About This Book
A new cozy mystery series from USA Today best-selling author Dale Mayer. Follow gardener and amateur sleuth Doreen Montgomery—and her amusing and mostly lovable cat, dog, and parrot—as they catch murderers and solve crimes in lovely Kelowna, British Columbia.
Riches to rags … Chaos has calmed … At least while out on the lake … Until poison is found, blowing up the peace again …
Enjoying a beautiful day on the lake, while Doreen tries her hand at paddleboarding, ends up on an odd note after finding poison in a bed of pansies. She garners a tidbit of information out of her BFF, Corporal Mack Moreau, about a man who’d recently walked into the emergency room, complaining he’d been poisoned.
Only on a threat of good behavior (surely it doesn’t count if given under duress), Doreen agrees to stay out of his case. But, as it happens, the mention of poison to her beloved Nan brings up another recent death and an old woman who’d been saying someone was poisoning her for months. Only no one listened. Now she is dead.
When Doreen’s case and Mack’s collide, she’s delighted, and so is he. NOT. But, when Nan decides to join in the sleuthing, with her pal, Richie, it’s Doreen’s turn to worry—and with good reason!
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Prologue
A Full Week Later, … Very Early August
Seven days later Doreen tried once again—slowly—to stand up on the paddleboard and again promptly wiped out. As she splashed into the water, she heard Mack’s laughter ringing beside her. She stood in the shallow water and glared at him, then flipped her hair off her face. “I thought this was supposed to be fun.”
“It is fun,” he said gently, “Just relax, you’re doing great. Besides we needed to get you out and away from all that chaos.”
“You’ve got a point there,” she muttered, “but I don’t know about this kind of chaos.”
He stood beside her on his board, with Mugs comfortably slouched on the front end of it. She, on the other hand, was spending more time in the water than atop it. Even Thaddeus was on Mack’s shoulder to avoid getting dunked.
“This is unbelievable,” she muttered. Goliath had elected to stay on the beach. She felt bad about leaving him there, but, until she could control her board, no point in even thinking that he should come out in the water with her. He’d looked at her in horror when she’d invited him and had promptly stalked off to the side, where he’d sprawled in the sand and had remained, tail twitching the whole time.
“Try again,” Mack said. “Now remember. It’s all about balance. You need to relax.”
“Relax?” she murmured. “I’ll relax you.”
He grinned. “Keep up that fighting spirit. It’s good to see.”
She brushed her hair off her forehead and slowly clambered onto the paddleboard. The water was warm; the sky was blue. The sun was shining, and it was a gorgeous day. She managed to stand steady on the board and, with a triumphant turn, she spun to look at Mack. “I did it,” she crowed. And immediately wiped out again.
When she came back up, sputtering this time, she just stood in the shallow water, her arms resting on the board. “I think it’s coffee time.”
He grinned. “In your world it’s always coffee time.”
“Always.”
“That’s fine,” he said, “but you have to get back up on the board, so we can paddle you to the shore.”
She turned to stare at the beach, her gaze easily picking up Goliath. He hadn’t moved. “Ugh, you know that’ll take an hour. So maybe only half that but still…”
“Don’t be discouraged. Next time you’ll do that much better. I promise,” he said. “You will.”
“I didn’t realize I was so uncoordinated,” she muttered.
“I don’t even know that it’s about coordination,” he said. “Most of it’s balance.”
“And yet you seem to be doing fine. And you said you’d never done this before.”
“I hadn’t.”
She glared. “You know that it’s really not fair that you should take to something like this so easily, while I’m an obvious failure.”
“You’re hardly a failure,” he said. “And, speaking of which—”
She glared at him. “There is no topic where that is a suitable intro. Nobody wants to think of being a failure.”
“I was just wondering,” he said gently, “if you’d heard from my brother.”
“Several times, but mostly because I’m the one hassling him.”
He grinned. “I like the fact that you’re pushing to have that divorce taken care of.”
“I don’t want anything to do with my ex, soon-to-be ex,” she said, “and the sooner this is done, the less stress for me.”
“Oh, I agree,” he said. “I just wasn’t sure how you felt about it.”
“You were just afraid that I would go back to him,” she teased as she attempted to get on her board. When there was a long silence, she glared up at him.
He shrugged, but she could see the color mounting high in his cheekbones. She stopped and stared. “And I told you very clearly that I wouldn’t.”
“I know you did.” His lips quirked. “But, in my job, I’ve heard a lot of women say otherwise.”
“No, they say the same thing, but then they change their mind. I get it,” she said. “I’m not really into changing my mind right now.”
“Good,” he said. “So can we get moving?”
“I hope so.” She managed to get back up on the board, and, kneeling, she slowly paddled her way back to the shore. “I can kneel just fine.” She slid off on the other side at the beach.
Mack slowly paddled toward her, standing calm and graceful on his board. She looked at him in admiration. “I should really hate you for this,” she said, “but you look just great up there. I mean it. It’s a totally natural thing for you.”
“And it will become that way for you as well.”
She didn’t want to say that she doubted it, but, well, she doubted it.
He shook his head. “Nope, none of that,” he said. “Give it time.”
“Time is something I do happen to have.”
“Yeah, until you get a job anyway.”
She winced. “Did you really have to go there?”
He chuckled. “Hey, you’ve had a couple callbacks at least.”
“Yeah, but all they wanted to do was ask me questions,” she wailed, “about all the different cases I’ve been involved in.”
“Of course,” he said, “that does make sense.”
“Yet there are more cold cases. They matter too. How come there isn’t more curiosity about those?”
“They do matter, but everyone wants juicy details,” he said. “Remember, you’re the one who went down this pathway even though I warned you. You wanted a quiet life out of the public eye. How did that work out for you?” At least his tone was cheeky, not arrogant.