Murder At The Buckstaff Bathhouse

By Serena B. Miller

In this tongue-in-cheek short story, Doreen Sizemore, an elderly and opinionated Kentucky woman who seldom leaves her small town, visits a niece who works as a Mary Kay consultant in Little Rock, Arkansas. Her niece has a special surprise for her after she arrives—a nice, long, soak in the mineral waters of Hot Springs, Arkansas at the historic Buckstaff Bathhouse. Doreen is feeling quite the lady of leisure...until she discovers that a murder occurred while she was luxuriating in her first spa treatment.

• Language: English
• Publisher: L. J. Emory Publishing
• Release date: Jan 6, 2014
• ISBN: 9781940283050

Serena B. Miller

Prior to writing novels, Serena Miller wrote for many periodicals, including Woman’s World, Guideposts, Reader’s Digest, Focus on the Family, Christian Woman, and The Detroit Free Press Magazine. She has spent many years partnering with her husband in full-time ministry and lives on a farm in southern Ohio near a thriving Amish community.

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Murder At The Buckstaff Bathhouse

Murder At The Buckstaff Bathhouse

The Doreen Sizemore Adventures Book 2

Serena B Miller

L J Emory Publishing

Contents

Main Body

Also by Serena B Miller

About the Author

Copyright © 2013 by Serena B Miller

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.

Published By L J Emory Publishing

ISBN: 978-1-940283-05-0

Murder At The Buckstaff Bathhouse

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My name is Doreen Sizemore . I’m a born and bred Kentuckian and I’m seventy-one years old. I still got tolerable good health, all my own teeth, and no cataracts yet that I know of. I been taking care of my sister-in-law for the past few months way down here in San Antonio, Texas. That’s where she and my baby brother, Ralph, live.

Frankly, right now I’m so mad at my brother for taking my good nature and hard work for granted that I could just spit. In all my years on this earth I have never minded helping a body out, but I do hate feeling like I’m being used by people, and that’s exactly what Ralph’s been doing from the moment I stepped foot in his house until Carla’s hair started coming back in after her chemo treatments.

I don’t mind helping Carla none, poor little thing. She’s one of them women who seem to think that if’n she’s real quiet and mousey nobody will notice her and won’t bother to hurt her or say something mean to her. I suppose that works in the animal kingdom. If you blend in with the foliage, the hawk won’t eat you because it can’t see you. But from what I can see, that kind of thinking don’t work none too good in a marriage.

While I’ve been down here, I’ve been trying to talk to her about standing up for herself a little more. I thought it might help her after I was gone, but it’s hard for a woman to stand up for herself when she feels so bad from the chemo treatments she can’t even keep down more than a spoonful of Doreen’s homemade chicken noodle soup at a time.

So there I was, babying Carla along, cooking one thing after another that might tempt her appetite, when my brother comes home from where he works cleaning out the septic systems of San Antonio, Texas.

Doreen, he said. Fix me one of them grilled peanut butter, brown sugar, and banana sandwiches Mama used to make us. You know, the kind Elvis Pressley liked. And while you’re at it, how about slicing it diagonal? Sandwiches just taste better sliced diagonal. And I want me some sweet iced-tea, too.

I suppose it weren’t a terrible thing he was asking of me. A sandwich and some tea. I mean, Ralph does work hard and it ain’t like he’s got work that he likes or nothing. He just does whatever he can find that’ll pay him a half-way decent pay check. That’s what happens when a boy runs off and joins the navy before he’s even graduated from high school,