The Money Pit Read online

  Table of Contents

  Excerpt

  The Money Pit

  Blurb

  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

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  Note from Renee

  eBooks by Renee George

  Renee recommends … Dakota Cassidy

  Excerpt

  I’d started on loosening the plaster in my new house. Luckily, the water and electricity had been set up for the trailer, and tonight, I would sleep on the property for the first time. It made me both sad and excited.

  Sad, because there was no chance of running into Parker in the mornings before the rest of the crew arrived, and excited, because it was nice to have something that felt like it was all mine.

  I swung a flat shovel nearly as tall as me against a wall underneath the staircase to the second floor. Plaster smashed to the floor in chunks. Smooshie skittered across the hardwood hallway and around the corner to the living room. She wanted no part of my foul mood.

  Battery-operated lights illuminated the hall, living room, kitchen, and downstairs bathroom—not working currently, like everything else in this place—and with my Shifter vision, I could see incredibly well. I tapped the shovel along the wall to loosen the plaster from the laths, which were wooden slats that were attached in rows to the studs. It was the way they put up walls before the invention of drywall. And it was a pain in the butt. Real messy too. I wore a mask I’d gotten at the hardware store and a pair of safety goggles and work gloves. Every chunk of plaster that crashed to the floor filled me with satisfaction, and after the awful couple of days I’d had, I needed a lot of satisfaction.

  Smooshie, who’d put several new holes in the yard and the woods the past couple of nights, began to race from the living room to the hallway and back. When a chunk would hit the ground, she’d slide to a halt and run away. It made me smile. Thank heavens for her. She was a real ally for me. No matter what else happened, she would never like Naomi better than me. That was some consolation.

  I worked for the better part of two hours, stopping only for water breaks until the wall was nothing but a striped pattern of wooden laths. “I rock!” I shouted to Smooshie.

  I heard her growling, not with menace, but more like when I played ball or tug-of-war with her. She was scratching against something as well. I took the mask and glasses off.

  “What are you doing?” I asked, when I walked around the corner. She’d dug a section about the size of basketball out of the base of one of the only walls I wasn’t going to have to tear down. The wallpaper and the drywall hadn’t stood a chance. “Oh, Smooshie. Why?”

  She had something in her mouth, and since I’d left the front door open to air out the place, she ran outside with her prize. I chased after her into the darkening night. She placed her possession into one of the holes in the yard and starting pulling dirt over it. More curious than worried, I walked to her spot. She plopped down on top of the hole as if to say, move along, nothing to see here.

  “What you got there?”

  She put her chin down on her feet, her eyes swiveling up to gaze at me.

  “Let me see.” I knelt beside her and put my hand under her belly. I felt something almost like papier-mâché once it dries. I gently gripped it and pulled it out from under the dog.

  I could see pretty well in the dark, but still, I wasn’t sure what the heck I had in my hand. “Come on, Smoosh. Let’s go back to the house.”

  Once we were back inside, Smooshie jumped around my legs, hoping to get her hard-won prize back. When I got a good look, I nearly dropped the darn thing—because, holy Goddess in a pink tutu, I was holding a foot. I mean, it was brown and leathery, but I was pretty confident this was a human foot.

  I examined it closer. The smell of decay was minimal. It had been dead long enough to lose the scent of rot. Also, it was missing a large toe. I hoped that happened before it was dragged out of the wall. I worried Smooshie had chewed it up like a rawhide toy.

  “This can’t be happening.” I’d moved to Moonrise so I could stop being surprised by dead bodies.

  Wait. There was no body. Not yet. Maybe this was the only thing. Maybe it hadn’t even come out of the wall.

  Smooshie was back at the hole, growling and tugging, and yanking on, dear Goddess, a leg with no foot.

  “Smooshie! No!” I reprimanded. I dug the clicker out of my pocket and snapped it several times as I pulled her back. Was there really a body in my wall? The leather calf covered in a brown denim fabric sticking out of my wall pretty much meant yes. Yes, there were human remains in my new house. Ugh.

  “You’re destroying evidence, girl. Just sit and stay.” She cocked her head sideways at me, the way she did when I got naked. I sighed. Just because Smooshie had found a body, didn’t mean it had to be murder. Right?

  Because people wall themselves up before dying of natural causes all the time, Lily. Don’t be daft. I knew foul play was involved, but the idea of calling the sheriff’s department to report another crime made my teeth ache.

  Smooshie surged forward when I straightened. I clicked the trainer again. “Stay,” I told her. Unfortunately, the foot she’d found already felt like a possession to her. Her massive chest vibrated with excitement as I placed the foot on the mantel over the fireplace.

  Carefully, I pulled at the sheetrock, creating a big, wide circle of it around the area Smooshie had knocked out in her pursuit of a hidden treasure. The inside was stained brown with blood. I wondered if that’s why wallpaper had been put up instead of paint. Had the blood soaked through the drywall? It took me less than fifteen minutes to expose the entire area, and less than five minutes to confirm that I was not unveiling a suicide.

  The leathery corpse’s dried-up, shriveled eyeballs stared right into the core of me, and the way the skin had pulled away from the teeth made it look like it was grimacing. It wasn’t cold in the house, but I couldn’t stop shivering. Smooshie’s tail thumped on the floor excitedly.

  “Stay put,” I told her. She made a whining noise. My baby wanted desperately to play. “What in the world happened?” I asked the corpse. “Someone did a real number on you.”

  I’d seen worse things in my life, unfortunately. My brother’s killer had made him virtually unrecognizable as a person. At least this victim was like a dried husk, not bloated and disfigured. Instead, the dark skin looked as if it had been shrink wrapped around the bones. The Midwest had high humidity and a fluctuation of temperatures. I’d read a mystery once in which it took almost a year of limited moisture exposure for a body to desiccate to this extreme.

  I planned to call the sheriff’s office, but Sheriff Avery hated me. He would find a way to make this body my fault. There was a hole in the side of the corpse’s head and another in the chest on the right side. The one in his chest was jagged. Was it a knife? Or some kind of tool? I was assuming the one in his head was a bullet hole, but I didn’t have enough experience with weapons to know for certain. The corpse’s hair was thin, brittle, and choppy, as if the person had gotten a bad haircut right before death.

  I allowed my cougar to surface. The world around me colored, and my sense of smell grew keener. I leaned forward and took a big whiff of the body. Must, mold, dust, hardly any rot or decay, even with my Shifter nose in action. It wor
e denim pants that were stained brown. The shirt was of the button-down western variety. It had decorations over the pockets and metal snaps. There were no shoes, but I imagined this was the kind of person who wore cowboy boots. The right side of his neck was more discolored than the other parts of his exposed skin. A tattoo maybe. It was hard to tell. I’d read that mummified skin could be rehydrated for fingerprints. I wondered if it worked the same for tattoos, or did the process damage the embedded ink?

  I plucked a screwdriver, a flat head, from the toolbox and lifted the fold of the shirt. No bra. Which didn’t really mean anything, but I decided this was probably once a man. Hadn’t Parker mentioned a family disappearing from here back in the eighties? Was this the father? Was the rest of the family buried behind the other walls?

  The idea was repugnant enough to make me pull back from the wall. I hadn’t noticed that Smooshie had stopped thumping the floor with her tail.

  My partial turn had her thinking we were going for a run. “Not this time, girl.” I reached out, and she rolled her ear against my hand. I willed my cougar side to fade. “Such a good girl.” Except for the finding-a-dead-body-in-my-home thing.

  Her tail swished frantically, her mouth opened in her usual wide-mouthed, tongue-lolling grin. I scratched her behind the ear. “We’ll run again soon, promise. Right now we have to deal with ol’ Leather Face.”

  I turned back to the body. It was folded unnaturally. One hand was bent behind the corpse’s back, the over was tucked into his side. He was making a fist. I reached down with the screwdriver again and gently pried at the clenched fingers.

  A whispering crack made me stop. The tip of the index finger fell to the ground. Oops. I looked a Smoosh, who gave me an Is that mine? look. I shook my head. I stared down at the desecrated digit then back to Smoosh. “I won’t tell about the big toe if you keep quiet about the finger.”

  The Money Pit

  Barkside of the Moon Mysteries, Book 2

  Renee George

  Published 2017 by Book Boutiques.

  ISBN: 978-1-944003-84-5

  Copyright © 2017, Renee George.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of Book Boutiques.

  This book is a work of fiction. Any similarity to actual persons, living or dead, locales, or events is wholly coincidental. The names, characters, dialogue, and events in this book are from the author’s imagination and should not to be construed as real.

  Manufactured in the USA.

  Email [email protected] with questions, or inquiries about Book Boutiques.

  Blurb

  Sometimes, trying to be part of the human world can be a real killer… Cougar-shifter Lily Mason is ready to put down roots in the human town of Moonrise, Missouri. She only has two problems: her attraction and proximity to Parker Knowles, her boss at the Pit Bull Rescue Shelter, and her need to shift into animal form more than once a month.

  When she gets the opportunity to buy a “fixer-upper” outside of Moonrise with plenty of room to get wild without running into easily freaked-out humans, Lily jumps at the chance. Smooshie, Lily’s lovable pit bull and partner in chaos, is eager to participate with the home improvements. Unfortunately, Smooshie’s help includes digging out a mummified body from the living room wall.

  Lily is still recovering from the last murder investigation she got involved in—and she’s not looking forward to being in the middle of another one. The case gets even stickier when Lily’s landlord is murdered, rumors of heist gone wrong run rampant, and Parker’s old high school buddies have returned to Moonrise, thus increasing the suspect pool. Lily’s attempts to become a bona fide citizen of Moonrise might well be thwarted by this newest complication—especially when the murder sets sights on her.

  Dedication

  For Steve, Taylor, Josie, Thumper, and Kona. You are the best Forever Family ever.

  Acknowledgements

  First, I have to thank Lauren Allen of the Missouri Pit Bull Rescue organization for patiently answering each one of my questions about pit bull rescue (no matter how crazy they might have been). Thank you for sharing the stories of success and failure you all experience in your quest to save this wonderful breed. I encourage everyone who loves dogs to donate to this group (www.mopitbullrescue.org) as they build their new shelter that will allow them to house even more rescues until they can be placed in foster or forever homes. The shelter in my book is more well-funded than real life shelters, but that is the benefit of fiction. There is not nearly enough money, volunteers, or space at most of these places to help all the pit bulls who need to be rescued. Any mistakes I may have written about “pit bull rescue” are mine and mine alone.

  Second, I have to thank the usual suspects, Michele Bardsley and Robbin Clubb. You two get me through it. Every. Time. Whew. And this book is so much better because of you both.

  Third, to my editor Kelli Collins (editmethis.com), thank the Goddess for you! You are the grammar and content ninja!

  Fourth, I want to give a shout out to my rebels (www.facebook.com/groups/reneesunusualsuspects). You guys are the teriyaki to my chicken, the salt to my pepper, and the peanut butter to my chocolate. In other words, I’m so much better with you than without you! Thank you for being such great fans and readers.

  Fifthly, (I almost wrote Filthy, LOL), I want to thank Michele Hoppe, my Book Boutiques publisher and INscribe, for having a lot of faith in Barkside of the Moon Mysteries. This series is a real labor of love for me, and I thank you for jumping on board!

  Lastly, I have to thank that rich, dark bean, that when ground up fine and brewed fresh, serves to invigorate my brain enough to keep my fingers typing away on the keyboard. Thank you, Coffee. Thank you, thank you.

  Chapter 1

  I have never been an impulsive person. I look both ways before crossing the street, I test the water with my toe before wading in, and I don’t buy dilapidated, two-story rural houses.

  Oh, wait. Yes, I do. The decrepit home on twelve acres of wooded land outside Moonrise, Missouri, was mine-ish. I’d just signed an “as is” rent-to-own, fifteen-year contract with Merl Peterson, a property developer, and had given him a ten-grand down payment.

  What have you done, Lily Mason?

  “The place needs a lot of work,” Merl said. His bushy eyebrows were as thick and long as the hair on his head was thin and short. “It hasn’t had any work done on it in a long time. I was planning to fix it up myself for a cushy resale price, but Greer’s a hard man to say no to.”

  “Greer’s a good man,” I said. “One of the best.”

  Greer Knowles was a mechanic in Moonrise. He owned a small garage called The Rusty Wrench. He was the very first person I met when I came to town, thanks to my green and yellow mini-truck, aka the rust bucket. I’ve had the truck for over twenty years now, and Martha, even with her occasional problems, was still the most reliable thing in my life. At least, she’d been the most consistent. I looked over at her. Martha’s wheel well rust had gotten worse over the winter. Salted roads had a tendency to speed up oxidation. But lucky for me, Greer knew how to keep her in top running order.

  Greer was also the father of my boss and friend, Parker.

  My heart picked up the pace, the way it always did when I thought of Parker. I was currently living over his garage in a small studio apartment. As much as I wanted independence and a place of my own, another reason this house was so important to me was because I needed distance from Parker. It was hard working with a man I had feelings for when I knew nothing could ever come from them. Living right next to him made my heartache almost unbearable.

  Merl pushed up his thick glasses and shook his head. “I have another place in town that’s cheaper if this doesn’t suit you.”

  What Merl didn’t understand was that I liked the tall columns out on
the porch and the ornate gables. There was something about this house, a certain charm, that I wanted to preserve. To make mine. Besides, my pit bull Smooshie needed room to run, to be free to stretch her thick legs. Frankly, I needed the same. As a werecougar living in a human town, I didn’t often have the privacy needed to shift.

  Smooshie barked and yipped with manic energy. I looked over in time to see my eighty-pound brown and white pittie leaping around after an orange and black Monarch butterfly near a patch of milkweed. We’d had a warm end to winter, and spring was a couple of weeks away. Even so, seeing a butterfly this early in March was unusual. Smooshie leaped again, her whole body twisting in the air.

  I smiled. I really loved that dog.

  “I’ll be fine, Mr. Peterson. I have plans for the place.”

  “I hope a bulldozer’s involved,” he muttered.

  I didn’t say “what?” because I’d heard him loud and clear. My excellent hearing was the blessing and curse of being a cougar Shifter. I could also smell the remnants of his lunch—a burger with bacon, grilled onions, and bleu cheese. Buying a house on an empty stomach was no bueno. I turned to him and said, “Thank you, Mr. Peterson. I appreciate you taking a chance on me.”

  “Greer says you’re okay, then you’re okay in my book.” The older man smiled, the lines around his eyes crinkling into small canyons. “Don’t mind the ghosts.” He grinned now.

  Parker had tried to talk me out of the place. He’d said it was haunted. His expression had been so severe that I’d tried not to laugh. Not because I didn’t believe in ghosts, quite the contrary. It’s just that I grew up in a town with way scarier paranormal creatures than spirits. Besides, the ghost angle had allowed me to get the place at a steal. No one wanted to live in a house where people disappeared and were never seen from again. Except me.

  “If it’s all right, I’d like to hang out for a while, just to get some ideas and stuff,” I told Merl.