Last Call

by Libby Kirsch

  Janet stared at the aqua glass in surprise.

  The older woman stood once again, slower this time, and took a step toward the door.

  “Nell, you’re still welcome here. You’re just not allowed to sit by the cash register anymore.”

  The other woman looked uncertainly at Janet before smiling. “Really?”

  “Like, far from the register, okay?”

  Nell glided over to the opposite side of the bar and settled onto a new stool, her old smile back in place.

  Janet wiped down the counter and looked at the clock; Elizabeth would be in for her shift any minute. Janet would have to rearrange the schedule soon to accommodate Elizabeth’s new semester of classes at the community college. Mel had the day off so she and Kat could attend an adoption hearing, but Janet wasn’t expecting any trouble at the door that night, and if there was, Jason was in the office, ready to spring into service if needed.

  Her father, as much as she wasn’t looking forward to it, was due at the airport first thing the following morning. He was going to help her write out a statement for the police, and—if she knew him at all—give O’Dell one hell of a talking-to.

  She hummed to herself as she worked, giving the cutting board and lemon knife a wide berth. Not long ago, Janet had been all alone. Now she’d reconnected with a father she once didn’t know existed, her boyfriend had her back, and the truth was that everyone at the Spot was a part of her family, too.

  “Another one, sweetie?” Nell asked, pointing to her empty glass.

  Janet nodded and pulled a glass from the shelf. Sure, they were a bunch of nut jobs and kleptos, but they were hers, and that’s all that mattered.

  * * *

  <<<<>>>>

  (Turn the page for a preview of Last Minute, available now!

  Also by Libby Kirsch

  The Stella Reynolds Mystery Series

  The Big Lead

  The Big Interview

  The Big Overnight

  The Big Weekend

  The Big Job

  * * *

  The Janet Black Mystery Series

  Last Call

  Last Minute

  Last Chance

  * * *

  For updates on new releases or to connect with the author, go to www.LibbyKirschBooks.com

  About the Author

  Libby Kirsch is an Emmy award winning journalist with over ten years of experience working in television newsrooms of all sizes. She draws on her rich history of making embarrassing mistakes on live TV, and is happy to finally indulge her creative writing side, instead of always having to stick to the facts.

  Libby lives in Michigan with her husband, three young children, and Sam the dog.

  * * *

  Connect with Libby

  www.LibbyKirschBooks.com

  Libby@LibbyKirschBooks.com

  Copyright © 2018 by Libby Kirsch

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Last Minute—Special Preview

  Chapter One

  * * *

  Janet Black stood back and looked at a spot on the floor near the bed critically for a long moment, then finally nodded at her boyfriend. “You know what? I think you’re right.”

  Jason Brooks raised his eyebrows. “Well, darlin’, let the record reflect that on September fourteenth, at three forty-seven in the afternoon—”

  “Oh, shut up and get a stool! That should take care of the problem.”

  Jason’s eyes lingered on her before he turned and left the room. Janet adjusted her garter belt and tapped the heel of her stiletto against the wood floor. Ta-ta-tap. Ta-ta-tap. Ta-ta—

  “Something like this?” Jason was back, his expression betraying his opinion that it would never work.

  “Yes!” Janet grabbed the stool and then eyed the bed before placing it on the floor about two and a half feet away from the edge of the mattress. “If I stand on the stool and then do a backbend to the mattress, everything should line right up—”

  “What kind of tread do those heels have?” Jason’s eyes narrowed and he nudged the stool closer to the bed by a few inches with his toe. “I don’t know . . . if your hands slip, you’ll fall to the floor.” Jason crept toward her, despite his objection.

  “Well, you won’t just be standing there, will you? You’ll be holding on to my hips!” Janet tossed her shoulder-length light brown hair back and pushed her chest out while batting her hazel eyes at her boyfriend. At five foot six, she was too short for her original idea—but the step stool and heels combined more than made up for the height difference. “I know you won’t let me fall.”

  The colorful ink on Jason’s arms rippled as he crossed them and considered Janet’s plan. He’d shed his shirt earlier and the top button on his jeans was undone. Janet licked her lips as she watched him, picturing him doing what she wanted him to do.

  She wiggled her hips and he finally reached for her.

  Ring, ring.

  “The phone,” Jason murmured, stepping close. His day-old whiskers tickled her neck.

  “Let’s ignore it,” she sighed, and ran her hands down his arms.

  The phone went quiet, and his lips moved across her neck and up her jaw until he finally parted her lips with his tongue. Heat licked up from her core. Her legs felt like jelly.

  Ring, ring.

  “Damn it,” she moaned, reaching back blindly for the receiver on the nightstand. “What?” She sucked in a gasp when Jason knelt in front of her, nibbling at sensitive skin.

  “Uh, boss?” The woman’s twangy, uncertain tone made it clear who was on the other end.

  “What is it, Cindy Lou?” Janet focused on not moaning as she shifted her body to the right. Jason grinned and kept working his way up her leg.

  “I think you better come in,” the bartender said. “We’ve got—well, cops are here, and I don’t know what to do.”

  Janet pushed back from Jason and thumped down on the bed, worry edging away all other emotions. “What do you—wait, never mind. I’ll be right in.”

  She dropped the phone back onto the receiver. “Cops are at the Spot! I’ve got to go.”

  Her boyfriend’s eyebrows knitted together. “I’ll come, too.”

  “That’s sweet, but you don’t have to—”

  “Janet! Of course I’m coming.” He hopped up with a scowl and snagged his shirt off the ground as he stalked out of the room.

  She blew out a sigh. Somehow he’d taken her offer for him to stay home as an insult.

  She slipped out of the lingerie and got dressed in her usual bar “uniform” of jeans and a T-shirt. So much for being spontaneous. She picked up an envelope off the dresser and left the room. Jason’s dad’s mail had inadvertently been mixed in with hers, and she tossed it on the hall table on her way to the front door.

  William Brooks had moved in with them over the summer, after he and Jason’s mom argued their way through a messy divorce. The situation was not ideal, but Jason felt bad; his dad had nowhere else to go, so they’d been making the best of it.

  On the plus side, William had been working on their kitchen remodeling project. In the minus column, he spent a lot of time moping around the house. Janet struggled to feel empathy for the man; after all, you can’t cheat on a woman and then be mad when she leaves you!

  “Ready?” she called to Jason.

  “Let’s go.” He swept past her and she frowned. Every time she tried to do something nice, Jason took it as dismissive. William Brooks had brought his bad mojo from Memphis and Janet couldn’t wait for him to leave.

  “Bye, William. We’ll be home later.”

  “Everything okay, Janet?” He stuck his head through the open kitchen door; drywall dust covered his hair. “I forgot to tell you I called an arborist to come to
the Spot. Those ash trees need to come down—they’re being devoured by emerald ash borers—”

  “Fine, William, thanks so much.” She turned and walked out of the house, a stiff smile plastered on her face. He needed to get his own home and business to worry over, and leave hers alone.

  Janet stood frozen in the parking lot. The bar’s Beerador, a massive seven-foot-tall, bottle-shaped refrigerator, stood guard by the door. The unusual appliance had come with the bar when Janet and Jason had bought it years ago, but it had been taken during a murder investigation several months earlier. Why was it back?

  She shuddered slightly, remembering the body she’d found, staring lifelessly out the Beerador’s window. A quick look behind her confirmed that Jason was still on the phone call that had just come in when he parked. She waved when he looked up, then turned and strode into the Spot. It took a moment for her eyes to adjust to the low lighting inside.

  Her bar looked like it had been ransacked.

  Someone had cleared a path from the door to the center of the room, forcing tables and chairs aside in an uneven mess.

  Janet made her way behind the bar to Cindy Lou.

  Her assistant manager, and most faithful bartender, was channeling Rosie the Riveter that day; her bleached-blond hair was tied back in a red bandana, and a short denim jumper with a plunging neckline replaced the blue jumpsuit from the poster.

  “What’s going on?”

  Cindy Lou stared pointedly across the bar but didn’t speak, only continued to prep a pile of lemons for the night ahead, her knife making click, clack, clack sounds against the cutting board.

  “I should charge you extra for the door-to-door delivery, but I won’t.” The deep voice came from Janet’s left. Detective Patrick O’Dell grinned from a bar stool, his green eyes sparkling mischievously. A sports coat hung off the back of his chair, and his white shirtsleeves were rolled up to the elbow. One of her regulars, Nell, an older woman with silvery-gray hair, waved, but Janet could only stare at the cop, her mouth open.

  His resulting chuckle shook her tongue loose. “You’re giving it back? I mean, shouldn’t it go to . . . I just assumed it would be disposed of, or something—I . . .”

  Janet eyed the Beerador suspiciously. She’d thought—hoped—she’d never see it again.

  “Would have cost the city too much to bring it to the dump with the fees and everything,” O’Dell said. “Where do you want my guys to put it?”

  “Ahhh . . .” Janet grimaced. “Has it been cleaned or anything?”

  “Nope.”

  “Son of a—”

  “Biscuit!” Cindy Lou interrupted with a sharp elbow in Janet’s side. “It can be just as satisfying if you say it right,” she added out of the side of her mouth.

  Janet snorted. Nothing could be as satisfying as a real curse word, but she bit back the one that had been on her lips, crossed her arms, and glared at the refrigerator. She’d once considered the Beerador fun—campy, almost—but now . . . Now it was a tainted vessel of death. “What am I supposed to do with it?”

  “Clean it out, I guess, hon.” Cindy Lou wiped her forehead with the back of her hand, then pointed at the offending appliance with her chef’s knife. “I’m gettin’ dirty just looking at all that fingerprint dust! I bet if we use a mixture of bleach and baking soda—”

  “We’ll blow up the building?” Janet popped a hand on her hip and scowled at the Beerador.

  “Everything okay?” Jason edged past the Beerador at the front entrance, then stopped short when he saw O’Dell. “Oh.” He crossed his arms over his chest and came to a stop several feet away from the bar.

  O’Dell forced a grin. “Jason. Good to see you, man.”

  Just beyond O’Dell, Nell leaned in, her eyes flicking from O’Dell’s wallet to his hand resting just inches away. Nell’s dark, quick eyes—magnified through the enormous lenses of her bold, black eyeglass frames—were even then calculating the distance between his wallet and her handbag.

  Janet stifled a groan; the last thing she needed just then was for their resident klepto to strike against Knoxville’s lead homicide investigator. She cleared her throat. “Nell, did you need another round?”

  Nell dropped her chin to her chest and tucked a stray gray hair back into her tidy, low bun. “All good here, Janet.”

  Janet smiled to herself, then racked her brain for how to solve the larger problem in the room. “I think . . . we should . . . turn the Beerador into a coat closet.”

  Cindy Lou’s nose wrinkled, and her head tilted to one side. “I don’t know. It wouldn’t hold that many coats, would it?”

  Jason didn’t smile. With a scowl still etched firmly on his face, he said to O’Dell, “Now that it’s here, I guess you’ll be on your way.”

  O’Dell slid off his bar stool and laid a few bills from his wallet on the bar for Cindy Lou, then all six foot one of him tried to move past Nell. The older woman closed her eyes and leaned into the empty space between them with her puckered lips tilted up when he brushed past. Janet almost laughed out loud. Nell hated cops, but even she couldn’t ignore O’Dell’s broad, muscular frame and boyish good looks.

  Janet met O’Dell on the other side of the countertop. “Can your guys move it out of the doorway, at least?”

  “Sure.” O’Dell grinned at Jason as he rested a hand on her shoulder and squeezed. “Anything for you, Janet.”

  Jason’s chest puffed out and Janet stifled a groan. These two grown men were acting like possessive peacocks.

  O’Dell tapped something into his cell phone and soon four burly men walked into the bar with a heavy-duty hand cart.

  As they surrounded the Beerador, O’Dell asked, “Where do you want it, Janet?”

  “Jason?” She turned to her boyfriend, but he was beyond being able to help. Waves of irritation rolled off his body like freshly applied aftershave.

  She locked eyes with Cindy Lou. Her head bartender lifted one shoulder and dropped it back down, then motioned behind her. “I always did like having bottles in there.”

  Janet raked a hand over her face. “I guess back behind the bar, O’Dell. We’ll deep-clean it and see if it still works.” Could you get the smell of murder out of a refrigerator? Seemed like a Clorox wipe just wasn’t going to be enough.

  As the men navigated their way through the bar with the heavy load, the front door opened, and a beam of sunlight sparkled beautifully off the Beerador’s curved glass door.

  Cindy Lou gasped, and new emotion multiplied the twang in her voice when she said, “I think she’s glad to be back home, y’all!”

  Janet suppressed a snort and turned her attention to the newcomer. “Come on in, don’t mind the mess. Can I get you a drink?”

  But the man, wearing a herringbone sports coat over khakis and a blue button-down, beelined for O’Dell. A golden badge glinted at his waist. “O’Dell. What are you doing here?”

  “I’m delivering that back to its rightful owners.” He pointed to the Beerador, which came down off the dolly with a crash behind Cindy Lou. “I thought you were heading to a dead body call out, Rivera?”

  “I did.” Rivera scanned the bar. “Now I’m here to find Nell Anderson. Do you know her?”

  Janet leaned in when O’Dell asked, “What’s going on?”

  Rivera blew out a sigh and lowered his voice. “I just came from her daughter’s house. She’s dead.”

  Want more? Check out Last Minute today! For a preview of Libby Kirsch’s other series, turn the page.

  The Big Lead—Special preview

  Chapter 1

  * * *

  Sweat rolled down Stella Reynolds’s face and arms; her back was slick with it. Whoever thought being a TV reporter was glamorous had clearly never worked in a small town.

  She hitched the old, beat-up camera onto her shoulder and took a deep breath to steady her shot; then she grabbed the tripod, looped the camera over her arm, and clomped after the sheriff of Bozeman, Montana, as he led the way to the c
rime scene. The deck—a thirty-pound VCR-style machine that connected to her camera—banged against her leg with every other step. She cursed the out-of-date equipment for the tenth time that day. Leave it to her to take a job in one of the smallest TV markets in the country at a station using equipment from the 1970’s!

  Stella pushed her long, auburn hair away from her green eyes and looked ahead, relieved to find they were almost to the top of the hill. It was a mountain, really, but the locals just called it a hill. She snapped her shirt away from her sticky skin and wished she’d thought to bring a change of clothes.

  After she set up the heavy tripod, clicked the camera into place and connected the microphone, then did all of the technical checks she’d learned not to skip, Stella began her interview with a precise, cutting question.

  “So, uh, what happened?”

  “Well, the attack happened right up there.” Sheriff Wayne Carlson wiped his brow and pointed to an old but well-kept barn visible at the end of a dirt road. “But some of the bodies were found over that way.”

  Stella looked to the left, and saw a dark spot on the ground. She zoomed in on the spot, then cringed and zoomed back out. Do you show bloody splotches on the news? She was so new at the job—all of a sudden she wasn’t sure.

  She directed the camera back toward the sheriff. “And how many died?”

  “At least four were killed. Another eight in bad shape. But without Jake, things certainly would have been worse.”