GRIM DEATH A Juniper Grove Mystery KARIN KAUFMAN
Copyright © 2022 by Karin Kaufman
All rights reserved.
Series cover design: Deranged Doctor Design
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without written permission of the author. This includes reprints, excerpts, photocopying, recording, or any future means of reproducing texts.
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.
Contents
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
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A Note from the Author
CHAPTER 1
I put some papers in your coat pocket. Call me later. Don’t tell anyone.
I stared down at the note Mary Blackwell had pressed into my hand.
By the time I looked up, she was chatting with another guest at her New Year’s Day brunch, directing his attention to something across the living room. I stuffed the note into my jeans pocket.
I knew Mary well enough to know she wasn’t kidding around. First, she wasn’t the joking type, and second, she’d been as tense as a cat in a carrier since greeting James and me at her door.
She’d even forgotten my name.
“Clay,” she’d called out to her husband, “it’s James Gilroy and Rachel Stowe.”
“It’s Gilroy now,” I reminded her.
“Of course it is!” She’d waved us inside and asked for our coats. “It’s because I read your mystery novels. You know, with Stowe on the cover. So it’s Rachel Stowe-Gilroy? You added a husband and a name.”
“No, I didn’t add—”
“Chief Gilroy, Mrs. Stowe!” Clay had sped across his living room, a wide grin on his long, angular face. “Happy New Year!”
“She’s Mrs. Stowe-Gilroy now,” Mary had said. “Ignore the book covers.”
I’d been momentarily tongue-tied by Clay’s new black-framed glasses—the lenses so large he looked rather insect-like—and by the time I’d recovered my power of speech and was ready to untangle the name mess, Mary was taking our coats and Clay was asking us what we’d like to drink.
Now, several minutes after giving me the note, Mary was heading back to the kitchen, focusing her attention on nonexistent crumbs or lint on her black sweater. She didn’t grant me so much as a glance as she sped by. It seemed to me I deserved some explanation, if only via facial expression.
“You’re stalking her with your eyes,” Gilroy said. He took a sip of his mimosa. In the fifteen-plus months I’d known him, I’d never seen him drink a mimosa. Or anything from a champagne flute. He wore flannel shirts, barn coats, and cowboy boots, for goodness’ sake. I, on the other hand, was drinking plain water from a glass tumbler.
“What’s with her?”
“Never mind about the name thing. You know I don’t care.”
