A Treasured Little Murder: A Violet Carlyle Cozy Historical Mystery (The Violet Carlyle Mysteries Book 23) Read online

  A Treasured Little Murder

  A Violet Carlyle Historical Mystery

  Beth Byers

  For Ethy

  Contents

  Summary

  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

  Preview of The Mystery at the Edge of Madness

  Also by Beth Byers

  Summary

  August 1926

  Jack and Ham’s first solo case is placed on pause just as the tale of a treasure is brought to light.

  As the case progresses, Vi and Rita dive in, and somehow it becomes a competition between the two couples. Things, however, take a sideways turn and the couples must unite and work together to protect all they hold dear.

  Chapter 1

  “Remember when we decided to whimsically get on the next ship and go to lands unknown?”

  Violet was lying on one of the couches in her parlor. It was stifling hot and even with the lights low and the thick curtains drawn, nothing helped against the heat. Wearing her lightest dress still felt like wrapping in a wool blanket. Stockings were the bane of her existence.

  Her Turkish coffee and her cocktail were on the table next to her, but she’d have to move to partake, so they were slowly moving in temperature towards each other with the coffee cooling and the ice in her cocktail melting. Only her headache had her contemplating the coffee, but she couldn’t quite bring herself to put it near her mouth.

  They had determined to go bathing later but Jack had a meeting, so they were waiting for him to return. A part of Vi considered abandoning her husband to dive into the pool without him, but the heat of the day would turn her skin to a burnt crisp. She needed the sun to start moving towards the horizon before she could risk diving into the water. Instead, she once again considered taking a sip from her cocktail and then rejected the idea of moving at all.

  Only Denny had even appeared in the parlor that morning, and he’d explained it had been because his wife, Lila, had ordered him and his hot breath from the bedroom.

  Denny glanced at Vi from his reclined position on the chaise lounge, propped up with a melting box of chocolates. “Are you referring to our most recent voyage?”

  Violet held out an imperious hand for a chocolate. Denny scowled darkly, eyed the box carefully, and handed over one of his least favorites.

  “You’re lucky I like this one”—Violet lifted the chocolate and took a slow bite before lying back down—“given these chocolates are mine.”

  “They’re always yours.” Denny’s whine was clouded by chocolate and she lifted a brow at him. It was too hot to voice a mockery. “No one loves me.”

  “Do you remember our trip?” Vi asked again. She sighed deeply and snuggled into her sofa. What she needed, she thought, was some sort of fan. The kind her great-grandmother would have glanced flirtingly over the top of at a man or snapped closed to make a point.

  “I remember. Twins trying to murder each other’s husbands, failing, and poisoning each other. It’s a story I’ll tell my grandchild and she won’t believe me.”

  Violet laughed weakly, exhausted from the heat to make more of an effort. “Maybe next time we should research our ship first. Perhaps also be sure of where we’re going.”

  “So let’s never, ever do that again.” Denny grunted and then demanded, “Where is everyone?”

  “Jack and Ham went to meet with Smith about something or other. I think they’re working with him on a missing person.”

  “A child?” Denny asked and for once he didn’t sound lazy. Instead he had the edge of a frantic father who suddenly cared about more than cocktails, chocolate, and afternoon naps. It was a new look for him, and he was struggling to carry it.

  Consolingly, Violet replied quickly. “No, a businessman, I think. His partners are looking for him.”

  “I would say that’s interesting, but my guess—and I’m just wildly throwing out ideas here—is that what they’re missing is money.” Denny popped another chocolate into his mouth and then groaned, waving his hand in front of his face. With a whimper, he added, “It’s so hot.”

  Violet ignored the obvious to continue. “It’s possible that Jack and Ham have thought of that. They’re supposedly somewhat good at this whole investigating thing.”

  “Jack scolded you about interfering in his new collaboration with Smith and Ham, didn’t he?”

  Violet scowled. “It’s not like I don’t have my own things to do.”

  Denny giggled like a schoolboy. She watched him wipe a tear away before he asked, “Did Rita get scolded as well?”

  Violet sat up suddenly. That idea had not occurred to her, and she needed to know. She abandoned Denny and the parlor, leaving behind her shoes to make her way to the telephone. A quick call later and Vi returned to the parlor and tossed Denny’s feet from the chaise lounge.

  “Hey now,” he said with a bit of a groan. The glee in his eyes, however, told her that he already knew the answer to his previous question.

  Vi put her hands on her hips and scowled down at him.

  He grinned at her, unrepentant. “Am I in trouble for being one of the boys or am I in trouble for being right?”

  “The latter,” Vi told him and then took the chocolate, found one of the covered caramels—both of their favorite—and popped it into her mouth, savoring it in retaliation.

  “It’s not my fault that I’m brilliant, Vi. It just happens.”

  “Brilliant?” She put the box of chocolates just out of his reach. He tried to appease her with a meek expression.

  “Maybe I have a little bit of an idea of how some men might feel even if I would never scold in such a manner.”

  “Never?” Vi snorted and then gave him the chocolates again. She was too hot to stay angry for long. She frowned at her cooled coffee and watered-down cocktail. “My brother staying home with his sick wife and sick daughters really make this whole cocktail situation unacceptable.”

  “It’s not that hard to make a cocktail, Vi.”

  “There’s an art. Don’t make me kill you off in my next book. Maybe there will be werewolves or pirates. Either way—” She slowly drew her finger across her neck.

  Denny laughed heartily at her threat. “Would it be bloody?”

  “The grisliest scene I had ever written.” Vi’s solemn reply had him laughing again. “Knives, axes, fires, beetles.” When she reached beetles, she petered out and repeated, “Fires.”

  “What about pirates and werewolves?” Denny asked seriously around another chocolate. “If I have to die, I should think it would be best to be murdered in a fight between them both. Nearly victorious, but not quite.”

  Vi choked on a laugh first, but then an idea occurred to her and she leaned in, almost whispering, “Can you imagine Victor’s face when he read the draft? Our villain Denny on the deck of the werewolf pirate ship?”

  Denny slowly sat up, his eagerness dampened only by the heat.

  “Your twin would understand what you were doing immediately,” Denny warned Vi.

  “That do
esn’t mean he wouldn’t revel in it.” She crossed to the melting ice block on the drinks table and dipped her kerchief in the drip pan before wrapping it around her neck.

  The story idea had excellent merit, especially because if she wasn’t mistaken, her twin was struggling with his own series of grey days, which had almost exclusively been her purview over their life. His very occasional bouts were worse for all of them because they were so rare.

  “Reveling is the winning phase of a prank,” Denny said with a nod. “If you can get him to revel at our brilliance, then we’ve won.”

  “We’ve?” Vi asked silkily. “And who said this was a prank?”

  He ignored her question without meeting her gaze. “Anything with both werewolves and pirates needs a princess.”

  “Oh! A pirate princess!”

  “A pirate princess who falls in love with a werewolf,” Denny crowed.

  Vi raised a hand in the air and said, “Anything this ridiculous calls for cocktails.”

  She tried a woebegone face and Denny rose to mix them, groaning the whole way as though he were an old man who struggled with pain even walking across the floor.

  Vi grabbed paper from the drawer and started making notes. The two of them shot ideas back and forth until Rita arrived. She threw herself onto one of the large chairs, grabbed an empty cocktail glass and begged, “Please sir, I want some more.”

  Her large blue eyes were as wide as a puppy’s as she begged Denny to be the one to break ice off the block. She fluttered thick black lashes and then glanced at Vi out of the corner of her eye. She smirked when Denny complied with her pleading.

  Rita was an arresting level of lovely. She could walk across the room and eyes would follow wherever she went. With golden hair bobbed and marcelled into waves, she was smooth and perfect. Her big blue eyes were vibrant and sparkling. They were so utterly feminine and she was so dryly witty, it was rare for many to realize just how clever her perfect gaze was. She was curvy, dressed in a light linen blue dress that emphasized her coloring, showing herself as the epitome of the bright young thing.

  Violet might well have been jealous of Rita for her looks. Vi was pretty enough. With sharp features and dark hair and eyes, she was taller than average for a woman and quite slender. She was not, however, someone that would turn all heads. Vi didn’t care in the least. Jack loved her and that was all she needed.

  Rita had joined Vi in more than a few of the investigations that so agitated their beloveds. Ham was no happier with it than Jack. “Do you think they agreed to lecture us?” Rita asked. “I mean, they talked about it over a glass of port?”

  Vi imitated Ham. “‘You talk to Vi, be firm.’”

  Vi’s impression of her husband made Rita laugh. Her pretty blue eyes flashed with humor until Denny joined in and then they flashed with irritation.

  “Yes,” Denny answered Rita, ignoring her dark look. “Certainly they agreed.”

  He gave Rita a cocktail made with gin, orange juice, and Victor’s blackberry cordial.

  Rita sighed into her cup. “I can’t imagine Jack as easily.”

  “It would have been well-intentioned,” Vi muttered. “‘We don’t have the Yard behind us now, Ham,’” she imitated. “‘If the girls get involved, they could get even more hurt than they have already been.’”

  “Then they recapped all the times we’ve been hurt,” Rita said, seeming to see the scene herself. “Me, after I came home with Martha.”

  “Vi and Kate,” Denny added helpfully, “that terrible Christmas visit to my home.”

  “Not terrible. Not when we got Kate,” Vi countered.

  “Poor sap,” Denny said, referring to Vi’s brother who had met and fallen in love with Kate during that visit. “Besotted in love. Takes us all eventually, I suppose.”

  Violet rolled her eyes, shaking off the old injuries. Had she gotten into trouble a few times while delving into Jack’s cases? Perhaps, yes, it was possible.

  “It’s not that the boys are right,” Vi began with a mischievous expression as she held her glass against her forehead. The chill provided such a beautiful respite that she sagged into her seat with a deep sigh.

  “Although they are,” Denny said and then grabbed the chocolates and fled Vi’s parlor before Rita and Violet could throw something more than a pillow at him.

  “It’s that they’re right,” Rita finished. She said it without restraint, given they no longer had an audience. “It does bother me though. Jack was hurt a few times. Ham has scars that he changes the story behind them time after time. We are all fragile.”

  “How are things at home?”

  Rita paused long enough that it was evident that something was bothering her friend.

  Chapter 2

  “Father came by.”

  Vi waited. Rita’s pause had been too long and Vi’s gaze widened with mirth. She rose and refilled their drinks, slamming the ice pick down into the block until she had enough chunks to make new, cool drinks. “That’s rather satisfying.”

  “Is it?”

  “Given your tone—” Vi handed Rita a new cocktail and then slipped into the chair next to her. “I’m guessing that you might benefit from the fierce use of an ice pick.”

  “I would benefit from the fierce use of a lot of things. I might have even placed a pillow over my face and shrieked today after Father left.”

  “Oh?” Vi waited but Rita was so busy staring into the distance that Vi finally asked, “Why did he come?”

  Rita blinked rather rapidly and then her gaze met Vi’s and shifted. Rita was, Vi realized, rather pale. “Those Hollands brothers from my wedding have been coming by. Father wanted to let Ham know, but of course, Ham was off with Jack interfering in people’s lives after putting us in pretty little cages.”

  “Are you and Ham fighting?”

  Rita paused so long that Vi thought for certain that they were. “I—” Rita shook her head and then finished, “No. No, of course not.”

  Their gazes met again and this time Rita’s matched Vi’s humor.

  “All right, I confess. Ham and I have to keep consciously and desperately from arguing. We’re just both so…so…”

  “Intelligent and opinionated?”

  “Opinionated anyway.” Rita sipped her drink and then leaned back, fanning herself with her hand. She finally met Vi’s eyes. “Father had other news.”

  “Did he?” Vi asked when Rita let the silence linger too long again.

  “Father has purchased a house near ours.”

  “You rather thought he was going to, didn’t you? Or at least leave Scotland after the scandal and the true colors of his friends becoming apparent.”

  Rita nibbled at her lip and Vi was surprised to see the uncertainty on her friend’s face. Rita was nothing if not the confident, outgoing personification of a bright young thing. How…why…had Rita become so uncertain? Vi guessed. “Is he going to marry that woman?”

  “Mmm.” Rita’s gaze shifted to the side. “They married while we were gone.”

  Again, the silence was too long and it was filled with the suffocating weight of Rita’s bottled feelings.

  “Mmm,” Rita said again.

  “Are you too full of emotion for words?” Vi’s gentle tone made them both wince. Vi reached out a sweaty hand to her friend and squeezed Rita’s.

  Rita had to clear her throat to answer and her voice was shaky when she did. “He knew I would understand when I discovered she was with child.”

  It was Vi who was now silent as she stared at Rita. The silence was a different kind of weighty and Vi had to bite down on her bottom lip to hold in the inappropriate laugh. “Are you…isn’t she…my goodness. Isn’t she too old?”

  “Apparently not,” Rita replied with an edge of bitterness. “I’m going to be a big sister.”

  Again that weight. It was a combination, Vi thought, of ridiculous humor, jealousy, guilt for the jealousy, and hurt.

  Violet turned her glass in her hand as she fought f
or how to be a good friend. “You’re jealous.”

  Rita gasped as if wounded and then admitted, “Perhaps.”

  “It’s all right to be jealous. I’ve been bitterly jealous of Isolde the whole of my life, and I adore my sister. Let alone the wart. Father is kinder and more engaged with the child he knows isn’t his over Victor and I.”

  “He did raise him,” Rita said, knowing that Violet agreed.

  “Emotions aren’t rational. Yours or mine. It’s fine if you’re jealous. It’s reasonable. Human even.”

  “I expect better of myself.”

  “So do I,” Vi added. “I love that wart of ours. I miss him when I don’t see him. I envy him his relationship with my father.”

  “I…thank you.” Rita drained her glass.

  “You need a distraction.” Whenever she said anything quite so mischievously it was evident she intended to dive into the type of hijinks that would send her stepmother into spasms.

  Rita smiled slowly. “A party?”

  “Something ridiculous. More ridiculous than going on a voyage without any investigation.”

  “The opposite of my perfect wedding. From one extreme to the other,” Rita said. “Prizes like Father had, but of the most ridiculous nature.”

  “Roller-skates,” Vi suggested. “A live band. Someone serving ice cream. A party that doesn’t start until most of the countryside has gone to bed.”

  “Your bathing pool,” Rita added. “Midnight swims with candlelight.”

  Vi’s eyes narrowed, recognizing the clever push of the party to Vi’s house rather than to Rita’s. Rita grinned widely and Vi said, “Fine. But you have to find the band and decide upon what we serve.”