Storm Season

Storm Season
Charlotte Douglas

But weather isn't the only threat to P.I. Maggie Skerritt.Maggie's got her hands full when a nationally syndicated columnist enlists Pelican Bay Investigations to protect her from a stalker and a mysterious stranger with amnesia poses a threat to some dear neighbors. But when her partner-turned-fiance Bill Malcolm's brokenhearted ex-wife reappears after twenty-odd years, well, the calm seas suddenly become as rocky as their once-peaceful relationship.Now, with the eye of a category-five hurricane closing in, will Bill and Maggie be able to reclaim their premarital bliss before the storms flood their sunshine state?

Storm Season

Charlotte Douglas

www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)

CONTENTS

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 15

CHAPTER 16

CHAPTER 17

CHAPTER 18

CHAPTER 19

CHAPTER 20

CHAPTER 21

CHAPTER 22

CHAPTER 23

CHAPTER 24

CHAPTER 25

EPILOGUE

CHAPTER 1

Violet Lassiter passed me the heavy blue-willow plate with a remarkably steady hand for a one-hundred-year-old. “Have a cookie, Miss Skerritt.”

She didn’t have to twist my arm. Fresh from the oven, the cookies smelled heavenly.

“They’re better with nuts,” she added in apology, “but Bessie can’t have ’em, so the rest of us have to suffer.”

“You eat too many sweets, anyway,” her eighty-four-year-old sibling, Bessie, countered.

“What do you think—” Violet accused her with a roll of her eyes “—that I’m going to shorten my life?”

Taking a cookie, I sat on the screened back porch of the modest cement-block home with the two elderly women, who were apparently unfazed by the ninety-degree heat and suffocating humidity of the September morning. Violet, tall and gangly with thick white braids wrapped around her head like a crown, wore a heavy sweater over her cotton housedress. Bessie, short and lean, was also dressed in a cotton shift and a cardigan, plus bright-pink sneakers and heavy flesh-toned nylons rolled just below her knees.

I’d first encountered the Lassiter sisters last June when Bill Malcolm, my fiancé and partner in Pelican Bay Investigations, had done background checks on volunteers for the local historical society. To his dismay, he’d discovered that Bessie had an arrest record for shoplifting. Further digging revealed she’d been stealing food for Violet after their Social Security money had run out before the end of the month. The judge had given Bessie probation, but his lenient ruling hadn’t solved the elderly women’s subsistence problem.

Bill and I had arranged for meals-on-wheels for the pair and had put together a gift basket to tide them over until deliveries began. To save the Lassiters’ pride, we’d fabricated a story that Bessie had won the basket in a grand opening raffle we’d held at our business. We’d presented them the basket of staples and goodies, along with our business card and instructions to call on us if they needed a private investigator, a request we never expected to receive.

Their call came yesterday.

I’d solved many cases during my twenty-three years as a cop and more recently for Pelican Bay Investigations, but I couldn’t guess what dilemma had prompted these elderly sisters to contact me. And I couldn’t get them to stop sniping at one another long enough to find out.

“Get Miss Skerritt more ice,” Violet ordered her sister in a drill-sergeant tone. “Her tea’s getting warm.”

“Just because you’re older doesn’t mean you can boss me around,” Bessie shot back.

“My tea is fine, really,” I said. “Now what—”

“You need to be bossed,” Violet said, ignoring me, “because you act like a child. I hope I live long enough to see you grow up.”

“Ladies.” I spoke loudly and firmly. The situation was spiraling out of control, sweat was soaking through the back of my blouse and all I could think of was how great air-conditioning would feel about now. “Why exactly did you want to see me?”

“We have a man,” Bessie announced with a gleeful expression.

I nodded but didn’t comment, not sure where this was going.