The Bad Break: A Riley Ellison Mystery - Softcover

Orr, Jill

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1945551208 ISBN 13: 9781945551208

Verlag: Prospect Park Books, 2018

Inhaltsangabe

Silver Falchion Award Finalist

“The small-town nature of this mystery, with the requisite fish-bowl local politics, relationships, and grudges, makes it perfect for cozy lovers who want something more modern. Readers will enjoy Riley’s humor and determination even when things turn sad.”
— Booklist

Riley Ellison has taken a great leap of faith by giving up her comfortable job at the Tuttle Corner Library for the exciting world of print journalism. Except that so far it hasn't been very exciting. All that changes when Riley's former co-worker Tabitha finds her soon-to-be father-in-law dead on the floor of his office, and Riley is asked to write his obituary. And when they discover Tabitha's fiancé's knife sticking out of his father's chest, Riley finds herself with a murder investigation to cover as well.
With Holman out on leave and mounting pressure from her boss, the mayor, and a bridezilla facing the possibility of a conjugal-visit honeymoon, Riley is desperate to prove she can handle the increasing demands of her new job. Despite warnings from her new boyfriend Jay, Riley blurs the line between reporter and investigator. Will Riley's rookie mistakes lead to more than just her byline ending up on the obituary page?

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Jill Orr is the author of the Riley Ellison mystery series, which has been called “delightfully comic” and “highly amusing” by Publishers Weekly. Books in the series have garnered praise from industry professionals and readers alike and have earned a Silver Falchion nomination, a starred review and "Best Book of the Week" from Library Journal, and a Midwest Connections pick.

Originally from Chicago, Jill moved to Columbia, Missouri, to attend the University of Missouri, where she received her bachelor’s degree in Journalism and her master’s degree in Social Work. However, these days the only social work she does is at cocktail parties, and she sometimes wishes her degrees were in What’s for Dinner and Decoding the Teenage Eye Roll.

Jill lives in Missouri with her husband and two (usually delightful) teenage children. The fourth installment in the Riley Ellison series, The Full Scoop, is new for 2020. And Jill's new illustrated nonfiction humor book, How Not to Be Old (Even if You Are), arrives in November. Learn more at www.jillorrauthor.com.

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The Bad Break

By Jill Orr

Prospect Park Books

Copyright © 2018 Jill Orr
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-945551-20-8

CHAPTER 1

So how long will you be gone?" I asked Holman, trying to keep the panic from my voice.

"Depends. Could be a few days or a few weeks."

"Uh-huh. Yeah. Okay. I gotcha." For reasons I didn't understand, I kept spitting out affirmatives. I could feel my head nodding up and down like a bobble-head on the dashboard of a monster truck. "I see. All right. Mm-hmm."

Holman arched an eyebrow. "Riley, are you okay?"

He had clearly not anticipated the effect the news that he'd be taking leave to go undercover would have on me. I was a little surprised myself, but the idea of working at the Tuttle Times without Holman had me feeling panicky, like all the air had been sucked out of the room. Or like I couldn't find my cell phone. I guess I'd come to depend on him more than I realized during the past month.

"A few weeks? Really?"

He shrugged. "The first trip is scheduled for seven days. But if I don't see anything, I may have to do another."

For the past few months, Holman had been working an investigative piece on the TransVirginia Shipping Company. A former employee had tipped him off that the company had been ordering its workers to illegally dump barrels of toxic waste in the ocean to avoid the high cost of proper disposal. Holman had found several former employees who corroborated the story, but all refused to go on the record. As the son of a maritime engineer in the Royal Canadian Navy, Holman knew his way around a ship. So he'd been trying to get a job as a handler on one of the ships, which had proven more difficult than he anticipated. But after several weeks, he'd finally been hired. It was a great break for him. For me, not so much.

"You'll be fine," he said. "You're ready."

"But what if I'm not?" I let my insecurities bubble up to the surface. "I have yet to write a single story without going over it with you first."

"You bring your work to me because it makes you feel better. Not because you need to."

"But who will edit me now?"

"Kay, of course," he said. Kay Jackson was the editor-in-chief of the Times, and although she was technically my boss, I think I'd spoken a total of seven words to her since I started working there. She was nice but scary. And therefore my tenure at the Times so far had been spent comfortably in Holman's shadow. I liked it there. He had become my personal safety net, my insurance against failure.

"Fine," I huffed. "Leave me all alone with the jackals."

"Spencer and Henderson aren't jackals —" "Well, they don't exactly like having me around."

"— if anything, a more apt comparison would be vultures, as they're waiting for you to die, metaphorically speaking, of course, so they can pick off your stories," he completed his thought.

"Is that supposed to make me feel better?"

Holman blinked, surprised. "I wouldn't think so."

The guys in the newsroom had not been thrilled when Holman convinced Kay to hire me. The Times was a small weekly newspaper, and everyone who worked there had worked there forever and had their own turf. Holman was the paper's crown jewel, having received the Worth Bingham Prize for Investigative Journalism some years ago, and I was hired mostly to assist him. But at a small paper, everyone pitches in, and over the past few weeks I'd been assigned stories from multiple departments. This wasn't always appreciated.

"They think I'm an intern," I said, sulkily. "Spencer called me Lewinsky yesterday."

"Who cares what they think. You're not an intern. You're a paid employee, same as me."

"Are you sure you won't be available at all, even by phone? Text? Email?" My desperation ticked up as he packed up his files and loaded them into his briefcase.

"Listen," Holman said. "You are going to be fine. And who knows, maybe Flick will even let you help with obits while I'm gone."

I knew he was just trying to make me feel better. Hal Flick hadn't let me do anything for the obituary department except research on the "pre-dead." Even though Kay told him to train me, Flick had stubbornly refused to let me write a single obituary since I'd been at the Times. This was partially because he was an old curmudgeon who didn't like change, and partially because he and I shared a long and complicated history. Either way, it sucked.

People in small towns read the newspaper for two main reasons: high school football and obituaries. Flick had been lobbying Kay for years to let him expand the obit section to include more than just death notices sent in by families or funeral homes. He wanted to run editorial obits, like the kind in The New York Times, true news stories about people whose lives have influenced our community. Kay finally agreed to give him the space for one news obit per issue, and the response had been amazing. People in Tuttle were loving the longer obits. Personally, I felt vindicated that I was no longer the only person in town who realized the simple beauty of the form. Plus, I was thrilled that I was going to get to learn the craft of obituary writing like my granddaddy had done. But so far Flick had kept the juicy assignments all to himself, leaving me the scraps, spellchecking death notices or doing research for our advances, which basically involves calling healthy people and asking them to verify information to be used ... "later." Needless to say, people don't always appreciate these calls.

"What am I supposed to do if I need you?" I whined.

"You won't. This will be good for you — a natural way to bring your training to an end. I have provided you with the knowledge, insight, and experience gained during the course of my career to help launch yours. As the sculptor molds the clay, I have been able to shape you —"

"Holman!"

"What?" He looked surprised. "I didn't mean that in a sexual way, if that's what you were thinking —"

I held up a hand to stop him. I simply could not have this conversation again. "That was not what I was thinking. That is never what I am thinking. It's just ... what if I'm not ready?"

"You're going to be fine," he said again with a confidence I envied. "But there is something I'm going to need you to do for me while I'm gone."

"Name it." I got out my notepad to write down the assignment. Was it research for another investigation? Following up with a source? Looking for the proverbial smoking gun?

"I'm going to need you to feed Aunt Beast."

"What? You need me to feed your aunt? Is she ill?"

"No, she's not ill," Holman said, looking at me like I was crazy. "She doesn't have any arms."

This was the first I was hearing about a relative of Holman's with no arms. But before I asked any more questions I paused, waiting for the rest. With Holman I'd learn-ed that sometimes when you thought you were talking about one thing, you were actually talking about something else entirely.

"She gets one pinch in the morning and one in the evening. And if I'm gone for more than two weeks, you'll need to change her."

Before I could object to feeding, pinching, and changing anyone, he pulled out a large cylinder of Bettamin Tropical Fish Food and set it on the desk in front of me.

And there it was: a fish.

Holman pointed to the electric-blue betta fish swimming in a clear glass bowl atop his credenza. I realized that although I'd seen the fish nearly every day, I'd never asked if it had a name.

"You named your fish Aunt...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Prospect Park Books
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2018
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1945551208
• ISBN 13: 9781945551208
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 308
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar