The Happy Housekeeper's Guide To Theft (A Barbara Hollis Murder Mystery Book 3), page 1
THE HAPPY HOUSEKEEPER’S GUIDE TO THEFT
BLYTHE BAKER
Copyright © 2024 by Blythe Baker
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.
CONTENTS
Description
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
About the Author
Barbara Hollis has barely settled into the sleepy little town where her brother is sheriff, when a shocking crime rocks the community. Thanks to a peculiar new friend she has made and an unexpected prize she has won at a plasticware party, Barbara finds herself dragged into a dangerous mystery.
Can she uncover the identity of a murderer and track down a jewelry store thief, while navigating a confusing acquaintance with a handsome restaurant owner who is just a little too charming for anyone’s good?
1
“You know…” I murmured to my friend Vicky in a low voice behind my hand; I pretended to scratch my nose with some fervor. “This wasn’t exactly what I expected when we were invited to this party.”
Vicky glanced sidelong at me, but said nothing. I noticed the smirk curling up the side of her face as she righted herself in her seat at the long Formica island counter. Our hostess had just reentered the room.
“Sorry about that,” the plump woman said, smoothing behind her ear some of her auburn hair that had fallen out of her barrette as she approached the other side of the island. “Where…were we?” She looked around at the half dozen ladies seated there, staring into each of our faces with a blank look. In the light of the aqua aluminum lights hanging above us, she seemed slightly flushed.
Vicky looked at me, and I saw that the other two women beside her were glancing around in confusion.
“Uh…you left to go get the next set of plasticware,” Vicky said hesitantly when it became clear that Delores wasn’t joking.
“…Right,” Delores said with a nervous smile. “Right, I’ll go get them.”
She walked out of the kitchen again, her heels clicking against the tile floor as she disappeared.
Of all the places I had expected to be the afternoon before Halloween, a plasticware party had never crossed my mind.
“Well,” commented the woman to my left, who lived three doors down from Vicky’s house. I’d met her a few times when going for a walk with my nephews through the neighborhood after school. She folded her arms, glowering at the empty archway that Delores had just disappeared through. Jane, I thought. Or was it Janine? “I’ll be the first to point out that something happened to our hostess since last I saw her.”
The low murmur of agreement spread through the room and answered her already obvious statement.
I hardly knew Delores Robinson, but even I could see something was troubling her. She’d had flushed cheeks and sweat clinging to her brow when she had opened the door for us precisely an hour before. She had nearly dropped an expensive glass pitcher that she had been showing off to us all with the hopes one of us might want to purchase it. Vicky reconsidered her offer as it had swung from the end of Delores’ finger like some sort of precarious trapeze artist.
“This certainly is the most interesting plasticware party I’ve ever been to,” said a woman beside the other. She looked so similar to her companion that she might as well have been a mirror’s reflection.
“I’m sure everything’s fine,” Vicky hissed under her breath. “Now hush before she comes back in here and hears you.”
Janice – that was her name – shot Vicky a glare before her words proved true as Delores wandered back into the kitchen.
Our hostess looked at us all with a vague, distant smile, once again brushing some of her bushy hair from her eyes – and then blinked.
“What – what was I doing?” she asked blankly.
Two of the younger women giggled briefly, but fell silent when Delores didn’t share their humor. It would have been much better if she was trying to be funny, but I certainly didn’t think that to be the case.
“Oh – Oh, that’s right,” Delores said with a flash of a grin, turning to a cupboard behind her. “I guess it’s time to move on to the bakeware. Yes, that’s right.”
She set down a trio of white, ceramic casserole dishes, all of which had been adorned with the same blue floral design along the side. Daisies, they looked like. She spread her hands out, but I paid closer attention to her smile, which seemed more like it had been taped in place than naturally remaining where it should.
“These are top of the line, brand new, the latest in baking,” she said as if she were reading from a script. “They’ll easily withstand up to four hundred degrees, are guaranteed to be shatterproof, and I have had great success making my husband’s favorite shepherd’s pie in one just the other night!”
She glanced at me when she said it, and I realized that must have been what she had been at the market to pick up ingredients for when we had run into one another.
I, on the other hand, had been about ready to strangle my brother for sending me to the supermarket with such a ridiculous list. Six packages of black licorice? Four pumpkins that were exactly twelve inches in diameter?
“My husband is very particular about the shape of his pumpkins, too,” said a kind voice beside me that day almost a week before, when she had found me staring at the display just inside the front doors of the market. She had a pretty, round face to match the cheerful laugh that followed her words.
“Oh, it’s not for my husband,” I’d said. “It’s for my brother.”
She leaned against her shopping cart. Even at an angle, she still stood taller than me by almost a head. “I don’t recognize you. Are you visiting from out of town?”
The annoyance tinging my thoughts made me question just why everyone seemed intent on asking me that question.
“Yes,” I said, eyeing a nearby pumpkin and wondering if Craig wouldn’t mind a fist-sized hole in it; he was planning to carve it anyway, wasn’t he? He could have thought of it as a head start. “I’m staying with my brother and his kids for a while.”
She arched a brow, laying a fist against her wide hip. “I thought you looked familiar. You’re Sheriff Hollis’ sister.”
I looked up at that, my brow wrinkling. “I am, yes.”
She grinned. “The two of you look a lot alike, you know. It’s in those eyes of yours.”
“Thanks,” I said, even though Craig was not someone I was particularly pleased to be associated with at the moment. “And who might you be?”
She held a hand out. “Delores Robinson. I’m your brother’s neighbor three doors down.”
I shook her hand, smiling in return. She had a friendly air that was easy to like, which softened my bristled mood just a touch. “Nice to meet you,” I said.
“Likewise, dear,” she said. “Oh, say, you wouldn’t happen to be busy next Friday, would you? In the late afternoon?”
“The day before Halloween?” I asked. “No, I don’t think so. Why do you ask?”
Her grin widened. “I am throwing a little party for some of the ladies in the neighborhood. Nothing special, just one of those plasticware parties.”
My stomach sank. “Oh…” I said, trying to keep my polite expression firmly in place. “Oh, that sounds like fun.”
She chuckled again. “Oh, I promise it won’t be like those other parties that you might have heard about. I won’t pressure you into buying anything. All I want is for some of you ladies to come and have a nice afternoon, maybe have sweet tea and finger foods. My plan was to use one of the trifle bowls that you could purchase – if you want to, of course – to make one of my grandmother’s angel food cake recipes.” She gestured to the cart beside her, some of the items recognizable as they hid among a bunch of carrots and meat wrapped up in butcher’s paper.
She stared at me expectantly.
“Who – uh – who else is going to be there?” I asked.
“Oh, let’s see…Janice Williams, Brenda Granger, Vicky Foster – ” She listed off a few other names that I vaguely recognized, but Vicky’s RSVP was enough for me.
“I’d be glad to come,” I said. “Is there anything I can bring?”
“Just yourself and a good sense of humor,” she answered. “Well, I’ll leave you to find those perfect pumpkins. I take it they’re for your nephews?”
I hesitated, swallowing the choice words I had about Craig. Really, he wasn’t all that bad…even if he sent me to the store to get precisely twenty-three lemons for his Halloween punch. “Yes, they are. The boys are excited to do some carving.” A lie, through and through.
“So glad to hear that. Well, I’ll see you next Friday, then?”
“What time?”
“Let’s say four,” she said. “I want to give everyone the chanc e to make it back home for dinner with their families, given the holiday this weekend and all.”
“That sounds great,” I said. “I’m looking forward to it.”
“As am I!” she said with a wave as she turned her cart around. “Any sister of the sheriff’s is welcome in my home!”
And at the time, I was surprised just how much I truly did look forward to it.
I spent the next week with an undertone of excitement. I had an impressive group of people back in Liberty City that I considered friends, and I hadn’t realized just how much I missed the company of other people around the same age as me since moving to sleepy little Cobbsville. Delores and Vicky knew one another, and they seemed all too happy to let me into their circle. I was no fool to realize how fortunate I was. I might have been forever on the outside of all of these social groups. Instead, I hoped that the plasticware party would be a good way for me to meet some of the women in our neighborhood, and maybe in turn, make a few more friendships.
Those hopes might have been a bit too high, given the sneer that Janice and her twin sister now wore, as cold as a pair of porcelain dolls. The expression was reflected in the faces of a few of the others as they watched Delores’ trembling fingers as she fumbled with the ceramic casserole dishes, trying to extricate them from inside one another. The middle dish clattered as it somewhat slipped from her grasp, thankfully only a hair’s breadth that didn’t damage it.
I glanced sidelong at Vicky, who wore her concern as openly as if it were written on her face.
“There, now…” Delores said, her cheeks flushed. “I also have some cookie sheets that are the next prizes. The game is – uh – it’s a crossword.” She reached into the drawer beside her, pulling out a shallow stack of papers, along with a bundle of fluorescent blue markers secured with a rubber band. She set them down on the counter and passed out the papers. “Now, fill these out, and whoever gets the most right will win the cookie sheets.”
With that, she turned her back to us and started to undo another box marked with a plasticware label.
I wasn’t the least bit surprised when the women beside me exchanged disgusted looks before bending over the crosswords.
Soon, though, most of us began to find some fun in it. Mrs. Langley, who lived at the end of Pine Street, had bent her head together with Mrs. Farling and young Nancy, a girl who couldn’t have been older than eighteen who had accompanied her aunt to the party.
Vicky glanced at my crossword. “You know, I’ve never really been all that good at these,” she said in a low voice. She adjusted her seat on the barstool beside me, leaning closer. “These trivia type games with all this useless knowledge? Now Robert, he’s very good at this sort of thing. He could be on one of those gameshows if he really wanted to be.”
I smiled. “Craig’s the same way, but he just shrugs his shoulders at me when I tell him he should audition. ‘Never been one for that stuff,’ he tells me. The prize money doesn’t tempt him.” I twirled by blue marker around the third question; The capitol of Arkansas. Apparently it was the headquarters of this plasticware company. I sighed. “If the boys were here, they’d be able to answer some of these. Tim’s doing pretty well in geography.”
“So is my Elaine,” Vicky commented, frowning at her sheet. “But why in the world would I ever know the year that a refrigerator was invented?”
I chuckled. “Maybe if we were paying a little better attention, we could have answered these easier.”
Vicky eyed the back of Delores with some reservation. “Maybe if our hostess didn’t seem as frazzled as she does…” she remarked in a low voice.
I sympathized. “I just met her a few days ago, but she seems completely different from the woman I met at the supermarket,” I whispered back. “Something must have happened between now and then. It’s as if someone stole the life right out of her.”
Vicky and I watched as Delores moved away from the box, having unpacked an entire mixed set of plastic containers with different colored tops. She strode across the kitchen to the back door behind us, bypassing us without so much as a glance.
“I hope it’s nothing serious,” Vicky murmured, forgetting the crossword all together. “She told me about a month ago that her sister and brother-in-law received some troubling news from the doctor about their young daughter. Cancer, they suspected.”
“That’s awful,” I said. “But would it shake Delores up like this?”
Vicky pursed her lips, stealing another quick look. “Maybe she got some other bad news right before we arrived. Anyway, whatever is bothering her, she did tell me that she had been considering canceling the party.”
“It must be something serious, then,” I said. “When did she tell you this?”
“Just before you got here,” Vicky said.
“But she didn’t explain for sure why she considered canceling?”
Vicky shook her head.
I took a quick look over my shoulder, too. Delores pawed through the contents of her purse which was resting on a side table next to the door. She seemed to be looking for something. I turned back to Vicky. “She seems like she’s trying to rush the party,” I said, tapping the crossword puzzle with the end of my capped marker. “Would it not be kinder to her if we just got up and left?”
Vicky shook her head. “That would be rude, wouldn’t it? She’d think it was something she said or did.”
“That’s because it is something she did,” I said. “We are all just sitting here pretending the obvious isn’t happening.”
“Do you suggest we say something to her?” Vicky asked, her dark, pencil eyebrows knitting together.
“I think it would be for the best – ”
“All right, is everyone done?” Delores asked, carrying her purse back with her. She nestled it up against the refrigerator so that it was now within arm’s reach.
She quickly read off the answers to the ten or so questions that made up the crossword.
“Who got ten or more points?” she asked.
Five of us raised our hands. Vicky looked down at my paper, her brow furrowing again.
“What about twelve?” Delores asked.
Three of us kept our hands raised.
“Fifteen?” Delores asked.
All of us lowered our hands.
“Anyone get fourteen?”
“I got thirteen,” I said, glancing at my paper.
Everyone turned to look at me.
“Then you are our winner,” Delores said. She turned around and pointed at the breakfast nook behind us. “Feel free to go and pick a prize from over there.”
“Thanks,” I said, sliding off the barstool and wandered over.
I had no idea what I was getting, since everything was wrapped up in brightly colored paper and ribbons. I knew it wouldn’t help me to stand there and think, so I just grabbed the closest package to me, a square box wrapped in cobalt blue paper and a deep teal ribbon.
By the time I’d carried it back to the island and set it down at the foot of my stool, Delores had already moved on to the next item. “We’re going to play a guessing game,” she said. “I’m going to hide a coin underneath some of these containers, and shift them around. Whoever can find the coin will win a small door prize.”
She turned to her purse and reached in.
“What sort of door prize?” Mrs. Farling asked. “I could really use some of those cute measuring spoons you showed us earlier.”
“That could be one of them,” Delores said with a glance over her shoulder. She yanked out a small coin purse, but half the contents of her purse seemed to come with it. Out tumbled a stack of coupons, a brochure for a resort in Mexico, and a pair of what appeared to be airplane tickets.
Delores blanched and dove to scoop the contents off the floor, but it was too late; we had already seen them.”
“Is that a brochure for a Mexican resort?” asked Vicky.
“Oh, my husband took me to one of those for our ten year anniversary,” said Mrs. Farling, her eyes brightening. “What a lovely place it was. The flowers that bloom all year are just divine.”
Delores said nothing as she hastily stuffed the tickets and brochure back into her purse.
“How fun!” exclaimed Nancy, clasping her hands together. “And how romantic.”
