At the Drop of a Hat (A Hat Shop Mystery, Band 3) - Softcover

McKinlay, Jenn

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0425258912 ISBN 13: 9780425258910

Verlag: Penguin Publishing Group, 2015

Inhaltsangabe

From the New York Times bestselling author of the Library Lover’s Mysteries and Death of a Mad Hatter comes a tale of hat shop owners who put a cap on crime.
 
MURDER CAN BE SO OLD HAT
 
Cousins Scarlett Parker and Vivian Tremont’s fashionable London hat shop, Mim’s Whims, is visited by a new customer bearing an old hat box. Ariana Jackson is getting married and wants to restore her mother’s bridal hat and veil for the occasion. The elegant item was made by Scarlett and Vivian’s grandmother over thirty years ago, so Viv is delighted to take the job. 
 
When Scarlett goes to Ariana's office to consult about the restoration cost, she finds her outside, standing over her boss’s dead body. Though Ariana claims to know nothing about his demise, the investigation unveils a motive for murder. Now, with the bride-to-be in custody and the wedding on hold, Scarlett and Viv must find the real killer before Ariana's future is boxed up for good.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

The hardest decision New York Times bestselling author Jenn McKinlay ever had to make was what to major in during college. Then she discovered the sanctuary of the library and library science—a major that allowed her to study all the subjects. She loves working as a librarian. After all, what other occupation allows you to research the ethnobotanical properties of agave, perform a puppet show for twenty wiggly toddlers and try to answer why the rabbit’s foot is considered lucky, all in the same day? Jenn is also the author of the Cupcake Bakery Mysteries, the Hat Shop Mysteries and the Bluff Point romance series. She lives in Scottsdale, Arizona, in a house that is overrun with books, pets, kids and her husband’s guitars.

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Chapter 1

I stood at the counter of Mim’s Whims, the hat shop my cousin Vivian Tremont and I had inherited from our grandmother Mim, and I gazed out the window. All I could see was gray.

Gray clouds, gray sheets of rain, gray fog filling the streets and alleyways, gray, gray, gray. Or as the Brits like to spell it, grey.

Our shop is nestled in the midst of Portobello Road and takes up the bottom floor of the three-story white building that our grandmother bought over forty years ago. I’ve always loved it and found the bright blue-and-white-striped awning and matching blue shutters on the windows above to be cheerful, but even they couldn’t defeat the never-ending gloom that seemed to descend upon our section of London.

Having been raised in the States and hailing most recently from Florida, I was being pushed just to the right of crazy by this late September weather.

Three solid weeks of rain will do that to a girl. Besides, I was quite sure I was going to sprout mold if I didn’t get some sunshine, and soon.

“It’s the last one,” Fee said. “You should have it.”

“No, no, I insist you take it,” Viv said. She tossed her long blond hair over her shoulder as if the gesture added weight to her argument.

Fee is Fiona Felton, my cousin Viv’s apprentice. She’s a very nice girl with a tall willowy build, a dark complexion courtesy of her West Indies heritage and a bob of corkscrew curls that she likes to dye new and different colors. Currently, she was rocking green streaks, which I thought was pretty cool but would look hideous in my own auburn shoulder-length hair.

Viv is the mad hatter of our little trio. Growing up down the street, she trained to be a milliner beside Mim. My own attempts at millinery were encouraged, but it became readily apparent that I did not have the family gift for twining ribbons into flowers or shaping brims or anything artistic or even crafty.

Viv and Fee were standing on the other side of the counter, taking a break from their current creations in the workroom. They were pushing a plate back and forth between them which contained one rogue piece of Walker’s Toffee, the last of the package we had been nibbling on all day.

“After such a large tea this afternoon, I couldn’t eat another bite,” Fee said.

“Fee, honestly, I insist you take the last piece of toffee,” Viv said. She sounded very bossy about it.

“No, I couldn’t possibly. You absolutely must have it,” Fee said. She blew a green curl out of her eyes.

“Oh, for goodness’ sake,” I said. “I’ll eat it just to end this.”

I scooped up the last piece of toffee and popped it into my mouth. Viv and Fee both turned to look at me with wide eyes.

“What?” I asked while chewing.

“Nothing,” Fee said and glanced away.

“It’s fine,” Viv agreed.

I stopped chewing. I knew the stone-sinking sensation of committing a social gaffe when I felt it. Scarlett Parker, boorish American, that’s me.

“Aw, man,” I said. “I messed that up, didn’t I?”

“It’s fine, honestly,” Viv said.

Which was how I knew it really wasn’t.

“What did I do?” I asked. “Did I not force it on you two enough?”

“You’re making fun of us,” Viv said.

I swallowed the last of the toffee. “No, I’m just trying to figure out how pushing something that you apparently really want onto others makes sense. If you want it, take it.”

“That’s not our way,” Fee said. “There are just certain things we do out of politeness like saying ‘Cheers’ when you step off the bus.”

“The toffee push could have gone on all day,” I said.

“It probably would have,” Viv agreed.

“See? You did us a favor,” Fee said.

“And now you’re trying to make me feel better for being a clumsy American,” I said.

“You’re half British,” Viv reminded me. Like I could forget my charming mother, Viv’s mother’s little sister, that easily. The woman had all but demanded a vow of celibacy out of me after my last relationship implosion went viral on the Internet and had my dad, a pacifist, looking into buying a gun to shoot the rat bastard who hurt his baby girl.

“I still don’t get it,” I said.

“It’s just one of the many idiosyncrasies of being British,” Viv said. “You indicate you’re longing for something by rejecting it. Repeatedly.”

“Now I see why you’re both single,” I said.

“Was that nice?” Viv asked. “We’re just very polite.”

“One might say cripplingly polite,” I said.

“Huh, enjoy that toffee, yeah?” Fee said.

I smiled. Maybe I was too brash and forward for my cousin’s sensibilities, but at least I didn’t spend my time pining or pretending I didn’t want things that I actually did.

The doors to the front of the shop opened and in strode Harrison Wentworth. My heart did a little toe tap against my ribs but I refused to acknowledge it. Okay, so maybe I did pretend I didn’t want something that I really did want just a little.

“Afternoon, ladies,” he greeted us as he stood in the door and shook out his umbrella.

“Hi, Harrison,” Viv and Fee greeted him in unison.

“Hiya, Harry,” I said.

His bright green eyes glittered when they landed on me.

“It’s Harrison, Ginger,” he corrected me.

Little did he know I liked hearing him call me Ginger, especially in that swoonworthy accent of his. Although I had tried to get everyone to call me Ginger over the years, Harry was the only one who’d kept it up from childhood. Yes, I’d known him that long.

Most of my school holidays had been spent in Notting Hill in Mim’s hat shop. My mother had insisted that I be well versed in all things British, and palling around with Viv was never a hardship. She was two years older than me, and given that we were both the only children in our families, she was the sibling I had never had.

Harry had been one of our brat pack, the kids whose families lived or owned businesses on Portobello Road, who ran amuck in the neighborhood. His uncle had been Mim’s bookkeeper just as Harry was ours. Of course, I had recently come to find out that he had bought a share of the business and was now technically my boss. Yeah, I was still chewing on that one.

I couldn’t fault Viv, though. She’d gotten into financial trouble over a haul of Swarovski crystals—yes, like me, she has impulse control issues. Unfortunately, I’d been so caught up in the drama that was my life at the time that she’d forged ahead and had Harry save the business when I should have been there to help. I still had guilt about it, but I was working through it.

“What are you doing here?” I asked Harry.

He raised his eyebrows at me and I realized my American rudeness was rearing its ugly blocky head—again.

“Sorry,” I said. “Was that too abrupt?”

“One does generally start with a comment about the weather,” he said. “Then you slowly segue into a softly pedaled interrogation.”

I glanced at the window. “After three weeks of gloom, I am thinking any conversation about the weather would be redundant, but if it makes you feel better . . . ruddy wet out there today, isn’t...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Penguin Publishing Group
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2015
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0425258912
• ISBN 13: 9780425258910
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 304
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: gpsr@libri.de; gpsr@libri.de; ; Friedensallee 273; Hamburg; 22763; Deutschland