Charlotte Douglas: Spring Break

“Ms. Douglas brings the reader a heroine (Maggie Skerritt) we can empathize with and a mystery we can sink our teeth into.”

—Rendezvous Reviews on Pelican Bay by Charlotte Douglas

Bill stood, set my mug aside and pulled me to my feet.

“What does Swami Malcolm see in my future?”

“You’re spending the night on a boat with a tall, dark man.”

“Dark?”

“Well, suntanned, at least. But just because there’s snow on the roof doesn’t mean there’s no fire in the furnace.”

I couldn’t resist teasing him. “You know what else they say?”

He tugged me closer. “What?”

“That by thirty-five you get your head together and your body starts falling apart.”

“I don’t feel a day over twenty,” he said with an irresistible grin, “and I’d guess that you’re just over eighteen.”

“Why eighteen?”

“Because that makes what I have in mind legal.”

He kissed me then, and all thoughts of murders and cold cases disappeared.

USA TODAY bestselling author Charlotte Douglas, a versatile writer who has produced over twenty-five books, including romances, suspense, Gothics 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.

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Dear Reader,

In West Central Florida, spring and fall often arrive at the same time. In late February, as azaleas in dazzling colors burst into bloom and the air is laden with the scent of orange blossoms and confederate jasmine, deciduous trees drop their leaves. This juxtaposition of rebirth and the end of life is also reflected in the influx of college students to beach communities, where they vie with senior citizens for parking places and spaces on the sand.

This spring, as Maggie Skerritt launches her new career as a private investigator and plans her approaching marriage to Bill Malcolm, a ghost from her past has her looking back to a cold case that has haunted her for sixteen years. In this time of rebirth and renewal, Maggie finds herself surrounded, not only by young people on spring break but by death, as well. But Maggie, with the help of Bill and her former partner Adler, is determined to prevail. Enjoy spring break in Pelican Bay!

Happy reading!

Charlotte Douglas

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

Darcy Wilkins skidded into my office early Monday morning and closed the door. I looked up in alarm. Darcy, in all her years as a police dispatcher, had never lost her cool. And in the few weeks she’d served as receptionist for Pelican Bay Investigations, she’d been a model of efficiency and decorum. Today, however, she had the wild and crazy look of a die-hard rock ’n’ roll fan who had just sighted Elvis, alive and well.

“You okay?” I asked.

“Maggie.” Her voice was breathless, her brown cheeks flushed, her eyes wide and bright. “You’ll never guess who’s asking to see you.”

Why people tell you that you can’t do something, then wait for you to do it, I’ve never understood. “Okay, I give up.”

“Jolene Jernigan!”

I drew a total blank.

Darcy must have guessed by the look on my face. “You don’t know who she is.”

“Haven’t a clue.”

“You don’t watch daytime television?”

“Not if I can help it.”

Darcy shook her head. “Jolene Jernigan has been the star of Heartbeats for more than forty years.”

“Heartbeats? Is that a fitness show?”

I’d once caught Caroline, my older sister, sweating to the oldies with Richard Simmons, but I’d never heard of Jolene Jernigan.

Darcy looked at me as if I’d been raised in a barn. “It’s the number-one soap opera on television. I watched it every day when I worked night shifts. Now that I’m working days, I have to record it.”

“So what’s this Jolene doing in Florida? Aren’t soaps broadcast live from either New York or L.A.?”

“Her character’s in a coma with her face bandaged because of an auto accident. Maybe she has a stand-in for a while.”

“Did Jolene say why she’s here in Pelican Bay?”

Darcy shook her head and made a tsking noise.

“For a detective, you don’t know much. She owns a fabulous vacation home on Pelican Beach.”

“And she wants to see me?”

“She says it’s urgent.”

I glanced at my bare desktop and my day planner devoid of appointments. “I suppose I can work her in.”

“Don’t forget to ask for an advance.” Darcy ducked out the door.

She was right to remind me. After twenty-two years as a police officer, I wasn’t yet accustomed to the business details of running a private investigation firm. I preferred that Bill Malcolm, my fiancé and partner in crime, so to speak, handle money matters, but he was in Sarasota on another case.

Through the open windows of our recently acquired second-floor office, I could hear the traffic idling on Main Street as it backed up from the causeway to the beach. The April breeze carried the scent of confederate jasmine and sweet viburnum tinged with car-exhaust fumes. The town had more visitors than you could stir with a stick, and half of them were young, horny and slightly inebriated. I recalled reading a complaint the British had made about American troops during World War II: overpaid, oversexed and over here. Apply that to these college kids and you had spring break in Pelican Bay in a nutshell.