Scorched Eggs

Berkley Prime Crime titles by Laura Childs

Tea Shop Mysteries

DEATH
BY
DARJEELING

GUNPOWDE
R
GREEN

SHADES
OF
EA
RL
GREY

THE
ENGLISH
BREAKFAST
MURDER

THE
JASMINE
MOON
MURDER

CHAMOMILE
MOURNING

BLOOD
ORANGE
BREWING

DRAGONWELL
DEAD

THE
SILVER
NEEDLE
MURDE
R

OOLONG
DEAD

THE
TE
ABERRY
STRANGLER

SCO
NES
&
BONES

AGONY
OF
T
HE
LEAVES

SWEET
TEA
REVENGE

STEEPED
IN
E
VIL

Scrapbooking Mysteries

KEEPSAKE
CRIMES

PHOTO
FINISHED

BOUN
D
FOR
MURDER

MOTIF
F
OR
MURDER

FRILL
KILL

DEATH
SWATCH

TRAGIC
MAGIC

FIBER
&
BRIMSTO
NE

SKELETON
LETTERS

POSTCARDS
FROM
THE
D
EAD

GILT
TRIP

GOSSAM
ER
GHOST

Cackleberry Club Mysteries

EGGS
IN
PU
RGATORY

EGGS
BENEDIC
T
ARNOLD

BEDEVILED
E
GGS

STAKE
&
EGGS

EGGS
IN
A
CASKET

SCORCHED
EGGS

Anthologies

DEATH
BY
DESI
GN

TEA FOR THREE

THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

Published by the Penguin Group

Penguin Group (USA) LLC

375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014

USA • Canada • UK • Ireland • Australia • New Zealand • India • South Africa • China

penguin.com

A Penguin Random House Company

This book is an original publication of The Berkley Publishing Group.

Copyright © 2014 by Gerry Schmitt & Associates, Inc.

Excerpt from
Ming Tea Murder
by Laura Childs copyright © 2014 by Gerry Schmitt & Associates, Inc.

Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

Berkley Prime Crime Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group.

BERKLEY® PRIME CRIME and the PRIME CRIME logo are trademarks of Penguin Group (USA) LLC.

eBook ISBN: 978-1-101-63351-9

Childs, Laura.

Scorched eggs / Laura Childs.—First edition.

pages ; cm.—(A Cackleberry Club mystery ; 6) ISBN 978-0-425-25559-9 (hardcover) 1. Women detectives—Fiction. 2. Arson—Fiction. 3. Murder—Investigation—Fiction. I. Title.

PS3603.H56S365 2014

813'.6—dc23

2014031991

FIRST
EDITION
:
December 2014

Cover illustration by David Leonard.

Cover design by Sarah Oberrender.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

PUBLISHER'S NOTE: The recipes contained in this book are to be followed exactly as written. The publisher is not responsible for your specific health or allergy needs that may require medical supervision. The publisher is not responsible for any adverse reactions to the recipes contained in this book.

This book is for all my terrific teachers at JHS. Especially the ones who taught social studies (sorry I voted for Nixon), chemistry (apologies for that lab explosion), higher algebra (my favorite pi is still apple), English (Steinbeck, yes;
Beowulf
, no), speech (I still use your tricks!), and typing (a skill I use almost every single day).
Thank you very much.

A major thank-you to Sam, Tom, Amanda, Bob, Jennie, Troy, Dan, and all the designers, illustrators, writers, publicists, and sales folk at The Berkley Publishing Group. You are all such a wonderful team. Thank you also to all the booksellers, reviewers, librarians, and bloggers. And special thanks to all my readers and Facebook friends who are so very kind, supportive, and appreciative. I truly love writing for you!

S
UZANNE
didn't know how she felt about Blond Bombshell No. 4 as a hair color, but she was about to find out. Especially since she was sprawled in a red plastic chair roughly the size of a Tilt-a-Whirl car, bravely enduring her “beauty experience” at Root 66, downtown Kindred's premier hair salon. Silver foils that looked like baked-potato wrappers were crimped in her hair, while a sparkly pink '50s-era bubble-top hair dryer hovered above her head, blasting a constant stream of hot air.

Yup, the foils were bad enough, but the droning dryer made Suzanne feel as if her head were being sucked into a jet engine.

Jiggling her foot, tapping her fingers, Suzanne knew she should try to regard this as “me time” as so many women's magazines advocated.

But, all cards on the table, Suzanne felt restless and a little guilty about ducking out of the Cackleberry Club, the cozy little café she ran with her two partners, Toni and Petra. She'd dashed away this Friday afternoon claiming a dire personal emergency. And when you were a silvered blonde who was a tad over forty, the emergence of dark, scuzzy roots all over your head definitely qualified as an emergency.

But now, after all the rigmarole of mixing and tinting and crimping and blow-drying, Suzanne just dreamt of sweet escape.

She glanced around at the five other women, customers in the salon, who seemed perfectly content to sit and be beautified. But scrunched here, paging through an old copy of
Star Whacker
magazine and reading about the questionable exploits of Justin and Miley, didn't seem like the most productive way to spend an afternoon.

“How you doin', gorgeous?” cooed Brett. He bent down and flashed his trademark pussycat grin. Brett was her stylist and a co-owner of Root 66. A man who wore his hair bleached, spiked, and gelled. “Are you in need of a little more pampering? Should I send Krista over to do a French manicure?” He cast a slightly disapproving glance at Suzanne's blunt-cut nails.

“No thanks, I'm fine,” Suzanne told him as she balled her hands into tight fists. What she wanted to tell Brett was that she had working-girl hands. Every day she muscled tables, swept floors, hauled in boxes of groceries, and wrangled two unruly dogs when she finally arrived home at night. In her free time, she stacked hay bales, mucked stalls, and guided her quarter horse, Mocha Gent, through his paces at barrel racing. Oh, and last week, on an egg run to Calico Farms, she'd manhandled a jack and changed a flat tire on her Ford Taurus. Lifestyles of the rich and famous? Here in small-town Kindred? Like . . . not.

Suzanne poked a finger at an annoying tendril of hair that tickled the back of her neck.
Ten more minutes
, she told herself.
Gotta white
knuckle it for ten more minutes. Then I'm outta here.

She knew she should relax and let herself be coddled, but there were things that needed to be done. Kit Kaslik's vintage wedding was tomorrow and she had to figure out what to wear. Toni was babbling about launching a new book club. Her horse, Mocha Gent, still wasn't ready for the Logan County Fair. And Petra was all freaked out about the dinner theater that was coming up fast. And what else? Oh man. She'd gone and invited her boyfriend, Sam, over for dinner next week. And hadn't he promised to bring a bottle of Cabernet if she grilled a steak for him? Yes, she was pretty sure they'd struck that particular deal.

Suzanne drummed her fingers. She wasn't high maintenance, but she was definitely a high-achieving type A. Even so, she projected a certain calm and sense of poise, looking polished but not prim today in a soft denim shirt that was casually knotted at the waist of her trim white jeans. But underneath that denim shirt beat the heart of a racehorse—a thoroughbred who was smart, kind, and the kind of crackerjack businesswoman who could drive a hard bargain or negotiate a sticky contract.

Suzanne shifted in her chair. She figured she had to be parboiled by now. After all, that wasn't her morning spritz of Miss Dior that was wafting through the air. In fact, it smelled more like . . . what?

A few inches of sludgy French roast burning in the back room's Mr. Coffee? A cranked-up curling iron? Someone's hair being fricasseed by hot rollers?

Suzanne peered around suspiciously. Maybe it was Mrs. Krauser, who was tucked under the hair dryer directly across from her. Mrs. Krauser with a swirl of blue hair that perfectly matched her light blue puffed-sleeve blouse.

Wait a minute. Now she really did smell smoke!

Suzanne wiggled her nose and sniffed suspiciously. Was it her? Was
her
hair getting singed?

Tentatively, she touched a hand to the back of her head. She was warm but not overly done. So . . . okay. Peering around again, she felt a faint prickle of anxiety. It had to be Mrs. Krauser over there, blotting at her pink cheeks with a white lace hankie.

But wait
, Suzanne told herself. There was something definitely going on. Something cooking. And it wasn't Brett's complimentary snickerdoodle cookies from his back-room oven.

So where on earth was that smell coming from?

Suzanne ducked her head out from beneath the behemoth hair dryer and gazed around the salon, where everything seemed copasetic.

Still . . . it really did smell like smoke. And were her eyes deceiving her, or did everything suddenly look slightly ethereal and hazy? Like she was peering through a gelled lens?

Holy crap on a cracker! That
was
smoke!

Suzanne scrambled to her feet so fast every pair of eyes in the place was suddenly focused on her.

“I think there's . . .” she said, and then hesitated. Standing in the middle of the beauty shop, with everyone staring at her, she felt a little unsure of herself now. No sense making a ruckus over nothing. But when she inhaled, she definitely detected a nasty, acrid burning scent. A scent that touched the limbic portion of her brain and sent a trickle of fear down her spine.

Smoke. I definitely smell smoke.

“Something's on fire!” Suzanne cried out, trying to make herself heard above the roar of the blow-dryers and the blare of show tunes playing over multiple sets of speakers.

Brett looked up from where he was shampooing a client. “What?” He sounded puzzled as bubbles dripped from his hands. “Something's what?”

But Suzanne had already crossed the linoleum floor in three decisive strides and was pushing her way out the front door. On the sidewalk, smack-dab in the middle of downtown Kindred, the summer breeze caught her. It ripped the foils from her hair and sent her purple cape swirling out around her as if she were some kind of superhero.

And as Suzanne stood there, arms akimbo, knowing something was horribly wrong, she heard a terrifying roar. A rumble like the 4:10 Burlington Northern Santa Fe freight train speed-balling its way through Kindred. Within moments, the roar intensified, building to such a furious pitch that it sounded as if a tornado was barreling down upon the entire town. And then, without any warning whatsoever, the windows in the redbrick building right next door to Root 66 suddenly exploded with an earsplitting, heart-stopping blast. And a molten blizzard of jagged glass, chunks of brick, and wooden splinters belched out into the street!

Suzanne ducked as shards of glass shot past her like arrows! She felt the intense heat as giant tongues of red and orange flames belched from the blown-out windows as if they'd been spewed by World War II flamethrowers.

Fearing for her life, her self-preservation instinct kicking in big-time, Suzanne dove behind a large blue metal sign that proudly proclaimed Logan County Historic Site
.
She buried her face in her hands to shield herself from flying debris, hunched her shoulders, and prayed for deliverance.

A few moments later, Suzanne peered out tentatively and was
shocked to see that the entire building, the old brick building that housed the County Services Bureau, was completely engulfed in flames!

Like a scene out of a Bruce Willis action flick, people suddenly came streaming out of all the surrounding businesses. Realtors, bakers, bankers, and druggists, all screaming hysterically, waving their arms and pointing at what had become a roiling, broiling inferno right in the middle of Main Street. Everyone seemed hysterical, yet nobody was doing much of anything to help.

“Call 911!” Suzanne yelped to Jenny Probst, who ran the Kindred Bakery with her husband, Bill.

Jenny nodded frantically. “We called. We already called. Fire department's on its way.”

Two minutes later, a fire engine roared to the scene. A dozen firemen jumped off the shiny red truck even as they struggled to pull on heavy protective coats and helmets.

“There are people in there!” Suzanne cried to the fireman who seemed to be in charge. She pointed desperately at the building that was now a wild torrent of flames. “You've got to get them out!”

“Stand back, ma'am,” ordered one of the firemen, and Suzanne did. She retreated a few steps and took her place in the middle of the street along with the rapidly growing crowd.

A second fire truck arrived and a metal ladder was quickly cranked up to a second-floor window. To shouts of encouragement from the onlookers, a fireman gamely scrambled up. Then a siren blatted loudly directly behind Suzanne, giving its authoritative
whoop whoop
, and she was forced to move out of the way again. Sheriff Roy Doogie had arrived in his official maroon and tan cruiser, along with two nervous-looking deputies.

Sheriff Doogie, by no means a small man, hopped out and immediately began to bully the crowd back even farther.

“Get back! Give 'em room to work!” Doogie shouted as his khaki bulk quivered. “Get out of the way!”

Then a white ambulance came screaming into the fray and rocked to a stop directly next to Doogie's cruiser. Two grim-faced EMTs jumped out, pulling a metal gurney with them, ready to lend medical assistance.

Thank goodness
, Suzanne thought.

When Suzanne glanced up again, she was thankful to see a terrified-looking woman and a small child clambering over a second-story window ledge and into the waiting arms of the fireman on the ladder.

“That's Annie Wolfson,” said a voice behind her.

Suzanne turned around and found Ricky Wilcox, the young man who was the groom in tomorrow's big wedding, staring fixedly at the rescue that was taking place.

Good
, Suzanne thought.
Annie and her child have been saved
. But what about the folks in the first-floor County Services Bureau? Bruce Winthrop, the county agent. And his longtime secretary, Hannah Venable. What about those poor souls? Were they still inside?

Suzanne's question was partially answered when Winthrop, looking bug-eyed and scared spitless, suddenly crashed through the crowd. Arms flailing, he caromed off her right shoulder and then continued to push his way toward the burning building.

“Hannah!” Winthrop cried, frantically trying to charge through the surging crowd. “Hannah!” He seemed ready to rush into the burning building and save her single-handedly.

“Whoa, whoa!” Suzanne cried out. She dashed forward a couple of steps, snagged Winthrop's arm, and tried to pull him back. But the man was in such a blind panic that he simply shook her off. Suzanne made a final frantic grasp at the back of his tweed sport coat, found some purchase, and fought to reel him in backward. “Wait,” she cried. “You can't go in there. You've got to let the firemen do their jobs.”

Winthrop spun around to look at her, but was in such an anguished state that he didn't display a shred of recognition. His face contorted with fear as he tried to jerk away. “Let me go!” he cried. Then, in a pleading tone, “I've got to go in and get her.”

“No you don't,” Suzanne told him. She grabbed Winthrop's arm and gave a sharp tug that made him suddenly wince. But at least she'd commanded his attention. “Better to alert Doogie,” she said. “He'll send a couple of firemen in to rescue Hannah.”

“Gotta hurry hurry hurry,” Winthrop chattered.

Suzanne waved an arm over her head and cried out, “Doogie! Sheriff Doogie!”

Doogie heard his name called out above the roar of the fire and the nervous mutterings of the crowd. He swiveled his big head around, saw Suzanne, and frowned.

Suzanne pushed closer toward him, dragging Winthrop along with her. “Hannah Venable's still inside,” she shouted. “You've got to send someone in to get her.”

Doogie's eyes widened in surprise and he gave a sharp nod. Then, quick as a wink, he grabbed the fire chief and pulled him into a fast conversation.

“You see?” said Suzanne. She still had a firm grip on Winthrop's arm. “They'll get Hannah out. She'll be okay.”

Winthrop just nodded woodenly as if in a sleepwalker's trance.

The firemen shot thick streams of water at the building now, trying to beat back the flames. As water gushed from fat, brown hoses that crisscrossed the street, the fire hissed with fury but seemed to slowly retreat.

“I think they're gaining on the fire,” Suzanne said to Jenny, who'd taken up a spot in the front lines next to them.

“I hope so,” she said.

Two firemen hastily donned protective gear—full breathing apparatus and special asbestos coats. Then, after a hasty conference with their fire chief, they plunged into the burning building to make the daring rescue.

They were the brave ones, Suzanne thought. They were the ones who risked their lives for others. God bless and keep them.

The firemen working the hoses were definitely gaining a foothold on the fire now. Flames were knocked back as charred beams and red-hot embers sizzled and hissed.

“Getting it under control now,” said Darrel Fuhrman, a man Suzanne recognized as one of Kindred's firemen. He was tall with slicked-back dark hair and eyes that danced with wild excitement.

Suzanne wondered idly why Fuhrman wasn't in the fray lending a hand, as she continued to keep her eyes fixed on the front door of the building, waiting to see Hannah Venable come staggering out. Hannah was the sweet-natured clerk who had manned the front desk at the County Services Bureau for the past fifteen years. She answered phones, kept the books, and handed out brochures on how to grow snap peas, raise baby lambs, and put up fruit jams and jellies without giving your family ptomaine poisoning.