A Treasure to Die For
by
Richard Houston
Copyright © 2014 Richard Houston. All rights reserved. Including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof, in any form. No part of this text may be reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the author.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictionally. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to actual events or locales is entirely coincidental.
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with.
Version 2015.08.26
Cover Art by Victorine Lieske
Also by Richard Houston:
A View to Die For
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B009NNL8EC
Book to Die For
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00JLW1E1W
Acknowledgements
The author could not have finished this book without the help of his editors and beta readers:
Elise Abram, www.eliseabram.com
Faith Blum, www.faithblum.com
George Burke
Bob Cherny
Lynne Fellows
Cheryl Houston
Robert Spearman
And for her great cover art, Victorine Lieske, www.bluevalleyauthorservices.com
Dedication
This book is dedicated to all my fans and loyal readers who have told me how much they love this series.
And to my family for all the time I spent shut up in my room to write this novel.
Acknowledgements
Dedication
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
CHAPTER ONE
For several months now, I’ve been thinking of ways to commit the perfect murder. It’s not that I’m a violent man, or I’d own a Doberman instead of a Golden Retriever. No, it’s because after I inadvertently solved a couple of murders, I thought I might try to write a murder mystery. Well, to be fair, Fred should get most of the credit for finding those killers, but I did help. He’s great when it comes to fetching rocks and sticks, but really sucks at speaking, so together we make a pretty good team, like Scooby Doo and Shaggy.
Fortunately for Evanovich and Patterson, I couldn’t get past the first chapter of my book. Good writers need to get into the heads of their characters and I couldn’t for the life of me understand why someone would want to kill another human being. All that changed the day Shelia’s boyfriend tried to kill Fred.
My brief journey into the dark side started like most days when I was between jobs, which lately, was far too often. Fred and I would spend half our morning walking around Evergreen Lake where a normal forty-five minute walk takes a couple hours if I let him swim and retrieve sticks. Little did I know then that I was about to get involved in a real murder.
Bonnie, my neighbor and friend, had talked me into joining her for a signing at a small bookstore in town. She had taken it upon herself to keep me busy ever since my wife, Julie, died last year. Bonnie thought I should be at the signing because the author was supposed to be talking about a hidden code in Tom Sawyer. She knew Julie had bought me a copy of the book on our first date. It was some kind of omen, she said, and insisted I had to go because a friend of hers, who bought and sold rare books, would be there and could tell me how much my copy is worth.
I told her I wouldn’t sell the book for a million dollars and did everything I could to get out of going; including the fact that Fred would probably be soaking wet after his swim in the lake. That was when she insisted on walking the lake with us so she could help keep him out of the water. She would have better luck taking an alcoholic on a tour of Coors’ brewery and not letting him sample the merchandise.
Luckily for Bonnie, Evergreen Lake isn’t much more than a large pond with benches strategically placed where she could stop to catch her breath. Catching a breath for Bonnie consisted of lighting a cigarette and smoking half of it before flicking it into the water. She had recently turned sixty-nine, but refused to let her age stop her from living, as she put it.
About halfway through our walk, Bonnie needed another break and plunked her thin frame down on a nearby bench. “Let’s take five, Jake. We don’t want to be the first ones there.” She was right, of course. I had a habit of always being too early, like the last time I picked up my first wife from work and saw her on her boss’s lap. Sometimes it pays to be late.
“Sure, Bon, Fred needs off this leash anyway.” We were on the backside of the lake, away from the fishermen and most of the morning crowd so I let him loose. He ran straight to a nearby stick and brought it back to me. I instinctively threw it into the water.
Bonnie tried to look perturbed, but her smile gave her away. “Jake, you promised he wouldn’t get wet.”
I answered with a frown when I saw her reach inside her purse for a pack of cigarettes. “And you promised to cut back on those.”
Her smile faded to a pout while we watched Fred swim after the stick. I tried to forget I had agreed to sit through a boring reading by a local author. My mind had drifted to when Fred and I used to take these walks with Julie. Unlike my first wife who would yell and scream when Fred shook himself dry after a swim, Julie only laughed. Then she would shake her head so her ponytail would swing back and forth before picking up the stick to throw it back in the water. Julie had died just when I thought life couldn’t get better.
Fred kept me from becoming totally depressed, and it wasn’t long before I was back to writing how-to articles and doing odd jobs to pay the bills, even if it wasn’t always on time. I knew the real reason I didn’t want to go to the reading was because I was jealous. I couldn’t for the life of me fathom how this guy was not only published, but made it to the New York Times Best Sellers List and was selling his book faster than they could be printed.
Bonnie woke me from my trance with a sharp jab of her elbow. “She has a nerve coming back here.” At seventy-two-hundred feet, we were high enough to enjoy the warm morning sun and escape the haze from Denver, but not high enough to escape from its rudest residents. I didn’t see Shelia and her boyfriend until it was too late.