Hoedown Showdown Read online

  Table of Contents

  Excerpt

  Praise for Misty Simon and Ivy Morris

  Hoedown Showdown

  Copyright

  Dedication

  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

  Epilogue

  A word about the author…

  Thank you for purchasing this publication of The Wild Rose Press, Inc.

  I had few choices right now. I have to admit here that I had no desire whatsoever to call the police. I didn’t want to be involved in things. I had plans this week. This was not going to keep me from swinging from the freaking chandelier if I could.

  Of course, I could go across the street and call from the house, or have Ben call and then remove myself from the situation altogether. But that would be completely unfair to Mrs. Crandall.

  I couldn’t help myself. I let out a scream that would have brought down an opera house, something between frustration and fright because, at that moment, something furry ran against my leg before shooting into the bushes.

  In the end, the decision of what to do was taken out of my hands because the police came tearing up in the one marked car in town, screeching to a halt at the curb. A man in uniform was out of the car before I could blink again. And I’m glad I didn’t blink because I would have missed the way he jumped from the car and then did a forward roll across the front lawn as if he was in some crazy-assed shootout.

  Praise for Misty Simon and Ivy Morris

  “I can’t seem to read the books in this series fast enough. They are so much fun! Ivy keeps me laughing. Some of the antics of the women in town had me laughing out loud!”

  ~unknown credit

  ~*~

  “The author has done a great job of intertwining a few mysteries and putting plenty of twists and turns into the plot. I highly recommend this book.”

  ~Dawn Dowdle

  ~*~

  “Laugh out loud funny, Misty Simon has given us a character to root for. You go Ivy!!!”

  ~Angela Hayes, author

  ~*~

  “I loved this book. I was laughing during most of it. I enjoyed the characters and I like how they seem like people you would want to be friends with. …If you like to laugh and have a bit of mystery followed by a growing romance, here is the book for you. I highly recommend you give this book a try!!”

  ~Rae, My Book Addiction and More (4.5 Stars)

  ~*~

  “I found it to be an interesting cozy mystery with an odd mystery and enough love for everybody. What more could you want?”

  ~Aloe, Long and Short Reviews (4 Stars)

  Hoedown Showdown

  by

  Misty Simon

  Ivy Morris Mysteries, Book Six

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either 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.

  Hoedown Showdown

  COPYRIGHT © 2017 by Misty Simon

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the author or The Wild Rose Press, Inc. except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  Contact Information: [email protected]

  Cover Art by Debbie Taylor

  The Wild Rose Press, Inc.

  PO Box 708

  Adams Basin, NY 14410-0708

  Visit us at www.thewildrosepress.com

  Publishing History

  First Mainstream Mystery Rose Edition, 2017

  Print ISBN 978-1-5092-1233-0

  Digital ISBN 978-1-5092-1234-7

  Ivy Morris Mysteries, Book Six

  Published in the United States of America

  Dedication

  To everyone who’s loved Ivy over the years…

  and to Nan Swanson, editor extraordinaire.

  Thank you for giving Ivy a chance to shine again!

  Chapter One

  While the kids were away, the mommy and daddy would play. Or so I thought. But now I was stumbling over a plethora (good word, but no time to enjoy it because I was hopping mad) of tomato plants lining every conceivable inch of our house, which, understandably, was making for some serious irritation.

  I took a deep breath to calm myself so that I would not have a banshee moment with my husband. Of course, that almost never worked.

  “Benjamin Fallon, you have got to move this damned tomato thing and its UV light out of the hallway…” I trailed off in abject horror as my gaze landed on a new addition to the already limited space. My voice was about forty decibels louder when I started in again. “And when did you bring in these horrid gnomes?”

  We’d had some pretty strange conversations in this house, but this had to be one of the strangest. We had just gotten back from hours in the car to take our twins to Ben’s parents in New York. I had been looking forward to down time, and now I was faced with gnomes and hot lights and tomatoes. In my house. In my hallway. I was not amused.

  The Ivy Morris-Fallon of almost seven years ago, being not amused, would have hidden somewhere while holding something brown and coming up with witty rejoinders hours later. Now, I had that backbone I had lacked before moving to Martha’s Point, Virginia, and the world better watch out. Well, maybe not the entire world. Definitely Ben, though.

  “Babe.” Ben spread his arms wide and gave me a cheeky smile. “Come on, now, Ivy. I called Jared when we stopped for that bathroom break. He came over to put all the plants in the house while we were gone. It’s only for a little bit longer. Promise. The Tasty Tomato Tournament is five days from now, and then they’ll all be out. Swear. And my little plants need their gnomes to grow and be happy.”

  To calm myself down (since the deep breath hadn’t worked), I tried to say Tasty Tomato Tournament three times fast in my head. It failed to do the job too.

  However, I did bring the decibels back into a non-glass-shattering range.

  “Look, Ben.” I pinched the bridge of my nose, blew out a breath, and tried again in an even softer voice. “I said it was fine to do the tomato thing. I’m even okay with them in the house for a short time, but I did not agree to gnomes. In the garden, grudgingly. In the house, no way. Not even for another hour, much less the next five days.” And that was final, at least in my mind.

  Ben’s, not so much.

  “Babe…” He reached for me, and I sidestepped him. As much as I enjoyed his full-body hugs, and believe me I did, he was not going to distract me. He tried to entice me with a glimpse of that dimple in his cheek that I had often licked in the last seven years. His eyes went a-wandering, and I almost—almost—gave in. But then I looked down, and one of those little gnome buggers was staring at me. I swear! Freakiest thing ever.

  I backed away with my hands tucked in my pockets. “Nope, Ben, not going to work this time. The tomatoes and the lights can stay, because I know you’re worried about whoever is running around destroying other people’s crops, but I can’t abide the gnomes. They have to go.”

  He tried the dimples again. They did not work. Finally, he shook his head as I gathered up the gnome who had been staring at me and one other to begin the trudge into the back yard, Be
n pleading behind me all the way. He could just keep on doing that if it made him happy. I was not changing my mind.

  As he shadowed me out the back door, I turned around and glared at him. I pointed one particularly jolly-looking gnome toward the bedroom. “Go. Get in the shower now, or we’re going to be late for our reservations at Jerry’s, and that will get you none tonight.”

  “How about some now?” He stood in the doorway with his sexy smile on and did a little hip wiggle. This was supposed to be our first week alone since the kids had come along. Needless to say, it was not starting out in the fashion I’d thought. Why had I hoped it would?

  “Shower. Now.” But I laughed a little as I walked out back. He was a pain sometimes, but he was mine, and that was enough. These almost seven years of marriage had made me better at compromise, even with the backbone, but the gnomes had to go. No doubt about that.

  Our back yard was now a virtual oasis of vegetation. Where pre-Ben I had just let whatever grew there grow, I now had all manner of vegetables in the garden. Shrubs bloomed here and there; trees and flowers came up in clusters. My master gardener had really come through with his green thumb and love of digging in the dirt. I couldn’t fault him, because of how pretty the yard looked, even if I did fault him for the gnome invasion.

  I was on my fourth trip of gnome moving when our neighbor across the street, Mrs. Crandall, came trucking across the pavement. Well, trucking might have been a little too ambitious, since it was more of a creak and shuffle, with her ever-present cane, after eighty-four years on this earth.

  “Ben!” She waved her hands as if I couldn’t see her. “Ben! Is that you, Ben?”

  “No, Mrs. Crandall. It’s Ivy. I’m right here.” I stepped out from behind the bower Ben had put in at the side of the house that would soon be covered in night-blooming jasmine. Loved that stuff. It smelled amazing!

  “Oh, Ivy. Thank goodness I found you! I need to see that husband of yours, Ben, immediately.” Peering at me through glasses thick enough to stop bullets, she shouted as if her hearing aid was not turned up. Oy!

  I didn’t shout back. Be proud of me. “Well, Mrs. Crandall, he’s actually in the shower, but he should be done soon. I can take you inside if you’d like.” I did a quick mental sweep of how messy the house was and didn’t come up too entirely happy. Then again, the woman had a hard time telling the difference between Ben and me. I doubted she was going to break out the white gloves.

  “No, going into the house is not going to help my dilemma. Are you sure he can’t come outside?” She peered at me now over the rims of those glasses, like Ben would come waltzing out of the house, proving to her that I was lying. She used to be a schoolteacher, so I guess that could account for some of her skepticism.

  “I’m positive.” I added a smile for effect.

  “Well, then, I guess you’re just going to have to do.” She twisted her gnarled hands together, which made me wonder what exactly the “it” I was going to be doing entailed.

  Didn’t I feel like the special person of the day. “What do you need help with?” Probably something about trimming her hedges, or getting something off the top shelf of her vast pantry. She’d called Ben over for much less, even having him do what she called reconnaissance on a spider once, a tiny little garden-variety spider that you would have thought was a tarantula, based on her hysterics.

  After smacking her hands together, she put them on her little waist. “I have an issue in my shed that I need you to come take care of.”

  Well, crap. I was very, very tempted to go in and grab Ben anyway. Surely he was done in the shower. I got momentarily distracted by thinking about all that Ben in the master bathroom, steam up to here and nothing between me and him but a piece of glass I could easily and quietly slide aside to get into the shower behind him…

  “Ahem!”

  Right. Not the time for steam dreaming. Still, I could go see if he was out of the shower so he could come over and take care of whatever would be in the shed. But then again, I was a big girl, and I could take care of a little spider. If it was too much for me, I could always call animal control or pest control. I would probably even be inclined to pay for it if I had to.

  “Lead the way,” I said. “We’ll take care of whatever’s in your shed.”

  She smiled at me, flashing dentures that were pearlier white than anything had a right to be. They nearly glowed in the setting sun. Right about then I started to get a bad feeling in my stomach.

  When was I ever going to learn to trust my gut?

  The walk wasn’t far, but it was far enough that it gave me time to come up with a ton of scenarios in my poor little brain to make my skin crawl. What if it was a snake? Or a rabid squirrel? I had a feeling Mrs. Crandall would not smell pleasantly of gardenias if it was a skunk, so I could at least rule that out.

  The shed was around back and came complete with the crescent moon cut out of the weathered wood. It looked innocuous enough (fantastic word!), but I had learned over my years here in Martha’s Point not to ever take anything at face value.

  “Right here’s the problem.” She stopped about five feet back from the wooden door while gesturing me forward. She gave me her toothy smile again, and my gut was screaming at me to be careful, especially because that smile seemed to be crumpling around the edges just a little bit.

  “Um, not to be ignorant, but what?”

  “Open the door, and I’ll be right back.”

  “Oh, I don’t think that’s such a great idea.” But she had already shuffled away, moving faster than I would have thought possible for someone of her age in her condition. Argh!

  So what was I supposed to do now? I couldn’t very well just stand out here for heaven knew how long and wait for her to come back. I didn’t have much face to save in a community that still didn’t consider me one of their own. I wasn’t allowed to hang with the biddies in town unless I had my Bella buffer, and while the town adored my daughters, they were still referred to as Ben’s girls, as if I hadn’t pushed them out into the light of day feeling like I’d just passed two large watermelons.

  I really wished I had stayed in my own yard, putting gnomes out back. I might not like them, but at least I knew what to expect. Anything could come out of this garden shed, and I was seriously not prepared for anything. This was what I got for being a Good Samaritan.

  Shifting from foot to foot, I stared at the door. It was just a door. I bit my lip as I tried to convince myself it was going to be something stupid, like that spider, or maybe a little mouse, or even a chipmunk.

  Yeah, I could handle a chipmunk. I’d done a report on them when I was in fifth grade and loved them. They were fast on their feet and always seemed to be jerking around, so it would shoot out the door as soon as I opened it and be gone. Problem solved and perhaps a point in my favor when it came time for the biddies to take an accounting of what I did do versus what I was hopeless at.

  I cautiously took a step closer to the door with my hands behind my back. It could even be a cat. Maybe an angry one that she’d locked in the shed. Turning my head, I got as close to the door as I possibly could stand and waited. Maybe for hissing? Scratching? Anything that would indicate what on earth the issue was without me having to yank open the door and get the scare of my life as some little dog pounced out and bit my ankles.

  Really, I was not helping myself here, and the anticipation was only making me crazier with each second that passed. What on earth was Mrs. Crandall doing that she still wasn’t back?

  I hitched my jeans up, cracked my knuckles, shrugged my shoulders, and rotated my head to loosen up. Whatever was behind door number one couldn’t be worse than what my imagination had previously conjured up.

  Of course, there is something to be said for being so very, very wrong.

  Grasping the doorknob, which appeared to be in the shape of a tomato, I braced myself for anything. Or thought I did. I yanked the door open and stood for a second as nothing, and no one, came out. Maybe it
really was just a spider that had made a web, and she didn’t want him in her precious tomato hut.

  One step forward and I started breathing a little easier. See? Nothing! At that point, one shadow separated itself from the darkness inside the shed and a man fell out, toppling over at my feet, his hands bound behind his back with a loud silk tie I was all too familiar with. If my guess was right, I was very likely looking at the highest-ranking judge in the Tasty Tomato Tournament. And he was face down in the grass. Crap!

  He didn’t move once he hit the ground. I’m not proud to say I stepped out of the way of his descent instead of trying to catch him. It was an automatic reaction, not one I’d planned on. He’d been kneeling in the shed, though, and his fall wasn’t that far. But he looked mighty uncomfortable with his face planted in the grass.

  When he still didn’t move after a few seconds, not even to turn his head to the side to breathe, I watched his back for breathing. Nothing. And that’s right about the time I started to fight back the scream pushing its way up my throat. Holy camoley.

  I so should have yanked Ben out of the shower.

  I ducked down and felt for a pulse. Nothing. My own heart rate spiked as I backed away.

  Calm down, Ivy. Maybe it was just a thready pulse and I hadn’t felt it right. Or maybe I hadn’t felt the right place. These were both possibilities I was not above grasping.

  I tried the pulse thing again and couldn’t resist at least turning his face out of the grass. Still nothing and, with my hand in front of his mouth, I felt no air. I quickly flipped him over, intent on giving him CPR. There would not be another dead body on my watch. There hadn’t been a dead body, except for old folks, in years. No unexplained deaths in the little town of Martha’s Point, and I wanted to keep it that way.

  Then I saw the tomato stake sticking out of his chest.

  Well, shit.

  Should I go get Ben? Call immediately for the police? Run into the night and hope Mrs. Crandall, in her old age, forgot she ever called me?

  “I brought you a glass of iced tea, dear,” Mrs. Crandall said from behind me. “I figured getting that nasty crop saboteur out of the shed would be thirsty work.”