Contents
COPYRIGHT
The Butler Didn't Do It (A Maddox Storm Cozy Mystery Book 2)
PROLOGUE
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
ELEVEN
TWELVE
THIRTEEN
FOURTEEN
FIFTEEN
SIXTEEN
SEVENTEEN
EIGHTEEN
COPYRIGHT
The Butler Didn’t Do It
A Maddox Storm Cozy Mystery (Book 2)
Published by Claire Robyns
Copyright © 2016 by Claire Robyns
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or resold in any form or by any means without permission from the author, except in the case of brief quotations for non-commercial uses. To obtain permission to excerpt portions of the text, please contact the author.
All characters in this book are fiction and figments of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to people, living or otherwise, is purely coincidental. If real, names, places and characters are used fictitiously.
Once again Maddox Storm finds herself at the center of a murder, and not the one she artfully arranged.
Desperate to turn Hollow House’s newfound dark fame into a money-making machine, Maddox hosts her first murder mystery weekend. But what starts out as a surprising success is bludgeoned by the all too real death of one of her guests. And worse, now they’re refusing to leave. They came to solve a murder mystery and by gosh, that’s exactly what they intend to do.
Events quickly spiral out of control and before Maddox can say whodunit, she’s sharing a house with her soon-to-be-ex husband, the smoky-eyed Detective Nathanial Bishop, a litter of Sherlock Holmes wannabes and a cold-blooded killer.
There’s only one thing to do, really. Roll her sleeves up and solve the murder before the lot of them drive her off the deep end.
PROLOGUE
So here’s a life fact I wish I’d never learnt.
If you catch your husband in the arms of another woman and decide to exact revenge by clearing out his bank account to buy a fifty percent stake in a flailing inn, there’s a good chance he’ll rock up on your doorstep with his bags. Because, you know, he has no money and no place else to go and he does own that fifty percent stake right there along with you.
And if you have goo for brains and mush for a conscience, you’ll agree to postpone the divorce until he can sort out the sticky mess you made of his finances.
Which could take a while.
Hollow House has had no paying guests this year. Except for the Limlys, but I figure they don’t count since Principal Limly turned out to be a psychotic murderer who’d only stayed the night so he could search through the room of the woman he’d killed. Plus, he’d ended up kidnapping me and I very nearly ended up his third victim.
Oh, and then cheating scumbag husband (aka Joseph McMurphy) releases his first crime thriller and his publisher goes wild promoting the fantasy of the author who actually lives in a death house/inn.
That story splashed the headlines, was even picked up by a couple of news satellites. Needless to say, Joe’s book was selling like hotcakes, which would really help our financial situation—in another six months or so, when he got his first royalty check.
So I was stuck living under the same roof as Joe until he could shift our shares in Hollow House and that wasn’t going to happen unless we turned the house of horrors into a profitable business.
What’s a girl to do?
ONE
“This is going to be so much fun,” Jenna exclaimed, her summery blue eyes alight with excitement. “A murder mystery weekend!”
“Well, you know what Nana Rose always says.” I wiggled my brows at her. “When life throws you lemons—”
“—suck on it?” Jenna drawled.
“She only said that the one time.”
“To me,” Jenna said, sounding so indignant I couldn’t help barking out a laugh.
“To be fair,” I said, “you’d spent the whole week dragging your feet around and sulking.”
“I was heartbroken.”
I rolled my eyes. “You dumped Jason.”
“I was thirteen,” Jenna grumbled. “How was I supposed to know what I wanted? Thirteen’s a very confusing age.”
“Yeah, poor Jason was very confused indeed, especially when he took you back and got dumped the second time around.”
“Oh, come now.” She waved me off. “He was miserable after we hooked up again. I did him a favor, seriously.”
“And I believe you, but only because you’re my very best friend in the whole world.” I chuckled, lowering my gaze to my plate and using my fork to hunt through scraps of lettuce for a piece of chicken I might have missed. “You’re still happy to play the victim next weekend?”
“Are you kidding? I’ve always wanted to die. Listen to this, I’ve been practicing.” Jenna made a choking noise that sounded like, well, like nothing I’d ever heard before.
I glanced around discretely, and of course we’d attracted the stares of everyone within earshot.
“Jenna,” I hissed beneath my breath, “you do know you’re not actually going to die, right?”
“I should hope not,” she said with a laugh.
“No, I mean your murder won’t be witnessed.” I searched her face, not sure what this was really about.
I was the actress, after all, if that’s what you could call my almost-not-there stint on Broadway as understudy to Chintilly Swan. The same Chintilly Swan, might I add, that I’d last seen wrapped around my soon-to-be-ex husband. Jenna, on the other hand, didn’t have a dramatic bone in her slender body and, so far as I knew, had never wanted one.
“You’ll be stone cold dead by the time anyone finds you,” I reminded Jenna. “So there’s not actually a death scene.”
She gave me a wide smile. “You and Joe will be there.”
“Lucky us,” I groaned.
“Underpaid and under-appreciated,” Jenna grumbled.
“Not paid at all and wildly appreciated,” I countered, raising my glass of wine to her.
She reached for her glass and clinked mine. “Speaking of dosh, have you had any more bookings?”
“No, still only Miss Crawley, but I haven’t advertised anywhere except for the announcement on our website,” I sighed. “I wanted to keep it small for the first weekend, like a dry run, you know? But I was hoping to fill more than one room.”
Jenna laughed. “Don’t worry, Miss Crawley will be more than a handful. You’ll feel like you’ve had a full house by the end of the weekend.”
I joined in the laughter, although goodness knows why. Miss Crawley was a self-proclaimed spinster, a self-appointed arbiter of propriety and the town crier. She’d single-handedly brought the Silver Firs gossip mill into the digital era with her social media outlets and Sunday digest roundups.
All in all, Miss Crawley was no laughing matter and I’d have the joy of her company for an entire weekend without, it would seem, any other houseguests to dilute the pleasure.
Jenna’s laughter faded as she stared over my shoulder. “Huh.”
I turned in my seat to take a look. The Seafood Grille & Bar, known as Seefies to us locals, was the place to be any night of the week. The food was excellent and the view was magical. We’d managed to snag a table on the canopied deck on the boardwalk and the lake was as smooth as gla
ss tonight. The moon and stars above reflected like dancing ice fairies and across the lake, the Lakeview Spa Retreat glittered like a diamond tiara crowning the far shore.
The place was packed, especially out here on the deck, but my eye immediately caught the couple who’d just strolled up on the boardwalk. Peter Ottenburgh and the woman hanging on his arm, Candy or Candra or something like that. More importantly, the woman he’d left his wife for and now I knew why.
Candy was pregnant. About nine months pregnant from the size of her bump.
“She looks like she’s about to pop,” I exclaimed.
“Looks like it,” Jenna murmured.
I raised a brow at Jenna. “Did you know?”
She threw her hands up. “Hey, I didn’t even know they’d gotten hitched.”
“They’re married?”
“Unless Peter is wearing his old wedding band, which I doubt considering the state of Sandra.”
Sandra, that was it. I gave the couple another glance and sure enough, there was a band on his ring finger.
“She doesn’t come into town much,” Jenna went on. “Actually, I haven’t seen her in months.”
“Before she began to show?” I murmured, turning back to face Jenna across the table. “A secret wedding and a secret pregnancy. Hmm…”
“Maybe he was trying to spare Heather. I mean, look at her. Sandra must have fallen pregnant before the ink dried on his divorce papers.”
They’d been the golden couple, Heather and Peter. A few years above us at school, both of them blonde and beautiful and totally devoted to each other. They’d gotten married straight out of school, attended university together, and then they’d settled down on the Ottenburgh wine estate to enjoy their prosperous future. Until last year, of course, when the divorce had been announced and Sandra had suddenly appeared in the picture.
“Poor Heather,” I sighed. “If she doesn’t already know, the news is going to hit her hard and it will be all over town by morning.”
“It’s probably for the best,” Jenna said, lifting her wine glass to her lips. “At least she can move on with the rest of her life now.”
I read between the lines and bit down on my lower lip. “I’ve moved on.”
“Your ex-husband lives two doors down the hallway from you.”
“Joe isn’t my ex yet.”
“And there’s my point.”
I scowled at my best friend, who could sometimes be a real stick in my ass. “You know why I stalled the divorce proceedings.”
“Because Joe said pretty please?”
“No! That’s not… I felt…” I glared at her, grabbed my own glass of wine and drained it. “It’s not exactly a party over at Hollow House right now, you know. I could use some moral support.”
“I’m on your side, Maddie Mads, one hundred percent.” Jenna reached over to clasp my hand. “That’s why I’m worried. This situation with Joe isn’t healthy. Unless you’re considering a reunion…?”
“No thanks.” I shuddered. “I don’t do threesomes.”
Jenna pulled a face. “He’s still seeing Chintilly?”
“Don’t know and don’t care,” I said, and almost meant it. “But she’d always be there, sharing a bed with us regardless.”
Jenna sipped on her wine, studying me for a long moment before she said slowly, softly, “You do realize this whole pleading poverty thing is a just an angle? Joe is playing you.”
“How?”
“To stay close so he can win you back.”
“That’s ridiculous. We’re barely civil to each other.” I shook my head emphatically. “He really is penniless.”
“The guy’s a bestselling author.”
“But he won’t see a royalty check for at least six months.”
“He can walk into any bank and get an instant loan,” Jenna said. “No questions asked.”
“His Uncle Markus raised him to be wary of credit,” I said. “Joe’s never even owned a charge card.”
The look in Jenna’s eye grew more skeptical by the second. “And he doesn’t want to move in with this uncle because he doesn’t want to admit that he lost all his money.”
“I lost all his money,” I corrected. “Joe doesn’t want to rat me out to Uncle Markus.”
“Your husband’s a regular hero.”
“My soon-to-be-ex husband, you mean, and God, that’s such a mouthful. I seriously need a good acronym.” I reached for the bottle in the wine cooler as I thought about it. “STB-ex. How does that sound?”
Jenna wrinkled her nose. “Like a venereal disease.”
“Then it’s perfect!” We shared a wicked smile as I filled our glasses to the brim. “Now can we please talk about anything other than my STB-ex?”
Jenna chortled. “Sure, heard from the divine Detective Nathanial Bishop lately?”
Out of the frying pan and into the fire.
I pushed aside my plate and plucked the dessert menu from the centerpiece holder.
“What do you think?” My mouth watered as I glanced over the picturesque choices. This was one culinary photographer that had taken a slow boat up the river of decadent fantasies for inspiration. “Chocolate brownie cake drowned in hot fudge sauce or double cream apple pie?”
“Hot fudge, of course,” Jenna said, then, “Are we done with the diversion tactics?”
“Dessert is never just a diversion,” I said, giving the blueberry cheesecake serious consideration. “There’s a reason I suffered through chicken salad for my main course.”
Jenna sighed. “I have his cell number, you know.”
My eyes flashed to her. The ‘how’ was easy. Jack Spinner, the Sheriff Department’s latest recruit and Jenna’s latest boyfriend. The ‘why’ was another matter altogether. And yes, my pulse gave a traitorous flutter, but I refused to acknowledge it.
After a long pause, I settled on a flippant, “You should totally call him.”
“I already have a boyfriend.”
“And I have an STB-ex,” I shot back.
“Maddox,” she growled, and it wasn’t the growl, it was the use of my full name that alerted me.
Jenna was thoroughly frustrated. Either at my lack of interest in the Nate affair or my lack of concern over the STB-ex situation. Maybe both. Fortunately both were so far out of my control, I couldn’t give either any proper worry.
“Nate has my number,” I told her flatly. “I told him I’d like us to be friends and he turned his back on me and walked away. That was two weeks ago. Why on earth do you think I’d want to call him?”
“A guy like Nate’s too clever to fall for the platonic friendship routine. Once you’re stuck there, it’s a dead end, no matter how hot for each other you are.” Jenna sipped on her wine, watching me.
Having nothing to say to that, I settled lower in my chair and watched her back.
“He’s waiting for you to get your stuff sorted,” Jenna spelled out. “Trust me, Maddie Mads, the next move is definitely yours.”
My phone vibrated on the table and I made a grab for it. I’d kiss a spam email right now if it got me out of this conversation. I swiped the screen and saw it was indeed an email alert.
“It’s the new email account I set up for the Hollow House domain,” I said, opening the message. My eyes popped as I read. “We have a booking enquiry! A Mr Charles Sitter. He’d love to join our murder mystery weekend and he’d be most disappointed, apparently, if we couldn’t accommodate him.”
Jenna clapped her hands. “Mr Charles Sitter is so not going to be disappointed.”
“Our first fully-fledged guest!”
Jenna laughed. “What’s a fully-fledged guest?”
“Not a psychotic murderer and not a pedantic Blue Rinse Lady who only signed up so she could snoop around the big house,” I said, thinking of Principal Limly and Miss Crawley in short order.
“Don’t let Miss Crawley ever hear you throwing her in with the Blue Rinse Ladies,” Jenna warned. “The result won’t be pretty.”
Another email came through.
“Another booking!” I exclaimed. “Mr and Mrs Parker. Also interested in the murder mystery weekend. Hang on…” And another. “Ms Julie Brown is really hoping we still have place on such short notice,” I read out, then glanced up at Jenna. “What’s going on?”
She pulled her phone from her purse. “Maybe Miss Crawley posted an announcement,” she said, her eyes glued to the screen. “That woman has connections you don’t want to… Oh, there’s nothing on her Facebook timeline, nothing on her blog…”
My phone vibrated in my hand. “Two more booking enquiries. At this rate, we’re going to have a full house before we’ve ordered dessert.”
“Don’t forget the champagne,” Jenna declared. “We’re celebrating!”
“We certainly are.” I was somewhat nonplussed at the sudden viral explosion but, hey, it’s not like I was about to complain. “Hollow House is back on the map.”
TWO
Friday came at me out of nowhere. One moment I was agonizing over the housekeeping details with Burns and scouring menus with my mother, and then boom, it was Friday afternoon and our guests were due to begin arriving within the hour.
I gave my appearance some critical study in the mirror. Olive green suede form-fitting pants that had cost a fortune, but the hidden panels that flattened my stomach and smoothed any ungainly bulges at my hips where worth every dollar. Strappy sandals that added a couple of extra inches to my measly five-foot-five. Cashmere top that kept threatening to slide seductively over one shoulder.
Thank goodness Joe hadn’t only arrived on my doorstep with his bags, he’d packed up my belongings from the Manhattan apartment into the second trunk. It would be a while, maybe never, before I could add to the previous extravagance of my wardrobe.
I leaned in to check my makeup, tucked a curly length of fringe behind my ear, telling myself I had to look presentable for our guests. Of course, that didn’t explain every other day of the week. I’d felt compelled to look my best every freaking second of the day since Joe had moved in.
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