Whiskey Rebellion (Romantic Mystery/Comedy) Book 1 (Addison Holmes Mysteries)

the better.”
    “Yeah, yeah, I know. See you around,” I said to Nick.
    “Hey, wait a sec,” he called back before I could reach the door.
    I waited for him wearily as he approached, wondering what he was going to say to piss me off this time. I inhaled swiftly and held it there as I watched his hand move towards my breast. My whole body was on fire with one small touch of his finger, and I watched him smile in satisfaction at my reaction and bring the small piece of brownie that had fallen on my shirt to his mouth.
    “Mmmm —good brownie.”
    There was a small part of me that wanted to punch him in the face, but mostly I just wanted to rip my clothes off.
    I didn’t dignify giving him a response because I couldn’t get my tongue to work. I grabbed my things to my chest and walked out the door, shoulders straight.
    “Stupid jerk, stupid, stupid —idiot.”
    I wasn’t sure if I was talking about Nick or myself. Probably a little of both. I stood on the sidewalk in front of Kate’s office and let the rain sizzle off my overheated body. I didn’t need these complications in my life right now. Want, yes. Need, no.

    There was plenty of time before I had to act as a marital aid to Gretchen Wilder, so I decided to follow up with John Hyatt. I thought the best course of action was to see if I could catch sight of the mystery woman who was spending so much time at the Hyatt mansion. School was out for the day, so if the mystery woman was Veronica as I suspected she might be there already.
    I used my cell phone to call the bank. A woman answered, but I didn’t recognize her voice.
    “May I speak to John Hyatt, please?” I asked, crossing my fingers that she didn’t recognize my voice and just hang up.
    “I’m sorry, but Mr. Hyatt is attending meetings today. He won’t be back in the office until tomorrow. Would you like to leave a message on his voice mail?”
    “No thanks, I’ll just call again tomorrow,” I said and hung up.
    I left Savannah at light speed and headed back to Whiskey Bayou, sure that John Hyatt and the mystery tart, a.k.a Veronica Wade, were about to get caught in the act.
    Once I got into town I was glad to see that the weather was still keeping everyone indoors. I drove down Main Street ten miles over the speed limit, passing the train depot, The Good Luck Cafe, the whiskey distillery and the fire station before I took a left and headed into the residential area of Whiskey Bayou. I had a plan, and it might even be a well-thought-out plan.
    My parents had lived in the same small, cottage style house their entire married life, and when my dad died last year my mom got two German Shepherd puppies to keep her company.
    People always comment on my parents’ house because it’s so out of the ordinary. “It looks like a fairy tale from Hansel and Gretel or Snow White,” they ’d always say. That weirded me out as a kid because who would want to live in a place where an old woman shoved kids into her oven? I’d gotten over it for the most part.
    I pulled behind the 1969 Dodge Charger my mom had bought off eBay with the insurance money she’d gotten after my dad died—it was an exact replica of the “General Lee” from the Dukes of Hazzard.
    I sloshed my way to the detached garage at the back of the house. My dad had been an avid collector of nothing and everything, so I knew my best chances of finding what I was looking for were in the garage.
    The walls were lined with tools, some of which had never been used, and there were shelves filled with fishing lures and golf clubs, two sports I was pretty sure my dad had never played. There was a telescope in the corne r he’d bought when I was going through my astronaut phase and a Samurai sword he’d bought at a flea market. I found what I was looking for in a box marked hunting gear. Go figure.
    I dug through layers of bright orange vests and about a hundred bottles of buck urine before I found the binoculars. The houses on John Hyatt’s street all backed up to Magnolia Park. If I was lucky I’d catch a glimpse of the culprit through the windows from long distance.

    I realized once I turned into Magnolia Park and weaved my way through mud holes and giant trees that my plan wasn’t as well-thought-out as I’d imagined.
    On a bright sunny day, what happened inside John Hyatt’s house would be an open book—the entire backside of his house was glass and looked out onto the pool. But in a deluge of rain with zero percent