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    Pick a Letter: Antique Pickers in Paradise Cozy Mystery Series, #4
    Pick a Letter: Antique Pickers in Paradise Cozy Mystery Series, #4
    Pick a Letter: Antique Pickers in Paradise Cozy Mystery Series, #4
    Ebook76 pages1 hour

    Pick a Letter: Antique Pickers in Paradise Cozy Mystery Series, #4

    By Maggie West

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    About this ebook

    When Sherri Green is the winning bidder of a box of ephemera at an auction, she thinks it's just an innocent box of old papers. But a stack of letters from the 1970s grabs her attention and she's off.

    With the help of her gossipy antiques picking parter, Carol O'Brien, Sherri tracks down the girl who wrote the letters and unravels a mystery decades old. 

    Pick a Letter is a clean, short read perfect for lovers of cozy mysteries set in a small town that feature an amateur sleuth.

    Be sure to check out the first three books in the Antique Pickers in Paradise Cozy Mystery series, Picked to Death, Cotton Picking Murder, and Picked On, for more small town fun and crime solving in the close-knit community of Paradise.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMaggie West
    Release dateJan 17, 2017
    ISBN9781386468301
    Pick a Letter: Antique Pickers in Paradise Cozy Mystery Series, #4

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      Book preview

      Pick a Letter - Maggie West

      More than kisses, letters mingle souls.

      ~John Donne

      Chapter 1

      At the auction held earlier in the day, Sherri Green was the high bidder of a cardboard box of old maps, newspaper clippings, greeting cards, postcards, and other ephemera for just two dollars and fifty cents. That was the minimum bid for any lot at the auction so when no one else nibbled, Sherri bit.

      She pulled the cardboard box from the front seat of her truck and carried it to her picking shed. That was her new name for her garage; she thought picking shed sounded so much better than garage especially since a vehicle hadn’t been inside in years. She’d even painted an old board with the words Picking Shed and hung it on the back wall. The treasures she’d found through the years made her smile each time she entered since she’d taken the time to clean up the jumbled mess. The clean up had amounted to every spare minute she could find for two solid weeks, but it had been well worth the time and effort. She’d sorted the boxes and taken everything out of every nook and cranny, every last thimble and glass insulator and every other trinket and treasure she’d ever bought and put it in its place on a shelf or in a drawer or in a see-through plastic tote. All items were inventoried and labelled. Now she knew what she had and where it was.

      From the new box she’d set on the wood plank counter, she began removing items and placing them carefully in a row so she could catalogue and start researching each piece to figure out the best way to sell the vintage and antique paper items.

      Sherri, you in here?

      Deep in thought, Sherri jumped at the sound of her husband’s voice. She looked toward the garage door, the direction where his voice came from. She knew it was Ralph, who had once again succeeded in creeping up on her. 

      Yep, right here, she yelled back and walked toward the door.

      Ralph approached with a flat carpenter pencil shoved behind his ear. He gave Sherri a peck on the cheek. Find anything good?

      Sherri nodded toward the box on the counter. Some old maps and stuff. She knew it was fruitless explaining that a vintage road atlas from the fifties was worth anything other than its value as a map. Ralph would even argue of its usefulness in that regard because it likely showed out of date routes and didn’t include all the new roads that had been built since then.

      As if on cue, Ralph rolled his eyes and smirked. But he kept quiet. After a few seconds, he said, You hungry? I’m kinda hungry.

      It was only three-thirty, but she knew her husband. Since she’d left him on his own for lunch and he hadn’t had a proper meal since breakfast, he’d want to make up for it at supper.

      I’ll be in in a bit. I’ll start those pork chops, and how’s twice baked potatoes sound? Sherri knew that combo was one of Ralph’s favorite meals. If she threw in a side of cole slaw or a gelatin salad, he’d be in hog heaven.

      Ralph’s grin said everything Sherri needed to hear. She smiled and then turned back to the box and continued to sort the papers as methodically as possible in the time she had before she had to start cooking.

      ~ ~ ~

      That night Sherri tossed and turned for what seemed like three hours, but when she checked the alarm clock beside her bed she saw that it had only been twenty minutes since she’d turned off the light. After supper she had returned to the picking shed and finished sorting the box. Buried at the bottom under a mess of Christmas postcards and newspaper clippings from the sixties and seventies, she’d pulled out a small stack of white envelopes tied together with white string. The postmark didn’t look familiar and the large loopy handwriting hadn’t intrigued her enough to even untie the string to take a closer look. Now that stack of letters was all she could think about.

      She climbed out of bed, careful not to disturb Ralph, grabbed her robe, and at the back door slipped on a pair of garden clogs she kept handy. The spring night was chilly, but she quickly ran to the picking shed, unlocked the entry door with her key, and retrieved the letters. Back inside she heated a cup of water

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