by CC Dragon
Table of Contents
Title Page
Legal Page
Book Description
Trademark Acknowledgements
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Epilogue
A Note from Belle
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About the Author
Southern Belle
Cozy Mysteries
THE MINT
JULEP MURDER
CC DRAGON
The Mint Julep Murder
ISBN # 978-1-83943-397-9
©Copyright CC Dragon 2020
Cover Art by Louisa Maggio ©Copyright June 2020
Interior text design by Claire Siemaszkiewicz
Totally Bound Publishing
This is a work of fiction. All characters, places and events are from the author’s imagination and should not be confused with fact. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, events or places is purely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any material form, whether by printing, photocopying, scanning or otherwise without the written permission of the publisher, Totally Bound Publishing.
Applications should be addressed in the first instance, in writing, to Totally Bound Publishing. Unauthorised or restricted acts in relation to this publication may result in civil proceedings and/or criminal prosecution.
The author and illustrator have asserted their respective rights under the Copyright Designs and Patents Acts 1988 (as amended) to be identified as the author of this book and illustrator of the artwork.
Published in 2020 by Totally Bound Publishing, United Kingdom.
No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the authors’ rights. Purchase only authorised copies.
Totally Bound Publishing is an imprint of Totally Entwined Group Limited.
If you purchased this book without a cover you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book”.
Book one in the
Southern Belle Cozy Mysteries series
Ah, sweet home Tennessee, with the Music City, Dollywood and Murder…
Annabelle ‘Belle’ Baxter returns home to her small southern town after studying catering and hotel management, to help her Gran, the only real family she has. Determined to make their preserves shop a success, Belle expands the menu and boosts business—until the pompous sheriff drops dead, poisoned, after trying one of her signature smoothies.
People looking down on Belle is nothing new, but this time they’re quick to point a finger as well. Now it’s not just her high school rival or the perfect church ladies—the bumbling deputies want to pin it on her too, leaving her no choice but to find the murderer herself. If the preserves shop goes under, she and her gran are ruined.
But it’s scary how many suspects her poking around turns up—the sheriff’s jealous deputy, his pissed-off wife, the girlfriend he was about to dump his wife for, or even the handsome new deputy, Gus Haywood, whose city ways riled the stuffy sheriff. Belle can’t let this handsome stranger distract her, not when she has to clear her name and protect the town she loves, despite its people.
Well, maybe he can distract her a little…
Trademark Acknowledgements
The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of the following wordmarks mentioned in this work of fiction:
Ace bandage: 3M Company
Beauty and the Beast: The Walt Disney Studios
Cadillac: General Motors Company
Cheshire Cat: Lewis Carroll
Chevy: General Motors Company
Cinderella: The Walt Disney Studios
Coke: The Coca-Cola Company
Diet Coke: The Coca-Cola Company
Instagram: Facebook, Inc.
Jack Daniel’s: Brown–Forman Corporation
Kleenex: Kimberly-Clark Corporation
La-Z-Boy: La-Z-Boy Inc.
Medicare: Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services
Starbucks: Starbucks Corporation
Chapter One
I really need to powder my nose!
Gran had taught me that that was how polite women referred to needing to use the ladies’ room. I was only ten minutes from my ultimate destination—I could make it. Hideous traffic had already made me late, but this close to midnight, nothing was open in the tiny town of Sweet Grove, so there were no options anyway.
I should’ve gone when I stopped back in Nashville to gas up my baby, an old white pickup truck that had never failed me. I could deal with a gross gas station bathroom—I always had hand sanitizer.
Unfortunately, there had been too many truckers and sketchy wannabe musicians at the gas station. I’d paid at the pump and whipped out of there before any of them had wandered over to creep on me. Good old southern boys just out to help were now often hard to distinguish from the creepy men looking to throw a pretty girl into their trunk so they could do terrible things later.
Not that I was much to look at, but some guys saw a petite blonde alone and thought I was easy. Usually those were the wrong kind of guys—generally the drunk sort. Better safe than sorry. I didn’t want to end up in someone’s basement being a story on the news. Gran would worry. She was probably already worried.
Moving back to my hometown hadn’t been the plan, but the plan had changed. At least I’d be safe—no one locked their doors and everyone knew everyone. Not that everyone liked everyone—there were subgroups. The quilting ladies, the charity and church group, the old guys sitting outside the bait and hunting shop, and so on. The farmers were a tight-knit bunch. There wasn’t much industry around except for the distillery that was between our town and the next. It was a huge employer and sat on unincorporated land.
I glanced up at the mountains that were pitch black now. All my life, I’d been warned about going up in the hills. The true hillbillies lived up there. They worked when they wanted to, and if they shot a deer, they’d quit because they had food enough for a while. Mainly it was subsistence farming and scavenging—a very simple life. They didn’t like outsiders. When I’d been little, there’d been stories about pipe-smoking grannies who’d whip out a double-barreled shotgun on anyone who got close to their property. Back then, they were making moonshine.
Today it was far more likely that they were growing weed in the thick forest areas. Maybe running stills too, but the marijuana was lucrative and hard for the police to find. Part of me wondered how they sold it or even moved it from way up in the mountains, but it wasn’t my business. I preferred legal work and not needing guns to keep my business safe.
Still, Sweet Grove wasn’t perfect. There were gossips and judgmental people who made everyone’s business their own business. One Sweet Grove resident always tried to get the town to go dry—every year it was a petition or they ran for mayor.
I drove by the Town Hall and the community center. The paired buildings were quaint but very official looking. The whole town was respectable, but some of the places were on the fring
e. My friend’s bar was on the outskirts, but always full, and the mechanic shop had a used car lot next to it that people said was sketchy—probably a few stray dogs, and teens looking to buy some cigarettes or beer.
Back home, I needed to be on my best behavior. In Atlanta, most people had good southern manners, except tourists of course, but in the city, people generally minded their own business. The judgmental types weren’t nearly as noticeable or concentrated as in a small town where secrets were harder to keep, and everyone knew everyone and their great-grandparents back to the Civil War.
I visited every month to check on Gran, so Sweet Grove didn’t feel completely foreign. Normally I managed to pop in mid-week on a day off. It was only a three-hour drive, more or less, so I was back for work the next day. That way I’d usually avoided running into too many blasts from the past at home, but could check on Gran’s bills, pills and anything else that came up.
It wasn’t enough anymore. Gran needed more help and support than a weekly check-in.
There was no one on the street so I put my foot down to get through town and to Gran’s big, old, sprawling ranch home faster. Grandpa had believed in brick houses, Chevy trucks, Jack Daniel’s whiskey, yellow labs and that there was no such thing as too much barbecue.
He didn’t believe in seeing the doc, either, so he’d died when I was little of a massive heart attack. The docs had said he must’ve had smaller ones, but he’d powered through.
I barely remembered him, but Gran talked about him so much that his philosophies were like Bible stories to me. He never wanted a two-story house because his great-grandmother had lost a toddler to a nasty fall down a long flight of stairs. If that wasn’t proof that people in small towns had really long memories, it was proof of something. Superstition maybe.
I slowed down for a stop sign, but there was literally no one on the road. Main Street had a variety of old buildings, with every business someone could need. A couple of restaurants, Gran’s shop, a lawyer, an insurance agent, the bank and, farther down, the florist and grocery store. I’d already passed by the red brick schools lined up from elementary to middle to high school. Across from the schools was the simple white siding church with the community center connected.
I could drive these streets with my eyes closed with the complete lack of traffic. Rolling along, I was almost through the main part of town and headed for the far end. So close.
Red and blue lights caught my eye in the rearview mirror.
“Oh, crap,” I said.
Pulling my truck over, I felt like an idiot. I shifted to Park and grabbed my license from my purse. Looking back, I saw it was Sheriff Monroe. What was he doing out in the middle of the night patrolling?
The potbellied old grump moseyed out of his police SUV and up to my window. He put on his hat and adjusted it like he was a supermodel on a catwalk.
I rolled down the window and handed him my license and registration. “Hi, Sheriff.”
“Annabelle Baxter? Where’s the fire?” He chuckled and shone the flashlight on me.
I smiled. “I just wanted to get home. Traffic was awful around Nashville and I want to check on Gran. I’m really late.”
“Late isn’t enough of an excuse to go flying through town and endangering people,” he said.
I looked around. “What people?”
“Don’t you sass me, Belle. Laws are there for a reason.”
“I know, I’m sorry. If I had my druthers, I’d have been home hours ago. I’m moving back and I didn’t want Gran to worry,” I explained. I could hear Gran now… Being good is doing what’s right when no one is looking. I’d botched today nicely.
He huffed a big exhale of air. “Moving back? I thought you went off to college.”
“I did. Hospitality management. I graduated and have been working,” I said.
“Hospitality? That should be something a good southern girl knows without schooling. But given your family, it couldn’t hurt. Did you ever find your mama?” he asked.
My face burned. “No. I was working and going to school. It wasn’t about her. I reckon Gran needs more help now.”
“She sure does. Nearly burned down her kitchen last month.” He shifted his hat.
“Bless her heart. It won’t happen again. It was an accident. Her old dog had passed and someone gave her a new puppy who’d jumped up for something while she was cooking. I told her to crate the puppy, but she thought that was mean. She was so busy trying to save the puppy from eating something it shouldn’t that the fire got out of hand.” I rambled through what he already probably had been briefed on.
“I know it. We were all there for her. She’s fixin’ to turn seventy, rumor has it. Ladies don’t like talking about their real age, but I commend you for stepping up and looking after her. That mother of yours is nowhere to be found.” The sheriff looked at the book in his hand.
“Thanks. I’m here and I’ll handle things. Find a job and get settled. No more late-night driving or speeding at any time of day. I really do appreciate ya being there for Gran,” I promised.
“We don’t have a Starbucks for you to work at,” he teased.
I resisted rolling my eyes. “Well, it helped with tuition, room and board for college. I’m not too big for my britches to work where I can get it.”
“Fancy drinks—people here can make their own coffee. You’ll have your hands full with that shop of your Gran’s too. She’s a charitable woman, but you have to draw a line between charity and business.”
“Yes, sir.” That had me more worried.
Something started ringing and I knew by the tune that it wasn’t my phone.
“I’ll let you off with a warning this time, but you slow it way down. Fast girls aren’t what men really want. None of us want to see you turn out like your momma.” He wagged a finger at me.
I bit my tongue and nodded. “Yes, sir. Thank you. I’m glad to be on old stomping grounds.”
As he walked away, I started to roll up my window. I heard him mutter something like, “Back like a bad penny.”
One would think that in modern times, people wouldn’t be quite so spiteful and judgy. Widows with kids got full proper respect and admiration. Single moms with an ex but not a dead husband garnered some respect along with a “Bless her heart” sympathy. Her man didn’t stick around but she’d been married and was doing right by her kids—good old southern folks could respect the effort.
But when the dad was way gone before the kid was born and the mom bailed as soon as she got sprung from the hospital, people started to worry the kid was a bad seed or something.
That was me.
Everyone in town knew my little history. Some pitied me while others judged my parents hard and assumed I’d turn out just like them. I felt worse for Gran. She’d lost a daughter and gotten stuck with me. If she hadn’t claimed me, I’d have ended up a ward of the state. There were no aunts or uncles or extended family to lean on.
I pulled back onto the road, into the non-existent traffic. Part of me wished Sweet Grove had a Starbucks. I’d be running it in a few months and that’d be good money. I’d left a great job in Atlanta for extremely limited prospects here.
But bringing Gran to Atlanta, away from everyone she knew and to a big city that was confusing—that wasn’t an option. Well, it was the last resort. This was for family. I had to do the right thing. I’d made my mistakes growing up, but I’d die before I turned into my mother and walked away. Sweet Grove wasn’t perfect, but it was home.
The pale-yellow brick of Gran’s ranch house triggered a million memories of my childhood, but I was so frustrated and tired I couldn’t even get emotional. I parked my baby in the driveway, grabbed my overnight duffel filled with essentials and tried the back door. Gran had left it unlocked. Most people only locked their houses at night, if at all. I’d grab the big suitcases tomorrow and really unpack once I’d slept.
The sharp bark of the puppy made me jump. I missed old Reg, a sweet and calm dog. Puppyhood
won’t last forever, I reminded myself, and the new dog was cute.
After locking the door behind me, I slipped into the washroom off the laundry room, all very near the backdoor. Gran called it the servant’s bath. Not that we’d ever had any servants, but it was a basic square shower and toilet with a sink. Nothing frilly or decorated like the guest bath up front or her master bath.
I relieved myself and heard the barking growing louder. Quickly I washed my hands and opened the door.
“Get out! I’m calling nine-one-one!” Gran yelled.
The double-barreled shotgun pointed at me made me very grateful I’d gotten to the bathroom before she’d made it out of bed, or I’d have wet the floor!
“Gran, it’s me!” I shouted.
She looked quite dangerous, all of five feet tall with long gray hair and her old orange robe cinched at her waist. Her slippers showed her pride in the Tennessee Volunteers, but it looked like the puppy had been chewing them up a bit. Her usually sweet face finally registered what I’d said and went from serious to shocked.
“Belle? What are you doing here?” She lowered the gun then hugged it to her body.
“You knew I was coming home. I got stuck in traffic. I called, but you didn’t answer.” I gently took the gun from her, and I could breathe again.
“I fell asleep waiting for you and I thought… I’m sorry, I forgot. I thought you were an intruder. Sorry, darlin’,” she said.
“It’s okay, but I’ll keep the gun in my room now.” I looked down at the puppy bouncing for attention. “Have you named it?”
“Duke, and it’s a he. At least until we get him snipped,” she said proudly.
“Definitely snipped as soon as possible. Duke. Well, he made a puddle on the floor, careful not to step in it.” I snapped on the light. “Go to bed and I’ll get this cleaned up.”
“No, it’s my dog. I’ll clean it up. You go get some sleep. But first, admire my newly remodeled kitchen.” She grabbed a mop from the mud room.
