Up In Smoke Spirit of the Soul Wine Shop Mystery Part 3: A Rysen Morris Mystery, #3

By K.J. Emrick

In the final installment of this three part series things are still not quite settled.

 

Some of the people involved in targeting the Spirit of the Soul wine store have already been arrested.

 

Just not all of them.  

 

That is what concerned Rysen Morris the most.  Whatever hand has been moving things around in the background is still a mystery.

 

A mystery Rysen plans on solving.

 

So when the Spirit of the Soul is targeted in a viscious arson attack Rysen teams up with Brandon again to try and get to the bottom of it once and for all.

 

Will they find the person responsible before someone else gets hurt... or worse?

• Language: English
• Publisher: South Coast Publishing
• Release date: Apr 15, 2015
• ISBN: 9781507047361

Book preview

Chapter 1

Cambria was beginning to feel a lot smaller than it ever had before. It used to be a comfortable place, a good fit like an old glove. Now Rysen Morris couldn’t help but look at the quaint shops and pretty homes and wonder if she hadn’t outgrown her home town.

Sales at her sister’s wine shop were up this month. The summer heat was driving the tourists in. Good thing, too, considering the luck Christina had been having. Stolen shipments. Missing money. Being poisoned. Somehow, Christina had made herself a target.

Things had quieted down over the last few weeks, and life in Cambria went on. It was almost easy to forget that there had been any kind of trouble at all. For everyone except Rysen, that was. She was still expecting trouble around every corner, and seeing danger where no one else did.

Someone had targeted her sister and this wine shop, intentionally. Thanks in no small part to Rysen herself, the police had been able to arrest at least some of the people responsible. Just not all of them. That was what concerned Rysen the most. Whatever hand had been moving things around in the background was still a mystery.

A mystery Rysen planned on solving.

Only three months ago that would have sounded crazy. Now, as she stocked the large display window at the front of the Spirit of the Soul wine store, Rysen didn’t think it sounded crazy at all. She sat down at one of the round customer tables and thought about that. Back then, she was working her way up the corporate ladder at a design firm in San Francisco. Nothing was standing between her and the future she wanted.

Then she’d lost her job, her boyfriend, and her apartment all at once, and had been forced to come back home. If that hadn’t been humiliating enough, she’d had to take a job with her sister just to make some money.

It had been rock bottom for her. At the time, it had felt like the end of the world. Now Rysen saw it for what it was. A stepping stone that had allowed her to create a new dream. She’d learned more about human nature back here in Cambria than she had ever seen in the big city. Good, bad, and in between. She was a whole new person, suddenly comfortable in her own skin again.

She had a new purpose. Solving the crimes against her sister had sparked a desire to become a private investigator. A bizarre notion, to be sure, but one she felt was right for her. Not that her current, sort-of boyfriend Josh agreed with her. He thought the whole thing was foolish. That was part of the trouble in their relationship.

Brandon was the rest of it.

The two men were as different as night and day. Josh Keats, dependable and stable. Brandon Dennicort, here one day and gone the next. Josh was a physician’s assistant at the hospital over in Thornsburg. Brandon, on the other hand, led an exotic life as a security consultant, travelling to all sorts of places and meeting all sorts of new people.

That’s how he and Rysen had met, after all.

But she had known Josh all of her life, and there was a lot to be said for knowing someone that well. It wasn’t just the way she could picture his sandy hair and pale brown eyes or his smile or the way his muscles were sculpted when he took his shirt off. It was knowing his moods and his likes and his dislikes.

Brandon was still a mystery to her. Dark hair that fell across his forehead like a male model in Cosmo magazine. Crystal blue eyes. That coy Australian accent. The way his shirt hung tightly across his broad shoulders and the way the back of his pants cupped that tight ass of his. Ahem. Anyway. He was a mystery.

If there was one thing Rysen had figured out about herself after coming back to her hometown, it was that she loved to solve a good mystery.

Now if only the rest of her life could be figured out so easily.

Rysen checked her watch. It was only midmorning. There hadn’t been a single customer in so far and she was fine handling things here by herself. Still, Christina should be here by now. She’d left the house they shared early, before Rysen had even gotten out of bed, leaving a note stuck to the refrigerator that simply said she had errands to run. Rysen couldn’t imagine what sort of errands would take her sister out of the house that early, but she was the owner of the shop, after all. If she wanted to be late for work then that was her choice.

The shopkeeper’s bell over the door rang and Rysen quickly sprang to her feet. Two tourists, a man and a woman, smiled at her and glanced around the shop. They were both dressed in khaki shorts and t-shirts that no self-respecting local resident would wear. No matter. Rysen wasn’t here to critique their fashion sense. She was here to sell them wine and make her sister’s shop lots of money.

Hello, she greeted them. Welcome to the Spirit of the Soul. I’m Rysen Morris. Can I help you find anything?

We’re just looking, the man said automatically. He brushed a finger along his mustache with a grimace.

His companion—probably his wife, judging by the diamond on her left ring finger—stared at him with gentle patience. Her lovely brown hair had streaks of gray in it. We’re looking for a cabernet to bring home to our friends in Reno. We’ve heard so many good things about your shop. Can you suggest something for us?

Rysen managed a smile, but she knew what sort of things the couple had probably heard about the shop. Between the thefts of wine shipments they had endured, and then the murder up the street at Beatrice’s flower shop, the lazy town of Cambria had been in the news a lot lately. Not in the good way. Strangely enough, tragedy had been good for business.

We have a few selections for cabernet, she told them. Right over here.

The shop was laid out with low shelves in rows, bottles of wines organized by variety and color and a host of other little details. It was a testament to how methodical Christina could be when she put