If Onions Could Spring Leeks (Country Cooking School Mystery, Band 5) - Softcover

Shelton, Paige

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0425269299 ISBN 13: 9780425269299

Verlag: Berkley, 2015

Inhaltsangabe

The New York Times bestselling author of If Catfish Had Nine Lives returns to Broken Rope, Missouri, where ghosts of the Old West seek assistance from country cooks and amateur sleuths Betts Winston and her grandmother.
 
With summer tourists flocking to Broken Rope, locals volunteer to keep chaos to a minimum. Old West skits are running smoothly, actors are behaving, and stagecoach rides are more popular than ever, but when a spectral visitor appears by ghost train, it’s a job only Betts and Gram can handle.
 
Gram soon starts having nightmares about their ghostly visitor’s demise.  And if a ghost and the hot summer weather weren’t making things sticky enough, one of the town’s volunteers—a man notorious for having more than his fair share of ex-wives—is murdered. When Jerome, Bett’s otherworldly friend, makes an unsettling appearance, this simmering double mystery becomes a recipe for disaster.

Includes delicious recipes!

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Paige Shelton is the author of the New York Times bestselling Farmers’ Market Mysteries, including Bushel Full of Murder, Merry Market Murder, A Killer Maize, and Crops and Robbers. Previous books in the Country Cooking School Mysteries include If Catfish Had Nine Lives, If Bread Could Rise to the Occasion, If Mashed Potatoes Could Dance, and If Fried Chicken Could Fly. She lives in Salt Lake City, Utah, with her husband and son. When she’s up early enough, one of her favorite things is to watch the sun rise over the Wasatch Mountains.

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Acknowledgments

Chapter 1

At first the mournful whistle sounded far away and lonely. I was asleep and I liked the noise, as though it were part of a sad but hopeful dream. But then it became less a part of the dream and more the thing that was waking me up.

I sat up in bed and tried to gather my weary senses. I was home. Cliff wasn’t with me. Why? I remembered—he was in St. Louis picking up some equipment. He should be back tomorrow, or was that later today?

The train whistle sounded again, its volume much louder and its pitch high enough that it would surely hurt my ears if I was standing close to it.

I didn’t live anywhere near train tracks.

“Oh. Not true,” I said aloud with a sleep-cragged voice.

Clumsily, I rolled out of bed. I pulled a shirt and some shorts out of my dresser and threw them on over my nightshirt. I grabbed my phone, noticing that it was 3:04 in the morning, and hurried through and then out of the house, stopping short when I got to my small front porch.

My house was located on a dead-end street; the dead-end part, the spot where now there was just an open field of neglected grass, was once home to the Broken Rope train station. In its heyday and before Route 66 was the Route 66, this spot of Missouri saw lots of train traffic, and the area where my house was now located had been a thoroughfare, busy with travelers coming and going. I wasn’t old enough to have any memories of the station, of course, but my best friend and the town historian, Jake, had shown me pictures. Black and white renditions of women in tight-waisted long dresses and hats that made my neck ache just by looking at them, and men in heavy suits and ties posing in front of oily black engines that spat out white clouds of steam. There weren’t many smiles in those pictures. I liked to tease Jake that it was because those posing for the pictures were so miserable in their heavy, tight, and itchy clothing. He insisted that it was because back then everyone had such lousy teeth.

The field was five houses away, and currently no longer a field. Well, it probably still was a field, but I was seeing it differently. I was seeing it as it was back during the late 1800s when those long skirts and thick suits were all the rage, and back when people dressed up when they traveled.

I was both concerned and fascinated, but more intrigued than anything else. I knew what was going on and it wasn’t an unusual occurence—for me, as well as for my gram, Missouri Anna Winston. I’d become used to seeing and communicating with ghosts from Broken Rope’s past, so I knew the scene being played out at the end of the street was something that would contain at least one specter searching for attention from someone still alive. Mostly, my and my grandmother’s ghosts were pretty harmless, but there were moments when the danger they brought with them was real and present-day, and potentially deadly.

I stepped slowly and carefully down the porch steps, pausing again at the bottom. The train I’d heard approaching the station came into view nose-first, its squeaky brakes and loud whistle announcing that it was about to stop completely. I sniffed deeply and found a scent—flowers, a big, assorted bouquet of flowers. Or was that a neighbor’s garden? I couldn’t be totally sure, but the scent was so strong, so pure, that I thought that it was most likely attached to a visiting ghost.

The station platform was on the other side of the slowing train, so my view of whatever was going on there was about to be blocked. I looked around, confirmed that no one was watching me or peering through their windows, and then hurried down the street. I stepped in front of the now stationary locomotive and over the seemingly very real train tracks. Those few steps transported me almost fully into the past. Different than some time I’d spent in an old bakery, I could still see my house and neighborhood in their present-day state, though all the houses, streetlights, and cars were dim and murky and much less real than the feel of the wood planks shifting with my weight as I moved onto the platform.

The station was a long, wide, one-story building that ran along the back of the platform, made of what looked like the same pinewood planks under my feet. There were two doors in its middle, both currently open wide. To the right of the doors was a small window where I assumed long-ago tickets had been purchased. I stepped toward the doors and peered inside. There were two more ticket booths along one wall. The rest of the space was filled with rows of benches, also made of the same pinewood. The handiwork on the benches was much more utilitarian than I might have pictured it to be. Perhaps it was the movies of my time that made me think of curved, ornate arms and slanted backs, but these benches were simple, straight-backed seats that must have offered respite to only the weariest of travelers. The row of windows along the back wall seemed odd in a couple of ways. Daylight streamed through them, and they were made of glass and what looked like fancy wrought-iron frames. They looked almost elegant against the light pine everywhere. The contrast of the thick Missouri woods bathed in bright sunlight on the other side of the windows made me wonder why and when all the trees had been razed to make way for the present-day vacant grass field that now extended at least a hundred yards back.

As I turned toward the train, more images began to appear. With faded beginnings, people quickly formed and solidified, becoming dimensional and bathed in the same long-ago sunlight that lit the trees.

“But, Papa, I’m so very hungry,” a small girl with black curls and big green eyes said to a man with matching features who held her hand tightly.

“I know, Mary, but we’ll spoil our dinner if we eat the peanuts right now. Save them. Grandmama will have dinner on the table when we get there. Don’t ask me again.”

“All right,” she said with a sigh of disappointment.

With her bottom lip stuck out, she looked up at me. I smiled and waved, but she didn’t respond, didn’t even blink. Did she not see me?

An older gentleman who was still spry enough to be moving at a quick clip had his eyes on the pocket watch he held as he beelined directly toward me. I stepped to the side, but not quickly enough to avoid him completely. His left arm went right through me. I felt nothing, but it was one of those weird ghost things that I would probably never get used to.

It seemed that none of these ghosts saw me, which was a first. Usually, if there was a ghost in the general vicinity, they could see and communicate with both me and Gram. It was what I thought “this” was all about—we could see and talk to them because they could see and talk to us. But the ghost rules had already proved to be fluid, changing at least a little bit with each new ghostly guest.

I wondered what was going on, but didn’t sense any danger. I decided I could either go home and go back to bed or stay and wait for whatever happened next, discover if anyone would “see” me eventually.

So many ghosts materialized that the platform became crowded. Even though I could not feel anyone’s touch or any sort of breeze their movements stirred up, I became uncomfortable and a little claustrophobic. No one was dodging me, and it was impossible for me to dodge everyone else, so I wove my way to a spot close to the building’s doors and out of the main streams of traffic. I heard their voices as they hurried to purchase tickets and sped toward the train or from it and toward whoever was greeting them. I saw their faces and expressions clearly, but still...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Berkley
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2015
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0425269299
• ISBN 13: 9780425269299
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 304
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar