Destined for Trouble (A Jules Cannon Mystery Book 1) Read online

  I smiled for the first time since I arrived back in Trouble, grateful Abby Lee had come to my party. Maybe it hadn’t been such a bad idea after all. “I’ll be there,” I said. I wasn’t so sure about the high school reunion, but I was happy to reunite with my oldest and dearest friend.

  Just as I was promising Abby Lee we would catch up later, I froze. The fried catfish I had consumed earlier began to churn in my stomach at the sight of him. I knew I couldn’t avoid him, Trouble being such a small island and all, but I had at least hoped it would be a few more days before I crossed paths with Deputy Chief Harper. I honestly didn’t expect him to be here.

  You could just add him to the short list of law enforcement professionals I wanted to run away from.

  But there he was, standing right beside Daddy near the keg line, looking fine in a pair of crisp, pristine khakis and a white polo shirt. It was what the locals liked to call the unofficial uniform of the Trouble Island Police Department. He was making small talk with some of the guests who had lined up to pump more beer into their empty red Solo cups—it was the only concession my mom made in regard to disposable tableware.

  With the short distance between me and the keg line, our past seemed like it was only yesterday. I watched with curiosity as I thought of what might have been had we stayed together. Of course, I knew I was simply suffering from posttraumatic breakup disorder, but I couldn’t help myself.

  Simply put, Justin Harper was the guy who got away.

  We dated our junior and senior years of high school and ultimately went our separate ways when we went to college. Justin had gotten a scholarship to Sam Houston State, while I headed off to TCU. Justin pleaded with me to go to Sam Houston with him, with the idea that we’d graduate, get married, and return to Trouble to start a family. But at eighteen, I didn’t want to be the kind of woman who settled down with her high school sweetheart. I wanted to see the world, live in the big city, and not be saddled with babies at twentysomething.

  So far, I was two for three—I still hadn’t seen the world.

  Father Time was definitely Justin’s friend. He looked just as good, if not better, as he had back in high school. The Texas Board of Tourism should consider placing him on their ad campaigns. The man was a walking advertisement of the Lone Star State’s rugged good looks that women from other states could only dream of.

  I had hoped he wouldn’t spot me, but he did, just as I was about to head back into the house to hide. Call me chicken, but I wasn’t ready to face the past. Though I was kidding myself thinking I could get away without seeing him. This was a party held in my honor—of course he was going to make an effort to stop by and say hello.

  And just as I was making up my mind whether to stay put or go indoors, Justin made his way over to where I was gawking from afar.

  “Jules,” he slowly drawled.

  Damn. Had his voice always been this sexy? I shook the notion right out of my head. This was my ex—from ten years ago, I reminded myself. I gave him another once-over and almost kicked myself for being a foolish teen back then. Almost. Obviously, he’d kept his end of the bargain and moved back to the island after graduating college. But did I really want that kind of life for myself? I was happy living in the DC metro area. How great of a catch could he actually be if he was still living in Trouble?

  As I tried to talk myself out of the coulda-shouda-woulda blues, I reminded myself that he was the one with a career, albeit in a small town, while I was currently running away from the big, bad city, licking my wounds after being dumped. If anyone was keeping score, he was ahead by a mile.

  “Long time,” he said when I didn’t respond to his initial greeting.

  “You still seeing Heather?” I didn’t waste any time. I couldn’t help myself—inquiring minds want to know. According to Mom, Heather Clegg leeched herself onto Justin right after he moved back to Trouble and joined the force. She’d been after him ever since high school, following him around everywhere he went, even when he and I were an item. The girl had no shame.

  The smile didn’t reach his eyes. “No. Didn’t really work out between us.”

  “I see,” I said. “The way I heard it, it sounded like you two were destined for marriage.”

  He laughed, showing off his bright pearly whites. “You of all people know how the gossip mill works around here. Half of what you hear is false. The other half are all lies.” Despite laughing at his own joke, it was obviously a touchy subject, so he steered the conversation back to me. “So what brings you back? The way I heard it, you’re in town for a couple of months. Things not working out with the feds?”

  I ignored the jab. Local cops didn’t like the feds and vice versa. I got it. Though I couldn’t shake the feeling there was a double meaning behind his words. As if he knew the real reason I came back—to mend a broken heart. But I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction. I stuck with the same story I gave everyone else that inquired. “Just taking a much-needed vacation.”

  “I see,” he said, not entirely convinced. “You know about the reunion, right?”

  “So I heard,” I said. “Are you going?”

  “How could I not?”

  Of course he’d be there. He was the town’s star football player. The crown jewel of Trouble Island. Yes, even an island town the size of a crumb on a map had a football team—it would have been a sacrilege not to, living in a state entirely devoted to the sport.

  “It’ll be interesting, that’s for sure,” I said, wondering how well the others in our class had fared.

  A throat cleared next to us. It was one of those forced guttural sounds—the kind that lets you know someone is intentionally trying to get your attention.

  “Well, if it isn’t Jules Cannon.”

  With the amount of contempt and venom in her voice, you’d think I had crashed her party.

  “Hey, Heather,” I said, turning slightly to face the devil herself. Now, my mom was the kind of woman that would be sneaky enough to invite my former high school sweetheart, but I knew she wouldn’t have invited Heather.

  “Heather,” Justin said, equally surprised to see her. It wasn’t hard to spot the tension in his eyes as he addressed her. Something told me their relationship didn’t end on a good note.

  “You two look awfully chummy. Just like old times, right?” She played every bit the part of the scorned woman, and I could tell she was doing her best not to claw my eyes out. What gives? By Justin’s own admission, they weren’t seeing each other anymore. I chalked it up to simple jealousy.

  “Uh, thanks for stopping by—I think,” I said, muttering the last part.

  Justin laughed at my poor attempt to break the tension. “Now if you two ladies will excuse me, I have to head back to the station.” I could be wrong, but it was as if he were doing his best to deliberately avoid Heather. Not that I blamed him. “Good to see you again, Jules—welcome home,” he said to me as he made a beeline toward the side entrance of the backyard.

  Heather gave me the once-over, similar to the one I’d given Justin a few moments before. Only, she didn’t seem to approve of what she saw. “Are you sick or something? You look a bit pale,” she said, noting my lack of color.

  Knowing I hadn’t seen the island sun in a good while, I wasn’t going to allow her to make me feel bad about my appearance, so I ignored the comment. “Glad you could make the party, Heather,” I said. “Although I have to say, I didn’t know you were invited.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  “Now, tell me the real reason you came back to Trouble.” No one could pull the wool over on Aunt Lula.

  I turned to face my favorite aunt. Seemed she’d been invited after all. Or maybe she was a party crasher. Either way, I was happy she made it—even if she was two hours late. I truly believe she was the inspiration behind the concept of being “fashionably late.” She’d arrived well after the other guests, donned in
all white—for a backyard fish fry. I stifled a giggle thinking she’d somehow gotten lost along the way, intending to be at an all-white Labor Day soirée in the Hamptons, not a get-together in my parents’ backyard. Her platinum-blond bob was tucked behind her ears, showcasing pearl earrings the size of Whoppers.

  If I was the prodigal daughter, then Aunt Lula was the black sheep of the family. Although for the life of me, I still couldn’t understand the wedge between my mom and my aunt. She was my great-aunt actually, my maw-maw’s sister. Once upon a time, the Bolling daughters, Lula and Marie, were considered the crème de la crème of Beaumont society and, by extension, Trouble Island. If the island had a royal court, Aunt Lula would be its reigning queen. And while our island wasn’t nearly as Southern as, let’s say, Charlotte or Savannah, my aunt Lula played the part of an aging Southern belle in a manner worthy of an Academy Award. She spent her time much like the rest of the silver-haired women in the antebellum South: playing bridge, going to church, spending one too many cocktail hours on the front porch, and provoking family members for sport.

  Aunt Lula set her untouched plate down on the patio table and got straight to business. She posed the same question, only in a different way—just in case I hadn’t heard her the first time. “Tell me why you left Virginia? Your mother didn’t get into any of the details when she said you decided to move back home.”

  Leave it to Mom to fail to mention the finer points of my return. Although in this instance I couldn’t blame her entirely. I surely didn’t want her blabbing about the real reason I left, and frankly, I didn’t want to rehash the details of my failed relationship with James. “It’s good to see you, too, Aunt Lula,” I said, embracing her in a hug before I explained myself. “And just so you know, I didn’t leave Virginia. I was in need of a long vacation is all.”

  “Hogwash.” She took a sip of her bloody mary.

  Wait—where in the world did she find herself a bloody mary? We were only serving beer and wine as far as I knew, though I knew my dad had a few bottles of whiskey stashed around somewhere. Then I remembered that Aunt Lula liked to travel with her own booze. And only my aunt would be brave enough to drink a bloody mary while wearing all white. If it had been me, I would’ve already looked like a gunshot victim.

  “You have such a great job with the FBI,” she went on. “Why are you taking a leave of absence? You’re only twenty-eight years old. You’re way too young to be burnt out already.”

  I chewed the inside of my cheek. Her statement wasn’t too far off the mark. I loved my job as a crime analyst, and I cried when I packed for my two-month hiatus, knowing I would miss it. OK, maybe that was a bit of a stretch. Truth is, I cried because I felt like such a failure, running away the second things got rough.

  And while I loved my job, I hated my supervisor. I know, who doesn’t hate their immediate boss, right? But in my case it was justified. For example, I was an extremely organized person, teetering on the brink of obsessiveness (I’m always making to-do lists, reminders to myself, etc.), while my supervisor, Wendy, was a disorganized mess, always misplacing my files, blaming me for never turning them in—as if. Personally, I think she did it on purpose to sabotage my career. Plus, ever since she went on Weight Watchers and lost thirty pounds, she’d been a bigger bitch than usual. You’d think she’d be happy losing all that weight. I didn’t know how much more I could take of watching her count jelly beans and calories while I did all the legwork. We’d already had one crime analyst transfer to another field office and lost two interns, all because the damn woman didn’t eat.

  So coming home was kind of a mixed blessing—I could escape the humiliation of any postbreakup gossip, as well as Weight Watcher Wendy.

  “I was homesick, that’s all,” I finally said and left it at that. It wasn’t much of an explanation, but it wasn’t exactly a lie. I did miss home. Trouble Island was like no other place in Texas—or Louisiana for that matter, depending on which island descendant you bothered to ask.

  Explaining any more on the matter was useless on my part, as my aunt questioned the sense of urgency in my need for a sabbatical. “I see. Well, now that you’re home, I think it would be nice to have some brunch and catch up. And . . . ,” Aunt Lula drawled a little longer than necessary, “I thought maybe you could help me out with something.”

  And there it was.

  As much as I wanted to ignore that last statement, my curiosity was piqued. I knew I would regret asking, just like I had when Abby Lee informed me about the reunion, but I asked anyway. “What exactly do you need help with?”

  “One of my girls just up and quit unexpectedly yesterday,” she said. “Since you’re home for a few months, I thought you could be a dear and help out at the store.”

  “You want me to work at Palmetto Pink?” I hadn’t intended for my voice to go an octave higher, but I was caught off guard. I’d only been in town one day, and already I was regretting my decision to come back to the island. The last thing I had in mind was working part-time for my aunt.

  Palmetto Pink was a specialty store my aunt owned that carried high-end, chic resort wear. Think Palm Beach–resort type clothing. It was definitely a niche market, which suited her customers just fine—we lived on a coastal island, after all. Aunt Lula was very proud of her store, or, rather, proud to be able to call herself a business owner. After my great-uncle Jep passed away, she decided she needed something to occupy her time, so she bought the building and opened up shop. Even though she came from an era when women didn’t work, much less own their own businesses, she decided that selling clothes and accessories to fashion-savvy women was an acceptable employment option for a woman of her social status.

  “Just until I find a suitable replacement,” Aunt Lula said hurriedly, knowing full well I was about to decline her offer.

  I groaned at the prospect of working at her store. I came here to relax, work on my tan, and forget about my troubles for a while—not to spend my vacation helping customers pick the right beach ensemble.

  Don’t get me wrong; I loved wearing island apparel. I just didn’t want to sell it.

  Aunt Lula kept going on and on about the store, and I wasn’t paying much attention, until I heard her say, “So it’s settled then.”

  It was easy to lose track when Aunt Lula was talking a mile a minute. That was her MO—talk really fast until the other party lost track of the conversation and she got what she wanted.

  “What’s settled?” I asked.

  “You’ll work part-time for me at Palmetto Pink.”

  “What?”

  “Isn’t that what we’ve been discussing?”

  Her gift of gab had lost me somewhere around the new summer collection, but I distinctly remembered not giving her a definitive answer on working at the store. As much as I hated to admit it, sometimes Mom was right.

  “But I’ve never worked retail before,” I began to protest.

  “Nonsense,” she said, waving her hand in the air as if my wants were irrelevant. “All you have to do is smile at the customers and ring them up. If they need assistance finding something, you help them.”

  My dear aunt Lula seemed to have forgotten one minor detail. “I’m horrible with people,” I said. Where did Daddy hide the whiskey? I needed a shot right about now.

  “You work for the FBI. Isn’t it your mission to help folks? How could you hate working with people?” she asked. “You’ll do just fine.”

  Just what exactly did I get myself into? There was just no winning with Aunt Lula once she had an idea in her head. But it didn’t stop me from trying.

  “I sit behind a desk and analyze intel. And I didn’t say I hated working with people,” I mumbled. It was simply a matter of not being a people person when it came to handing out service with a smile. It was my opinion that people became annoying when demanding assistance. Which was exactly why I never worked in food service, either.
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br />   With Aunt Lula considering the matter closed, we spent the rest of the party talking about everything I’d missed while I’d been gone, which I refer to as “the gossip according to Aunt Lula,” purposely avoiding the issue I knew was on both our minds: I was going to be a horrible sales associate.

  After I reluctantly promised Aunt Lula I would start work bright and early Monday morning, I politely excused myself to mingle with the other guests, hoping I could avoid committing myself to any more engagements, like high school reunions or summer retail jobs.

  Once the last of the guests had left, I brought up the subject of the reunion. “Mom, why didn’t you say anything about my high school reunion?”

  She looked at me with surprise. “Why, I thought you already knew.”

  “No. Abby Lee brought it up at the party. A little heads-up would’ve been nice.” If I had known about the reunion, I would have packed nicer clothes before coming home. Nothing says success more than a killer wardrobe.

  Mom frowned. “They mailed out the invitations. Plus, it was all up on that Friends Space site, I’m told. Aren’t you linked on or chained in—whatever it is you kids say these days?”

  “That’s LinkedIn,” I said. “And that’s a different networking website.” As much as my job required me to be on the Internet doing research, I hardly had time to check social media sites for my own personal enjoyment. It was kind of frowned upon at work. Unless, of course, it was for research on a case.

  “If you want, I can go with you to pick out something suitable for the reunion,” Mom offered. “There’s still time.” There was nothing you couldn’t cure or disguise with a new dress or a tube of lipstick, according to her. In this instance I was sure she wanted to camouflage the fact that I was dumped and ran home to lick my wounds.

  “That’s OK. I’ll pick up something at Palmetto Pink. Maybe I’ll get a discount.”

  That stopped Mom cold in her tracks. Any mention of Aunt Lula or her store put her on high alert.