Wine Up Dead: Cozy Mystery Short Story

By S. Y. Robins

A group of friends meet up every year at a vineyard in the Virginia hills to prepare for the summer vacation and three months of their children being at home. They love their children but sometimes a mommy needs to be prepared. When one of the ladies doesn't show up, a hunt begins with jokes and gossip. But then the friend is soon found, in one of the fields of the vineyards, her hand clinging to the grapes and a piece of paper. It's all fun and games until somebody dies. The ladies suspected the friend was having an affair but finding out the truth could prove deadly as Tania searches for clues. The police might have dismissed her friend's death as nothing more than an accident but Tania knows better. As she digs into her friend's past Tania starts to uncover secrets she could have never imagined, secrets that could get her killed. After escaping a kidnap Tania should be cowed and hiding in her home but she knows the answer is out there and someone is guilty of murdering her friend. Sitting at home waiting on the police to catch the killer could get her killed so Tania continues her search. Finding out the truth could be the very last thing she does though.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lovy Books Ltd
• Release date: Dec 19, 2017
• ISBN: 9781386344926

Book preview

1

Has anyone seen our missing party yet? I asked, watching my friends choose their seats as in the resort’s restaurant for dinner. The ladies sitting around the table with me were two of my favorite buddies from my hometown of Alexandria, Virginia. There was supposed to be four of us on this mini-vacation to the western hills of Virginia’s wine country but so far only three of us were here.

Wasn’t she coming early? Let me see if I can an answer from her on messenger. My friend Celia Hughes said as our other friend, Gia, looked at other social media platforms.

Gia tapped the phone a few times, her gel nails making a scratching sound on the screen.

She posted checking in a few hours ago. Did either of you ask if she’d checked in? Gia, a tall blonde with a penchant for Italian clothes asked.

I haven’t, I didn’t think they’d tell us anything. Celia, a redhead who hated all things unnatural said. She wouldn’t even wear makeup most of the time because she felt it hid who she really was. Celia was the free-spirit of the group, and kept us all grounded when we started to talk about Botox or tummy tucks.

We were all in our early to mid-thirties and already some of us had mentioned using plastic surgery to keep us attractive. When your husband worked in the government in Washington, DC, looking good and staying beautiful was important. Even if we didn’t always believe that ourselves, there was always some old crone of 75 trying to tell us what we needed to do in order to keep our husbands coming home at night and the public happy to see us. I watched some of them walking around and wondered if they ever looked into a mirror to see the hideous caricatures of themselves they presented with their dyed hair and piles of makeup. I shuddered now just thinking about it. I was not going to do that to myself, though I did often joke I was going to have my breasts stapled back up.

I’ll be right back. I said, looking over at the check-in desk. It was being manned by a rather handsome young man that checked us in earlier. He was too good looking to be working in a resort. The man should have been on magazine covers with that blond hair framing such a perfectly shaped face, and his grey eyes that burned into your soul. Alright, perhaps not your soul but they were piercing, those eyes.

I stood up, deciding it was time to find out where our friend Lori was. She wasn’t answering her phone, she wasn’t answering her messengers, something was wrong. It was a long drive from our side of Virginia to this side but she’d said she was checking into the resort on her last post to her social media accounts. Maybe she’d fallen asleep in her room?

I passed a mirror as I walked out of the restaurant and saw my red hair was still in place and I could still stand to lose a few pounds but I didn’t look bad for a woman of