Let There Be Suspects

Table of Contents

 

 

Praise for
Blessed IS the Busybody

“A well-crafted story with both humor and mystery. Emilie Richards has a writing style that reels the reader in with her first words. Aggie is a fun character . . . Any of Emilie Richards’s books are keepers on my shelf!”

 
“A delightful cozy that stars an amateur sleuth who feels as if she swims upstream against the tide . . . All comes together in this fine ‘Ministry Is Murder’ thriller.”

—
Midwest Book Review
(five-star review)

 
“An absolutely delightful mystery that fans of Emilie Richards and anyone who enjoys light mystery will adore . . . This novel takes a clever and unexpected turn at its conclusion. It also marks the beginning of a new mystery series involving Emerald Springs. I think Aggie is just getting started with her sleuthing and if future adventures are as well-written as this one, we are in for a treat.”

—
The Romance Reader’s Connection

 
“An enjoyable read . . . Any new book by this gifted author is cause for celebration.”

—
The Mystery Reader

 
“A cozy mystery with style. Aggie is adorable and her sleuthing efforts will fill the reader with admiration—as well as chuckles . . . Ms. Richards’s characters are particularly vivid and all have interesting little twists that make them memorable and very real . . . A lighthearted and endearing read with a great deal of flavor and wit.”

—
Roundtable Reviews

 
“Fun and suspenseful.”—
Fresh Fiction

“Multilayered plot, vivid descriptions, and a keen sense of time and place.”—
Library Journal

 
“Richards writes with rare honesty and compassion and has a keen eye for detail. This is a beautiful, heartwarming story that will find its way onto many shelves.”

—
Romantic Times

 
“Richards pieces together each woman’s story as artfully as a quilter creates a quilt, with equally satisfying results, and her characterizations are transcendent, endowed with warmth and compassion.”—
Booklist

 
“Richards’s ability to portray compelling characters who grapple with challenging family issues is laudable, and this well-crafted tale should score well with fans of Luanne Rice and Kristin Hannah.”

—
Publishers Weekly
(starred review)

 
“A flat-out page turner . . . reminiscent of the early Sidney Sheldon.”—
The Cleveland Plain Dealer

 
“Unforgettable characters and complex relationships.”

—
The Romance Reader

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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.

 
LET THERE BE SUSPECTS

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

 
PRINTING HISTORY Berkley Prime Crime mass-market edition / December 2006

 
Copyright © 2006 by Emilie McGee.

 
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eISBN : 978-0-425-21307-0

 
BERKLEY® PRIME CRIME
Berkley Prime Crime Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group,
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1

Given a chance to make a Christmas wish, most people ask for peace on Earth. This year, peace is high on my list, but maybe not quite at the top. In addition to the really important stuff, I’m also wishing for a personal miracle. I, Agate Sloan-Wilcox, the wife of a minister and theoretically something of a role model, am praying that Junie, my mother, will arrive in the middle of our parsonage open house wearing something,
anything
, straight off the rack of a Dillard’s department store.

In a moment of contrition, I confessed this to my oldest sister Vel. An extraordinary cook, Vel knows instinctively how to season or spice anything and improve it doublefold. She had been blending cloves and nutmeg to make a mulled wine punch, but now she reached for a cinnamon stick and pointed it at me.

“Junie? You’re kidding, right? Last December when she visited me in Manhattan I gave a quiet little holiday dinner. She wore a royal blue sari studded with rhinestones and embroidered with shepherds and Magi.”

I had no trouble picturing this. Junie is short, pale, and Polish, but this has never stopped her from dressing like a maharani or geisha. To Junie, clothing is theater.

Of Junie’s three daughters, Vel, with her ash blonde hair and gray blue eyes, actually looks the most like our mother, although she’s a head taller and her features are sharper and stronger. But Vel is as cautious as Junie is reckless, as conventional as Junie is free-spirited. While Junie might show up at
my
party dressed as the ghost of Christmas past, Vel, an accountant for a Fortune 500 corporation, was already dressed in the ubiquitous uniform of her profession. Dark power suit, pale silk blouse, a simple string of pearls.

Vel shook the cinnamon stick in emphasis. “Junie claimed the sari was her personal rendition of Christmas night in the Holy Land. The Magi looked like the Grateful Dead.”

Teddy, my youngest daughter, looked up from the platter of Christmas cookies she was decorating with colored icing. A green spot at one side of her mouth told me where some of the icing had gone.

“How can somebody wear a sorry? What was Junie sorry for?” Teddy is a first grader at Grant Elementary School and a collector of words. It’s possible she’s getting a head start on the SATs.

“Not spelled the same way. S-A-R-I,” Vel said, always happy to instruct. “It’s a length of cloth, usually silk, that women in India drape around them like a dress.”

Since both Vel and Teddy are precise, logical creatures I knew a discussion of culture and clothing was on its way. As it picked up speed without me, I thought about the past weeks.

Accompanied by our youngest sister, Sid, Vel arrived two days ago for a family reunion. The reunion was Junie’s idea. Unfortunately, she forgot to mention it to me until three weeks ago. By the time she remembered, everyone had their airline tickets, everyone except Junie herself, who twenty years ago envisioned her death in a midair crash and hasn’t boarded an airplane since.

Even less fortunately, by the time Sid and Vel called to tell me their flight times, my plans for an all-church open house to spread Christmas cheer to our congregation were already carved in stone.

The open house is a necessity. My husband Ed is barely into his second year as minister at the Consolidated Community Church in Emerald Springs, Ohio. Last Christmas we were just settling in, and entertaining was out of the question. Things quickly went from bad to worse. This past September when I should have entertained the church board at a traditional Labor Day party, the chalk outline of a body was gracing our front porch.

Now it was time to make up to our parishioners both for my lapses as a hostess and our front porch drama. It was time to erase memories of bodies and near-death experiences. It was time to take back the parsonage.

I just hadn’t expected to take it back with my screwball family on the premises.

Vel and Teddy had exhausted the topic of historic Asian dress, and I quickly routed the subject back to Teddy’s grandmother. “Don’t you think just this once Junie will realize that blending in is its own form of creativity?”

“Who’s blending what?” Sid stumbled in from my living room where she had been busily adorning everything that didn’t move. At least I was fairly certain this was Sid hiding behind the brush pile nestled in human arms. I glimpsed a green angora sweater and heather-toned wool pants. From what I could tell she had stripped the branches from every evergreen in a ten-block radius.

“We’re talking about Junie,” Vel said. “Aggie thinks Junie will have the good sense to try and blend in today, since a minister lives here and his entire congregation has been invited to the open house.”

I love to hear my sisters’ laughter. Sometimes.

After the noise died down Sid deposited her assortment of limbs by the kitchen door and stood back to survey the space above my cabinets, a showcase only she and Martha Stewart would consider embellishing.

“I thought I’d drape these along the tops. Maybe here and there I’ll add those satin balls we tied in clusters last night. I still have some left.”

I tried to picture this. Until now my cabinet tops have housed only dust balls, spiderwebs, and a collection of toothpick holders. My mother-in-law Nan started the collection for me and gives me another each Christmas as payback for marrying her only son. Fragile bits of china are the perfect gift for a mother with young children and a cat. I was pretty sure the latest addition was wrapped and waiting under the majestic blue spruce in my living room.

As she planned where to place the garlands lying at her feet, Sid wound her brown hair into a knot on top of her head. With only a twinge of jealousy I can say that Sid is the prettiest of Junie’s daughters. She has the delicate features both Vel and I lack, a slender model’s figure, and posture so perfect people invariably ask if she’s a dancer. Sid, short for Obsidian, has eyes as black as the stone she was named for and a rose-tinted complexion inherited from her Irish father.

Men see Sid and they register the entire perfect package. Men see me and register my ample breasts and little else. I have Sid’s dark hair and Vel’s dimples, but no stranger who sees us together suspects we are sisters.

“You’re going to need a stepladder,” I warned. “We only have a rickety one, and it’s going to take a lot of effort to haul it in here. You’re afraid of heights.”

Sid wasn’t swayed. “You just don’t want to clean up the needles.”

“I’ll only consent if you promise to accidentally destroy Nan’s collection.”

“Deal,” Sid said. But of course we both knew she wouldn’t. The toothpick holders are antiques, and Sid is a great admirer of all things pedigreed and dignified.

Take Bix Minard, for instance. Bix is Sid’s latest conquest and a reluctant addition to our family reunion. Boyfriend Bix wasn’t in my house more than ten minutes before I’d been treated to a rundown of the many branches of his family tree, heavy with the fruit of Revolutionary War heroes and latter-day diplomats. As an encore I’d been gifted with a description of the family home in the Hamptons, where he was pining to spend the holidays with folks more notable than we.