âYouâre not really into this, are you?â
I sighed. Bill knew me too well. âIâve never been a big fan of Christmas, not even as a kid.â
âThatâs hard to believe. What kid doesnât like Christmas?â
âMy mother always hijacked the holiday.â
âYour family didnât celebrate?â
âWe celebrated all right, in my familyâs own inimitable way.â
Bill pulled me toward him and tipped my chin with his finger until our eyes met. âYou donât have to do thisââ he nodded toward the box with my Mrs. Claus costume ââif you donât want to.â
I hesitated. Part of me wanted to take the out heâd given me and run.
âYouâve been telling me I need to lighten up and have some fun. So Iâll give it my best shot,â I said, determined to enjoy myself.
Even if it killed me.
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 Floridaâs central west coast.
Douglasâs 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 Floridaâs central west coastâa place not unlike Pelican Bayâand their mountaintop retreat in the Great Smokies of North Carolina.
She enjoys hearing from readers, who can contact her at [email protected].
Dear Reader,
Christmas in west central Florida isnât 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 floristâs. And weâve 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 youâll enjoy her at her bestâand worstâin Holidays Are Murder, and that youâll return to Pelican Bay in March 2006 for Spring Break, when Maggie matches wits with murderers again.
Happy reading, and happy holidays!
Charlotte Douglas
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
The phone rang at 12:30 a.m., awakening me from a deep sleep.
âGive me a break, Darcy,â I complained to the night dispatcher whoâd called. âIâm still on vacation.â
âSorry, Maggie. According to the chief, youâre back on the clock as of midnight.â
George Shelton, Pelican Bayâs chief of police and certifiable closet redneck, had been the bane of my existence for the past fifteen years, so his attitude didnât surprise me. I scribbled the address Darcy gave me and hurried to dress.
Ten minutes later, with a bad case of bedhead and my body screaming for caffeine, I drove east along Main Street, deserted except for the crowded parking lot at the Blue Jay Sports Bar.
Pelican Bay, a picture-postcard retirement town and tourist mecca on Floridaâs central west coast, is populated primarily by retirees and snowbirds from the northern States and Canada, and few are night owls. Once the sun sets and television enters prime time, you might as well roll up the sidewalks, because no one ventures outâaside from a few of the younger folks and the occasional criminals.
The criminals are where I come in. Iâve been a cop for over twenty-two years and a detective with the Pelican Bay Police Department for the past fifteen, and being hauled out of bed after midnight was making early retirement seem more alluring by the minute.
The address Darcy had given me turned out to be a pizza place in a strip mall a few miles west of U.S. Highway 19, the main artery that bisected the county from Tarpon Springs at the north to the Sunshine Skyway Bridge at the mouth of Tampa Bay. All of the strip stores were dark except the center one, Mama Miaâs Pizzeria. Lights blazed from the large plate-glass windows and illuminated a scattering of bistro tables and chairs in what was primarily a take-out joint.