Fiber & Brimstone

Informationen zum Autor Laura Childs is the New York Times bestselling author of the Cackleberry Club, Tea Shop, and Scrapbooking mysteries. In her past life she was a Clio Award–winning advertising writer and CEO of her own marketing firm. She lives in Plymouth, Minnesota. Klappentext With its history of spooky folklore, New Orleans offers the perfect atmosphere for Halloween. Scrappy sleuth Carmela Bertrand is getting into the spirit by building a giant puppet for the French Quarter's Halloween Monsters and Mayhem parade. But things get terrifying earlier than expected when she overhears an argument between Jekyll Hardy and Brett Fowler-and minutes later, finds Fowler's lifeless body. Chapter 1 A globulous giant head, evil grin stretched wide across its glowing orange face, teeth jagged as a buzz saw, bobbed and pecked at the air above Carmela Bertrand's head. Ten feet high, it dwarfed her five-foot-six-inch frame, seemingly oblivious to her concerned gaze. The bizarre creature hovered for a few more seconds, like a bad moon rising, then slowly sank to eye level. "It's still not working," Carmela called to her friend Ava Gruiex. She retreated a few paces to the temporary table they'd set up in the Pluvius krewe's vast float den and bent low over her sketches. Some design flaw kept causing her giant puppet to deflate, and she couldn't quite put her finger on what was causing the implosion. Carmela pursed her lips and frowned, allowing a few faint crinkles to appear at the corners of her mouth. Blue-gray eyes, with the same flat glint as the Gulf of Mexico, scanned her notes and hand-drawn pattern, while one hand reached up to haphazardly tousle her caramel-colored chopped and gelled hair. With a fair complexion, full mouth, and perpetually inquisitive expression, Carmela was quite lovely, even by New Orleans standards, where moonlight and magnolias seemed to be handed out by the bushel basket. But her physical traits, her attractiveness quotient to men, like current boyfriend Lieutenant Edgar Babcock, were the furthest thing from Carmela's mind right now. She was bound and determined to figure out this crazy puppet if it killed her. After all, Halloween was only six days away and this puppet, such as it was, was scheduled to march in the Monsters and Mayhem Torchlight Parade. "Tell Miguel we're going to wrap for the night," Carmela called to her friend Ava, who'd offered to lend assistance as long as she didn't have to actually handle a needle and thread. Or ponder the puppet's inside hydraulics. Ava nodded briskly, ran lethal red-lacquered fingernails down her tight red T-shirt to the waist of her skin-tight black leather pants, and nodded. She was a curvaceous almost-thirty, a few months older than Carmela, and a few inches taller. As she strode over to the monster, her four-inch stilettos clicking and clacking above the babble of other float designers in the vast float den, Ava drawled, in a voice dripping with honey, "Miguel, sweetie pie, Carmela says we're gonna bag it." The strange yellow head seemed to bob in agreement on its stalk-like neck, and then the puppet slowly bent forward. As if in slow motion, the creature collapsed into yards of parachute nylon, the fabric whispering softly, like banana leaves in a bayou breeze at midnight. And Miguel Angelle, Ava's right-hand man at the Juju Voodoo shop, carefully emerged from his costume. "Hot in there?" Ava asked him. Even though it was cool in the Pluvius float den, Miguel was sweating bullets inside the costume Carmela had designed and painstakingly constructed by hand. "The mouth's still not working," Miguel told Ava. "Tell Carmela if she wants gnashing teeth, I have to get my hand all the way in there." "Got it," said Ava as Miguel gathered up gigantic folds of nylon and pushed them at her. Then Miguel gave a quick wave and was off across the den, dodging groups of ...

About the author

Laura Childs is the New York Times bestselling author of the Cackleberry Club, Tea Shop, and Scrapbooking mysteries. In her past life she was a Clio Award–winning advertising writer and CEO of her own marketing firm. She lives in Plymouth, Minnesota.

Product details

• Authors: Laura Childs
• Publisher: Berkley Publishing Group
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback
• Released: 04.10.2011
• EAN: 9780425244029
• ISBN: 978-0-425-24402-9
• No. of pages: 352
• Dimensions: 107 mm x 173 mm x 23 mm
• Series: Scrapbooking Mystery; Scrapbooking Mystery; A Scrapbooking Mystery
• Subject: Fiction > Suspense