Murder in Champagne Shores by Amie Denman

Author:Amie Denman [Denman, Amie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2020-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Nine

The coffee shop, beauty salon, and paint store all closed at five, and I met up with Hazel, Tiffany, and Aunt Minerva in front of my shop. We tried to get together for a girls’ night at least once a month, usually coinciding with a movie we all wanted to see, a birthday, or something new in the world of hair, beauty, or fashion.

“I have three bottles of wine in my fridge, plenty of those Italian cookies we love, a stack of new magazines, and a romance movie on my DVR,” Tiffany announced. “No one will go home hungry or sad.”

“That’s a guarantee I’ll take you up on,” Hazel said. “I’m getting pizza and cheese fries from the food trucks. I swear I can order pizza anytime I want, but somehow it’s better from the festival.”

“Same with the steak sandwiches,” Aunt Minerva said.

“Corn dogs and funnel cakes,” Tiffany said.

They looked at me because I hadn’t said anything yet. “All of the above,” I said. “And I’ll still save room for the cookies.”

We walked over to the street fair, and I was glad to see the crowd was much larger than Friday night’s. It was good for Champagne Shores, even if it was still a town hovering between its orange-stand past and its glitzy hotel future. Saturday was the big day for the festival last year, too, and the most likely to draw tourists from nearby towns in addition to bringing out the locals.

The rides were in full swing, lines were long at the food vendors, and there was plenty of evening left to have fun. Groups of locals, girlfriends and old friends like my group, stood around talking, many of them with a beverage from the beer tent.

The mayor and his wife worked the bottled water station raising money for a local charity, and I saw members of the town council helping at the beer tent and ticket stand. Some owners of other businesses, including several who owned the small hotels, had tents set up where they offered brochures or raffles to promote their business. I wondered how the other hotel owners felt about Herb being arrested. Had their newfound unity against Ransom Heyward survived his death? If suspicion landed on Herb because of his vocal opposition to Ransom Heyward’s development, the other hotel owners had to feel they had dodged a bullet and could have just as easily been suspects.

Of course, the other hotel owners had the benefit of not having a murder weapon found on their property. I’m sure they were silently breathing sighs of relief just as other residents of Champagne Shores were. Except poor Vera Rivers. If she wasn’t involved in the murder, she was a victim of it, too, and I wondered what she would do with a half-renovated old motel.

I saw Mark Prince at the festival with some other men who lived in the Champagne Circle neighborhood. They, too, must be relieved that a suspect in the murder was behind bars because it deflected attention away from their battle with the victim.

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