Voice recognition mistake of the day: "Miranda left weekly." 🏃‍♀️‍➡️

... or laughed weakly. Practically the same thing.

That’s from a new project that involves a cat café with a touch of magic– but this is a collection of linked cozy short stories rather than romance novels. (If you haven’t read my cat café sweet romance novels yet, what are you waiting for? Book 1 now has 600 ratings with a 4.2-star average! The e-books are currently only on Amazon, free with Kindle Unlimited. The books are also in paperback.) Get the Furrever Friends Sweet Romance series.

A Stone Cold Murder is on sale for 99c for a few more days! A loner who can read an object’s history with a touch finds mysteries at a quirky museum. Find the series links to all retailers here.

Buried in Betrayal (Reluctantly Psychic Murder Mystery Book 3) is out, and more 5-star reviews are coming in!

“I’ve enjoyed this series with its touch of the paranormal and a cast full of quirky characters … I found this addition to the series well-written, full of red herrings, twists, turns, and surprises.”

“Another entertaining read with a likeable amateur sleuth and lots of pets!”

It's been cold in New Mexico, but not compared to much of the country. We've gotten out for a few hikes. This is on one of our favorite hikes, at Sevilleta National Wildlife Refuge.

The boys continue to be adorable and often hysterical. I posted some videos of them experiencing snow (inside) for the first time. Also here. I *think* you can watch them even if you’re not on Facebook.

Find More New Books and Authors!

My Late Husband's Secrets by Victoria Michaels: “Ellen Whistler-Cooper is struggling to understand how she did not really know her late husband. After a trip to Portugal where Ellen meets a sexy younger man, she returns to her home in Vancouver, Canada, ready to take on her new life all alone. But another surprise is waiting for her. Robert owned a house in the quiet little town of St. Catharines, Ontario. What will Ellen find there? Can she make a new life and perhaps even find love… for the first time?” A “steamy suspense romance” with the ebooks only on Kindle.

Love in a Lavender Field by Coral Harper: “When Clara Danvers inherits Lavender Lane Farm from her long-lost aunt, she and her rebellious teenage daughter trade her Manhattan life for a crumbling farmhouse and a town that seems to remember everything she wishes she could forget. But Clara isn’t the only woman searching for something more. As the summer unfolds, five women—each with wounds of their own—find themselves drawn together by circumstance, history, and the mysterious past of the farm itself. And the one person who holds the key to them all… may not be as dead as everyone believed.” Part of a series, with the ebooks Kindle-only.

The Fern Valley Theft by Ashley Hollow: “In Fern Valley, the town square bubbles with secrets. Ethel, the mayor’s widow, has a knack for eavesdropping and entirely too much time on her hands. But when the townspeople’s favorite target becomes the headline of suspicion, she trades her teacup for a magnifying glass. The gruff farmer with soil on his boots and secrets in his eyes suddenly has her full attention. But one nosy question too many… and this cozy mystery could turn hotter than her morning brew.” This 50-page story is free with newsletter signup (or $1.38 on Amazon.)

Adventures for Young Readers: Find books for elementary and middle school readers (ages 7 to 12+). These mysteries, fantasies, historical fiction, humor, and science fiction promise many hours of fun reading! I can personally recommend any of the booksby Jennifer Bohnhoff—as well as the ones I wrote under the name Chris Eboch!

Free Short Story ThrillFest: Check out new stories, each free with newsletter signup (unsubscribe any time). You’ll find mysteries, thrillers and suspense in this group of dozens of free stories. You might meet your next favorite author!

  A Stone Cold Murder excerpt Chapter 6 part 1

  [Petra is at the Banditt Museum in a small New Mexico town. She’s trying to find out more about her predecessor, who died in circumstances she believes are suspicious. Photos: Marine fossils embedded in rock; Smithsonite at The New Mexico Mineral Museum; large mineral sample with foot for scale from that museum. See the Reluctant Psychic Mystery series.]

 Back at Reggie’s office—my office—I put on a pair of thin white cotton gloves I bought by the carton and started searching. Museum curators often use those gloves when handling items that would be damaged by the oils on one’s skin, like photos and filmstrips. Most people probably didn’t think rocks and minerals counted, but some minerals can be sensitive to oils, so much so that a fingerprint could become permanent.

  Was that true with fluorite? Contrary to common belief, geologists don’t instantly recognize every mineral and know all its properties. We might focus on volcanoes, earthquakes, geophysics, or engineering . . . the list goes on. With only a BS degree, I hadn’t chosen a specialty yet, and I certainly didn’t know the thousands of minerals with all their variations.

  I’d looked up some of the common minerals in New Mexico, in case I got quizzed or people brought in samples for me to identify. I expected to see a lot of jasper and chalcedony, which are quartz variations, and some marine fossils since southern New Mexico used to be covered by a shallow sea. Also probably a lot of chert, which often breaks into small, triangular pieces that people want to believe are arrowheads. (Spoiler alert: They usually aren’t.)

  The geology wing was surprisingly quiet, at least in comparison to my morning full of visiting colleagues. A few groups of tourists came in, looked around briefly, and headed out again. A skinny man with black hair and tan skin spent half an hour loitering, shooting glances at me through the office door as I went through Reggie’s desk. I had no idea what that was about and didn’t want to ask. Eventually he left.

  I didn’t find anything suspicious in Reggie’s desk. Of course, I didn’t know what I was looking for, so it’s entirely possible I missed whole catalogs of suspiciousness. I also didn’t find a power cord for his laptop. That was odd. He wouldn’t have a laptop without a power cord. But was it suspiciously odd, or randomly odd? I’d kept a sunglass case for a year because I was sure the sunglasses had to be in my apartment. I finally threw out the case while I was packing, which probably meant I’d find the sunglasses when I unpacked. Life can be so random that way you’d swear it’s a plot against you.

  I couldn’t think of any reason someone would take a power cord and not the laptop.

  Unless the cord had been used to strangle someone.

  I wished I could go back to not thinking of a reason. But why hit someone on the head with a rock and then strangle them? I mean, why do either? But even if I had a reason to believe someone got hit on the head with the fluorite, that didn't mean they’d also strangled someone, or that another random person had strangled someone. I needed actual clues, not panicked wild guesses because I was nervous, and my imagination was running away with me.

  Okay. So, if I jumped way back from that conclusion and used logic, what did I find? The cord was missing. Maybe Shelley had found it when she cleaned and had donated it or threw it away. A rational, likely possibility. Unfortunately, it didn’t get me closer to breaking into Reggie’s computer.

  Next I browsed through the filing cabinets. It would take days to go through every folder, so I just checked the titles, hoping I’d come across something with a helpful label such as Why someone wants to kill me.

  No such luck. I did find out that Reggie, or someone who’d handled the files before him, or a whole string of people over the years, had been terrible at alphabetizing. That wasn't psychometry, just observation. I put reorganization on my to-do list, but way at the bottom, after unpacking, learning my way around town, investigating a murder, and dealing with the new donation.

  Maybe that’s why no one prior to me had gotten around to fixing the filing system. I could easily envision years passing without that chore getting to the top of my priorities.

  I couldn’t find a folder on the fluorite. Did that mean the mineral itself was important in all this, so much so that someone took the folder? Or just that the filing system was messed up? Or maybe it was part of a donated collection in a folder listed by the donor’s name, in which case it might take months to track it down. The fluorite had a number on the bottom, but I hadn't yet found a master document that explained how the numbers related to the files—optimistically assuming that they did.

  Surely someone in the throes of violent conflict wouldn’t bother to grab a particular mineral sample as their weapon. Fluorite wasn’t even very hard. If you wanted to do damage, you’d be better off with granite. Granted, the one sample of granite in the office sat on the floor and probably weighed over twenty pounds. Your victim might escape while you tried to heft the rock. In any case, while I didn’t entirely dismiss the importance of the weapon being fluorite, it was probably random: The attacker had grabbed something convenient. (That was also a good excuse not to spend the time searching the files for info on the fluorite.)

  If the office held any clues, I’d failed to recognize them. At least it was cleaner, and I’d boxed up most of the things Reggie might have handled extensively.

  The laptop seemed a better bet for finding out about Reggie Heap. I needed that cord. I could order one online, but that might take several days to arrive, and I doubted Bonneville had an appropriate store. Maybe the museum had extra cords in the office.

  The laptop was pretty standard for an older style, but it had some wear marks. I didn’t want to risk someone recognizing it as Reggie’s, so I couldn’t show it as I asked for spare cords. Plus I didn’t want to handle it, and it would seem weird to carry a laptop around in a towel. I studied the plug hole to determine what kind of cord would fit.

  It was almost five. The museum was open from ten to six, so I had another hour before quitting time. I had gathered a box of what I assumed were Reggie’s personal items: an old windbreaker, a small vase that had held pens and pencils, and a few other things I didn’t want in my office.

  Unfortunately, I couldn’t get rid of them quite yet. I needed to know if they’d tell me anything about Reggie.

***

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Learn more about the Accidental Detective humorous mystery series, the Reluctant Psychic Mystery series, the Accidental Billionaire Cowboys sweet romance series, the Felony Melanie: Sweet Home Alabama romantic comedy novels, and the Furrever Friends cat cafe sweet romance series.