We are delighted to welcome back author B.E. Sanderson to Omnimystery News today.
Last week we revealed the cover of B.E.'s new mystery, Accidental Death (May 2015 ebook format) and today she is providing us with an excerpt from our featured book, the first chapter.
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Denny? I need you. Jimmy's dead!"
His sister's drawn out wail echoed through Detective Dennis Haggarty's head as he stared at his mountain of work. He'd sworn on his badge to close those cases, but they'd have to wait. There was no refusing the trapped animal sound of his only sibling.
After ten years apart, he almost hadn't recognized Kimmy's voice. The urge to maintain their silence for another ten years almost overwhelmed him, but not before the guilt over his part in their estrangement took hold. Before he could find a way around it, he promised he'd help her through this.
"What time do you have to be in Serenity?"
His partner's gravelly accent broke into his mental playback loop. Dennis raised his eyes to the icy-blue stare of Pat Talsma. "The memorial starts at six."
"Then you'd better get your ass on the road, eh? Fashionably late ain't fashionable at the undertaker's." The other detective slid out of his sport coat and tapped his watch. "Unless you wanna get caught in the snow they're predicting."
Dennis cursed under his breath. He wanted to blame his reluctance to leave on the mountain of unclosed cases, but they were a fact of life. If he had to be honest with himself, he didn't want to go to Serenity, Colorado — even to keep a promise to his sister. Twenty years before, he'd dragged himself out of a tiny town like it and vowed he'd never go back. Still, if his dislike of the backwoods had been his only objection to this trip, he could've gotten over it.
"Come on, kid. You shoulda left an hour ago."
Pushing himself slowly from his chair, he cast a longing glance at his work. "Finish the paperwork on those last two cases for me, okay?"
"Not on your life."
"I've got an idea," he said. "I'll stay here and work on tracking down that vehicular homicide while you go east. Take your wife. After twenty years with you, she knows how to talk to strange people." He laughed to underscore the joke, but he hadn't been kidding about wanting someone else to take his place. If only it were possible.
"Lila would have my hide. Or at least have me sleeping on the couch for the next month. No sirree. I'd rather spend the weekend lookin' for that car that's been described ten different ways by twelve different people than spend even one day in Kansas-lite." Pat pointed toward the exit. "Now quit draggin' your feet and get outta here. All of this glamour'll be waiting for you when you get back. And that includes your piles of paperwork."
"Thanks for nuttin'," he said, trying to match his partner's wry tone and his Yooper accent. Pat was probably the only person in the world who understood that Dennis actually preferred work to most any other pursuit. It sure beat sitting in his condo listening to the neighbors fight, wondering when their domicile would be the next murder/suicide to cross his desk. Still, even those rare occasions when he subjected himself to a whole day at home, the volume of their wedded bliss beat a weekend in Serenity.
"You could always tell Kimmy you have a big case you can't get loose from right now." Pat knew the score. After hours of long, boring stakeouts, they ran through conversation topics like most men went through cases of beer. They'd discussed Dennis' term in the Army and how seeing what the world had to offer had cured him of little prairie towns.
Time among normal, sane people cured him of the need to socialize with his family.
"It might even work out to be true if we catch a lead on the motel triple."
They both understood the unlikelihood of that, but he grasped at the excuse like Pat offered him the last life preserver on the Titanic.
"Never mind," his partner said, squashing his glimmer of hope like a cockroach. "Forget I said anything. Your baby sister needs you, and you need to go, or you won't be a damn bit of good to anyone here. You'll only sit around worryin' about her instead of work. Go. Help her through this."
He didn't like Pat's logic, but he couldn't argue with it. "Fine. Hold the fort. I shouldn't be more than a couple days. Max. You know where to reach me if anything breaks —"
"Get out of here already, eh? I'm already sick of lookin' at ya." Pat stabbed at the power button for his computer. Dennis had an inkling the older man would spend the entire time wrestling with technology he didn't quite have a handle on. "I was doin' this job nine years before they dropped your sorry ass in my lap."
"But you were never as good without me."
His partner wadded up a sheet of paper and chucked it at his head. "Get out!"
With a nod and a lingering look at stacks of unfinished work, Dennis threw his jacket over his shoulder. If it were up to him, he'd take a few days to go ice-fishing, but he promised himself years ago to look after Kimmy. So far, he'd done a shitty job keeping his promise. He wouldn't fail this time.
As he feared, the Friday afternoon traffic heading out of Denver sucked, but one glance at the westbound lanes made him look on the bright side. At least visiting Serenity didn't mean a drive into the mountains. The lure of fresh powder at Aspen and Telluride made people crazy, but none of those skiing junkies would think of spending a snowy weekend in the high desert. Once he got away from the city traffic, he'd only have to worry about semis filled with either corn or cows.
He still couldn't imagine what prompted his sister to move so far out of the city. He got why she stayed. Her precious Jimmy would never have left the town of his birth. Why she chose to move there in the first place stymied him. The town really didn't have much to offer a young woman, even if, at the time, she needed a job and they needed teachers. Meeting Jimmy once she arrived had been a stroke of bad luck —
Dennis gritted his teeth. He really needed to watch himself. Repeating a gaff like that out loud, right after his brother-in-law had a brain aneurysm himself, would bring a shitload of well-deserved hell down on his head.
Miles and miles of nothing slipped past his Durango as he barreled down the highway, trying not to think. The trip stretched longer than he remembered, and right about when he figured he'd reach Nebraska before his exit, he saw signs pointing toward Serenity. If the town's placement had been anywhere near sane, he'd almost be there, but once he left the freeway, he still had another hour of driving north. One glance at his dashboard clock had him pushing the car well over the speed limit. He couldn't bear disappointing his sister. Again.
Only days past her twelfth birthday, he enlisted in the military. He'd been absent for all the important things little sisters need their brothers for. Certainly, the difference in their ages had already driven a wedge in their camaraderie, but from the way their mother spoke, Kimmy took his absence harder than anyone had expected. The first real rift in their familial love seemed to come when her high-school graduation found him half a world away. She never understood why he couldn't simply drop everything.
Especially when he couldn't explain where the government sent him. Particularly when half the time he didn't know where his next duty station would be until after he put feet on the ground. With or without his family's support, he had made a commitment to his country, and if his vow meant missing a few events, he had to be willing to accept it. He just wished his own blood could've accepted it, too.
Kimmy's attitude made it clear she never had.
He didn't blame her for being angry. At the time, she'd been a kid who couldn't grasp how the things that were important to her weren't as crucial as protecting the world. She never understood why he had to be absent for the countless birthdays and Christmases and get-togethers. Still, they'd managed civility until he missed the start of her wedded bliss. The rift widened until it became a chasm. She swore she would never speak to him again. And she hadn't until a couple days ago.
Her cry for help called to a part of him that wanted to believe his little sister might accept him back in her life. He wouldn't have refused her if someone had a gun to his head. Right now, she needed him like she'd never needed him before. He couldn't let her down.
By the time he reached Serenity, darkness lay over the town like a down comforter. The streetlights illuminated snow that had been piled on either side of the highway like guard posts on the Berlin Wall. If not for the mounds of white, the terrain would've been as flat as a yardstick with the highway running straight through.
Easing off the gas, he looked for a sign to show him which way to turn. Serenity didn't have so much as an arrow pointing the way toward the mortuary, or a street sign leading to its address. Cursing his luck, he pulled into a brightly-lit gas station for directions.
"Excuse me," he said to the cashier. "Could you tell me how to get to Oakleaf Mortuary from here?"
"Going to Jimmy's memorial, huh?" The scruffy, young man with his rumpled uniform shirt could've been a suspect from the seedier streets in LoDo. The boy's slow, high-plains drawl pegged him as a local, though.
"Yeah," Dennis said, tapping his watch. "And I'm late. If you could tell me how to —"
"He was a real nice guy, that Jimmy. I'm sure sorry about …" The kid reddened. "Well, ya know."
"Thank you. I'll pass the sentiment along to his wife." Glancing pointedly out the double glass doors, he tried again. "Oakleaf? Which way?"
"Oh. Let's see. Umm … Well … You wanna go down to the SooperFresh Market … There's a light there. Then you make a …" He played with his hands for a second before continuing. "… left. At the first road past the lake, take another … uh … left. If you drive past the water tower, you went too far. Anyways, go down that street, through the light on Lloyd Avenue. Oakleaf is just past Pine on your right. Big, white building, looks like the Addams Family lives there. If you get to the lot with all the headstones stacked in piles … little creepy if you ask me … Well, if you see those, you went too far."
When Dennis had begun to despair of ever reaching the mortuary, a voice behind him said, "You wouldn't happen to be going to Jimmy Powden's memorial, would you?"
Dennis turned to look down into a pair of light-brown eyes. "Yes, ma'am," he said. To his surprise, the corners of her full mouth turned down.
"Funny. You don't look like you'd be going to that."
He couldn't tell if she meant her statement to be rude, or if the trip had worn him out, but her attitude grated along his nerves. "Pardon me?"
"Sorry," she said, ducking her head a little. "It's only that you don't look like you're from around here — obviously, since you don't know where Oakleaf is — and pretty much everyone who knew Jimmy is within a ten mile radius." She pushed a twenty across the counter at the clueless cashier and told him she'd already pumped the gas off number two. "I'm headed over there now if you'd like to follow me. And don't worry about being late. Everyone around here is late."
"Thank you for the consideration, but I promised my sister —"
"You're Dennis." Her words sounded more like an accusation than a simple statement of fact.
"Yes."
"Well, then we'd better get you moving. Kim's a bit lost in all this and needs a strong shoulder to lean on now that …" She shrugged as if she'd said everything she planned to say. Without a backward glance, she strode to the door, wrapping her black scarf around her neck and pulling on a pair of black gloves right before she pushed out into the night. Combined with her black coat and boots, she had the look of being a mourner, but something about her seemed off.
Struck dumb, Dennis could only stare at her while she left the store. By the time he recovered, she had already climbed behind the wheel of a big black truck. She revved the engine and rolled down her window. "I'll try and keep it slow so you don't get lost." He nodded at her courtesy, even if he felt like a fool for needing her help in the first place.
When they reached the mortuary, the woman pulled into the only remaining parking spot out front, leaving Dennis to find his own place. By the time he found a space another block down, the strange Samaritan had disappeared inside. On the sidewalk, he stared at the mortuary, convincing himself he needed to figure out her major maladjustment before he went inside. Deep down, he knew the truth. He'd rather stand outside all night freezing than face his only sibling.
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Photo provided courtesy of
B.E. Sanderson
Former sales "road warrior" and corporate "Jack of all trades", B.E. now lives the hermit's life in southwest Missouri, where she divides her time between doing writerly things, inhaling books, networking on the internet, and enjoying the "retired" life with her husband and her crazy cats.
For more information about the author, please visit her website at website and her author page on Goodreads, or find her on Facebook and Twitter.
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Accidental Death by B.E. Sanderson
A Novel of Suspense
Publisher: B. E. Sanderson
Murder doesn't happen here …
Serenity is the safest, little town in Colorado. But residents are dropping like flies. No big deal. Accidents happen.
Or do they?
Detective Dennis Haggarty came to town to comfort his recently widowed sister, not investigate a homicide. However, finding a corpse means he can't avoid doing his job — especially since the local authorities are determined to disregard the facts. Delving deeper, he finds a string of deaths everyone wants to ignore even when all the evidence points to murder. Lucky for the detective, only one person in town has means, motive, and opportunity.
Too bad he's falling in love with her.
— Accidental Death by B.E. Sanderson
