Free Bed & Breakfast Bedlam (A Logan Dickerson Cozy Mystery Book 1) by Abby L. Vandiver Page B

last name. She did that to everyone but family – Renmar, Brie
and Bay (she didn’t usually call me by name, she’d just sort of talked at me,
and when she did use a name it was Missy). And now this man was just “Mac.” 
Mac must be like family to her.
    I looked over at her sitting there, and it
seemed almost like she was sad. Cat had placed her paws on Miss Vivee’s chest
and put her wet nose right in her face, trying to get her attention. But Miss
Vivee didn’t seem to pay her any notice. I remembered what Renmar said, it
doesn’t matter how old you are, you still have the same wants and desires. You
always feel the same inside, she had said.
    I guess that went for Miss Vivee and Mac.
    Cat gave up, climbed into the backseat,
and I reached over Miss Vivee and grabbed her seatbelt. I buckled her in and
decided I was going to be more sensitive to her. Maybe getting back to the
Maypop would make her feel better.
    “You’ve got to get me a newspaper.” She
said suddenly.
     “What?” I asked in surprise. “Why do you
need me to get you a newspaper? There’s one at the Maypop, isn’t there?” I
remembered one was delivered every morning.
    “Home?” she turned to me and tilted her
head. “Why in the world would I be ready to go home?” She shook her head and
closed her eyes as if tolerating me was such a chore. “Look,” she said opening
her eyes. “We got some staking out to do, but first I want to go and find the
crime scene.” She reached in her purse and pulled out her sunglasses.
    “I thought we did that when we went over
to talk to Viola Rose at the diner.”
    “We just learned about the crime scene. We
didn’t actually go to it, now did we?” She turned around and smiled at her dog.
“What’cha doing back there, girl? Come here and give me a kiss.”
    Cat jumped up front and I rolled my eyes.
    I hopped out of the car and went back to
Hadley’s where I’d bought her notebook and got her a newspaper.
    “Where to?” I asked when I got back in the
car. I turned the ignition.
    “Mims Point Park. Over by the beach.”
    I drove around the square and headed over
to the coastline of the Savannah River.
    “This is where she would have gone down to
the run along the shoreline,” Miss Vivee said.
    Once we reached the park Miss Vivee directed
me to pull over near a set of sandstone steps that lead from the park down to
the beach. I shut off the engine and we sat for ten minutes or so and watched
as people walked and played. At least that’s what I did. Miss Vivee seemed lost
in thought, either that or she was having one of her senior moments when she
would seem to fix her gaze on something far off and not know what was going on
around her.
    “Yasamee isn’t that big,” she said.
    Yep, must’ve been a senior moment. I
didn’t know what she was talking about.
    I tilted my head and looked at her
sideways. “You okay, Miss Vivee?”
    “Why wouldn’t I be okay?” She broke her
trance-like stare and furrowed her brow. “You know. If you don’t straighten up,
I’m going to have to demote you from partner to just driver.”
    I laughed. Pointing out the window I said,
“So this is the crime scene.”
    “Possibly,” she said and surveyed the
area. “Wherever it was, there has to be something hard. Those steps would be
just about right.”
    I followed her gaze. Miss Vivee hadn’t
told me how Gemma died, and I hadn’t bought into the idea that she’d been
murdered yet, but Miss Vivee seemed to know exactly what she was looking for.
    “Viola Rose said that Gemma Burke ran past
the Jellybean around 11:30 am.”
    “Yep. She said she remembered exactly
because one of her customers that came in at the same time she saw her and he
always comes for lunch at 11:30.”
    Miss Vivee nodded. “Junior Appletree. He
works over at the library, doing cleaning and odd jobs. He eats there every
day, breakfast, lunch and dinner. Viola Rose always bragging about how he can’t
get enough of her good cooking