Sleigh Bells and Sleuthing, page 1
Sleigh Bells and Sleuthing
16 Cozy Mystery Holiday Novellas Featuring Female Sleuths
Carolyn Ridder Aspenson
Ritter Ames
S.E. Babin
Morgana Best
Sam Cheever
Stephanie Damore
Loraine J Hudson
Clare Kauter
Ava Mallory
Mona Marple
Tara Meyers
K. E. O’Connor
Larissa Reinhart
Tricia L Sanders
Jenna St. James
Laina Turner
Good Fortune Farm Refuge
Contents
Foreword
Carolyn Ridder Aspenson
THE CLAUS KILLING
Ritter Ames
ORGANIZED FOR CHRISTMAS WISHES
S.E. Babin
THE CANINE CONUNDRUM
Morgana Best
A CHEMISTREE OF WITCHES
Sam Cheever
FAMILIAR HIJINKS
Stephanie Damore
DECADENT DEMISE
Loraine J. Hudson
THE CHRISTMAS BUTTON
Clare Kauter
STRANGLE ALL THE WAY
Ava Mallory
MISFITS & MISTLETOES
MONA MARPLE
THE ROBBERY OF MYSTIC SPRINGS
Tara Meyers
A ONE HORSE OPEN SLAY
K. E. O’Connor
GHOSTLY FOWL
Larissa Reinhart
A CHRISTMAS QUICK SKETCH
Tricia L. Sanders
HARK! A HOMICIDE
Jenna St. James
CHRISTMAS TREES & FELONIES
Laina Turner
HOLIDAY LIGHTS OUT
A BONUS NOVELLA!
Ava Mallory
WITCHES & WINTER MIRACLES
Copyright
THE CLAUS KILLING
A Lily Sprayberry Realtor Cozy Mystery Christmas Novella
Copyright © 2018 by Carolyn Ridder Aspenson
ORGANIZED FOR CHRISTMAS WISHES
An Organized Mystery Novelette
Copyright © 2018 by Ritter Ames
THE CANINE CONUNDRUM
Copyright © 2018 by Sheryl Babin
A CHEMISTREE OF WITCHES
The Kitchen Witch series
Copyright © 2018 by Morgana Best
FAMILIAR HIJINKS
Copyright © 2018 by Sam Cheever
DECADENT DEMISE
Copyright © 2018 by Stephanie Damore
THE CHRISTMAS BUTTON
Copyright © 2018 by Loraine J. Hudson
STRANGLE ALL THE WAY
Copyright © 2018 by Clare Kauter
MISFITS & MISTLETOES
A Missy Rae Mystery Short
Copyright © 2018 by Ava Mallory
WITCHES & WINTER MIRACLES
A Missy Rae Mysteries Spin-off Series Novella
Copyright © 2017 by Ava Mallory
THE ROBBERY OF MYSTIC SPRINGS
Copyright © 2018 by Mona Marple
A ONE HORSE OPEN SLAY
Copyright © 2018 by Tara Meyers
GHOSTLY FOWL
Copyright © 2018 by K. E. O’Connor
A CHRISTMAS QUICK SKETCH
A Cherry Tucker Mystery prequel
Copyright © 2018 by Larissa Reinhart
Original Copyright © 2013 by Larissa Reinhart
First Edition: December 10, 2013, Heartache Motel, Three Interconnected Mystery Novellas, published by Henery Press.
Author photograph by Scott Asano
HARK! A HOMICIDE
Copyright © 2018 by Tricia L. Sanders
Christmas Trees & Felonies
Copyright © 2018 by Jenna St. James.
HOLIDAY LIGHTS OUT
A Thief River Falls mystery
Copyright © 2018 by Laina Turner
All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereinafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is purely coincidental.
Printed in the USA
Foreword
Carolyn Haines, Good Fortune Farm Refuge Founder
Animals have always been a huge part of my life—and rescuing and helping animals is my “mission.”
As a child, I picked up stray animals and took them home to care for them. I was such a “character” in my little town of Lucedale that the local veterinarian would neuter cats that I caught for $5. That was a good thing—as a twelve-year-old I didn’t have a big spay/neuter budget.
The years passed and in 2010 I helped start Good Fortune Farm Refuge. Along with a few dedicated friends, we’ve run this shoe-string budget rescue for over eight years.
When the authors of Sleuthing Women offered to create a Christmas anthology with proceeds going to GFFR, I was floored and humbled.
GFFR is located in Mobile County, Alabama and we serve a largely rural area where spay/neuter is too expensive for a lot of pet owners. There are no laws to truly protect animals or enforce responsible ownership. A lot of animals suffer. GFFR takes in dogs, cats, and horses—we are at maximum capacity now—but through networks and friends, we continue to work to place horses, donkeys, burrows, pigs, cats, and dogs in safe and loving homes. And we work with local veterinarians to find affordable spay and neuter solutions for low-income families. We’ve also helped with basic vet care thanks to several Banfield Charitable Trust Grants.
Until attitudes about animals change—and laws are passed to make cruelty and neglect a serious and punishable offense—animal rescue is going to be an uphill battle. The good news is that people like Sleuthing Authors are always stepping up, unexpectedly, to help. The GFFR board of directors accepts no pay and every penny goes to the animals.
And you can play a big role too.
Whenever there is an election—local, state, regional, national—be sure to ask the candidates running how they stand on animal legislation and enforcement of anti-cruelty laws. From city council to US Congress, animal lovers need to be represented. When life is better for animals, it is also better for humans.
We authors are good at creating a different reality—a place where our characters solve the mystery and win the day. We can do that in real life. These 16 generous authors who tell such wonderful and enjoyable stories are proof. Through their generosity, life will be better for animals and humans.
Carolyn Haines
Founder, Good Fortune Farm Refuge
Delena Datillo
President, Good Fortune Farm Refuge
Aleta Boudreaux
Treasurer, Good Fortune Farm Refuge
THE CLAUS KILLING
A Lily Sprayberry Realtor Cozy Mystery Christmas Novella
Carolyn Ridder Aspenson
Chapter One
The front doors to my office flew open. "Santa Claus is dead."
My best friend and business partner, Belle Pyott was a hot mess. Tears streaming down her face, mascara smeared under her eyes like a zombie Halloween costume gone wrong, and her hair a knotty ball barely attached and dangling from the top left side of her head.
I almost said, honey your porch light is on, but you ain't home, but it wasn't the time for joking because she was clearly distraught. So instead. I stood up from my chair and held out my arms to hug her. She fell into them bawling her eyes out. "Bless your heart, have you been watching sad Christmas movies again?"
She backed away and wiped her nose with a tissue she'd pulled from her sweater pocket. "You haven't heard, have you?"
I leaned against my desk. "Heard what? What's going on?"
"He's dead."
I gripped her shoulders with my hands and stared into her teary eyes. "Belle, look at me. Are you okay? Did you eat something funny? Are you on some new medication or something?" Her normal black leather Coach tote bag wasn't hanging from her shoulder. "Where's your bag? Did someone mug you? The odds of someone assaulting anyone in our small north Georgia county would have been unlikely a few years ago, but considering we'd had several murders over the past year, I couldn't be sure anymore.
She swatted my arms away with a swift Judo-like move she'd learned in a self-defense class in college at the University of Georgia. "I'm serious, he's dead."
"Belle, Santa isn't dead. He can't be, he's not real." I took her hand and guided her to her desk chair. She plopped into it. "Now, speak slowly and make some sense, please. What are you talking about?" My cell phone chimed with my boyfriend, Dylan Roberts's text tone. My boyfriend also happened to be the county sheriff. I ignored his message and focused on my best friend.
She blew her nose into the tissue, and it sounded like an eighteen-wheeler horn blowing on Interstate 85 in downtown Atlanta. "I know he's not real, you je
I rolled my chair over next to hers. "Wait, you're saying Dooley Compton died?"
"No, I'm saying he was murdered, and you're not going to believe—"
My cell phone rang. It was Dylan. I sighed and annoyed, said, "Hold on." I pushed myself from my seat and stretched my arm to my desk to reach it. "Hey. Belle's telling me about Dooley. Can I—"
"Did she tell you we've arrested a suspect?"
"You've already made an arrest?"
"That's what I was trying to tell you," Belle said.
I tapped the speaker "Who?" I asked.
In unison, they both said, "Billy Ray Brownlee."
"Billy—no way." Billy Ray Brownlee was the local volunteer paramedic for the county fire department, and the sweetest man alive. I couldn't pinpoint his age, but he had to be somewhere upwards of seventy, and the thought of that man having the soul of a killer seemed impossible. "I can't imagine that."
"Neither can I," Belle said. "But your boyfriend here says they've got witnesses."
"And your best friend there is one of them," Dylan replied.
"I'm telling you he didn't do it."
"But she won't tell us anything else."
Oh, goodness, I'd just heard my Christmas cheer flush itself right down the toilet and swirl off into the bowels of Bramblett County, Georgia. "Guys, come on, it's almost Christmas."
Belle leaned back in her chair and snarled. With her mascara all smudged and her hair in disarray, she'd appeared more an amused clown than an angry Southern girl, but I wasn't about to tell her that. She had a pen in her hand, and Belle was the star pitcher on our high school softball team. The girl had phenomenal aim. I wasn't taking any chances.
I clicked the phone off speaker and held it to my ear. "Dylan, can I call you back?"
"Can you talk to her? She refuses to tell us what happened. Even Matthew tried, and he can't get anything out of her."
"Okay. I will." I clicked the end icon on my iPhone and set it face down on the desk. I smiled at my best friend, knowing the angst she must have felt. She loved Billy Ray as much as I did. If she had seen him do something terrible, her insides must have been ripped into a million tiny pieces, and her heart a shredded mess. I wanted to wrap her in a cocoon of love and shield her from the pain I knew overwhelmed her, but I knew I couldn't. So instead, I did what my momma would have done. I got up, walked over to our bathroom at the back of our office, took some paper towels from the roll and squirted them with soap. I doused them under the water, squeezed the excess out, dried my hands, and brought them back to her. "Here. You look like something the cat dragged in."
She'd been twisting the pen between her fingers, absentmindedly staring at it in that way people did when they weren't focused on what they were doing. When I spoke, I'd surprised her. She glanced up at me, her eyes wide but cloudy and mapped with jagged red lines. "I do?"
I nodded. "We can't be listing or selling homes with you looking like someone from the competition now, can we?" I dabbed under her left eye gently, not wanted to get the soap inside her eye itself and make them any worse. "Here, tilt your head up for me."
She followed my directions. I spoke in a soothing tone, something I'd learned from my momma. Any time one of us kids hurt ourselves, she'd speak calmly and whisper, and we'd instantly feel better, our tears stopping, our quick breathing evening out to slower, regulated breaths. I hoped doing the same would steady Belle's rapid pulse, too. I hadn't actually felt her pulse, but I knew the signs—flushed skin, heavy breathing, dazed, distant look in her eyes. Of course, these were also signs of shock to some degree, and if she'd actually seen Billy Ray Brownlee do something horrible, and if Dylan knew this and hadn't forced Belle to go to the hospital, I was going to tan his hide something fierce. Him and her deputy sheriff boyfriend Matthew's, too. "Belle, honey, I think we need to get you to the hospital."
She blinked. "No, no. I'm okay. How's my makeup? We have client meetings today, right? I need to prepare their files. I'm behind."
"Sweetie, your makeup is fine. Our client meetings aren't until this afternoon. Here." I guided her out of her seat. "How ‘bout we go to Millie's Café and grab ourselves a chamomile tea?" I hated lying to my best friend, or to anyone, really, but if that got her to the hospital, I didn't much care. I'd handle the client meetings on my own or reschedule them if need be. Belle mattered more than our clients anyway.
I supported my best friend the entire way to my car, which was really just out our front entrance and down the street a half block, her weight leaning heavily on my right side like someone who'd just injured their ankle or leg and couldn't walk on it, with the added emotional strain of a broken heart. I helped her into my tiny vehicle, wishing I'd chosen her larger one instead, but hindsight was always twenty-twenty. I let her know I'd be right back. Millie's was just a few doors down, but Belle was too distraught to realize I was up to something.
I returned with a chamomile tea for her and a triple shot espresso latte for me. I had a feeling I would need the energy for the long day ahead of me.
Chapter Two
Being a realtor in a small town, or, truth be told, a reasonably sized county that posed as a small town, actually had its perks. I wasn't even thirty-years-old, but I'd made great connections with my business by being a part of the county's Chamber of Commerce and volunteering for practically everything the county set up and sponsoring every event. Those simple actions made our realty business the top in the tri-county area, and because of that, I'd been able to secure several local doctors as our clients. Belle did the behind the scenes work, and as she put it, I was the face of the agency. Luckily, that face was seen walking into the emergency room of the hospital by a former client who happened to be a doctor.
He sauntered up to me, his bright blue eyes sparkling like small pools of little fresh saltwater oceans. "Lily Sprayberry, it's great to see you," Dr. Stan Wheatly said. When he caught a glimpse of Belle, his glistening white toothy smile closed up and reversed into a concerned frown. "Belle's in shock." He did a quick ninety-degree pivot, grabbed the shoulder of a nurse scooting by and ordered a gurney, stat. "And get a room for my patient too, please."
The nurse took off in a near-sprint as Dr. Wheatly ticked off a million other orders at her, all the while she responded in some barely audible tone, her head nodding as she did. I watched the two of them, Dr. Wheatly responding to the nurse, checking Belle's eyes with a little flashlight, monitoring her heart rate and holding her wrist, all the while still speaking to the nurse.
I've spent a lot of time watching night time crime dramas, but real-life emergency room drama topped those by a long shot. In utter awe of Doctor Wheatly, when he asked me what was going on, I could barely get the words out, practically in shock myself.
He asked me a question, but I didn't quite make out the words. He squeezed my shoulder. "Lily, get it together. I need some help here."
"I'm sorry. What?"
He took the drinks from my hands and tossed them in the garbage can nearby. "Neither of you need these. Tell me what happened. Are you two okay?"
