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86 pages

English

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The exciting tale of a group of retirees on a weekend seaside getaway who embark on a salty mission to find a murderer.

Shirley Dalton is a retired educator who lives in a town known for making good moonshine. After she becomes friends with other retirees—Jackie, Kea, Lucy, and Roberta—they decide to name themselves “the Salteens” since they enjoy visiting salt caves and the beach. Although the ladies are all seeking adventure in their third act of life, none have a clue they are about to become embroiled in a murder mystery.

After the Salteens head to Seaside Beach for a weekend getaway, Shirley unwittingly unearths a human hand while settling in for an afternoon on the beach. Obviously shaken, Shirley and the other retirees summon the police and head back to their rental. Fueled by an insatiable need to know more, Shirley convinces her friends to extend their stay and help her investigate. But when good sense falls by the seaside and their moonshine antics become the talk of the tourist town, now only time will tell if the women can solve a string of grisly murders or if they will go down in history as just a group of retirees full of shenanigans.

Moonshine and Salteens is the exciting tale of a group of retirees on a weekend seaside getaway who embark on a salty mission to find a murderer.

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Fiction

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Publié par	Xlibris US
Date de parution	24 octobre 2022
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781669852032
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0200€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

Moonshine and Salteens

Brenda Strickland

Copyright © 2022 by Brenda Strickland.

Library of Congress Control Number:
2022919679
ISBN:
Hardcover
978-1-6698-5202-5

Softcover
978-1-6698-5201-8

eBook
978-1-6698-5203-2

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

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

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.
Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 12/07/2022

Xlibris
844-714-8691
www.Xlibris.com
840967
Contents
Prologue
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
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Acknowledgments

As the proverb says, men cannot know each other until they have eaten salt together.
—Aristotle
Prologue
I couldn’t get the stick down in the sand dune! We had one member of our group, named Otis, who went to the movies or to dinner with us. He wouldn’t come on any overnight trips like this vacation to Seaside Beach, so I had laminated a headshot of him and put it on a stick. We had already decided before we left that we were taking pictures of him with us as a gag wherever we went while we were here. This was going to be a picture of him like he was buried in the sand up to his neck.
I pulled the stick out because something was keeping it from going all the way down. I looked at the stick, and there was nothing on the end of it to keep it from going straight down. The sand in this dune was rather coarse and hard, but it shouldn’t be this difficult to put a stick in it.
I could hear the seagulls squawking, children laughing and playing, and the waves crashing as I concentrated on my mission. There was a wide stretch of white sand going as far as I could see. My friends were already in position on the sand—tanning, reading books, putting on lotion, sipping cold drinks, and taking in the sights. There were only a few families on the beach, since school was back in session. Parents were watching their young children jumping waves. Some people were eating picnic lunches. I heard one man say to a woman, “Do you want to sit here or nearer the water?”
She replied, “We’d better sit here because the tide will start coming in soon.”
I heard someone else say, “I’m going to have to bury my feet in the sand because they are red from my sunburn.”
Jackie, our resident photographer, was ready to take a picture once I got Otis in position. She kept looking around with impatience, and I could tell that at any minute she was going to come up and start ramming the stick down in the sand for me. We had already taken a picture of Otis at the edge of the water and in the seagrass.
I gave it all the strength I had, but the stick still didn’t budge. It was like there was a rock underneath, so I positioned the stick a few inches over in the sand and moved the stick back and forth as I burrowed down again. It still didn’t want to go down all the way.
I pulled the stick out again as Jackie said, “For crying out loud.” I looked down and saw something gold and shiny in the hole the stick had made. It looked like a woman’s ring.
I said, “I see something down in the hole.”
Jackie said, “Ooh, what is it? Maybe it’s buried treasure!”
I dug down to where it was. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. I frantically started digging some more. I screamed.
I couldn’t stop screaming. This was an off-the-charts, agonizing scream, and then I began to shake all over from shock. Jackie was the first one to come over and look. She said, “What is it? What’s wrong?”
I said, “There’s a hand in the sand.” Then Jackie took a look, and she started screaming, too. By then, Kea had dropped her cold drink, Roberta her suntan lotion, and Lucy her book. All my girlfriends were there by my side.
Kea said, “Are you okay?”
I said breathlessly, “I’m better than the person in that sand dune.”
Roberta said, “The dune doesn’t look big enough to hold a dead body.”
I said, “That’s because I didn’t see an arm or a body attached to the hand.” Then all my girlfriends gasped in terror.
It seemed like everyone on the beach had heard me screaming, so a lot of people came running to satisfy their curiosity. Mothers were holding their young children back since it was potentially something they shouldn’t see. People were pushing and weaving their way through the rubbernecking crowd. We had no control over the situation. Everyone was asking the same question. “What’s going on?”
Someone looked in the hole and said, “Oh my God. There’s a hand down there!”
Someone else said, “Is he or she dead?”
I said, “I would say that the odds are not in his or her favor that he or she is alive.”
Word spread like wildfire. People ran up, found out what the chaos was about, fled the scene, and went to tell the rest of their party what was going on.
Lucy was an EMT, and her husband was a police officer, so she remained the calm one while the rest of us freaked out. Lucy yelled out, “It’s time for all of us to step away and let the big boys do their job.” She got out her phone and called 9-1-1. She used her expert speaking tone. “There’s a DOA here on the beach near 101 Seaside Boulevard. Someone needs to come out here immediately to control the scene to make sure no evidence is disturbed. There is no need for resuscitation in this case.” Lucy said to us, “They’re sending a unit right away.”
It was hot, and I felt faint. My mouth was dry, and I needed water. I drank my water, then Roberta’s and Jackie’s. I kept having random thoughts and talking crazy. “Who was that person in the sand? Why did I have to be the one to find the hand? I have ruined the vacation for all of you. I want to call my family. I need a hug. Jackie, this will be the last event you plan for us. Don’t invite me anymore.”
Jackie said, “Shirley Ann, you look at me. Calm down. This is not your fault.”
We started hearing sirens. The crowd parted like the Red Sea, and I saw a whole posse of police coming toward us. Whenever I met a police car on the road, I slowed down, even if I knew I wasn’t speeding, and at this very moment, I was thinking every irrational thought. I said, “Uh-oh! Are we in trouble?”

Chapter 1
Six Months Earlier
Oh no! I thought. Someone had thrown up in the women’s bathroom again. I knew Jackie couldn’t clean it up because if she saw it, she’d hurl. Kea, who had a very sensitive nose, couldn’t stand the smell. No one else could leave his or her duties; therefore, I, Shirley Ann Dalton, a retired schoolteacher who had seen body fluids from every orifice every day of my educator’s life, went into the bathroom.
We had all volunteered at a music venue in our spare time. It was a wonderful place to hear good music, but when someone decided to overdrink and throw up, it wasn’t much fun to clean up. I’d never understood why anyone would pay fifty dollars for a ticket, drink before the show, drink the limit at the bar, and miss his or her favorite song by being sick in the bathroom.
All the volunteers at this music venue took their jobs seriously. The volunteer coordinator, named Arthur Murphy, had assigned our jobs. The positions changed a lot depending on the bands and the size of the crowd. Some of us checked people in. Others ushered people to their seats and guarded exit doors. Some volunteers were bartenders. Others helped with the catering for the bands.
All kinds of music were played at this venue. The crowds were different according to the type of band it was. If it was a ’60s or ’70s band, it was an older crowd, which meant they were calmer and didn’t drink as much. If it was heavy metal or rock, then we would smell an occasional cannabis odor and see a lot of tie-dyed shirts. Most of the time, the crowds were very respectful, and we didn’t have any trouble with anyone.
We all loved music, and that was the main reason we were here. It was a small venue that seated around four hundred people, which made it even better. Smaller venues had less open space for the music to travel, which led to a more powerful sound, and they could pack a lot more energy. The closer you were to the band, the more energy you could feel. The energy created a livelier crowd, and it gave everyone a more shared, connected, and enjoyable experience. This intimate experience gave people what we were all seeking—a connection. If you loved music, then you felt that connection.
If your volunteer job was checking people in, you were able to watch the show when the last person came through the door. If your job was as an usher or door guard, then you were in the auditorium where the music