Death in a Difficult Position Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-one

  Twenty-two

  Twenty-three

  Exercises

  Recipes

  Berkley Prime Crime titles by Diana Killian

  PRAISE FOR

  Murder on the Eightfold Path

  “A witty, uplifting story of how to not let life mess up your balance.”

  —The Romance Readers Connection

  “A lively and adventurous mystery . . . peopled with a cast of unique and quirky characters. The only yoga-themed cozy mystery series, with the inclusion of yoga tips and great organic recipes, makes the Mantra for Murder series a very tempting collection indeed.”

  —Fresh Fiction

  Dial Om for Murder

  “A great follow-up to the first book in the series.”

  —CA Reviews

  “A fun cozy mystery, with plenty of twist[s] and turns for the die-hard mystery enthusiast.”

  —Fresh Fiction

  Corpse Pose

  “[A] nicely executed cozy.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Diana Killian has outdone herself . . . Corpse Pose has it all, from a well-written plot and sharp prose to wit and humor that had me rolling with laughter . . . Fun, fun, fun!”

  —Michele Scott, author of the Wine Lover’s Mysteries

  “The best a cozy can be . . . [A] fresh, solid, and, most important, entertaining kickoff to her new yoga-themed series.”

  —ReviewingTheEvidence.com

  “A tight, well-written story.”

  —Gumshoe Review

  “A funny and fun cozy mystery.”

  —Affaire de Coeur

  Berkley Prime Crime titles by Diana Killian

  CORPSE POSE

  DIAL OM FOR MURDER

  MURDER ON THE EIGHTFOLD PATH

  DEATH IN A DIFFICULT POSITION

  THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

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  Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada

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  South Africa

  Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are 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. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE: The recipes contained in this book are to be followed exactly as written. The publisher is not responsible for your specific health or allergy needs that may require medical supervision. The publisher is not responsible for any adverse reactions to the recipes contained in this book.

  DEATH IN A DIFFICULT POSITION

  A Berkley Prime Crime Book / published by arrangement with the author

  PRINTING HISTORY

  Berkley Prime Crime mass-market edition / September 2011

  Copyright © 2011 by Diane Browne.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  For information, address: The Berkley Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  ISBN : 978-1-101-55111-0

  BERKLEY® PRIME CRIME

  Berkley Prime Crime Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014. BERKLEY® PRIME CRIME and the PRIME CRIME logo are trademarks of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  To Lisa and Megan—and the friendships that last a lifetime.

  Acknowledgments

  Sincere thanks to my editor, Faith Black, for her ongoing and much-tried patience—and of course a big thank-you to everyone at Berkley Prime Crime.

  One

  “The Reverend David Goode says you’re going to hell.”

  “Me?” A.J. Alexander stared at Sacred Balance receptionist Emma Rice’s severe features. “What? Why?”

  “Not for the reasons you might think,” Emma said obliquely, laying a stack of neatly sorted mail in A.J.’s in-box. “Reverend Goode says yoga is rooted in demonic practices. That even one little yoga class is playing right into the hands of evil.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding me. How could anyone—” A.J. stopped and eyed Emma doubtfully. “You don’t believe that, do you?” At sixty-something, Emma probably didn’t fit anyone’s image of a yoga studio receptionist. She was a short, slender black woman who favored Worishofer orthopedic sandals and Chantilly talcum, but she had a memory like a steel trap and organizational skills that many a five-star general would envy. A.J. didn’t even want to think about replacing her.

  Emma snorted. Not a ladylike snort, a snort like a workhorse facing a pitchfork of moldy hay. “Honey, if I thought there was something profane about all this stretching and bending, I wouldn’t be here. I’m old enough to know right from wrong.”

  And yet from the minute the Reverend David Goode had turned up in Stillbrook with his dog and pony show, Emma had been in attendance at every Sunday service. Well, perhaps dog and pony show wasn’t quite fair. A.J. liked to think of herself as both hip and tolerant, but evangelism made her uncomfortable. Especially the made-for-TV brand that Goode touted.

  “Did he mention me by name?”

  Emma nodded. “You and Lily Martin.”

  “Me and Lily?” There was some kind of cosmic irony to that. Lily Martin was A.J.’s business rival. Formerly A.J.’s co-manager at Sacred Balance, Lily had received what she considered a better offer and was now managing Yoga Meridian, a chic, upscale studio and spa in neighboring Blairstown.

  “The reverend sees you as the biggest threat, though,” Emma added as though that was somehow reassuring news.

  “Threat? What am I threatening?” Except maybe stiff backs and bulging waistlines? If only she could laugh this off the way it deserved to be. Unfortunately, though New Jersey was not a particularly
conservative state, Stillbrook was a small town with many small-town attitudes.

  Emma shook her head in part commiseration, part bemusement. “I don’t know, but I see a lot of familiar faces every Sunday.”

  Meaning a lot of Sacred Balance clients were also buying what the Reverend Goode was selling?

  “Great.” A.J. chewed her lip, thinking. “Maybe I should try and talk to him. Maybe he honestly doesn’t understand what we do here.”

  Emma shrugged her bony shoulders. The phone was ringing in the front lobby, and she went to answer it. A.J. studied the photo on her desk of Diantha Mason, founder of Sacred Balance studio. The woman in the photograph smiled back with serene confidence. No question what Aunt Di would do. Aunt Di would head straight into town and have it out with the good reverend.

  A.J. wasn’t afraid of confrontation, but she didn’t relish it either. After a moment’s thought, she reached for the phone on her desk.

  “Oh my God! Did you hear?”

  A.J. dropped the handset and sat back in her chair. Suze McDougal, the most junior of her instructors, stood in the office doorway, blonde hair standing on end. That wasn’t alarm. That was the way Suze’s hair always looked.

  “Did I hear what?”

  “About John Baumann’s cows.”

  It sounded like the start of a folk song. “Oh, did ye hear about John Baumann’s cows . . . ?”

  “I haven’t even got through my e-mail this morning, let alone—”

  “Something attacked them last night.”

  “When you say attacked—”

  Once again Suze interrupted. “A bunch of John Baumann’s cows had their throats ripped out last night!”

  “What?” A.J. knew she was gaping. She couldn’t help it. Not that Mondays didn’t have their own strange dynamic, but this was just . . . weirder and weirder.

  “Everybody’s talking about it.”

  A.J. spoke cautiously. “You mean ripped out as in . . .”

  Suze made an uncannily vivid gesture—sort of like a monster yanking his bowtie off with both claws.

  “Oh my gosh.”

  Suze nodded. “Really sick.”

  A.J. assumed Suze was going by what she’d heard others saying, which meant there could easily be some exaggeration. In fact, there was almost certainly some tall tale telling in this sort of situation, right?

  “What are people saying? I mean, what’s the theory? Bears?” Warren County was home to the Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area, and as such, the area had its share of wildlife, including the occasional black bear. Bear attacks were fairly rare, although the more people pushed into previously uninhabited areas, the more likely they were to encounter critters.

  “I don’t know if there is an official theory,” Suze said. “It’s weird, no?”

  “It’s weird, yes.” A.J. lived on a fairly remote farm outside of Stillbrook. She wasn’t exactly thrilled at the idea of marauding bears.

  “Are they going to hunt the bears?” She was nearly as unenthused at the idea of hunters as she was bears.

  “I don’t know. It might not be bears.”

  “What else could it be? Wild dogs?”

  “Wolves?”

  “Werewolves?”

  Suze said, “No, seriously.”

  “There are no wolves in New Jersey,” A.J. said firmly.

  “Yes, there are,” Suze said, to A.J.’s surprise. “There’s the Lakota Wolf Preserve at Camp Taylor Campground. That’s not that far from here. Maybe a wolf got out.”

  First bears, now wolves. It made A.J.’s issues with the Reverend Goode seem quite tame by comparison.

  “Oh!” Suze beamed, abruptly changing mood. “I saw your mom on TV last night. That was the best episode yet. An old boyfriend from your mother’s past turned out to be a hit man.”

  A.J. smiled feebly. Her mother, Elysia, once the darling of British B films, had a new career these days on the hit television series Golden Gumshoes, a show about three “mature” lady detectives. One critic had described the series as “Charlie’s Angels on Geritol and crack.” In A.J.’s opinion, he’d nailed it. Not that she was a regular viewer.

  The show did seem to be popular with the fickle public, and at least it kept Elysia out of trouble. Unless she was getting into trouble in California. A.J. listened with half an ear as Suze burbled on about the details of what sounded like another insane plot.

  “So finally your mom had to shoot him in order to save Gina’s life. . . .”

  “Oh dear.”

  Should she try to confront Reverend Goode? Maybe the best thing was to ignore his ranting and raving. If she went up against him, she was liable to bring more attention to his charges, even lend them credibility.

  “He died in your mom’s arms.”

  “Sounds . . . great.”

  “Oh, it was. Your mom’s such a good actress. I can’t believe you don’t watch the show. Oh my God. Look at the time!” Suze departed in a flash of sage green unitard.

  A.J. gave her head a little shake like she had water in her ear. She picked up the phone again but replaced the handset slowly. It was probably wiser not to give Goode advance warning. If she really was going to beard the lion in his den, there were advantages to not ringing the supper bell first.

  “Have a seat, please,” the grave young man told A.J. “I’ll see if the reverend can spare you a few minutes.”

  The nameplate on the tidy desk of the Reverend Goode’s administrative assistant read Lance Dally. Dally was thin and bespectacled but, nonetheless, attractive. His eyes were green and long-lashed behind wire-framed glasses. His mouth seemed naturally inclined to a wry smile despite his gravity, which A.J. read as an encouraging sign.

  She seated herself on the tan sofa in the lobby of the New Dawn Church headquarters in the Stillbrook Shopping Center and gazed doubtfully out the windows at the busy parking lot. People in raincoats splashed back and forth from their cars to the shops, heads ducked against the pelting rain.

  “He’ll be right with you,” Lance said, closing the door between the lobby and the mysterious inner hallway. He took his seat at the desk once more and began busily sorting the just-delivered mail.

  A.J. sighed inwardly and gazed out the window. They’d been having rain and thunderstorms all day—not unusual for November in New Jersey—and the parking lot was starting to flood. That meant the country roads would also be less and less traversable, which could making getting home that evening problematic. If A.J. did get stranded, she could always stay over at Jake’s. Thinking of the possibilities of an impromptu sleepover made it hard to suppress a smile. She bit her lip hard, not wanting the Reverend Goode to find her grinning like a loony in the church lobby.

  Assuming the reverend deigned to speak to her demonic self. There had been no sign of him so far, and A.J. wasn’t sure how much longer she could take the sappy, soulful Muzak drifting through the office speakers.

  “Have you worked for the New Dawn Church long?” she asked Lance, mostly out of boredom.

  He smiled. “I’ve been with the reverend a little over six months.”

  “Do you enjoy your work?”

  “I do. Yes.”

  A.J.’s cell phone vibrated, and she picked up her bag and fished it out.

  A photo of her mother looking uncharacteristically relaxed and maternal flashed up.

  Speak of the Devil. Elysia would be phoning with her travel plans. Golden Gumshoes had finished shooting for the season and Elysia planned to return to her home in Warren County for the break.

  A.J. was a little surprised at how much she was looking forward to seeing her mother. Their relationship had not always been as close as it was these days, but A.J. found that she’d missed Elysia during the long months she was filming her new series. Though A.J. had been frequently invited to visit Los Angeles, she just couldn’t bring herself to leave Sacred Balance for more than a day or two. In fact, every time Jake suggested they go away for a real vacation she reminded him that wit
hout Lily to co-manage, there was no one to handle any possible emergencies at the studio. The truth was, even when Lily had been her co-manager, A.J. hadn’t trusted her enough to leave Sacred Balance in Lily’s unsupervised hands. Ironically, Lily had felt the same way about A.J.

  No doubt that inability to trust had contributed to the strain between them.

  Conversations with Elysia often led in unexpected directions, so A.J. let the call go to voice mail and then listened to the message. It was brief and to the point. Elysia gave her flight info and requested that A.J. pick her up in Elysia’s Land Rover rather than A.J.’s own car. A.J. raised her brows at the imperial directive, saved the message, and put her phone away.

  Still no sign of the Reverend Goode. A.J. sighed.

  “He’s really very busy,” Lance said apologetically with a glance at the phone on his desk. “His line is still in use.”

  A.J. nodded, gazing restlessly around the small room. The lobby was generic to the extreme. Neutral walls, neutral carpet, tan furniture, and a couple of potted silk plants. A rental space in a mall was not A.J.’s idea of church, and she assumed that worship services were held elsewhere. For one thing, no way could this space be large enough to contain the crowds that the Reverend Goode supposedly drew each Sunday.

  A tidy bulletin board notified the faithful of an upcoming bake sale, a cross-country bike ride, and a youth group secret slide show. A picture of a giant glass and steel cathedral with a small brass plate inscribed New Dawn Church hung on one wall. On the opposite wall was a large formal photograph of a plain woman in a plain navy dress and an extremely handsome man wearing a smile that would put most toothpaste models to shame. A.J. had seen enough photos in the local paper to recognize the Reverend David Goode, but she had no idea who the woman was. Mrs. Reverend?