The first fiancee, p.1
The First Fiancée, page 1
Table of Contents
Excerpt
Praise for The First Fiancée
The First Fiancée
Copyright
Dedication
Acknowledgements
Prologue
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 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
A word about the author…
Thank you for purchasing
Also available from The Wild Rose Press
Alone with Matt, Bethany said, “It must be hard, the situation you’re facing, finding out about the death of someone you loved so many years after it happened. I’m sorry to say it so awkwardly.”
He acknowledged her apology with a nod. “It’s been a shock. I thought Krystal left me and didn’t want to be found.”
“Joni told me someone killed her. Is that possible? Couldn’t it have been an accident?”
“At first that’s what I assumed, but apparently, somebody hit her on the head and left her in a gully. In the national forest beyond the lodge. The police seem to think I could be capable of doing that.” He cleared his throat. “It’s good you came, but I don’t want you burdened with my problem.”
“It’s Joni’s problem, too. She sounded frantic when she called.”
“That’s because of the rumors that I’m some sort of monster.”
He put his hands on her shoulders, locking eyes with her. His grip felt so tight that she winced. “Look, I didn’t kill Krystal. Joni believes me. But we can kiss goodbye to paying guests if people worry they’re not safe under this roof.”
She stepped back to free herself from those hands.
“Sorry.” He led her out of the lodge and down the front steps, their hiking boots thudding on the wood.
Praise for The First Fiancée
“Rita A. Popp's debut delivers a brilliant whodunit set in the winter-chilled New Mexico mountains. Cozy up to the fireplace with a cup of hot chocolate and a copy of The First Fiancée for a delightful read. Highly recommended!”
~ Margaret Mizushima, author of the award-winning Timber Creek K-9 Mysteries
“Rita A. Popp’s sleuth, Bethany Jarviss, is clever, determined, and fearless. In her well-paced novel, Popp takes us on a search for the killer of The First Fiancée to help her sister, Joni, who’s walking a tightrope as the second fiancée. An excellent series debut.”
~ Patricia Stoltey, author of mysteries and frontier fiction from Five Star/Cengage
“Bethany Jarviss heads for the New Mexico mountains when the body of The First Fiancée turns up in the woods seven years after her unexplained disappearance. Armed with the doggedness of Jessica Fletcher and the plunk of Nancy Drew, she is determined to clear her sister’s fiancé, Matt, of murder charges or expose him before the second fiancée meets the same end. Filled with suspicious characters, each with something to hide, Ms. Popp has written a whodunit that intrigues and surprises. Just when you think you know who—you don’t. A great read.”
~ Terry Korth Fischer, author of The Rory Naysmith Mysteries
The First Fiancée
by
Rita A. Popp
A Bethany Jarviss Mystery
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales, is entirely coincidental.
The First Fiancée: A Bethany Jarviss Mystery
COPYRIGHT © 2022 by Rita A. Popp
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the author or The Wild Rose Press, Inc. except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
Contact Information: info@thewildrosepress.com
Cover Art by Kim Mendoza
The Wild Rose Press, Inc.
PO Box 708
Adams Basin, NY 14410-0708
Visit us at www.thewildrosepress.com
Publishing History
First Edition, 2022
Trade Paperback ISBN 978-1-5092-4542-0
Digital ISBN 978-1-5092-4543-7
The First Fiancée: A Bethany Jarviss Mystery
Published in the United States of America
Dedication
To Tony, for asking me to dance
Acknowledgements
Writing is a solitary business for the most part, helped along by those who take more than a casual interest in a writer’s dream of publication.
My husband Tony Popp has never wavered in encouraging my journey from journalist to fiction writer. Retired publisher Linda Harris and former writing group partner Jim Earley have been steadfast friends during the ups and downs of this writer’s life. My editor at The Wild Rose Press, Melanie Billings, guided the manuscript from submission to final product with an incredible level of skill and encouragement. The Colorado Chapter of Sisters in Crime welcomed me into their ranks when Tony and I moved to Colorado a few years ago. My special thanks goes to the SinC-Colorado Book Club for the lively discussions and camaraderie.
Prologue
Panting in the thin air, Jason trailed Cory along a ridge thick with pines, junipers, and gnarled oaks shedding dry, brown leaves. Jason’s lungs ached, but what a relief to escape Sorrel, that nowhere New Mexico town, at least for a while. It had little to offer thirteen-year-old guys stuck with two sets of parents for a whole weekend. They’d begged off Sunday lunch at the motel’s café, tossed granola bars and water bottles into their daypacks, and promised to be gone an hour max. They kept secret their plan to get off the beaten path they’d hiked with the grownups the day before.
Half an hour out, Jason, his chest heaving, called a halt to their march. “We ought to turn back.” He imagined the mothers packing up everybody’s stuff, the dads settling the bill. The parents wanted to get down the bad part of the mountain road to La Plata in full daylight so they could relax the rest of the way home to El Paso.
“Let’s go a little bit farther,” Cory said. “To that pine with two tops.” He didn’t wait for an answer.
Jason, trudging on, felt his boot catch on something—an exposed tree root that he saw too late as he slid down a ravine, yelling as his hands scraped against jagged rocks and prickly cactus. He landed with his backpack bunched under his neck and heard Cory’s hoot of laughter. Mindful of last winter’s skiing lessons, he rolled to his side to get up and let out a shriek. Inches from his face, a creepy skeletal hand thrust up from the ravine’s rocky floor—a left hand with a dirt-encrusted diamond-and-ruby ring encircling the fleshless third finger.
Chapter 1
Bethany Jarviss hated to admit it, but the ascent to Sorrel had her spooked. Narrow and bumpy usually didn’t faze her—a New Mexican born and raised, she could handle rural roads—but these particular switchbacks made her teeth ache. Get a grip, she ordered her panicky self. Joni needs you to be the strong big sister. Almost there now.
Bethany tightened her hold on the SUV’s steering wheel. At a particularly harrowing blind curve, she held her breath and hugged the inside of the road so closely the passenger doors rasped against scrub oaks sticking out of the crumbling mountainside. Beyond the curve, as a pickup aimed straight at her—its cowboy-hatted driver raising his hand in a customary back-country salute—she thought her heart would stop.
Actually, there had been a good inch of clearance between the two vehicles, Bethany told herself as she pulled off at a railed overlook and got out of the car. She tried to relax her jaw, which throbbed from the last, scary twenty minutes. A sheer drop-off beyond the railing set her heart racing again, as did the sight, on the inside of the road, of boulders positioned to fall on her head. High above, pine trees brushed a cloudless sky. At their base, she detected movement—a lone hiker aiming binoculars at the view. He saw her and waved. Don’t fall off the edge, she wanted to cry out but merely called hello.
She checked her watch. Almost noon. She’d made good time taking back roads south from Las Cuevas. She resumed the drive, bracing herself for more close squeaks, but didn’t meet any other vehicles. The road widened and flattened, thank goddess, as Joni would say in a nod to the divine feminine. In a couple of minutes, the gravel turned to weathered pavement at a sign, Welcome to Sorrel. Alt. 7,886. A considerable rise above the valley floor of 3,800 feet, no wonder she felt light-headed. On the right sat a clapboard building labeled MUSEUM. A guy stood pumping gas outside Ernie’s Mercantile, a building topped by a false Western front strung with holiday lights. A few people strolled past gift shops and a tavern on a covered boardwalk. At the far end of town, Bethany got a quick look at a café, motel, and redbrick schoolhouse—no, the library, by its sign.
The pavement ended, but the SUV rumbled sure-footedly over a narrow forest road. Bethany took the turnoff Joni had said to expect and saw, at the top of a wooded slope, the hunting lodge Matt and Joni planned to open before Christmas as a bed and breakfast. Its log sides appeared freshly stained, and the window frames freshly painted
a greenish turquoise, a color choice Joni said she’d agonized over.
When no one answered her knock, Bethany let herself into a large lobby and said “Wow” out loud at the massive stone fireplace and wagon-wheel chandeliers hanging from a beamed, cathedral ceiling. Joni’s flare for set design showed in the Southwestern wood-framed furniture, bright Mexican rugs, and nineteenth-century pictures of miners with pickaxes, cowboys on horses, and studio portraits of solemn-faced men, women, and children.
Bethany peered into the rooms surrounding the lobby: an enclosed porch piled with sealed cardboard boxes, the office, and the kitchen where a dishwasher and new cabinets waited to be installed. As she decided to investigate the upper floors for signs of life, Joni ran down the stairs. “I saw your car. You made it!”
As always, Bethany keenly felt the five-year gap between herself and her younger sister. Joni, at twenty-seven, resembled a rebellious kid with spiky hair dyed a whitish blonde. People who didn’t know she’d been adopted assumed she took after their petite mother. A head shorter than Bethany, she was tiny in every respect, from her elfin face to her feet.
Hugging Joni felt like holding a quivering butterfly. Her delicate frame seemed thinner than ever. Is she not eating? Best not ask now. “The lodge looks terrific. Even better than in your pictures.”
Joni’s blue eyes, artistically made up, looked huge, sad, and scared. “It’s Matt’s dream project,” she said. “Mine, too, now. It’s so close to happening, but it won’t if Matt is arrested for something he didn’t do.”
Joni had bitten her nails to the quick and left them unpolished for once. She wore rings on most of her fingers and a diamond stud in her right earlobe. Her embroidered silk shirt and red cowboy boots made Bethany aware of her own unglamorous black parka and black jeans, her scuffed hiking boots.
“Hey, don’t worry.” She made a wild promise. “Everything will work out.”
“Says you.” She took Bethany by the hand and pulled her onto a loveseat. “We’re still in shock over Krystal Decker’s bones turning up three weeks ago. After seven years! Why did it have to happen right after we got engaged? People are calling her the ‘First Fiancée,’ like an official title. Matt’s been grilled by the sheriff’s deputies and the state police. It’s been horrible for him.”
Bethany gave Joni’s hand a light squeeze. “What has Matt been saying lately about Krystal?”
“Not much more than I already knew. Krystal with a K. A small-town star. Matt heard her sing at one of the festivals and asked her out. His job as a financial adviser must have impressed that gold digger! Once they got engaged, he found out how bad she wanted to get away from Sorrel. She never liked his plan to move down here from Santa Fe and run this place as a B&B, not just come for weekends. That’s why when she disappeared, he thought she ran out on him.”
She jumped up as Matt came down the stairs. “Look, Bethany’s here!”
Matt’s expression shifted from preoccupied to polite in an instant. He came across as Bethany remembered him—impressively tall and strong—with freckles that fit his last name, MacGregor. Today the freckles stood out on winter-pale skin. The man looked exhausted.
“Bethany. You made good time. You must have left Las Cuevas before dawn.”
“At six. It’s not that much farther than from Santa Fe.” She moved to a chair on the far side of a rough-hewn coffee table so the couple could have the loveseat. “The road up the mountain must be a mess during a snowstorm.”
“The last few miles for sure,” Matt said. He gathered both of Joni’s hands in his. “Let’s hope the weather holds. Joni said she told you we have bookings for less than two weeks from now, all the way through Christmas and New Year’s. But first, we’re throwing a dinner for the locals—”
“Shop owners, people who’ve lived here forever, those types,” Joni said, her voice upbeat.
“People we want on our side,” Matt said. “On Friday, only five days from now. And an open house next Sunday.”
He blinked and squeezed the bridge of his nose. Bethany guessed the contacts Joni had said he wore were bothering him.
“We’re cutting it close to be ready to open,” Joni said. “We’re still painting and decorating.”
“I can stay for a few days,” Bethany said. “I came to help.”
“I know you did.” Joni slid closer to Matt. “And like I told you on the phone, we do have two employees who live with us. Matt, tell her about David and Gloria.”
“David is a good friend,” Matt said. “He’s going to be the lodge’s massage therapist and our handyman. Our housekeeper will cook breakfasts for the guests.”
“Gloria,” Joni said. “From La Plata. You’ll like her. She works nights at the Black Bear, the bar. Around here, people do whatever jobs they can get. You’ll like David, too. He teaches P.E. part-time at the elementary school. He’s from Santa Fe, recovering from a divorce.”
“Our guests will stay in rooms off the lobby,” Matt said, gesturing to a hallway, “and on the second floor. Joni and I, plus David and Gloria are on the third floor.”
“You’ll be up there with us,” Joni said. “Let’s get you settled.”
“Or maybe you’d like some lunch?” Matt asked.
“Sorry, I should have thought of that,” Joni said. She drew down the corners of her mouth in her characteristic whoops gesture.
Food could be a touchy topic with Joni, so Bethany rushed to say, “I had a burger in La Plata. I’m fine.”
“Okay,” Matt said, “but raid the fridge any time you like. The kitchen’s that way.”
Bethany didn’t bother to say she’d peeked into the kitchen. Matt insisted on helping fetch her luggage from the SUV, and Joni said she would head upstairs to turn on the heat. “It’ll take a while for your room to warm up,” she said. “Think rustic charm.”
Alone with Matt, Bethany said, “It must be hard, the situation you’re facing, finding out about the death of someone you loved so many years after it happened. I’m sorry to say it so awkwardly.”
He acknowledged her apology with a nod. “It’s been a shock. I thought Krystal left me and didn’t want to be found.”
“Joni told me someone killed her. Is that possible? Couldn’t it have been an accident?”
“At first, that’s what I assumed, but apparently, somebody hit her on the head and left her in a gully. In the national forest beyond the lodge. The police seem to think I could be capable of doing that.” He cleared his throat. “It’s good you came, but I don’t want you burdened with my problem.”
“It’s Joni’s problem, too. She sounded frantic when she called.”
“That’s because of the rumors that I’m some sort of monster.”
He put his hands on her shoulders, locking eyes with her. His grip felt so tight that she winced. “Look, I didn’t kill Krystal. Joni believes me. But we can kiss goodbye to paying guests if people worry they’re not safe under this roof.”
She stepped back to free herself from those hands.
“Sorry.” He led her out of the lodge and down the front steps, their hiking boots thudding on the hard wood.
****
Unlocking the SUV, Bethany let Matt take charge of her duffel bag and a smaller holdall. She slipped her daypack over her shoulder and gathered up the pillow she toted on her business trips and the briefcase that held her laptop. She told Matt to leave the sleeping bag; she kept it in the car for emergencies.
“You could be glad you brought it.” He made a short “huh” sound that might have been a laugh. “Heat is a scarce commodity on the top floor.”
They climbed creaky, uncarpeted stairs to the second-floor lounge where Joni had upholstered the easy chairs in the same fresh fabric as below. An antique pot-bellied stove contrasted with a wall-mounted flat-screen television. “We’ve got satellite TV and Wi-Fi through a phone company’s landline,” Matt said proudly.
The third-floor lounge mimicked the one below in size, but no one had attended to the worn furniture, cracked stucco, and scratched wood floors. Joni had mentioned the lodge’s origin as a nineteenth-century private home turned boarding house, unused for decades before Matt’s uncle acquired it. The third floor certainly showed the building’s age.
