Corpses & Conmen (Rosewood Place Mysteries Book 2)

First published by Ruby Blaylock in 2016.

Copyright © Ruby Blaylock, 2016.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise without written permission from the publisher. It is illegal to copy this book, post it to a website, or distribute it by any others means without permission.

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Annie Richards smoothed her dress down for what felt like the millionth time that morning. She pulled her hair up in a casual ponytail, then pulled it back down again, unable to choose between comfort and looking somewhat professional. The phrase ‘first impressions’ bounced around the inside of her head like a rubber ball, but she reminded herself that, as the owner of her very own business and the master of her own destiny, she could make whatever type of impression she wanted, as long as it wasn’t a bad one.

She peered out of the window in the parlour, staring down the driveway as though doing so might hurry things along somewhat. A quick glance at the grandfather clock behind her told her that it was early still--her first guest would likely be another hour away, at least, but the knowledge of that fact didn’t settle the butterflies in her stomach. Normally Annie thought of herself as a patient person, but today, waiting felt like it took forever.

She flitted around Rosewood Place like an insect, inspecting nooks and crannies for dust or out-of-place items. She helped her mother in the kitchen hoping that the distraction of preparing snacks for her guests would help alleviate her nerves, but it didn’t quite do the job. All Annie could focus on was the fact that Rosewood Place was opening its doors to its very first guests, and by some miracle, it was fully booked.

Rory Jenkins passed by one of the large windows on the front of the house. He carried a hammer in one hand and a toolbox in the other. After spending months working on renovating the plantation style farmhouse, he’d become part of the scenery. Originally, Rory was meant to be a contractor, hired just long enough to whip the place into something suitable for use as a bed-and-breakfast. After Annie’s mother, Bessie, worked her charms on Rory, pleading with him to stick around and help keep the place in good working order, he’d agreed to take on the role of full-time handyman for the grand old house.

Annie knew he hadn’t taken the job for the money; the business was a long way from profitable right then. And he hadn’t taken it for lack of work. Rory had developed a reputation as a fine carpenter and fair tradesman who took great pride in doing a good job. She suspected that Rory’s love of the house’s history played some part in his decision, and her mother seemed convinced that Annie and Rory’s own history played some part as well. They’d dated for nearly three years in high school and had been friends long before that. She often wondered how differently her life would have been if Rory hadn’t ended their relationship after graduation, but she knew it didn’t do to dwell on the past.

Annie cast her mind back to the early part of the year when she’d been unsure of whether she’d be able to pull off a challenge as big as renovating the old farmhouse. She often felt that she’d overcome so much in the past year that she’d practically been transformed into an entirely new person. Perhaps she’d actually turned into the old Annie, the one who’d been headstrong and determined, who’d never been afraid to tackle a challenge. That Old Annie was who she’d been before she got married and moved to the Big Apple. Twenty years of marriage to someone who cared more about the appearance of their marriage than the actual state of it left her feeling lost and somewhat incapable, at least for a little while.

Annie had become a widow at the age of forty and had discovered that her late husband had been quite the liar and cheat during their marriage. She had decided almost immediately to reclaim her life with her sixteen-year-old son back in the welcoming folds of Coopersville, South Carolina. After some time spent acclimating to life in a small town, Devon had learned to love the place almost as much as his mother, and with the help of Annie’s own mother, Bessie, they’d turned Annie’s dream of opening a country inn into a reality.

Annie looked around her and smiled. The farmhouse looked very different than it had when she’d first bought it. It had been empty for several years when she’d first set foot inside the antebellum home. Originally built sometime in the late 1700’s, it had grown and changed with each new owner, beginning as a shanty on a hundred acres of farmland and blooming into an enormous farmhouse on ten meagre acres of land. As a plantation, Rosewood Place had failed miserably, or so Annie thought. What should have been a huge success never seemed to thrive as a functioning plantation. Crops failed and the Cooper family, who owned the plantation during its most successful years, couldn’t even afford to keep the slaves needed to farm the place.

The view from the windows at the front of the house was beautiful and somehow calming. Annie spent a great deal of time on the front porch just outside these windows admiring the gentle slope of the lawn that stretched lazily down to the main road. Her gravel driveway, which had been recently filled with new white gravel to fill the crevices created from rain washing down the hill, stood out in stark contrast to the shadows of the trees that lined one side and the stubby green grass that lined the other.

Wildflowers and dandelions dotted the edge of the lawn where Annie hadn’t been able to bring herself to cut them. She noted with some satisfaction that the blackberry bushes still held a handful of fat berries. They’d be dried up and bitter in a few days but Annie had already picked more than enough for several pies and a few jars of jam. Her mother had frozen some as well, so they’d enjoy them long into the fall. These last berries were for the birds, of which there were many out here in the South Carolina countryside. Annie loved watching them from her porch, where the sound of cars driving along the main road could hardly be heard. Rosewood Place felt so cozy, so lost from the world around it, that Annie sometimes forgot that anywhere else existed at all. She hoped that her guests would feel this way, too.

Annie was glad that the plantation had been a failure. If it had thrived, she probably would have never been able to afford the place, and because Annie hated the idea of slavery, she would have felt guilty living in a place where human beings were regularly mistreated and abused. No, it was definitely one of those lucky, beautiful coincidences that this particular farm had slipped into near oblivion. The universe had lined everything up perfectly to ensure that Annie and her little family wound up here, and for that, she was grateful.

Tearing herself away from the window, Annie made her way into the large sitting room at the front of the house. It was one of two sitting rooms, the other was the small parlour at the main entrance of the home, and it was one of Annie’s favorite rooms in the house. Windows lined two walls, letting in plenty of natural light. There was an enormous fireplace, which, much to her delight, had required only a thorough cleaning to make it fully functional. She envisioned cozy winter evenings by the fire with her guests and family members, sipping cocoa and eating her mother’s homemade chocolate chip cookies.

Several oversized chairs dotted the perimeter of the room. They were comfy and inviting, perfect for piling up with a book on a lazy afternoon. Annie crossed the sitting room and pushed open a small door in the far right corner. It was designed to blend in with the wall on which it hung, giving it the appearance of a section of panelling. This ‘hidden’ door swung open to reveal a tiny room filled wall-to-wall with books. It had originally been some sort of storage room or possibly an oversized closet, but Rory had insisted that a grand plantation house ought to have at least a small library, and he’d dutifully fitted it with floor-to-ceiling shelves. Annie had contributed some of her own books to the library, and her mother had added a few of her own. The rest were purchased at the annual Friends of the Library sale back in June.

Annie smiled as she recalled her son picking out a handful of books for younger guests. He’d been almost too shy to pay for them when he’d seen that the girl behind the library counter was young and pretty. Annie suspected that Devon’s recently increased appetite for reading had quite a lot to do with the young library assistant, and she silently hoped that he was on his way to making some friends his own age here in town.

She knew that once school started in a few weeks Devon would have less time for her and likely less interest in working at the inn. At sixteen, he still didn’t have his driver’s license, and she made a mental note to try and remedy that before his next birthday. She dreaded seeing him become so independent, but at the same time, she was extremely proud of how mature he’d become these past few months.

She supposed that letting him have a say in certain aspects of his new home and their family business had directly contributed to that newfound maturity. She’d put Devon in charge of designing his own attic room, and despite her worries that he’d turn it into some sort of high-tech bachelor pad, Annie was pleasantly surprised by Devon’s design choices. She suspected that Rory may have had a hand in steering him towards a room that was practical and that fit with the house’s history, though Devon’s personal touch was clearly seen in the small details. She knew of no other plantation-era home that had a TARDIS-style closet built into its attic, but she decided that she could live with that quirk quite happily.

Annie ran her fingers across the spines of the books in the tiny library and pulled one from the shelf. It was a history book about Coopersville that she’d bought from the local history museum. There was very little about Rosewood Place, the plantation on which her home had been built, but there was plenty of information about the rest of her small hometown. She stepped out of the library and closed the door behind her before placing the history book on the coffee table in front of a pair of plush armchairs. Her guests would likely find the history book to be a charming touch, and it would give them an idea of what the rest of the town was like, if they were interested.

A small table and two chairs sat in front of one of the large windows facing out to the side of the house. Annie grinned as she noted the deck of playing cards her mother had placed on it along with a glass candy dish filled to the brim with peppermint candies. Bessie loved a good game of cards, and Annie wouldn’t be surprised if her mother spent time trying to convince their guests to play a few hands with her. Bessie could be quite persuasive at times, especially if she really wanted something. Annie was secretly relieved that her mother would finally have someone other than herself and Rory to play with, since Devon flatly refused to learn any of her ‘old woman’ card games.

As if Bessie knew that her daughter was thinking about her, she appeared suddenly and silently beside her. “Are you still fussing over this room? I told you, it’s perfect.”

Annie jumped. “How do you move so quietly? I swear, Mother, one of these days you are going to give me a heart attack!”

Bessie grinned. “I guess it’s just my natural, catlike abilities,” she teased. “You know, I may be on my way to becoming a septuagenarian, but I’m not dead yet, just in case you thought I was some sort of ghost.” Bessie loved to tease her daughter about ghosts, especially ones that might lurk inside the walls of a home that was over two-hundred years old. Although they had yet to experience any ghostly experiences, Annie couldn’t help but let her imagination run away with her. If she actually did see a ghost, she’d probably faint from fright, but Annie doubted it would make her stop loving her new home.

Bessie also loved pointing out that she was ‘getting on in years,’ though she hadn’t actually hit her seventies yet and was as fit as many women half her age. Despite hair that was white as snow, Bessie didn’t look her age, either. She had a cheerful, slightly chubby face and the soft curves and edges that a grandmother was supposed to have. She did have a touch of arthritis, but unless it was very cold or rainy it didn’t seem to slow her down. Her favorite walking stick, which had been a gift from Annie’s late father, was brought out every now and then, used more for show than out of any actual necessity.

Annie suspected that her mother loved making people underestimate her abilities. Whether this was because Bessie liked to shock others with what she could actually do, or whether she just liked to play the helpless little old lady, Annie wasn’t entirely sure. She’d just accepted it as a personality quirk of her mother’s that she could live with. Bessie might claim to be some helpless old lady, but her active social life and vigorous domestic activities painted a very different picture.

Bessie was often up before everyone else, cooking and cleaning cheerfully until the rest of her family was up and active. She’d begged Rory to build her both a chicken coop and a large garden, though Annie drew the line at allowing Bessie to have a dairy cow.

“It’s a farmhouse, Annie. We need farm animals,” Bessie had protested.

“It’s a bed-and-breakfast, Mother. We need beds and food,” Annie had retorted before acquiescing to the chickens.

Now they stood in the doorway to the sitting room, each smiling as they imagined the guests who would get to enjoy the room as much as they had these past months. “It’s going to be mighty fine, Annie. You wait and see.”

Annie followed her mother into the kitchen and poured herself a glass of iced tea. She eyed the trays of finger sandwiches that Bessie had prepared that morning. The trays filled an entire shelf of their oversized refrigerator. Beside the fridge, rows of cupcakes stood at attention, frosted in vanilla and chocolate buttercream. Bessie was an enthusiastic cook who loved to bake as well, so it seemed only natural that she take on the cooking duties at the B&B. Annie knew she’d have to take on more of the cooking responsibilities later on, but for now, Bessie had things firmly under control.

Bessie ran a hand across her white hair, patting the bun on top of her head gently before pushing her spectacles up on the bridge of her nose. She’d had white hair as long as Annie could remember. Apparently, it was common in Bessie’s family for the women to go prematurely grey, but Annie took after her father’s side of the family and she only found the rare sliver of a grey hair hiding in her chestnut locks.

Robert Purdy had been buried with very little grey in his thick brown mop. Annie only wished that her father’s heart had been as virile as his hair, but he’d been gone for over five years now. Like her husband, her father had suffered a massive heart attack and died suddenly. Unlike Annie’s husband, David, her father had died in his sleep while napping in his recliner. David had died at work, or rather, in the ambulance on the way to the hospital. Both deaths had shaken her to her core, but of the two men, Annie could honestly say she missed her father the most.