Featured Excerpt: She Doesn’t Have a Clue by Jenny Elder Moke
By Crime HQ
January 31, 2025Our story begins, as these stories often do, with an awfully convenient murder.
Not convenient for the murder victim, of course. They probably had plans, hopes and dreams, maybe even a date or a meal left unfinished. No, I guess their murder came as a bit of a shock for them.
It might not even be convenient for the murderer, considering the circumstances. That’s the problem with crimes of passion, isn’t it? There you are, having a normal day, fed up with your spouse or your cranky neighbor or maybe your boss, and suddenly, BAM! You’ve got blood on your hands, a blunt object to toss in a river, clothes to burn, and an alibi to line up.
But these murders are admittedly convenient for Loretta Starling, she of the Starling Mysteries, a Florida Keys bartender by night and amateur sleuth by day. This is Loretta’s fourth murder in as many books in her sleepy vacation resort town, and, really, it’s a wonder no one has gotten suspicious of Loretta herself. I mean, look at Jessica Fletcher. How many people have to kick the bucket around her before you start looking for blood spatter on that typewriter? Murder, She Committed, am I right?
Kate Valentine sighed and deleted the note on her phone, letting her head drop against the back seat of the ride share. She’d thought a change in venue and writing device might have shaken some decent words loose, but so far it was proving as productive as the last six months of trying to force this book out hunched over her laptop in her apartment, surrounded by increasingly distressing mounds of takeout containers.
“You said Pier 66?” said the driver as they traversed the brilliant blue of the Lake Washington Ship Canal, looking her over in the rearview mirror. “That’s the clipper terminal, right? You headed to Victoria or the San Juan Islands?”
Kate cut her gaze up sharply. That was the problem with writing murder mysteries; it made a girl far more fine-tuned to the inherent dangers in the minds of men. Any rideshare driver could end up being The Bone Collector. Sure, this guy had a picture wedged into his dashboard of what looked like a wife and two kids, but how was Kate to know they were real? The car was some kind of gray SUV that she normally would have clocked the make, model, license, and any visible damage or identifying marks on. This time she’d barely even checked to make sure it was her rideshare before chucking her suitcase into the trunk.
“A private island, actually,” Kate said, turning her attention out the window. The sky outside was no help for her mood, the glorious golden tones of a Pacific Northwest autumn having given way to the gloomy gray rains of late October. It was the season of SAD lights and short days, a constant drizzle in the air that ruined your hair and turned your socks squishy. How was she meant to imagine the sunny, saturated beach vibes of a Florida Keys summer in this drab gray existence? Normally she loved a rainy day—the perfect excuse to curl up with a hot mug of coffee, a cozy oversize sweater, and the latest Loretta murder. But Loretta was playing as coy with her as the sun behind the clouds, frustratingly out of reach.
“I didn’t realize there were private islands out there,” the driver continued. “Which one are you headed to?”
“Hempstead Island,” said Kate, never one to offend someone who might keep her pinky toe as a memento. That was the problem with being a woman in the real world; not all men were murderers, but you couldn’t tell the difference between the ones who were and the ones who weren’t just by looking.
Maybe in the new book, Loretta could track down a murderous rideshare driver who asked too many questions and blew through one too many red lights. Kate opened a new note on her phone, typing away furiously.
“Where you headed?” asked the driver, making suggestive eyes at Loretta through the rearview mirror. “What business is it of yours?” Loretta asked, making hard eyes right back at the nosy driver as she pulled out her lipstick case shaped like a knife and ran the color over her lips for emphasis. Shocking Red, the tube promised, but on Loretta it looked natural.
Of course, there were currently only two rideshare drivers on Big Pine Key, and one of them was Loretta’s aunt. The other was the hot British mixologist who worked with Loretta at the Key Lime and had already been accused (and acquitted) of murder in book one. So maybe not a rideshare murderer, then.
“Hempstead?” the man said as Kate deleted the note, his eyebrows rising in surprise. “That got anything to do with the Hempstead building downtown?”
“And Hempstead Park, and the Hempstead Arts Center, and Hempstead Dormitory at the University of Washington,” Kate went on. “Those Hempsteads.”
The man let out a low whistle. “That’s old money. You a Hempstead?”
Kate sighed. “No, I’m just attending a wedding.”
“Yeah, I didn’t figure you were,” the man said, shaking his head. “Money like that, you don’t take rideshares. You just buy the car and the damn driver.”
When Spencer took Kate to Orca Island for their last anniversary, it was a full-day trek of walking to the bus stop, wedging herself in with a shirtless man in old army fatigues on the last remaining bus seat available, and riding the public ferry with gulls screaming and children wailing, before walking more than three miles from the ferry terminal on Orca to their Airbnb because Spencer didn’t want to spend forty dollars for a taxi. And now Kennedy probably helicoptered both of them to Hempstead Island for the weekend without a second thought.
“Pier 66,” announced her driver as he parked the car and stepped out. He squinted toward the docks. “That your boat down there? Sheesh, looks expensive.”
It did look expensive, the sleek white boat waiting below. Probably a yacht, if Kate knew anything about boats. Which you would think she would, considering she wrote a whole successful series set in the Florida Keys. But her knowledge didn’t extend very far beyond “they float in water.” She’d gotten dinged in more than a few online reviews on that front. She once put Loretta in the ocean on a pontoon during a storm, which apparently was not a seaworthy vessel, according to DanSeaLife4376.
“I’ll get your suitcase,” said her driver as she stepped out. He squinted in the direction of the dock where the possibly-a-yacht waited. “You sure that’s your boat? Looks like it’s pulling away.”
Kate had been too busy rating him five stars—at least one of them out of guilt for briefly assuming he was a murderer—to pay attention to the boat. But now that he’d mentioned it, there was a thin sliver of ocean water between the edge of the boat and the dock. A man stood on the aft deck in a puffy jacket and a thick beanie, watching as an other man cast off their dock lines (that, at least, she’d learned from her research).
“I think you’re gonna miss it,” the driver said.
“Like hell I am,” Kate said, hoisting her rolling case under one arm. She took off for the stairs, waving her free arm. “Hold the boat, please!”
Now that she was full-on sprinting across the uneven wooden planks it was plain to see the fat slice of green-black ocean water between the boat and the dock. The man in the puffy jacket stood alone on the aft deck, cupping his hands around his mouth and shouting something. But it was lost in the brisk wind that stirred up the choppy waves. The forecast had been clear all week long, but now the sky looked leaden and threatening for an outdoor wedding. Still, predicting rain in Washington State in October was like predicting bears in the forest or alligators in Florida. An ever-present threat.
As she closed in on the end of the dock there was a gap of about three feet between the boat and solid ground. On impulse, she chucked her luggage across the gap and took four long strides back to give herself a running start. This was obviously an insane idea; she was going to end up splattered against the side of a luxury boat. But her computer was in that suitcase, her life’s work stored on its hard drive. She wouldn’t jump for anyone except Loretta.
“Look out!” she shouted at the man, who had caught her suitcase in an impressive maneuver, obscuring his face. “Clear the deck!”
She sprinted down the dock and leapt across the gap. Her feet pedaled and her arms windmilled, and she had a split-second realization that she’d been absolutely right; she wasn’t going to make it. She was going to hit her head and drown three feet off the docks. At least she’d have a decent excuse for missing the wedding and her deadline. Her own accidental murder.
But then a pair of hands grabbed her and pulled, helping her clear the last foot as she crashed into the man. They both went tumbling back on the sleek deck, her suitcase skittering away. He curled up with a painful grunt, the movement pulling her in tighter against him.
“I’m so sorry,” she gasped, struggling to catch her breath after that Olympic-level long jump. “I didn’t mean to crash into . . . Jake?”
Her eyes went wide, heart beating in double time as the man beneath her winced out a tight smile and spoke with that gorgeous, buttery Australian accent of his. “Still know how to make an entrance, don’t you, Katey cakes?”