Calamity Jayne Heads West

CRITICS ARE CHARMED BY

KATHLEEN BACUS AND CALAMITY JAYNE!

CALAMITY JAYNE GOES TO COLLEGE

“Calamity Jayne rides again in the light-hearted, fun story that also encompasses an interesting and well-plotted mystery. It’s nice to have a heroine who knows her limits and isn’t so secretive, but shares her thoughts and ideas with those around her.”

—RT BOOKreviews

“Outlandish chick-lit blended with comical sleuthing make this mystery a winner. Kathleen Bacus lets the personalities of her distinctive characters run free with sharp dialogue and quick-witted introspection. More outlandish than Stephanie Plum, more unorthodox than Nancy Drew and funnier than anything I’ve read in a long time, this Tressa Jayne Turner chick-lit comedy mystery is a guaranteed good time!”

—Fresh Fiction

“Tressa is hilarious, both in her thoughts and actions. Her antics may be over-the-top, but they keep her both humble and loveable….Lively, quick-paced, full of memorable characters, and laugh-out-loud funny, this is a great pick for both mystery and romance fans.”

—Romance Junkies

GHOULS JUST WANT TO HAVE FUN

“An enjoyable, easygoing mystery…A slight touch of the paranormal gives this title a nice twist.”

—RT BOOKreviews

“
Ghouls Just Want to Have Fun
is a hilariously funny story with a hint of suspense and my favorite heroine, Tressa “Calamity” Jayne Turner doing what she does best….Get ready for a roaring good time when you open up
Ghouls
Just Want to Have Fun.
”

—Romance Reviews Today

MORE PRAISE FOR KATHLEEN BACUS

AND CALAMITY JAYNE!

CALAMITY JAYNE RIDES AGAIN

“Bacus provides lots of small-town fun with this lovable, fair-haired klutz and lively story, liberally salted with dumb-blond jokes….It’s even better paired with the hilarious first book of the series,
Calamity Jayne
.”

—
Booklist
, Starred Review

“With potential wacky disasters lurking around every corner, Bacus takes readers on a madcap journey through Tressa’s world of zany characters and intrigue…A cute comedy infused with a light mystery in a fun, small-town setting, this novel is enjoyable.”

—RT BOOKreviews

CALAMITY JAYNE

“Bacus’s riotous romantic suspense debut offers plenty of small-town charm and oddball characters...Filled with dumb-blonde jokes, nonstop action and rapid-fire banter, this is a perfect read for chick-lit fans who enjoy a dash of mystery.”

—Publishers Weekly

“Frothy and fun...”

—RT BOOKreviews

“Making her entrance into the world of romance with a story full of mishaps, danger, and well-crafted characters, Kathleen Bacus does a superb job with
Calamity Jayne
. This reviewer can’t wait for more...”

—Romance Reviews Today

THE NEWEST CALAMITY

“Why are you here, Tressa?” Townsend asked.

I shook my head and water flew from the tangled mass. “What do you mean? I came to retrieve my property from a demented little toadstool,” I said, squeezing more water out of my hair.

“But what brought you to the hotel in the middle of the night?” Townsend asked, and I knew what he wanted to hear. And the sexually frustrated part of me wanted to tell him what he wanted to hear.

“
You
did,” I found myself saying. It was, after all, the truth.

“I did?”

I nodded. “I was...concerned,” I said, picking my words carefully. But then what had seemed like a certainty when I was lying in bed now seemed fanciful at best. I took a deep breath. “I think someone is after Kookamunga.”

CALAMITY JAYNE GOES TO COLLEGE
GHOULS JUST WANT TO HAVE FUN
CALAMITY JAYNE RIDES AGAIN

CALAMITY JAYNE

CALAMITY     JAYNE
HEADS WEST

KATHLEEN BACUS

LOVE SPELL
^®

October 2007

Published by

Dorchester Publishing Co., Inc.

200 Madison Avenue

New York, NY 10016

If you purchased this book without a cover you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”

Copyright © 2007 by Kathleen Cecile Bacus

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher, except where permitted by law.

ISBN-10: 0-505-52733-2

ISBN-13: 978-0-505-52733-2

The name “Love Spell” and its logo are trademarks of Dorchester Publishing Co., Inc.

Printed in the United States of America.

Visit us on the web at
www.dorchesterpub.com
.

Thanks, Daddy Buck, for everything.

‘Parnelli’

CALAMITY JAYNE HEADS WEST

CHAPTER ONE

A plane is on its way to Phoenix when a blonde in economy gets up, moves to the first-class section and sits down. The flight attendant watches her do this and asks to see her ticket. She then tells the blonde that she paid for economy and that she will have to sit in the back. The blonde replies, “I’m blonde, I’m beauti-ful, I’m going to Phoenix, and I’m staying right here!” The flight attendant goes into the cockpit and tells the pilot and copilot that there’s some blonde bimbo sitting in first class who belongs in economy and won’t move back to her seat. The copilot goes to the blonde and tries to explain that because she only paid for economy she will have to leave and return to her seat. The blonde replies, “I’m blonde, I’m beautiful, I’m going to Phoenix, and I’m staying right here!” The copilot tells the pilot that he probably should have the police waiting when they land to arrest this woman. The pilot says, “You say she’s a blonde? I’ll handle her. I’m married to a blonde—I
speak
blonde!” He goes back to the blonde, takes off his hat, bends over and whispers in her ear. She abruptly stands and says, “Oh . . . I’m sorry,” passes her hand through her hair and moves back to her seat in economy. The flight at-tendant and copilot are amazed and ask the pilot what he said to make her move. The pilot just grins. “I told her first class isn’t going to Phoenix.”

I know what you’re thinking. Everybody loves a good dumb blonde joke, right? Uh, think again, pil-grim. I hear them so often I see them acted out in my dreams at night. There’s the one about the poor, dumb blonde tied to the railroad tracks. Her biggest concern? That the oncoming train will change the part in her hair. Or the blonde who tripped over the cordless phone and sprang a leak in her silicone im-plant. Or the blonde who spent twenty minutes staring at the orange juice can because it said “concentrate.” What a laugh riot. I’m doubling over here, folks. You?

My grandma—a blonde before her hair turned the color of toilet-bowl cleaner—swears blonde jokes are part of a vast brunette conspiracy. You know. It’s a by-product of the Blondes Have More Fun ad campaign that fueled the fires of discontent of envious brunettes everywhere and put blondes forever in their mahogany-colored crosshairs. Yikes!

Blonde jokes are the bane of my existence—along with my hair, which could do double duty as a scour-ing pad. They’re like bunions are to my gramma. Come to think of it, blonde jokes seem to have been around just as long as my gammy’s bunions. Hmmm. I wonder if there’s a connection.

Some folks swear I’m living-and-breathing inspiration for my own cockeyed collection of dumb blonde jokes—an assertion I downright dispute. My official position on the matter? Prove it. I will ante up being somewhat notorious in my little hunk of heartland heaven, though. My name is Tressa Turner. Tressa Jayne Turner. But thanks to a drop-dead gorgeous ranger named Rick, who is the only guy I know who can make my heart go pitter-patter one minute and give me indiges-tion the next, to my hometown homeys in Grandville, Iowa, USA, I’m better known as
Calamity
.

No, not
that
Calamity Jane—although I do like to think she and I have a few things in common. For one, we’re both cool cowgirls with a bit of a rebellious streak thrown in to keep things interesting. Two, we’re devastatingly attractive to men. Well . . . okay, you caught me. I admit I’m not your traditional beauty queen material—although I was State Fair Rodeo Queen runner-up one year. But for all I know, the orig-inal Calamity Jane was so homely that even horseflies wouldn’t look at her twice. With her sidearm skills plus that harmless little ol’ rebellious streak I mentioned earlier, I doubt anyone was foolhardy enough to sug-gest she was any less purty than a newborn filly with four white stockings and a matching blaze on its head. Unless they had visions of suicide by a Wild West sharpshooter, that is.

I’m your basic twenty-first-century, cute cowgirl type. Born and raised in small-town Iowa, I grew up loving horses, dogs, John Wayne movies, and beef—sadly for my hips and thighs, not always in that order. Growing up I always thought I’d have made a kick-ass Mattie Ross in the film version of
True Grit
. Well, ex-cept for that hideous bowl cut the actress had going. And that scene in the rattlesnake den? Big-time deal breaker.

Iowans worship John Wayne. Maybe because he was born in Winterset we feel like Duke was one of us. Sim-ply say the word “grit,” and John Wayne with an eye-patch pops into our heads.

Being from rural Iowa is both a blessing and a curse. In a town as small as Grandville—population: seventhousand—you have a sense of community and kin-ship pretty much impossible to replicate in larger cities. Someone dies in Grandville, the family gets enough casseroles, pies, and mac and cheese to feed the Carlisle Septuplets for a month.

That close-knit connection, however, comes with a cost. It’s almost impossible to get by with much of any-thing that the entire population doesn’t know all about. That’s not a bad thing when you’ve made the dean’s list or the state basketball tournament, but it’s not exactly ideal when you have a history of misadventures that in-volve murder, malicious mischief, moldering mansions and matrimonial madness. (Not my matrimonial mad-ness, thank goodness. Just in case you’re wondering.) In the last twelve months I’ve played hide and seek with a dead body, tag with a felonious dunk-tank clown, cat-and- mouse with a chiller-thriller author, and college-edition Clue with a campus criminal.

Uh, no. Funny you should ask. I’m not a cop by pro-fession, although I have spent a respectable amount of time in various law enforcement interrogation and in-terview rooms lately. I’m a journalist. Kind of. Sort of. Of the aspiring variety. A jill-of-all-trades—that pretty much describes my colorful and varied job history. I’ve worked my way through enough different voca-tions that I finally feel somewhat confident I’ve discov-ered what I want to be when I grow up. I’m just finding it a wee bit of a challenge to be taken seriously as a professional print journalist when folks still recall the time my horse crapped in the mayor’s open con-vertible at the Fourth of July parade. Or when I made the front page of my employer’s biggest competitor’s newspaper dressed as the Wicked Witch of the West and doing the tango with a geriatric Van Helsing. It would be fair to say my nickname’s been harder for me to live down than
Gigli
for Ben and Jen.

In between working as a cub reporter at the
Grandville Gazette
and as assistant chief cook and bottle washer at my Uncle Frank’s Dairee Freeze, taking (and passing) college courses and getting my best friend married off, I’m also posing as fiancée to one very large and very mysterious felon—I mean fellow—much to the dismay of one certain ranger-type. To further com-plicate matters, I’m still attempting to decide if Ranger Rick Townsend, an Iowa Division of Natural Resources officer who would set a sales record for
Midwest Outdoors
if they stuck him on their cover, is the man for me—and if I’m the conflicted cowgirl for him. Sometimes I’m convinced that I could never settle for any other guy. Other times, I’m equally certain the studly ranger could never settle for just one gal. Sounds like something from my grandma’s daytime TV shows, no?
The Days of
Our Celibate Lives. The Carp Cop Casanova and the Con-fused
.
Ranger Romeo Meets Calamity Jayne
. Sigh.

While we’re on the subject of relationships, it ap-pears my seventy-year-old gammy is about to sample the joys of sex on a rather more frequent basis than her twenty-four-year-old granddaughter. How sad and pathetic is that? (Uh, no need to respond. That ques-tion was your basic rhetorical one.)

Things get even better. Gram’s fixin’ to hitch her wagon to a long-in-the-tooth
Townsend,
no less. My Grandma Turner recently became engaged to Joe Townsend—Ranger Rick Townsend’s grandfather! Now, don’t get me wrong. I think the world of ol’ Joe. He was the Van Helsing I was tangoing with last Halloween in that photo. It’s just that some even scarier mental im-ages pop into my head when I think of Joltin’ Joe, a se-nior citizen with a James Bond complex housed in a Pee-Wee Herman physique, getting it on with my gammy, who, in her younger days, was known as Hellion Hannah. My grandma collects anatomically-enhancedfertility statues—think Priapus on Viagra—never skips those hot, steamy sex scenes in romance novels—okay, she even highlights them for quick and easy reference later, and reads them out loud to me in the evenings—and I probably have her to thank for bequeathing me her predilection for getting into pickles. And we’re not talking the kosher kind here, folks.

As a result, I’m just a teensy bit tense. Okay, so I’ve ac-tually developed this rather unbecoming nervous twitch that has on occasion been confused with a grand mal seizure whenever I ponder these nuptials. Especially considering a good chunk of the Turner/Townsend clans were headed to points west to formally celebrate the auspicious union.

Considering the dynamic duo’s history of doing their own thing—which usually spells trouble for Tressa—I’d initially supported a long engagement. “Take your time,” I’d encouraged, reminding them that the glow of true love can often diminish when confronted with whiskers on the sink (Joe’s, not Gammy’s . . . I hope), and panty hose on the curtain rod (Gammy’s, not Joe’s . . . I hope), and toenail clip-pings on the nightstand. (Gotta level with you, folks. This one here’s a toss-up.)

With my gramma taking up residence with me last fall, however, I must confess the idea of her moving out of our shared double-wide trailer outside Grandville and into Joe’s residence morphed into a dangling car-rot this little blond bunny was finding very hard to re-sist. Coupled with the thought of helping Gram pack up the phallic statues in the living room, and an op-portunity to have intimate encounters of my own with-out worrying my gramma would wander in wearing nothin’ but her dentures and wooly socks, said dan-gling carrot was now dipped in chocolate and coated with colorful candy sprinkles.

Wedding plans were hastily made, but I was having none of attendant duties. I’d just finished a stint as maid of honor for my friend, Kari, and that hadn’t gone real well. Trust me on this one, folks. When you can use the words “strip club,” “raid,” and “attempted murder” as matrimonial scrapbook moments . . . well, you don’t want to go there. Or, I didn’t.

As a result, Gram insisted her daughter—my Aunt Kay—must perform that role. My dad’s twin sister lives in northern Arizona. Aunt Kay is a media specialist at the Flagstaff Public Library. Her husband, my Uncle Ben (yeah, like the rice) is an art professor turned artist. His work is regularly sold in a pricey little art gallery in nearby Sedona, an elite tourist community with upscale souvenir shops and an eclectic collection of yummy eateries.

(I suppose this is as good a time as any to mention that I enjoy food. I manage to avoid rampant obesity only by virtue of the fact that I usually hold down a minimum of two jobs, feed and care for a small herd of horseflesh, and look out for two hairy golden labs big as miniature horses that, unfortunately, leave the watchdog duties to me. And living with a senior citizen who loves a walk on the wild side even if she has to use a walker to get her there, and who is about to hook up with a fellow AARP member with a gift for sticking his nose where it doesn’t belong, I burn calories more ef-ficiently than my Uncle Frank’s new ninety-three per-cent energy efficient Dairee Freeze furnace burns heating fuel.)

So, Gram and Joe agreed to a short civil ceremony at our local courthouse to “make it legal,” after which the entire family was fixing to fly out to Phoenix for a small but tasteful exchanging of vows that would take place in Flagstaff. As an added incentive, Gram and Joe had insisted the entire family join them to cele-brate on their weeklong honeymoon cruise and, as Gram put it, “help the new blended family bond.” I’d begged off, citing one how-low-can-you-go bank bal-ance, two bosses, five critters and ten post-Easter pounds, compliments of a serious, long-term Cadbury Crème Egg addiction that made the idea of squeezing into a swimsuit and showing off what spills out around the edges about as appealing as helping my gammy wax her mustache . . . or any other part of her body for that matter.

I finally caved when Gram and Joe went ahead and purchased my nonrefundable passage—my birthday and Christmas presents from them for the next five years—and I found out a certain ranger with a certain booty that a certain cowgirl fantasizes about seeing in a bright red Speedo . . . or on a nudes-only beach somewhere—was to be a fellow passenger. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Contrary to what you may have heard, Tressa’s momma didn’t raise no dummy.

“So. You packed yet?”

I was in my bedroom at the open door of my closet, staring at hangers that held too many khakis from too many days employed at Bargain City, a local discount chain store; assorted T-shirts with cute cowgirl slogans for leisure time; hoodies, jeans, and low-rise slacks for the newspaper. I turned to discover my gramma in the doorway. With white beauty cream slathered on her face and her hair in a shower cap, she looked like something from
Scary Movie
’s 60th Reunion.

“Does underwear count?” I asked.

“Underwear?” My gammy’s eyebrows met above her nose.

“You know, the garments we wear under our cloth-ing to protect our modesty—and the sensibilities of the seeing public. You did pack underwear, didn’t you?” I asked.

“Guess I’m not done packin’, after all,” she said. I winced. “You better get a move on. We leave Saturday,” she reminded me.

“I’m not sure what to take,” I replied, frowning at my closet contents again.

The last time I’d packed for an extended trip I’d been about fifteen. It was our last family vacation. My brother, Craig, had just graduated and was about to head off to college, so the folks thought we needed a final family fling. Paw Paw Will had died the previous winter, and the folks thought the trip would do my grandma some good. Me being . . . well, me, I’d packed a nice assortment of chocolate bars in my suit-case. (You know: Have chocolate, will travel.) Outside Wichita, the AC in our car went out. By the time we hit our hotel that night, my sister Taylor had gotten car-sick four times and Gramma had to stop six more times for calls of nature. And my suitcase? Well, let’s just say if I’d dressed in any of the clothing I’d packed, Willy Wonka would’ve been all over me. Not a pleasant mental image. Unless, of course, Johnny Depp was Wonka.