Dutch Courage: A Brandy Wyne Mystery
by Anne Avery
Being a rich widow isn't all it's cracked up to be.
I was two days, five hours, and fourteen minutes away from my first appointment with a divorce lawyer I couldn’t afford when my husband, not so fondly known as The Jerk, plowed into a tree at high speed and made me a widow before I could become a divorcée. His death didn’t bother me much, but the fact he’d been driving a brand new Porsche I knew nothing about was a tad upsetting.
And that was before I discovered his various banking and investment accounts stuffed with a whole lot of cash I definitely hadn’t known existed. Widowhood, it turned out, was a whole lot more profitable than I’d ever have imagined.
It wasn’t long before I’d ditched the Goodwill hand-me-downs I’d been wearing in favor of Versace and Chanel, bought my own brand new Porsche, then driven all the way across country to the Chica Perdida Hotel, the ultra-luxurious resort on Chica Perdida Key in the Florida Keys, which was about as far from California and my old life as I could get and still keep my feet on the ground.
The Chica promised sun, sand, and every luxury a girl could want. I assumed it was just bad luck that it also included a dead body on the beach. That is, I did until the local Chief of Police somehow connected the dead man with my dead husband and promptly started eyeing me for the role of Murder Suspect Numero Uno!
I was two days, five hours, and fourteen minutes away from my first appointment with a divorce lawyer I couldn’t afford when my husband, not so fondly known as The Jerk, plowed into a tree at high speed and made me a widow before I could become a divorcée. His death didn’t bother me much, but the fact he’d been driving a brand new Porsche I knew nothing about was a tad upsetting.
And that was before I discovered his various banking and investment accounts stuffed with a whole lot of cash I definitely hadn’t known existed. Widowhood, it turned out, was a whole lot more profitable than I’d ever have imagined.
It wasn’t long before I’d ditched the Goodwill hand-me-downs I’d been wearing in favor of Versace and Chanel, bought my own brand new Porsche, then driven all the way across country to the Chica Perdida Hotel, the ultra-luxurious resort on Chica Perdida Key in the Florida Keys, which was about as far from California and my old life as I could get and still keep my feet on the ground.
The Chica promised sun, sand, and every luxury a girl could want. I assumed it was just bad luck that it also included a dead body on the beach. That is, I did until the local Chief of Police somehow connected the dead man with my dead husband and promptly started eyeing me for the role of Murder Suspect Numero Uno!