Wedding Bell Blues
Charlotte Douglas
MAGGIE SKERRITT CAN'T GET AWAY FROM WEDDINGS…The fortysomething cop-turned-P.I. has enough on her hands, dodging her mother's plans to turn Maggie's upcoming wedding to partner Bill Malcolm into an 800-guest circus. Then a friend asks them to provide security at the wedding uniting Florida's answer to the Hatfields and McCoys. And to top the week off nicely, they're hired to find a runaway bride–Maggie can empathize!–whose path intersects with a very dead, very murdered body.Murder always gives Maggie hives. Add that to her own prewedding jitters and a sudden crisis of confidence about her new profession…. Well, suddenly she's thinking that staying single–and becoming a bartender–might be better choices after all….
I’d been avoiding Mother’s calls for days.
She was anxious to finalize her plans for my elaborate wedding, and I’d hoped by putting her off that she would finally cease and desist.
Guilt prompted me to pick up the phone and face the consequences.
“Good morning, Mother. How are you?”
“I’m perfectly fine, but I was beginning to worry that you’d fallen off the face of the earth, Margaret. It’s a relief to know you’re alive and well.” Mother cloaked her sarcasm in such a soft, sweet tone it took a few seconds to realize I’d been zinged.
“Business is booming.”
“Not too booming for you to have lunch with your mother today, I hope?”
When she referred to herself in the third person, I knew I was in trouble, so I bit the bullet. “Of course not. Just the two of us?”
“There’s someone at the door,” Mother replied without responding to my question. “I’ll see you at noon.”
With a feeling of foreboding, I hung up the phone. I feared the wedding-planning trap had been sprung.
Charlotte Douglas
USA TODAY bestselling author Charlotte Douglas, a versatile writer who has produced over twenty-five books, including romance, suspense, Gothic, and even a Star Trek novel, has now created a mystery series featuring Maggie Skerritt, a witty and irreverent homicide detective in a small fictional town on Florida’s central west coast.
Douglas’s life has been as varied as her writings. Born in North Carolina and raised in Florida, she earned her degree in English from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and attended graduate school at the University of South Florida in Tampa. She has worked as an actor, a journalist and a church musician and taught English and speech at the secondary and college level for almost two decades. For several summers while newly married and still in college, she even manned a U.S. Forest Service lookout in northwest Montana with her husband.
Married to her high school sweetheart for over four decades, Douglas now writes full-time. With her husband and their two cairn terriers, she divides her year between their home on Florida’s central west coast—a place not unlike Pelican Bay—and their mountaintop retreat in the Great Smokies of North Carolina.
She enjoys hearing from readers, who can contact her at charlottedouglas1@juno.com.
Wedding Bell Blues
Charlotte Douglas
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
From the Author
Dear Reader,
Welcome back to Pelican Bay! This month Maggie is inundated by all things bridal.
She and Bill Malcolm are hired to find a runaway bride and to provide security for a wedding reception. At the same time, Maggie struggles to convince her mother and sister that she doesn’t want them to plan for her “the biggest wedding Pelican Bay has ever seen.” But all is not beribboned bouquets and white lace as Maggie and Bill’s search for the missing bride-to-be turns into a full-blown murder investigation.
My mail has been filled with requests for Maggie and Bill to tie the knot. Will their marriage finally happen in Wedding Bell Blues? Or will commitment-shy Maggie balk again? Relax, smell the orange blossoms and enjoy Maggie’s latest adventure.
Happy reading!
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
EPILOGUE