Beatrice Young 12-The Mewltide Mugger by Alannah Rogers

Author:Alannah Rogers [Rogers, Alannah]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Cozies, Cats, Investigation, Amateur Sleuth, Cafe, New Hampshire, USA, Mugging, Theft, Robbery, Arson, Christmas
Published: 2017-12-07T05:00:00+00:00

7

Matthew had had some bad times in his life, but having his newly purchased engagement ring stolen from him was up there.

While Beatrice had happily snoozed through every night since the incident, Matthew had lain awake, staring at the ceiling as his mind raced to find a solution to the problem. He could sell his car! And make Beatrice drive him around everywhere? That wouldn’t work. He could dip into his retirement savings! But somehow he felt like Beatrice wouldn’t be as keen on a ring if it meant bungling their retirement plan.

The Mall Santa idea was the only one he’d actually carried out and it was feeling more and more like the worst option, least of all because the pay was not spectacular and small children seemed terrified of a real-life Santa.

Beatrice was working at the café that afternoon and Matthew had been home all day, trying to get excited for another evening of wearing a velvet suit and laughing merrily. He’d always loved Christmas. He loved kids. So why was this job making him so miserable?

He’d been distracting himself by working on the house. Beatrice hadn’t had a lot of time to do repairs lately and he was enjoying making little changes to the house, putting his mark on it. So far he’d re-painted the downstairs powder room, spray-foamed some cracks in the basement that were letting in cold air, replaced all the light bulbs in the house with energy saving ones, and gone through Beatrice’s cabinets and thrown out everything that was expired or smelling weird.

Today, he was shoveling. A huge snowfall had happened overnight and he’d dug out the driveway so Beatrice could get her truck out. Now he was working on the walkway and cleaning up the driveway to give her truck more room to pull back in.

The air smelled crisp with new-fallen snow. Chickadees flitted through the yew bushes in Beatrice’s front yard, which were dotted with red berries. It was almost completely quiet except for the sound of Matthew’s shovel cutting into the snow and the distant sound of tires navigating over newly fallen, packed-down snow in the country road beyond.

What was really bothering him was the linchpin to his plan, one he didn’t even really want to admit to himself—that he was sure Beatrice had somehow found out about her engagement ring being stolen and that she was not going to be able to contain herself from leading the search to find it. If she hadn’t been on the lookout from the beginning—and believe him, he’d taken every precaution to try to keep it from her—it was possible the sheriff could’ve accidentally said something or she could’ve overheard something.

Matthew let out a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding. The air fogged in front of him. At least he had the cats to keep his spirits up. He’d volunteered to babysit them to give Beatrice a break, though he felt more like they were babysitting him. Petunia hadn’t deigned to come out

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