Murder Most Unlucky: A Cozy Mystery (A Carolyn Neville Mystery Book 5) Read online

  Murder Most Unlucky

  A Carolyn Neville Mystery Book 5

  John Duckworth

  Murder Most Unlucky

  Kindle Edition

  Copyright © 2021 John Duckworth

  CKN Christian Publishing

  An Imprint of Wolfpack Publishing

  5130 S. Fort Apache Rd. 215-380

  Las Vegas, NV 89148

  www.christiankindlenews.com

  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events, places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced by any means without the prior written consent of the publisher, other than brief quotes for reviews.

  eBook ISBN 978-1-64734-536-5

  Paperback ISBN 978-1-64734-537-2

  Contents

  Prologue

  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

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Epilogue

  If you liked this, you may like: Angels & Imperfection

  About the Author

  Murder Most Unlucky

  To Christopher and Jonathan, who’ve made me the luckiest dad in the world.

  Prologue

  I checked the mirror. “White Cadillac about a mile behind us.”

  “Got it,” Stephen said. “Take this next road to the right.”

  I let go of the steering wheel and let the car have its way.

  “I’m trying not to think about what’s going to happen when the rental company hears their car has burned to a crisp,” I said.

  Stephen snorted. “Probably will, given the full gas tank. But they won’t find any bodies—unless we screw up.”

  “Maybe they’ll think we were thrown clear and survived. They’ll search for us. But they won’t know we’ve gone to Pennsylvania.”

  Stephen looked at his phone. “Slow down.” He paused. “Are they still behind us?”

  “Yeah, about half a mile.”

  “Okay. There’s a sharp left turn and a ravine about 300 feet ahead. We’ll have to bail out before that.”

  I swallowed and sent up a quick prayer. Were I Catholic, I’d be grabbing my dashboard St. Christopher.

  Slowing to about 15 miles per hour, I unsnapped my seatbelt and hoisted my purse on my shoulder.

  “We’ll have to make a run for it,” Stephen said. “Into those trees on the right.”

  Glancing in the mirror, I saw Stuart clutching his suitcase, pale as parchment.

  “I’ll count down from ten,” Stephen said. “Try to hit the ground running.”

  We were nearing the cliff. I gripped the handle of my overnight bag.

  “Three . . . two . . . one,” Stephen said.

  We flung the doors open. “Now!”

  I rolled through the weeds, hoping I’d stop before I ran out of ground. Stuart was on my side and hit the dirt like a bale of hay.

  I helped him up. Stephen was dusty but apparently unharmed.

  The three of them fled toward the trees. Stuart was limping.

  The car sailed over the edge, hit the rocks, and burst into flame.

  Chapter 1

  The weather at Legends of Camelot Mini-Golf was hot as a ghost pepper that day. I wiped my forehead with the back of my left hand, the right being occupied with a club that didn’t quite reach the ground.

  Had we cared about the druthers of my boss, Hunter Thicke, we would have been torturing ourselves with Scotland’s most unpalatable export, the real thing. To his way of thinking, such as it was, golf was the only way for Pendleton House Publishing to celebrate the achievement of its bestselling and most endearing children’s author, Stuart Lytle. He’d built a hospital in India with ten percent of the royalties from his Jennifer Jenner mystery series. He might fund another now that Jennifer was set to become the star of an animated PBS show.

  “Your shot,” he said, sweating profusely and nodding at my inexplicably young senior editor, Stephen Ames. We all faced a green fiberglass dragon the height of a two-story building, breathing orange-yellow fiberglass fire, wild-eyed and spiny-tailed. Stephen, who tended to take this sort of thing much too seriously, pulled his Mets cap down over his scarlet eyebrows and took what appeared to be a professional stance. The trick would be to get the ball between the dragon’s feet and into a giant fiberglass toilet bowl.

  His stroke was perfect. The ball cleared the claws and dropped into the target, triggering a satisfying recorded FLOOOOSH. He pumped his fist into the air, took off his hat, and fanned his flushed and freckled face.

  “Reminds me of the course in Atlantic City,” he said. “They’ve got this windmill with a blade that spins fast as a food processor. I swear if you moved too slowly, it’d turn you to hamburger. And their skull is a hoot. Big as three NBA players standing on each other’s shoulders, painted gold, with eyes that light up red. It’s got a cigar in its mouth, and you’re supposed to knock it out so the jaw clamps down. Never saw anybody do it. And—”

  “Fascinating,” I lied. “But isn’t anybody else hot? Can we move this along before we get heat stroke?”

  Stuart ran a pudgy hand over his spiky gray hair. “You can’t rush greatness, my dear. As far as I’m concerned, this is the sport of kings.”

  “Actually, that’s horse racing,” Stephen said, still fanning himself.

  Stuart, looking like a very large little kid in his baggy gray tropical shirt, black shorts, and thick, round glasses, chuckled until his oversized torso registered a 4.5 on the Richter Scale. “Fine. You’ve caught me in a very expansive mood. Let’s wrap this up and go to the snack bar to return our putters.”

  As if to confirm his generosity, on the last hole he took a dive, muffing an easy shot over an elephant’s trunk that moved slowly up and down and sprayed water. It was clearly on purpose, no doubt intended to make my score look less humiliating. I did, after all, have the power to insert an embarrassing multitude of unnecessary commas into his next book.

  We got drinks and sat down on the uncomfortable green steel chairs at one of the sticky green tables. I looked around at the dozen or so patrons under the umbrellas, half of whom were parents staring vacantly at their hyperactive rug rats mourning the loss of the ice cream on their cones due to Nap-Deprived Clumsiness Syndrome.

  “So,” I said. “PBS. You’ve come up in the world, Stuart. I can remember when you drew cartoons on that cable access kid’s show.”

  He sighed. “Those were the days.” He leaned forward conspiratorially. “Speaking of PBS, did you know Mr. Ratburn on Arthur is gay?”

  “Who doesn’t?” S
tephen asked.

  Stuart looked disappointed. “Nobody tells me anything.”

  Stephen downed the last of his drink and surveyed the small crowd. “Huh,” he said.

  “What?” I asked.

  He pointed at a hefty, gray-haired man three tables away, dining alone. “Does he remind you of anybody?”

  “No.”

  “He looks like Stuart, at least from the back.”

  I squinted. “Not that much.”

  I watched as a thirtyish man in sunglasses, oily-looking, stringy brown hair askew, sidled up behind the alleged doppelgänger and put a hand on his shoulder. Within a few seconds the latter slumped into his plate.

  I drew a deep breath. No one seemed to notice. The man who’d touched him slipped away toward the parking lot.

  Without a word I grabbed my purse and went to the victim. There was no pulse.

  I got out my phone to dial 911. No charge.

  Returning to our table, I felt numb.

  “Need to borrow your phone,” I told Stephen.

  He handed me his Samsung without looking up from his cup. Stuart was already standing, open-mouthed, apparently having seen the commotion.

  “Got to get out of here,” he said, backing away from the table, sweating more than ever.

  “Why?” I asked, pushing the buttons on Stephen’s phone.

  “Is that guy dead?” Stephen asked.

  The 911 operator answered. “We’re at the Legends of Camelot mini-golf place,” I said, and gave the address. “I think there’s been a murder.”

  “Stay on the line. Are you sure the person is dead?”

  “Couldn’t find a pulse.”

  “Is anyone else in danger?”

  I hesitated. According to Stuart, he could be next in line. Maybe we all could. But that wasn’t what she meant.

  “Not that I know of,” I said.

  “Let’s go,” Stuart whispered.

  “Police and ambulance should be there in ten minutes,” the dispatcher said.

  I handed the phone back to Stephen. “Now, what’s this all about?”

  I looked at Stuart. He looked away.

  “We have a right to know,” I said.

  “I’ll tell you in the car,” he whispered, and headed for the exit.

  The other patrons had retreated from the dead man’s table, leaving only the clerk from the snack bar to sit, helpless, next to him.

  We followed Stuart to the parking lot. He kept his head lowered as if not wanting to be recognized.

  The inside of my car was doing its best imitation of a toaster oven. We shut our doors. I turned the key and pushed the A/C button. Wasn’t helping yet.

  Stuart gave a squeak from the back seat. “It’s him.”

  “He,” I said.

  “He who?” Stephen asked. “Why are we—”

  “Let him leave first,” Stuart said, his voice muffled, face pressed against the back of my seat.

  We waited. The temperature grew less volcanic at a glacial pace.

  Slowly Stuart raised his head. “Okay, he’s gone.”

  “Where are we going?” I asked, impatient.

  He sagged against his seat and exhaled, deflating slowly as the last balloon in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.

  “Anywhere but here.”

  Chapter 2

  Pendleton House seemed like a safe place to go, despite the sometimes deadly office politics and the world’s most dangerously clueless supervisor. Manhattan traffic was constipated as ever.

  Stuart, seemingly unaffected by the air conditioning, loosened his collar and kept looking at the lanes on either side of us.

  “Time’s up,” I said. “Tell us what’s going on.”

  “Yeah,” Stephen said.

  “I can’t.”

  “If you don’t, I’ll turn around and go back to that stupid golf course. I’m sure the police would like to ask you a few questions.”

  “I’ll talk when we get to Hunter’s office.”

  I hit the steering wheel with my palm. “Stuart, some mysteries are intriguing. Some are just irritating.”

  “Sorry,” he said. “When you hear the whole story, you’ll understand. Or you might just want to kill me.”

  Hunter was practicing putts on a small patch of artificial grass next to his desk, head down, brushed-back black hair as shiny as ever. “Just a minute,” he muttered.

  We waited. Stuart flopped into a chair, still sweating.

  “Fore!” Hunter yelled, tapped the ball into the hole, and twirled his club like a Miss America contestant with a baton. Looking up, he smiled that serial killer smile and winked at me.

  “Stuart has something to tell you,” I said. “To tell all of us, actually.”

  Hunter turned toward him. Poor Stuart’s face was pale as a butternut squash, but the boss didn’t notice. “Tell me all about your game. Who won?”

  “Stuart did,” Stephen said. “I think he blew the elephant’s trunk on purpose at the end.”

  Hunter looked confused. “There was an elephant on the course? Escaped from the zoo, or what?”

  Stuart rubbed his temples with his chubby fingers. “My fault. I insisted we play miniature golf.”

  “Oh,” Hunter said, obviously disappointed. Then he shrugged. “It’s your day, Stu. You can play anything you want.” He leaned his putter against a wall of shelves holding books he would probably never read.

  Stuart sighed. “That’s my problem. I’m a little too fond of games.”

  “What sort of games?” I asked.

  “Games of chance.” He rubbed his eyes.

  A queasy sensation rose in my gut like antifreeze in an overheated radiator. “Gambling?” I asked. “As in casinos?” I asked.

  He nodded, looking miserable. “I have a problem.”

  “Our best children’s author is a gambling addict? How did that happen?”

  “Slowly. I’m a man of great appetites. No excuse, I know. It started at an ABA convention in Las Vegas. I won about $350 playing craps.”

  “So why was that man at the snack bar after you?”

  “I owe some people a little money.”

  “How much?”

  He cleared his throat and looked away. “About two hundred thousand,” he said, his voice squeaking.

  “Dollars?” Hunter cried.

  “I don’t have it.”

  Feeling faint, I lowered myself onto the sofa across from Hunter’s desk. Hunter himself sat in his chair, frozen in disbelief.

  Stephen grinned. “Man, I’ve never met anybody who was in hock to a real live loan shark. That must be pretty exciting.”

  Stuart stared at him. “Do I look excited?”

  “No,” I said. “You look like a cadaver.”

  “You know,” Stephen said, “loan sharks used to be a big business. People who owed them would pledge their bodies as collateral.”

  Stuart groaned.

  “Fifty years ago the mob started concentrating on stuff like money laundering and gamblers. In fact, loansharking was their second biggest racket, right behind gambling itself.”

  I looked at my watch.

  “Stuff like payday loans has made the really bad guys harder to find.”

  “Too bad I found one,” Stuart mumbled. “A whole family, actually.”

  “Have they threatened to break your kneecaps?”

  Stuart shook his head. “Worse. I recognized the guy who killed the man who looked sort of like me. Name’s Jeremy.”

  I frowned. “How could he know you’d be at a miniature golf course?”

  “Been following me for the last couple of months. Works for Angel Boudreaux. Threatened me over the phone.”

  Hunter roused himself from his stupor. “Did you call the police?”

  Stuart laughed bitterly. “These people see that as impolite. Socially unacceptable.” He paused. “Jeremy and I have never met in person. Maybe that explains how he could mistake that poor guy for me.”

  “This Angel,�
� Stephen said. “Related to Max Boudreaux?”

  “His daughter. And next in line, I hear.”

  Stephen whistled. “I’ve heard of this guy.” He picked up his phone and started swiping and poking. “Born ten years after Dillinger died. They’ve never been able to pin anything on him, but he’s probably indirectly responsible for at least a hundred killings. In his eighties now. Family lives in a mansion in New Orleans.”

  I wanted to take Stuart by the collar and shake him, maybe deliver a rant about the evils of vices that didn’t appeal to me. But all I could manage was a sigh.

  “Oh, Stuart,” I said, and closed my eyes.

  “I know you think this is a terrible idea,” I continued. “But what’s the worst that could happen if we go to the police?”

  He leaned forward, clasped his hands as if in prayer, and lowered his head. “You can bet the Boudreauxs have paid off at least two or three cops. My career would be over, not to mention my life.”

  Stephen scratched his head. “Isn’t organized crime an FBI thing?”

  “Yeah, but they’ve never been able to pin the family on a murder charge. If I go to them, the Boudreauxs will add me to their list of canceled debtors.”

  Stephen went back to his phone and resumed searching. “Aha!” he said finally. “Here’s an article about a guy named Robert Gallagher. Retired FBI agent, age 67.”

  He handed me the phone. There was Gallagher’s photo. Short, tired-looking, head shaved. Apparently his purpose in life had been to bring the family down.