Death, Guns, and Sticky Buns Read online

  PRAISE FOR

  VALERIE S. MALMONT AND

  THE TORI MIRACLE MYSTERY SERIES

  “Tori Miracle is a fresh and appealing new amateur sleuth who charms you, then pulls you

  through the dark caves and sinister secrets of

  Lickin Creek. Delighted with her company, you

  willingly follow along.”

  —Sister Carol Anne O'Marie, author of Murder in Ordinary Time

  “Cute along the lines of Lilian Jackson Braun's cozies.”

  —San Jose Mercury News

  “The creation of Tori Miracle as a ‘whodunit’ figure

  is a pleasant surprise…. Malmont has introduced a

  likable heroine whose adventures are worth reading.”

  —Albuquerque Journal

  “Tori is an engaging, believable character, and

  her adventures in Lickin Creek are

  highly entertaining.”

  —I Love a Mystery

  “Likable, eccentric characters, frothy hullabaloo,

  and humorous situations.”

  —Library Journal

  DELL BOOKS by Valerie S. Malmont

  Death, Guns, and Sticky Buns

  Death, Lies, and Apple Pies

  Death Pays the Rose Rent

  Published by

  Dell Publishing

  a division of

  Random House, Inc.

  All right reserved. No part of this book may be

  reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means,

  electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording,

  or by any information storage and retrieval system,

  without the written permission of the Publisher, except

  where permitted by law.

  Dell® is a registered trademark of Random House, Inc.,

  and the colophon is a trademark of Random house, Inc.

  eISBN: 978-0-307-48365-2

  v3.0

  For my children, Paul, Andrea, and Jason,

  who have taught me the meaning of

  unconditional love.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I was assisted by many people during the writing and publication of this book.

  I wish to thank the following: Francçoise Harrison, Helen Platt, Laura Schramm, Susan Backs, and Jackie Werth for their valuable critiquing.

  Jody Barthle, who gave up her own precious writing time to chauffeur me around Gettysburg, pointing out places and sights I'd missed during many previous visits.

  Shirley Katusin, Linda Lake, and Helen Moe, who shared with me their recipes for sticky buns.

  Barbara Lee, who offered daily support and encouragement.

  George Nicholson, my agent.

  Maggie Crawford, my editor, whose suggestions made this a more readable book.

  CHAPTER 1

  A Friday in October

  RESERVED FOR EDITOR. AFTER ONLY A WEEK ON THE job, it still gave me a thrill to park in front of the sign. Granted, I'd only taken the job as editor of the Lickin Creek Chronicle on a temporary basis to help out P. J. Mullins while she recovered from major surgery; granted, I didn't have the foggiest idea of how to run a small-town weekly newspaper; and granted, the paper only had two full-time employees, including me, plus a few freelance writers, and a delivery staff all under the age of twelve. None of that mattered; for the present I was The Editor for whom the space was reserved, and that was a necessary ego boost for me, Tori Miracle, recovering journalist and mid-list author.

  I couldn't find the key to the back door, even though I was sure I had dropped it in my purse last night when I left. But that was okay; I preferred using the front entrance. Maybe someone I knew would see me—the editor—going in. With them of my sleeve, I wiped a smudge off the little brass plaque on the front door that said the building had been constructed in 1846. Last week, as my first official duty, I'd polished it with Brasso until it gleamed. Inside, the little waiting room stretched the entire width of the building, almost twelve feet. The furniture was red vinyl with chrome arms, dating from the forties, two chairs and a couch, and an imitation-maple coffee table that held an empty ashtray and a pink plastic vase full of dusty plastic daisies.

  “Morning,” I called out as I hung my blue linen blazer on a hook behind the door.

  Cassie Kriner came out of the back office. “Good morning, Tori. Can you believe this weather?”

  “Is it unusual?” I asked.

  “Sorry, keep forgetting you aren't local. Yes, it's very unusual for this late in October. Almost like summer.”

  In the office we shared, she handed me a mug of coffee. I took one sip to be polite and put it down on the edge of my rolltop desk. As always, it was dreadful, but I hadn't quite worked up the courage to tell her so.

  “You had a phone call this morning. From a Dr. Washabaugh. She wants you to call her back.”

  “Thanks, I will.”

  “Nothing wrong, I hope?”

  “Of course not. She's probably just calling to tell me I'm fine.” I smiled reassuringly, but inside I was feeling a little alarm. Would a doctor really bother to call if the tests were all okay?

  “She said to call her back, Tori.”

  “There's no urgency.”

  I hoped I sounded less concerned than I felt. Last week, at the urging, no, nagging, of my friend Maggie Roy, the town librarian, I'd gone for my first checkup in about five years. Pap smear, mammogram, the whole nine yards. Dr. Washabaugh had said she'd call me with the test results. Or had she said she'd call me if the test results were positive? Or did she say negative? Is positive good or bad? I couldn't quite recall what she'd said.

  Cassie perched on the edge of our worktable and drank her coffee as if she really enjoyed it. Today she wore a beige cashmere suit that probably cost more than I had earned in royalties from my ill-fated book, The Mark Twain Horror House. At the V of her rust-colored blouse was an amber necklace that looked antique and expensive, and her silver-gray hair was pulled back into an elegant Grace Kelly–style French twist. She always managed to look like a million bucks, I thought, which was a lot less, P. J. had told me, than what Cas-sie's husband had left her when he suffocated to death in a silo a few years ago.

  In comparison, I knew I looked all wrong in my favorite navy blue slacks and red-and-white-striped Liz Claiborne T-shirt. When I dressed this morning, I thought it was a perfect outfit for the warm weather, but it was autumn, despite the temperature, and I now realized I had committed a seasonal faux pas. Even worse, the pleats on my pants were making me feel fatter by the minute, and the contrast between my light-colored T-shirt and my dark slacks cut me in half and made me look even shorter than five one. Why hadn't I seen that before I left the house?

  The regular Friday morning routine, I'd learned last week, was to check the paper for obvious errors and to make sure all the regular features were in place. I took the front section, Cassie took the middle, and we began to read through the articles. It all seemed to be there, the things our readers expected each week: church schedules, real estate transfers, births, deaths, marriages, divorces, comics, high school sports, and a single column of national and world news. The extension service's column was extra long this week, full of helpful tips about fertilizers, apple storage, and the need to turn over one's mulch on a regular basis to prevent fires.

  The police blotter was very short, for which I was grateful. The worst crimes Lickin Creek had experienced during the past week were the theft of some plastic flowers from a cemetery plot and some rolls of toilet paper tossed into the trees on the square during the high school's Homecoming Week. It looked like life had returned to normal after Percy Montrose's poisoning death during the Apple Butter Fe
stival a few weeks ago. Despite my role in finding his killer, I knew many locals had added the closing of the medical clinic to the list of things they blamed me for, starting with the burning down of the Historical Society last summer.

  After we'd finished our individual sections, we spread the classified section out on the table so we could check it together. The classified ads were of major importance—without them, the paper would fold. We'd found only a few errors before the bell over the front door tinkled, indicating somebody had entered.

  “Come in,” I called. “We're in the back room.”

  A young woman appeared, and my first thought on seeing her was she had to be about eleven months pregnant. The visitor's chair echoed her groan as she lowered herself into it.

  “Only six weeks to go,” she said with a weary sigh.

  It flashed through my mind that she must be expecting quadruplets at the very least to be as big as this at seven and a half months.

  “I'm Janet Margolies, vice president in charge of marketing and public relations for the college.”

  By college, I knew she meant the Lickin Creek College for Women, the only one in town.

  “Nice to meet you, Janet. I'm Tori Miracle and this is

  Cassie Kriner. How can we help you?” I asked as I pointed out a typo to Cassie.

  “Have you heard about the Civil War Reenactment we have scheduled for Parents’ Weekend?”

  I shook my head.

  “That's the problem. Nobody else has, either. We need some publicity, and we need it fast.”

  “If you want to buy an ad, we still have time to get it into tomorrow's paper,” I suggested.

  She grimaced. “That's the second problem. President Godlove thought it would be great to do something different this year, something that would pull in townspeople and maybe even some tourists. Trouble is, I don't have any money in the PR budget to promote it.”

  I sensed she was preparing to ask a big, big favor and waited to hear what came next.

  “I was hoping you could give us some free publicity.” She smiled hopefully. “Please don't say no,” she said as I began to shake my head. “Maybe we can work something out, something that would be beneficial to both of us.”

  I ignored Cassie's groan. “Like what?”

  “I've got an article all prepared. If you do a big feature about the reenactment this week and next and scatter some ads throughout the paper, we could… we can…” Her voice faded away as she tried desperately to come up with an idea.

  “How about listing the Chronicle as the cosponsor of the event?” I asked. “I'd like to get involved in community work.”

  “Cosponsor? I'm not sure President Godlove would approve.”

  I stood up and extended my hand. “Well, good-bye then. Maybe you'll have better luck with the other paper in town.” The only “other paper” was the weekly shopper, and she knew it.

  “Deal,” she said, quickly reaching up and shaking my hand. I suddenly realized she had cleverly manipulated me into doing exactly what she wanted.

  She opened her briefcase and pulled out a folder. “Here's the article I mentioned and some camera-ready ads.”

  “You've certainly made it easy for us,” I said. Cassie was standing behind Janet's chair, glaring daggers at me.

  “Can you attend a planning meeting on Monday?” she asked. “I'll introduce you to the college president and some of the staff.”

  “I'll do my best.”

  After she left, Cassie smacked herself on the forehead and looked as if she wanted to smack me. “What on earth were you thinking?” she asked. “We don't have the resources to cosponsor anything.”

  “You heard her—it won't cost the paper anything, and we'll get a lot of good publicity for being so community-oriented.”

  “P. J. never did anything like this,” Cassie said doubtfully. “I sure hope it doesn't backfire on us.”

  “Don't worry about it, Cassie. It's a win-win proposition. How could anything possibly go wrong?”

  Friday was our short day. After we plunked the article about the reenactment on the front page, put the camera-ready ads on subsequent pages, and finished the proofing, the paper was ready for Cassie to take to the printer in the next town, twelve miles away. It would never win me a Pulitzer, but I found the work very satisfying.

  We left the office together. “What're your plans for the afternoon?” Cassie asked as she put on her sunglasses.

  “It's moving day,” I reminded her. This was the day I was to leave the Gochenauer home, where I'd been living for several weeks with Garnet and his sister, Greta Carbaugh, to take up residence as a house-sitter for a college professor who was going to England for a year's sabbatical.

  It's funny how things never seem to work out the way I plan. When I accepted the temporary position at the Chronicle to give P. J. time to recover from her lung surgery, I'd done so thinking it would give me time to get to know Garnet Gochenauer better, time to decide if being the wife of a small-town police chief was really the life for me. Ironically, he, not knowing my plans, had accepted a job as a police advisor in Costa Rica and was due to leave this weekend for his training in Washington, D.C. I tried over and over to convince myself that this was okay, that I could use the time alone to finish writing my second novel. Besides, I'd sublet my little apartment in Hell's Kitchen for six months, and I really had no place else to go.

  “Good luck with it. See you Monday.” Cassie walked smoothly away on high heels that would have crippled anybody else.

  Garnet's blue monster truck was parked under the porte cochere in front of his house, already loaded with my two suitcases, a box of paperback mystery novels I'd picked up for a song at a yard sale, three bags of kitty litter, two 20-pound sacks of Tasty Tabby Treats, various sizes of feeding dishes and water bowls, and two litter boxes. I had a feeling Garnet wasn't sorry to see those last two items go.

  I stepped inside, into the dim foyer, where the walls were red, the Oriental carpet on the floor was blue, and the ceiling was paneled with dark brown mahogany. When I flipped the light switch, the hall came ablaze with light from the priceless Tiffany lamp that hung from the mahogany ceiling. In my opinion, the place would look a lot better covered with a coat of antique-white enamel. My two cat-carriers sat side by side next to the door. Noel sat in one, glaring at me with her round gold eyes wide open. The other carrier was open.

  I walked into the front living room, where I discovered a body lying facedown on the floor.

  The body's head was under the Victorian sofa. What was visible was a crinkled broomstick skirt, a silver concho belt, and a pair of very large feet, clad in Earth shoes. “Hi, Greta,” I said. “What are you doing?”

  From under the couch came a mumbled reply. “Trying to get this stupid fat cat out so I can put him in the carrier. Of all the stubborn…”

  From my purse I pulled an old prescription medicine container in which I always carried some Tasty Tabby Treats for emergencies like this. “I'll get him, Greta.”

  Garnet's sister rolled over and sat up. Her long gray hair was full of dust bunnies. Greta was always too busy saving the whales, the rain forests, and the Chesapeake Bay to worry about something as mundane as housecleaning. She removed a fuzzball from her face and said, “Be my guest.”

  Fred always responded to the word treat even when he pretended not to recognize his own name. The poor baby's life was ruled by his stomach. I pulled him onto my lap and plucked lint off his orange and white fur.

  Greta sat cross-legged facing me, looking exactly like the aging hippie she was. “You should put him on a diet. He must weigh twenty pounds. And it's all fat.”

  Diet. How Fred and I hated that word. “He's just pleasantly plump.”

  It took the two of us to get him into the carrier. “I'll get some iodine,” Greta said. “You don't want to take a chance on those scratches getting infected.”

  “Maa-maa,” came a plaintive wail from the carrier.

  “Did you hea
r that? He called me mama.” I dabbed at my bloody arm with a Kleenex.

  “Mama, indeed! What you need is to settle down and have a real family.”

  I saved my snappy retort for later because Garnet chose that moment to come in from the kitchen.

  “All ready to go?” In my opinion he sounded much too cheerful for a man whose ladylove was moving out. I thought he could show a little dejection.

  “Will you two be here for dinner?” Greta called from the porch as Garnet boosted me into the cab of the truck. “I'm fixing scalloped weiners.”

  “No thanks,” we said together, a little too quickly. Garnet and I had fought about any number of things during the past weeks, but we stood united in our dislike of Greta's Pennsylvania Dutch cooking.

  I took one last look out the side window at the Gochenaur home, at the white gingerbread trim dripping from the eaves, the Corinthian columns on the front porch, the slate-shingled fish-scale roof, and the four round brick towers topped with onion-shaped domes. The southeast tower was still under repair, a reminder of something very scary that had happened to me a few weeks ago. Then I turned face forward and looked ahead, as I had countless times in the past during my many moves as a foreign-service brat.

  This one's different, I told myself. This time, Tori, you're only moving a few miles across town, not half a world away. But the familiar sadness was still there.

  “Are you crying?” Garnet asked.

  “It's the iodine. It smarts.”

  Sometimes Garnet shows remarkable sensitivity. This afternoon was one of those times. He took my hand in his and squeezed it gently. I studied him as he drove over Lickin Creek's cobbled streets. His straight sandy-brown hair fell forward on his forehead. He was the kind of lucky person who always looked tan, sort of like Don Johnson on the reruns of Miami Vice, which was one of my TV addictions. Today he wore what I thought of as the Lickin Creek uniform, a plaid shirt, tight jeans, and hunting boots. On him, it looked good.