The Saucy Lucy Murders (42 page)
Read The Saucy Lucy Murders Online
Authors: Cindy Keen Reynders
In addition to keeping track of her extended clan, which includes three sisters, two brothers, her father, step-mother and numerous nieces and nephews, Cindy works for Laramie County School District 1 (LCSD1) in Cheyenne. She is a marketing specialist in the district’s Community Relations department and writes feature articles for the LCSD1 Public Schools Chronicle, which has a circulation of approximately 40,000 readers. She has found that her family and friends inspire her to explore human nature and she believes this has enabled her to draw out all aspects of human behavior in her books.
Her future goals include being able travel more as time allows and to write, write, write. She constantly challenges herself to develop more entertaining plots, characters and settings. Nothing pleases her more than to be able to tell a good story. If it touches someone’s heartstrings and makes them laugh or cry, then she knows she’s done her job.
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fter a difficult divorce, Lexie Lightfoot moves home to Moose Creek Junction, Wyoming, to start a new life with her teenage daughter, Eva. Lexie and Lucy open a small business, The Saucy Lucy Café. Lexie begins the process of assimilating herself back into a small town full of gossip and secrets.
Lucy is a staunch, churchgoing woman who believes her sister must remarry in order to enter the kingdom of heaven. After several disastrous blind dates arranged by her sister, Lexie is ready to give up in the dating department. Especially when her relationship with Detective Gabe Stevenson, the handsome lawman from Westonville, goes south. She is determined to live her life without a man and without her sister’s interference.
When her friend goes missing and Lexie and Lucy find her buried in her garden, Lexie is devastated. Moose Creek Junction’s inept sheriff, and Lucy’s husband, Otis Parnell, is no help. With Gabe on vacation, the Westonville police are having a hard time finding the murderer.
Lexie grows impatient and decides its time to lend a helping hand. With Lucy’s assistance, the sisters begin questioning the townspeople in order to conduct their own investigation. When things start to cook, Lexie and Lucy find themselves in a heap of hot water!
ISBN#9781933836614
Mass Market Paperback / Mystery
US $7.95 / CDN $9.95
DECEMBER 2008
Bertie Byrd is unique. To say the least.
She calls Sweet Meadow, Georgia, home, where she works for her father doing auto repairs. She also drives the tow-truck, although Sweet Meadow’s rather colorful denizens tend to treat Bertie more like the local, free taxi service. You know, someone has to get to a doctor’s appointment or pick something up at the dry cleaners.
Bertie’s favorite day of the week is Friday, when she leaves the wrecker with her father for the whole weekend and joins her friends at the Dew Drop Inn for a night of dancing. Her best friend, Mary Lou, sometimes fixes her up with dubious dates, although Bertie has to remind her friend not to tease her hair too high for those occasions. Like the time when they went to Carrie Sue’s open house, and a ceramic cow with angel wings hanging from a ceiling fan locked its hooves into Bertie’s big hair and refused to let go. She had to wear it all night, dangling chain and all.
Bertie’s nearly perfect life is about to take a downhill turn, however. It starts when her landlord, Pete, currently a resident in a nearby nursing home, starts showing up at her house. In his birthday suit. A very badly wrinkled birthday suit. And then she goes to her mailbox, a rubber large mouth bass, and finds a notice from the zoning commission saying she can no longer park the wrecker in her driveway. The notice is signed by George Bigham. But when she goes to the courthouse to take care of her little problem, it is only to discover George Bigham is deceased. And Mary Lou’s pregnancy test just came up positive. Can it get any worse?
In a word… yes.
ISBN#9781932815979
Mass Market Paperback / Fiction
US $6.99 / CDN $9.99
Available Now
Bertie Byrd Fortney never thought she’d be spending her wedding night in a maternity ward. But her best friend went into labor right in the middle of the conga line at Bertie and Arch’s wedding reception, and it wasn’t until her friend’s son made his entrance into the world that Bertie, her husband, and her stepdaughter could leave on their motor home honeymoon. The trip’s trials, however, leave Bertie wondering if a honeymoon is some kind of test a woman must pass before becoming a wife.
To add to her tribulations, Bertie returns to Bertie’s Garage and Towing to find Linc, her tow truck driver, is being threatened by the Redneck Mafia. The mob boss has told Linc to return to Atlanta to marry his daughter, or he will move him there himself … one body part at a time.
And then Bertie is taken hostage by a man who has taught his goats to bark and his twins to talk. A mistake on both counts, in Bertie’s not-so-humble opinion.
Finally, a bizarre accident involving an elderly drunken citizen Linc mistakes as a hit man, a golf cart, a trip to the hospital, and a positive pregnancy test has tongues wagging in Sweet Meadow, Georgia. Did Bertie really get knocked up on a golf cart by her tow truck driver?
Will Bertie be able to douse the rumors? Will she be able to save her faithful employee from the mob? More importantly, will she pass the wife test?
ISBN#9781932815634
Hardcover Fiction
US $24.95 / CDN $33.95
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Bertie is at it again.
It starts when she wants a traffic light at a dangerous intersection. But because the purchase of an automatic traffic counter would cut into the city council’s Christmas party fund, Bertie is forced to count each car personally and present a report. Then Bertie, in her inimitable fashion, gets into it with one of the council members. When he dies of a heart attack, she’s accused of causing it. Goaded into running for the now-open position, an unlikely political career is launched. That’s not all.
She finds herself running against Booger Bailey, he of barking goat fame. That’s going to be interesting. Who, for instance, is the mysterious donor financing his campaign?
And then there’s the two octogenarians who talk Bertie into backing them in a business venture: street vending their boiled peanuts. But what are they really up to?
Seemingly insignificant events once again twist Bertie’s life into a series of improbable, and hilarious, misadventures. Because Bertie is off … and running.
ISBN#9781933836119
Hardcover Fiction
US $24.95 / CDN $33.95
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Blood Ties. What do they mean?
How far would someone go to sever … or protect them?
Julie Collins is stuck in a dead-end secretarial job with the Bear Butte County Sheriff’s office, and still grieving over the unsolved murder of her Lakota half-brother. Lack of public interest in finding his murderer, or the killer of several other transient Native American men, has left Julie with a bone-deep cynicism she counters with tequila, cigarettes, and dangerous men. The one bright spot in her mundane life is the time she spends working part-time as a PI with her childhood friend, Kevin Wells.
When the body of a sixteen-year old white girl is discovered in nearby Rapid Creek, Julie believes this victim will receive the attention others were denied. Then she learns Kevin has been hired, mysteriously, to find out where the murdered girl spent her last few days. Julie finds herself drawn into the case against her better judgment, and discovers not only the ugly reality of the young girl’s tragic life and brutal death, but ties to her and Kevin’s past that she is increasingly reluctant to revisit.
On the surface the situation is eerily familiar. But the parallels end when Julie realizes some family secrets are best kept buried deep. Especially those serious enough to kill for.
ISBN#9781932815320
Mass Market Paperback / Mystery
US $6.99 / CDN $9.99
Available Now
