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    A Fatal April Shower: Mt. Abrams Mysteries, #6
    A Fatal April Shower: Mt. Abrams Mysteries, #6
    A Fatal April Shower: Mt. Abrams Mysteries, #6
    Ebook176 pages2 hours

    A Fatal April Shower: Mt. Abrams Mysteries, #6

    By Dee Ernst

    ()

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    About this ebook

    Ellie Rocca tapped the best party-planning company in the state, Luxe, for her mother’s seventy-fifth birthday party, and she’s not disappointed.  The food is perfect, the wine and beer are flowing freely, and all the guests are having a wonderful time.  In fact, everything is going along just perfectly until one of the guests turns up dead, strangled with her own scarf.

    Ellie’s police detective boyfriend, Sam, is at the party, so he’s off the case. Ellie doesn’t have much faith in the two officers in charge, and neither does Enza Biondi, the co-owner of Luxe, who discovered the body.  Ellie may have sworn off snooping, but Enza’s curiosity is peaked, and she keeps drawing Ellie deeper and deeper.  Thanks to Enza, the two of them think they’ve got the whole thing figured out. But as new and more chilling facts come to light, Ellie discovers the real killer is much closer to home than she ever imagined.

    This is the sixth and final novella in the Mt. Abrams Mystery Series.  29K words long.

    LanguageEnglish
    Publisher235 Alexander Street
    Release dateJun 27, 2017
    ISBN9780998056814
    A Fatal April Shower: Mt. Abrams Mysteries, #6
    Author

    Dee Ernst

    DEE ERNST grew up in Morristown, New Jersey, and attended Marshall University in Huntington, West Virginia, where she majored in Journalism, thinking it would help her launch a writing career. She miscalculated, gave up writing entirely, and began a long career as a bookkeeper. Two husbands and two daughters later, Dee returned to the tri-state area—happily married—to begin her career as a writer with her debut novel, Maggie Finds Her Muse.

    Read more from Dee Ernst

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      Book preview

      A Fatal April Shower - Dee Ernst

      Chapter

      1

      My mother’s birthday was April twentieth. Some years, we could celebrate out on my front porch, wrapped in light sweaters, and look at the faint blush of spring green spread around the lake. Some years, it rained so hard we could have taken a boat from my porch to the lake. And some years, we couldn’t go farther than the front room of her assisted living facility, The Fairview Manor, because the snow was

      too

      deep

      .

      That was New Jersey

      for

      you

      .

      This year, she was turning seventy-five, and I was throwing her a party, inviting all her friends from the old neighborhood, as well as those from The Manor, as she liked to call it. My brother, Ted, and his partner were flying in from Chicago. I had rented out the Lake Abrams clubhouse, and arranged for a very new and chichi party-planning company, Luxe, to take care of everything—food, set up, clean up, even the bartender.

      Leona Rocca was going to have quite a party. Small, but mighty.

      After going over the plans—again—with Vincenza Biondi, co-owner of Luxe, I was convinced that the entire affair would go off without a hitch.

      Unless, of course, a foot or two of snow fell the day before.

      Or there was a small flood.

      Or my mother forgot who I was and refused to get in the car

      with

      me

      .

      Or, once she arrived at the clubhouse, forgot who the event was for and started asking to be taken home early.

      And she could always think that Marc and I were still married and ask him embarrassing questions, like, is it true you beat up my daughter? And, why are you sitting with that brazen hussy instead of

      your

      wife

      ?

      To be fair, my ex-husband’s new girlfriend did have a certain look about her that, to a person of a certain generation, screamed FLOOZY. And, in the past, Lou Lombardi had a reputation of going through men the way some of us went through cheap pantyhose.

      But still. I was hoping for

      the

      best

      .

      Vincenza looked exactly like a woman named Vincenza should look, with thick, dark hair, perfect makeup, a roman nose, and a body with more curves than the track at LeMans. She arrived wearing sunglasses despite the cloudy day, red stilettos, and wrote in a hot pink notebook with a flashing gold pen. She had taken a quick tour of the clubhouse and found it to be, in her words, a friggin’ delight.

      Her voice was deep, almost masculine, a stark contrast to her very feminine appearance. She also had what I like to think of as the generic Movie New Yawk Accent. Possibly Brooklyn or Staten Island. Maybe the Bronx.

      Call me Enza, she said. And Ellie, honey, let me tell you, this place is perfect, and my staff is on top of this. Just get her here, and we’ll do the rest. You have nothing to worry about. Besides, this little town is like a Rockwell painting. I almost tripped over over a friggin’ red wagon walkin’ up here, swear to God. How can you even think that somethin’ could go wrong in a place like Mt. Abrams?

      Oh, Enza. If you

      only

      knew

      .

      I walked every morning—weather permitting—with my good friends, Carol and Maggie. My best friend, Shelly, had gotten her hours changed at work and didn’t have the time in the morning to walk with us anymore. That’s what she told us, and we all nodded and said of course. We also knew she was lying, and why she was lying.

      The man she had left her husband for had murdered Beth Graves, his ex-wife, by running her down in a blizzard. He would have gotten way with it, too, if I hadn’t been walking down the same road and realized that his story about not seeing Beth because it was too dark was a total line of BS. When I showed my boyfriend, Sam Kinali, who just happened to be the homicide detective working the case, what I had found, Sam called him on it. James Fergus could have turned himself in and gotten a good lawyer. He might have even been acquitted. But instead,

      he

      ran

      .

      Shelly blamed me. Then, she didn’t, and she cried and said how sorry

      she

      was

      .

      But things hadn’t been

      the

      same

      .

      I missed her. After twenty years of practically living out of each other’s pockets, it was hard getting through the days knowing we were never going to be that close again.

      Carol Anderson, tall, thin, gracious, and the head librarian at the Mt. Abrams Library, was particularly sensitive to the whole issue, and neither she nor Maggie mentioned Shelly once the weather broke, and we got back into our routine. But she wasn’t the type of person to pretend something didn’t exist just because it might be unpleasant.

      So, tell me about your mom’s party, Carol said as we

      started

      out

      .

      This particular April morning was cold but sunny, and the ground was hard and dry. Boot, the most spoiled cocker spaniel on the planet, was delighted to have growing things to smell again and sniffed every sprouting weed. Well, about forty people, which is manageable, and the planner seems to be in complete control. Thank God for Ted, pitching in to help pay for this. She did not come cheap.

      Maggie, whose hair was dark pink right now, was doing some sort of arm-swinging routine as she walked. "They were written up in NJ Monthly, I think. Luxe Affairs? Very in demand

      right

      now

      ."

      Yep, that’s them. The owner, Enza, is right out of one of the Godfather movies. I mean, I’m Italian, but I’ll never be as Italian as she is. I kept waiting for her to give me her grandmother’s recipe for Sunday gravy. She lives in Morristown now, but grew up in Brooklyn, and it shows.

      Did she have a driver named Vinnie? Carol asked, smiling.

      No. She drove her own little black Mercedes. She seemed very nice and very competent, which is going to be a good thing. I’m going to be juggling too many personal things to be worrying about when the dessert gets served.

      So, did you invite Shelly? Carol asked.

      Maggie stopped swinging

      her

      arms

      .

      Yes, I said. She says she can’t come, because she has the boys this weekend.

      She had the boys this past weekend,

      Maggie

      said

      .

      I know. I heard the anger in my own voice and tried to tamp it down. I saw them up at the mall. She didn’t see me, though.

      And just how long is this going to last? Carol asked. Seriously. Do you two need an intervention?

      "We’re fine. We talked, and she understands why I had to tell Sam, and she understands that Sam could never not do his job, and she thanked him for giving James a chance to make it

      right

      —

      "

      Which he didn’t, Maggie said. "What

      a

      jerk

      ."

      Yeah, I said shortly.

      We walked around the lake in silence. We were coming up on the Mitchell house, and noticed that the For Sale sign

      was

      down

      .

      It sold? I said in surprise.

      Yep, Maggie said. Viv told me it’s a young couple with a newborn. Nice family, she said. Viv was Vivian Brewster, our local realtor and Maggie’s best friend.

      That’s nice, Carol said. Babies are always good for a neighborhood. She looked sideways at me. I’m going to say something to Shelly.

      Please don’t. That will only make things worse.

      No, dear. I don’t think so, because I can’t imagine things getting any worse. She went off the rails when she met James, and she needs a kick in the butt if she ever wants her life to get back to any kind of normal. She sniffed. "I understand that you can’t give it to her. But

      I

      can

      ."

      We’d stopped, and Boot tugged at the leash

      towards

      home

      .

      I don’t think we’ll ever get back to normal,

      I

      said

      .

      She leaned forward suddenly and hugged me tight. Don’t worry, she said as she stepped back. I’ll get her to the party. You can take it from there.

      Maggie threw her arms around me as well. "Oh, Ellie. It’ll all come right in

      the

      end

      ."

      I didn’t think so, but I

      didn’t

      say

      .

      Boot tugged again, and I turned and

      walked

      home

      .

      My brother, Ted, was an architect, and lived in Chicago with his partner of twelve years, Cal Winthrop, a very charming, WASPy man who was a professional photographer with lots of money. That wasn’t why Ted was with him, of course, but it sure didn’t hurt, because it meant that when he flew to Newark for our mother’s party, he flew first class and arrived in a

      great

      mood

      .

      Ted looked just like

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