Organized Death

By Sue Star

Novelette and a short story:

Organized Death--She had everything planned down to the minute. Of course, murder put her slightly off schedule.

Gullible Girl--Always loving, always trusting, always wrong.

• Language: English
• Publisher: D. M. Kreg Publishing
• Release date: Nov 11, 2016
• ISBN: 9781540105363

Sue Star

Sue Star writes mysteries about families in chaos. In her leisure time, she enjoys hiking, skiing, martial arts, and hanging out with her family.  Murder in the Dojo, Murder with Altitude and Murder for a Cash Crop are the first three books  of her Nell Letterly series, about a single mom who solves murders and tries to avoid being a suspect in Boulder, Colorado. She also has two collections of mystery stories, Organized Death and Trophy Hunting.   Soon to be released, Trouble in a Politically Correct Town will feature short stories about Nell’s friends.  

Book preview

Organized Death

A Novelette and

A Short Story

by

Sue Star

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Electronic edition published by D. M. Kreg Publishing.

Copyright © 2012 by D. M. Kreg Publishing and Sue Star.

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All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction, in whole or in part in any form. This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Cover Art:  Tish Marti and Dreamstime

Table of Contents

Organized Death–She had everything planned down to the minute.  Of course, murder put her slightly off schedule.

Gullible Girl–Always loving, always trusting, always wrong.

Organized Death

Catherine Trapp felt paralyzed.  She’d hardly been able to wait for today to arrive, but now that it was finally here, she couldn’t even climb out of her car.  She’d managed to steer her dented Subaru wagon into the self-parking lot without hitting any of the valet blockades, and now she stared dumbfounded at the pink stucco walls of the Canyon Palace Resort.  She should feel giddy with excitement.  Instead, the weight of two thousand people crushed her.  They’d only been names on the attendance sheets.  Today she was about to meet them.  They were real.  And... 

She was a fraud.  A fool.  Martin had told her so, over and over. 

Whatever. 

She reached for the door handle.  Two thousand real people depended on her. 

Stepping out of the car, she brushed dog hair from her power suit and balanced on her new Gucci heels — she’d bought the outfit to get her through the week ahead.  The long-anticipated excitement that she’d expected to feel vaporized to dread. 

Catherine had given away the last four years of her life when she took on the role of co-chair of the International Crime Convention.  She’d spent four years planning for this day, and now her energy bled out.  But she had to power ahead anyway.  She had to finish the damn job.  The sooner this convention — her convention — got underway, the sooner she could leave it behind her. 

She hurried across the parking lot in the waning light of day.  Already the sun had slipped beyond not-so-distant peaks, casting purple shadows along the contours of these foothills, a jagged wall from north to south.  The resort, a pink slash against a sandstone backdrop, resembled an adobe fort sprawled atop a butte that overlooked the mouth of the canyon and miles of empty plains. 

The last four years had been a hell of a price to pay. 

She clicked inside the mesquite-spiced lobby.  Leather cushions, hand-crafted tables of rough pine, and unlikely potted palms were grouped around lightning bolt patterns on gaily colored Native American rugs.  Pelts of fur and antlered deer heads surveyed the lobby from the walls. 

As she waited her turn for check-in, a man shaped like a plump pear hovered at the edge of her peripheral vision.  He swayed slowly, rocking from the balls of his feet to his heels and back again.  Up and down.  Up and down. 

She approached the counter and gave the clerk her information.  Pear man shuffled to a position an arm’s length beside her.  Just outside the roped-off cue.  Until she finally turned and glared at him.  Back off.

He cleared his throat.  Excuse me, he said.  I couldn’t help but overhear.  You’re the one running this convention, aren’t you. 

It was a statement, not a question.  His low monotone suggested a sense of urgency yet patience.  He wore a green flannel shirt, stained and rumpled pants,