Preserving Peaches by Pamela Burford

Author:Pamela Burford
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: humorous mysteries female sleuth, amateur sleuth, love triangle, romantic comedy mystery, female protagonist, dog mystery, humorous mystery series, amateur female sleuths romantic, humorous dog mysteries, small town mystery and humor, love triangle mystery series, cozy animal mystery series
Publisher: Radical Poodle Press
Published: 2019-08-03T16:00:00+00:00

10

Pork Rinds for Everybody!

SO THAT WAS a threat, right? It felt like a threat, but it wasn’t, you know, blatant or anything. And he said it with that sexy-scary accent, so how was a girl supposed to process something like that?

I was still fretting over Burke’s words the next evening while preparing for a séance in the home of my new client, Betsy van Heel. It was Betsy who’d hired me to get in touch with her dead husband, Harvey. She’d offered a thousand bucks if I made a sincere effort, and an astounding twenty grand if Harvey actually decided to interrupt his fourteen-year dirt nap to pop in and say howdy.

I’d tried to explain that this sort of thing wasn’t in my skill set, but Betsy had insisted I give it a try, having thrown away an ungodly sum of money on con men and women over the years. I might not be a professional medium, in other words, but I was a professional Death Diva with a reputation for honesty and integrity, and that was good enough for her.

In the end, I’d agreed to take the assignment, on one condition. I required Betsy to sign a written statement declaring that no matter the outcome of our séance—whether Harvey deigned to finally make an appearance or remained his old, elusive self—she would never spend another dime trying to communicate with him. I even went with her to have the paper notarized, thinking it might make her take it more seriously.

Of course, if she decided to break her promise, there wasn’t a darn thing I could do about it. Her reliance on fakes and charlatans was a kind of addiction, and in the end only she could kick the habit. I hoped our signed “contract” would give her a shove in the right direction.

So this was (fingers crossed) my client’s last hurrah when it came to summoning poor dead Harvey, and I was determined to give it my best shot. While it’s true I’m a confirmed skeptic when it comes to all things supernatural, I do acknowledge the existence of unexplained phenomena. I don’t claim to have all the answers, and I respect the efforts of those who struggle to fill in the blanks. Communing with the spirits via séances has a long, albeit sketchy, history, and during the past five days since accepting the job, I’d made it my business to learn the right way to go about it.

And lest you accuse me of bilking a grieving widow: The Death Diva code of honor—aka my conscience—would never permit me to take unfair advantage of a client. Not once did I consider trying to bamboozle her out of that twenty grand.

In any event, by the time I found myself setting up in Betsy’s home office, I’d put in so many hours on preparation, I felt like I’d already earned my thousand bucks. Or I should say, my five hundred. I needed a partner for this job, and Martin was the natural choice since we’d worked together before, so I’d be splitting the fee with him.

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