Murder of a Creped Suzette

Copyright © Denise Swanson Stybr, 2011

All rights reserved

To my good friend, and trivia team member

extraordinaire, Beverlee (Angel) Porter.

Thank you for nearly single-handedly spreading the word

about my books throughout Canada.

Acknowledgments

A big thank-you to Donna Sears for telling me about a music promoter trying to turn her town into the “Branson of the West.”

Author’s Note

In July of 2000, when the first book in my Scumble River series, Murder of a Small-Town Honey, was published, it was written in “real time.” It was the year 2000 in Skye’s life as well as mine, but after several books in a series, time becomes a problem. It takes me from seven months to a year to write a book, and then it is usually another year from the time I turn that book in to my editor until the reader sees it on a bookstore shelf. This can make the timeline confusing. Different authors handle this matter in different ways. After a great deal of deliberation, I decided that Skye and her friends and family would age more slowly than those of us who don’t live in Scumble River. So to catch everyone up, the following is when the books take place:

Murder of a Small-Town Honey—August 2000

Murder of a Sweet Old Lady—March 2001

Murder of a Sleeping Beauty—April 2002

Murder of a Snake in the Grass—August 2002

Murder of a Barbie and Ken—November 2002

Murder of a Pink Elephant—February 2003

Murder of a Smart Cookie—June 2003

Murder of a Real Bad Boy—September 2003

Murder of a Botoxed Blonde—November 2003

Murder of a Chocolate-Covered Cherry—April 2004

Murder of a Royal Pain—October 2004

Murder of a Wedding Belle—June 2005

Murder of a Bookstore Babe—September 2005

And this is when the Scumble River short story and novella take place:

“Not a Monster of a Chance” from And the Dying Is Easy—June 2001

“Dead Blondes Tell No Tales” from Drop-Dead Blonde—March 2003

Scumble River is not a real town. The characters and events portrayed in these pages are entirely fictional, and any resemblance to living persons is pure coincidence.

CHAPTER 1

“Walking the Floor Over You”

Skye Denison had to admit that Flint James was hot. Neither the engagement ring on her finger nor her utter aversion to sports of any kind altered the fact that the pro quarterback turned country singer looked like a Greek statue—if statues wore cowboy hats, had smoky whiskey-colored eyes, and sported really good tans.

Flint leaned on the side railing of Scumble River Park’s newly constructed grandstand, gazing at the early evening sky. The rising star appeared unconcerned about whatever was transpiring at the back of the stage, where a cluster of guys wearing jeans, T-shirts, and baseball caps surrounded a man dressed in an expensive country-western-style suit.

To Skye, the group of men looked like the featured critters in a Whac-A-Mole game—first one head would pop up, scan the audience, and duck back down; then another and another, before starting the process all over again. It was obvious that something was wrong, but what? While the others appeared merely irritated, Mr. Suit looked apoplectic.

According to the liberally distributed flyers, the program was supposed to start at six thirty. It was already a quarter to seven, and although the park was ablaze with lights and there were amplifiers scattered around the stage’s perimeter, nothing was happening.

Perhaps the out-of-towners didn’t understand how much the good citizens of Scumble River valued punctuality, but Skye knew that if something didn’t happen soon, people would begin to leave. Small-town Illinoisans considered arriving fifteen minutes early as the equivalent of being on time, the stated hour as barely acceptable, and anything afterward as intolerably late.

The only thing that might persuade everyone to hang around was the complimentary refreshments. An open bar tended to keep most Scumble Riverites happy for quite a while.

Skye fanned herself with the old grocery list she had found in the pocket of her khaki capris and watched for her fiancé, Wally Boyd. As chief of police, he was on duty tonight.

Usually he wouldn’t be working on a Saturday night, but the entire Scumble River police force—six full-time officers and two part-timers—was patrolling this event. An affair like this one needed all the crowd control available. It wasn’t often that a celebrity like Flint James performed anywhere near Scumble River, let alone at a free concert.