Aunt Dimity Goes West Read online

  Praise for Nancy Atherton and her

  Aunt Dimity Series

  Aunt Dimity Goes West

  “A humorous, satisfying cozy with exceptionally likable characters.”

  —Booklist

  “For those who consider Nancy Drew the ideal sleuth…Atherton’s books are perfect.”

  —Rocky Mountain News

  “With its delightfully descriptive imagery and quirky characters, the twelfth novel in Atherton’s series is the ultimate cozy mystery. Along with its humor comes a well-plotted and engaging story that holds your interest till the very last word. It’s great fun to read about Lori’s newest adventure, helped along by ghostly intervention from Aunt Dimity.”

  —Romantic Times Book Reviews

  “A pleasant, easy series, just the ticket to ease out of a stressful day.”

  —Deadly Pleasures Mystery Magazine

  Aunt Dimity and the Deep Blue Sea

  “The eleventh Aunt Dimity mystery is testament to the staying power of Atherton’s cozier-than-cozy premise…. Rainy Sunday afternoon reading.”

  —Booklist

  “I adored it…. Just sit back and take a breather while immersing yourself in something a little fun.”

  —Curledup.com

  Aunt Dimity and the Next of Kin

  “Thoroughly entertaining.”

  —Booklist

  “Atherton’s series is for those who like the puzzle of a mystery minus the corpses. This is a book entirely without edge, cynicism or even rudeness, and the characters are so nice you can’t just dismiss them—this is the way life really ought to be if only we were all better behaved. Put on the teakettle and enjoy.”

  —Rocky Mountain News

  “Fans of cozy mysteries won’t want to miss this one.”

  —The Romance Readers Connection

  “This is Atherton at her coziest…. Fans of the series will not be disappointed.”

  —Over My Dead Body! The Mystery Magazine

  “Cozy mystery lovers wouldn’t dream of missing an entry in this series, and for good reason…. The quality of this series never runs down.”

  —The Kingston Observer

  Aunt Dimity: Snowbound

  “Witty, engaging and filled with interesting detail that will make the cottage-in-the-English-countryside fanciers among us sigh…. A romp and a half, just the thing to veg out on when life gets too much, and you want to escape into a book.”

  —The Lincoln Journal Star

  “The perfect tale for a cold winter’s night.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Fans of this series will be delirious with joy…. This series is among the best of the cozies, and this book is my personal favorite…. What a treat!”

  —The Kingston Observer

  Aunt Dimity Takes a Holiday

  “A thoroughly modern cozy…classic cozy elements abound. The setting is delicious…. A very enjoyable read.”

  —The Washington Post Book World

  “Delightful.”

  —Library Journal

  “Charming.”

  —Booklist

  Aunt Dimity: Detective

  “Atherton’s light-as-a-feather series…is an excellent example of the (cozy) genre’s traditions…. Profoundly comforting.”

  —The Seattle Times/Post Intelligencer

  “Entertaining, comforting, and charming.”

  —Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

  Aunt Dimity Beats the Devil

  “Nanc`y Atherton is a simply wonderful writer. Her descriptions of the British moors are breathtaking, and her protagonist, Lori Shepherd, is appealing and sexy.”

  —The Cleveland Plain Dealer

  Aunt Dimity’s Christmas

  “Here is a rarity: a book with a Christmas theme that is an engagingly well-written literary work.”

  —Rocky Mountain News

  Aunt Dimity Digs In

  “The coziest cozy of them all.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  Aunt Dimity’s Good Deed

  “Atherton has a whimsical, fast-paced, well-plotted style that makes this book a romantic and graceful romp.”

  —Houston Chronicle

  Aunt Dimity and the Duke

  “Nancy Atherton is the most refreshingly optimistic new storyteller to grace the shelves in years…. charming!”

  —Murder Ink

  Aunt Dimity’s Death

  “A book I thoroughly enjoyed in the reading and which leaves me richer for having met charming people with the courage to care; and in places we all visit, at least in dreams.”

  —Anne Perry

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Nancy Atherton is the author of twelve previous Aunt Dimity mysteries. The first, Aunt Dimity’s Death, was voted “one of the century’s 100 favorite mysteries” by the Independent Mystery Booksellers Association. She lives in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

  Visit the spirit of Aunt Dimity

  at www.aunt-dimity.com

  Aunt Dimity Goes West

  NANCY ATHERTON

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3 (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, EnglandPenguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd)Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd)Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi–110 017, IndiaPenguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd)Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices:

  80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  First published in the United States of America by Viking Penguin, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. 2007

  Published in Penguin Books 2008

  Copyright © Nancy T. Atherton, 2007

  All rights reserved

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  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.

  ISBN: 978-1-1012-0196-1

  Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  The scanning, uploading and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law.

  Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials.

  Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  For

  my friends in the Colorado Mountain Club,

  who’ve taken me to new heights

  Aunt Dimity Goes West

  Contents

  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

  About the Author

  Epilogue

  Carrie Vyne’s Calico Cookies

  One

  Thunder rolled and lightning stabbed the sky. Savage waves battered the cliffs, and stinging rain lashed my face as I sprawled across the stoney ground, hurt and helpless. A figure loomed above me, a dark-haired man with eyes as black and fathomless as the pits of hell. He raised a pale hand, to point at me. There was a blinding flash, a deafening explosion—

  —and I woke up, heart racing. My blankets were a tangled mess, my pillows damp with sweat. With a sobbing gasp, I sat up in bed and stared into the darkness.

  The night was calm and peaceful. A summer breeze wafted through the bedroom’s open windows, and an early bird chirped in the back garden, as if to announce to all and sundry that it had successfully gotten the worm. I heard no thunder, no crashing waves, and the brightest light in the sky was a faint smudge of gray heralding the dawn. I wasn’t sprawled at the edge of a storm-battered cliff, at the mercy of a cold-blooded killer. I was safe at home.

  My husband cleared his throat as he rolled over and propped himself up on an elbow.

  “Again?” he said, caressing my back.

  “Yeah,” I managed shakily.

  “I’ll make a cup of tea for you.” Bill fell back on his pillows and rubbed his tired eyes, then heaved himself out of bed and reached for his bathrobe.

  “You don’t have to,” I said hastily. “I’m okay now, really.”

  “A nice cup of tea,” Bill murmured sleepily. He stepped into his leather bedroom slippers and padded softly into the hallway.

  Stanley, our black cat, took advantage of the open door by trotting into the bedroom and vaulting gracefully into my lap for a morning cuddle. He purred softly as I stroked the sweet spot between his ears. Calmed by his soothing rumble, I closed my eyes and released a tremulous sigh.

  Six weeks had passed since an obsessed lunatic known as Abaddon had put a bullet just below my left collarbone at point-blank range, nicking an artery and shredding a ridiculous amount of muscle tissue. A host of excellent doctors had helped to heal the garish hole Abaddon had left in my body, but they’d so far failed to repair the damage he’d done to my peace of mind.

  For the past month and a half, my moods had swung like a giddy pendulum, shifting from listless to restless, from cranky to weepy, without rhyme or reason, at least fifty times a day. Sleep brought no respite because with it came nightmares, except that in my case there was only one nightmare, the same vivid reliving of heart-chilling horror, night after night after night.

  It was hardly surprising. For the past seven years, my husband and I had lived an idyllic life in a cozy, honey-colored cottage amidst the picturesque, patchwork fields of rural England. Although we were Americans, the nearby village of Finch had become our own. Our five-year-old twins had been dandled on every knee in Finch. Bill was an honored member of the darts team at the pub. I arranged flowers at the church, brought casseroles to elderly neighbors, and swapped gossip with the fluency of a native. We were a normal family engaged in commonplace activities, none of which had prepared us in the slightest for the terrifying events that had spawned my nightmare.

  I’d never dreamed that an insane stalker would threaten to kill me and my family. I’d never dreamed that Bill would send me and the boys to a remote Scottish island for our own protection. I’d most assuredly never dreamed that Abaddon would find the island, kidnap the twins, and try to murder me in the midst of a Force 9 gale. It wasn’t the sort of thing I could have dreamed, until it happened. But once it happened, I could dream of nothing else.

  I was sick of it. Abaddon was dead and gone, killed by a providential lightning bolt that had jolted him into the roiling sea, but he lived on in my mind, a deranged squatter who ignored insistent demands for his departure. I was desperate to evict him because he was making a mess of the place and the mess was hurting everyone I loved.

  My bouncing, effervescent boys had emerged unscathed from their encounter with Abaddon, but they’d taken to tiptoeing around the cottage and speaking in unnaturally hushed voices because “the bad man hurt Mummy.” Annelise Sciaparelli, the boys’ inestimable nanny, walked on eggshells in my presence because she never knew from one moment to the next whether I’d burst into tears, snap her head off, or lapse into a morose silence. My husband, a high-priced attorney with a well-heeled international clientele, had taken so much time off from work that half of his clients thought he’d retired or died. And I was so addled by sleep deprivation that I couldn’t muster the energy to arrange flowers, visit my elderly neighbors, or contribute my fair share to the great chain of gossip that connected everyone in Finch. My world would never spin smoothly on its axis again until I rid myself of Abaddon once and for all, but I didn’t know how to make him leave.

  Stanley’s breathy purr became a loud rumble as Bill reentered the bedroom, carrying a cup of tea on a silver salver. Stanley was, to all intents and purposes, Bill’s cat. He liked it when Bill stayed at home to look after me. My ongoing incapacitation was, in many respects, the best thing that had ever happened to Stanley.

  Bill placed the salver on the bedside table and rubbed his eyes again. I stared at the steaming teacup and felt guilt settle over me like a lead cape. My husband was in his midthirties, active, attractive, and extremely good at his job. He’d spent half the night in front of his computer, yet here he was, serving tea to me at dawn. It wasn’t fair. He was supposed to be running the European branch of his family’s venerable law firm, not playing nursemaid to an invalid wife.

  “Mind if I catch another forty winks?” he asked, yawning.

  “Live it up,” I told him. “Catch eighty.”

  Bill crawled back into bed, and Stanley left my lap to curl contentedly behind Bill’s knees. I drank my tea in silence, then made my way to the bathroom to prepare myself to face another day. It was bound to be a hectic one because of the parade.

  The parade, as Bill called it, was the kind of thing that happened in a tight-knit community when one of its members suffered a mishap. Since my mishap had been more newsworthy than most, our parade had become a popular social event. No one wanted to be left out of a story that had made headlines in the Times, so once a week—on Sunday—a steady stream of neighbors appeared on our doorstep, bearing gifts and basking in reflected glory.

  “And today is Sunday,” I muttered, closing the bathroom door. “Bath, breakfast, church, and on with the show!”

  By the time I had finished dressing, Will and Rob were up, and by the time Annelise and I had finished dressing them, Bill was up again, so we trooped down to the kitchen en masse for a hearty breakfast. We were clearing the table when the doorbell rang. Annelise quickly took the boys into the back garden—they tended to get overexcited on parade days—and Bill went to answer the front door.

  “Who was it?” I asked, when he returned to the kitchen.

  “Terry Edmonds,” Bill replied.

  I stopped loading the dishwasher and gave him a puzzled glance. Terry Edmonds wasn’t a neighbor. He was a professional courier who picked up and delivered legal papers for Bill’s firm.

  “Since when does Terry work on Sunday?” I asked.

  “Special delivery,” said Bill. “I put it in the study.”

  “He brought it here?” I winced as another twinge of guilt assailed me. Bill had a high-tech office overlooking the village green in Finch, but he hadn’t set foot in it since I’d been shot. “If you don’t
get back to work soon, Bill, you’re going to have to change the address on your letterhead.”

  “All in good time, my love,” he said.

  I swung around to face him.

  “Look,” I said, flexing my arm gingerly. “I’m as good as new. You don’t have to play Nurse Nancy anymore.”

  “If I didn’t know better, I’d suspect that you were trying to get rid of me,” Bill observed mildly.

  “I am trying to get rid of you,” I scolded. “You can’t work all night and take care of me all day. You’ll make yourself ill and then where will we be? It’s mid-June already, Bill, time for you to resume a normal schedule. Annelise and I can look after the boys, and I can look after myself. I don’t need a babysitter anymore. I’m perfectly capable of—”

  “—being on time for church,” Bill inserted, “which we won’t be if we don’t get a move on.”

  I smiled grudgingly, closed the dishwasher, and called Annelise and the boys in from the back garden.

  The parade began within an hour of our return from church. The doorbell rang almost nonstop for the rest of the day.

  Sally Pyne, the plump and pleasantly chatty owner of the tearoom, dropped off a basket filled with her delectable Crazy Quilt Cookies, which had everything in them except coconut because Sally knew I wasn’t fond of coconut. The imperious Peggy Taxman, who ruled Finch with an iron hand and a voice that could penetrate granite, gave Will and Rob bags of candy from her general store, along with a stern lecture on dental hygiene. Miranda Morrow, Finch’s red-haired professional witch, bestowed an unlabeled packet of healing herbs upon us, and Dick Peacock, the rotund and amiable publican, gave us three bottles of his homemade wine. Since Dick’s wine was undrinkable and Miranda’s herbs were quite possibly illegal, Bill flushed both down the toilet after everyone had left.