Holidays Are Murder

Charlotte Douglas

THE HOLIDAYS?–DON'T YOU JUST LOVE 'EM?Been overstressed at work? Ever wish the holidays would go on an extended vacation? Worried about finding the perfect gift? Or had unresolved conflicts with family that drive you up the wall?Detective Maggie Skerritt is every woman who's been there, done that.She also excels at her work, doesn't eat right or get enough sleep and loves to have someone else do her cooking. But her job is murder and she strives to make her city safe. In the process, she gathers her courage to risk loving again.But first she has to make it through Thanksgiving, Christmas…and another murder in Pelican Bay.

“You’re not really into this, are you?”

I sighed. Bill knew me too well. “I’ve never been a big fan of Christmas, not even as a kid.”

“That’s hard to believe. What kid doesn’t like Christmas?”

“My mother always hijacked the holiday.”

“Your family didn’t celebrate?”

“We celebrated all right, in my family’s own inimitable way.”

Bill pulled me toward him and tipped my chin with his finger until our eyes met. “You don’t have to do this—” he nodded toward the box with my Mrs. Claus costume “—if you don’t want to.”

I hesitated. Part of me wanted to take the out he’d given me and run.

“You’ve been telling me I need to lighten up and have some fun. So I’ll give it my best shot,” I said, determined to enjoy myself.

Even if it killed me.

Charlotte Douglas

USA TODAY bestselling author Charlotte Douglas, a versatile writer who has produced over twenty-five books, including romances, suspense, gothics and even a Star Trek novel, has now created a mystery series featuring Maggie Skerritt, a witty and irreverent homicide detective in a small fictional town on Florida’s central west coast.

Douglas’s life has been as varied as her writings. Born in North Carolina and raised in Florida, she earned her degree in English from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and attended graduate school at the University of South Florida in Tampa. She has worked as an actor, a journalist and a church musician and taught English and speech at the secondary and college level for almost two decades. For several summers while newly married and still in college, she even manned a U.S. Forest Service lookout in northwest Montana with her husband.

Married to her high school sweetheart for over four decades, Douglas now writes full-time. With her husband and their two cairn terriers, she divides her year between their home on Florida’s central west coast—a place not unlike Pelican Bay—and their mountaintop retreat in the Great Smokies of North Carolina.

She enjoys hearing from readers, who can contact her at charlottedouglas1@juno.com.

Holidays are Murder

Charlotte Douglas

www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)

Dear Reader,

Christmas in west central Florida isn’t exactly a Currier and Ives event. We still celebrate with family and friends, but we make our snow angels in white sugar sand instead of the frozen white stuff. Poinsettias grow in the landscape as well as sprouting in pots in the produce aisle and at the florist’s. And we’ve been known to crank up the air-conditioning in order to roast our chestnuts on an open fire. Floridians, as Bill Malcolm will show you, adapt creatively to Yuletide celebrations in the land of palm trees, sunshine and surf.

Like many of us, Maggie Skerritt has a lot on her plate for the holidays. I hope you’ll enjoy her at her best—and worst—in Holidays Are Murder, and that you’ll return to Pelican Bay in March 2006 for Spring Break, when Maggie matches wits with murderers again.

Happy reading, and happy holidays!

Charlotte Douglas

CONTENTS

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 15

CHAPTER 16

CHAPTER 17

CHAPTER 18

CHAPTER 1

The phone rang at 12:30 a.m., awakening me from a deep sleep.

“Give me a break, Darcy,” I complained to the night dispatcher who’d called. “I’m still on vacation.”

“So