Free Maya Mound Mayhem (A Logan Dickerson Cozy Mystery Book 3) by Abby L. Vandiver

exact his revenge on my mother, he gave Aaron the GPS to
Jairo’s phone, the liaison between me and my benefactor. And soon an asset to
me and my mother getting to the bottom of my find.
    When Aaron
followed Jairo’s GPS, he found him outside of the cave we were in and shot him.
In cold blood. My mother and I were able to get away and Aaron, his girlfriend,
and another man chased us, but we lost them.
    Wait . . .
    His girlfriend.
That woman I saw at the police station. The blonde who was eyeing me. I think
that was her.
    Why were there
here in Gainesville? Why was Aaron Coulter at Track Rock Gap?
    What am I going to
do? I started sobbing and buried my head in my pillow.
    Are they out to
kill me?
    I stretched out on
the floor, lying on my back, I stared up at the ceiling and tried to sniff back
tears that threatened to fall. I stayed like that for a long while. Thinking.
    Then I thought, am
I just going to just lie here, do nothing and let someone come and kill me?
    I sprang up, a
sudden bravado shot through my body. I wasn’t just going to sit back and find
out if I was in danger of being the next body upturned. Or, if Detective Davis
had his way, the prime suspect. I needed to find out what was going on. What
they were doing there.
    Somehow I had
gotten away from Aaron and Simon when they had set out to kill me. And even
though I had had a little help, I had been in charge of three excavation sites.
I was only twenty-eight. But I was strong, I told myself.
    I can do this.
    Be strong. Use my
experience to get out of this and not just cry and cry “Woe is me.”
    Yeah, but you
don’t know how or where to start.
    I laughed at that
thought because I knew someone who did.
    I had been with
Miss Vivee when she solved two murders. She already wanted me to let her solve
this one.
    I glanced at the
screen of my iPhone. Four a.m. I took in a breath. Now is a good of time as
any.
    I jumped up from
the bathroom floor and stared at myself in the mirror. My light-brown skin damp
and eyes red from crying.
    Pitiful.
    I shook my head
and narrowed my eyes at my reflection. “Stop being so pitiful. You can do
this,” I told myself. I splashed cold water on my face and grabbed a towel on
my way out of the bathroom.
    “Yoo-hoo, Miss
Vivee,” I said gently shaking her. “Wake up. We need to solve a murder.”
     
     

 
    Chapter
Twenty
     
    Miss Vivee was so
excited that I wanted her to help me. Although I knew me saying before she
couldn’t, never would have stopped her. She didn’t listen to me.
    She wanted to go
to a diner. She had been trying to get me to take her to one since we’d got to
Gainesville. I knew (just like Viola Rose and Mac) that it was where she always
started her murder investigations. Even if it wasn’t Jellybean Café, the
atmosphere must hold some magical aura for her.
    Although I had
told her I didn’t know where a diner was that we could go to get information, I
really did. It was a place that people from around Track Rock Gap, including my
team, went often to eat. I’d never gone, but I knew just where it was located.
It was in Itza.
    How apropos.
     “May I help you?”
an older woman, maybe in her mid-forties stood at our table after we arrived
and was seated said to us. A Viola Rose she was not. No sparkle. No sass. She
seemed not too happy to take our order either. Her black straight hair was
pulled back into ponytail at the nape of her neck. A rectangle-shaped plastic pin
with the name Talisa in bold black lettering pierced the strap of her uniform.
    “We’ll all take a
glass of iced tea,” Miss Vivee said. “Do you have egg salad?”
    “No,” she said,
head down.
    “Okay then, well
give us a minute to go over the menu.”
    “Be right back,”
she said.
    “You think you’re
going to find out anything from her,” I asked with a grin. “I don’t think so.”
    Mac had a beam in
his eye. “You should know better than to underestimate Vivienne Pennywell,” he
said.
    The forlorn
looking