Pungent Justice: A Christmas Crime Story

By Kari Kilgore

The Worst Day of a Rotten Year

The holiday season looks gloomy to Jennifer after a job loss forces her family to move. Away from friends and high school, into struggle and uncertainty.
Then a heartless theft sends everyone's mood even darker.
Only the comfort of her best friend Lynda makes sense.
Unless they can work out a way to set things right. And deliver their own form of justice.

 

An excerpt from Pungent Justice:

One Bright Light on a Dark Day

 

At the thought of walking into Lynda's reassuringly normal living room, with her relatively happy parents who'd been born and raised nearby, and the solidly middle-class peace and quiet, and the pretty little Christmas tree that went up the day after Thanksgiving and came down on New Year's Day like clockwork, Jennifer balked.

That had been her family up until a year ago, and she'd thought it was boring. Dull routine that she couldn't wait to get away from. A world where everything was predictable and no one had their Christmas gifts and everything else stolen from right in their damn driveway.

"Can you… Do you think you could go for a walk? I need to talk to you."

Lynda scowled for a second, but Jennifer's face probably gave the whole game away. At the sight of the one friend she really cared about in this place—more than cared about if she ever had the courage to admit it—Jennifer's hard shield of anger about the robbery slipped.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Spiral Publishing, Ltd
• Release date: Dec 15, 2021
• ISBN: 9781393470984

Kari Kilgore

Kari Kilgore started her first published novel Until Death in Transylvania, Romania, and finished it in Room 217 at the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colorado, where Stephen King got the idea for The Shining. That’s just one example of how real world inspiration drives her fiction. Kari’s first published novel Until Death was included on the Preliminary Ballot for the Bram Stoker Award for Outstanding Achievement in a First Novel in 2016. It was also a finalist for the Golden Stake Award at the Vampire Arts Festival in 2018. Recent professional short story sales include three to Fiction River anthology magazine, with the first due out in the September issue. Kari also has two stories in a holiday-themed anthology project with Kristine Kathryn Rusch due out over the holidays in 2019. Kari writes fantasy, science fiction, horror, and contemporary fiction, and she’s happiest when she surprises herself. She lives at the end of a long dirt road in the middle of the woods with her husband Jason Adams, various house critters, and wildlife they’re better off not knowing more about. Kari’s novels, novellas, and short stories are available at www.spiralpublishing.net, which also publishes books by Frank Kilgore and Jason Adams. For more information about Kari, upcoming publications, her travels and adventures, and random cool things that catch her attention, visit www.karikilgore.com.

Book preview

Pungent Justice

For anyone facing the holidays

with more dread than joy

---

You’re not alone

PUNGENT JUSTICE

A CHRISTMAS CRIME STORY

KARI KILGORE

SPIRAL PUBLISHING, LTD.

CHAPTER 1

Jennifer did her best to ignore the soft sound of her mother weeping and concentrate on the reason for the tears.

And what she could do about it.

Their townhouse complex looked exactly the same as it had when she was last outside early that morning. Row after row of narrow, two- and three-story houses. Faded yellow garage door on the bottom, then either speckled tan brick or muted dove-gray aluminum siding.

Almost all the units—sorry, houses—had at least one late-Eighties model car or truck parked in the short asphalt driveway, nothing too new or flashy. Either more than two drivers at home, or too much junk shoved into the garage.

Stubby little yards on the side units with a holly bush and a leafless stunted maple tree. A few merry souls had draped those weird nets of Christmas lights over the hollies to try to liven up the place and install the holiday spirit. Even in late December, the ghosts of barbecues and cigarettes past drifted through the blustery cold air, damp and smelling of oncoming snow.

That was it, more or less. It was so flat in this bland suburb of Columbus, Ohio, that as far as Jennifer could see, the entire world was made up of dozens of the exact same townhouses on the exact same street, forever and ever, amen.

Except in front of the unit she’d lived in with her father, mother, and usually annoying little brother. That one looked quite a bit different on this day before Christmas Eve, 1994.

The sharp bits and pieces glittering all over the stubby driveway, for starters. The front passenger side window of an old Chevy conversion van held a remarkable amount of glass when shattered with a brick wrapped in an old white t-shirt covered with red and green stains.

The van’s side doors hung open along with the passenger door, with one of the side doors screeching as it swung back and forth in the wind. A few bits of travel junk were scattered in the broken glass. A huge Rand McNally road map book from a couple of years ago lay open and face down, beside a bag of garbage from McDonald’s.

For some bizarre reason, the bag had been ripped open and stomped on. Maybe because the mediocre at best food had