Joanna Campbell Slan - Kiki Lowenstein Scrapbooking. 2 Cut, Crop & Die

Table of Contents

OTHER BOOKS BY JOANNA CAMPBELL SLAN

Title Page

Copyright Page

Dedication

ONE

TWO

THREE

FOUR

FIVE

SIX

WHY YOU NEED DIFFERENT GLUES FOR DIFFERENT JOBS

SEVEN

KIKI'S SUBTITLE-WITHIN-A-TITLE TECHNIQUE

EIGHT

NINE

HOW TO USE SYNECTICS TO GENERATE CREATIVE SOLUTIONS

TEN

ELEVEN

TWELVE

THIRTEEN

FOURTEEN

KIKI'S PAPER BAG ALBUM INSTRUCTIONS

FIFTEEN

SIXTEEN

SEVENTEEN

EIGHTEEN

NINETEEN

TWENTY

TWENTY-ONE

TWENTY-TWO

TWENTY-THREE

TWENTY-FOUR

TWENTY-FIVE

TWENTY-SIX

TWENTY-SEVEN

TWENTY-EIGHT

EPILOGUE

AUTHOR'S NOTE

Acknowledgements

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

WWW.MIDNIGHTINKBOOKS.COM

Acclaim for Paper, Scissors, Death , the first

Kiki Lowenstein Scrap-N-Craft Mystery

* An Agatha Award Finalist *

"Scrapbookers will love the whole idea of forensic scrapbooking and will relish the tips on the craft sprinkled throughout the story."-- Booklist

"With plotting as tight as the seal of a decompression chamber and a flow to the narrative that is as smooth as silk, this is a wonderful read."-- Crimespree Magazine

"A proper pacy mystery with plenty of tension (and red herrings) that kept me guessing to the end."-- ScrapBook inspirations Magazine (U.K.)

"An engaging mystery."--Donna Andrews, Agatha and Anthony award-winning author of the Meg Langslow and Turing Hopper series

"Charming, funny and very enjoyable!"--J. A. Konrath, author of Whiskey Sour

"Clever, witty, and exciting--with a cliffhanger at the end!"--Monica Ferris, author of Knitting Bones

"You'll love Kiki Lowenstein! A spunky, down-on-her luck widow with a young daughter to raise, she's not going to let a murderer get away with, well ... murder!"--Shirley Damsgaard, author of Witch Way to Murder

"A page turner, who-done-it, filled with colorful characters and scrapbooking tips. The plot line races along as Kiki, a personable if unlikely heroine, struggles to take care of both herself and her daughter while dealing with death, betrayal, and injustices. Along the way the story is filled with insightful glimpses into the heart of a true scrapbooker and a touch of romance."--Rebecca Ludens, Scrapbooking Guide for [http://About.com] About.com

"Joanna Slan's Paper, Scissors, Death should be required reading for any scrapbooker who loves to dive into a good mystery. Liberally spiced with plenty of local St. Louis flavor, and generously sprinkled with insider's insights into the world of scrapbooking, Paper, Scissors, Death is rich with details ... If you like mysteries, quirky characters, and scrapbooking, you will love this book."--Angie Pedersen, The Scrappy Marketer, [http://ScrapbookMarketing.com] ScrapbookMarketing.com

"What a treat to find a plucky new heroine in Kiki Lowenstein, who dispenses advice on scrapbooking along with solving her faithless husband's death in Joanna Slan's debut novel, Paper, Scissors, Death. This is an author to watch!"--Eleanor Sullivan, author of Twice Dead

"A rare gem ... [and] creative scrapbooking tips are woven expertly throughout!"--Jess Lourey, author of June Bug

"Sign me up for Tough Tamales U. Paper, Scissors, Death is a fun and charming read with a scrappy heroine."--Terri Thayer, author of Wild Goose Chase

"Ms. Slan's debut mystery has a bit of a cliffhanger at the end, sure to keep readers coming back for the next book. Pick this one up if you love scrapbooking or cozies."-- Fresh Fiction

"Fun to read, with laugh-out-loud humor along with tensions and true friendships."-- Mysterious Women

OTHER BOOKS BY JOANNA CAMPBELL SLAN

Paper, Scissors, Death

Cut, Crop & Die: A Kiki Lowenstein Scrap-N-Craft Mystery (c) 2009 by Joanna Campbell Slan. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever, including Internet usage, without written permission from Midnight Ink except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

First Edition

First Printing, 2009

Book design and format by Donna Burch

Cover design by Kevin R. Brown

Cover images: Flowers (c) PhotoDisc, Bee (c) iStockphoto

Editing by Connie Hill

Midnight Ink, an imprint of Llewellyn Publications

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Campbell-Slan, Joanna.

Cut, crop & die : a Kiki Lowenstein scrap-n-craft mystery / by Joanna

Campbell Slan.--1st ed.

p. cm.

ISBN 978-0-7387-1251-2

eISBN : 97-8-073-87125-1

1. Scrapbooks--Fiction. 2. Scrapbooking--Fiction. I. Title. II. Title: Cut, crop and die.

PS3603.A4845C87 2009

813'.6--dc22 2009003846

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

Midnight Ink

Llewellyn Publications 2143 Wooddale Drive, Dept. 978-0-7387-1251-2

Woodbury, MN 55125-2989 USA [http://www.midnightinkbooks.com] www.midnightinkbooks.com

Printed in the United States of America

DEDICATION

For my gorgeous and talented son, Michael Harrison Slan. I'm going to miss you, sweetheart, while you're off at college. Please call me! Love, Mom.

ONE

"ALL WE'RE MISSING IS a corpse." I hadn't realized I was thinking out loud until Mert Chambers, my best friend, stopped in her tracks. She turned and nearly crashed into me. We were both carrying heavy cardboard boxes of supplies, so our inept maneuver had a Keystone Cop clumsiness.

"Why, Kiki Lowenstein, I can't believe you said that! I think all these flowers are beautiful," said Mert, as we continued our trek down the short flight of stairs into a church basement. She smiled at the big pots of day lilies we'd purchased to give away as door prizes.

"It's the smell," I explained. "When my eyes are closed, all I see are caskets and corpses. Plus, I haven't been in a church since my father died." The slightly dank basement brought back horrible memories.

That said, I had to admit we'd been lucky Mert was able to find us a place so close to the Missouri Botanical Garden and willing to let us hold a crop--a scrapbooking event--in their basement for a small donation.

Our boss, Dodie Goldfader, wagged a finger at me. "Knock it off with the morbid talk. We can't risk customers hearing you."

Dodie owns Time in a Bottle, nicknamed TinaB by those in the know. At six feet tall, she towers over Mert and me and walks like that cartoon version of the Abominable Snowman.

After shushing me, Dodie glanced pointedly over her shoulder. Women were filing in, towing their picnic coolers and Cropper Hoppers, rolling suitcases full of papercrafting materials. "The shuttle bus from the Botanical Garden has arrived!" Dodie sang out with delight. "Ladies, did you enjoy your tours?"

Women nodded and chattered happily. They staked out places at long tables covered with white butcher paper to create a clean surface. Some opened their supplies and started to work on pages immediately. Others shared the photos they'd just taken by handing around their digital cameras. Many of our guests had never seen the Jenkins Daylily Garden in full flower. The women were chatting happily about the glorious sight of all 1,350 different varieties of Hemerocallis (Greek for "beauty for a day") spreading their luxe petals toward the sun.

Nicknamed "Shaw's Garden" after Henry Shaw, the English-man who in 1859 opened his personal place of refuge to the public, the Missouri Botanical Garden is considered one of the three great gardens of the world. It's the oldest continuously operating display conservatory in the United States. Part of my prep for this outing was spending an entire day roaming the grounds last week. I familiarized myself with what was blooming, taking photos to help me design page layouts, some of the best work I'd ever done.