New Corpse in Town (Secret Seal Isle Mysteries Book 1) Read online

  New Corpse in Town

  Lucy Quinn

  Seaside Story Productions

  Contents

  Copyright

  About This Book

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  About the Author

  Copyright © 2016 by Lucy Quinn

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Cover by Lewellen Designs

  Editing by Red Adept Publishing and Angie Ramey

  Don’t miss an installment from Lucy Quinn. Sign up for her newsletter.

  About This Book

  FBI agent Cookie James is enjoying her extended leave from the agency on Secret Seal Isle, managing her quaint inn and flirting with the oh-so sexy-handyman, Dylan Creed…until her sixty-year-old mother goes skinny dipping and is almost drowned by a corpse.

  A phone call to the sheriff should mean the end of Cookie’s involvement, but when it’s clear the sheriff has no interest in the investigation, Cookie calls in reinforcements…her ex-partner Hunter O’Neil. Suddenly it’s like old times while the pair questions the residents of Secret Seal Isle. Except it’s not. Now she has both Hunter and Dylan vying for her attention, a wayward hippy mother, and a potential killer on the loose.

  With her love life heating up, her mother lighting up, and all signs pointing to the most unlikely suspect, Cookie does the only thing she knows to do—focus on solving the case.

  1

  “Well…” Cookie James sighed quietly to herself, leaning against the doorframe of the Secret Seal Inn. “I could certainly get used to this view.”

  But despite the fact that the inn was situated on one of the highest points on Secret Seal Isle, affording her a perfect angle on the rest of the small town spread out before her, all the way to the scenic coastline and the Atlantic Ocean beyond, that wasn’t what had captured her attention.

  Nor was it the porch of the same historic inn she now stood in—and owned.

  Rather, her gaze lingered on the man standing on the other side of that porch, wrestling an old, rotted railing out of place. An already overheated, shirtless man with the full blaze of the late-morning sunlight glistening off the perspiration clinging to his short, dark hair—and to the finer hairs that covered most of his lean, muscular torso.

  It was a very nice view indeed.

  Cookie had thought she’d been quiet enough, but the man—Dylan was his name, she remembered, Dylan Creed—must have heard her, or simply felt the heat of her stare, because his own gaze lifted to catch hers. Steely blue eyes—bright enough for her to make out from here—locked with her own soft brown ones, and an impish grin flashed across his rugged features.

  It was a grin that clearly said, ‘Yes, I know you’re looking, and I don’t mind. And yes, I know you think I’m hot, and you’re right.’ It didn’t seem to carry the usual arrogance of many attractive men, however. It was more a simple statement of fact, an acknowledgment of his own appearance, rather than a demand for praise.

  Then his eyes dipped, first to Cookie’s full lips, then lower, where her white button-down shirt struggled in vain to restrain the abundance of her curves. His grin widened, his stare once more returning to her own, and now she could read a different message in it: ‘You can look all you want, but turnabout is fair play.’

  From the gleam in his eye and the hint of desire tingeing his smile, there was an addition to that thought, one that made Cookie flush at its directness, even if she certainly didn’t object to the statement: ‘And I like what I see.’

  With a last tug, the railing came loose, and Dylan slowly lowered it out of the way. Now Cookie had an unobstructed view of his chest, which was just as impressive as it had seemed at first glance. She tried not to linger too long, though, before returning to his face. She’d already been caught out once—no sense making it twice in as many seconds.

  “I’ll have this new rail installed in a jiffy,” he called out to her, his voice deep and rich with the timbre of the local Maine accent. He tilted his head for a second to study the rest of the porch, where several brand-new rails already attested to his work. “A quick coat of paint and this whole porch will look good as new.”

  “Thank you so much,” Cookie told him honestly. “I really appreciate all your hard work.”

  Now he almost did look embarrassed as he shrugged. “Just doing my job,” he answered. Which was true. In a town the size of Secret Seal, there was only need for one all-purpose handyman, and around here Dylan Creed was it. Whatever work you needed, if it wasn’t something you could handle yourself, you called him—carpentry, plumbing, electrical work, lawn care.

  She suspected he’d be happy to move furniture or help the lobstermen haul in the day’s catch, if it came to that. Even after only observing him for a few minutes, Cookie could tell that he wasn’t the kind of man who liked being idle.

  Which was certainly good news for her and her mother, because it turned out that the Secret Seal Inn needed a lot more work than either of them had realized when they’d bought it. And neither of them was exactly handy.

  At least when it came to things like woodwork.

  Dylan was still watching her, she realized with a start. “Where’d you all come in from?” he asked finally. Naturally, in a town this small, he’d have known they were new.

  “Boston,” she answered with a small smile. “We needed a change, just to get away from it all.” Images of Boston flashed through her mind, but they were quickly replaced with scenes from Philly, the field office there, her old desk, her coworkers, the cases she’d worked… and the one that had sent her running here.

  Not being privy to the dark turn her thoughts had taken, Dylan gave her a slow smile of his own. “If you wanted to get away from it all,” he told her, the gravel in his voice sending a delicious shiver up her spine, “you certainly came to the right place.”

  She laughed to cover the thrill his words had given her. “What about you?” she asked, suddenly feeling bold. “Local boy makes good?”

  That got an answering chuckle from him, deep and low and rumbling. “I guess you could say that,” he replied, smile broadening. He gestured behind him, to where an old, battered truck sat in the driveway. “I’ve got my own wheels, my own place, and I’m my own boss. Not too shabby for a guy who was once voted ‘most likely to get tossed overboard.’”

  Cookie laughed with him. “I don’t think we had that caption in our yearbook,” she admitted. She twirled a piece of her long brown hair around her fingers and didn’t miss the way Dylan’s eyes darted to the movement. That thrill was back, and now it was expanding from her chest outward, sending tingles of warmth all through her that had nothing to do with the sun. She was flirting, she realized. For the first time in what felt like forever.

  And she was definitely enjoying it.

  “Maybe I
could take you out for lunch sometime,” she suggested and hastily added, “as a thank you, I mean. For all your help.” Heat flushed her cheeks. It had been a long time since she’d danced this particular number.

  Dylan opened his mouth to reply, but a high-pitched scream cut him off.

  “Coooooooooookkkkiiiieeeeeeeeeee!”

  Astonished, Cookie stared at him for a second, all flirtation forgotten. Where was that shrill, girlish shriek coming from? Especially one that sounded an awful lot like—

  It was then that she spotted the figure racing up the hill toward her from behind the inn; back where the ground sloped away gently before ending in a short ledge a few feet above the ocean. An ocean that the running, screaming woman must have been in, judging by the water still streaming from her body. A body covered only by a pair of short jean cut-offs, Cookie realized at the same time her brain finally kicked in, confirming the woman’s identity.

  Oh, for the love of… the older woman was completely topless. The bouncing going on was not her personality, either.

  “Mom?” Cookie was down off the porch in an instant, hand going to the small of her back where her pistol rested beneath the loose tails of her shirt. “Mom!”

  Rain raced up to her and flung her arms around Cookie, heedless of the water now soaking them both. The briny scent of the ocean filled Cookie’s senses.

  “Oh, Cookie.” Her mother sobbed. “It was horrible. He tried to kill me!” Then, noticing Dylan for the first time, her mother paused. Switching gears instantly, Rain swept back the short, bobbed hair she had taken to dyeing a bright red and fluttered her eyelashes at him. “Well, hello there.”

  “Mom!” Just seconds before, Cookie had been struggling to pull free of her mother’s wet embrace. Now, however, she wished they were still clenched, as she stepped between Rain and Dylan. “You’re half-naked,” she hissed over her shoulder.

  “Oh, pshaw!” her mother replied, slapping her lightly on that same shoulder as she stepped to the side to reveal herself once again. “A good-looking man like him, I’m sure it’s nothing he hasn’t seen before.” The smile she sent Dylan’s way could have lit a grill without any need of gas or charcoal. “Though maybe not quite this nice, hm?”

  And even without seeing it Cookie knew her mother was hefting her still-ample chest up for inspection. She sighed. Cookie wondered, not for the first time, why it had ever seemed like a good idea to bring her mother along.

  To his credit, Dylan kept his eyes strictly at head level, but if he felt embarrassed, shocked, or horrified it didn’t show in his voice or his face. Amused, perhaps, but out of the possible list of reactions he could have had, that was far better than Cookie had expected.

  “I’m sure they’re lovely, ma’am,” he replied, “but I have a strict ‘no admiring a woman’s assets before we’re on a first-name basis’ rule.” The grin he sent Cookie’s way made her flush again. She’d hired him over the phone based off a recommendation from the proprietor over at the Salty Dog, and this morning was the first time they’d met in person.

  Damn it, now wasn’t the time. Turning back around, she faced her mother instead. “All right, Mom, what are you talking about?” Cookie demanded, hands on her hips—and still conveniently close to her gun. “Who tried to kill you?” Because, flighty as Rain could be, that wasn’t the kind of thing she’d make up.

  Reminding her of her recent trauma made Rain return to panic mode. “Oh, it was terrible, sweetie,” she declared, wringing her hands together. “I was just out back sunbathing, you know? And it was so nice and warm, and then the girls got a little too toasty, so I thought ‘I’ll just hop in the water a sec to cool off.’”

  Cookie shuddered at the very idea of diving into the Atlantic. Even with the lovely mid-spring weather, the water still had to be forty degrees or less.

  “And there he was!” Rain waved her hands out in front of her, the skin of her upper arms flapping around like fish out of water.

  “There who was?” Cookie asked, fighting back another sigh. Interrogating suspected terrorists had been easier than this.

  “The man!” Rain insisted. “The dead man. He tried to drown me!”

  “Dead man?” Now Cookie was really confused. “What dead man? Where?”

  “There, in the water.” Her mother pointed back the way she’d come. “He was floating there in the ocean, only I didn’t see him until it was too late. I landed right on top of him, and his arms wrapped around me like, well”—she winked over her shoulder at Dylan—“like any man’s would. Only he was dead.”

  Cookie frowned. A dead man in the ocean? That was a new one. But she could see that her mother was serious. At least it wasn’t a real threat, she thought as she let her hands drift back away from her gun. Not to them, anyway.

  “We’d better call someone about it, I guess,” Cookie said finally. The town had a sheriff’s office—she remembered seeing it the other day when she’d been at the grocery getting supplies. They’d know what to do.

  “Sounds like you’ll be wanting Deputy Swan,” Dylan commented. His grin was gone, all expression fled from his face as he backed away. “I’d best get out of your hair. I’ll come by later to finish up with that railing.”

  “Oh. Okay. Sure. Thanks.” Cookie watched him go, confused. For someone whose whole business was helping people with any job that needed doing, he seemed awfully eager to not offer any help now. Then again, dealing with a dead body wasn’t exactly the same as repainting a door or rehanging a shutter.

  Fortunately, this was one thing she actually was handy with.

  But as he stopped to grab his T-shirt and pull it back on, Dylan caught her eye—and grinned. “I’ll take a rain check on that lunch, okay?” he called.

  Cookie smiled back, reassured that he hadn’t totally lost interest. Maybe being around dead bodies just made him uncomfortable? She knew people like that.

  Behind her, her mother thwacked her on the shoulder again. “You’ve already got a date with him?” she asked, and Cookie could hear the glee in Rain’s voice. “How wonderful for you, sweetie. See, I told you this place would be good for us.”

  “Sure, Mom,” Cookie agreed absently. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’d better go call in that corpse this heavenly refuge chose to dump at our doorstep.”

  “Oh, don’t be a Debbie Downer,” her mother hollered after her, but Cookie didn’t bother to respond.

  2

  “Huh.” The deputy squatted near the edge of the overhang, shading his eyes from the sun even though he already had sunglasses on, and peered down at the body floating in the ocean not four feet away. “You’re right, he looks dead.”

  “Gee, d’ya think?” Cookie snapped from where she crouched, an arm’s length away. “What was your first clue, that he’s facedown in the water or that he’s not moving—or breathing?”

  She’d come down here to study the body herself right after she’d called the sheriff’s office, but had been careful not to touch it. Which meant, of course, that she couldn’t turn the corpse over or check his pockets. Right now all she knew for certain was that the deceased was most likely male, Caucasian, roughly six feet tall, neither cadaverous nor overweight, and possessed a full head of dark hair. She suspected he’d been in the water at least a day, judging from the pale, wrinkled nature of what skin she could see at his wrists and neck. But he’d also acquired a hefty collection of seaweed somewhere along the way, which had clumped onto the corpse, making it difficult to discern any other details.

  Water lapped at the dock as she waited for the deputy to offer any other commentary, but her patience—which had never been her strong suit and was already frayed by the very fact that there was a body, and it was behind her inn, and her mother was the one who had found it—was fading fast.

  “Well?” she urged finally when the deputy still hadn’t moved.

  He turned to glance over at her. “I’ll radio the sheriff,” he said slowly, “and have her send the ME to collect the body. We�
�ll get him out of your way in no time.” With that he stood, dusting off his pant legs, and adjusted his sunglasses.

  But Cookie wasn’t done. “That’s it?” she asked, following the deputy as he retraced his steps around the inn toward the front where his cruiser was parked. “I’m not worried about having a body cluttering up the water by my back porch, Deputy,” she pointed out. “A man’s dead here. Something has to be done about that.”

  Deputy Swan—whose only resemblance to his namesake was the way he waddled when he walked—stopped and studied her. “What exactly is it you want us to do, Ms. James?” he asked.

  “I want you to investigate!” she all but yelled. She managed to regain her composure and said, “That’s what you do when someone gets killed. You find out how it happened, and why, and if somebody’s responsible.”

  Swan pulled off his sunglasses and rubbed at one cheek where the frames had rested. Without the mirrored shields over his eyes, he looked surprisingly young, most likely early twenties, with baby fat still visible in his round, fleshy face. “Responsible?” he said now, his eyebrows rising toward the heavy mass of his black hair. “Most likely he got drunk, tripped, and fell into the water and drowned. Then the ocean washed him up here, which is just our bad luck but nothing more.”

  “Bad luck?” Cookie stared at the local lawman. “He’s the one who’s dead.” She flashed back to what he’d just said. “Wait, so you’re saying he’s not even local? How do you know?”

  Deputy Swan sighed. “Ma’am, I know because with the welcome addition of you and your lovely mother, Secret Seal Isle has exactly 347 people, every one of which I know on sight—and he ain’t one a’ them.” He shook his head. “Which means he’s from the mainland somewhere. So he ain’t really my problem.”