Murder in the Graveyard, page 1
Murder in the Graveyard Copy
A Destination Murders Short Story Collection
Meri Allen, Leslie Budewitz, Karen Cantwell, Misha Crews, Eleanor Cawood Jones, Tina Kashian, Daphne Silver, Rosalie Spielman, Cathy Wiley
Destination Murders
Copyright © 2025
All rights reserved.
No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher or author, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the authors' imaginations or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, business establishments, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Authors holding their copyrights, 2025:
Meri Allen pseud. Shari Randall "Murder at the Midnight Madness Book Sale"
Leslie Ann Budewitz, "The Devil's Chair"
Karen Cantwell, "The Goode, The Dead, and the Hungry"
Misha Crews, "I Thought You Were the Dead Man"
Eleanor Cawood Jones, "Graves Millie Does a Bunker"
Tina Kashian, "A Killer Party"
Daphne Silver, "Grave Expectations"
Rosalie Spielman, "Battle of the Grapevine Creek Graveyard"
Cathy Wiley, "Rest in Peas"
Contents
1. MURDER AT THE MIDNIGHT MADNESS BOOK SALE by Meri Allen
2. THE DEVIL'S CHAIR by Leslie Budewitz
3. THE GOODE, THE DEAD, AND THE HUNGRY by Karen Cantwell
4. I THOUGHT YOU WERE THE DEAD MAN by Misha Crews
5. GRAVES MILLIE DOES A BUNKER by Eleanor Cawood Jones
6. A KILLER PARTY by Tina Kashian
7. GRAVE EXPECTATIONS by Daphne Silver
8. BATTLE OF THE GRAPEVINE CREEK GRAVEYARD by Rosalie Spielman
9. REST IN PEAS by Cathy Wiley
10. Other Destination Murders Anthologies
MURDER AT THE MIDNIGHT MADNESS BOOK SALE
by Meri Allen
An Ice Cream Shop Mystery Short Story
Set in the picturesque New England village of Penniman, Connecticut—land of dairy farms, covered bridges, and town-green traditions—the Ice Cream Shop Mysteries follow Riley Rhodes, a former CIA librarian and travel food blogger who returns home to manage the Udderly Delicious Ice Cream Shop. With her keen instincts, insider’s knowledge, and a scoop of small-town charm, Riley serves up justice while savoring the sweet comforts of home.
“That one’s trouble,” Geraldine Fairweather said as she stamped over to the refreshments table and jutted her bulldog chin toward a tall man of about thirty, bearded, in a plaid flannel over a band shirt and jeans.
Riley Rhodes looked over in time to see the guy flash Gerri a brilliant smile and head to the Old and Antique Books table at the front of the Congregational Church’s vast meeting hall.
Riley smiled. That was typical Geraldine. Gerri always found the worst in people and had a distinct dislike for the men’s style she called “faux lumberjack.” The older woman, in addition to being her employee at the Udderly Delicious Ice Cream Shop, was also the President of the Penniman Historical Society, former principal of Penniman High School, and manager of the evening’s Midnight Madness Book Sale fundraiser.
“Gerri, for heaven’s sakes, all he did was come in the wrong door.” Flo Fairweather, Gerri’s younger sister and another employee at the ice cream shop, shook her head in exasperation.
“He came in through the graveyard entrance!” Gerri made angry air quotes. “Said he didn’t see the sign on ‘the cemetery gate’ telling people to enter through the main door, which indicates to me that he did see the sign on the gate. Those steep steps leading up to the meeting hall from the graveyard are dangerous even in daylight. That’s why that sign’s there.”
Riley threw a glance at the tall white meeting hall exit doors. They were clearly marked with a sign that read “emergency exit only” and were truly meant to be used only in an emergency. If one pushed through them, there was a steep drop to the first of twenty uneven cement steps that descended directly into the graveyard and its dozens of weathered graves that lay along the Congregational Church’s south flank.
“Maybe he was admiring the old gravestones,” Flo said in the mild voice that had calmed and charmed Penniman’s school children for fifty years.
“Well, his girlfriend came in the same way, you must’ve missed her,” Riley said as she greeted a customer.
“His girlfriend?” Gerri scanned the crowd.
“I’m assuming. Over there by the romance novels.” After she scooped a luscious pistachio gelato and handed it to her customer, Riley added, “She entered through the same door about a minute after the guy did. Her head was down and she was wiping her eyes. Looked like she’d been crying.”
Flo tsked. “Poor thing!”
“Mark my words.” Gerri flipped through the bills in a cash box, then dramatically flung her long silk emerald scarf over her shoulder as she turned toward the door marked “Office” behind the table. “They’re trouble. I’m going to get you some change.”
As Riley served customers, she cast her eyes over to the Old and Antique Books table where Gerri’s prey was chatting with Brady Thompson. She stifled a chuckle. He’d be there for a while. Brady, the long-retired mayor of Penniman, was a chatterbox.
“Flo,” she began, then noticed that Flo had drifted over toward the romance section. She shook her head. The Fairweather sisters had spent decades with young people, and though they leaned toward different ends of the emotional spectrum—Flo openhearted and understanding, Gerri suspicious and judgmental—she’d learned to trust their guts. And her own. And there was something off, she thought, about Gerri’s faux lumberjack’s behavior with Brady, something too effusive, too showy.
As she served gelato to a growing line of customers and the “lumberjack” continued his lively conversation with Brady Thompson, Riley noted he never looked around for his girlfriend. She remembered they’d arrived separately. Why did she assume they were together? She rewound their entrances in her mind. They were the only people who entered at the exit door … same age. Aside from herself, there weren’t many shoppers in the thirty to forty age range. Like many couples, they had the same look. The man had long dark hair along with his voluminous beard, and the young woman also had black tousled curls, though her roots were blond, and she, too, wore a flannel shirt over black leggings. When the woman had pushed her hair back from her face, she revealed multiple piercings in her nose and ears, her nails painted in a rainbow of different faded and chipped colors. What else? Their black backpacks matched. They had the same expensive hiking brand with a matching patch embroidered with a bright red cardinal.
As Riley craned over the line of customers to keep an eye on Brady Thompson’s table, the noise level exploded as two scout troops surged into the meeting hall. Riley sighed with relief when Flo rejoined her. She looked over the heads of the kids lining up for gelato and saw the young woman text, give a disgusted shake of her head, then storm out the exit door.
Riley shared a look with Flo. “Wow. How was she when you talked to her?” Riley whispered.
“Not okay.” Flo’s shoulders drooped. “I only had time to say hello and ask if she needed anything. She told me to go away, rather rudely I’m afraid. I was going to keep trying but someone interrupted and asked me to show them where the mystery section is, and then someone needed help finding the restroom. I think those romance books set her off.”
I think it was the text, Riley thought.
Brady Thompson shouldered behind the refreshments table, clapping a heavy hand on Riley’s and Flo’s shoulders. “My that looks tasty. Things are hopping! I need to get change!”
Gerri surged from the office. “Brady, you don’t leave your table! You text me!”
“Now Gerri, we only have change for a twenty in our boxes, as you know, and this young fella just gave me a fifty.” He flourished the bill and handed it to her with a bow. “So if you’d make change, I’d appreciate it.”
“Okay, well, a fifty.” Gerri smiled.
“Yes, two books, $21.50.”
Gerri’s lips pursed.
“Here he is now,” Brady greeted Gerri’s lumberjack.
The young man in question, gleaming white teeth parting his beard, nodded toward the gelato case as he took a wallet from his pocket. “I’ll take a chocolate gelato.”
“Of course. And one for your friend?” Riley scooped some into a cup and held it out with an innocent smile, watching the man’s grin falter.
“Ah, Meg’s on a diet,” he laughed. “Always on a diet.”
Riley swallowed a retort as Gerri sighed, made change, and handed it to him. “Forty-seven, forty-eight…”
“And here’s the five for the ice cream.” The man put the bill on the table in front of Riley with a flourish and stuffed the bills Gerri gave him into his wallet.
“Good night!” Brady said brightly as the guy melted into the crowd. He scanned the gelato case. “Oh, I’ll take a chocolate, too. Nice young man. He came over to me and started chatting about stuff. You know how you chat. We talked about the town history, and he was very interested in Joshua Penniman. You know our Joshua Penniman?”
“Yes, as president of the Historical Society, I have an idea,” Gerri muttered through clenched teeth as she watched her prey move through the crowd toward the back of the room and the forbidden exit door
Flo handed Brady his gelato. He nodded his thanks and continued without missing a beat “… so he was very interested in the books and said something about maybe visiting the Historical Society later but I said well, heck, most of us volunteers are over here. Told him the Joshua Penniman House, the Society’s HQ, it’s closed and won’t reopen again until the spring. I gave him some info, and he was really interested. History buff and book lover.”
Riley watched the “history buff and book lover,” his backpack swinging heavily from his shoulders, push through the exit door to the graveyard.
“Are you kidding me?” Gerri started after him but Flo lay a hand on her arm.
“Deep breaths,” Flo said.
“What?” Brady said.
Gerri squinted at the bill in her hand. “This had better be real.”
“How many books did you say he bought? Two?” Riley said.
Brady nodded.
Riley cast her mind back … had his pack been empty when he arrived? Now it looked like it contained more than the two books he’d purchased. “Brady, go do a quick inventory … I wonder if that guy just walked off with a bunch of books.”
“Lady, I want strawberry.” A little boy waved a bill.
“Flo, would you please help this young man?” Riley removed her apron and pushed through the crowd.
Gerri steamed behind her toward the door. “That guy had dishonesty oozing from every pore! And Brady Thompson is a fool! If this bill isn’t real, I’m going to make him eat it!”
After what seemed like hours, Riley and Gerri fought through the crowd of shoppers and pushed through the bar on the door of the exit. Before Riley could step through, Gerri flung an arm across the doorway. “Watch that first step!”
“I will.” After Gerri lowered her arm, Riley gingerly stepped down onto the top step then paused so the older woman could put her hand on her shoulder as she carefully made her way down onto the slippery cement. They hesitated on the top step as their eyes adjusted to the darkness outside. The cold March air buffeted them and the steep steps sparkled with ice. Riley groped for the handrail. The cold iron burned to the touch, but she was glad for its solid support.
Mist blanketed the small walled graveyard. Gerri let the door close behind them, cutting off the warmth and light and bustle of the sale. All was suddenly quiet. The graveyard was generally not a spooky place to Riley, but in the nighttime, the low headstones and footstones, the undulating earth, the moss, all was the stuff of nightmare. Riley shook herself. The graveyard was quiet—but something was off.
“What’s that?” Gerri pointed.
A shining spade lay directly in the center of the path through the graves.
None of the volunteer gardeners would leave a spade in the middle of the path. Riley blinked as a form deeper than the shadows around it came into focus next to a headstone at the foot of the steps. A backpack. And a leg.
“Gerri, do you see—” she began.
But Gerri’s eyes had also adjusted to the dark, and Gerri had seen the body.
Gerri’s operatic scream rang off every stone in the graveyard.
***
Riley took one look at Jack Voelker, Penniman’s chief of police, and before he could say a word, she held up her hands. “I didn’t mean for this to happen.”
Jack grinned. “I never said so. It’s just … uncanny.”
Riley knew that she was a mine in the professional minefield for Jack. She always seemed to be on the spot when a dead body popped up in Penniman, and it had happened again.
He flipped open a notebook. “Gerri said you talked to the deceased.”
“Briefly. He bought gelato. But I saw him and his girlfriend—well, I think they were together—come in through that door.” She nodded toward the door to the graveyard. “They were the only shoppers who did. And they had matching backpacks. He called her Meg.”
Jack nodded and threw a glance across the meeting hall. Unfortunately, the book sale was part of the crime scene and would have to close. The hall was being cleared of shoppers and volunteers, and the few that had anything to share about the death were corralled into the office. Officers ushered out disappointed book lovers and taped off exits. Once over her shock, Gerri had been furious—so many people volunteered so many hours to the book sale, and the actions of one person shut it down.
Sitting behind the Historical Fiction table by the exit door to the graveyard, Riley told Jack everything she remembered. It was hard not to assume it had been the victim’s angry partner who’d lain in wait near the bottom of the stairs and whacked him with the spade—readily available from the gardening shed—but Riley wasn’t sure Jack was ready to hear her theory.
Riley was certain he wouldn’t answer but still asked, “Any idea who he was?” She knew the deceased had a wallet.
Jack looked down at his ever-present notebook and shook his head. Riley twisted her lips. “I think he stole some books from Brady Thompson‘s table.”
Jack looked up. “The books in the backpack,” he said.
Riley nodded. “I’m pretty sure his pack was empty when he came in, and also Gerri’s pretty sure the $50 bill he paid with was fake.”
Jack’s eyebrows flew up.
“She said he oozed dishonesty.”
Riley watched as Jack scrubbed the side of his head. He too had thick dark hair, though his was cropped short, shot through with a few grays that she’d probably given him, and a neatly trimmed beard. But the “lumberjack” look Gerri so despised looked right on his tall, broad frame.
Jack sighed. “I’d have to say that Ms. Fairweather is correct.”
An officer entered through the exit to the graveyard and whispered in Jack’s ear. Jack nodded, then told Riley she could go. When he went outside with the officer, Riley jumped to her feet, held the door open a crack, and peeked at the scene below her.
The police had roped off the graveyard as a crime scene and were erecting a white tent over the body. This side of the church backed up to a quiet lane that led away from the shops and restaurants that ringed the broad town green on the other side of the building. The swirling lights of emergency vehicles illuminated the roofs of crime scene vans that were parked on the other side of the brick wall of the graveyard.
Gerri grabbed Riley’s arm, and Riley jumped. “If you get this one solved for them right away we may be able to reopen tomorrow,” Gerri said. “We saw the two major players. Of course, the murderer must be that unstable-looking girlfriend.” She blew out a breath. “Unless that unscrupulous young man had someone else after him. One shouldn’t make assumptions, I guess.”
“We need more information.” Riley said. “We don’t know much about either one of them.” Besides being witness to their emotional relationship, she mused. That they’d been fighting was obvious.
“But you were talking to Jack, right?” Gerri asked as she looped her arm through Riley’s, and they headed into the office. Thanks to the hungry scouts, the gelato case was empty, and Riley gave thanks that she didn’t have to watch her profits melt away.
Riley sighed. “You know he can’t tell me anything.”
“There’s more than one way to skin a cat.” Once in the office, Gerri waved Riley toward the open window. “The brick walls make for helpful acoustics.”
Gerri put a finger to her lips, but the women were too far up to really hear anything besides the occasional squawk of a police radio.
As Riley watched the investigators work outside, her thoughts tumbled back to the discovery of the body and then drifted to how the murder might have unfolded.
Staring out into the cold March night, Riley imagined the distraught young woman standing at the top of the steep cement steps. What did she see in the dim light of the graveyard? Church volunteers often left gardening implements, tall ones like rakes, hoes, and spades, leaning against the walls of the overflowing gardening shed at the foot of the steps. Perhaps the light gleamed on the metal of the spade, and that wicked gleam had caught her eye. How easy it would be to grab the spade, to swing it as her boyfriend came out the door and reached the bottom of those precarious icy steps. He was young, probably didn’t bother to hold onto the railing and just ran down. And …
