the finest scrapbookers and designers in the business, Mother. It’s not like it’s just any cruise,” Vera had said.
Not just any cruise, indeed.
Photo by Christy Majors
Mollie Cox Bryan, author of the Cumberland Creek mystery series, is also the regional best-selling author of Mrs. Rowe’s Little Book of Southern Pies and Mrs. Rowe’s Restaurant Cookbook: A Lifetime of Recipes from the Shenandoah Valley. An award-winning journalist and poet, she currently blogs, cooks, and scrapbooks in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia with her husband and two daughters. Her first Cumberland Creek mystery Scrapbook of Secrets was nominated for an Agatha Award for best first novel. Please visit her at molliecoxbryan.com.
Having traded in her career as a successful investigative journalist for the life of a stay-at-home mom in picturesque Cumberland Creek, Virginia, Annie can’t help but feel that something’s missing. But she finds solace in a local “crop circle” of scrapbookers united by chore-shy husbands, demanding children, and occasional fantasies of their former single lives. And when the quiet idyll of their small town is shattered by a young mother’s suicide, they band together to find out what went wrong . . .
Annie resurrects her reporting skills and discovers that Maggie Rae was a closet scrapbooker who left behind more than a few secrets—and perhaps a few enemies. As they sift through Maggie Rae’s mysteriously discarded scrapbooks, Annie and her “crop” sisters begin to suspect that her suicide may have been murder. It seems that something sinister is lurking beneath the town’s beguilingly calm façade—like a killer with unfinished business . . .
The ladies of the Cumberland Scrapbook Crop are welcoming an eccentric newbie into their fold. A self-proclaimed witch, Cookie Crandall can whip up a sumptuous vegan meal and rhapsodize about runes and moon phases with equal aplomb. She becomes fast friends with her fellow scrapbookers, including freelance reporter Annie, with whom she shares shallow roots in a community of established family trees. So when Cookie becomes the prime suspect in a series of bizarre murders, the croppers get scrappy and set out to clear her name . . .
Annie starts digging and discovers that the victims each had strange runic patterns carved on their bodies—a piece of evidence that points the police in Cookie’s direction. Even her friends begin to doubt her innocence when they find an ornate, spiritual scrapbook that an alleged beginner like Cookie could never have crafted. As Annie and the croppers search for answers, they’ll uncover a shockingly wicked side of their once quiet town—and a killer on the prowl for another victim . . .
Spring is in the air, but the ladies of the Cumberland Creek Scrapbook Crop hardly have time to stop and smell the roses. Not when famed Irish dancer Emily McGlashen is found murdered in her studio just after the St. Patrick’s Day parade—and one of the Crop’s own members is the prime suspect. Vera’s dance studio may have suffered when Emily waltzed into town, but the croppers know she’s not a vengeful murderer. Lucky for her, co-scrapbooker Annie is a freelance reporter eager to vindicate her friend. What she discovers is a puzzling labyrinth of secrets that only add question marks to Emily’s murder. Just when it seems they’ve run out of clues, an antique scrapbook turns up and points the croppers in the right direction—and brings them face to face with a killer more twisted than a Celtic knot . . .
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Copyright © 2014 by Mollie Cox Bryan
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ISBN: 978-0-7582-9459-3
First Electronic Edition: June 2014