Mardi Gras Madness Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Mardi Gras Madness

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Other books in the Mardi Gras Series

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Epilogue

  Thank you for purchasing this publication of The Wild Rose Press, Inc.

  Praise for Lynn Shurr

  “MARDI GRAS MADNESS is a fantastic book set in the deep south. The author Lynn Shurr weaves her story with the turn of every page drawing the reader deep into the world of hot sunny days, sultry nights, spicy foods and the mystery and magic only the Mardi Gras offers. If you are looking for a book that offers love and laughter, tears and triumph, this is a story that brings it all home.”

  ~Jane Lange, Romances, Reads & Reviews

  ~*~

  “Shurr is a wonderful story storyteller.”

  ~The Romance Studio

  ~*~

  “Lynn Shurr’s stories have that distinctive flavor…and make you eager for another taste.”

  ~J.L. Salter, Author

  ~*~

  “I can attest to the fact that Lynn Shurr knows her subject matter. Her grasp of Crescent City customs, particularly the social swirl surrounding Mardi Gras, is top-notch…Colorfully-written, engaging and often poignant.”

  ~Ashton Lee, Author

  ~*~

  “MARDI GRAS MADNESS is a delightful story which starts as a standard Northern girl-moves-to-small town-in-the South, but soon becomes so much more…With a number of tense and dangerous situations experienced in both the past and the present, this book contains the best of a classic romance novel.”

  ~Tonette Joyce, Four Foxes, One Hound blogger

  Mardi Gras Madness

  by

  Lynn Shurr

  The Mardi Gras Series

  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.

  Mardi Gras Madness

  COPYRIGHT © 2014 by Lynn Shurr

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the author or The Wild Rose Press, Inc. except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  Contact Information: [email protected]

  Cover Art by Diana Carlile

  The Wild Rose Press, Inc.

  PO Box 708

  Adams Basin, NY 14410-0708

  Visit us at www.thewildrosepress.com

  Publishing History

  First Champagne Rose Edition, 2014

  Print ISBN 978-1-62830-650-7

  Digital ISBN 978-1-62830-651-4

  The Mardi Gras Series

  Published in the United States of America

  Dedication

  For my daughter Cora,

  who prefers a little mystery with her romance.

  Other books in the Mardi Gras Series

  by Lynn Shurr

  COURIR DE MARDI GRAS

  Anything can happen on Mardi Gras day in the countryside.

  Fleeing an obsessive boyfriend, Suzanne Hudson arrives in tiny Port Jefferson, Louisiana, to inventory the antiques of an antebellum home. Full of moonlight and magnolia dreams, she soon finds her job boring and the master of the manor, George St. Julien, dull.

  Everything changes during the Mardi Gras ride when Suzanne is playfully abducted by a masked man on a white horse and the famous Magnolia Hill silver disappears shortly thereafter. Determined to discover the rider’s identity and solve the mystery of the lost silver, Suzanne unearths small town secrets that might be better left alone and finds her life in jeopardy.

  Chapter One

  Laura Dickinson sat three feet from her husband’s closed coffin and calmly accepted more condolences. Bodies brought up from a helicopter sunken in the Gulf of Mexico did not make pretty corpses. The mourners moved aside, and Laura could see the framed photograph of David sitting on the shining bronze surface of the casket.

  Lanky, sandy-haired and sporting a wide grin that said he loved the whole world and most especially Laura, David’s image gazed at her. She smiled back just slightly, but even that annoyed David’s two sisters who soaked up sympathy and tears with their damp wadded tissues on her right. They were already upset because she’d worn a blue dress, one of David’s favorites because its tint made her gray eyes seem almost the same shade as his. Another old friend of the Dickinson family came to stand before her and blocked the view of her husband’s face. Laura took the offered hand and murmured a quiet, “Thank you for coming.”

  Two rows back, friends of her motherin-law dissected the demeanor of the widow loudly enough for Laura to hear. “Considering they were only married a couple of months, she sure doesn’t seem too grieved, does she, Bev?”

  “Probably drugged. I’d be bawling my eyes out over losing a fine, handsome young man like that. Now with my Ed, he was way past his time to go, and I still managed to shed a few tears.”

  Laura stiffened her spine. Their words crawled like black spiders over her back, but she wouldn’t weep or get hysterical. That would be bad for the baby. If only she could have told David about it before his death. But then, she hadn’t known. Both in their mid-twenties, they had decided to chuck the pills and go for a family right away. She’d been amazed after so many years of using birth control how soon she’d gotten pregnant. Knowing she carried David’s child was a comfort not divulged to anyone else yet. Only two weeks late, but in the urgency of planning the funeral, she’d put off getting one of those test kits at the drugstore. She knew. Only that mattered.

  The elder Mrs. Dickinson came to take her seat on Laura’s left. “The minister is going to deliver the eulogy now,” she told her daughter-in-law.

  Out of the corner of her eye, Laura saw her own mother take a seat behind her, along with her father and older sister. Her mother lifted a few strands of dark brown hair out of her collar and patted her shoulder. Laura wore her hair loose, the way David loved it, not bunched up in knots like his frumpy over-thirty sisters. Mom shushed the gossiping ladies as the reverend took his place at the podium and began a lengthy series of anecdotes about her husband’s short life.

  Laura’s mind drifted. Two weeks ago, she and David had been eating beignets at Café Du Monde in New Orleans. They’d discussed the housing shortage and whether they should live across the lake or try to get a place in the city where it would be easier for her to find a job as a librarian at one of the universities or in the vast public library system
—until they had a baby, of course. Newly hired as a petroleum engineer for one of the large oil companies, David would be offshore a lot. He worried that his wife would be lonely or bored.

  “In New Orleans? Dave, this is like visiting a foreign country. How could I be bored?” she’d answered, but mailed off her resume to the State Library the next morning because of her husband’s concern.

  Sugar had fallen from the hot beignet as she’d lifted the little donut to her lips, and the white powder drifted across her chest. Even now, she could feel her husband’s fingers moving across the tops of her full breasts to wipe the sugar away. Those long fingers went into his mouth to be licked one by one. They were back at the hotel making love before their deserted mugs of café au lait cooled on their abandoned table. Certainly, the baby had been conceived that morning.

  Laura smiled again. All eyes turned toward her as the minister finished up with—“And let us all support this young woman in her time of sorrow and comfort her with the knowledge that surely her husband, David Lee Dickinson, has gone to a better place, and they shall be reunited in eternity. Amen.”

  “Did you see?” the old bitch in the third row said to her friend. “She’s smiling. How can she smile at a time like this?”

  David died the day after that passionate quickie in a fine hotel. The helicopter taking him to an offshore platform crashed, no survivors. So sorry, our condolences, such rotten luck. The oil company paid her airfare home and shipped the body after its recovery. She’d collect a large insurance settlement, naturally. Nausea rose in Laura’s throat, but then, pregnancy did that to a woman. She stood up a little dizzy, another sign of the child to come, and followed the coffin on its way to the cemetery.

  ****

  Laura regretted having had any food at all at the post-funeral reception as her parents’ small sedan bumped along the crumbling Pennsylvania Turnpike toward home. Being crammed in the backseat with her sister brought back old times when they had gone on family vacations. Just like old times, she felt a little carsick.

  Thank God, when her father and mother began their usual debate about which exit to take, her sister had gone to sleep after spending half an hour yammering on her cell. Laura’s head throbbed. Dad won the argument. They left the turnpike at Morgantown, skirted the city of Reading on a much better road, and ten miles later, arrived in Lost Spring.

  Laura rushed from the car, fumbled her key into the lock of her childhood home and made it to the first floor bathroom before the cramps doubled her up. Blood like bright red tears coursed down her thighs. She was losing David’s baby, and all the bottled up grief and hysteria came out with it.

  “Laura! Are you okay? Speak to me, honey,” her mother begged as she knocked on the door.

  No words would come out, only sobs, great gasping sobs. Her father took over, pounding on the door and using his deep authoritative voice. “Answer your mother, young lady. Don’t make me get the screwdriver to open the lock.”

  She felt as if she were twelve again and embarrassed over having started her first period. Laura looked at the stain in her panties. The headache, the cramps, the slightly ill feeling, she was having her period, late but normal, and she couldn’t stop crying.

  Through the door, Laura heard her mother on the phone. “So sorry to bother you, doctor. We’re just back from the funeral. Not good. She’s hysterical. Yes, I can send my husband over to Geiger’s Pharmacy to pick up some tranquilizers. I’ll bring her in tomorrow. Thank you. Thank you so much.”

  ****

  Laura could see that unlike herself, her mother had gotten up bright and early and gone to the hairdresser. Mom’s once gray head sprouted in tight, honey-blonde curls sprayed to last.

  Her father, wise in the way of marriage after thirty-five years, peered over his Saturday morning paper. “Always wanted to be married to a voluptuous blonde. How about another pancake?”

  “Then, why didn’t you say so sooner?” her mother carped, shoveling a flapjack onto his plate and flipping another on top of the one sitting uneaten in front of Laura. As her daughter made no move to do so, Mom topped the pancake with a pat of butter and doused maple syrup over the stack. “Eat something, Laura. You are nothing but skin and bones.”

  Laura looked down at the gray cashmere sweater David had given her for Christmas. He’d liked the way she filled it out, but now, there wasn’t much to see but the sharp edge of her collarbone. Finally skinny enough to wear low-rise jeans, she didn’t have the energy to shop for them. In fact, she felt like crap—all Dr. Goode’s fault because he wouldn’t renew the prescription for those dandy capsules that made her all warm and cozy like being wrapped in a soft woolly blanket too comfortable to shed. Although the pills killed her appetite, she slept very well indeed under their influence. Now, she couldn’t sleep at all and still didn’t feel like eating.

  “I’ll tell you what, Laura. Since you aren’t working right now and your settlement still hasn’t come in—three months should be plenty of time—how those insurance companies drag their feet—I’ll treat you to a new hairdo. Maybe you could get some streaks to perk up your appearance.” Her mother put her hands on her fleshy hips causing her blouse to gap over large breasts. “Eat,” she ordered again.

  “David liked my hair the way it is.”

  “He probably liked it washed even better. Honey, it’s been three months, one quarter of a year since David’s funeral. Consider that you only met your husband a little over a year ago, six months of dating, six months of engagement and bam, a wedding. Time for you to get out, look for another job, socialize a bit. You know, Jay Geiger asks about you every time I go to pick up your prescription. He’s the pharmacist now. Didn’t you date him in high school?”

  “I went out with Jay once.” Once too often, Laura thought. An ordinary date for a football game and dance afterwards had turned into a wrestling match under the deserted bleachers with Jay Geiger high on some unknown substance that Laura refused to take. She’d scraped him off and walked home.

  “You know, dear, you take things too hard. When Jordan dumped you in college, you didn’t date again until you met David. When our old dog Fritzie got hit by a car, you refused to get a new puppy.”

  “Jordan broke up with me at the end of senior year so he could go off into the world unencumbered, he said. I did my grad work at the School of Library and Information Sciences—not too many men there. And David wasn’t a dog.” She wanted to snarl herself.

  But, she did meet her future husband in a library. Asked to sub in the Science and Engineering area, way out of her comfort zone in the Humanities, when Mr. Bean and Mr. Nelson were both out with flu, she’d spent most of her first afternoon there helping the tall friendly grad student look up information on mud logging and directional drilling. She’d been such a help he offered to take her to dinner. After their engagement, Dave admitted he’d made up the questions about stuff he already knew to get the jump on any other engineering students who might make moves on lovely Laura, the librarian. Lovely Laura. If he could see her now. She needed more of those pills.

  “Fine, I’m going for a walk if you don’t want me around.” Laura scraped her chair back and headed for the kitchen door. Oh, more shades of high school—how could she be so petulant? Because she felt lousy, that’s why.

  “Laura, don’t be that way. Finish your meal.”

  She slammed the door behind her and headed off to Geiger’s Pharmacy. If Jay remembered her so fondly, maybe he would give her a little advance on a new prescription. Fatigued halfway to her destination, she leaned against the window of the Hallmark store on Penn Street to rest. Bad idea. Her reflection in the plate glass told her she should have taken the time to put on some makeup to cover the dark circles under her eyes and at least, brush her lank and greasy hair back into a ponytail. She’d do something about her appearance after she talked to Jay.

  Geiger’s hadn’t changed in twenty years. The pharmacy still maintained a tiny soda fountain where small town kids could
get an ice cream cone on a hot summer day. Laura moved past the racks of Whitman’s Samplers and over-the-counter remedies Geiger’s would deliver anywhere in town to the drug counter at the rear of the store. Jay had moved the boxes of condoms to a shelf outside his domain, she noticed. No more need for teen boys to turn red in the face asking for them. Once his old man retired, Jay would probably make other changes—and raise all the prices.

  He lorded over the store from his dais above the customers. Jay’s red hair, already receding, stood out in contrast to his white lab coat pulled tight across an expanding midsection. He leaned over the high counter and gave Laura a very white, toothy smile.

  “Why, Laura Schumann has come to my humble store in person for a change. What can I do you for?” He acted out the part of her friendly neighborhood pharmacist.

  “Ah, Doc Goode is out of town, and I need a refill on my prescription. Could I get a few pills to tide me over?”

  “Let’s see here.” Jay tapped away on a keyboard. “What’s the married name? Oh yeah, Dickinson. Hmmm, no more refills. Doc Goode is very unbending about refills.”

  “Yes, I know. He gave me that old line about Doc Goode knowing what’s good for me. He needs to retire. The man gave me my baby shots for heaven’s sake.”

  “Yeah, he knows everything about everybody in town—and so do I. If you really need those pills, we might work something out. Why don’t you come over to my place tonight? Oak Hill Apartments, number sixty nine—get it? I picked that unit myself.”