Maggie and the Hidden Homicide Read online

  Maggie and the Hidden Homicide

  A Carita Cove Romantic Mystery

  Barbara Cool Lee

  Pajaro Bay Publishing

  Contents

  Introduction

  Newsletter

  Copyright & Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Jasper

  Booklist

  Newsletter

  Charities

  Stay in Touch

  Introduction

  Maggie faces her most confusing case yet when she finds a treasured beaded knife–in someone's back! Can she figure out what happened before anyone else ends up dead?

  And when her buddy, movie star Reese Stevens, tries to make a fresh start after falling off the wagon, can Maggie keep him from going off-track?

  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 © 2020 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: March 3, 2020

  2021-01-15-D

  Chapter One

  September 19, mid-morning

  Carita, California

  * * *

  Magdalena Lopez McJasper was too nice.

  She told herself that every time.

  On a beautiful autumn day, Maggie stood behind the counter at her little shop in Carita, California, Playground of the Stars.

  Playground of the Spoiled Rotten Idle Rich, really, but that wasn't as catchy a slogan for the little tourist town. The sunshine was spilling in through the big plate glass window. The street outside was bustling with pedestrian traffic.

  The antique barber pole that marked the entrance to her shop was spinning, catching the eye of passersby who were then startled to read the sign on the window that said CARITA BEADS: CRAFT SUPPLIES & CLASSES instead of the hair stylist the barber pole suggested would be inside.

  It was all cute and whimsical and darling and every other adjective Maggie could think of.

  But at the moment she was just as mad as could be, and was trying her best not to show it.

  Because she was too nice, and it was coming back to bite her in the rear. Like it did every time.

  She looked down at the sales counter. Her carefully packaged Sea Breeze Pearl Bracelet kit was a complete mess.

  "Are you sure you want to buy that one?" she had asked Mrs. Hightower just two days ago. And the older woman had insisted, even though it was a bracelet that used the right-angle weave technique, and there was no way the woman had the patience for those tiny little stitches that made up the complex design. Mrs. Hightower was more of a 'string some beads on a cord and call it a day' kind of person, but the colors of the kit had caught her eye, and she just had to have it.

  So today Mrs. Hightower was back demanding a refund when (what a surprise!) the kit turned out to be too complex of a design and she didn't have the patience to make it.

  And Maggie stood there with a smile pasted on her face while Mrs. Hightower told her all about how terrible the pattern was, and how no one would be able to make those tiny little stitches lie flat, and how Maggie shouldn't be selling such inferior kits in her shop.

  She didn't even offer to show Mrs. Hightower how it was done, because the woman was late for the spa and a massage, and then she would do a bit of shopping and maybe buy a new Birkin bag for $10,000 or so to calm her nerves after her harrowing experience with the bead project.

  So Maggie refunded her the $27.95 for the kit, plus the sales tax, and then kept that same smile pasted on her face as Mrs. Hightower sauntered out of Carita Beads without even saying, "thank you."

  Maggie opened the little plastic bag and spilled the contents onto a sorting tray to assess the damage. Knots. There were lots of knots. This was going to take some time.

  She wished Abby was here. Her assistant Abby Xiong was a master of customer relations, able to say no without appearing to say no, and able to steer the most stubborn of customers to the right project for their skill level.

  Maggie started to pick out the pink focal beads from the snarl of threads.

  Mrs. Hightower would have said "thank you" to Abby. She was sure of it.

  The shop door opened again. Please be a fun customer, she thought, before lifting her eyes from the tray to face the newcomer.

  "Can I come in, or will you throw a tray of beads at me?" Abby asked sheepishly.

  "Abby!" She set down the knotted threads and came around the counter to give her a big hug. "What are you doing here?"

  Abby looked all grown-up now in her little black pantsuit and horn-rimmed eyeglasses, with her messenger bag slung over her shoulder, and her press pass pinned to her suit jacket. Carita News Times Sentinel Bulletin, it read, and she was the junior reporter on the beat.

  And, alas, no longer the junior clerk in the Carita Bead Shop.

  "Can you forgive me for leaving you in the lurch?" Abby asked.

  "I don't know," Maggie said thoughtfully. "You broke my heart when you left." She punctuated it with a wink, and Abby grinned back.

  "Yeah," the younger woman said. "Sorry about that. But I couldn't pass up the chance at my dream internship, and they insisted I start right away."

  "You mean you don't want to be my part-time cashier for the rest of your life? I'm shocked."

  Maggie went back behind the counter and Abby leaned her elbows on the glass case and started sorting the beads in Mrs. Hightower's kit. "You need an assistant," Abby said. />
  "I know. But everyone in this little beach town wants the tourist jobs, where they can earn tips to supplement the minimum wage. I'll find somebody, but you're a hard act to follow."

  They both bent their heads over the sorting tray. Abby picked all the cream pearls while Maggie worked on finding the pink crystals, while they chatted about how things were going at Abby's new job at the NTSB, as the locals called it.

  "Well, that's the last of the pearls," Abby said a bit later. She straightened up. "Listen, Maggie…." She trailed off.

  "Yeah?" Maggie kept sorting.

  Abby opened her messenger bag and set something on the counter next to the tray. It was just a small object, about the size of a baseball, wrapped in a dingy yellow bandana.

  "What's that?" Maggie was trying to find the gray seed beads now, but they blended into the gray of the sorting tray and were hard to spot.

  "Have you heard of the Huichol people?" Abby asked.

  "Wee-chul?" Maggie said. "What's that?"

  "Huichol," Abby repeated. She spelled it. "They call themselves the Wixáritari, but their name in Spanish is Huichol, so that's how most people refer to them."

  Maggie shrugged. "Is this for a story you're writing?"

  "Nope," she said. "But I found out about it while I was working on the profile Jack assigned me. I told you I was writing a feature on the Gallegos farmworkers charity."

  "Uh huh," Maggie said absently. She had only found four of the gray beads. She knew there were more....

  "The Huichol do beadwork," Abby said.

  Maggie straightened up so suddenly she knocked over the tray. The tiny beads skittered across the countertop. She grabbed at them. "Beadwork?"

  "I thought that would get your attention," Abby said with a laugh.

  Maggie used the palm of her hand to sweep the beads back into the tray. "I'll finish this later," she said.

  She set the tray on the back shelf, then dusted off her hands.

  Abby waited, a smug grin on her face.

  "All right, smarty-pants. Beadwork. Tell me all about it."

  "I can do better than tell." She nodded to the bandana-wrapped object on the counter. "Open it."

  Maggie loosened the knot at the top of the package and let the folds of fabric fall away. She stared at the little object on the counter, astounded.

  "What do you think?" Abby asked.

  "First, it's amazing. Second, please tell me that isn't a real skull."

  The human skull was only about four inches around.

  "It's a wooden form," Abby said. "Carved into that shape."

  "And perfectly lifelike," Maggie said. "Or perfectly deathlike, I guess is more appropriate."

  Abby laughed. "They take the wooden forms and decorate them."

  Decorate was putting it mildly. Every inch of the little piece was covered in tiny seed beads, which created patterns on the surface. "Look at the arrow," Maggie said of a lifeline that marked the back of the head.

  "I like the flowers in the eye sockets," Abby said.

  There was a lizard on top of the skull, its tail hanging down the side like a lock of hair.

  Maggie started to count the colors, but lost track after a dozen.

  "What does it all mean?" she asked.

  "Each image and color symbolizes something different," Abby said. "Like growth, or family, or some other concept like that. They apparently used to do this with real skulls in the old days. They sell decorated wooden forms now to the tourists, though this particular one is more a work of art than a tourist tchotchke. It has great meaning to the Huichol people."

  "May I touch it?" Maggie asked.

  Abby nodded, and so Maggie picked it up and examined it, entranced at the elaborate beauty of the piece. She could see the technique of it—tiny seed beads were somehow pressed into a wax or glue to form the patterns.

  She set it down on the counter again. "I have so many questions," she said softly. "Who are the Huichol people? And who is this artist? Would she like to sell her artwork in my shop? How do they choose the patterns? What is the technique? Can we learn to do it, too, or is it too sacred to share with outsiders? Are there more pieces like this? What about—?"

  Abby held up her hand. "Not so fast. You'll have to wait until tonight. I will show you everything then. That's why I came here, actually. I wanted to invite you to a barbecue this evening."

  "A barbecue? Where they do beadwork?" She tried to reconcile the delicacy of the artwork in front of her with the idea of a big, raucous party.

  "Not exactly," Abby said. "But you can meet the artist, and learn everything I found out today. Want to come?"

  Maggie looked at the little skull again, her hands itching to pick it up and caress it. "Just tell me when and where."

  Chapter Two

  After Maggie closed up shop for the day, she went home to pick up her best buddy and go for a walk.

  Jasper bounded ahead of her down the beach stairs, dragging Maggie along behind him.

  "Slow down!" she said, and tugged on the leash.

  The dog ignored her. She scrambled after him, trying not to be pulled off her feet.

  "Jasper, Sit," she said firmly.

  That was his best command and he knew just what to do. The dog immediately sat down right where he was, so his fuzzy buns ended up plopped down one step above his front end. She laughed, and Jasper wagged his tail, smacking her in the legs as she reached him.

  When she caught up to him, she patted him on the side. Even standing one step above him he was still huge, an oversized Rough Collie whose thick double coat of rich sable and white made him appear even larger than he was.

  She pushed him aside so she could stand on the same step as him, and rubbed the lightning-shaped zig-zag scar on his side. He grinned his appreciation, and his tail thump-thumped loudly on the wooden stair.

  He was big and messy and sweet, and when he stood up, he almost knocked her over.

  But she was used to his antics, and quickly sidestepped to stay on her feet. Then she said firmly, "Jasper, Heel!"

  He was a good boy whose desire to please her just slightly outweighed his desire to run around like a maniac, so he walked nicely by her side the rest of the way down.

  When they touched the sand she said, "Good Boy!" and he said "you're welcome" by bumping her in the side with his hip and knocking her down.

  She got back up, dusted off the sand, and said, "thanks, buddy." Then they headed down to the wet sand for their daily ramble along the shoreline.

  The beach was almost empty as it neared sunset. Tourist season was over, kids were back in school, and many of the houses along The Row, the string of mansions that fronted on the Cove, were closed for the season.

  But all the absent tech moguls and day trippers were missing a good one. The afternoon fog was drifting in, and Maggie loved this time of day the best. Other people thought clear, sunny days were the ideal, but she loved the fog. There was something almost magical about the mist rising off the sea and blanketing the shore. Sounds were hushed, and the late afternoon sun was softened to a gentle glow behind the water vapor.

  The waves were calm, and sent white foam over the crystal sand at their feet. There was still some blue visible overhead as the fog came into the little cove, but the mist was giving everything a hazy, soft-focus appearance through which the gold of the sun shimmered as it neared the horizon.

  She sighed. She couldn't imagine living anywhere else. But she would have to, as soon as Casablanca was sold.

  She owned one of those millionaire's mansions on the cliff above the cove. Or, more accurately, her name was on the deed. But unfortunately, she was upside-down on the mortgage, so the bank really owned it, and she had decided there was no point in paying them every penny she brought in every month for the rest of her life, with no hope of ever climbing out of the hole she'd gotten into after the divorce.

  Now that her tenant had informed her he was going to buy a house and leave, she had to figure out what to d
o. So the big white mansion had a discreet for sale sign in front of it. And as soon as she found a buyer, she'd have to move.

  Not find a new place to live, but move the one she had.

  Because she hadn't been living in Casablanca since her divorce. Her tenant had.

  She and Jasper had their own home, a minuscule, purple, perfect little tiny home on wheels that was parked in Casablanca's driveway. And as soon as Casablanca sold, she would have to find a new place to park it.

  It wasn't easy to find a place to park a tiny house. Mobile home parks didn't want them. Parking in a driveway the way she had been doing was iffy, at best. Most driveways in Carita were too small, and those that were big enough were in areas that didn't allow RVs.

  She'd had a place in mind when she had listed Casablanca for sale. But that plan seemed to be falling through, and she was stuck.

  Maybe she'd just take Casablanca off the market and stay where she was. It felt like defeat, though, somehow. She had made the hard decision to let go of the big house with the underwater mortgage, and had been so proud of herself for being mature about it. She would declare bankruptcy, take her lumps like a grown-up, and move forward with her tiny house and her big dog and her new life.

  But now she had no place to go.

  The fog was getting thicker now, and the gray enveloping them matched the gray in Maggie's thoughts. She felt fuzzy and unsure about where she was going in life, and the misty air around her matched that.