Un-friend: Cozy Mystery Short Story

By S. Y. Robins

We'd been planning it for months, a weekend getaway just for the ladies of Coffee and Cake, an online social group of women that had come to form a very strong bond over the years. Thirteen of us, that is, until one of us died on night one of our trip. Secrets are revealed, suspicions are levelled, and accusations are made. Can an online group of women really be true friends or is it all just a lie they have spent an age imagining? The murder of one of their own could tear it all apart and for one member in particular, Babette Martin, her very freedom may depend on finding the real killer. A web of lies, far too many instances of turning a blind eye, and the arrogance of one woman could tear apart the entire group. Far more is at stake and the very sanity of one member could be in peril. Are online relationships the same, or as good as real life relationships, and can a group of women really truly be friends? Babette is about to find out, she just has to survive the ordeal first.

 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lovy Books Ltd
• Release date: Jun 16, 2016
• ISBN: 9781533728333

Book preview

1

Babette, do you think you could stop to pick up some plastic cups? I heard Melanie’s voice through my car’s speaker system, one bit of technology I truly loved. I’d stop but I don’t know what kind everyone will want.

I groaned to myself as I added one more item to the list of things Melanie had put off doing by asking me to do it. It was my own fault, I never said no.

Sure honey, I’ll pick them up. Melanie had an excuse for everything but I let it go. I’ll see you this evening then? I asked as I pulled into a grocery store a few miles from the cabin my friends and I had rented for the weekend.

Yep, I’m bringing Pam and Lena. We’ll see you later on. I heard a click and knew she’d gone. She had little time to talk once her task was reassigned. I wondered what she did with all the free-time she bought herself as I walked into the store with my younger sister, Celeste, at my side, walking past a harried mother with screaming twin boys having a major meltdown over a can of tuna fish, to get to the plastic utensils on the next aisle in the tiny store.

I quickly picked out two different kinds of cups and got two of each, some plates, napkins, and spoons, forks, and knives. The cabin was supposed to come with all of these things but I didn’t want to have to come back out later. I picked up a few more items for the dinner I was going to prepare once I got there, a box of trash bags, and some rope. No, I’m only kidding about the rope. Celeste did pick some up and grin at me though. She’s a bad one, yeah.

An hour later, chicken and dumplings, the kind with thick, fluffy, biscuit dumplings was cooking on the stove, and I was waiting for the guests to start arriving. There was going to be thirteen of us in all and I had a very large pot of chicken cooking. I’d wait until the rest of the group arrived to put the dumplings in.

I wanted everything to be perfect for this getaway, we’d joked about it for years, planned it for months, and today was the day. Our Cake and Coffee group, an online group of women that I’d become friends with over the years, was finally meeting up. Some of the women I knew in real life but others I only knew by a screen name and the pictures they posted. This wasn’t just a group of women that chatted about recipes and holiday party ideas, no, we shared our secrets, came to each other for comfort and support, and over the last five years we’d become a real community. Now we’d finally become brave enough to meet up. Some of us couldn’t make it but for the first meeting, thirteen was a good number.

We came from a variety of backgrounds, southern, northern, human resources, factory workers, former military, and college professors were all in the group. We also came from