The New Teacher: A small town female sleuth cozy mystery (The Sheridan County Mysteries Book 1) by Erin Lark Maples

Author:Erin Lark Maples [Maples, Erin Lark]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Lodestar Literary
Published: 2022-08-25T00:00:00+00:00

On Saturday morning, she loaded their suitcases and a small box of Rhett’s toys into the trunk and added a small bag of groceries.

As promised, the lights, plumbing, and heat worked. Jo had put a small vase of flowers on the tiny kitchen table with no note, but Elizabeth knew her mark, knew the woman was of two minds about the situation.

Rhett explored the connected rooms as she unpacked their few belongings. A front area served as kitchen, dining, and sitting spaces, with a couple windows facing west. The former classroom had been converted into a bedroom space, shelves added to the coat closet. There was a trundle bed and a squat dresser to finish out the furniture, a prairie landscape dotted with buffalo hanging on one wall. Like a motel.

“It’s just for a little while,” she said to Rhett, hoping she spoke the truth.

Casey had made Rhett a stack of building blocks out of some lumber he had, polished smooth. Her son stacked the blocks to form first one wall and then a second, on his way to a full structure.

“Mac and cheese work for you?”

Rhett regarded her, brown eyes saucers. He held out a block, a pine tree burned into one side, a bison on the other.

She busied herself at the small cookstove, a two-burner operation Jo had warned her to regard as armed and dangerous. “We filled the gas tank, so you shouldn’t have any issues with cooking or heat, but it’s not the newest equipment, so if anything, and I mean anything, acts strangely, let us know.”

Later, after tucking herself into the overstuffed chair to read from a bodice ripper, convincing herself that somewhere there may be a man who would seduce her over Parisian picnics if only she would give him a chance, she heard a tap on the roof. Another page in and she heard it again. Two minutes went by, and a series of three startled her.

The roof of the old schoolhouse building was tiled in green shingles, layered over each other and anchored with nails. The steep pitch was designed to negate the snowstorms that battered the structure each winter. Anything that hits the roof should roll off.

Two more taps. Like hail, an unnatural force among the gentle patter of rain, the sounds disrupted the night. Elizabeth slid into her shoes to peek outside.

Wrapping her arms around her torso, as much for comfort as for warmth, she beheld the night sky in all its glory. Light pollution is all but a myth in this part of the world. Endless tiny stars pin-pricked the blackness, a few thin clouds chasing the moon.

She scanned the landscape in front of her, the glow from the sky crescent giving little hint but shadows.

Nothing.

In the distance, she could see the yard light on at the Wolf house. A copse of trees blocked the view of Casey’s place, but she thought she saw the faint glint of a silver roofline behind them.

A rush of vulnerability raced up her spine.

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