Coastal Cottage Calamity - Abby L. Vandiver Page 0,1

her shoulder. Her wheaten Scottish terrier, Cat, stood next to her, ears on high alert and tail wagging. Both Miss Vivee and her dog, heads tilted, had a look of surprise etched in their faces and seemed unsure what to do – stay or turn and flee.

“Logan,” Brie said to me. “Maybe you should get Momma and her dog. She shouldn’t be in the middle of this.” Then she nodded toward her sister, Renmar. “And, I’ll try to help Renmar and Hazel. All we need is another murder around here.”

Another murder.

Oh. My. Gosh.

Nope. No need for another one of those. I hadn’t been in Yasamee one day when Gemma Burke keeled over dead in her bowl of bouillabaisse. Correction: A bowl of Renmar’s world famous (so I’m told) bouillabaisse. And that had only been a month ago.

Miss Vivee stared at the melee mesmerized. Cat gave out a yelp or two and Miss Vivee, without looking down, arm lowered at her side, gave Cat a couple waves of her hand to quiet her down. Too bad that wouldn’t work on the cat fight going on in the middle of the dining room.

I took in a breath. Glancing over at the fight, I flinched. One blonde had poised her hands ready to scratch, tear into someone it seemed with her acrylic inch long nails. And another was howling at her saying, “Come on. I will take you down.”

Miss Vivee was feisty, but Brie was right, the way things were going Miss Vivee might just get hurt.

“Okay,” I said to Brie and headed over to Miss Vivee. “Whatever you do, don’t let anyone get murdered,” I said over my shoulder. At my words, the entire room stilled. The yelling stopped and everyone looked at me.

“Murdered?” I heard someone’s strained voice eke out.

Someone else plopped down in their chair and held their head in their hand. “Not another murder.”

“Missy,” Miss Vivee said pointing a shaky finger at me – her white skin so thin you could see the green veins. “Come here,” she instructed. She often called me Missy. Don’t know why. It isn’t because she didn’t know my name. “You’re not helping anything,” she said to me then called out to Renmar. “I’ll make tea.”

Remar nodded and all eyes followed me as I left the dining room.

Hadn’t everyone just heard Miss Jilted White-Blondie say she was going to kill people? How was what I said bad?

“Come and help me,” Miss Vivee said as she turned around and headed down the hallway toward the kitchen with Cat in tow.

I followed behind her thinking that it was me that was supposed to be rescuing her.

“They are going crazy in there,” I said and sat down on one of the breakfast stools that surrounded the large, butcher block topped island.

“I know. You’d think it was a full moon out,” Miss Vivee said.

As it was, it was the middle of the day. A hot June day. I’d come to the Maypop to grab a bite to eat. It was where I was staying while I worked at Stallings Island, an archaeological site located across a small shoal at the edge of the Savannah River. I would have been better off if I’d gone to the Jellybean Café. Never run into anything over there other than gossip. But Renmar was, to me, the best cook in the Western Hemisphere. Although I’d never let my mother or grandmother hear me say that. So, I’d come home, as it were, to eat.

“I’m going to make some Passionflower tea,” Miss Vivee said. She stood at the sink and filled up the silver teapot with water. “I don’t seem to have any lemon balm tea,” she said absently. “I thought I did.” She searched through bottles lined up in a spice rack. “It’s better for anger and rage.”

“You want me to help you?” I asked.

“No. I got it.” She opened a cabinet and started fussing around with hand marked bottles of herbs and extracts she’d brought in from her greenhouse. “I’ll just add a few extra drops of Passionflower extract,” she said. “Make it more powerful. Then, I’ll mix in a little chamomile,” she grunted as she stood on her tippy toes to grab another bottle. “It’s good for temper tantrums.”

“That is exactly what that one woman was having,” I said. “The one with the white-blonde colored hair. Threatening to kill people. Why does Oliver try to date more than one woman in a city this size? Does he not understand the