Cozy Mystery audiobook scripts

Nobody in Upper Tidbury had ever been murdered before, and Mrs. Winifred Plum felt strongly that it was bad manners to start at the church fete. "Winnie, you cannot stand there," said Constable Dobbs. "This is a crime scene." "It is the cake tent, Gerald. I have stood here every June since you were in short trousers." "There's been a death." "I am aware. I found him. Face down in the lemon drizzle, poor man, which I may say was not one of Marjorie's best." She lowered her voice. "Too dry. But that is not what killed him." "We don't know what killed him." "I do. Look at the table." He looked. Eleven cakes, each with a little numbered card. "There were twelve entries," said Mrs. Plum. "I counted them at nine. Somebody has taken a cake away, Gerald, and nobody steals a cake at a village fete unless there is something in it they would rather you did not taste."

I opened the bakery at five that morning, same as always, and found three things that should not have been there. A broken window, an empty shelf where my recipe box lived, and the mayor's reading glasses in my flour bin. "Don't touch anything," said Detective Ortiz. "I have forty scones due at the bank by eight." "Tess. It's a crime scene." "It's a kitchen. I can be careful in a kitchen." I pointed with a spatula. "Whoever it was came in hungry. Look at the cooling rack." "What about it?" "One cinnamon roll gone, and they took a center one. Who reaches past the edge for the center roll?" "Somebody with taste?" "Somebody who's bought them before. That's a regular, Ray." I tied my apron. "And they left the cash drawer alone and took my grandmother's recipes. So it isn't about money. It's about the county fair." He stared at me. "You got all that from a cinnamon roll?" "I got it from which cinnamon roll," I said. "Coffee?"

The Wednesday Night Knitters had been meeting above the hardware store for eleven years, and in that time they had solved one disappearance, two burglaries, and the mystery of who kept taking Doris's good scissors. "Well, it wasn't the nephew," said Doris, not looking up from her sleeve. "It's always the nephew," said Pearl. "Not this time. He was at the dentist. I checked." "You called his dentist?" "I am his dentist's aunt." Gladys, who was ninety and working on something enormous and orange, cleared her throat. The others went quiet. Gladys did not speak often, and when she did, somebody generally went to jail. "The gardener," she said. "Gladys, honey, they don't have a gardener." "No," Gladys agreed. "So who has been trimming that hedge?" Three sets of needles stopped at once. "Pearl," said Doris slowly, "get your car keys." "I'm mid-row." "Pearl." "Fine. But if I drop a stitch over this, somebody's paying."

My dog has never once been wrong about a person, which is a problem, because right now he is growling at the nicest man in town. "Biscuit. Stop it. That's Mr. Fairweather. He runs the food drive." Biscuit does not stop it. "He's usually so friendly," I tell Mr. Fairweather. "Quite all right." He smiles and keeps his hands in his coat pockets. "Dogs can smell fear, isn't that what they say?" "I think he smells ham." "I don't have any ham." "No," I say slowly, looking at the mud on his very clean shoes, the same red mud as the museum garden. "I didn't think you did." Biscuit sits down, satisfied. Somebody has finally caught up.

When Father Dolan's bicycle was stolen from outside the church in Ballycarrow, the whole village agreed on two things. It was a disgrace, and Nuala Feeney would have it solved before the guards had found their hats. "I'm not involved," Nuala said, from behind the post office counter. "Of course you're not," said Sergeant Tierney. "I only happened to notice a few things." "Go on, so." "That bicycle has no brakes. Everyone in the parish knows it has no brakes. So it was taken by a stranger, or by a fool." "That narrows it to half the county." "And whoever it was went down the hill road. There's a hole in the Mulligans' hedge the shape of a man." The sergeant put away his notebook. "Would you not just tell me who it was, Nuala?" "I would not. That'd be gossip." She stamped a parcel. "But if you were to call on the young curate, I'd say he'd be glad to sit down. Carefully."

I run the fish and chip shop at Wattle Bay, which means I know three things about everybody in town. What they order, when they order it, and when they suddenly stop. "Bev, I'm a police officer," said Senior Constable Nguyen. "I can't arrest a bloke because he changed his order." "Twenty years, Kim. Flake and a small chips, every Friday at six. Then the week the surf club money goes missing, he's in here Tuesday ordering lobster." "Maybe he got a raise." "He's the treasurer. It's volunteer." She stopped chewing. "And he paid cash," I said. "New fifties. Still stuck together." "That's not evidence." "No, love, that's a hint. The evidence is he asked me for a receipt." I wrapped her order and slid it across. "Who wants a receipt for lobster? Somebody who's forgotten which money he's spending." Kim looked at her chips, and then out at the surf club, and sighed. "I was going to have a quiet weekend," she said.

In thirty years at the Alder Falls Public Library, I have learned that people will lie to their doctor, their spouse and their pastor, but they will tell a librarian exactly what they are up to. "Marian, I can't go through library records on a hunch," said Sheriff Boyd. "I'm not offering records. I'm making conversation." "About what?" "About a man who came in Monday, never held a library card in his life, and asked for three books. One on antique clocks. One on the tides at Lake Winnesaw. And one on how long it takes concrete to set." The sheriff put down his coffee. "The Hendry clock went missing Tuesday," he said. "Did it? My goodness." "And they poured the new boat ramp Wednesday." "Isn't that something." I stamped a due date. "Now, I couldn't possibly tell you his name, Tom. That would be a breach of privacy. But he is parked in the fire lane, and I'd feel just terrible if you didn't go check his license."

The emergency meeting of the Little Wickham Gardening Club was called to order at four minutes past seven, and by ten past, three members had accused each other of murder and one had asked whether there would be biscuits. "Order," said the chair, Mrs. Hester Bright. "Colonel, sit down." "I will not sit down. That woman has as good as called me a poisoner." "I said you had access to weedkiller, Colonel," said Miss Tolley. "Which you do. You have a shed full of it. You use it on other people's dandelions." "Dandelions are a menace." "So, it appears, are you." "Order!" Hester rapped the table with a trowel. "Poor Mr. Crabbe was found in his greenhouse on Sunday. The police say natural causes. I say a man does not die naturally the night before the dahlia final, with the only key to the trophy cabinet in his pocket." "Is the key still in his pocket?" asked a small voice at the back. Everyone turned. It was the new member, the one who had only joined for the seed swap. "No," said Hester slowly. "It was not." "Then it isn't about dahlias, is it? It's about whatever's in the cabinet." The Colonel sat down. "There is nothing in the cabinet but the cup," said Miss Tolley. "And the minutes," said Hester. "Forty years of minutes." She had gone rather pale. "Including, now I think of it, who really won in 1987." Somebody at the back asked, again, about the biscuits.

It is three days before Christmas, the town gingerbread contest is in one hour, and somebody has bitten the head off the mayor's entry. "This is sabotage," says Mayor Whitlock. "It's a cookie, Dale." "It is a scale model of the courthouse with eleven gingerbread councilmen and one gingerbread me. And I am the one missing a head." I crouch by the table. I run the hardware store, but I read a lot of mysteries, and in a town this size that makes me the detective. "Who had a key to the hall?" "Me. The janitor. The Ladies' Auxiliary." "That's forty people." "Forty-one. Agnes got a spare cut." I look closer. Crumbs. A smear of red icing. And low down on the table leg, about knee height, one small sticky handprint. "Dale. Did your granddaughter come by this morning?" "For five minutes. She's four. She's an angel." "She's a suspect," I say. "And she's got icing on her ear."

Now, I have judged the Pecan County Chili Cook-Off for nineteen years, and nobody ever fainted at it until Earl Tubbs keeled over at table six. "He'll be fine," said Doc Hadley. "But somebody doctored that chili." "Whose was it?" "That's the trouble, Buck. It was his own." Well, that set everybody talking. I walked down the row instead. Eleven pots. Eleven spoons. And Lurleen Baker, two tables down, stirring like she meant to wear a hole in the pot. "Afternoon, Lurleen." "Buck." "Earl's took sick." "I heard. Shame." "You two still feuding over that blue ribbon?" "I don't feud. I'm a Christian woman." "Yes, ma'am." I leaned over her pot and took a good long sniff. "Lurleen, honey, how come your chili smells like Earl's recipe, and Earl's smelled like a bottle of sleeping tonic?" She quit stirring. "Somebody switched the pots," I said. "And I don't believe it was you. I believe it was meant for you."

On the morning of the fourth of May, 1924, Miss Edith Larkin boarded the number eleven omnibus with a hatbox, a bag of peppermints, and the firm intention of proving her employer innocent before luncheon. "You're the typist from Harcourt's," said the conductor. "The jewel business. It's in all the papers." "I am a secretary," said Miss Larkin. "And the papers are wrong." "They say the old man took the necklace himself." "Mr. Harcourt cannot find his own spectacles when they are on his nose. He did not crack a safe." She offered him a peppermint. "Tell me, were you on this route Tuesday night?" "I was." "Did a gentleman board at Farrow Street, about eleven? Evening dress, possibly out of breath?" The conductor stopped chewing. "Left glove missing." "Thank you," said Miss Larkin warmly. "That is the nicest thing anyone has said to me all week. Where did he get off?" "Now, miss, I oughtn't to say." She held out the whole bag. "Pelham Mews," he said.

The bookshop came with a leaky roof, a mountain of debt, and the ghost of the previous owner, who had opinions about all three. "You've shelved the poetry wrong," said Mr. Finch. "Good morning to you too." "It's Monday. Nothing good happens on a Monday. I died on a Monday." "You fell off a ladder, Mr. Finch. It was an accident." "So everyone keeps saying." He drifted through the cash register, which he knew I hated. "Thirty years I climbed that ladder. Do you know what was different that morning?" "What?" "Somebody had oiled the wheels." I stopped counting change. "I never oiled the wheels," he said. "I liked the squeak. Kept the customers from sneaking up on me." "Who else had a key?" "Ah." He actually smiled, which on a ghost is unsettling. "Now you're asking the right question. Only took you six weeks." He floated toward the back room. "Bring a notebook. And for heaven's sake, fix the poetry."

Three things happen every Tuesday at Sunset Pines Retirement Village. Bingo at seven, decaf at eight, and by nine, Ruthie Katz has accused somebody of a felony. This Tuesday she was right. "The jackpot's short," she said, sliding into our booth. "Four hundred dollars. I counted the envelope before and after." "You counted the bingo envelope?" said Walt. "I was a bank teller for forty years, Walter. I count everything. I've counted your teeth." I should explain the three of us. Ruthie has the brains. Walt, who was a mailman, has the legs, or did until the hip. I taught high school drama, so I have what Ruthie calls no useful skills and a loud voice. "So who had the envelope?" I asked. "Brenda from Activities. Then the new night manager." "It's the night manager," Walt said. "Brand new shoes. On that salary?" Ruthie tapped the table. "We need him out of his office for ten minutes. A distraction." They both turned and looked at me. "Oh, no," I said. "You did eleven seasons of summer stock, Leonard." "I am eighty-one years old." "Then it'll be very convincing when you collapse." I would like it on the record that I objected. I would also like it on the record that I was magnificent. I clutched my chest by the piano, I called for my mother, and I took down a ficus on my way to the floor. Walt was in and out of that office in six minutes. Nine, with the hip.

I knew the moment I tasted the marmalade that somebody at the Women's Guild was lying. Seville orange, she had written on the label. Made last week. But Seville oranges are over by February, and this is June. So either dear Prudence has a time machine in her pantry, or that jar came from the cellar of a woman who has been missing since the spring. I had another spoonful. One must be thorough.

The sign on my bookshop door said Closed for Inventory, which was true. I was taking inventory of who could have stolen a first edition from a locked case six feet from my desk. "Maybe you sold it and forgot," said my sister. "It was worth more than the building." "Then maybe it was the cat." We both looked at Chaucer, asleep on the atlases, fourteen pounds of orange indifference. "He doesn't have thumbs, June." "He doesn't have morals either." "Three people came in today. The mailman, Mrs. Pruitt, and a man who asked for the restroom." "We don't have a public restroom." "No," I said slowly. "But I pointed him down the back hall anyway. And he was gone ten minutes."

Let me state for the record that I saw everything. I am the cat. I see everything. It is simply that nobody ever asks. At nine o'clock the tall human closed the yarn shop and went upstairs. At ten past, the back window opened, and in came a person who was not staff. The staff have treats. This person went directly to the till, which was foolish, because my human keeps the real money in the tin marked Buttons. Then they trod on my tail. I wish this noted. I consider it the more serious offence. Naturally I gathered evidence. I removed a quantity of trouser, left leg, grey wool. It is under the sofa with my other valuables. This morning there is a policeman in the shop, asking my human if she noticed anything unusual. She says no. I am sitting on his notebook. I have been sitting on it for some time. Any moment now, one of them is going to work out why.

The Lighthouse Tea Room in Port Aigas served forty covers on a good day, and Morven Blair could tell you where every one of them had been sitting when the lifeboat fund went missing. "Table four," she said. "The birdwatchers." "They've an alibi," said Constable Reid. "They were watching birds." "In that fog?" She set down the teapot. "And they'd binoculars round their necks and not a speck of mud on their boots. Three days on the cliff path, Hamish. In November." "Tourists are tidy." "Tourists order the scone. Those two had the soup and kept their coats on." She untied her apron. "Folk who keep their coats on are planning to leave in a hurry."

Somebody in this town is returning library books with clues in them, and I would like them to know I am onto it. Tuesday, a cookbook, with one page turned down. Poison ivy remedies. Wednesday, a road atlas, and inside it a gas receipt from the night of the break-in. Today, a mystery novel. The last chapter has been torn out. Either I have a witness who is too shy to talk, or a thief who wants to be caught. Both are overdue.

A good compost heap will tell you everything about a household, and the one at number nine was telling me that Mrs. Ogilvy had not gone to her sister's in Devon. "Arthur, come away from there," said my wife. "You're trespassing." "I'm turning it for her. Neighbourly." "You're snooping." "Look, Jean. Half a grapefruit, fresh this morning. She's the only one in that house who eats grapefruit." "So he's eating it." "It gives him hives." I leaned on my fork. "She's still in there, Jean. And they told the whole street she'd gone, the very day the raffle money did." Jean was quiet for a moment. "I'll put the kettle on," she said. "And then I think you'd better ring someone."

It is Halloween night, my tea shop is full of small pirates, and I have just realized that the witch at table three is the only grown-up who came alone. "Poppy," I whisper to my niece. "The lady in the pointed hat. Did she come in with the school group?" "Nope. She was here before." "Did she order?" "Chamomile. She paid with a really old coin." Poppy is nine, dressed as a detective, and taking it very seriously. "Also, Aunt Jo, the antique shop next door got robbed an hour ago. Old coins." I look at her. "I have a badge," she says. "People tell me things." "It's a plastic badge." "They don't know that."

I have taught Tuesday night cooking class for six years, and I can tell you the exact moment it stopped being about risotto. It was when I opened the saffron tin and found a diamond ring in it. "Nobody panic," I said. Twelve students panicked. "Is that real?" said Marcy from station two. "Is that mine?" said her husband, which was interesting. "Everybody stay at your stations. Keep stirring." I held the ring up to the light. "This tin was sealed when I locked up last week. So somebody in this room hid it here tonight." "Why would anyone hide a ring in saffron?" asked the quiet man at station nine. "Because it's the one ingredient nobody else is allowed to touch." I looked down the row. Eleven worried faces. One very calm one. "And because whoever it was needed empty pockets when the police came through the lobby an hour ago. Sir, your rice is burning."

I have kept a respectable boarding house on Garnet Street since 1898, and I will say this for a house full of lodgers. Nobody can steal so much as a hatpin without six people hearing the floorboard. So when Mr. Aldous Pym came down to breakfast and announced that his gold watch had been taken in the night, I did not send for the police. I sent for more toast. "Mrs. Tibbet, I must insist," he said. "Sit down, Mr. Pym. You will have your watch before the eggs are cold." I looked round my table. Miss Fenn, the schoolteacher, buttering very fast. Young Mr. Rourke, who sells patent medicines and owes me two weeks. And the Professor, who has not noticed anything since the last century. "Now then. The third stair creaks, and I sleep light. It creaked once last night, at a quarter past one. Going up." "Up?" said Miss Fenn. "Up. Not down. Somebody came home late, and passed Mr. Pym's door on the way." Mr. Rourke had gone the color of the tablecloth. "I never took it," he said. "I swear. His door was open and it was lying on the carpet. I only picked it up so it wouldn't be trod on." "And where is it now?" "On the hall table. Under the newspaper. I meant to say, only he came down shouting." I went and looked. There it was, ticking away. "Mr. Pym," I said, "your chain is broken. Eat your eggs. Mr. Rourke, two weeks. Friday."

My aunt left me her tarot shop, her debts, and a deck of cards that will not stop predicting crimes on my street. "It's just one card," says my neighbor Gus, who runs the bike repair place and does not believe in any of this. "Doesn't it come up all the time?" "Not four mornings in a row. Not the Seven of Swords." "What's the Seven of Swords?" "A thief. Sneaking off with something that isn't his." "Lena. Come on." "Monday, I pulled it. Monday night the florist got robbed. Tuesday, same card, and somebody hit the pet store." "Coincidence." "This morning I pulled it again. And then this." I flip the next card over. A great big wheel. Gus stops smiling. "That's not a real card," he says. "It's the Wheel of Fortune, Gus. It's extremely real. And you are the only shop on this block with wheels in the window." I hand him my phone. "Call your alarm company. I'll make tea."

At Palm Meadow Estates, the shuffleboard court opened at eight, the gossip opened at five past, and by nine Frank Delgado had a theory. "It's the son-in-law," he said. "You don't know that," said Irene. "He drives a convertible." "That's not a crime, Frank." "It is at his age." He lined up his shot. "Look. Mabel's coin collection disappears Saturday. Sunday, the son-in-law shows up with flowers. When has that man ever brought flowers?" "Her birthday." "Her birthday's in March." Irene had been a court stenographer for thirty-five years. She remembered everything anybody had ever said, which made her a terrible person to lie to. "He told Mabel he was up at the lake on Saturday," she said slowly. "See?" "But on Sunday he complained about the drawbridge traffic. There's no drawbridge between here and the lake, Frank." Frank missed his shot entirely. "Irene," he said, "you are the scariest woman I ever met." "Thank you. It's your turn to buy the coffee."

Bless their heart, whoever has been sneaking around the church bake sale did not count on me keeping a ledger. Forty-two pies came in. Forty-one were sold. There is not one pie left on that table. And the cash box is over by exactly nine dollars, which is the price of a pie. So we are not looking for a thief, y'all. We are looking for somebody who took Darlene's lemon pie in secret and felt too guilty not to pay. That is her husband.

She told the police she had spent the whole evening knitting, and I might have believed her, if she had not been holding the needles upside down. "Is that a problem?" asked Officer Bell. "It's like saying you drove all night and pointing at the trunk. And look at the scarf. First ten rows, tight and even. That's mine. I sell them started. The rest is hers." Four rows, full of holes. "That is not three hours of work. That's ten minutes, in a parked car." "You can tell it was a car?" "There's a seat belt crease across row twelve." He wrote that down. Then he looked up. "Do you teach a class?" "Thursdays," I said. "Bring your own needles."

Our book club has not finished a book since 2019, but in that time we have correctly identified one embezzler, two affairs, and whoever keeps stealing the Kowalskis' newspaper. Tonight it's the Garden Society raffle. "It was rigged," says Priya, pouring. "The same woman has won the quilt three years running." "Maybe she's lucky," says Dana. "Nobody's that lucky. I'm an actuary." "You say that like it's a threat." "It is a threat." I'm the host, so I'm the one with the snacks and the whiteboard. Yes, we have a whiteboard. "Okay. Who draws the ticket?" "The president." "Who prints the tickets?" "The president's husband." "And who won?" "The president's sister," says Dana. "Oh, come on. That's not even trying." "I'm offended by how lazy it is," says Priya. "So next year we buy every single ticket," I say. "All of them. And see who wins." A pause. Then Dana raises her glass. "This," she says, "is why we don't read."

My husband says an innkeeper should notice everything and mention nothing. I have never once managed the second part. So when the couple in the Maple Room signed our guest book as Mr. and Mrs. John Smith, I mentioned it. "Theo. People are allowed to be called Smith." "He wrote Smith. She started to write a G and turned it into an S. That is the guiltiest S I have ever seen." "You're doing the thing." "I am not doing the thing." "You are holding the guest book up to the lamp." I put it down. I picked it up again. "They've got one suitcase between them, and he wouldn't let me carry it. They asked for the room with the view of the road, Sam. Nobody asks for the road. And when the radio said the Ashford Gallery had been robbed, she turned it off." "Maybe she doesn't like the news." "Then she asked what time the border crossing closes." Sam stopped chopping. Eleven years of marriage, and I had finally said something that made him stop chopping. "What did you tell her?" "I said nine. It's actually midnight. And I told them you make the best blueberry pancakes in the state, which nobody has ever walked out on." Above us, a floorboard creaked, very carefully. "So we just have to keep them here until morning," he said. "Until the sheriff finishes his supper. I called him twenty minutes ago." Sam picked up the knife again. "You could have led with that."

Miss Honoria Peck had been headmistress of St. Winifred's for thirty-one years, and in retirement she found that a jewel thief was really no different from a boy who had not done his Latin. "Do sit down, Mr. Crane. Milk?" "I only came about the hedge." "Of course you did. Sugar?" "Two. Miss Peck, about the hedge." "You told the inspector you were at the cinema on Friday evening." "I was." "What was the picture?" He told her the plot, the star, and the price of the ticket. "How thorough," said Miss Peck. "Most people can hardly remember what they saw last week. You have learned it by heart." She stirred her tea. "A boy who has copied his homework can recite it, but never explain it. Why did the heroine go back to the house, Mr. Crane?" Silence. "Quite," she said kindly. "Drink your tea. Then we shall telephone the inspector together, and you will feel so much better."

The only witness to the robbery at Wexler's Pet Emporium is a forty-year-old parrot named Captain, and he will not stop talking. Unfortunately, what he says is, "Who's a pretty boy?" He says it to the detective. He says it to the insurance man. He says it to me. Then the delivery driver walks in, and Captain goes quiet, puffs up to twice his size, and says, very clearly, in a man's voice, "Hurry up, Kevin." The driver's name tag says Kevin.