Pecan Flan Murder Plan Read online

  Contents

  Pecan Flan Murder Plan

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  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  RECIPE!

  Nancy McGovern

  Cyra Bruce

  Disclaimer

  A SLICE OF PARADISE COZY MYSTERY

  BOOK 5:

  Pecan Flan Murder Plan

  By

  Nancy McGovern

  &

  Cyra Bruce

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  At the end of this story, there is an offer to join our mailing list for this series, through which you will receive updates, special offers & discounts on all future books in this series as well as information about joining our Street Team. Plus, you will receive a FREE BOOK from this series as a Thank You for signing up (a book you cannot get anywhere else)! If interested, the link is immediately after this story…

  Chapter 1

  Today was to be the ‘soft opening’ – a term Nathan had discovered from reading far too many business books for his own good. Since he’d decided to turn his little piece of waterfalled-paradise into a botanical tourist attraction, he’d realized he didn’t know quite as much as he’d thought he did about profit and margins and marketing. So, he’d delved into every business book he could find. Most of it hadn’t exactly been relevant, but he was full of new phrases, and new enthusiasm.

  Faith was buzzing with excitement as she and Nathan made their final round around the place, hand in hand. Nathan had insisted they check everything was perfect, before their first visitors would arrive, and he looked around every which direction with intense eyes, biting his lip.

  Faith felt more carefree – even a mistake here or there couldn’t dent the magic of the place. Her white and blue sundress caught on the warm Florida breeze, while the coconut trees swayed against the creamy-blue backdrop of the summer sky. It was the perfect day. The crunch of their sandaled feet on the stone-lined graveled paths even brought her joy – just a few weeks ago they were little more than muddy tracks that splashed up dirt onto their calves.

  “Wow,” Faith said, pausing to take pictures on her iPhone – she’d been talked into tossing her years-old flip phone by none other than Grandma Bessie. In truth, Faith had been hanging onto it because it was teal, her favorite color. But now she had a beautiful teal case for her iPhone and conceded that actually the device was pretty amazing. She snapped a picture of the shock of bright pink heliconias Nathan had planted. “We have to compare these to the before shots, Nate. I think we’d get the shock of our lives. You remember what it was like before?”

  “Hmm,” Nathan said, distracted, his head making sharp turns as he looked this way and that.

  “Babe,” said Faith, coming over to him and running the back of her finger over his forearm in a comforting motion. “It’s amazing. I don’t know why you’re so worried. Seriously.”

  Nathan looked like he was coming back to the world, having been very far away. “Are you sure it’s good enough?”

  “Good enough?!” Faith said with a tinkly laugh, then linked her arm in his. They entered into the 20-foot-long arched canopy Nathan had designed, where the sun filtered through the leaves into dappled shade. Bougainvillea, in creamy whites and shocking fuchsias and deep purples, trailed down over their heads. “I think this is my favorite part.”

  Janice and Max, the mother-and-son gardening team helping Nathan out, had done a great job with setting up the arches and making the bougainvillea climb and scale and bloom in such a short time.

  “I know,” Nathan said, with a smile and a happy sigh. “Janice and Max have really—”

  “AAAAAH!”

  A scream pierced through the peace of paradise.

  Nathan and Faith turned to each other, wide-eyed with shock.

  “Oh help,” Faith said with a gulp. “What in the heck was that?”

  They were already rushing back up the path. “I think it came from near the entrance,” Nathan said.

  “I don’t even know.” Faith shook her head. “This place has so many trees. So many paths. It could have come from anywhere.”

  As they dashed through paths and thick bush, Faith couldn’t help her mind running away with her. Dread was pounding in her chest. Though she tried to convince herself it had been a scream of joy, she knew it wasn’t the case. The scream had slashed through everything, and sent all Faith’s nerves haywire. Her mind twisted the scream into endless grim scenarios, each darker than the last. She saw blood. A collapsed body. Maybe a murder weapon tossed callously on the ground next to the victim.

  So when they emerged from the last path and arrived at the entrance area to see nothing gruesome at all – just a group of teenagers laughing, joking, and playing on their phones – she didn’t quite know what to think. Could she be relieved, or was there a body in the bushes somewhere?

  “Eeee!” Laura squealed with excitement as she rushed over from one of the small groups of teens. She had on a pink Tinkerbell T-shirt and a pair of khaki shorts. Her wispy blonde hair, tied up in a tiny little chignon as was always her style, made her look more like Tinkerbell than ever.

  She came over and wrapped Faith up in a hug. Then she punched Nathan in the arm. “Oh gosh, that was a bit hard,” she said, then hugged him, too. Both Nathan and Faith were still a little confused – the scream had been so loud and bloodcurdling. It must have come from somewhere. Laura cocked her head on one side, an amused smile dancing at the edges of her lips. “What?”

  “Didn’t you hear that scream?” Nathan asked.

  “Yes, I sure well did,” Laura said, rolling her eyes. “Right in my darn ears. That was Allen. He has autism, and he got overstimulated from the new experience, and all the kids getting excited and making noise and stuff. He sometimes screams like that.”

  “Oh,” Faith said, sharing a relieved smile with Nathan. “Is he okay?”

  “Sure,” said Laura. “I asked Tabby if he could go in the little back room in the kiosk to get some peace and quiet. He’s got a big black blanket over his head right now, which helps him calm down. He’ll probably be all right in ten minutes or so.”

  “Thank goodness,” Nathan said. “I was wondering if we didn’t have a murder case on our hands.”

  Laura giggled. “Oh, gosh, that would be just perfect, wouldn’t it? A murder on the grand opening?”

  “The soft opening,” Nathan corrected, so seriously that Faith and Laura couldn’t help but laugh.

  “Hey!” a cheerful voice said.

  Laura, Faith and Nathan turned to see two young teens walking toward them. The one who’d obviously spoken had a broad open smile and shining green eyes, and his blond hair was cut so short it shimmered in the sunshine. His friend had complicated cornrows, and near-black wide eyes that looked out, somewhat fearful, from his ebony face. They may have been polar opposites in coloring and demeanor, but one thing was exactly the same – their clothing. Both wore oversized basketball tops, with gray jeans stuffed into high top trainers. Faith also noticed that each had a blue string around his left wrist. The first thought that popped into her head was: gang. She didn’t know if that was reasonable or discriminatory, to be honest.

  “Hey, Shane,” Laura said. “Hey, JoJo. Com
e meet the creators of this place.”

  Shane was still all smiles, and JoJo was still all wary eyes. They stepped forward.

  “This is my cousin Nathan,” Laura told them. “When he first got this piece of land it was like hell to get through, and it was more wild bush than anything. When we go for our tour you’ll see how much he’s changed it.”

  “Cool,” Shane said.

  “I didn’t do it alone,” Nathan hurried to say. “I have Robbie. And my gardening helpers Janice and Max. Max is just a little bit older than you, I’d say. He’s 20.”

  “Both of us are nearly 16,” Shane said.

  “You’ll meet him as we go around,” Nathan said. “Janice is his mom. To be honest, I’m surprised they work so well together. Working with my mom at 20? I don’t think I’d have been mature enough for it. I think it would have been my worst nightmare, actually!”

  Faith thought back to when she’d tried to join her mother’s manuscript editing business. That certainly hadn’t worked out well. There was something about taking instruction from her mom as a young adult that felt… well, grating. She wasn’t a kid anymore, and had wanted to stand up for the fact. Somehow it was easier for a stranger to tell her what to do. Immature, probably. But it was true.

  “Oh, we don’t know our moms,” Shane said, just as breezily as he’d said, ‘Hey!’. “We’re foster kids.”

  “I do know my mom,” JoJo countered quietly.

  “Yeah, yeah, but you haven’t seen her in about 12 years,” Shane said. “I haven’t seen mine ever.”

  JoJo’s voice was thick with feeling. “It’s not my mom’s fault I’m a foster kid. She tried to—”

  “Let’s talk about this later, sweetheart,” Laura said, putting an arm around JoJo, then the other around Shane. “It’s time for the tour now.”

  Nathan nodded, then his eyes flashed wide in a panic. “I did remind you to bring their bathing suits, right?”

  “Yep,” Laura said with a bright smile. “I bet you have around a million things to remember, right?”

  “Uh huh.” Nathan looked around, biting his lip. Faith could practically see the cogs turning in his mind. “I hope I haven’t forgotten anything.”

  “You need to write to-do lists,” Faith said. “If Grandma Bessie was here, she’d whip your organizational skills into shape in no time.”

  Grandma Bessie, as it was, had left her retirement home to take a poker tour of the US with Arthur. For a woman who had once said, “I despise gambling and will never ever play a part in it,” this was quite a revelation. “We’re not doing it to win money,” she’d told Faith as a means of explanation – or perhaps, excuse. “We’re doing it for the fun of it. To live a little.” And, in truth, Arthur had more than enough money to fund plenty of fun.

  Nathan laughed. “Grandma Bessie’s having too much of a blast to think of to-do lists. Anyways, this is the reason you don’t have a grand opening straight away. You have a—”

  “Soft opening!” Faith and Laura chimed in chorus.

  Shane’s bubbly laughter rang out with Laura and Faith’s, and even Nathan had to chuckle.

  “All right, let’s go,” Nathan said, shaking his head, still laughing.

  “I’ll go get Allen,” said Laura. “He should be okay now. Hopefully that scream won’t be repeated.”

  “Now we know what to expect, it’s totally fine,” Faith said. “It was just alarming at first. We thought someone was getting attacked. I was half-expecting to come out here and see a dead body.”

  JoJo began, “Shane saw his brother and I saw my father when they—”

  “Not now, JoJo,” Laura said, pulling him into a side-hug. “You remember when we spoke about the right places to say things? When we want to talk about those things, we have to pick the right time and place. We’ll find some quiet time a little later on, okay?”

  Faith loved to watch Laura with the kids she worked with. It made Faith so proud and inspired – Faith didn’t think she’d have the depths of patience and unending compassion to do the same.

  Shane slapped JoJo on the back in a friendly way. “No dead body, talk, okay, JoJo? We’ll save that for later. Come on, bro, let’s check out this place.” He linked his arm in JoJo’s and dragged him away, chattering all the while. “It’s like the jungle, huh? You remember in fourth grade when we went to the zoo?”

  Laura hurried off to attend to Allen.

  “No dead body talk,” Faith said, turning to Nathan. “Kids have such a blunt way of putting stuff, huh? I don’t know whether that should make me laugh or cry.”

  Little did they know, there’d be a whole load of dead body talk to come.

  *****

  Chapter 2

  In truth, Faith hadn’t been sold on the idea of conducting the soft opening with Laura’s band of emotionally troubled teens. She had images in her mind of them running riot, pulling rare flowers off their stems and generally causing chaos.

  But she couldn’t have been more wrong, and Faith was glad it had just been her prejudice talking. As they made their way through the gardens, there was certainly excitement, but it wasn’t the rowdy kind. The kids were bubbly, chatty and had a sense of wonder and awe about them that was charmingly innocent.

  The soft breeze whispering through the canopy and the chirpy bird song were cut through with amazed, “Hey! Look at that!”, sometimes laced with happy expletives.

  “Oh, hey Janice!” Nathan called out. He was at the head of the procession, never looking more alive or in his element. “Still working?! Why don’t you join us?”

  Janice straightened up her wiry frame from her position kneeling over the flowerbed. “Oh, hello, all,” she said with a smile. Her brown hair straggled behind her in a messy ponytail, wisps escaping everywhere and giving her a wild halo around her face. She tried to push it back, only serving to lodge crumbles of soil in her hair. As always, her fingers were covered in soil, with smudge marks of it on her face, too. Her clothes were baggy, stained, and only good for gardening. “There’s always more work to do,” she said cheerfully. “Hey, kids.” She wasn’t at all phased by the huge gaggle of slightly intimidating-looking teenagers.

  “Yo, yo, yo!” someone called back excitedly.

  “Oh shut up, Jerry,” one of the girls said, giving him a shove with her hip.

  “Wow, wow, wow!” Max came veering around the corner with a wheelbarrow, at his usual semi-sprint pace. His voice was loud, his smile was wide, and his long limbs were always expressive. “It’s the motley trailer park slash Harlem crew.” He laughed at his own joke, while the whole atmosphere turned cold.

  “Max,” Janice whispered desperately, then stooped down back to the bed, presumably to hide her embarrassment.

  The silence that followed for a couple seconds was deafening. The tiniest chirping of a bird could be heard overhead.

  “Excuse me?” Laura burst out. Not too long ago, Laura had burst into tears at the slightest hint of confrontation. Getting in her new job changed that, though – she could handle anything, and with a new feistiness that Faith just loved.

  “Did that guy just say trailer park?” the hip-pushing girl said, flinging her long blonde ponytail over her shoulder and setting her face into a glare.

  “Yes, Alizee, he did,” Laura said, her face turning red.

  Max’s grin was still firmly in place, but he held his hands out, palms face up. “Hey, hey, hey!”

  “Max is one of the most passionate young landscapers I’ve ever met,” Nathan said, seemingly as both a way to change the subject, and an excuse for hiring such a man. “Maybe he can teach you about flowers or plants, if you’re interested.”

  Alizee folded her arms across her chest. “He ain’t teaching us nothing.”

  Shane nodded. “Damn straight. Ain’t that right, JoJo?”

  “Let’s move on,” Faith said diplomatically.

  “Yeah,” Shane said.

  Max threw his hands up in the air, his broad smile still plastered on.
“Gosh, I didn’t mean anything by it. Can’t you all take a joke?”

  “Let’s go,” Nathan said. He threw a wide-eyed pointed look at Max, as if to say please-hold-your-darn-tongue.

  Max wasn’t one to take a hint. “What?! Why’s everyone so sensitive? I thought these kids were supposed to be tough.”

  “Come on everyone,” Laura said loudly, beginning to usher the crowd of young people past Max and Janice and onto the next part of the path. “Let’s move, let’s move.”

  The mood had changed. Many of the young people glowered in Max’s direction.

  “You see what I mean?” Max said. “These kids need to learn some manners.”

  Alizee lurched forward toward him, and Faith had to rush to intercept her.

  “You don’t know nothing about me!” Alizee raged. “About any of us!” Faith held on to her arms, looking desperately toward Laura for help, while Alizee thrashed.

  Max shook his head and smiled in an infuriating way, then turned back to his gardening work.

  Laura was on the other side of the group, so couldn’t make it over quickly to help Faith.

  “I swear I’m gonna hurt this guy!” Alizee raged. “I swear!”

  Faith tried to swallow her panic, but worrying about having one of her panic attacks was only making it buzz through her all the more menacingly.

  It was JoJo who came to the rescue in the end. He tried to put his arm around her at first, but Alizee shoved it away. Then he stood in front of her and held her face gently. “He isn’t worth it, Alizee.” His voice was so quiet that Faith could barely hear over the other noise. “I know that. You know that. We all know that.”

  “Yeah!” Shane said, bounding over with a huge smile, reminding Faith of a big, friendly dog. “He’s just some annoying guy who doesn’t know anything.”

  “Yeah.” Alizee straightened up, pulling out of Faith’s grasp. She smoothed her long ponytail through her hand and put on a nonchalant look, like she’d never lost her temper at all. “You’re right. Let’s leave that idiot and go.”

  They made their way along the path, slightly subdued. But within a few minutes, Max had been all but forgotten about. Nathan made a big deal of leaping about at the front, showing them this tropical fruit tree from the Caribbean, and that vining vanilla from Tahiti, until they were all quite happy again.