Livia Washburn - A Peach of a Murder: A Fresh-Baked Mystery

A Peach of a Murder

Lyvia J. Washburn

Being a murder suspect is the pits.

All year round, retired schoolteacher Phyllis Newsom is as sweet as pie peach pie, of course, made with Parker County peaches, the sweetest in the state of Texas. All year, that is, except during the Peach Festival whose blue ribbon has slipped through Phylliss fingers more than once....

Everyone's a little shaken when the corpse of a no-good local turns up underneath a car in his own barn. But even as Phyllis engages in some amateur sleuthing, she won't let it distract her from outbaking her rivals and winning the upcoming Peach Festival contest.

She and all the othgr contestants guard their secret original recipes with their lives-and talk a whole lot of trash. With her unusual spicy peach cobbler, Phyllis hopes to knock'em dead. But that's just an expression never in her wildest dreams does she think her cobbler will actually kill a judge. Now she's suspected of murder, anti she's got to bake this case wide open....

LIVIA J. WASHBURN has been a professional writer for twenty years. She received the Private Eye Writers of America Award and the American Mystery Award for her first mystery, Wild Night, written under the name L. J. Washburn, and was nominated for a Spur Award by the Western Writers of America for a novel written with her husband, James Reasoner. She lives with her husband and two daughters in a small Texas town, where she is constantly experimenting with new recipes.

"Peach cobbler killed Donnie Boatwright!" Donnie finished his cobbler and set the empty bowl o the table.

"Mighty good, Phyllis, mighty good," he said, but then h gave a little shake of his head and put a hand on the table t steady himself.

"Donnie, are you all right?" Phyllis asked.

"Yeah, yeah, just a little dizzy. Must be the heat." H lifted his water bottle and drank what was left.

"I'll be a right in a-"

But then he stopped abruptly, his eyes rolling up in thei sockets. He lurched back a step, staggered into a half turn, stiffened, and pitched forward onto his face, toppling like felled tree. Donnie hit the ground hard, without any atteml to catch himself. Screams came from the crowd. Phyllis ju; stood there behind the table, shocked into motionlessness by the sudden collapse, but Mike's emergency training too over and sent him hurrying to Donnie's side. He rolled tb old man onto his back, and Phyllis recoiled in horror as sb saw Donnie's glassy eyes staring sightlessly up at the re( white, and blue canopy over the table.

In the middle of all the sudden commotion and chaos, sb heard Carolyn exclaim as plain as day,

"Oh, my God! Phylis's peach cobbler killed Donnie Boatwright!"

This novel is dedicated to all the teachers who have touched my life, starting with my mother, Naomi Washburn, my teacher in life, and both my daughters' fast-grade teacher.

To Iris Hamilton for teaching a fourteen-year-old how to cook better.

To Marsha Hardin, Rita Heatley, Thomas and Sharon Hicks, Chelsa Holder, Jan Johnson, Marsha Lindenmeier, LouAnn McLaughlin, Jamie McNeil, Mary Nelson, Larry Prather, Kathy Raine, Joan Schmitter, David Slininger, Lisa Tadlock, Linda Tindall, Sherman and Sue NV'all, Fred and Talana Weir, and Andy Zapata, just to name a few, for going above and beyond the job of teaching.

To my agent, Kimberly Lionetti, for guiding me to this story.

And, last, to my husband, James Reasoner, my one and only.

The smell of peaches filled the air, sweet but with a particular bite all its own. Warm sunshine flooded the orchard. Later, the sun would be hot, oppressively so; but now, in the early morning, basking in its glow was like luxuriating in a warm bath. The peach smell could.have come from a scented candle, but was instead the real thing, which made it even better, Phyllis Newsom thought.

.Balanced on a wooden ladder, wearing blue jeans and one of her late husband's shirts, with the sleeves rolled up to the elbows, she reached up carefully into the tree and took hold of a particularly-nice-looking peach. With just a little tug, the fruit came loose from its stem. Phyllis turned and handed it down to Mattie Hams, who was helping her fill the bushel basket that sat on the ground.

Mattie was a sight. Somewhere between eighty-five and ninety, which made her approximately twenty years older than Phyllis, Mattie was still as spry and nimble as a bird. She wore a dress covered with a bright flower print that was even more brilliant in the sunlight, and a straw hat with a huge brim that shaded her face. Like Phyllis, she wore gloves to protect her hands, which could get pretty scratched up from the tree branches while picking, not to mention itchy from the peach fuzz.

"I remember when this orchard was just a sorghum field," Mattie said, tilting her head back so that she could look up at Phyllis on the ladder. "That was before Newt Bishop got the bright idea of growing peaches. Land's sakes, everybody else in Parker County was doing it already, but Newt was always slow to catch on. I remember a time..."

Phyllis knew it was rude, but she tuned out Mattie's reminiscences and searched the tree for the next peach she wanted to pick. Mattie remembered all about the Depression and World War II and working at the bomber plant over at Fort Worth. She had an endless supply of stories about those days. Phyllis had been born just before the war started, but she, i 't remember it, of course. She had been too young. As a teacher ... a retired history ... teacher now-she had`&vested.interest-in the past, and most of the time she realty enjoyed listening to- Mattie's stories. This morning, though, she was thinking about the upcoming Parker County Peach Festival and trying to come up with a recipe for the cooking contest.

Everybody knew that Parker County peaches were the best peaches in Texas-and, therefore, the best in the worldand every summer the peach festival was the biggest thing in the county seat, Weatherford. The State Fair in Dallas was bigger, of course, and the Stock Show rodeo in Fort Worth was bigger than the Sheriff's Posse Rodeo, held in conjunction with the peach festival, but those events lacked the small-town charm of the celebration in Weatherford.

Half of the courthouse square in downtown was blocked off and surrounded by portable fences, as were some of the side streets off the square, and into that area were packed dozens of booths showing off the best arts and crafts and food that the county had to offer. Two stages were set up, for musical entertainment at various times during the day. Whenever a live band wasn't playing, recorded music blared from large speakers. There was a kids' area, filled with games and rides, puppet shows and face-painting booths. A little bit of something for everybody, and during the day of the festival, it was almost possible to forget that Weatherford was part of a much bigger, not-so-nice world. There was nothing like eating cotton candy and homemade ice cream, listening to a high school band and strolling through a display of homemade quilts to make it seem as if time had

:stood still, as if Weatherford had indeed somehow gone back to a slower, more gentle era.

The high point of the festival, at least for Phyllis, was the cooking contest. Everything revolved around peaches, of course. Peach cobbler, peach pie, peach ice cream, peach preserves... If there was any way to work peaches into a recipe, somebody was bound to try it. And at the climax of the festival, a winner would be named by a panel of judges. There was a blue ribbon, of course, just a little thing made by the local trophy shop that read BEST PEACH RECIPE PARKER COUNTY

PEACH FESTIVAL, with the year printed on it.

Phyllis wanted that ribbon. She told herself it wasn't because Carolyn Wilbarger had won it the past two years while Phyllis's recipes had finished fifth and second, respectively. She just wanted to be recognized for the good work she'd done.