Mud Bog Murder Read online

  Mud Bog Murder

  An Eve Appel Mystery

  Lesley A. Diehl

  Camel Press

  PO Box 70515

  Seattle, WA 98127

  For more information go to: www.camelpress.com

  www.lesleyadiehl.com

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Cover design by Sabrina Sun

  Mud Bog Murder

  Copyright © 2016 by Lesley A. Diehl

  ISBN: 978-1-60381-315-0 (Trade Paper)

  ISBN: 978-1-60381-316-7 (eBook)

  Library of Congress Control Number: tk

  Produced in the United States of America

  * * *

  Acknowledgments

  Too often we forget that good writing is really good rewriting, and I have certainly done a lot of that; first, when I submitted my work to the person who became my agent, Dawn Dowdle of Blue Ridge Literary Agency. She certainly put me through the wringer with my first Eve Appel book. How could this perfect work be made more perfect, I wondered. Thanks, Dawn, for being so insistent I could do better.

  Over the course of the Eve Appel series Eve has matured and developed into a woman not only sassy, but also one coming to know herself more fully. Eve has taken some surprising turns in her life, changes encouraged and fostered by Jennifer McCord, associate editor at Camel Press and Camel’s publisher, Catherine Treadgold. Thanks to you both for helping to make Eve a woman we want to admire for her pluck and love for her generosity to others.

  I’m a better writer because of the support of Dawn, Jennifer, and Catherine, but most important, Eve is a better character.

  Chapter 1

  “I think you should hang one of the pictures on the wall behind the counter.” I flipped back several pages in the album and pointed to one of the photos. “This one.”

  Madeleine and I were going through her wedding album in our consignment shop on wheels, an RV we had converted to hold our merchandise. We still hadn’t moved into the new, non-mobile location because the carpenters who were supposed to begin the renovations had been held up on another job. Or so they said. Finding professional crews to do carpentry work and painting on schedule wasn’t easy, as I was learning. A crew would show up once then disappear, and tracking them down proved difficult.

  “You mean on the wall in the new place, right?” Madeleine asked.

  “When we move into the new store, whenever that might be. Could be next week. Could be next year.”

  Madeleine shook her soft red curls in that ultra-feminine way of hers. She’s cute and petite and sometimes makes me feel like a stuffed giraffe standing next to My Little Pony. I’m tall, skinny, and I rock stiletto heels and gel my blonde hair. We couldn’t be more different in appearance, but we’ve known each other since childhood. We’re as close as sisters. “Don’t be so pessimistic, Eve,” my friend said. “It’ll happen soon, and then our only dilemma will be whether we close down this rig or keep it and operate both places.”

  Madeleine Boudreau—now Madeleine Boudreau Wilson, having married David Wilson, love of her life and owner of a hunting ranch outside our community of Sabal Bay in rural Florida—and I have been best friends since sixth grade. Several years ago we bought a consignment shop that features designer fashions and other pre-owned items such as jewelry and house wares.

  If you’re thinking we’re crazy to be selling and consigning high end merchandise among the cowboys, horses, and alligators of rural Florida, then you just don’t know your wealthy West Palm matrons. They relish making a few bucks off their classy worn clothes plus discovering bargains in a shop where their friends won’t know they’re buying secondhand. Of course, that’s a ruse, because those same matrons run into each other here all the time. They just pretend that Ralph Lauren gown wasn’t the one worn to the cancer benefit gala—the gown the wearer brought into the store last week. And as we’ve found, which has only added to our trade, the clientele from West Palm love to patronize the shop. It’s the perfect excuse for them to slip off the coast and indulge in activities not found in West Palm, such as spending an afternoon riding an airboat and hobnobbing with the local alligators.

  Probably the strongest lure for the ladies to our environs is the cowboys who sing and dance the two-step in our local bars. I have to agree with them. There is nothing sexier than having a long, lean cowboy’s strong arms around you while dancing to some country western cryin’, lyin’, and dyin’ song. And of course, I’d be remiss if I didn’t say our resident country gals have classy taste too, and don’t mind buying Oscar de la Renta or Jimmy Choo for pennies. The best part? Madeleine and I meet some pretty unusual people, and we make money.

  One of our customers, Jenny McCleary, emerged from the dressing room in the back of the rig.

  “You like the blue lace Diane von Furstenberg?” I asked Jenny.

  Jenny, a big woman almost as tall as me—I’m over six feet in my stilettos and I always wear stilettos—but carrying more curves, shook her head. “It didn’t fit, which is just as well. I don’t think I’m the lace type.”

  “I’ll agree with you on that. And I’d choose a primary color to bring out your tan. And your dark hair. Don’t you agree, Shelley?” Jenny’s daughter Shelley was as tall as her mother but thin like me.

  “Whatever.” Shelley shrugged her shoulders. I knew she wasn’t being rude, just a young adult trying to look bored while shopping with Mom. Shelley, sixteen and soon to graduate from high school, not only shared her mother’s height but also her dark hair. The two of them came into the shop often but rarely purchased anything. Shelley always carried a sketch book with her. She’d look at clothing then flip open the book and draw something in it. When I asked her one day what she was doing, she showed me her work. She’d drawn a picture of a dress on the rack, but so transformed that I hardly recognized it.

  “I’d like to be a designer,” she said in a quiet voice.

  “Well, you certainly have the talent for it,” I replied.

  She gave me a shy smile. Shelley seemed like a pale shadow of her mother, who was larger, more outgoing, more colorful and had an opinion on everything and liked to state it out loud. And at the top of her lungs. Yet I found something likeable about Jenny. Maybe that was because her mouth was as out of control as mine. Her daughter Shelley I admired for her developing fashion sense. The kid would be a killer designer in a few years.

  Jenny handed me the dresses she had tried on, and I laid them on the counter. As with my first encounter with her, I noticed her unusual eyes—one brown, the other hazel. Then, as now, they twinkled with delight. Jenny always seemed to be upbeat and liked a good laugh.

  “So what are you gals looking at?” she asked.

  “This is Madeleine’s wedding album.”

  Madeleine moved to one side to let Jenny and her daughter take a look at the book.

  “Eve thinks I should put up this picture in our shop.” Madeleine pointed out the one of her and David. In it, Madeleine’s gaze was turned away from the camera and she was looking up at David. Her gauzy beige dress, whipped by the breeze, billowed away from her legs and the ringlets of her red hair blew across her delicate face. David’s hand caressed her cheek, his handsome features stretched into a wide smile. The picture said “We’re in love.”

  Jenny focused on the photo, then bent forward for a better look. “Hmmm. Well, I guess it is a great picture of the
three of you.”

  “Three? What three?” Madeleine leaned over the page, her mass of red curls obscuring my view of the photo. I grabbed the book and turned it around so I could see the photo better.

  Madeleine gasped and stepped backward, her freckled hand flying to her chest in a gesture of horror.

  “I never noticed that before,” I said.

  “Yup. There’s a damn alligator in the background.” Jenny chuckled. “And here I thought you were the maid of honor, Eve.”

  “I’m sure the photographer can Photoshop the reptile out of the picture, honey,” I assured Madeleine. “It’s such a sweet photo. Don’t toss it out.”

  “Where was it taken?” asked Jenny.

  “We were married at David’s hunting ranch,” Madeleine said. “That’s a shot from in front of the pond, north of the house.”

  I remembered that pond well. It was where I tangled with a Cape Buffalo several months ago … but that’s a story for another time. The exotics were gone now, shipped off to wildlife preserves and zoos, but I still had nightmares about that huge animal charging me. I took to a live oak to avoid being trampled.

  “Eve, did you hear me?” Madeleine tugged on my sleeve. “I think this is a better picture. It’s of the four of us—David, me, you, and Alex.”

  It was a great shot, me in my slinky red dress, Alex as best man in a dove gray suit. It had been a happy day. All of us were grinning, even Alex, who lately found little to be happy about.

  Madeleine looked up at me. “I’m sure it’s just temporary, Eve.”

  Alex’s misery mood was clear to everyone around us lately. I was the cause of it. I knew what would made him happy, but I wasn’t about to do that.

  “Kind of an unusual bridesmaid’s dress, isn’t it?” asked Jenny.

  “I like it,” her daughter said, surprising all of us.

  “I do, too,” said Madeleine. “It’s so Eve.”

  “You don’t suppose you could find an outfit ‘so Jenny’ ”? asked Jenny.

  “You said you wanted something formal, but tell me about the event,” I said.

  “It’s for my own wedding,” she replied.

  “Well, that’s just great. And the lucky guy?” I asked.

  “Some Yankee. I think he’s just after Mom’s money,” Shelley said.

  Jenny laughed. “If he is, then he’s gonna be surprised, ’cuz I got none.”

  I was surprised, too. Jenny owned about 500 acres of property east of Sabal Bay. That wasn’t a huge ranch for around here, but it put her among the top land owners in this county. She had to be running a large herd of cattle, and beef prices were good.

  Jenny must have seen the surprise on my face.

  “I’m land poor, Eve. My husband took our life savings and bought that land, but it’s mostly swamp and bog, wetlands. No damn good for beef or cows and calves. Then he up and died on me two years ago. I have no idea what he was planning to do with that useless property. He was a damn fool. Left me with land that only alligators, birds, and snakes have any use for. No money in it.”

  “That’s not true though, is it, Mom? You’re gonna make money off it this year.” Shelley’s tone was disapproving.

  I lifted one eyebrow, waiting for an explanation.

  “Tell them what you have in mind.”

  “My daughter doesn’t approve. I’ve been approached by a concern out of West Palm looking for someplace around here to do mud bog races. I underbid everyone for the event this year. Showed all those guys a thing or two about dealing with a woman.”

  Mud bog races? I’d heard something about them last year but wasn’t really familiar with the sport.

  Shelley crossed her arms over her chest and tapped her foot on the floor. “All you have to do is let trucks tricked out for mud racing come onto your property and tear the hell out of it, destroying all the plant life and bird and animal habitat.”

  “But you got to have swampy land, and I sure got a load of that,” Jenny said. To her daughter, she added, “You’ll be happy enough to see me sign that contract when I get the money that’ll send you to the Fashion Institute of New York up north.”

  Shelley’s face turned bright red. Anger or embarrassment? I couldn’t tell.

  “You’ve seen those trucks jacked up several feet with giant tires on them?” Madeleine asked.

  “Their cabs are usually three feet or more off the ground,” Shelley said. “They make normal cars and trucks look like miniatures. You can’t miss them ’cuz they’re usually covered with mud.” Her mother’s attention seemed to be elsewhere as she turned and looked out the windows of the rig. That was so like the Jenny I’d come to know. Once she’d had her say, she wasn’t interested in hearing out anyone else.

  “I remember now,” I said. “Last year, one of them drove past me on the Beeline, blew its mud all over my Mustang. It took over ten dollars’ worth of quarters in the car wash to get all that goop off.”

  Jenny waved her hand in a gesture of dismissal. “So, do you think you can find anything in my size? This is a second marriage for me so I think it’s appropriate I buy the dress at a secondhand shop, don’t you?”

  “Is it ever,” I said. “I’m going down to West Palm this week. I’m sure to find something for you there. When’s the big day?”

  “In a month. Unless I change my mind.” Jenny chuckled and headed for the door. “Come on, Shelley. Let’s leave Eve and Madeleine to their business.”

  Shelley hung back for a minute. “Eve,” she whispered, “Can I come see you one of these days? There’s something I need to talk to you about.”

  “Sure, honey. Anytime.”

  “Shelley? Let’s roll,” called her mother from the bottom step of the rig. “Oh hi, Alex,” I heard her say.

  I watched him step to one side to let Jenny and Shelley pass, then bound up the two steps. My heart did a little pit-pat, which it always did when I caught sight of him. The man was lust worthy, no doubt about it, but I knew we needed more than passion for a long-term relationship. He had more. I wondered if I did. My heart had done that pitter patter thing before my ex Jerry and I married, but we now were divorced. My heartbeat was not a reliable barometer of relationship durability.

  “Hi, Madeleine,” he said, giving me a half smile followed by his now typical look of unhappiness. “What’s happening?”

  I tried to send a silent signal to Madeleine to avoid talking about the wedding album, but failed. She was so overwhelmed by her happiness with David that she was immune to the negative “no marriage talk” vibes I was sending out.

  “You haven’t seen the wedding pictures yet, have you?” She grabbed Alex by the arm to haul him over to the album, which still lay open on the counter.

  Alex shot me a look I couldn’t read, but I was certain it held some kind of disapproval.

  “Look at this.” Madeleine indicated the picture of her and David. “See anything interesting?”

  “Sure. It looks like two people who love each other reveling in having said their wedding vows.” Alex’s azure eyes gazed at me with a penetrating steadiness. “That’s what people do who love each other. Right, Madeleine?”

  I rolled my eyes.

  Alex caught the look. “But some people can’t make up their minds about love. Even when it’s right in front of them.”

  Madeleine sighed, closed the album and walked off toward one of the clothes rounds. “I’ll let the two of you do whatever it is you seem to be doing lately while I do … something, too.”

  “Eve, we need to talk.” He brushed back the lock of sun-streaked brown hair that flopped over his forehead. He always looked like such an innocent boy. Maybe that’s why I felt such anger toward him now. His words were not innocent. They were meant to hurt in a grown-up way. He was being pushy, pushy, pushy. I was not ready to make a commitment. Not yet.

  “Why must we talk now, here, at the store? And just what are we going to talk about?” I tried to contain my anger, but lately all we did was fight about ou
r relationship. I thought the wrangling was wearing thin.

  “We’ve been an item for a year longer than Madeleine and David, and they’re married. We don’t even live together. What’s your issue?”

  There it was. It was always my issue, never Alex’s lack of understanding about who I was and what was important to me.

  I leaned my elbows back onto the counter, glad that Madeleine was out of earshot and there were no customers in the shop. I didn’t want to have anyone hear the prickliness in Alex’s and my discussion. It was bad for business.

  Maybe that was my “issue,” as Alex called it. I was focused on the business and not on the two of us. How could I not put business first? It had been less than three years since Madeleine and I set up the shop, and those years had some good times and many bad times when I worried we might go under. Now we had a mobile shop—a motor home we drove to flea markets on the coast and to the one here in Sabal Bay. It was a good business, but the rig was a loan from my mob boss friend Nappi Napolitani. I should be moving out of it and taking up full-time residence in our new location, the one being renovated. And although I knew he never wanted any money from us for rent, I felt guilty not paying him for the use of the rig.

  And in the middle of all this upheaval, Alex wanted a commitment from me? Was he crazy?

  “Yeah, yeah,” he said. “I know about your business problems, and I’m not denying you have to put them first, but we can get through these times together. I’ll help you like David helps Madeleine. Am I not supportive enough? Do I interfere with your work?”

  “No. You never interfere with my work, but you seem to feel I intrude upon yours, especially when it includes people I know and care for. Then you get all bristly about my sticking my nose in and tell me to back off. How can I back off? It’s not in my nature to ignore my friends and family when they need help. Just because you’ve got a license doesn’t mean you can push me out of the way. It would be nice just once if you gave me some credit for my ideas.” I knew I should keep my mouth shut and let his criticisms go, but I was beginning to feel defensive. When Eve Appel felt attacked, that was when she went in for the kill.