Murder Mayhem and Mama Read online

  Murder Mayhem and Mama

  christie craig

  (2001)

  * * *

  Being a mama is hard. But the job's even tougher when you're dead.

  Cali McKay's mama isn't ready to pass over to the "other side" yet. Her unlucky-in-love daughter needs her now more than ever. Before Mama can chain-smoke her way to heaven, she's gotta make sure Cali's ex deadbeat boyfriend doesn't get her daughter killed.

  Grief Sucks. Love Heals.

  Cali lost her mom to cancer. Detective Brit Lowell, lost his partner to murder. Now he's in the mood to take down some dirtbags and Cali's ex just happens to be a dirtbag leaving a trail of dead bodies behind him. Can Brit trust this beautiful woman to help take down her ex? Can Cali look past this sexy cop's hard exterior to trust him with her heart? Can life get any crazier when Mama starts meddling from the grave? Only one thing is for sure--none of it will matter, unless they catch a killer before the killer catches them.

  Available Dec. 20th at Barnes & Noble, will be available everywhere else in February

  Dedication:

  There’s always a person in your life who you know helped make you who you are. A person who, without them, you wouldn’t have taken the same journey. A person who didn’t just make a difference in your life, they were the springboard to all you’ve achieved. Thank you hubby, Steve Craig, for all you have done to help me become the person and the writer I am. Thank you for the love, for the years, and for the endless laughter you share with me. We make a hell of a team, don’t you think?

  Murder, Mayhem and Mama

  Christie Craig

  Copyright 2011 by Christie Craig

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented without the express written permission of Christie Craig. All characters, events and places in this book are fictional. Any resemblance to people living or dead is purely coincidental.

  Teaser chapter for Blame It on Texas

  Copyright 2012 Christie Craig

  Printed with the permission of Grand Central Publishing, Hachette Book Group. All rights reserved.

  Teaser chapters for Born at Midnight

  Copyright 2011 Christie Craig

  Printed with the permission of St. Martin’s Press. All rights reserved

  Rave Reviews for Christie Craig!

  DIVORCED, DESPERATE AND DECEIVED

  “The fun—and action—never stops in the enchanting Divorced, Desperate and Deceived. Christie Craig’s prose practically sparkles with liveliness and charm in the exciting conclusion to her stunning Divorced, Desperate and Delicious Club trilogy.”

  —Joyfully Reviewed

  GOTCHA!

  “The mystery and romance plots fit seamlessly into a witty and fast-paced novel that’s easy to read and satisfying to the heart.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  DIVORCED, DESPERATE AND DATING

  “I was simply delighted by this breezy, snappy, goodtime story . . . This book is sure to brighten your day.”

  —Beyond Her Book Blog, Publishers Weekly

  WEDDINGS CAN BE MURDER

  “A story that twines emotions and feelings with sizzle and steam, all wrapped around bits of humor . . . Weddings Can Be Murder combines passionate and intense characters with a plot that’s well-balanced and fast moving. It’s edgy and fun.”

  —Once Upon a Romance

  DIVORCED, DESPERATE AND DELICIOUS

  “This is an entertaining fast-moving mystery and romance peopled with interesting, likable characters, as well as warm cuddly animals. The main romance, as well as the secondary ones, are delightful, and the suspense is well done. This is an all-around enticing and fun story to read.”

  —RT Book Reviews

  SHUT UP AND KISS ME

  “Craig stays focused on playfulness and sexual tension, and hits all the high notes en route to happily ever after.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  Other books by Christie Craig:

  Divorced, Desperate and Delicious

  Weddings Can Be Murder

  Divorced, Desperate and Dating

  Gotcha!

  Divorced, Desperate and Deceived

  Shut Up and Kiss Me

  Hotter in Texas series

  For more information: www.Christie-Craig.com

  Books by Christie Craig writing as C.C. Hunter

  Shadow Falls series (Young Adult)

  Turned at Dark (Free download!)

  Born at Midnight

  Awake at Dawn

  Taken At Dusk Available April 2012

  For more information: www.CCHunterBooks.com

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  To my agent Kim Lionetti of BookEnds whose support and guidance is just what this writer needs. Thanks for helping me whip this book into shape. To Faye Hughes, my first reader, who isn’t afraid of my scary first drafts. Thanks for the help, but mostly thanks for the friendship. To Susan Muller, Teri Thackston and Suzan Harden: thank ya’ll for the support, the friendship, the critiques, and a heck of a lot of laughter. You will never know how much you mean to me. To Jody Payne, a woman whose courage and strength inspires me, whose writing support and friendship is invaluable.

  To Rosa Brand, AKA, R.M. Brand, whose brilliance as a graphic artist stuns me. Thanks for your support, for your fabulous videos and for the newfound friendship. Thanks to Kathleen Adey for the editing, and support with publicity; you make meeting my deadlines an easier task.

  MURDER, MAYHEM AND MAMA

  Christie Craig

  Prologue

  “Do you want to die, old man?” One of the four ski-masked men jammed the cold barrel of a gun against Farley Goldstein’s throat.

  Farley stared into the dark eyes peering out of the mask. Between jolts of panic, he remembered asking himself that very question this morning. Did he want to die?

  “Open the safe or I’m gonna blow your head off.” The armed stranger latched onto a handful of Farley’s starched shirt.

  The gunman slammed Farley against the wall. He slid to the floor, pain vibrating through his head. As lights exploded behind his eyelids, fear clawed at his chest—not fear of death, but fear of dying.

  The flashes hadn’t stopped when the biggest assailant stepped forward. “Easy. He knows we’re serious. Don’t you, ol’ man?”

  Farley nodded, but he couldn’t seem to talk. The shattering of glass echoed as the other two men swung baseball bats against the locked display cases filled with the most expensive pieces of jewelry. Twisting his wedding ring around his knuckle, Farley thought about his wife’s ring that he always carried in his shirt pocket.

  The meaner guy with fat fingers crouched down and screamed, “Open the effing safe!”

  When the assailant slammed Farley against the wall the second time, his hearing aid squealed. The whiteness that seemed to come from his brain exploded again. He stared into the sheet of light. The shapes started taking form. Fat Finger’s lips were moving, but Farley didn’t hear the words.

  Then he saw her. She appeared out of nowhere. Like a. . .

  “Wow.” She stood looking at the case of diamond rings. Farley reached up to touch the ring nestled over his heart. Beth, his wife, had come to take him home. Oh, how he’d missed her these last few years. But his image cleared, and he realized the redhead wasn’t Beth.

  The woman looked up a
t him. “I like the chocolate diamond. I’ve always been a chocoholic.”

  Holding a cigarette, she turned and focused the big fellow and frowned. “Weasel.” She blew smoke in his face. “They say second-hand smoke can kill you. I hope they’re right.”

  The big guy waved a hand in front of his face and looked around the room in an odd way.

  “You’re not going to hurt my girl.” After a second, the woman turned to meet Farley’s eyes again. “I may not look like I can take him on—” she waved her cigarette in the air, “—but nothing pisses a mama off more than some nitwit going after her kid. I’ll neuter his butt when he’s sleeping. He’ll wake up and be a nutless wonder.” She moved closer to Farley, walking in her high heels, her hips swayed, and the bracelets dangling on her wrist jingled as she moved.

  Farley just stared. Something wet oozed down his brow, sweat or blood, he didn’t know which. “Who are you?” She didn’t belong with these guys.

  “Who do you think I am?” Fat Fingers screamed.

  The woman knelt and touched Farley’s hand. Oddly, the attacker didn’t even look at her. Her touch sent a wave of warmth through him. “Just a ‘not ready.’ I have someone’s balls to collect before I…dive into the light, do my last tango, or make the big leap into the hereafter. Or whatever it is they call it.” She smiled.

  “You’re dead?” he asked.

  “Say what?” one of his attackers asked.

  “Yup. Kind of sucks, doesn’t it?” answered the woman. Pursing her lips, she spoke around her cigarette. “But I heard when I cross over, it’ll be different. And don’t worry, your sweet Beth’s waiting on you. But first, I need a favor. Open the safe and then...”

  Farley listened and then opened his eyes. Had he fallen asleep? The woman was gone. Had he been dreaming? Only imagined her? Was she an angel? But what kind of angel smoked and talked about cutting men’s balls off? He watched as one of the other men lunged forward.

  A different guy swung a bat and hit the wall over Farley’s head. “Let me talk to the old geezer.”

  The sheetrock above Farley’s head crunched. White particles, appearing almost like snow, rained down on his face. Dragging a deep breath into his tired lungs, he smelled cigarette smoke. While he couldn’t see the odd woman anymore, he felt her presence. And for some reason he didn’t feel so alone. He blinked and tried to remember what she needed him to do.

  The baseball bat crashed into the wall again.

  Oddly enough, he wasn’t afraid anymore.

  Chapter One

  “Cali Anne, your alarm went off twenty minutes ago, and that naked weasel in bed with you cut it off.”

  “Thanks, Mom.” Cali McKay rolled over in bed. She buried her nose deeper into her lavender-scented pillow and tried to ignore the roar and grind of Hopeful, Texas’ Monday morning traffic filtering through her bedroom window. Sleep offered escape. Escape from—

  “Did you hear me?”

  The four-finger touch against Cali’s back sent panic shooting through her sleep-dazed mind. She popped up on her hands and knees, air hitching in her throat. Gasping, she stared over her shoulder. Nothing. No Mom. Of course, no Mom.

  “What is it?” a masculine voice asked.

  She looked at the weasel—er, Stan—stretched out next to her. His black hair lay scattered across his brow.

  “Just a dream.” Still positioned as if offering horsey rides, she saw Stan’s gaze zero in on the scooped neckline of her nightshirt. Her girls were no doubt making an appearance.

  His violet eyes went from casual-sleepy to wanna-get-laid in a nanosecond. She flipped over and plopped on her butt.

  “Bad dream?” he asked as if guesstimating his odds for getting lucky.

  And from the smirk in his eyes he had the odds all wrong.

  “Not happening.” She adjusted the nightshirt to non-cleavage level, and blinked at the red-illuminated numbers of the clock. “Crap, I needed to be up twenty minutes ago.”

  “Kids love it when their teachers are late.” He inched closer as if he hadn’t heard her not-happening comment. His calf hair crinkled against her knee, and his tongue flicked inside her ear. A move that had even her liver shriveling up and screaming yuck.

  She really needed to tell him she didn’t like that. But telling men what she liked and didn’t like in the sex department was like asking a new boss for a raise, or telling a stranger he had a blob of spinach in his teeth. It just didn’t feel right.

  “Can’t be late.” She leaned out of tongue range.

  “Then skip work.” He caught the hem of her nightgown and finger-walked his way up. Past the knee, past the thigh...

  “No.” She grabbed his wrist and jack-knifed out of the bed.

  “Do you know how long it’s been since we had sex?”

  Halfway to the bathroom, she pivoted, stared, and decided the relationship was too new to be having this conversation. That meant it was also too new for her to be waking up with him. He’d been here for three weeks now. She couldn’t remember for sure how long he’d told her it was going to take for his new apartment to become available. But three weeks was too long, wasn’t it? Or had that been a lie?

  Oh, goodness, she hated early morning epiphanies.

  “It’s been forever since we’ve done it,” he snapped.

  She blinked. “Four days. We did it last Thursday.” Before the call from the hospice nurse.

  “And that doesn’t seem like forever to you?” He yanked off the blanket. Naked and aroused, he stood up. And at six foot plus, a lot of man stood there, too. His penis jutted out and bounced. Once. Twice.

  How could men do that? Just prance around, penis bobbing, with no concern whatsoever? A man’s privates were not eye friendly. Well, not when you were late for work and sex held about as much appeal as a pap smear.

  Stan groaned. “It isn’t normal.” His Mr. Wiggly lost some of its oomph.

  She tipped her chin up, swearing not to look at it again, and anger stirred inside her. Anger at Stan. Anger at herself for letting this thing with Stan get so out of control. Why hadn’t she already asked him about his apartment? Oh, yeah. She’d been too busy dealing with her dying mother.

  Then came the anger at her mother for refusing the last sessions of chemo. And that was the anger that hurt the most. The chemo would have given her another few months.

  Stan continued to stare. “Why don’t you want to have sex?”

  Maybe because funerals are not an aphrodisiac? She bit down on her trembling lip. Crying in front of him felt wrong, but she’d had sex with him. What did that say about the relationship? When had crying become more intimate than sex? What did that say about the sex they’d had? Not a good sign. “It’s been a bad week,” she said with sarcasm.

  “For Christ’s sake, Cali. She died. You didn’t.”

  His callous words burrowed so deep she stumbled back. The baseball bat he’d left leaning against the wall banged to the floor. She watched it roll under the bed. Was a four-day reprieve from sex too much to ask when one’s mother died? She didn’t have the handbook to know. Didn’t want to know. All she wanted was a shower and to get away from the naked weasel and the—she looked one more time—limp penis in front of her.

  ~

  Detective Brit Lowell stared at the dog-eared file amongst the other litter on his desk. Until the mold was scraped off Hopeful’s Homicide Division’s ceiling, the entire unit had temporarily moved into the main precinct. Brit slung a Styrofoam cup into the metal trash can. They had cases to solve and higher-ups were worried about a freaking fungus. Right now, he’d take his chair and his office—with the mold—over being stuffed in this broom closet.

  “Go home, Lowell,” someone said as he passed an office door.

  The grit that lined his eyes reminded him he’d been here too long. He hadn’t adapted to the graveyard shift. It might help if he went home and slept during the day. He seldom did. Go home or sleep.

  He curved his shoulders back in the pitiful d
esk chair. Then, knuckle-locking his fingers behind his neck, he tried to work out the kinks. The kinks hung on. The stress had hunkered down in his shoulders for the long haul. As had the grief.

  Damn, he missed Keith. Partners on the force for two years, they’d seldom agreed on anything except that they each would have taken a bullet for the other. But Brit hadn’t been there when the bullets were fired.

  “Hey.” John Quarles, his new partner, freshly transferred from another unit, walked into the office and tossed one file on the desk while he clutched another two.

  “What’s this?” Brit reached for the file, his chair squeaking like an injured bird.

  “The jewelry store heist got promoted to homicide.” Quarles dropped into a chair and rolled closer. Too close. Brit could smell what his partner had eaten for lunch, and it wasn’t particularly appetizing.

  “The old man who owned the place died,” Quarles added.

  Brit heel-skidded his chair back and tried to remember the buzz he’d heard about the case. He shuffled through a few crime-scene photos and remembered the owner of the store had been knocked around with a baseball bat. “I thought he was okay.”

  “Doctors thought so, too.” Quarles ran his fingers through his blond hair. “They stitched him up and sent him home. His daughter found him later.”

  “Prints at the crime scene?”

  “Come on, do we ever get it that easy?”

  “I could use some easy,” Brit said.

  “And if she was gorgeous and female, I’d fight you for her.” Quarles grinned. “But, the vic gave great details of the robbery. He even called the distributor and asked for images of the stolen jewelry, so, we’ll have something to show the pawn shops.” Quarles rolled closer.