All In and Death

By Patti Larsen

When Fee is hired as extra security for a poker tournament, she fully expects to learn a thing or two. Trouble is, when one of the players dies during play, she not only has to use her specialized skills to figure out who killed him, she’s forced to do so under threat of arrest courtesy of her hated cousin, Sheriff Robert Carlisle. Will the right person end up behind bars or will Fee go to jail for trying find a killer?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Patti Larsen
• Release date: Jun 9, 2020
• ISBN: 9781989925034

Patti Larsen

About me, huh? Well, my official bio reads like this: Patti Larsen is a multiple award-winning author with a passion for the voices in her head. But that sounds so freaking formal, doesn’t it? I’m a storyteller who hears character's demands so loudly I have to write them down. I love the idea of sports even though sports hate me. I’ve dabbled in everything from improv theater to film making and writing TV shows, singing in an all girl band to running my own hair salon.But always, always, writing books calls me home.I’ve had my sights set on world literary domination for a while now. Which means getting my books out there, to you, my darling readers. It’s the coolest thing ever, this job of mine, being able to tell stories I love, only to see them all shiny and happy in your hands... thank you for reading.As for the rest of it, I’m short (permanent), slightly round (changeable) and blonde (for ever and ever). I love to talk one on one about the deepest topics and can’t seem to stop seeing the big picture. I happily live on Prince Edward Island, Canada, home to Anne of Green Gables and the most beautiful red beaches in the world, with my pug overlord and overlady, six lazy cats and Gypsy Vanner gelding, Fynn.

Book preview

Chapter One

Clandestine meetings late at night weren’t exactly a novelty, but this one? This one I wouldn’t have missed for anything. Not if the person I believed had asked for this rather unorthodox but long-awaited conversation was going to tell me what I’d been dying to know.

Yes, I know. Dying is a terrible word when it comes to me. Apologies.

Thing was, I didn’t have proof the anonymous email was from the mayor of Reading, though. But it would be just like Olivia Walker to reach out in such a circumspect way, knowing she was on the edge of something she hadn’t been able to tell me for months now, having to do with a particular crime family we all knew and wished would just die off already.

Me and the death words. Go figure.

I know, I know. I should have been more careful, right? Made sure I knew who I was meeting, that the terse message (We need to talk. Lakeside road 8PM) wasn’t exactly forthcoming in the kind of details that inspired confidence that a) the person requesting said get-together was even going to show and this wasn’t a prank and that b) the person in question didn’t intend me bodily harm in a trap I drove into without question and that c) the person in question was the person in question.

Still.

I sipped my coffee, the warmth of it trickling down inside me while the inside of my car grew colder. Of course, I’d turned it off, headlights dark, parked off to the side of the dirt road that led from the main throughway to Cutter Lake. I was about as familiar with this specific stretch of unpaved delight as I was any other street in town, though with a far more personal prod to memory lately. One that made me believe it had to be Olivia asking to meet here.

Who else would drag me back to the scene of a murder I’d been involved in not so long ago but the mayor of the cutest town in America?

Okay, I was grasping at straws, yes. Hope, even. Curiosity and cats losing lives wasn’t lost on me (see me avoiding the death words there?), but I was nosy enough and confident (Brave? Crazy? Impulsive?) enough I figured whoever did lure me out here, if not Olivia after all, did so with good intentions.

And, if they meant me harm? Well, my newly acquired handgun, an odd gift to receive from one’s loving husband but the perfect choice knowing our little family’s history, would serve as a sufficient deterrent.

At least, that’s what I told myself as I shivered and sipped and eyed the closed compartment of my glove box and the dark and deadly thing I left in there just in case.

Concealed carry legal in my state without a permit or not, I wasn’t about to lug the thing everywhere I went, Crew. Forget it.

Look, I know why he bought it for me, impossible not to remember his grim face when I opened the gift just three days ago. After he told me he was finally going to stop hovering around me, take cases outside Reading again, resume his normal work schedule. With Jill Wagner running the office in Montpelier and Liz finally fully retired from the FBI, it meant all of the Fleming Investigations team members would be back on the job.

Even me. New and improved with a weapon to show for it.

I’d fired off enough rounds at the range a few hours later he was satisfied with my proficiency. Tucked the nasty thing away and tried not to think about its lurking deadliness now residing in my car. Knew if he knew where I was right now without any kind of backup or confirmation of my meeting’s goals and dreams my darling husband would be furious with me.

Was beginning to think, the clock on my phone telling me my contact was five minutes late, this was a write-off and a waste of time regardless. Which led me to settle deeper into my seat to give this mystery person a few more minutes and allowing my brain to take me places it shouldn’t have gone.

Like, to the fact I still wasn’t fully me again and this really was a stupid idea if I actually was honest with myself. I’d only just recovered, after all, from yet another close call with my own mortality. Two weeks ago, I’d almost died. I shivered again, this time from the memory of the fear in my husband’s face, how I made my mother cry, my father lurk like a looming oak tree of protectiveness, even my dear friend, Dr. Lloyd Aberstock, showing for the first time just how close I’d come to checking out.

My lungs still ached a little from the brush with pneumonia, my body’s recovery taking longer than I would have liked. I felt a lot better, don’t get me wrong, still hated snow—glaring at a small drift of the stuff piled against the trees next to me like it was all its fault I was pushed into its big brother and left to die. But the feeling of resistant malaise made me nervous, how I needed a nap in the afternoons still. It wasn’t like I was an old lady or anything, right? Thirty (cough, cough, number I refused to acknowledge) wasn’t that old, was it? And yet, it was clear I wasn’t springing back the way I used to.

Well, craptastic on a crap stick.

Which made me think sad and worried thoughts about my pug, Petunia, her advancing age, her brushes with death herself, (enough with that topic, thank you), and things only kind of spiraled from there.

Thank goodness my secret admirer appeared when they did, jerking open the passenger door and making me shriek and dump some coffee into my lap as I stared with huge eyes at the creator of this get-together, seating himself heavily beside me with a hrumph of expelled air before slamming the door shut and turning to fix me with a baleful eye.

Oliver, I gaped at the owner of Watters Antiques, the old man’s tense and almost angry expression doing nothing to ease my mind, while a part of me was disappointed to see him and not the expected mayor with her confessions and truths. Still, it wasn’t like Oliver Watters to contact me, to the contrary. He preferred his own counsel, didn’t he?

Fiona, he said, gravel voice a match for the scruff of white beard on his red face, spikey eyebrows jutting at odd directions, the thinning hair that normally wafted around his forehead held down by a thick, fur hat. Thanks for coming.

Wow, okay. So totally out of character for the elderly curmudgeon, I just nodded.

Oliver cleared his throat, hands in fists inside his fur mittens, the giant, puffy coat he wore making his already round body look a bit like a stuffed doll. But there was zero humor in the situation, his normal bravado gone, a faint trembling taking him over.

I instantly started the car, leaving the lights off, though the daytime runners lit the world around us a bit too much for a secret meeting. The heater chugged to life, washing both of us in warmth, though it was clear it wasn’t the early December cold that was making Oliver tremble.

What can I do for you? Seemed innocuous enough but triggered a reaction I wasn’t expecting.

Oliver leaned toward me, eyes wide and pupils huge in the low light of the dash, the scent of old books and peppermints, tea and fresh bread escaping the confines of his coat as though he’d brought his life with him beneath the puffy covering of feathers and fabric.

I need to know if I can trust you, he said. It’s a matter of life and death.

***

Chapter Two

Sheesh, I just couldn’t escape that kind of terminology, could I? Stuttered a bit at his seriousness, swallowed some coffee, then tried a softening tactic.

You could have come to the office, I said as gently as I could, still not sure this wasn’t just some overblown conspiracy something or another. Oliver was known for his written history of Reading, of taking some, shall we say, literary liberties with the truth. Then again, I’d never known him to come to anyone for help, least of all me.

If it was safe to do that, I’d have taken care of things on my own. A little waspish there, old fella. But there was fear behind his anger, enough I knew better than to belittle his worries any further. Oliver might have been a blowhard and a gossip, but if he was afraid and showing it?

I needed to pay attention.

Sorry, Oliver, I said, my soothing tone doing the job, apparently, because he grunted in reply and looked out the passenger window, hands now tucked tightly together in his lap under the round of his belly. What can you tell me about the case and whose life is in danger?

All of ours, he whispered into the glass, fogging it up for a moment while I shuddered at the deep and desperate sound of his voice.

Big breath, Fiona Fleming.

But just when I was ready to tell myself he was being paranoid, Oliver’s head whipped around, and those watery eyes met mine with enough intensity and focus I held my breath and listened as he went on.

You don’t believe me, he said then. Calm again, himself. Looked like he was about to brush me off, then thought better of it. Poked at me with one index finger still inside his mitten, making him look like a little kid trying to make a point. Fine, then, missy. You just do something for me, then we’ll talk about how safe we are and what’s wrong with this town.

What do you want me to do? I already knew something rotten was going on. Not a big shocker or anything. Thing was, there had always been an undercurrent of darkness running beneath the sparkly, happy, we’re just folks surface of my hometown. Thanks to the Pattersons and their whole mess of a disaster that happened finally and was supposed to leave Reading in better shape than before. Oliver had never brought anything to me in the past, even when things were at their worst. I’d always had to go to him for what I needed, and grudgingly on both our parts.

Did that mean he was actually paying attention finally? Or that he knew more than I did and taking this case might get me the answers I needed from a different source?

Check into our oh-so-dishonorable town council. Oliver reached for the door handle, shoving the way open, letting cold air inside as he grunted his way out of my car. Wait, that was it? Apparently, I’d lost my window to find out what he knew. The old fart was being purposely obtuse now because I hadn’t taken him seriously. I leaned over to protest his exit while he stopped and looked down and in at me, one hand on the top of the door. Do you know what’s happening to us?

Okay, so I’d been a bit out of touch lately. Hey, I almost died for heaven’s sake. Though, I had to admit this wasn’t the first time I’d heard funny things might be happening behind the closed doors of town hall. Hadn’t Terri Jacobs, the owner of our local flower shop and former councilor herself, mentioned as much to me? I might have lost track of some of what I’d learned up the mountain at the yoga retreat. Partly because I almost died.

Gimme a break, will you?

Oliver wasn’t in the mood to cut anyone any such slack, least of all me. This whole town has gone to sleep, lulled into false security thanks to you and your father, your husband, that mayor of ours. You think this is over, Fiona Fleming? I gaped at Oliver as, shaking and now enraged, he almost bellowed at me. You have no idea. He pulled himself together after a moment, staggering a little in the snow, big boots slipping beneath him. My car rocked when he used his grip on the door to hold himself upright, but the near collapse at least helped cool his temper. How many towns like ours host secret by-elections? How many towns like ours are being bought up by foreigners? How many towns like ours, Fiona? He huffed a breath. You do what you want, but if you decide to actually wake up and look into what’s going on in Reading, you email that account I used, and we’ll see if you’re worth hiring.

With that, he closed my door firmly and trudged off into the snow, disappearing into the darkness and the forest path by the edge of the lake, leaving me to battle guilt, frustration, anger and my own sense of unease about our hometown for a long few minutes before I had the wherewithal to put the car in gear and head for home.

It was a short drive but felt like forever, my mind a tumbling hamster wheel of squeaking activity, the critters on overdrive while I considered what Oliver said. It was fair to say I’d been distracted lately, and not just by my illness. With our new house under construction on the land where my bed and breakfast used to stand well underway, with a Christmas move-in date promised by my friend, Jared Wilkins, who we contracted for the job making me misty-eyed over decorations and cutting down trees in softly snowy woods with my darling beloved, sipping hot chocolate and eggnog and celebrating our very first holiday season in our new home, I had let some things slide. And I’d been trusting Olivia to handle the mess she’d, frankly, been part of since she’d become mayor, rather than pushing her harder for answers.

There was more I could have been doing, though I did finally sigh into the heat of my car’s blasting vents as I parked in the driveway at Crew’s little house, my sedan tucked in next to his big, black SUV. This little excursion had tired me out. I had to accept I wasn’t one hundred percent yet. And be okay with it.

But digging into Reading’s inner workings? Just jumped to priority number one.

And not out of the guilt trip Oliver had laid in my lap, either. As I climbed out of the car and tucked my coat around me in the cold night air, heading for the front door with my boots crunching on the salt pellets my thoughtful husband spread out to prevent ice and slips, I accepted my inner busybody needed prompting sometimes to go into overdrive.

Well, consider me a dog with a bone.

I was surprised to find Crew was out, Petunia absent as well, realizing he’d probably taken the pug for a walk or to The Iris to visit my mother in the bed and breakfast she ran. I was going to have to tell him where I went. I’d left when he’d gone to the office for a little bit, so he was likely as surprised I’d been missing as I was at his absence now. I checked my phone, grateful he hadn’t texted or called to check up on me.

Because my loving, caring, protective husband knew I could take care of myself.

Phone out and at the ready, I made a call as I put my coat and boots away. But when I only reached the voice mail of Pat and Ashley Champville, (You’ve reached Champville Realty in Reading, Vermont—let us find