The Way of the Wicked (Hope Street Church Mysteries Book 2)
Read The Way of the Wicked (Hope Street Church Mysteries Book 2) Online
Authors: Ellery Adams
Tags: #cozy, #church, #Bible study, #romance, #charity, #mystery, #murder
Dear Reader,
The Hope Street mysteries were originally published by St. Martin’s Press and written under the name Jennifer Stanley. The titles, in order, were
Stirring Up Strife
,
Path of the Wicked
, and
The Way of the Guilty
.
I have completely rewritten all three novels and am now publishing them under the name Ellery Adams as
The Path of the Crooked
,
The Way of the Wicked
, and
The Graves of the Guilty
.
If you’ve read the original books, you will find the basic plot of the above titles unchanged. My intention was to polish the writing in each installment and rerelease the novels as crisper, cleaner, more engaging books. Stay tuned for forthcoming novels in the Hope Street mystery series as well!
Thank you for supporting cozy mysteries.
Your friend,
Ellery Adams
The Way of the Wicked
Cooper Lee and her friends in the Hope Street Bible study group have just volunteered for a local charity, delivering much-needed food and cheer to shut-ins in their community. It seems like the perfect way for the group to do good, and to Cooper it offers the welcome opportunity to get out of the house and spend more time with her new boyfriend, Nathan. But when one of the charity’s recipients is murdered, the police have no choice but to single out the church group and their fellow volunteers as the prime suspects.
Determined to make sure no evil deed goes unpunished, Cooper and her friends decide to discreetly interrogate each volunteer in their search for the killer, even if it means putting themselves at risk in the process. And as serving the needy becomes more treacherous than any of them could have imagined, they just might discover that the road to murder is paved with good intentions.
Beyond the Page Books
are published by
Beyond the Page Publishing
This is a fully revised edition of a book that was originally published as
Path of the Wicked
by Jennifer Stanley, copyright © 2010 by Jennifer Stanley. Revised edition copyright © 2014 by Jennifer Stanley.
Material excerpted from
The Path of the Crooked
and
The Graves of the Guilty
copyright © 2014 by Jennifer Stanley.
Cover design and illustration by Dar Albert, Wicked Smart Designs
ISBN: 978-1-940846-32-3
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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.
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Contents
Excerpt from
The Path of the Crooked
Excerpt from
The Graves of the Guilty
Do not set foot on the path of the wicked or walk in the way of evil men.
Avoid it, do not travel on it; turn from it and go on your way.
For they cannot sleep till they do evil; they are robbed of slumber till they make someone fall.
They eat the bread of wickedness and drink the wine of violence.
Proverbs 4:14–17 (NIV)
1
Cooper Lee was not having a good day. She had spent the morning at an elementary school in the Far West End trying to coax their aged copier, a Toshiba e-Studio 28, back to life. But the machine had given its all and no amount of replacement parts, duct tape, or prayers were going to keep it running.
Kneeling on the floor next to her toolbox, a soiled rag, and the copier’s rectangular back panel, Cooper examined the dirty developer tray. When she’d removed the part, her hands and forearms had gotten covered in toner. She didn’t even notice her soiled fingers when she used them to pinch her nose and rub her temples in frustration. It was going to be impossible to resuscitate the spent machine, but it would be equally difficult to break this news to the school secretary.
Unaware of the splotches of gray and black ink on her face, Cooper sighed. She knew that the school didn’t have the funds in their budget to purchase a new copier, and they’d desperately need one soon, as summer break was ticking to an end.
“Hey!” a voice nearby whispered. Cooper looked up to see a girl dressed in a Hannah Montana T-shirt and white shorts standing over her.
“Hi.” She smiled. “Aren’t you supposed to be on vacation?”
“My mom works here,” the girl replied. “I had to help her carry stuff into her office.” She continued to study Cooper’s face with interest. “You look like you have the boooooobonic plague. I learned all about that for my summer reading assignment.” She crossed her arms across her chest and peered at Cooper intently. “Are those black
boils?”
Cooper laughed. “No, I do not have the
bubonic
plague. I probably got ink from the copier on my face. Happens all the time.”
The girl frowned. “Gross.
I
don’t want a dirty job when I grow up. I’m going to be a famous singer. I’ll live in a huge house, get driven around in a super-big limo, and own, like, twenty horses.” She stretched out her skinny arms to emphasize her point. “Then my mama can quit her job. She’s the school nurse and I think what she does is gross, too.” The girl lowered her voice to an awed whisper. “She gives people
shots!
With
needles!”
Examining her reflection in the shiny surface of an adjustable steel wrench, Cooper grinned and began to wipe the ink off her face with a clean rag. “Well, I’m happiest when I’m getting messy. My hands are usually covered in ink, garden soil, or cookie dough.”
“You’re weird,” the girl whispered and then looked back over her shoulder as though her mother might be close enough to overhear her rude remark. “But you’re still pretty,” she amended and then skipped away.
Cooper replaced the back panel of the defunct machine, taking her time turning the screws. This was the only part of her job at Make It Work!, an office-machine sales and repair company operating out of Richmond, Virginia, that Cooper disliked. She hated telling nice people, like the kind and courteous secretary in the front office, that she’d been unable to fulfill their expectations and could not repair their machine.
Smoothing her uniform shirt, Cooper snapped her toolbox closed and stood. She patted the lid of the copier. “You’ve given them your best. Time for you to retire to the greener pastures of the recycling facility.”
At the front office, the secretary took one look at Cooper’s doleful expression and said, “Oh, dear. You don’t have good tidings for me, do you?”
“No, ma’am.”
The secretary paused for a moment, unable to keep herself from staring at Cooper’s unusual eyes. The left eye was blue, but such a pale shade of blue that it was almost colorless. The right eye, however, was startlingly green. It called to mind a meadow of sun-dappled spring grass.
“Oh, my.” The secretary shook her head slightly as the enormity of Cooper’s prognosis sank in. “Are you sure you can’t fix our copier? We really need to get a few more months out of that machine.”
“I couldn’t buy you two or three more minutes, let alone months. It has nothing left to give.”
The secretary nodded, unsurprised by the revelation. “I know you did your best. You always do and we appreciate the extra time you’ve taken keeping that ole dinosaur running.” She rose and, signing Cooper’s work order, walked her to the front door.
“It’s going to take more than a bake sale to raise funds for a new copier.” The secretary’s expression was bleak. “And with school starting in two weeks, I don’t know what we’re going to do.” She wrung her hands anxiously.
“The way I see it—you have two choices. You can soak a mess of cakes in a barrel of rum and hope that the folks who show up for the bake sale write checks with a whole lot of zeroes.” Cooper smiled wryly. “Or you could lease one of our machines until you raise the money for a new one.”
The secretary brightened. “A lease?” She paused to consider the idea. “I’m fond of the rum cake plan, too, but a lease just might get us through the crisis. Thank you, Ms. Lee. You’re an angel! Please call me with the rates as soon as you’re able. We need a copier in here as of yesterday.” Then her face grew solemn and she lowered her voice. “And you’ll take away the old one for us?”
Cooper nodded, promised to phone later with leasing options, and hopped into a black van with the Make It Work! logo splashed across both sides in bright red lettering. As she drove back to the office, she remembered that the new employee Mr. Farmer hired to handle the document-shredding side of the business would be starting work today.
