This is the first cozy mystery in the Pecan Valley Series.
When Bea first arrives
in Pecan Valley she’s accompanied by thunder and lightning, and she tells
herself the storm will pass. She also tries to convince herself that she’s
taking an early retirement, looking for a quiet place to work on her quilts,
putter around in her new garden. But returning to the place where the event happened thirty years ago
sparks a longing to find out what took place after Bea left Pecan Valley. Although
the clouds have now dissipated, another storm is hovering over her new home and
when someone is murdered, she has second thoughts about moving to a small Texas
town.
Excerpt:
Bea
peeked through the blinds in her kitchen. They were still there, both of them.
Two feet clad in mud-covered brown boots protruding, uninvited, from beneath
the vines of her sunshine yellow squash or was it a cucumber vine? She couldn’t
tell from the window. Regardless of which vegetable patch these boots were
invading, she had no doubt that the owner was lifeless. After all, who lies
beneath vegetation in someone’s well tended garden in the middle of a Texas
summer?
This
wasn’t what Bea had anticipated when she told her friends she was starting a
new life, moving from the hustle and bustle of the city, moving to the country
and she said . . . . Bea paused for a
moment, thinking of the words she had used.
“I’ll
have a vegetable patch, grow raspberries. I’ll buy storage jars for the
vegetables and make jam. Perhaps even pickles.”
But
there in the middle of her prized squash . . . Bea lowered one of the blinds
with her finger until it resembled a v-shape, scrunched her brow and considered
looking for her glasses. No, the feet were definitely pointed toe up among the
yellow flowered cucumbers.
What
was she to do? The garden club tour was in less than a week and having yellow
tape and crime scene people traipsing around just simply wouldn’t do. But regardless
which vegetable from the cucumber family had been invaded, this was the second
death in as many weeks and she began to reconsider her life changing decision.
Hop on over to the Amazon Author Page for a list of published cozy mysteries by Ann Summerville here
