Shoots to Kill Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Teaser chapter

  Praise for the Flower Shop Mysteries

  A Rose from the Dead

  “The tale is wrapped around the wonderful hallmarks of this series: a spirited heroine surrounded by zany characters, humor, and irreverence.” —Romantic Times

  Acts of Violets

  “Abby’s sharp observations bring laughs while the intriguing, tightly plotted mystery keeps you guessing.”

  —Romantic Times

  “A delightful, lighthearted cozy.” —The Best Reviews

  Snipped in the Bud

  “Lighthearted and fast-paced, Collins’s new book is an entertaining read.” —Romantic Times

  Dearly Depotted

  “Abby is truly a hilarious heroine… . Don’t miss this fresh-as-a-daisy read.” —Rendezvous

  “Ms. Collins’s writing style is crisp, her characters fun … and her stories are well thought-out and engaging.”

  —Fresh Fiction

  Slay It with Flowers

  “Upbeat, jocular … an uplifting, amusing, and feel-good amateur sleuth tale.” —The Best Reviews

  “What a delight! Ms. Collins has a flair for engaging characters and witty dialogue.” —Fresh Fiction

  “You can’t help but laugh … an enormously entertaining read.” —Rendezvous

  “Collins has created a delightful amateur sleuth.”

  —Romantic Times

  Mum’s the Word

  “Kate Collins plants all the right seeds to grow a fertile garden of mystery… . Abby Knight is an Indiana florist who cannot keep her nose out of other people’s business. She’s rash, brash, and audacious. Move over, Stephanie Plum. Abby Knight has come to town.”

  —Denise Swanson, author of the Scumble River Mysteries

  “An engaging debut planted with a spirited sleuth, quirky sidekicks, and page-turning action … delightfully addictive … a charming addition to the cozy subgenre. Here’s hoping we see more of intrepid florist Abby Knight and sexy restaurateur Marco Salvare.”

  —Nancy J. Cohen, author of the Bad Hair Day Mysteries

  “A bountiful bouquet of clues, colorful characters, and tantalizing twists … Kate Collins carefully cultivates clues, plants surprising suspects, and harvests a killer in this fresh and frolicsome new Flower Shop Mystery.”

  —Ellen Byerrum, author of A Crime of Fashion Mystery series

  “As fresh as a daisy, with a bouquet of irresistible characters.”

  —Elaine Viets, author of the Dead-End Job Mysteries

  “This engaging read has a list of crazy characters that step off the pages to the delight of the reader. Don’t miss this wannabe sleuth’s adventures.” —Rendezvous

  “This story was cute and funny, had a good plotline [that] entwined a lot of interesting threads … an enjoyable read and a fine debut for this new mystery series.”

  —Dangerously Curvy Novels

  “A charming debut.” —The Best Reviews

  “This amusing new author has devised an excellent cast of characters and thrown them into a cleverly tumultuous plot … a terrific debut!” —Romantic Times

  Other Flower Shop Mysteries

  Mum’s the Word

  Slay It with Flowers

  Dearly Depotted

  Snipped in the Bud

  Acts of Violets

  A Rose from the Dead

  OBSIDIAN

  Published by New American Library, a division of

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  First published by Obsidian, an imprint of New American Library,

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  First Printing, August 2008

  Copyright © Linda Tsoutsouris, 2008

  All rights reserved

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  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  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.

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  eISBN : 978-1-4406-3503-8

  To my great big, wonderful, extended and cojoined

  family, and dear friends, without whom my life

  would have little meaning.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  The idea for this book originated in the creative mind of one of my offspring, who thought a story on identity theft to the max would be a horrible situation for Abby to be in, but a terrific mystery for her to solve. You were right, Jason. Thank you so much for inspiring the story and helping me come up with its unusual twists.

  The accuracy of the procedural and legal matters can be attributed to (or blamed on) my husband, Jim, who has amazingly vast quantities of information, advice, and wisdom to share, and who never complained about having to read the same scene over until I got it right.

&
nbsp; The critiquing fell to my sister, Nancy, who was willing to brainstorm with me whenever I needed her, and who spent hours poring over my chapters, offering her perspective on the unusual situations in which Abby finds herself.

  The integrity of the characters and plot stayed on course under the guidance of my editor, Ellen Edwards, whose opinion I trust and value.

  The encouragement and support came from my family and dear friends, near and far, as always. You are the true jewels in my life.

  The grunt work I did all by myself.

  A big thanks to Pam and Emaly Leak, of Autumn Hill Llamas (www.autumnhillllamas.com), the actual owners of Catastrophe. Pam and Emaly were kind enough to give me a lesson on the care and feeding of these sweet, gentle animals. It didn’t take long for me to understand why the Leaks are so fond of them.

  PROLOGUE

  As far as I knew, being a five-foot-two-inch green-eyed redhead wasn’t a crime.

  “Matron? Can you hear me? There’s been a mistake.”

  Yet there I was, jailed for being a five-foot-two-inch green-eyed redhead. At least that was what the state trooper had told me when he yanked me out of my beloved old Corvette, slapped handcuffs on my wrists, and stuffed me into the backseat of his squad car.

  “Hello? Is anyone out there?” I pressed my ear between the steel bars, listening for a reply. With all that clanging metal and cacophony of female voices ping-ponging against cement-block walls, it was a little hard to hear.

  “I need to talk to you,” I shouted up the hallway. At least a dozen women responded with comments that weren’t helpful, but were pretty colorful.

  “Baby, you’re wastin’ your breath,” came an easy voice from behind me. “You got to wait till breakfast is over. They eatin’ now.”

  “Someone has to be up there,” I muttered. “They wouldn’t leave the post unattended.”

  “Post?” Hearty laughter followed. “Baby, this ain’t no army base. This is lockup.”

  Lockup. I clasped my fingers around the bars and held on as a shudder shook me. I’d seen the lockup once before, but from the other side, during one of my dad’s “educational outings,” designed to scare the bejeepers out of my brothers and me. It was part of my father’s ongoing effort to keep us on the straight and narrow. He’d been a cop in the police department of New Chapel, Indiana, at the time. It had worked well. None of us had ever been on the inside—until now.

  “Hey!” I called up the hallway again. “I need to speak to Sergeant Sean Reilly. Tell him Abby needs to see him right away. He’s a good friend of mine. Seriously. He’ll want to talk to me.”

  “Will you shut up?” someone behind me snarled. “You’re making my head pound.”

  “Matron, please?” I called softly. I waited another few minutes, then leaned my aching forehead against one cold, thick bar. Damn it, where was Dave? I’d used my only phone call on my former boss—now my soon-to-be attorney—and had gotten his voice mail. Didn’t he check his messages?

  Then I remembered that Dave had gone out of town last week for a legal conference and wasn’t due home until later today. And Marco, my hunky knight in shining black leather jacket, the guy who was always there for me … wasn’t there anymore. He and I were history. Finito. My eyes filled with tears. The shock of losing him was so new and raw that I hadn’t fully absorbed it.

  Quickly I blinked back the tears so my cell mates wouldn’t think I was some wimpy little girl. I couldn’t think about Marco now. I had much bigger problems on my plate. I glanced around at my dismal surroundings— the long, narrow room, the stainless steel sink in the corner with the short partition beside it that hid the stinky toilet, the high, barred window on the back wall, the six bunks on a side wall, stacked two high, jutting from the cement blocks, the single lightbulb overhead… . I was actually incarcerated. Me, a harmless florist.

  I glanced down at the putrid orange prison jumpsuit I had been forced to put on, then shut my eyes as the walls began to close in on me. Sweat broke out on my forehead and my hands grew clammy as my claustrophobia clawed its way to the surface. My only hope was that word of my arrest would quickly reach Sergeant Reilly’s ears, because if I didn’t get out of there soon, I was going to have a serious meltdown.

  “Baby, those bars ain’t gonna bend. You might as well stop pullin’ on ’em and have a seat. ’Sides, they ain’t gonna let you out until you been arraigned.”

  “I know how it works,” I muttered weakly. “I went to law school.”

  “You did? You a lawyer then? Well, that’s a whole ’nother situation. You hear that, girls? We got ourselves a bona fide—”

  “I’m not a lawyer,” I said, cutting off the sudden excited chatter. “I didn’t make it.”

  “You run outta money, or what?”

  “Brains.” Like I needed to be reminded of that particular failure now. “If you don’t mind, I’d rather not go into it.”

  “So, what are you in for?”

  Her questions weren’t helping my glum mood. “No one would tell me. All I know is that I didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “Sugar, that’s what everyone says.”

  “I don’t care what everyone says,” I snapped. “I’m innocent.”

  “Well, someone’s got herself some attitude.”

  There were snickers at her comment.

  “And someone’s got herself too many nosy questions, ” I retorted.

  Silence.

  Ticking off an inmate probably wasn’t the smartest thing to do, considering I had nowhere to hide, so I loosened my grip on the bars and turned to apologize. There were five women in with me, each on her own bunk. One was a pasty-skinned, emaciated middle-aged white woman who was so blotto that her eyes kept crossing. She was lying on a second-tier bunk, one arm hanging limply off the side. On another bunk was a young Latina with long, dark hair, who looked like she was barely in high school.

  On a lower bunk was a woman who desperately needed a good bath and possibly a delousing. Beyond her lay a woman displaying multihued tattoos on her arms and neck. One bunk farther was an attractive black woman sporting an ugly purple bruise on her jaw and another around one eye. She was giving me a scowl. Clearly, this was the woman I’d offended.

  “Sorry,” I said to the scowler. “I’m getting some major claustrophobia here and it makes me extremely edgy.”

  Her expression softened. “Yep, this place’ll surely do that to you.”

  “I tried to explain my condition to the state trooper, but he didn’t care.”

  “Did you think he would?”

  Well, actually, I had, but I didn’t want to admit it now for fear of showing my naïveté. I’d even pulled out my ace in the hole, telling the trooper that my dad was a twenty-year veteran of the New Chapel police force, but he’d just ignored me. He’d laughed out loud when I said I hadn’t done anything wrong. The only thing he seemed to give a rip about was whether I understood my Miranda rights. I told him what he could do with those rights. It hadn’t improved my situation.

  “You’d better sit down, honey,” the woman called. “Come on over here. I won’t bite.”

  I peered up the hallway again, but it was still empty. Taking a deep breath, I made it across the narrow room in three strides and plunked down on the edge of her bunk, resting my head against the chilly cement wall behind me. I hoped the bunk would hold both our weights. My cell mate was a good-sized woman and I wasn’t exactly anorexic myself.

  The woman stuck out a beautifully manicured hand, where each nail had its own personality. “Lavender Beals.”

  “Abby Knight.” I shook her hand, then gave a start at a loud clang, hoping it meant someone had heard my calls for help. But no one appeared, so I sank back against the wall. “Will the matron come by when she’s done eating?”

  “You never been here before, have you?”

  “Once, when I was ten, on a field trip.”

  “I was eighteen my first time, but it wasn’t for no field trip. This is my third vis
it, all told, and each time it’s been because of that bastard I married. I got rid of him this time, though—for good. He done slugged me for the last time.”

  I eyed her warily. “You got rid of him?”

  “I didn’t kill him, baby, just kicked his booty right out.”

  “If he hit you, why are you in jail?”

  “I took a baseball bat to his windshield, just to show him I meant business. Now I get to cool my heels here until Thursday.”

  “For hitting his windshield? Why so long?”

  “’Cause I don’t have the money to hire a lawyer, so the court appointed me one, and now I got to wait until the next hearing date, and that’s Thursday.”

  “Can’t you get someone to post bail money for you?”

  “Baby, what you been sniffing? Nobody I know’s got that kind of money.”

  “How long have you been in here?”

  “Six days now.”

  “Six days, plus another three …” I could feel my indignation rising. “Do you realize that you’ll probably get less jail time than that for smashing the windshield?”

  “ ’Course I realize it. What am I gonna do about it?” Lavender nudged the underside of one of the bunks above us. “This here’s Maria. She’s sixteen—shouldn’t even be in here—but she was with two boys who TP’d and egged her neighbor’s house.”

  “What?” I stood up so I could see the girl. My claustrophobia was receding as fast as my outrage was growing. “You’re in the adult lockup for throwing toilet paper and eggs?”

  Maria shook her head, her eyes huge in a tiny face. “I didn’t throw the eggs. I just tossed rolls of paper into the trees.”

  “And you were jailed for that?”

  “See, sugar, it’s all about having political connections, ” Lavender explained. “That fatheaded neighbor of hers wasn’t about to let some little punks get away with pranking him, so he raised a stink with a councilman he knows and got the kids waived to adult court to prove how important he is. If he gets his way, Maria will have a criminal record. Ruin her life in the process. Won’t that make him feel important?”

  “How long have you been here?” I asked Maria.