Boared Stiff

BOARED STIFF STREET FOOD COZIES, BOOK 3 GRETCHEN ALLEN SUMMER PRESCOTT BOOKS PUBLISHING Copyright 2023 Summer Prescott Books All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication nor any of the information herein may be quoted from, nor reproduced, in any form, including but not limited to: printing, scanning, photocopying, or any other printed, digital, or audio formats, without prior express written consent of the copyright holder. **This book is a work of fiction. Any similarities to persons, living or dead, places of business, or situations past or present, is completely unintentional. CONTENTS Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Also by Gretchen Allen Author’s Note Contact Gretchen Allen CHAPTER 1 Billie Halifax snored softly as the water lapped against the shore less than five hundred feet from her bedroom window. In the moments before she fell asleep, Billie had felt the sensation of floating gently on the open water. Making her home in a tiny house so close to the Gulf allowed her drowsy imagination to take her there night after night. She had grown accustomed to falling asleep to the sound of the Gulf of Mexico just outside her home in the months since she had come to live on Sea Glass Island. What a difference her world had become since then. Falling asleep to the sound of ocean waves, for example, was a huge change from listening to the blaring horns of taxi cabs and police sirens in her apartment above the streets of Boston, Massachusetts. Owning her own business was another not-too-small change from her days running around on her aching feet, twelve hours a day, pouring coffee and serving hungry diners. She was now a partner in a commissary kitchen, and two food trucks from her fleet of twelve were up and running and quite successful, despite their rough beginnings. Her managers, Marcel Johnson and Enid Greene, were both more help than she ever could have imagined. Marcel opened the windows to the “Taco the Town” truck nearly every day around lunch time. Enid divided her time between the commissary kitchen and the “Just Mousse-ing Around” mousse truck. She worked festivals nearly every other week, weddings, special beach celebrations, and even corporate luncheons and birthday parties. Most of the time, she parked the orange and yellow truck right on the festival grounds around the commissary kitchen, but she had gone as far as one hundred miles inland for a handful of events on the mainland. Billie was just glad that Enid was comfortable enough driving back and forth across the bridge between the island and mainland. More than six months into her life on Sea Glass Island, Billie had successfully avoided it, and she had no plan to change that fact. She roused slightly in her sleep, hearing a curious sound just outside the door of her tiny house. In her half-awake state, she was sure a flock of seagulls were building their own condominium of nests on the steps just outside her front door. Billie covered her head up with her quilt and turned to face the other side of her bed, but the noise didn’t stop. She blinked her eyes open and threw the quilt toward her feet. “I swear I’m going to take a broom to every last one of you,” she threatened from her bed. She swung her feet over the side of the bed and stood up, grabbing her robe off of the small chair beside her. Sliding the barn door to the side, Billie wrapped the robe around her as she walked across the small house to the front door. Before she opened it, she grabbed the small wooden broom from the space next to her refrigerator, poised to swat at any birds that decided to fight their way inside. With the broom in one hand, she flipped on the porch light and pulled slowly on the front door. The sound of scratching stopped. Billie inhaled deeply, then pulled hard on the door. She looked out on the clear night, seeing nothing but the stars above and the moonglow skipping over the water. There were no birds pecking her front door. Instead, she looked down into a pair of soft brown eyes sticking out from under a mess of wet hair and debris. Billie bent down and investigated further. A wet, furry paw rested on the top of her bare foot. “Waffles?” She bent down and moved some of the debris from the top of his head. The dog rested his head on her outstretched hand and sighed. Billie began to work the tangled debris off from around the pup’s neck. In the dim light, she was unsure what the pooch had gotten himself into, but it took her a full five minutes to untangle it. She shoved the debris to the side of the porch and brushed the wet hair out of the dog’s face. She reached inside the kitchen and pulled out a couple of towels from the drawer beside the stove. When she returned to the porch, she knelt next to the dog and began to scrub his fur with the first towel. He smelled like a wet dog and salty sea water. Waffles Woodson, fur baby of Sea Glass Island’s very own ex-private detective, Travis Woodson, had come to her front door in the middle of the night. “Where is your human off to, Waffles?” she asked him. The dog barked softly at her and slumped down at her feet. He exhaled loudly and flopped his large body into a heap on the top step. Billie stepped back inside the house and slipped her beach sandals onto her feet. She grabbed the dog by the collar and headed down to the beach. She had only ever seen the dog by his owner’s side, so him showing up at her house alone didn’t sit right with her. Before she left