Maggie and the Inconvenient Corpse Read online

  Maggie and the Inconvenient Corpse

  A Carita Cove Romantic Mystery

  Barbara Cool Lee

  Pajaro Bay Publishing

  Contents

  Introduction

  Newsletter

  Copyright & Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Jasper

  Booklist

  Newsletter

  Charities

  Stay in Touch

  Introduction

  A handsome movie star in her kitchen, and a corpse in the swimming pool. Just your typical Monday morning….

  Maggie McJasper is starting over in a little California beach town. She has a craft shop, a nice circle of friends, and a handsome movie star who keeps flirting with her. Life would be pretty great if she could just stop stumbling over dead bodies….

  The Carita Cove romantic mysteries are fun and heartwarming reads, with no swearing or love scenes, and no gruesome violence to keep you up at night. Collect them all:

  * * *

  1. Maggie and the Black-Tie Affair

  2. Maggie and the Inconvenient Corpse

  3. Maggie and the Mourning Beads

  4. Maggie and the Empty Noose

  5. Maggie and the Hidden Homicide

  6. Maggie and the Whiskered Witness

  7. Maggie and the Serpentine Script

  8. Maggie and the Rattled Rake

  And more to come. Click here for the latest booklist.

  Copyright © 2019 by Barbara Cool Lee

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Neither the author nor the publisher claim responsibility for adverse effects resulting from the use of any recipes, projects, and/or information found within this book.

  This edition published: October 29, 2019

  2021-01-15-D

  Chapter 1

  July 5, noonish

  Carita, California

  * * *

  The rhythm coming out of the speakers sent a familiar thrill down Maggie McJasper's spine.

  She stood at the open sliding glass door of Casablanca, her multimillion dollar beach house. She gazed out across the big back yard toward Carita Cove, and listened to the classic rock song booming from the radio.

  The ocean in the distance was the perfect summertime blue, with just enough breeze ruffling the surface to add a few foamy whitecaps.

  Down on the sand below the house, she could see the couple who lived next door strolling on the beach, arm-in-arm. The woman was a curvy redhead a dozen years younger than her, and the man was older, and rich, and used to be Maggie's husband.

  She looked away.

  Closer, her yard was immaculate. The tiny patch of lawn was freshly mowed ($87.50 per week for Seaside Gardening Service), the furniture cushions were newly washed and fluffed ($300 per week for Mrs. Queen the housekeeper), and the big infinity pool with its sea blue tile was cool and inviting ($100 per week for Pool Boy Ned's maintenance service).

  A famous sculpture constructed of rusty rebar loomed over the pool, supposedly evoking a crashing wave, but in reality looking more like a sickly, gaunt bird with brown bones that rattled in the breeze.

  And all of it was accompanied by the famous opening handclap coming from the speakers hidden in the rocks by the pool:

  Clap-Clap-Clap. Pause. Clap-Clap. Repeated, over and over, until the rhythm penetrated Maggie's subconscious and she was once again a teenage girl in the passenger seat of a red convertible, roaring down the Coast Highway with Girl, You Rock Me Right blasting out of a tinny A.M. radio.

  Just like in the video.

  Just like in the video, because of course in reality she had never been a model in the passenger seat of a red convertible roaring down the Coast Highway while a teen idol sang an ode to her.

  Back when Girl, You Rock Me Right was a hit, she had been Magdalena Lopez, a braces-clad adolescent bookworm sweeping up at her dad's used car lot in the heat of Silicon Valley, while far away on the coast, the fictional convertible roared along in its rarified world of sunshine and cool breezes and beautiful people.

  But she'd felt like the glamorous girl in the video every time she watched the band Deep Creek on MTV all those years ago.

  Reese Stevens had been driving the convertible and singing the song, and he'd been on top of the world then, the sixteen-year-old boy with the slender body in skin-tight jeans, the gravelly blues in his voice, and that face.

  Every girl had memorized his face that long-ago summer. He'd been a dreamy-looking boy with an incongruously rich, masculine baritone you could feel all the way down to your toes every time he parted those full lips and a song came out.

  The face was pretty, the voice was lush, but it was the eyes that had made him memorable—eyes of a vivid cobalt blue that would have been enough to launch a million crushes even without the shock of what you saw in them.

  The shock hit you when you glimpsed the mind at work beneath the beautiful surface. There was an indefinable something in those eyes—cleverness, humor, sexiness, cynicism, wit. All of the above at once, somehow.

  The depth in those eyes made him stand out from all the other teen idols who showed up every summer, in the decades before and since.

  The rest of him was standard-issue perfection: the sun-bleached blond locks, too long, too shaggy. The tanned, muscled arms in the sleeveless T-shirt. The too sexy to be safe (but too fun and cheerful to be dangerous) boy staring out at you from every TV in the world. The perfect teen idol for that singular summer, more than twenty years ago.

  Now the same Reese Stevens lay by the pool—by her pool—which he was renting for the summer, along with the house that came with it. The incredible body was still lean and sexy, though he'd long ago tipped over that edge from innocent boy to pure adult male. And a lot had happened in those in-between years: the drug addiction, the car crash, the rehabs, the long climb back to success.

  Success this time looked more like movie star and less like teen idol. But it was stardom just the same, with all the money and fame that came with it. And that meant he needed a suitably luxurious vacation house in the tiny village of Carita, California, Playground of the Stars.

  So now he lay by the pool in back of the mansion she had been forced to rent out after her disastrous divorce. And by his side, as always, there was a woman. This one was Eva something or other, and she was having the time of her life. She was from Sweden, or Kazakhstan, or Pittsburgh, wherever women who looked like her came from, and she was a lingerie model or a film extra or a brain surgeon or something. Who knew? She doubted Reese di
d. Or cared.

  Maggie remembered the Mick Jagger quote Reese had told her once: he didn't get the women he wanted, he got the women who wanted him. And Eva was typical of that.

  She saw him offer Eva a drink from a champagne bottle. She opened her mouth to say something, then hesitated. It wasn't her concern if he fell off the wagon. It wasn't her place to nag him.

  "It's sparkling cider," he called out over his shoulder.

  How did he know? How did he know she was watching, and how did he know that was her question?

  If he weren't so impossibly charming she could hate him. "Okay," she called back, seeing he had tilted his head to one side, listening for her response. "Got it."

  "And would you please turn that off?"

  She reached over to the built-in stereo system in the bookcase next to her and switched off the radio. Too bad, because it was just getting to the bridge of Girl, You Rock Me Right. It was a great bridge, with the late David Zimmer's famous fuzzed-out guitar solo that had been imitated by a whole generation of kids wailing on Stratocasters in their parents' garages.

  "Ah," the model said petulantly. "But I like that song. Real old school."

  "Yeah," Reese said. "Old school. I wonder if that band ever did anything else."

  "Who cares?" Eva replied, obviously not getting the sarcasm.

  Reese turned his head and those stunning cobalt blue eyes looked past the model to meet Maggie's brown ones, staring back.

  "O'Riley's at three?" he asked.

  "Okay," she said. "See you there."

  She turned to go, carrying the load of her laundry she'd just taken out of the dryer.

  She heard Eva ask him, "Who was that, anyway?"

  "My landlady," he replied.

  Maggie sighed and left.

  She went out the front door of her magnificent beach house and walked across the driveway.

  She passed Reese's half-million dollar car, a Porsche 918 Spyder, parked sideways to take up two spots in the driveway that ran the full width of the house. The car was liquid silver, with a glossy clear coat so thick it seemed you could dip your hand into the finish, like cool water.

  Her own car was parked next to it, a second-hand Honda Fit in Passion Berry Pearl, a rich dark purple. It was a bit scratched, a bit dulled with age, but it was her favorite color in the world, and she didn't mind that it wasn't mint condition. It was cute, and small, and the color of a ripe blackberry dusty in the sun. It suited her, and best of all, she owned it outright and no one could repossess it.

  Beyond the car was a building that was more than a camper but less than a house. It was built on a chassis so it could be hauled down the highway like a travel trailer. But it was handmade of wood like a little cottage. It had purple-painted siding and a porch with a white railing, and a pot of lavender petunias stood next to the front door. It was a Tiny House. And now that she was divorced, it was her home, all 240 square feet of it.

  She went inside, leaving the door open to catch the breeze.

  The main level of the house was eight feet by twenty, and broken up into living area, a minuscule kitchen, and a bath so small she could touch all four walls while standing in the center.

  Above it was a sleep loft just big enough for a queen-size mattress, reached by a narrow set of stairs that looked much like the antique tansu chest in Casablanca's entry, with drawers built into each step to provide much-needed storage.

  The main room was dominated by two things: an Ikea daybed that served as sofa and lounging area, and a large bead loom that stood next to her craft table. The loom was newly strung, and she was looking forward to the process of beadweaving using the millions of tiny seed beads that were arrayed on the craft table.

  Her ex had never wanted her to have a loom. She could have two Mercedes (one for weekdays and a convertible for weekend trips), unlimited diamonds, and the latest designer clothes, but a bead loom had been a bridge too far for Big Mac McJasper.

  She blew out a big breath. If that had been their only point of disagreement, they might still be married. But the redhead on the beach had been Maggie's personal bridge too far, and now this trailer was her home.

  She set down the laundry basket on the daybed that spanned the width of the living room. She was still working out the logistics of living in such a small space, and that included everything from where to do her laundry, to where to store a frozen chicken until she was ready to cook it.

  So she had negotiated some things with her tenant. She got visitation rights to Casablanca's laundry room, the big SubZero freezer in the kitchen, and (until she figured out where to put all her clothes) the walk-in closet in the downstairs guest room.

  The rest of Casablanca was his, and in exchange he paid the ridiculous rent that a house like that warranted. It was barely enough to cover the mortgage and all the professionals it took to maintain the place, but it would keep the bankruptcy court off her tail.

  She started folding the laundry, but spotted something glittery at the bottom of the basket.

  "Oh, terrific," she muttered. She had thrown a bunch of stuff in the laundry without checking it, and now she found a $10,000 tweeded tulle jacket from last year's Chanel cruise collection had gone through the washer and dryer on high heat. Her housekeeper had been responsible for the laundry for the last ten years, and Maggie had lost the knack for doing this simple task for herself.

  She had better get back up to speed on taking care of her own clothes, or she'd run out of things to wear.

  She tried to pull at the twisted piece of fabric, but it just bunched up in a knot.

  She gave up and threw it in the trash. It didn't matter. She couldn't think of a single place she'd wear it in the near future.

  She finished folding the rest of the clothes, squeezed them into the two drawers in the stairs that held her current wardrobe, then tucked her purple T-shirt into her jeans and headed off to walk downtown and go to work.

  Chapter 2

  She locked the door and headed toward the street. Her car would stay home, since it was less than a mile to downtown, and parking was almost impossible to find in Carita. If she drove, she would spend more time searching for a parking spot on Main Street than she would just walking there.

  At the end of the driveway she stopped.

  A family in a minivan drove slowly past on The Row, looking for a place to stop. The winding street was the most exclusive in Carita, and had been deliberately designed to be too narrow for any public street parking. Every house on The Row had a direct oceanfront view, and the homeowners had fought to keep out the tourists.

  There were endless battles between the rich denizens of The Row and the Coastal Commission about exactly how many access points to the beach would be allowed.

  The residents of the enclave had naturally wanted as few as possible, while the townies, the working people of Carita who survived on tourist dollars, wanted the beach to be as accessible as possible to encourage the visitors who stayed in hotel rooms, bought hamburgers, and visited the shops along Main Street.

  Casablanca was exactly in the center of The Row, in the spot farthest from the public stairways down to the beach that had been installed on each end of the street.

  Maggie waved to the minivan family, and the man driving stopped and rolled down his window. She told him where the two parking areas were, one half a mile back and the other half a mile ahead. She warned him that the lots may be full, since it was already noon on a summer's day.

  The man looked at her driveway longingly, then sighed and drove on.

  She hadn't noticed the two levels of Carita society so much when she'd been at the top. The Row was populated with tech moguls, pro athletes, and movie studio executives like her own ex-husband, Michael "Big Mac" McJasper.

  Carita was only a few hours' drive from Los Angeles, and it was famous as a place celebrities could go and be anonymous. They bought vacation homes here at ridiculously inflated prices, then hung out in the cafés, dressed in ragged jeans and flip
flops, and pretended they were just like everyone else. Up to a point. Locals lived in their shadow, and there were two standards of treatment: the rich got away with everything, and everyone else got out of their way.

  She had been part of the elite in Carita, right up until she'd discovered her husband canoodling with his pretty young secretary at a New Year's Eve party six months ago.

  Now she was on the outside, looking in at the celebrities with their rich, fabulous, and oh-so flawless lives.

  And she didn't care. Honestly.

  Except right about now, when she spotted her husband's new girlfriend driving past in the baby blue BMW convertible he'd just bought her. The girlfriend waved, all sociable, and Maggie waved back.

  "Hi, Virginia," Maggie called out, friendly as could be.

  Because honestly, she truly didn't care.

  She didn't want to be Virginia Foley.

  She'd already been her. Maggie herself had been once been the secretary for a big-time movie mogul. She had been young, pretty, and absurdly naïve. It hadn't taken her boss long to tell her all his sob stories of an uncaring and neglectful old hag of a wife who "didn't understand him" the way Maggie did.

  She'd fallen for it, hook, line, and sinker.

  She had thought marrying a rich older man who was charming and attentive was some kind of fairy tale. She had imagined a fabulous life of parties and wealth and fun people, basking in the love of a wonderful man who told her she would be the center of his world.