I personally loved writing my Indian Creek Texas series. Since Kelly McWinter is the main character in all of them, and they are all mysteries, I've used the series title Kelly McWinter PI. This has worked well and the first three books have sold well over several years and continue to sell (although at a much slower pace, of course). I now have the first three combined in a trilogy, and I'm releasing the eBook for only $3.99, which is definitely a bargain for readers, but I'm hoping lots of you will enjoy reading about the inhabitants of Indian Creek, Texas as much as I've enjoyed writing about them .
In 2017 I decided to continue the series with a 4th book, Deadly Lights, which I released, and which really has never caught on like the first three. Readers who have purchased the book have given it good reviews. It has a combination of 4 and 5 stars on the review sites, but the sales have not been near as consistent as the first thee books.
So, applying good marketing sense to my future writing it only made sense to move away from this series, and I spent a good part of last year dabbling with this and that, trying to find something I wanted to settle down and work with. And, at the end of the year, I realized that it wasn't going to work. Kelly wasn't done with me, and apparently I wasn't done with the gang at Indian Creek.
So, what to do. I had the first couple of chapters of Deadly Ghosts worked out, and a line on where Kelly was going in the future. With a wife and a baby on the way, he'd stepped back a lot from the PI work, and as a result he'd made some changes, taking in a junior partner, and in addition, someone readers will remember from all the other Deadlies, Stella had come to join McWinter Confidential as a combination officer worker, and newly licensed PI. Yep, a whole new direction for the gang. And before I knew it a brand new mystery, with lots of ties to old times, started taking shape, and a new series just grew.
So, I'm hoping old Kelly fans and new readers will all enjoy this brand new series, with some of the same old characters.
Deadly Ghosts
Death in Texas, Book 1
Chapter One
Moonbeams reflected off the metal hinges on Frank
Wright’s weathered chicken coop. In the dim light, a shadow bobbed and
weaved, in and out of view.
Frank removed his metal-framed
glasses and rubbed his eyes. “What in tarnation?” Returning the crooked
frames to his face, he blinked. The shadowy shape was gone. Confused, he
shook his head. They say the eyesight is the first to go. He took a
quick inventory of his aches and pains then chuckled. Not so sure ‘they’
know what they’re talking about.”
Shoving a bucket on a shelf in
his neatly organized barn, he then exited and closed the door, wiggling
it to make sure it latched. One more suspicious glance toward the coop,
then Frank headed back to his house.
The squeal of rusted hinges
pulled him up short and drew his attention back to the chickens. He
cocked an eyebrow and waited. The shadow he could have imagined. The
mournful squeak of the hinged coop door was not a figment of his
imagination. Frank took a step toward the coop but paused when he saw
the hazy outline of a man near the fence.
“Who’s there?”
A dark-skinned face with vacant white eyes loomed out of the shadows.
“Ernie Potter, is that you? What the devil are you up to?”
As quickly as the apparition had appeared, it faded. Frank hurried to
the coop and fumbled for the light switch. When he found it, the dirt
caked bulb cast the yard in an eerie yellow glow.
Frank swiveled
around in a circle, checking every corner of the yard but there wasn’t a
soul in sight. Once again Frank tugged off the glasses with coke-bottle
thick lenses and rubbed his eyes. Course it wasn’t Ernie. What was I
thinkin’?
With another long look around, Frank smacked off the light
and made sure the coop fence and doors were secure. He padded back to
his house, muttering all the way. I was thinkin’ I’m a real dolt, that’s
what. Might as well of said I’d seen Elvis out there.
Entering
his house, he closed the door then peered out the window once again.
Exceptin’ Elvis has been dead for years. Ernie Potter’s only been dead,
what? Six months? Frank chuckled to himself, but before he climbed the
stairs he found the old skeleton key to the front door and locked it.
Scratching his head, he headed up the staircase to bed.
* * *
“McWinter Confidential.” Stella Davis answered the landline in the PI office. She immediately made a horrified face.
Cade Wyatt grinned, sure he knew who was on the other end of the line. “Rita?” he mouthed.
Stella gave an exaggerated nod. “Oh, hello, Mrs. Anderson. Yes, I told
Kelly you wanted to hire him to follow your husband. He’s just not sure
he’ll be able to devote as much time to your case as it would require,
what with the baby coming soon and all. He wondered if you might want to
contact Tony D’Amato in Dallas. Tony specializes in cases like yours.”
Stella raised her brows at Cade then made a face.
Still smiling, Cade swiveled his chair around to his desk.
Everyone in the hamlet of Indian Creek, Texas, knew that Rita Anderson
had set her sights on their boss Kelly McWinter, even though he was
happily married. The whole town also knew that Gillian was two weeks
overdue with their first child and she’d been complaining frequently and
loudly about feeling as attractive as a whale.
Cade shot a
glance at his boss through the open door to his office. Kelly sat
staring at his phone, much like he’d been doing for the past two weeks.
Gill was his much-treasured second wife. Cade didn’t know all the
details, but he’d heard that years ago, Kelly’s first wife had died in
an arson fire back when he worked for the Fort Worth Police Department.
Cade understood that Kelly carried a sense of guilt for her death. So
much so that he was a bit paranoid about anything happening to Gill and
the fact that she was carrying his baby had turned him into a basket
case.
Kelly had turned Rita’s case down three times, but the woman was relentless.
Stella ended the call just as Kelly looked up and Cade mouthed the name Rita.
Kelly shook his head. “That woman is a piece of work. Think she got the message this time?”
“Who knows?” Stella shrugged. “She’s a nut.”
Cade had his mouth open to observe that it took one to know one, when the chorus to The Yellow Rose of Texas jingled from his pocket.
Kelly looked up at the interruption and raised his eyes to the ceiling at Cade’s choice of music.
Cade grinned and pulled his cell phone out of his pocket. Probably
just as well he got interrupted before he could have another go at
Stella. They’d developed a love/hate relationship in the few months
they’d been working together. He loved to give her trouble, and she
hated not giving it back.
The screen of his phone lit up with his
father’s smiling face, the same image that could be seen on billboards
and bus stop benches all over Denton, Texas. Cade pushed the talk
button. “Hey, Dad. How’s the insurance biz today?”
“Hello, son. Fair to middling. Nobody’s died, so I’ve got that going for me.”
Cade chuckled at his pop’s canned reply. “Yes you do. How’s Mama?”
“It’s been a good week. She’s staying positive, and that helps.”
“Good. She’s a strong woman.” Cade sighed. His mother professed to
smoking two packs a day for twenty years, back in the days when
‘everybody did it’ and no one claimed to know any better. Now, at age
fifty, she suffered from Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease, or COPD,
and required the use of oxygen for a good portion of every day.
“That’s not why I phoned, though. I got a call from one of my clients,
do you remember Frank Wright? He has a chicken farm off old Highway 2B.”
“I think so. Wasn’t his wife Harriet the school lunch lady back in the day?”
“Yes. Harriet passed on a few years ago. Frank called to tell me about
some suspicious activity last night around his chicken coops. He swears
he saw a man out by his chicken coop, but when he went to look there was
no one around. This morning he found all his chickens dead in the
coop.”
Cade blinked. “Dead?”
“Dead. All one hundred eighty-two of them. The vet is running some tests, but he said how it looks like they’d been poisoned.”
“Poisoned?” Cade repeated.
“Poisoned.” Ben Wyatt chuckled. “Son, now I see why Kelly pays you the big bucks. You ask the tough questions.”
Cade had to laugh. “It’s so damn bizarre. Who would want to poison one hundred and eighty-two chickens?”
“Again, son, that’s a question I hoped you could answer. Frank had a thought, but I didn’t give it much credence.”
“Why not?”
His father cleared his throat. “Frank thought he saw someone by the
coop last night. A local troublemaker by the name of Ernie Potter.”
“That’s great! Sounds like you should be notifying the police instead of me.”
“Yeah, well, the problem is…” Ben hesitated. “Ernie Potter has been dead six months.”
“Dead?”
“Here we go again. Yes, dead.”
“So Frank thinks what?”
“He thinks that a ghost poisoned his chickens.”
Cade laughed. When his father didn’t join in, he stopped. “You don’t believe him.”
“Of course not. He’s just rather insistent about what he saw.”
“And you’re telling me this because?”
“Because I was thinking, hoping, that you’d come out and have a look
around. Talk with Frank. The police aren’t taking him seriously but it
can’t be denied that something happened to his brood. You’re an
investigator. I thought maybe you could investigate.”
Cade shook his head. “Dad, this isn’t the kind of thing we do here at McWinter Confidential.”
“Even if your old man asked for a favor?”
He sighed. “Well, hell. If you’re going to put it that way… Let me talk to Kelly.”
“Great! Thanks, Cade.”
“I’m not promising anything. I just said I’d talk to him. He might have something else for me to work on. But I’ll ask.”
“That’s all I needed to hear. Thanks again, son. See you when you come out.”
“Dad—” Cade protested but his father had already ended the call. He stared at the phone screen and sighed.
Kelly cupped his hand to his ear and waited. “Something interesting?”
Cade folded his arms across his chest. “Nah, not really. Dead chickens
and a ghost. Pretty much the status quo in Denton, Texas.”
A slow smile spread across Kelly’s face. “And your father wants you to check it out?”
Cade nodded, secretly hoping another case had arrived in the past five
minutes so he’d be off the hook. “But I’m sure we have something more
pressing, so it’s okay.”
Actually, we’re clear. Why don’t you
head on out to Denton tomorrow and have a look around? I know your folks
would be glad to see you.” Out of the corner of his eye, Kelly spotted
Stella waving her hand in the air. “Take Stella,” he nodded in her
direction, “She could use something to sink her teeth into besides
paperwork.”
Stella clapped her hands, grinning like crazy.
Cade groaned. “Seriously?”
“Yep.” Kelly shot him a look that Cade already recognized as
“don’t give me any crap.”
It’s going to be a long ride to Denton, Cade muttered to himself.
Chapter Two
“You really think your father’s friend saw
a ghost haunting his chicken coop?” Stella poked Cade on the shoulder to draw
his attention away from the country music he’d turned up high on the radio.
“The old coot must be having delusions,”
Cade muttered. He’d turned up the music in hopes of discouraging conversation
but that obviously wasn’t working. Stella just increased her own volume.
Cade
reached over and turned down the volume.
If you can’t beat ‘em might as well join them. He spoke under his
breath, and with a resigned shrug he turned his attention onto his traveling
partner.
“Funny though, my dad swears Frank still
possesses all his faculties, and I kind of remember him from when I was a kid.
He definitely wasn’t the type to see ghosts or aliens or anything like that.”
“Well, people do change. But what if he’s
telling the truth and there really is some paranormal activity going on out at
his place?”
“Come on Stella. Don’t tell me you’re one
of those Paranormal State junkies.”
Stella laughed. “I used to watch it like a
true fanatic back when I was bartending out at Indian Creek. I don’t think I’m
a fanatic, but there sure were a lot of things on that show that would make you
question your own eyesight. If they weren’t out of this world, they were
definitely inexplicable.”
Cade turned his head towards Stella and
raised his eyebrows. “Guess we’ll just have to check it out and see what we
find. That’s the turnoff to dad’s place up ahead, so be prepared for an
inquisition?”
“How’s that?”
“Mom and Dad have been hankering for
grandchildren for quiet awhile now. Since I’m their only kid, you can figure
out what that means. Me showing up with a good looking woman’s bound to get the
speculation going.”
Stella laughed. “Well thanks for that back
handed compliment cowboy. Don’t worry, I’ll flash my wedding ring and set them
straight before you find yourself backed into a corner. Of course, you gotta
remember favors run both ways.”
Always got an angle. Cade muttered under his breath. “Here we are. Gird your loins and let’s get
this over with.
* * *
Anyway, that's where I'll stop (the rest is just notes anyhow) but I think I've got the rhythm down now, and there's no doubt about it, I'm happily back at Indian Creek where all my old faithful friends are gathered around waiting for what comes next in the world of Kelly McWinter.
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