Your Chariot Awaits An Andi Mcconnell Mystery

Chapter One I flopped into a chair at a corner table, glad the little bakery/coffee shop was almost empty. Today not even the aroma of maple bars, apple fritters, and fresh-baked bread could burn through my fog of doom and gloom. "Hey, it's the middle of the afternoon. What're you doing here?" asked Joella, who was my next-door neighbor as well as a waitress here. She looked at me more closely as she set a cup of my usual French roast blend on the table. "Something wrong?" "I thought the most traumatic event of the week was going to be my birthday." I fished a paper out of my purse and spun it across the table. "Wrong." Joella grabbed for it, but it sailed right on by and landed under the only other occupied table. A guy in khaki pants and T-shirt emblazoned with a picture of a sailboat picked it up. He read it as he walked over to my table. Indignation joined my funk. "Hey, what're you doing? That's private!" I snatched my paper back. Joella patted my shoulder. "Don't mind Fitz. He used to play a detective on TV. He's nosy about everything." "I'm not nosy," the guy protested. "I'm just interested. And it pays off. I spotted a carjacking suspect in the Burger King parking lot a couple weeks ago, let the cops know, and right away they nailed him." "That doesn't give you the right to read other people's private papers." I held the letter close to my chest. He ignored my complaint and stuck out his hand. "I'm Keegan Fitzpatrick, usually known as Fitz. I live with my son on the Miss Nora over at the marina." He tapped the sailboat on his chest, which I now noted had " Matt's Sailboat Charters" arched over it, and " Sail into Adventure" below. When I offered only a grumpy stare in return, Joella identified me. "This is my landlady, Andi McConnell. She lives in the other half of the duplex. Don't mind her. She's a little irritable because she has a birthday coming up this weekend. She looks pretty good for ninety-seven, don't you think?" He looked me over, speculating about what birthday it actually was, of course. I saved him the trouble. "I'm going to be sixty, okay? The big six-o. Six decades. Sixty percent of a century: 21,900 days." "You figured out the days ?" Joella's tone was somewhere between appalled and incredulous. "Does that include leap years?" Fitz inquired. "I guess I forgot leap years." "Then you'll have to add--" "Never mind." "Doesn't matter anyway," he said. "Because sixty is prime time. Enjoy it." "Right," Joella agreed. Like she'd know. Joella is all of twenty, slim-thighed and sparkly eyed, with magazine-ad skin and bouncy blonde hair. "So how old are you ?" I challenged Fitz. Not that I cared, but I figured he may as well have a taste of his own nosiness. "Sixty-three," he said cheerfully. "That's prime time too. Although I've never gotten around to figuring how many days it adds up to." I had the feeling that when Fitz was ninety, he'd still be proclaiming prime time . On some days I might find that endearing. Not today, especially when he was slyly poking fun at me. But he did look reasonably well preserved. Gray hair thinning on top and a fairly weather-beaten face, but a trim physique and sharp blue eyes that looked as if they didn't miss much. "And I'd say you have more to be irritable about than an upcoming birthday." He nodded toward the paper I was still clutching. Joella's perky brows lifted, and I handed her the by-now somewhat scuffed and crumpled letter. She studied the words that were about to change my life. "So the rumors that have been going around for so long were true," she murmured. "Worse than true." For weeks rumors had rampaged around the corporate headquarters of Friends & Neighbors Insurance about an imminent merger with another company. The rumors had bMcCourtney, Lorena is the author of 'Your Chariot Awaits An Andi Mcconnell Mystery', published 2007 under ISBN 9781595542793 and ISBN 1595542795.