Murder On The Mississippi Queen

By Serena B. Miller

In this tongue-in-cheek novella, reluctant amateur sleuth, Doreen Sizemore, vows to never leave her home in South Shore, Kentucky ever again. She’s afraid of discovering another dead body since murders only seem to happen when she travels. Her vow to stay home is broken when a newly rich relative offers her the dream of a lifetime—a trip up her beloved Ohio River on the Mississippi Queen. Doreen is thoroughly enjoying her trip until another murder lands her in jail!

• Language: English
• Publisher: L. J. Emory Publishing
• Release date: Dec 6, 2016
• ISBN: 9781940283166

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.

Book preview

Murder On The Mississippi Queen

Murder On The Mississippi Queen

The Doreen Sizemore Adventures Book 4

Serena B Miller

L J Emory Publishing

Contents

Main Body

Also by Serena B Miller

About the Author

Copyright © 2015 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: 978-1-940283-16-6

Murder On The Mississippi Queen

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Cousins can get a body into a whole peck of trouble if you let ‘em, and that Lula Faye went and got me into an awful mess. I wish I’d never laid eyes on the woman. It’s true. Even if we did grow up together and share the same bed as kids more times as not.

My name is Doreen Sizemore and I turned seventy-two years old last month. Kinda hard to believe, but there it is. I remember my mama when she turned seventy standing in front of a mirror and saying, What is this sixteen-year-old girl a’doin in that old woman’s body.

I thought it was sort of funny at the time. Now I don’t. That’s just how I feel sometimes if I don’t do something quick to take my mind off my own self.

Now what was it I was fixing to tell?

Oh yes, Lula Faye and the mess she got me into. That woman don’t have the brains of a goose.

The biggest problem with me is I have trouble saying no to people who need me, especially if they’re kin. My mama taught me that rule. She said a person has to help kinfolks no matter what. Then there’s all that guilt-producing Sunday preaching I’ve heard my whole life about helping others.

This is a little hard to explain, so I’ll begin at the beginning and work my way up to explaining why this God-fearing, Sunday-School-going, senior citizen ended up sitting here in this little jail cell in Natchez, Mississippi, when I should have been watching my soaps at home with my feet propped up sipping a nice glass of sweet tea and waiting for my soup beans to finish simmering on the stove for dinner.

Matter-of-fact, I’d like me some soup beans right now, with a nice hunk of ham bone in ‘em and a crumbly piece of buttery cornbread with honey drizzled over it. Jail food ain’t all that good which probably shouldn’t come as a surprise to nobody.

Now what was I talking about? Oh yes, how I ended up in jail. I’m sorry, but I’m just a little rattled. I keep thinking about what people back home in South Shore, Kentucky are going to think about me becoming a jail bird? I’ll probably never live it down.

There’s been times in the past when I looked at my little house in South Shore and I’d think about how I’d kinda like me a new house. Maybe one where the roof was straight across instead of sagging in the middle. Sometimes I’ve looked at my house and thought maybe I oughta paint it a different color or have the porch replaced or I’d wish that I could afford me some new furniture. There’ve been times when I’d look at my old Frigidaire and think it might be nice to have a new one that didn’t make so much noise, or wish I had me one of them automatic dish washers instead of having to wash up everything my own self by hand.

I’m not thinking that way now, though. I’m so homesick for that little house of mine I don’t think I’ll ever want another thing if I can just get back there. A jail cell ain’t no place for a seventy-two-year-old Kentucky woman who ain’t never done nothing she were all that ashamed of.

If it weren’t for Lula Faye’s carrying’s on, that’s where I’d be right now. Back home without a worry in the world.

Instead, here’s what happened.

I got a lot of cousins on the Sizemore side of the family. That’s because my daddy’s people tend to be a breedin’ bunch. I have found this branch of cousins to be a mixed bag of blessings. Some are as close to me as a brother or sister and I want them to be because they’re just naturally good people.

Some of my cousins are as rotten as old potatoes—the kind you find stinking up the pantry when you go sniffing around trying to figure out what smells so bad. I stay away from ‘em if I can. They will either eat you out of house and home or be all nicey-nice and kissy-face when they come to visit. Then just when you’re feeling all warm and toasty from the visit and said your good-byes, you find out something’s gone missing--like that pretty silver sugar spoon of my mama’s that Cecelia slipped into her panty hose last time she come asking me for money, or that hunting rifle of Daddy’s that Jimmy Beam Sizemore stole after asking to use the indoor toilet. (I thought he was walking awful stiff-legged when he came back out into the living room!)

There’s a whole mess of Sizemore relatives I barely know way out in Salt Lake City, Utah, too. They ended up out there when my great-grandpa’s oldest brother up and decided to move way out west. The rumor is that he left a girl pregnant back here he didn’t want to marry but I can’t prove it and its ancient history anyway. I’ve only seen them Utah cousins a couple of times when they come around asking questions about our family. Them people do seem plumb starved for genealogical information and I don’t know why.

I got distant cousins in Congress, cousins who are priests in the Mormon Tabernacle, and cousins who are cooling their heels in the Southern Ohio Correctional Institution.

And then there’s Lula Faye Hall.

I hardly know what to say about Lula Faye. The woman defies description, but I’ll try.

Here’s the thing. Lula Faye’s the best Baptist I’ve ever known. That woman plays the organ at her church and about half the time she’s nodding at the choir, leading it by bobbing her head with the music at the same time. She teaches Sunday school, Vacation Bible School, Children’s Church, is in charge of two visitation committees (one for the physically ill, and one for the wayward sinners) and she volunteers part-time as a church secretary whenever Marva, the real church secretary, gets sick.

Marva told me once that it ain’t smart for her to get sick very often. She’s afraid that if she’s out of the office for any length of time, Lula Faye will talk the deacons into giving her the job.

Lula Faye is like that. She can talk people into doing just about anything. It ain’t that she’s hard-hearted. She’s not. It’s just that she thinks she knows what’s