Jess Lourey - June Bug

More cheers for Jess Loureys
Murder-By-Month Mystery Series

MAY DAY

All the ingredients for a successful small town cozy
series are here...

Publishers Weekly

Loureys debut has a likeable heroine and a surfeit of sass...

Kirkus Reviews

May Day is fresh, the characters quirky. Minnesota has many fine crime writers, and Jess Lourey has just entered their ranks!

Ellen Hart, author of the Sophie Greenway
and Jane Lawless Mystery series

JUNE BUG

The funny, earthy heroine of June Bug is sure to stumble her way into the hearts of readers everywhere. Dont miss this oneits a hoot!

William Kent Krueger, Anthony Award-winning
author of the Cork OConnor series

Jess Lourey offers up a funny, well-written, engaging story... readers will thoroughly enjoy the well-paced ride.

Carl Brookins, author of
The Case of the Greedy Lawyers

Jess Lourey is a talented, witty, and clever writer.

Monica Ferris, author of the bestselling
Needlecraft Mysteries

KNEE HIGH BY THE FOURTH OF JULY

***Shortlisted for a 2008 Lefty Award from Left Coast Crime***

Chosen as a September 2007 Killer Book by the Independent Mystery Booksellers Association (KillerBooks.org)

Mira... is an amusing heroine in a town full of quirky characters.

Kirkus Reviews

Loureys rollicking good cozy planted me in the heat of a Minnesota summer for a laugh-out-loud mystery ride.

Leann Sweeney, author of the
Yellow Rose Mystery series

AUGUST MOON

Hilarious, fast paced, and madcap.

Booklist (starred review)

Another amusing tale set in the town full of over-the-top zanies whove endeared themselves to the engaging Mira.

Kirkus Reviews

[A] hilarious, wonderfully funny cozy.

Crimespree Magazine

SEPTEMBER FAIR

Once again, the very funny Lourey serves up a delicious dish of murder, mayhem, and merriment.

Booklist (starred review)

Lively.

Publishers Weekly

[A]n entirely engaging novel with pathos, plot twists and quirky characters galore... Beautifully written and wickedly funny.

Harley Jane Kozak, Agatha, Anthony, and
Macavity-award winning author of A Date You Cant Refuse

June Bug: A Murder-By-Month Mystery 2007 by Jess Lourey

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any matter whatsoever, including Internet usage, without written permission from Midnight Ink, except in the form of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

As the purchaser of this ebook, you are granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on screen. The text may not be otherwise reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, or recorded on any other storage device in any form or by any means.

Any unauthorized usage of the text without express written permission of the publisher is a violation of the authors copyright and is illegal and punishable by law.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

First e-book edition 2010

E-book ISBN: 978-07387-1657-2

Book design by Donna Burch

Cover design by Ellen Dahl

Cover illustration 2010 by Marc Tobin

Midnight Ink is an imprint of Llewellyn Worldwide Ltd.

Midnight Ink does not participate in, endorse, or have any authority or responsibility concerning private business arrangements between our authors and the public.

Any Internet references contained in this work are current at publication time, but the publisher cannot guarantee that a specific reference will continue or be maintained. Please refer to the publishers website for links to current author websites.

Midnight Ink

Llewellyn Worldwide Ltd.

2143 Wooddale Drive

Woodbury, MN 55125

www.midnightink.com

Manufactured in the United States of America

For Zo and Xander,

who better not read it until theyre 18;

thank you both for being perfect, every day

In my dream, I walked days and nights through the woods to reach the clear stream. A tower built to look like a silo loomed at the waters edge, and I knew I was home. The creek gurgled, the moon shone, and the frog sounds of night sang to me. I laid down to rest and was swept with serenity. There was warm breath on the back of my neck and a comforting hand on my shoulder. I felt protected, covered in the safety of night and cozy warmth. But when the hand crept purposefully lower and I smelled digesting Schlitz on the tepid breath, I knew I wasnt in paradise anymore. My body lurched awake, and I was standing before I even remembered I had been lying down. The vertigo caught up with me, and I clutched at a bedpost as I blinked rapidly.

What! I yelled.

Sunny? slurred the voice in my bed.

I shook my head and some REM-spun cobwebs fell out. I wasnt in my apartment in Minneapolis, where I had lived for nearly ten yearsa little loft on the West Bank where Id shared a bathroom with a sexy, blue-eyed horn player in his sixties and a compulsively clean law student. I had moved out of there in March, leaving my cheating boyfriend and my career as a waitress and grad student in the University of Minnesota English program, and had been housesitting for my friend Sunny ever since. I was living in her little doublewide on the outskirts of Battle Lake, Minnesota, and there was a strange man in her bed. My bed.

I flicked on the cat-shaped lamp and angled the lit ears toward the intruder still sprawled on top of the handmade Amish quilt I had lucked on in the Fergus Falls Salvation Army. I yanked it from under him and covered up my body, clad in only my summer pajamasan oversized, threadbare white tank top. I was usually comfortable with my five-foot-six, 140-pound frame, but I wasnt a flasher. I pulled my disheveled hair away from my face and stared down my pointy nose at the relaxed drunk.

Sunny isnt here. I was hoping to conjure a verbal vanishing potion, but my heart was still pummeling my rib cage, and my voice shook. Sunnys dog, Luna, now my foster dog, barked from outside the open window. Who are you?

Mira?

I squinted. Happy Hands knew me, and his voice scratched an itch in the back of my memory. Jason?

Yeah. Youre not Sunny. He sounded bored.

Yup, it was Jason. I had met him through my moody friend C.C. ten years earlier, when my hair was dyed black, I smoked clove cigarettes, and dark, flowing clothes were my signature. Thank God for evolution.

Back then, C.C. and I were both awed freshman trying to act like we werent scared by the vastness of the U of M and its forty-
thousand-plus students. We had ended up as dorm mates through the luck of the draw, two small-town girls, and hit it off from the word go. She brought me to her hometown of Battle Lake on Thanksgiving break of our first year. A few months later, I introduced her to the guy who gave her genital warts, so I suppose, looking back, were even.