Pineapple Circus
Pineapple Port Mysteries Book 13
by Amy Vasant
Genre: Cozy Mystery
Now in the center ring... murder!
Newly-minted private detective Charlotte Morgan, resident orphan of the Pineapple Port 55+ community, discovers she might not be an orphan after all. Stunned by the news, she distracts herself with a cat burglar who left a smear of make-upped whiskers on a sliding glass door, and a path straight to "Clown Town" a retirement community for retired circus performers. When a fortune-teller doesn't see her own death in the cards, Charlotte's burglary becomes a murder investigation!
Charlotte's
neighborhood moms, Mariska and Darla, can't help with this one.
They're busy infiltrating an underground golf cart racing ring, led
by a shady operator and her toady sidekick...
When
another circus performer falls victim to the Big Top Killer and
Stephanie goes missing, Charlotte finds herself walking a highwire of
danger...this killer isn't clowning around!
WARNING!
Fans of the series will be particularly shocked by the breathless
ending! (though every book can be read as a standalone).
Pineapple
Port Mysteries by Wall Street Journal and USA Today bestselling
author Amy Vansant, is a funny, clean, and gore-free small-town,
female amateur sleuth series, but with all the pulse-pounding
excitement of a detective thriller.
**On Sale for $2 off right now!!**
Pineapple Cruise
Pineapple Port Mysteries Book 14
When
Mariska trades the brisket she won at “Meat Bingo” for three
tickets on the new Gulf
Voyager cruise
ship, she, Darla and our detective Charlotte enjoy a ladies cruise to
Key West. But when passengers start dropping like anchors, they find
themselves afloat in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico...and a murder
mystery.
Charlotte
notices the victims were all sitting at their assigned dinner
table...does that mean they're next?
Fans
of Agatha Christie’s And
Then There Were None will
love this cruise-bound caper!
**On Sale for $2 off right now!!**
***Check out the rest of the Pineapple Port Mysteries – some are on sale!!***
Pineapple
Lies – Get it FREE Sept. 2, 7, 14
Pineapple Beach House – Only
.99c Aug 30 -Sep 5
Pineapple Turtles - Only .99c Sept.
18-24
Pineapple Puppies – Only .99c Sept 20-26
Pineapple
House Hunter – Only .99c Sept. 30-Oct. 6
Pineapple Jailbird –
Only .99c Sept 10-16
Mystery
Readers love The Pineapple Port Series:
"Amy
is one of my favorite authors. I highly recommend all of her books.
No matter what genre she writes in, she manages to create books that
demand that the pages be immediately turned to find out what happened
because you really care about the characters." ~ Dianne
Harman, USA Today and Amazon Chart #1 Bestselling Author
"Too much!! Wow! I don't think I've had so much laughter and fun in a cozy mystery ever! " - Amazon Reader ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
"Mysteries usually aren't my genre, but Amy does a great job in adding twists, turns and - of course - her humor to every page. For a person like me who finds it hard to pick up a book and keep turning the pages, the fact that I tore through this book from start to finish and am looking forward to the next one speaks volumes." - Author, Rodney Lacroix ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
"More than once, I found myself laughing out loud while reading through the story. The character development is good, the humor is unforced. All around, an excellent, lighthearted mystery that I would absolutely recommend." - Amazon Reader ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
"One of the best surprise ending I have read.." - Amazon Vine Voice Reader ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
"An unlikely friendship and romance develop with moments of levity and hilarious laughter. More than once, I found myself laughing out loud while reading through the story. The character development is good, the humor is unforced. All around, an excellent, lighthearted mystery that I would absolutely recommend." --- Amazon Vine Voice Reader ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
PREVIEW: Pineapple
CIRCUS
A Pineapple Port Mystery: Book Thirteen
Amy Vansant
Baroness von Chilling
took her heart medication and tugged at the nightdress pinching her middle. The
cat she’d adopted during her tenure working in the Boudreaux & Bo's Family
Circus’ fortune-teller’s tent lay curled on her bed.
Kitty purred as she
approached her.
Breathless, Baroness
sat resting, preparing for the effort it would take to swing her dry-skinned,
dimpled legs beneath the sheets. A sharp clacking
noise, something like tiny plastic boulders bouncing down a metal mountain,
clattered in the adjacent room.
Baroness groaned.
I thought I turned off the ice maker...
She enjoyed the open
feel of her small modular home in The Big Top fifty-five-plus community for
retired circus performers, but every noise could be heard everywhere. In her opinion, whoever dreamed
up open plan deserved to be burned at
the stake.
Whenever she
complained, neighbors suggested she close her bedroom door.
As if she hadn’t
thought of that.
Idiots.
If she closed her
bedroom door, Kitty scratched and howled to get out. If she opened it, the cat
went right back to bed. They’d been playing this game since they first met.
Stupid cat.
Baroness pushed away
from the bed, steadied herself on her arthritic feet and shuffled toward the
kitchen, hips aching. A lot of good the clairvoyance gift she’d inherited from
her mother had done her. If she could have predicted the pains in her
eighty-six-year-old joints, she would have put stones in her pockets and walked
into the sea at seventy-two.
“Baroness.”
A voice spoke in the
darkness.
Von Chilling gasped
and wobbled on her feet, reaching out to steady herself on the back of the
sofa.
It wasn’t the ice.
A shadowy figure
stood inside her front door, large and triangle-shaped. It took her milky eyes
a minute to adjust before she realized the intruder wore robes.
Her robes.
She recognized the
stars and moons she’d Bedazzled on the dark fabric decades ago.
“Who are you?” she
asked, pointing with a crooked finger. “Be gone before I curse you for eternity.” She used her scariest voice,
one heavy with portent and husky with seventy years of smoking. A Romanian
accent dripped from every word, though she’d grown up in Newark, New Jersey.
The figure took a
few steps forward into the light cast by the moon through her skylight.
“You know me?”
She squinted. “No.
Who—”
More of the face
slipped into the glow cast by the streetlights outside her kitchen window.
I do know that face.
“What are you
doing?” she demanded to know, convinced no answer could make her feel more at
ease.
The figure spoke
again.
“How’s it feel to be
judged?”
Baroness turned to
run. Hands fell on her shoulders before she’d taken two shuffling steps.
Fingers tightened around her throat. She collapsed beneath the weight of her
attacker, who rolled her onto her back, pinning her to the ground.
With a knee on her
chest, Baroness couldn’t breathe. She squirmed to free herself. She clawed at
the thumbs pressing at her windpipe.
The irony of her
sudden urge to live wasn’t lost on her.
It was almost funny.
As the darkness
closed in around her, she shifted her attention to the bedroom.
Kitty was nowhere to
be seen.
Probably hiding.
The creature she’d
saved couldn’t be bothered to do the same for her.
Stupid cat.
The fingers around
Baroness’ throat released, and she took a gasping breath. From beneath the
robes, her attacker produced a crystal ball—her
crystal ball—and held it above her skull.
The intruder spoke
as the crystal ball raised higher.
“Not so powerful
now, are you, Baroness?”
Abby, Charlotte’s soft-coated Wheaten terrier, was the first to
see the truck pull up to Charlotte’s house. She barked once, and Charlotte
jogged from the kitchen to the window, stopping only to set a small platter of
crackers, cheese, and pepperoni on the living room table.
She peered through her curtains, trying hard not to look
like a lunatic.
At the curb, a woman and a man sat in a truck, talking.
Her mysterious Aunt Siofra “Shee” McQueen had arrived.
Shee had called a day before to arrange a visit, but Charlotte
didn’t mind the impromptu nature of the self-invite. She couldn’t be any more
excited. Shee was her only link to her parents and a life she barely
remembered. She’d been young when her father died in an accident. She’d lost
her mother later to cancer. After that, she’d been shipped to her grandmother
Estelle’s modular home in the fifty-five-plus community of Pineapple Port, only
to have her grandmother die soon after that.
Even with all that tragedy she’d been lucky. The community
raised her, mothering spearheaded by the neighbor across the street, Mariska.
She couldn’t have asked for a better substitute mother to
raise her. Thanks to Pineapple Port, she had a family larger than most.
Still...to find out she had blood relatives left...
She was excited.
In addition to meeting Siofra, she’d discovered her
grandfather Mick was still alive, though he lay in a coma on the opposite side
of Florida.
Shee was the only speaking
link to her past.
From what she could divine from the brief time she’d spent
working a kidnapping case with Siofra in Jupiter Beach, her aunt was a certified badass. She didn’t know the
whole story but hoped to learn from her. Anything Shee shared could only
enhance her own burgeoning private investigation skills.
Charlotte watched her visitors through the window, giggly
with anticipation.
Get out of the
truck...
The couple sat.
Is that her?
The woman in the passenger seat looked like Shee, but who
was driving? She hadn’t said someone else was coming. Was it Mick, her
grandfather? Was he better?
The woman glanced at the house.
Okay. That’s
definitely Shee.
She could see enough to tell the driver was a man, a big one, but little else.
Charlotte looked at her watch.
They’d been sitting in the truck for five minutes.
She heard a click and watched, enthralled, as the couple
climbed out of the truck and started toward the house.
Finally.
Squelching a squeal of excitement, Charlotte placed herself
behind the door.
Waiting.
They’d reached the stoop. She heard them talking outside.
Minutes went by.
Come on.
Charlotte opened the front to find her aunt standing there,
her fist raised to knock.
“Hi,” she said.
She bent to grip Abby’s collar, pulling the curious dog back
to make room as she unlatched the screen door.
Shee smiled and glanced at her big friend.
“After you,” said the man.
The couple walked inside, navigating the excited terrier.
Charlotte scrambled for something to say. She motioned to the dog.
“This is Abby.”
She swallowed.
I sound like an idiot.
She eyeballed the man. Handsome, probably Shee’s age—he was
built like someone who’d spent a long time doing things that required strength. She nearly asked him if he
were an actor, but she suspected even an action-star wouldn’t radiate with such
genuine toughness. He smelled good and
looked well-groomed, but his visible scars belied a life not spent in the lap of luxury.
She thrust an open palm toward him. “I’m Charlotte.”
He stared at her hand as if he wasn’t sure what it was.
“I’m sorry, this is Mason,” said Shee, bumping him with her
elbow.
He seemed to awake from a trance. “Hi,” he said, smiling and
shaking her hand.
Charlotte motioned to the sofa. “Have a seat. Can I get you
something to drink? Iced tea? Water?” The dog’s attention shifted to the
pepperoni on the platter and Charlotte pushed her away with her leg.
Shee mumbled something she didn’t hear.
“Iced tea would be great,” said Mason.
Charlotte flashed a smile and slipped into the kitchen.
Sliding the iced tea from the fridge, she took a deep breath.
Why am I so nervous?
She realized she really
wanted her aunt to like her. No—more than
that—she wanted her to respect
her as a fellow crime solver. She wasn’t sure what Shee was—she could be CIA
for all she knew—but she had skills.
She took another second to let her heartbeat slow and then
toted the teas to the living room. Abby sat beside Mason, getting pets beneath
his own giant paw.
“We’re kind of in brunch territory, so I put out this
stuff,” Charlotte said, nodding at the plate of crackers. “If you’d prefer
something more breakfasty—”
“No, this is fine,” said Shee.
Charlotte placed the glasses on the living room table her
boyfriend, Declan, had given her from his pawn shop. She looked around the
room. All her furniture was from the pawn shop.
Can they tell?
Charlotte realized Mason
was staring at her, his jaw cracked open. Unsettled, she looked to Shee and
noticed for the first time the bruises on her aunt’s face. One eye was
blackened, and she had a smattering of small cuts on her face and arms.
How did I miss that?
“What happened?” she asked, gesturing to her aunt’s face.
Shee’s hand fluttered to her bruises. “Oh. Little car accident.”
“Oh no, are you okay?”
She nodded. “Air bag did more damage than anything else.”
Silence again.
“So, to what do I owe the visit?” Charlotte asked. “How are
things at the Loggerhead?”
“Good...” Shee jumped in her seat. “Oh, Mick—your
grandfather—he’s awake. Out of the coma.”
Charlotte gasped. “He is? Oh, that’s great.”
“Yeah, I’m sorry. I should have told you sooner...”
“Is that why you came?”
“Hm?”
“To let me know?” Charlotte glanced at Mason.
He was still staring.
She couldn’t put her finger on his expression. It wasn’t
wolfish. He seemed...stunned.
Shee put her hand on his knee. “Um, yes and no. We have
something else we have to tell you...”
Mason cleared his throat and nodded. “We do.”
“We do,” echoed Shee. “There’s no easy way to say this, so
I’m just going to do it.”
OMG. It hit
Charlotte where this was going. Her
grandfather had awoken, but something else was wrong.
“Is he okay?” she asked.
Shee seemed confused. “Who? Mason? Sure. He’s just—”
Charlotte shook her head. “No, Mick.”
“Oh. He’s fine.
Sorry, I can see how you thought that’s where I was going. It’s not him—”
“I’m your father,” blurted Mason.
Charlotte looked at the giant, certain she’d misheard him.
“What?” she asked.
He hooked a thumb at Shee. “She’s your mother.”
“What?” Charlotte
followed his gesture to watch Shee close her eyes.
A laugh spat from Charlotte’s lips. She felt her shoulders
un-bunch a notch.
I get it. They’re
kidding me.
She was about to speak when she noticed the look on Shee’s
face. It seemed awfully serious for a
person in the middle of a joke.
“This isn’t exactly how I had this planned...” Shee glared
in Mason’s direction. “But it’s true. We’re your parents.”
Charlotte blinked at them.
What?
Shee continued. “I found out I was pregnant with you right
before he was deployed—”
“I didn’t know,” said Mason. “I’m in the Navy. Was. Was
in the Navy.”
Shee squeezed his leg. “Anyway, my sister Grace couldn’t
have a baby and I wasn’t ready, so I gave you to her—”
Charlotte swallowed.
Her mother’s name was Grace.
She’s not kidding.
“I didn’t know,” said Mason again.
Charlotte looked at him.
Shee plowed on. “When Grace died, I was in hiding, so I
couldn’t take you back. Someone was after me, and it would have been too
dangerous. Long story. Anyway, Mick gave you to Estelle—”
“I didn’t know,” said Mason.
“She’s got it,”
snapped Shee.
Charlotte heard her grandmother’s name, and everything
became even more real to her. All the facts were right. The story checked out.
This can’t be
happening.
Mason cleared his throat.
Shee took a deep breath. “You grew up here. You know that
part. I stayed in hiding. We just
stopped the guy who was after me and now I’m here—”
“We’re here,” said
Mason. “I just found out about you. Like a week ago.”
Charlotte looked at him. Somehow, his repetition had broken
through her shock.
“You didn’t even know I existed?”
she asked.
He shook his head.
She looked back at Shee. “Why didn’t you tell him?”
Shee stared at her, much the way Mason had earlier—jaw
slack.
Shee closed her mouth. “Um, at first, I was afraid the news
would distract him. Get him killed.
Then, after a while, I guess it just felt like it was too late.”
Charlotte found herself speechless.
“It’s not like he could have taken you instead of Estelle,”
Shee added.
Mason sniffed. “I don’t know, maybe if someone had offered
me the chance—”
“This was a better
option.” Shee growled the words.
Mason shrugged.
Shee took a deep breath and turned her attention back to
Charlotte. “I know this is a lot to digest.”
Charlotte nodded and said the sentence repeating in her
head.
“You’re my parents.”
Shee and Mason both nodded.
Charlotte stood. She wanted to run. She needed to process.
She wanted them to leave, but she wanted them to stay—
“I actually have to
be somewhere,” she said. She didn’t, but the words came out of her mouth
anyway. “But maybe we could have dinner or something?”
Shee and Mason both jumped to their feet.
“Absolutely. Our treat. You pick the place,” said Shee.
Shee.
Her mother.
Charlotte bit her lip. It felt as if she had locusts buzzing
in her brain, under her skin—
Dinner. Arrange the
dinner. I eat dinner. I eat dinner with—
That was it. She needed her people around her to help buffer
everything.
“Could I bring a few
people?” she asked. “There are people I’d like you to meet. People who raised
me, and my boyfriend...”
“Absolutely,” said
Shee. “Anyone. Everyone.”
“Absolutely,” echoed Mason. “Anyone.”
Charlotte nodded. “Okay. Maybe around five?” She offered
them a sheepish smile. “We eat kind of early around here.”
“Sounds good.” Shee pushed Mason out from behind the table.
Charlotte walked behind them as they moved to the door.
They’re leaving. What
if they run? What if I never see them again?
“Wait,” she said.
The couple turned.
Charlotte opened her arms and moved in for a hug. Shee did
the same, gripping her.
“Charlotte...” she said.
Charlotte panicked.
Okay. Too much. Move
on.
Charlotte released her mother to hug Mason. When she stepped
back from him, Mason put the side of his fist against his lips and looked away.
“We’ll see you tonight,”
said Shee, glowering at Mason, who flashed a quick, awkward smile.
Charlotte nodded.
“Okay. See you tonight.”
“Bye,” they said in
unison as they exited.
Charlotte waved and then shut the door, unsure if her heart
was beating so fast she could no longer
feel the individual thumps, or if it had stopped altogether.
What just happened?
She leaned her back against the wall, sliding until her butt
hit the floor.
Abby licked her face. She put her arms around the dog and
squeezed, staring at the opposite wall, her whole body vibrating with nerves.
After a minute, she released the terrier, clambered to her
feet and glanced at her watch.
Dinner with my parents
at five.
She had seven hours to find some way to distance herself
intact from the train that had just hit her.
Pineapple Port’s orphan had parents.
USA
Today and Wall Street Journal bestselling author Amy Vansant has
written over 20 books, including the fun, thrilling Shee McQueen
series, the rollicking, twisty Pineapple Port Mysteries, and the
action-packed Kilty urban fantasies. Throw in a couple romances and a
YA fantasy for her nieces... Amy specializes in fun, exciting reads
with plenty of laughs and action -- she tried to write serious books,
but they always ended up full of jokes, so she gave up.
Amy
lives in Jupiter, Florida with her muse/husband a goony Bordoodle
named Archer.
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