Tracy Gardner is a metro Detroit native who writes mystery and romance novels, including Out of the Picture: A Shepherd Sisters Mystery for Hallmark Pubishing. A daughter of two teachers, she has been writing since she could hold a pen. Tracy grew up on Nancy Drew mysteries and rock and roll. Her drive to understand the deeper meaning of things serves her well as an author of compelling, relatable characters and stories.
Tracy splits her time between being a nurse, a writer, and a baker, because brownies are an important staple in her home, which she shares with her husband, two fun-loving teens, and a menagerie of spoiled rescue dogs and cats.
Sneak Peek of Dead-End Detective
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CHAPTER ONE
How did this become my life?
That was the question I asked myself when I was halfway up Mrs. Berger’s oak tree and staring into the angry green eyes of her orange Maine Coon cat, Romy.
Romy didn’t like being in the tree any more than I did, but he was the one who’d gotten us into this mess.
“Hi Romy,” I said in my sweetest, I-love-animals voice.
Romy bared his teeth.
“Be careful, Darby!” Mrs. Berger called from below. “I don’t want Romy getting hurt.”
I tried not to dwell on the fact that she had no concern over whether or not I got hurt.
I’d been drafted to save the cat on my daily lakeside run this morning when Mrs. Berger had flagged me down on the sidewalk in front of her home.
The gray waters of Seneca Lake were in view directly behind Romy. It was early morning, and a handful of small fishing boats rocked on the thirty-five-mile-long lake’s gentle waves. Now on the cusp of autumn, it was a postcard scene with the red and ocher leaves reflecting off its blue-gray waters. Ducks and geese bobbed on the water’s surface as they made their way from Canada to points farther south.
“Is Romy all right?” Mrs. Berger’s voice wavered.
I looked to the ground, and for a moment, the world spun. I was only twenty feet high, but on my precarious perch—literally out on a limb—it felt like a hundred feet up. I gripped the tree’s trunk for support. “Romy’s fine. A little grumpy, but otherwise completely fine.” I brushed a lock of my shoulder-length brown hair that had escaped from my ponytail out of my face.
“Oh, poor thing. Tell him if he comes down, I’ll give him a whole can of tuna instead of his typical half. I know he must be peckish from his wild adventure.”
I was peckish, too. I should’ve grabbed a snack before I went out the door. There was always a twenty percent chance of cat rescue on my run.
I glanced at the cat. “You get that?”
He narrowed his green eyes. I narrowed my brown ones back. I found it was best with Romy to present myself as an equal, even if Mrs. Berger might not think that was true.
She stood below the tree in a mint-green pantsuit with matching bowler hat and perfectly set hair. She propped herself up on a mahogany cane—which could be used as a poker or pointer, depending on what the situation required. She wore her hair in pin curls and got it set every Tuesday morning at Mary Bee’s Beehives in downtown Herrington, and she loved her cat. Ornery Romy, the disgruntled Maine Coon, was showered with love and affection that he both relished and detested.
At ninety, Mrs. Berger was the oldest resident of Herrington, and she’d lived in her home on the shores of Seneca Lake for the last sixty years. She owned forty acres of prime lakefront property, and she let all of it remain wild except for the land immediately around her little ranch house. To the south was the imposing Lake Waters Retreat, a luxury resort where the rich and richer went “to get some work done,” as my father said. They came from all over the country for special skin treatments, face-lifts, and other services. To protect the well-to-do clientele’s privacy, the retreat was locked up like Fort Knox.
Lake Waters Retreat and builders throughout the Finger Lakes would’ve loved to buy Mrs. Berger’s little house, flatten it to the ground and turn it into something profitable, but Mrs. Berger wasn’t selling. Mr. Berger had been gone for over a decade now, and developers had given up trying to convince her.
She would tell people, eyes sparkling, “They’re waiting for me to die, but what they don’t know is I might outlive them all. Won’t they be surprised when that happens?”
It was very possible. Mrs. Berger wasn’t showing any signs of slowing down. The only thing she couldn’t do was climb a tree to save her cat. Then again, she had me for that.
“Be careful getting him down. He’s very upset. He might hurt himself,” Mrs. Berger warned.
If I reached out and tried to grab Romy, I’d surely be scratched within an inch of my life—which was why I had a bath towel slung over my shoulder. It was a new strategy I wanted to try. I’d asked Mrs. Berger to lend me one, and she’d gone straight to her linen closet and pulled one out, no questions asked. I appreciated the vote of confidence and hoped it wasn’t premature.
“Romy,” I cooed. “Don’t you want to come down from that tree? It can’t be any fun being up there all day, can it?”
I took a breath and looped the towel over Romy’s back. Before he could figure out what was happening, I climbed up to the next branch and grabbed him around the middle with the towel between us. I wrapped him up burrito-style, making sure his head was free and I was out of the way of his biting teeth. It worked! I couldn’t believe it.
The climb down was much more cumbersome because I was going backward and one-handed, my left arm wrapped around the very upset Romy. I was six feet from the ground when my foot missed a branch.
I fell and landed flat on my back, hard. Air whooshed out of me and onto Romy, who was still in his towel. He lay on my chest and stared me in the face. I pushed him off before he could bite my nose. He hissed and flopped to the side, still trapped in the towel cocoon.
Mrs. Berger poked me with the end of her cane. “You all right, Darby?”
That was a more difficult question for me to answer than she could possibly know.
She leaned a little farther over me and met my gaze. “Your eyes look normal, so I don’t think you have a concussion.” She waved her hand. “How many of me do you see?”
“One.”
“Good. You’re fine. Mr. Berger was a neuroscientist and always told me how to look for signs of head trauma, but I can call the EMTs if you want to be sure.”
“No!”
I struggled to my feet. If she called the ambulance, the police would most likely come, because there wasn’t much other policing to do in Herrington. If the police came, there was a high chance my ex-boyfriend would be the one they’d send out, and this was the last way I wanted him to see me: flat on my back in running clothes covered in orange cat hair with a ninety-year-old woman poking me in the ribs with her antique cane.
That didn’t really say, “Hey, I got my life together without you.”
Even so, I was pretty sure Police Officer Austin Caster knew I didn’t have my life together—even without the visual evidence.
Romy struggled, his body writhing under the terry cloth fabric. I quickly unwrapped him and jumped back with the same trepidation park rangers use when releasing a bobcat in the wild. Mrs. Berger scooped up the cat and held him to her chest.
“You’re the best detective I know. You always seem to know where to find Romy when he wanders off.”
I wished I could say she was right, that I was the best detective, but I was certain I wasn’t. Had I been better, I wouldn’t be about to lose the business I’d spent the last decade of my life building.
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Behind the Frame Page 29
