Bones on the Bayou: Sarah Booth Delaney Short Mystery

By Carolyn Haines

Christmas is six days away—and Sarah Booth Delaney has her hands full!

 

To honor a group of international investors, Shaw, Mississippi, resurrects the old custom of drifting miniature, lighted Christmas floats down Silver Bayou.  The Italian delegation from Venice may bring much-needed new jobs and commercial opportunities to this small, struggling Delta town. Among the investors is notorious womanizer, Enzo Aceto.  Handsome, witty, and eager for new conquests, Enzo meets his match in Tinkie Bellcase Richmond.  She, too, is an accomplished flirt, and a partner in Delaney Detective Agency.

 

Enzo disappears.  Rumors of murder are buzzing.  Suspicion falls on Tinkie's husband, Oscar, whose jealousy created a scene at a social event.  A body spotted bobbing behind the last Christmas float makes the joyous holiday celebration take on a much darker tone. Tinkie and Oscar flee Sunflower County.  Sarah Booth must determine what happened to Enzo, or her partner's and Oscar's holiday will end in multiple felony charges.

 

From paid shoppers to canine and feline assistant sleuths, "Bones on the Bayou" brings the Zinnia gang together to solve the mystery—and save Christmas.

• Language: English
• Publisher: KaliOka Press
• Release date: Dec 1, 2014
• ISBN: 9781386994176

Carolyn Haines

Carolyn Haines is the USA Today bestselling author of the Sarah Booth Delaney mystery series and a number of other books in mystery and crime, including the Pluto's Snitch paranormal-historical mystery series, and Trouble, the black cat detective romantic suspense books. She is the recipient of the Harper Lee Award for Distinguished Writing, the Richard Wright Award for Literary Excellence, and the Mississippi Writers Guild Lifetime Achievement Award. She is a former journalist, bartender, photographer, farmhand, and college professor and lives on a farm where she works with rescue cats, dogs, and horses.

Book preview

Bones on the Bayou

Bones on the Bayou

A Sarah Booth Delaney Short Mystery

Carolyn Haines

KaliOka Press

Copyright © 2014 by Carolyn Haines

All rights reserved. Published by KaliOka Press.

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.

Cover design by Lisa Morton

Formatted by Priya Bhakta

Contents

Bones on the Bayou

About the Author

Also by Carolyn Haines

Bones on the Bayou

A Sarah Booth Delaney Short Mystery

Wreath

Jealousy never shows a pretty face, and Christmas doesn’t make this less true. It was the green-eyed monster that prodded me onto a bridge over Silver Bayou in Shaw, Mississippi, on a December night as crisp and clear as anything Montana might offer. It felt like the frozen north—with a wind gusting at twenty miles per hour.

I burrowed deeper into the collar of my coat and jammed my gloved hands into my pockets. Beside me, my partner in Delaney Detective Agency, Tinkie Bellcase Richmond, tried not to shiver. She pulled a monogramed flask from her coat pocket and knocked back a jolt of Grey Goose, unconcerned that the crowd lining the bridge saw her. Such conduct usually fell at my feet, not Tinkie’s. She was a lady. I had no ambitions to hold that title.

Alcohol won’t warm you up, I reminded her. It a vasodilator, so ultimately it makes you colder. Talk about a role reversal, Tinkie was normally the voice of reason and I was the wild hare.

She took another swig.

Tinkie and her husband Oscar had assumed the roles of hormonal teenagers. All because of Enzo Aceto, a member of ‘the Italian delegation’—a group of Venice businessmen and women who were spending the Christmas holidays in the Mississippi Delta to explore a potential investment deal that could be an economic boon to the area.

Oscar behaved like a fool. Tinkie tipped the flask again.

Did you speak with him today? She’d spent last night with me, and most of the day at Dahlia House, except for a bit of shopping and an appointment at the hair salon.

He didn’t call me and I am not about to call him.

I had to snap her out of her funk. "Oscar is insecure. So what? It happens. And you were flirting with Enzo." The whole peccadillo was a tempest in a teapot. Tinkie always flirted. As queen bee Daddy’s Girl, Tinkie was born and bred to string men behind her like she was the sexy pied piper and they were besotted rats. Oscar most often took pride in her accomplished skills. It had to be the pressures of the holiday season that had put my normally bubbly partner and her husband on edge.

It didn’t help that with Enzo, Tinkie had found a male counterpart. Dark, polished, virtually sex on a stick, Enzo zeroed in on Tinkie and they had flamed the hallowed halls of The Club in Zinnia with their suggestive repartee and innuendos. It had been like watching a verbal tango.

We’d all enjoyed the show as the two of them matched swords. Everyone, except Tinkie’s husband, had been greatly amused by the dance of coquetry. All of the state dignitaries in attendance, the politicians, the business owners, and those with wealth and power had applauded and encouraged the show.

End result: Tinkie and Oscar had a very public fight and Tinkie stormed out