1 Who Killed My Boss?

Praise for Jerilyn Dufresne and the
Sam Darling Mysteries

Dufresne has created a charming, nosy, and slightly irreverent character in Samantha Darling, the heroine in
Who Killed My Boss?
, a fast-paced cozy that takes place in the small town of Quincy, Illinois.

Beth Amos, author of the Mattie Winston Mystery series (as Annelise Ryan)

The plot kept me guessing until nearly the end and I am looking forward to reading further adventures! Fun and entertaining read…highly recommended…well done! 

Anne Kelleher, author of
A Once and Future Love
and
Wickham’s Folly

Dufresne shows her gift of storytelling as she moves the plot forward, introducing believable characters and a complicated plot. Recommended to everyone who enjoys a well-written, fun, cozy mystery!

Kimberly Shursen, author of
Itsy Bitsy Spider
and
Hush

And from Amazon reviewers:

…It’s like reading the old Nancy Drew books with others. Loved it very very much!

…This book was very well written and I loved all the humor sprinkled throughout the story. Characters were loveable, not to mention the dog. Great ending.

…
Sam Darling is the kind of gal you wish you could know in real life. Funny, quirky, entertaining. And her “partner,” Clancy the dog, helped make this book just plain fun to read. When’s the next one?! 

…Very exciting plot and hard to put down. Waiting for the next book to come out. I have told all my friends about how good the book was.

…I am one who figures out the guilty party before the author does. This time I was WRONG! Very enjoyable book, fast paced…Looking forward to the next one.

Sam Darling mysteries
by Jerilyn Dufresne

Who Killed My Boss?

Any Meat in that Soup?

Can You Picture This?
(2014)

About

WHO KILLED MY BOSS?

A few minutes after he hires Samantha Darling as a therapist, Dr. Burns is murdered. Stunned by his sudden death and desperate to keep the job she just got, Sam vows to find the killer.

She has two things going for her. The first is that her brother Rob is a cop, and she figures the crime-solving thing has to be genetic. The second is that Sam is a little bit psychic—a trait she’s come to accept, though it can be inconvenient at times.

With the help of her landlord and her dog, Sam sets out to solve the murder. Along the way, she spends time with the hot new guy in town and tries
not
to spend time with her old beau.

Using her “vibes,” her wit, and her charm, Sam bumbles along and finally solves the mystery, but not before going in the wrong direction more than once.

WHO KILLED MY BOSS?

a Sam Darling mystery

Jerilyn Dufresne

To the eight other J’s, the brothers and sisters who inspired the five Darling siblings, although the Darlings aren’t nearly as sarcastic and fun as you are.

ONE

I
beamed as Leonard
Schnitzer plucked an enameled pen from the ceramic elephant on his desk, gave it a flourish, and began to sign the personnel authorization form. I would soon be an official employee.

A scream brought us both to our feet. Schnitzer jumped up ready to investigate. I wasn’t as excited as he was. Hell, this was a psychiatric clinic. People yell in psychiatric clinics.

Before he could escape, I acted on a hunch and hollered, “Sign this first. Sign the paper.” I grabbed the contract and held it under his nose, fearing that if he didn’t sign it before he left the room, he never would. “Sign it,” I commanded. I wanted that job. “Sign it
now
.”

Shocked, he signed.

I held on to the paper for dear life and followed his skinny behind right out of the room.

We joined a stampede that led to the office of my brand new boss, Dr. Burns. A woman stood near the doorway with her back to me, papers spilled at her feet. My gaze followed hers through a maze of curious onlookers. She stared at Dr. Burns. He stared back serenely, but he wasn’t seeing anything. The scene looked almost peaceful except for the blood that defaced his beautiful Persian rug.

Using offensive skills that the St. Louis Rams would envy, I pushed the group forward so I could be closer to the action. As I entered the room I clutched two strangers on either side of me when a dizzy spell unexpectedly hit. I shook it off and took a few more steps into Burns’ office.

I was pretty sure Dr. Burns was dead, but then I’m a social worker and not a medical expert. Someone with a white coat and stethoscope around his neck checked Burns’ pulse and stopped another man from beginning CPR, as he slowly shook his head from side to side and quietly pronounced Burns dead. White Coat must have been a doctor. But the blood on the floor told the tale, even to an amateur like me. This guy had lost a lot of the red stuff. I’d never seen this much blood in one place except at a Red Cross blood drive. He was a goner.

Shit, there goes my job.

I knew it wasn’t very charitable to be concerned about my job with Dr. Burns dead on the floor, but self-preservation is a powerful motivator. Hell, I’d started my job less than fifteen minutes ago, after spending months searching for, and finally landing, a position in the private sector. Suddenly I recalled the significant piece of paper glued to my sweaty hand. A smile twitched and it was difficult to suppress it, but hot damn—I had the contract, signed by both Burns and Schnitzer, the personnel officer. My job was secure. At least for now.

A sudden chill reminded me how serious the situation was. My shaking body convinced me I really did feel the intensity of the situation. Everyone else was shaking too—making me think we were a company full of empathy. Then I noticed that an office window was open and a freezing wind blew into Burns’ death chamber. So much for empathy. No one moved to close the window.

Now that I didn’t have to worry about receiving a paycheck, my concern about my erstwhile boss’s death surfaced. I wondered how he died. Was it a horrible accident? Did a patient kill him? Or did he kill himself?

I surprised myself by my lack of fear, but wrote it off to being in shock. I’d probably pay for it later.

After a few moments, reason overcame my curiosity and I said, “Don’t touch anything.” I looked around and zeroed in on someone who didn’t look panic-stricken. “Will you call the police?”

She looked down from her better-than-six-foot height, with her eyebrows raised nearly to the ceiling. “And just who might you be?”

I bit back the retort I’d been ready to shoot at her. After all she towered over me by at least a foot. “Sorry. I’m Samantha Darling and I work here. I’m a new therapist. Someone’s got to call 911. Will you please call the police?” I spoke in my nicest social worker voice. Seemingly satisfied, she turned to leave.

Every person in the room seemed to flash a cell phone at me sarcastically as the guy in the white coat said, “We already called 911. Didn’t you hear the yelling?”

I hadn’t heard anything. But that didn’t surprise me. I often tuned in to my inner voice and tuned out reality.

I turned to the rest of the curious bystanders. “Okay. Now that we know the cops and paramedics are on their way, will the rest of you please leave? We don’t want to mess up the crime scene. I’ll stay here and wait for the police to arrive.”

My personnel office escort puffed up his chest and in a squeaky little voice tried to sound commanding as he pointed to the group with a large gesture, “Why you? Why should the rest of us leave?”

His voice barely carried over the din of the other voices, but I had no such problem. “Because my brother is a cop and I know what I’m doing. Honest, Mr. Schnitzer, I have experience with this. I’ll explain it all later.”

Surprisingly enough, my bullshit worked. Shock does strange things to people’s behavior and they obeyed me. Mom always said that confidence is a great leadership tool.

Actually I sounded more confident than I felt. As the oldest of six kids, being bossy had become my survival skill. However, I was still nervous around a dead body. And I didn’t want to tell anyone that even though I really was a cop’s sister, my knowledge of crime scenes came primarily from reading psychological thrillers.

After everyone left, some of them a bit ungraciously, a mewling noise caught my attention. Lying on the floor near the door was the woman who had greeted me that morning at the reception desk. She was crumpled into almost a fetal position, crying softly, and looked nothing like the receptionist who had met me earlier. Then, her nametag had blazed proudly on her chest and the glare careening off her overly coifed helmet-head had almost matched the blinding light from her teeth. A 180-degree turnaround in less than an hour.

She was pretty in a brassy sort of way, even in her current disarray; her red-lacquered nails matched the crimson I remembered seeing on her large expressive mouth. Maybe she was younger than I was, but not by much. She looked like a person from the wrong side of town who worked hard to become someone who was no longer a social outcast.

My take was she’d never make it into the big time in Quincy, but she wouldn’t get the cold shoulder in nice restaurants either.

Her voice had a slight drawl to it. The uninitiated might think she was from the south, but my bet was that she was a River Rat who crawled up to dry land. In our town in West Central Illinois, the wrong side of the tracks meant you had one foot in the Mississippi River and the other foot in mud.

Anyway, this poor wretch on the floor bore little resemblance to that perky confident employee from a scant hour ago.

The woman I’d asked to call the police returned and together we knelt to check the person on the floor. In the midst of this, we introduced ourselves, and I apologized for asking her to make a call to those already on their way. My helper was Marian Dougherty, another therapist, and a tall one at that. The woman acting as a doorstop was Gwen Schneider. We gently raised Gwen to her feet and walked her to a chair in the hallway. I asked Marian to stay with her while I checked on the crime scene.

Marian started to talk, “Why do you need to check…‌okay, never mind. It’s because your brother’s a cop and you have experience in these kind of things.”

I grinned and nodded.

Her eyebrows rose again, but this time she almost smiled as I walked back into the other room.

The office was eerily silent, although the echo of Gwen’s crying seemed to remain. Carefully, I closed the door behind me. I wanted quiet but didn’t want to obscure any fingerprints.

Before I did anything else, I needed to stop my heart from galloping out of my chest. I closed my eyes and took a few deep breaths, practicing an abbreviated relaxation response. I pictured myself with Brad Pitt on an otherwise deserted beach. When that failed to calm me, I pictured myself alone in the same place. As my breathing slowed, so did my pulse.

Calm and thinking clearly now, I decided to look around while I was waiting for the police to arrive. Burns was lying on his back in front of his desk with his face turned toward the door. His arms were extended about shoulder level and he looked like his swan dive was aborted into a back flop. I couldn’t see what caused the bleeding. It looked like it came from his neck or his head. The blood was starting to congeal in the large pool under his head, and I noticed a weird irregular blood spatter around the room. The pattern looked like a drunken circle, haphazardly touching desk, walls, carpet, and chairs. Did I only imagine the metallic smell? Suppressing the urge to touch him, I backed away. The Good Samaritan who’d checked Burns’ pulse and pronounced him dead had already moved him a bit and I didn’t want to add to the evidence disarray.

I observed what I could. If I were lucky, the police would ask me for information and I’d be able to supply it. My brothers were always saying I acted like I wanted to be a cop. I’d prove to them I knew how to maintain the integrity of a crime scene.

Only yesterday I had finished reading
Bipolar Passion.
The hero had managed to shoo everyone out of the murder room and kept the clues intact. The police heralded him for his astute work and he then proceeded to solve the crime. I was certain I could do the same.