A Plus One for Murder (A Friend for Hire Mystery, Band 1) - Softcover

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

While spending a rainy afternoon at a friend’s house as a child, Laura Bradford fell in love with writing over a stack of blank paper, a box of crayons, and a freshly sharpened number-two pencil. From that moment forward, she never wanted to do or be anything else. Today, Laura is the USA Today bestselling author of the Amish Mysteries, including Just Plain Murder and A Churn for the Worse. She is also the author of the Emergency Dessert Squad Mysteries, and, as Elizabeth Lynn Casey, she wrote the Southern Sewing Circle Mysteries.
 

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Chapter One

Like the well-oiled machine she'd become, Emma Westlake wrapped her hand around the Limoges teapot and counted down silently in her head.

Ten . . .

Nine . . .

Eight . . .

Seven . . .

Six . . .

Five . . .

Four . . .

Three . . .

Two . . .

"Your tea, Dottie."

At the single nod she earned in return, Emma filled the matching cup atop the matching saucer to within exactly a quarter inch of its gold-trimmed lip and followed it up with a single splash of cream and two pinches of sugar.

She waited exactly three beats for the Lovely, dear that always followed, and then made her way around the linen-topped table to her own seat and her own cup. "Biscuit?" she asked, even as her mind filled in the answer she knew she'd get-the same answer she got every Tuesday at three o'clock . . .

"Why, yes, I think I will."

She held the basket out as the octogenarian helped herself to one, kept it hovering in place just north of the table's center point for the three-Mississippi-seconds' worth of hemming and hawing that invariably followed, and then firmed up her hold as the woman's frail hand reached inside for the I really shouldn't second biscuit.

"Thank you, Emma."

"Thank you, Dottie." Retrieving her napkin from the table, Emma unfolded it across her lap and smiled at the wheelchair-bound woman she'd grown to love in spite-or maybe because-of the weekly ritual.

The fact that the weekly ritual came with a steady paycheck was simply the unnecessary but always appreciated cherry on top of the cake. Especially now that-

"Aren't you going to have a biscuit, dear?"

Like clockwork, she swallowed back the instinctual urge to retch and, instead, nodded as she'd promised Dottie's husband she would during his deathbed phone call eighteen months earlier. After all, as per the unwritten script that never varied, never faltered, there would be a moment-fleeting, certainly, but still a moment-when the elderly woman would close her eyes in memory of dear old Alfred. And when that happened, the tail-wagging garbage disposal Emma had added to the weekly get-together six months earlier would be ready and eager to help bury the proverbial cardboard-flavored treat.

Leaning back in her chair just enough to afford herself a view of the golden retriever sitting faithfully beside her feet, Emma dropped her hand to her lap and flashed the get-ready signal she'd taught him. Sure enough, Dottie lifted her cup, glanced at the ceiling, murmured her husband's name, and then closed her eyes. In a flash, Emma snatched her lone biscuit from her dessert plate, pulled it down beneath the table's edge, and handed it off to-

"He doesn't like them, either, dear."

Emma sat up tall, her eyes meeting and then abandoning Dottie's. "Them?"

"Don't play dumb," Dottie said on the heels of a snort. "I may be old, and I may be confined to this cumbersome chair with wheels, but I'm not stupid. And that dog of yours is nothing if not consistent, as evidenced by the pile of twenty-three now-stale biscuits my cleaning lady found in the corner of Alfred's study."

Clamping back the urge to question the use of the word now in relation to stale, Emma hung her head in shame and-"Wait!" She snapped her full attention back to Dottie. "You said twenty-three?"

"Today's would've made twenty-four."

"But . . ." The rest of her protest faded away as the adding and multiplying part of her brain kicked into high gear. "I've been bringing Scout with me for the last six months now. Every Tuesday. Making this tea his"-she pulled up the edge of the tablecloth for an uninhibited view of her dog-"twenty-fourth and . . . Scout, you traitor! You didn't even eat one!"

"Now, dear, don't scold Scout for being the only honest one of the three of us."

She felt her mouth gape, rushed to close it, and then let it gape again, unchallenged. "The three of us?"

"Yes, three. You. Scout." Dottie pointed at each of them before landing her finger on herself. "And me."

"You?"

Dottie said nothing.

"Wait. You're telling me, after all this time-"

"Eighteen months," Dottie interjected.

Emma paused. Regrouped. "You're telling me, after eighteen months, that you don't like these biscuits?"

"They're dreadful."

"Dreadful?" Emma echoed. "But Alfred instructed me to buy them. To make sure to have them in that exact basket each week. And to offer you one-and then another-after I was seated with my own tea!"

"That was his part of the tradition. The tea part was mine. Tuesday at three o'clock sharp was ours."

She tried to make sense of what she was hearing, but it was difficult to hold a thought, let alone process it. "But you eat them every week," Emma argued.

"I do. For Alfred. It's the least I can do after he moved heaven and earth to make sure I still have my Tuesday afternoon tea by hiring you."

"Wow. I don't know what to . . ." Emma sat up tall. "Wait. Did Alfred know you didn't like them?"

Dottie took another, longer sip of her tea and then lowered her cup onto its saucer. "No. But that was okay. It mattered to him, just as the tea mattered to me. He knew that, which is why you're here. And as for the biscuits, there is no one else I would eat cardboard for every week."

It was Emma's turn to snort. "Two pieces, no less!"

The elderly woman's answering smile, along with the hint of tears that accompanied it, disappeared as quickly as it came, replaced instead by an eye roll to end all eye rolls. "It's clear I need a new housekeeper."

"Why is that?" Emma asked, draining away the rest of her own tea.

"Six months to find a growing pile of biscuits? You tell me . . ."

"Oh. Right." Flopping back against her chair, Emma fiddled with her spoon, her empty cup, her-

"Out with it, Emma."

She pushed her empty cup into the center of the table and then pulled it back again. "Out with what?"

"You're drooping on the inside."

"I'm . . ." Too tired to protest, she simply gave up. "It doesn't matter. I'll figure it out. Today is about you. The way I promised Alfred it would be."

Dottie waved at Emma's words with her age-spotted hand. "The reason Alfred asked you-as opposed to one of our good-for-nothing children-is because we grew to care about you during all those nightly walks that took us past your great-aunt's old place. He liked watching you transform her weed-infested flower beds under his tutelage, and I liked picking you apart all the way back to the house."

"Picking me apart?" she parroted.

"In a caring way, of course."

Emma laughed. "Right. Of course."

"I suspect Alfred thought I could help you navigate life, and that you could-I don't know . . . Be something for me to look forward to, I suppose?"

"You look forward to our teas?"

"I look forward to my tea," Dottie corrected. "I look forward to your company, pathetic and otherwise."

"Pathetic?"

"Yes. You look like someone took your favorite toy."

"How? I smiled when I...