The Busy Woman's Guide to Murder Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  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

  PRAISE FOR

  Death Loves a Messy Desk

  “Fast and breezy, Death Loves a Messy Desk is a pleasant mystery . . . Organizing tips at the head of each chapter offer little reminders on how to make our lives more organized to have more time to read mysteries.”

  —The Mystery Reader

  “A carefully crafted mystery with enough red herrings to be truly satisfying and enough cliché poking to be wickedly humorous as well.”

  —ReviewingTheEvidence.­com

  “This is a fun book . . . [A] pleasant way to spend a lazy afternoon.”

  —Gumshoe Review

  The Cluttered Corpse

  “Talented author Mary Jane Maffini has crafted a clever and fun tale . . . Red herrings and surprises await the reader [and] complexities of the plot make for a worthwhile read.”

  —New Mystery Reader

  “Charlotte is feisty, funny, and determined to help people, whether it’s organizing their mudroom or clearing them of a murder charge . . . Delightful.”

  —I Love a Mystery

  “Amusing . . . enjoyable.”

  —The Mystery Reader

  “We all should have a Charlotte Adams in our lives.”

  —ReviewingTheEvidence.­com

  Organize Your Corpses

  “A comedic, murderous romp . . . Maffini is a relaxed, accomplished, and wickedly funny writer.”

  —The Montreal Gazette

  “Maffini provides a first-rate, well-organized whodunit . . . A new series that is fun to read.”

  —Midwest Book Review

  Berkley Prime Crime titles by Mary Jane Maffini

  ORGANIZE YOUR CORPSES

  THE CLUTTERED CORPSE

  DEATH LOVES A MESSY DESK

  CLOSET CONFIDENTIAL

  THE BUSY WOMAN’S GUIDE TO MURDER

  THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

  Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

  Penguin Books Ltd., 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

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  Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty.) Ltd., 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

  Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  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. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  THE BUSY WOMAN’S GUIDE TO MURDER

  A Berkley Prime Crime Book / published by arrangement with the author

  PRINTING HISTORY

  Berkley Prime Crime mass-market edition / April 2011

  Copyright © 2011 by Mary Jane Maffini.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  For information, address: The Berkley Publishing Group,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  eISBN : 978-1-101-47771-7

  BERKLEY® PRIME CRIME

  Berkley Prime Crime Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  BERKLEY® PRIME CRIME and the PRIME CRIME logo are trademarks of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  http:­/­/­us.­penguingroup.­com

  To Giulio, for endless support

  Acknowledgments

  In writing the Charlotte Adams Mysteries, I’ve come to love and admire the cozy mystery community that is so supportive of this genre. I am grateful to my author colleagues and to the many readers who make it all so much fun. Of course I will always appreciate the leagues of professional organizers who make such a difference to people’s lives.

  My wonderful friends Mary MacKay-Smith and Linda Wiken and my daughter Victoria Maffini continue to make time for me and my manuscripts and never fail to be there with support and that all-important ingredient: fun. Of course I love them. Many thanks also to my buddy Nikki Bonanni for digging up elusive facts on such short notice. My husband, Giulio, manages to be smart, brave, and even nonchalant despite living with a woman who knows hundreds of ways to kill people. Once again, my patient editor, Tom Colgan, as well as Amanda Ng and Kaitlynn Kennedy of Berkley Prime Crime, and my agent, Kim Lionetti, offered good-natured and efficient help throughout the process. Closer to home, I continue to be indebted to Ottawa Therapy Dogs for allowing my spoiled princess dachshunds to bring joy to others and to open my eyes to what a difference a dog or two can make. Let’s hope they can inspire Truffle and Sweet Marie. We all know that any errors are mine alone.

  Make life better. Forget about doing things right. Concentrate on doing the right things.

  1

  Nine-one-one?

  Calling me?

  As often as I have had to dial 911 over the past two years, this still didn’t make sense. And yet, Mona Pringle’s voice was clear on the phone. Even if the call display said BLOCKED NUMBER.

  “Charlotte? Are you there? It’s Mona Pringle. We went to St. Jude’s together. Don’t you remember me?”

  I hadn’t needed her to tell me who she was. There wasn’t much chance I’d forget my regular 911 operator. That didn’t make the call any less surprising.

  “Of course I remember you, Mona. But why are you calling me? Is there some emergency? What can I do?”

  “Well, you can listen, for starters. Just let me talk. For once.” There was no sign of Mona’s usual calm and soothing tone. She was a full octave higher than normal. She sounded like a violin string about to snap.

  “Okay.”

  Her voice rose another few notes. “That bitch is back.”

  I felt a buzzing around my temples. Mona worked as a 911 operator for the city of Woodbridge. She’d answered every single frantic emergency call I’d ever made, no matter what time of day or night. She’d pulled a lot of double shifts and more than her share of overtime, without ever losing her cool. I�
�d never heard her use that kind of language. She had a remarkably stressful job: Lives depended on her response. Had the pressure finally caused her to lose her grip?

  “Sorry, Mona. I didn’t quite—”

  “Get with program. I said she’s back. And believe me, that means they’ll all be meaner than ever.”

  If Mona was flipping out—and it seemed that way—I didn’t want to make things worse by asking stupid questions, but I had no idea who or what she was talking about. Wait, make that shrieking about.

  “Did you hear me, Charlotte?”

  I held the phone away from my ear. “I did, but I’m not sure who’s back.”

  “Mean girls? Does that suggest anything to you? Who the hell else? How can you forget? Have you repressed your adolescent memories?”

  “Gosh, I sure hope so.”

  Mean girls? I thought hard. Who’d been notably mean in my adolescence? A shorter list might have been who hadn’t been. But Mona had been a gentle soul, thin as a clothesline, birdlike, with large hands, knobby knees, and a lively case of acne. She’d kept her head down in high school. She’d never given me or any of my misfit buddies any trouble. I knew she’d been on the receiving end, although not from us.

  “Are you there, Charlotte?”

  “Yes. Um, when did she get back?”

  “I don’t know and I wouldn’t care except I know she’s getting up to her old tricks.”

  My ploy hadn’t worked. No name revealed. Mona was obviously strung out. That seemed like a strong negative in a person who took emergency calls from panicky people.

  “That’s terrible. Oh boy. Mona? Are you crying? Is there anything I can do?”

  “I’ll cry if I want to. It’s my party, ha-ha. And I doubt there’s anything you can do.”

  “But you’ve always been so helpful when I’ve called you. The least I could do is—”

  “Get rid of them? Wipe them all off the face of the earth? Exterminate them like the cockroaches they are? Go ahead, do it, Charlotte. Make my day.”

  “Exterminate?” I blurted.

  “That’s right.”

  “Exterminate who?”

  “Start with that hag, Serena Redding. I told you she’s back, living the good life in a mansion on the edge of Woodbridge.”

  Serena. Oh. Thoughts tumbled in my head, jagged flashes from St. Jude’s. I could still picture Serena with her honey-blond hair, velvety golden tan, that turned-up nose, and round brown eyes fringed with thick lashes. She’d definitely been pack leader, and she and her three followers always seemed to have been sashaying through the halls of St. Jude’s as if playing to a swarm of paparazzi. They were gorgeous, smart, and popular, and left a trail of expensive scent in the air as they passed by. Some people admired them. Some people had the hots for them. And some people were scared to death of them. My memory dredged up the image of a scrawny girl with angry red zits stranded in the locker room after her shower. Mona. Not a piece of her clothing in sight. Not even her underwear. I’d come across Mona crouched in a corner, weeping, teeth chattering. Her skin was ice-cold when I tried to pat her shoulder. My own gym clothes were much too short for her thin, awkward body, but they were better than leaving her naked any old day. I’d gone searching for my friend Sally, who was tall enough and generous enough to give Mona something to wear to class. I’d been shaken by the vindictiveness of that trick. The first face I’d seen outside the locker room had been Serena Redding’s. She’d been laughing. No sign of her cruel deeds on that lovely face. She was a beauty queen of mean, without a shred of empathy.

  I could see how Mona might bear a grudge.

  “What do you mean by ‘she’s back’?” I asked.

  “What could I mean? She’s here. In Woodbridge. Again. Probably stirring things up as we speak. Oh crap. There goes the line.”

  “The 911 line?” I squeaked.

  “Some idiot probably gave himself a heart attack shoveling snow. When will people learn? Eat fries in front of the TV all your life and then, when you finally stir yourself, make sure you grab a heavy shovel to lift wet snow in the morning, when your blood is thick. Sure, go ahead. Live like an unhealthy slob. Nine-one-one will be there to bail you out. Not like we have anything else to do.”

  Was this happening?

  “You’d better pick it up, Mona.”

  “Yeah, yeah. I will, but there’s more. I have to talk to you.”

  “Let’s talk later. I’ll call you back.” I was speaking to the dial tone. However, in this case, I was glad. Mona needed to concentrate on her job and not on the return of Serena Redding. I thought back. Every queen bee has her courtiers, and Serena had been no different from any other flourishing monarch. In all public appearances, she’d been supported by Jasmin Lorenz, Tiffanee Dupont, and Haley McKee. They weren’t quite as gorgeous as Serena. She had to be number one. But Tiffanee had been particularly striking: waist-length dark hair, almond-shaped eyes, and milky skin. She’d been taller than Serena. Tiffanee must have been six feet. She always walked at the back of the pack, that fabulous hair swaying. They’d called her Princess T. Serena had usually been flanked by Haley and Jasmin. The boys had liked Haley; the flawless ivory skin, the bouncy ponytail, the sexy grin, and perhaps most of all, those curves. Next to Haley, everyone felt too tall or too short or too flat-chested. Everyone except Serena. And Haley had played on that. Jasmin’s name had seemed exotic, and she’d been a fairly attractive brunette, but not as dramatic as the other three. Not as nasty either, perhaps the weak link in the chain. At the time, each one seemed to have whiter teeth, lovelier skin, and a more fabulous wardrobe than anyone outside the charmed circle. None of the three measured up to Serena. Her hair could have fueled an ad campaign; her skin glowed. And those clothes—fresh from LA whenever her mother went on a shopping trip. Mind you, we wore uniforms to St. Jude’s, but Serena somehow managed to appear half-dressed and provocative, even when wearing our prim little plaid skirts, navy jackets, and knee socks. I remembered football players with their tongues dragging on the vinyl floor as Serena and her entourage swanned by.

  Looking back, I asked myself, Why would a beautiful, well-dressed, intelligent girl—the object of major male-adolescent lust in our high school—ritually humiliate a self-effacing, harmless classmate? Everyone must have known. Why had no one done anything to stop it? More to the point, why had I let it go on?

  I suppose it was a good thing that Mona had called with her bombshell. It distracted me from the three items clogging my mind.

  First was the looming therapy-dog evaluation for my rescued miniature dachshunds, Truffle and Sweet Marie. Make that reevaluation. Or, to be precise, re-reevaluation. The pooches were now napping on the sofa, snoring softly, their silky fur smelling vaguely like warm toast. They weren’t worried. I was.

  Second, the next morning I would be launching a fivepart course in cooperation with the Woodbridge Public Library: The Busy Person’s Guide to Managing Time and Life. The first session kicked off on Saturday morning. It was a new venture for me in my organizing business and I wanted it to go well.

  Third, Jack Reilly.

  Who was I kidding? Jack was first on the list. It had taken me nearly twenty years to realize Jack was the man for me. He was responsible for me having pets for the first time in my life. He was involved in animal rescue, and I was a sitting duck. He’d been my friend since we were kids, and now he was my hero, my landlord, and also the guy who had saved my life more than once. Of course, I’ve saved his life too, but only because he’d been in danger saving mine. It’s complicated. Jack isn’t. Now, if I could just find a way to tell him how I felt. But what if he didn’t share my feelings? What if I attempted to nudge the relationship forward and the whole friendship collapsed? That would be a disaster and I wasn’t yet prepared to risk it.

  At that moment Jack arrived home from CYCotics, his bicycle shop. He thundered up the stairs to my second-floor apartment, bringing a gust of wintry air with him. Jack lived downstairs, but he spent a
lot more time upstairs in my home. Perhaps because I had furniture and sometimes food. Or maybe it was the lure of the dogs.

  “Ready for tonight? We’ll knock them dead.” He shook a few random snowflakes from his spiky dark-blond hair, and eased his lanky form onto the sofa, letting the dogs snuggle up. “Still snowing. Brr. I wonder if it will end before June?”

  I refrained from commenting that if he didn’t like the snow, perhaps he shouldn’t wear cargo shorts and Hawaiian shirts twelve months a year. Why not? It wasn’t like being nice was getting me anywhere.

  Jack, obviously unaware of my grumpy thoughts, said, “Not the best weather for the spring bike sales.”

  I turned my mind back to the other worries. For instance, the rumor that Woodbridge Therapy Dogs had a “three strikes and you’re out” rule. I didn’t like to ask, in case the answer made me even more nervous. Speaking of nervous, I wondered what was happening with Mona. I tried calling 911, but was told quite firmly that operators didn’t take or make personal calls. That made sense, although Mona had called me from work. I took the hint. I found a Woodbridge number for M Pringle on the 411 website (although no home address was listed) and called. I left a soothing message and hoped for the best.

  Next, judgment day in a dog-training center. Actually, judgment night. Would Truffle and Sweet Marie make it through the test this time? We’d been training diligently, and after more than a year of trying and two spectacular failures, we were up again. I had a lot riding on it. My beloved pooches were adorable and cuddly—in my opinion anyway—the exact characteristics a therapy dog needs. Unfortunately, they were also inclined to bark. That got them turfed out of the last two evaluations in disgrace. We’d been working on that. All other thoughts flew out of my head as we, the about to be evaluated, faced down the evaluator. I held a trembling Sweet Marie. Jack stood next to me with Truffle firmly grasped in his long arms. That was only fair, as without Jack’s interference, I wouldn’t have dogs in the first place. This was a far cry from my glamorous evenings back in New York City—stilettos, fashion, and freedom. Oh, and one lying, cheating hound of an ex-fiancé, but let’s not dwell on that.