Feel the Bern by Andrew Shaffer

Author:Andrew Shaffer [Shaffer, Andrew]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Clarkson Potter/Ten Speed
Published: 2022-12-06T00:00:00+00:00

Mary-Jane was in the kitchen of her tiny bakeshop when the bell above the front door jangled. She was waiting for her young assistant, Bud Majors. He was supposed to have opened up today but was MIA. She’d texted him twice, but he hadn’t responded. She’d hired him as much for his shaggy, bleached-blond hair as for his baking skills. Her clientele loved him…and his patented “special” brownies.

“I’ll be right there,” she yelled, removing her gloves. When she pushed through the kitchen doors and saw who it was, her heart skipped a beat. It wasn’t Bud Majors.

“Mike,” she said, shocked to see the sheriff out of uniform. “What are you doing in town? Shouldn’t you be—”

“—in Key West?” He smiled that crooked smile of his. “It wasn’t the same without you.”

This man was trouble with a capital T. Mike was charged with keeping law and order in Cannon Cove. She was the town’s resident amateur sleuth, sticking her nose where it didn’t belong. While he’d tried warning her away from his murder investigations at first, Mike had come to appreciate the unique perspective she brought to the table. Mary-Jane helped him solve dozens of cases with her encyclopedic knowledge of the works of Agatha Christie.

Their flirting never went anywhere, however. Even a trip together to the National Sheriffs’ Conference in Key West last winter hadn’t resulted in anything, other than them solving a murder in their hotel. This morning, though, things felt different between them. Her breath quickened…

The door flew open. It was Mary-Jane’s mother. She always had a knack for showing up at the worst possible time. She was supposed to be a silent partner in Mary-Jane’s business, but she was in and out of the bakeshop so much she might as well have been drawing a paycheck. This morning, she was in a red kimono. Her equally red hair was drawn up into a bun.

“Hello, Mrs. Taylor,” Mike said. “I was just on my way out.”

Mary-Jane’s mother threw her hands up to stop him. “You’ll want to hear this, Sheriff Duncan. It’s about Douglas Knox.”

Mary-Jane cut in. “The sheriff isn’t on duty right now, Mother. If this is about the parking situation, I’ve told you before that having his customers’ cars ticketed isn’t the neighborly thing to do.”

“Listen,” her mother said. “I was walking the beach when I noticed something glinting in the sand. I thought it might be a ring, and I was right—it was a wedding band. Douglas Knox’s.”

“How would you even know that?” Mary-Jane asked.

“It was still on his finger,” her mother said. “Someone murdered Douglas Knox and tried to bury him on the beach. Looks like they didn’t count on the tides uncovering their gruesome handiwork.”

“Murdered?” Mike said. “I thought I’d escaped the homicide beat when I moved to small-town Oregon from Chicago.”

Just what the town needed. Another dead body. Today was really harshing her mellow, as Bud was fond of saying. At this rate, there wouldn’t be any residents left in Cannon Cove by this time next year.

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