Pineapple Circus
Pineapple Port Mysteries Book 13
by Amy Vasant
Genre: Cozy Mystery
Now in the center ring... murder!
Newly-minted private detective Charlotte Morgan, resident orphan of the Pineapple Port 55+ community, discovers she might not be an orphan after all. Stunned by the news, she distracts herself with a cat burglar who left a smear of make-upped whiskers on a sliding glass door, and a path straight to "Clown Town" a retirement community for retired circus performers. When a fortune-teller doesn't see her own death in the cards, Charlotte's burglary becomes a murder investigation!
Charlotte's neighborhood moms, Mariska and Darla, can't help with this one. They're busy infiltrating an underground golf cart racing ring, led by a shady operator and her toady sidekick...
When another circus performer falls victim to the Big Top Killer and Stephanie goes missing, Charlotte finds herself walking a highwire of danger...this killer isn't clowning around!
WARNING! Fans of the series will be particularly shocked by the breathless ending! (though every book can be read as a standalone).
Pineapple Port Mysteries by Wall Street Journal and USA Today bestselling author Amy Vansant, is a funny, clean, and gore-free small-town, female amateur sleuth series, but with all the pulse-pounding excitement of a detective thriller.
**On Sale for $2 off right now!!**
Pineapple Cruise
Pineapple Port Mysteries Book 14
When Mariska trades the brisket she won at “Meat Bingo” for three tickets on the new Gulf Voyager cruise ship, she, Darla and our detective Charlotte enjoy a ladies cruise to Key West. But when passengers start dropping like anchors, they find themselves afloat in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico...and a murder mystery.
Charlotte notices the victims were all sitting at their assigned dinner table...does that mean they're next?
Fans of Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None will love this cruise-bound caper!
**On Sale for $2 off right now!!**
***Check out the rest of the Pineapple Port Mysteries – some are on sale!!***
Pineapple Lies – Get it FREE Sept. 2, 7, 14
Pineapple Beach House – Only .99c Aug 30 -Sep 5
Pineapple Turtles - Only .99c Sept. 18-24
Pineapple Puppies – Only .99c Sept 20-26
Pineapple House Hunter – Only .99c Sept. 30-Oct. 6
Pineapple Jailbird – Only .99c Sept 10-16
Mystery Readers love The Pineapple Port Series:
"Amy is one of my favorite authors. I highly recommend all of her books. No matter what genre she writes in, she manages to create books that demand that the pages be immediately turned to find out what happened because you really care about the characters." ~ Dianne Harman, USA Today and Amazon Chart #1 Bestselling Author
"Too much!! Wow! I don't think I've had so much laughter and fun in a cozy mystery ever! " - Amazon Reader ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
"Mysteries usually aren't my genre, but Amy does a great job in adding twists, turns and - of course - her humor to every page. For a person like me who finds it hard to pick up a book and keep turning the pages, the fact that I tore through this book from start to finish and am looking forward to the next one speaks volumes." - Author, Rodney Lacroix ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
"More than once, I found myself laughing out loud while reading through the story. The character development is good, the humor is unforced. All around, an excellent, lighthearted mystery that I would absolutely recommend." - Amazon Reader ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
"One of the best surprise ending I have read.." - Amazon Vine Voice Reader ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
"An unlikely friendship and romance develop with moments of levity and hilarious laughter. More than once, I found myself laughing out loud while reading through the story. The character development is good, the humor is unforced. All around, an excellent, lighthearted mystery that I would absolutely recommend." --- Amazon Vine Voice Reader ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
PREVIEW: Pineapple
CIRCUS
A Pineapple Port Mystery: Book Thirteen
Amy Vansant
Baroness von Chilling took her heart medication and tugged at the nightdress pinching her middle. The cat she’d adopted during her tenure working in the Boudreaux & Bo's Family Circus’ fortune-teller’s tent lay curled on her bed.
Kitty purred as she approached her.
Breathless, Baroness sat resting, preparing for the effort it would take to swing her dry-skinned, dimpled legs beneath the sheets. A sharp clacking noise, something like tiny plastic boulders bouncing down a metal mountain, clattered in the adjacent room.
Baroness groaned.
I thought I turned off the ice maker...
She enjoyed the open feel of her small modular home in The Big Top fifty-five-plus community for retired circus performers, but every noise could be heard everywhere. In her opinion, whoever dreamed up open plan deserved to be burned at the stake.
Whenever she complained, neighbors suggested she close her bedroom door.
As if she hadn’t thought of that.
Idiots.
If she closed her bedroom door, Kitty scratched and howled to get out. If she opened it, the cat went right back to bed. They’d been playing this game since they first met.
Stupid cat.
Baroness pushed away from the bed, steadied herself on her arthritic feet and shuffled toward the kitchen, hips aching. A lot of good the clairvoyance gift she’d inherited from her mother had done her. If she could have predicted the pains in her eighty-six-year-old joints, she would have put stones in her pockets and walked into the sea at seventy-two.
“Baroness.”
A voice spoke in the darkness.
Von Chilling gasped and wobbled on her feet, reaching out to steady herself on the back of the sofa.
It wasn’t the ice.
A shadowy figure stood inside her front door, large and triangle-shaped. It took her milky eyes a minute to adjust before she realized the intruder wore robes.
Her robes.
She recognized the stars and moons she’d Bedazzled on the dark fabric decades ago.
“Who are you?” she asked, pointing with a crooked finger. “Be gone before I curse you for eternity.” She used her scariest voice, one heavy with portent and husky with seventy years of smoking. A Romanian accent dripped from every word, though she’d grown up in Newark, New Jersey.
The figure took a few steps forward into the light cast by the moon through her skylight.
“You know me?”
She squinted. “No. Who—”
More of the face slipped into the glow cast by the streetlights outside her kitchen window.
I do know that face.
“What are you doing?” she demanded to know, convinced no answer could make her feel more at ease.
The figure spoke again.
“How’s it feel to be judged?”
Baroness turned to run. Hands fell on her shoulders before she’d taken two shuffling steps. Fingers tightened around her throat. She collapsed beneath the weight of her attacker, who rolled her onto her back, pinning her to the ground.
With a knee on her chest, Baroness couldn’t breathe. She squirmed to free herself. She clawed at the thumbs pressing at her windpipe.
The irony of her sudden urge to live wasn’t lost on her.
It was almost funny.
As the darkness closed in around her, she shifted her attention to the bedroom.
Kitty was nowhere to be seen.
Probably hiding.
The creature she’d saved couldn’t be bothered to do the same for her.
Stupid cat.
The fingers around Baroness’ throat released, and she took a gasping breath. From beneath the robes, her attacker produced a crystal ball—her crystal ball—and held it above her skull.
The intruder spoke as the crystal ball raised higher.
“Not so powerful now, are you, Baroness?”
Abby, Charlotte’s soft-coated Wheaten terrier, was the first to see the truck pull up to Charlotte’s house. She barked once, and Charlotte jogged from the kitchen to the window, stopping only to set a small platter of crackers, cheese, and pepperoni on the living room table.
She peered through her curtains, trying hard not to look like a lunatic.
At the curb, a woman and a man sat in a truck, talking.
Her mysterious Aunt Siofra “Shee” McQueen had arrived.
Shee had called a day before to arrange a visit, but Charlotte didn’t mind the impromptu nature of the self-invite. She couldn’t be any more excited. Shee was her only link to her parents and a life she barely remembered. She’d been young when her father died in an accident. She’d lost her mother later to cancer. After that, she’d been shipped to her grandmother Estelle’s modular home in the fifty-five-plus community of Pineapple Port, only to have her grandmother die soon after that.
Even with all that tragedy she’d been lucky. The community raised her, mothering spearheaded by the neighbor across the street, Mariska.
She couldn’t have asked for a better substitute mother to raise her. Thanks to Pineapple Port, she had a family larger than most.
Still...to find out she had blood relatives left...
She was excited.
In addition to meeting Siofra, she’d discovered her grandfather Mick was still alive, though he lay in a coma on the opposite side of Florida.
Shee was the only speaking link to her past.
From what she could divine from the brief time she’d spent working a kidnapping case with Siofra in Jupiter Beach, her aunt was a certified badass. She didn’t know the whole story but hoped to learn from her. Anything Shee shared could only enhance her own burgeoning private investigation skills.
Charlotte watched her visitors through the window, giggly with anticipation.
Get out of the truck...
The couple sat.
Is that her?
The woman in the passenger seat looked like Shee, but who was driving? She hadn’t said someone else was coming. Was it Mick, her grandfather? Was he better?
The woman glanced at the house.
Okay. That’s definitely Shee.
She could see enough to tell the driver was a man, a big one, but little else.
Charlotte looked at her watch.
They’d been sitting in the truck for five minutes.
She heard a click and watched, enthralled, as the couple climbed out of the truck and started toward the house.
Finally.
Squelching a squeal of excitement, Charlotte placed herself behind the door.
Waiting.
They’d reached the stoop. She heard them talking outside.
Minutes went by.
Come on.
Charlotte opened the front to find her aunt standing there, her fist raised to knock.
“Hi,” she said.
She bent to grip Abby’s collar, pulling the curious dog back to make room as she unlatched the screen door.
Shee smiled and glanced at her big friend.
“After you,” said the man.
The couple walked inside, navigating the excited terrier. Charlotte scrambled for something to say. She motioned to the dog.
“This is Abby.”
She swallowed.
I sound like an idiot.
She eyeballed the man. Handsome, probably Shee’s age—he was built like someone who’d spent a long time doing things that required strength. She nearly asked him if he were an actor, but she suspected even an action-star wouldn’t radiate with such genuine toughness. He smelled good and looked well-groomed, but his visible scars belied a life not spent in the lap of luxury.
She thrust an open palm toward him. “I’m Charlotte.”
He stared at her hand as if he wasn’t sure what it was.
“I’m sorry, this is Mason,” said Shee, bumping him with her elbow.
He seemed to awake from a trance. “Hi,” he said, smiling and shaking her hand.
Charlotte motioned to the sofa. “Have a seat. Can I get you something to drink? Iced tea? Water?” The dog’s attention shifted to the pepperoni on the platter and Charlotte pushed her away with her leg.
Shee mumbled something she didn’t hear.
“Iced tea would be great,” said Mason.
Charlotte flashed a smile and slipped into the kitchen. Sliding the iced tea from the fridge, she took a deep breath.
Why am I so nervous?
She realized she really wanted her aunt to like her. No—more than that—she wanted her to respect her as a fellow crime solver. She wasn’t sure what Shee was—she could be CIA for all she knew—but she had skills.
She took another second to let her heartbeat slow and then toted the teas to the living room. Abby sat beside Mason, getting pets beneath his own giant paw.
“We’re kind of in brunch territory, so I put out this stuff,” Charlotte said, nodding at the plate of crackers. “If you’d prefer something more breakfasty—”
“No, this is fine,” said Shee.
Charlotte placed the glasses on the living room table her boyfriend, Declan, had given her from his pawn shop. She looked around the room. All her furniture was from the pawn shop.
Can they tell?
Charlotte realized Mason was staring at her, his jaw cracked open. Unsettled, she looked to Shee and noticed for the first time the bruises on her aunt’s face. One eye was blackened, and she had a smattering of small cuts on her face and arms.
How did I miss that?
“What happened?” she asked, gesturing to her aunt’s face.
Shee’s hand fluttered to her bruises. “Oh. Little car accident.”
“Oh no, are you okay?”
She nodded. “Air bag did more damage than anything else.”
Silence again.
“So, to what do I owe the visit?” Charlotte asked. “How are things at the Loggerhead?”
“Good...” Shee jumped in her seat. “Oh, Mick—your grandfather—he’s awake. Out of the coma.”
Charlotte gasped. “He is? Oh, that’s great.”
“Yeah, I’m sorry. I should have told you sooner...”
“Is that why you came?”
“Hm?”
“To let me know?” Charlotte glanced at Mason.
He was still staring.
She couldn’t put her finger on his expression. It wasn’t wolfish. He seemed...stunned.
Shee put her hand on his knee. “Um, yes and no. We have something else we have to tell you...”
Mason cleared his throat and nodded. “We do.”
“We do,” echoed Shee. “There’s no easy way to say this, so I’m just going to do it.”
OMG. It hit Charlotte where this was going. Her grandfather had awoken, but something else was wrong.
“Is he okay?” she asked.
Shee seemed confused. “Who? Mason? Sure. He’s just—”
Charlotte shook her head. “No, Mick.”
“Oh. He’s fine. Sorry, I can see how you thought that’s where I was going. It’s not him—”
“I’m your father,” blurted Mason.
Charlotte looked at the giant, certain she’d misheard him.
“What?” she asked.
He hooked a thumb at Shee. “She’s your mother.”
“What?” Charlotte followed his gesture to watch Shee close her eyes.
A laugh spat from Charlotte’s lips. She felt her shoulders un-bunch a notch.
I get it. They’re kidding me.
She was about to speak when she noticed the look on Shee’s face. It seemed awfully serious for a person in the middle of a joke.
“This isn’t exactly how I had this planned...” Shee glared in Mason’s direction. “But it’s true. We’re your parents.”
Charlotte blinked at them.
What?
Shee continued. “I found out I was pregnant with you right before he was deployed—”
“I didn’t know,” said Mason. “I’m in the Navy. Was. Was in the Navy.”
Shee squeezed his leg. “Anyway, my sister Grace couldn’t have a baby and I wasn’t ready, so I gave you to her—”
Charlotte swallowed.
Her mother’s name was Grace.
She’s not kidding.
“I didn’t know,” said Mason again.
Charlotte looked at him.
Shee plowed on. “When Grace died, I was in hiding, so I couldn’t take you back. Someone was after me, and it would have been too dangerous. Long story. Anyway, Mick gave you to Estelle—”
“I didn’t know,” said Mason.
“She’s got it,” snapped Shee.
Charlotte heard her grandmother’s name, and everything became even more real to her. All the facts were right. The story checked out.
This can’t be happening.
Mason cleared his throat.
Shee took a deep breath. “You grew up here. You know that part. I stayed in hiding. We just stopped the guy who was after me and now I’m here—”
“We’re here,” said Mason. “I just found out about you. Like a week ago.”
Charlotte looked at him. Somehow, his repetition had broken through her shock.
“You didn’t even know I existed?” she asked.
He shook his head.
She looked back at Shee. “Why didn’t you tell him?”
Shee stared at her, much the way Mason had earlier—jaw slack.
Shee closed her mouth. “Um, at first, I was afraid the news would distract him. Get him killed. Then, after a while, I guess it just felt like it was too late.”
Charlotte found herself speechless.
“It’s not like he could have taken you instead of Estelle,” Shee added.
Mason sniffed. “I don’t know, maybe if someone had offered me the chance—”
“This was a better option.” Shee growled the words.
Mason shrugged.
Shee took a deep breath and turned her attention back to Charlotte. “I know this is a lot to digest.”
Charlotte nodded and said the sentence repeating in her head.
“You’re my parents.”
Shee and Mason both nodded.
Charlotte stood. She wanted to run. She needed to process. She wanted them to leave, but she wanted them to stay—
“I actually have to be somewhere,” she said. She didn’t, but the words came out of her mouth anyway. “But maybe we could have dinner or something?”
Shee and Mason both jumped to their feet.
“Absolutely. Our treat. You pick the place,” said Shee.
Shee.
Her mother.
Charlotte bit her lip. It felt as if she had locusts buzzing in her brain, under her skin—
Dinner. Arrange the dinner. I eat dinner. I eat dinner with—
That was it. She needed her people around her to help buffer everything.
“Could I bring a few people?” she asked. “There are people I’d like you to meet. People who raised me, and my boyfriend...”
“Absolutely,” said Shee. “Anyone. Everyone.”
“Absolutely,” echoed Mason. “Anyone.”
Charlotte nodded. “Okay. Maybe around five?” She offered them a sheepish smile. “We eat kind of early around here.”
“Sounds good.” Shee pushed Mason out from behind the table.
Charlotte walked behind them as they moved to the door.
They’re leaving. What if they run? What if I never see them again?
“Wait,” she said.
The couple turned.
Charlotte opened her arms and moved in for a hug. Shee did the same, gripping her.
“Charlotte...” she said.
Charlotte panicked.
Okay. Too much. Move on.
Charlotte released her mother to hug Mason. When she stepped back from him, Mason put the side of his fist against his lips and looked away.
“We’ll see you tonight,” said Shee, glowering at Mason, who flashed a quick, awkward smile.
Charlotte nodded. “Okay. See you tonight.”
“Bye,” they said in unison as they exited.
Charlotte waved and then shut the door, unsure if her heart was beating so fast she could no longer feel the individual thumps, or if it had stopped altogether.
What just happened?
She leaned her back against the wall, sliding until her butt hit the floor.
Abby licked her face. She put her arms around the dog and squeezed, staring at the opposite wall, her whole body vibrating with nerves.
After a minute, she released the terrier, clambered to her feet and glanced at her watch.
Dinner with my parents at five.
She had seven hours to find some way to distance herself intact from the train that had just hit her.
Pineapple Port’s orphan had parents.
USA Today and Wall Street Journal bestselling author Amy Vansant has written over 20 books, including the fun, thrilling Shee McQueen series, the rollicking, twisty Pineapple Port Mysteries, and the action-packed Kilty urban fantasies. Throw in a couple romances and a YA fantasy for her nieces... Amy specializes in fun, exciting reads with plenty of laughs and action -- she tried to write serious books, but they always ended up full of jokes, so she gave up.
Amy lives in Jupiter, Florida with her muse/husband a goony Bordoodle named Archer.
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