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Sunny McKillup came to Mule Stop, Texas to be the assistant to the new dean of the local college, but her job ended abruptly when the dean was thrown out for having falsified his credentials. This left her penniless in a strange town but she quickly found employment as personal secretary to Honeybelle Hensley, the quirky and filthy rich matriarch of society in the county. Almost as quickly Sunny's job devolved into caring for Honeybelle's precious pet, a Texas Cattle Cur named Miss Ruffles whose energy and mischief made this a nearly full-time job.
When Honeybelle up and dies, Sunny figures she is out of a job again but the will bizarrely leaves everything to Miss Ruffles, at least temporarily, demanding that Sunny, the cook, and the butler remain in the house for a year, caring for both it and the dog. At the end of the year, if acceptable arrangements have been made for Miss Ruffles for the rest of her life, the estate will be distributed according to Honeybelle's wishes, including a bequest of one million dollars to each of her three in-house employees.
Enter Honeybelle's greedy children and the president of the local college who had been pressuring her to fund the building of a new football stadium for the school which would increase enrollment and save his job. Enter also a pair of enforcers of some sort who have come from far away to try to make Sunny cough up the money her mother swindled their boss out of before her untimely death.
Sunny and the cook are bothered by fact that Honeybelle died without much reason and was cremated with appalling speed, and that there does not appear to be a death certificate, and that the funeral home director and both of the senior lawyers in the firm that handles Honeybelle's affairs have all rushed out of town to destinations unknown about as fast as they could get the funeral over with.
The neophyte lawyer who has to try to manage the reading of the will is a cowboy mostly and very attractive and inappropriately engaged (at least in Sunny's estimation). Whether he can be trusted is another matter. Then Miss Ruffles is stolen by dognappers demanding a ransom and things get dangerous and more and more confusing. Toss in a scary storm and the probability of a collection of stolen rose bushes . . . .
Ah, it's a cozy and it does not have to follow a logical pattern or even make a whole lot of sense.
Nancy Martin is a skilled and imaginative writer and this mystery is sheer entertainment. Her use of Texasisms (is there such a word?) is charming and everything flows very quickly in an easy-to-read and take-to-the-beach way. If the ending wasn't what I wanted, who cares? It was definitely fun and if there are more Sunny McKillup novels, bring 'em on.
§ Diana Borse is retired from teaching English at Texas A&M University-Kingsville and savoring the chance to read as much as she always wanted to.
Reviewed by Diana Borse, January 2016
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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