Showing results by author "Connie Shelton" in All Categories

Charlie receives an assignment to drive a teen runaway girl back to her home in Arizona. It’s about a six hour drive each way, and all she has to do is deliver the girl back to her mother, enjoy a night in a nice hotel, turn around and drive back. She’ll be home in plenty of time to bake the Thanksgiving pies with Elsa and settle into the holiday season back in Albuquerque. Or not.

Charlie is on vacation. A cozy cabin, a diner that serves delicious guilty-pleasures, and Drake - all Charlie needs to relax and enjoy herself. But the town of Watson's Lake has a little unsolved mystery. Four years ago, a showplace home - beautiful and serene and tucked away on the mountain - blew sky high, due to an apparent gas leak. A young woman died. The owner disappeared. His gold-digging wife wants the insurance money, and his daughter wants to know what happened to her father.

Charlie's last case left her tired and emotionally drained, so her office staff convinces her to vacation in Kauai. Charlie is riding in a helicopter when she and the pilot spot a dead body lying on the rugged rocks of Kauai's NaPali coast. Mack Garvey, the owner of the helicopter tour company, is accused of the murder. Charlie wants to avoid the whole mess but is persuaded to help Garvey prove his innocence. As the tension builds, Charlie roots out the suspects one by one never dreaming that her own life is about to be snuffed out by sinister means.

Brian Swinney needs someone to fly his aircrafts in Scotland on a lucrative contract shuttling men and equipment to the North Sea oil rigs. Helping out their friend, Charlie Parker and Drake Langston agree to the job, ignorant of the escalating battle between the outfitters that service the rigs. Taking up residence at historic Dunworthy Castle, they become acquainted with owners Robert and Sarah Dunbar. They seem to be down-to-earth ranching folk but their daughter, son-in-law, and teenage son Richie are another story.

Three days before the start of the Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta, balloon pilot Rachael Fairfield walks into the offices of RJP Investigations. She received a threatening note, which she believes came from her father, a convicted felon whom she sent to prison 15 years earlier.

Octogenarian Willie McBride has gone missing, and now his obnoxious daughter is pestering Albuquerque CPA Charlie Parker to find him in time for the big family reunion. Apparently, the eccentric old man had one driving obsession: finding gold. So Charlie follows Willie's prospecting trail to the modern-day ghost town of White Oaks, site of an historic gold rush, a bitter scandal, some ugly business - and now a corpse.

Samantha Sweet and Beau Cardwell are getting ready for their September wedding, with the whole Sweet clan about to show up for the celebration.

Dealing with her mother may turn out to be the least of Sam’s problems when an unwelcome visitor walks into her pastry shop - Sam’s old heartthrob, the charmer Jake Calendar. Jake wants money for a Hollywood get-rich-quick scheme and he wants Sam to finance the deal. Can Sam convince him that the answer is "no"? Or will he sabotage the plans for her wedding?

Charlie Parker is asked to look into a controversial series of miscarriages in a small town in New Mexico that's heavily populated by Mexicans. The town has one medical clinic. Her first assumption is to look for some type of environmental problem such as pesticides but that draws a blank. Then she shifts her suspicions onto the medical industry and finds herself embroiled in politics regarding health care among minorities. It's when the dead bodies start to show up that she realizes she's onto something far bigger than she imagined and far deadlier....

There's cash missing from a local charity thrift shop—lots of it. And when it looks like her surrogate grandma might be accused, there's nothing for Charlie to do but take a job there and try to catch the thief from the inside and clear Elsa's name. As she and Elsa begin tracking the missing money, it becomes obvious that the shop is a little goldmine and there are a number of people who could easily be after the money. She's narrowing down the suspects, but when the person who is tops on her list suddenly and mysteriously dies, well it looks like there's a lot more going on.

It’s a New Mexico Christmas. The lights are strung, the luminarias are set along the sidewalks. Treats are abundant and Charlie Parker is getting ready for her mother-in-law’s holiday visit. But there is trouble in the neighborhood and when death shows up - right next door - Charlie’s bright, festive plans suddenly take a turn for the dark.

Two things are weighing on Samantha Sweet's mind this summer - organizing the Sweet Somethings chocolate festival and tracking down information on the mystical carved wooden box that came into her life nearly two years ago, changing her forever. At last she believes she has located the person who can give the answers.

Charlie Parker and her husband Drake Langston accept a job with Gold Trail Adventures in Skagway, Alaska, flying visitors by helicopter to remote cabin sites to experience the outdoor lifestyle and seek their fortunes. It isn't long before one of the guests finds a set of bones in an old mine, remains that date back decades.

Charlie's brother, Ron, is ready for the happiest day of his life when he will marry longtime girlfriend Victoria Morgan. Charlie will be matron of honor, her husband Drake the best man. But when Charlie stops by the bride's house to pick her up for the ceremony, the place is in disarray, and Victoria is missing. And Ron has no proof of where he was the night before, after he and his fiancée had a terrible argument. Was the fight nothing more than pre-wedding jitters, as Ron claims? Or did the unthinkable happen?

Is there a serial killer in Taos? It’s the height of the wedding season at Sweet’s Sweets and Sam has all she can do to stay ahead of the rush of bakery orders. Plus, her side job - breaking into houses - isn’t allowing much summer time off either. Not to mention that her mother is pressuring Sam and Beau to set a wedding date. When Sam encounters two older women who then die suddenly, it appears that there may be a serial killer on the loose.

Charlie is alone in the office when a teen girl comes in, wanting to hire RJP Investigations to find her mom, who vanished without a trace years ago. The clues were sparse at the time, and the old police file doesn't have much that can help Charlie with the search. The problem for young Cassie is that the grandmother who has raised her is now dying and Cassie's life is about to be upended. All that's holding her together is the belief that her mom is out there somewhere.

Charlie and Drake are working a helicopter job in rural Maine when a man approaches and asks for their help. At first glance, it seems he's just an old man who needs to get to his son's remote cabin in the woods. But the cabin holds more secrets than Fergus McNab will admit, and it isn't until Charlie returns to Albuquerque that she discovers they may have just aided and abetted a criminal who has escaped the law back home. The secrets get twistier, the more she looks into the 10-year-old case where Rory McNab, facing a life in prison, seemed to vanish from the reach of the law.

Sandy Werner’s longtime client walks into Desert Trust Bank, clearly down on her luck. Sandy is shocked to find Mary Holbrook’s once-hefty account is down to less than $200. Mary worked alongside her husband for years to build a successful business, but when she wasn’t looking, all their money vanished - and Clint found himself a cute new wife. Abandoned, Mary might be homeless, but she certainly isn’t helpless. She teams up with Sandy and her friends, who call themselves the Heist Ladies.

Sharon Ortega, an old school chum of Charlie's, hires Charlie to prove that her dead restaurant partner, David, didn't commit suicide. David's recent, keyman life insurance policy won't pay for suicide, and Sharon needs the money to keep the business going. Charlie uncovers evidence of tax fraud, high level political connections, and two distinctly different sides to David's life. Amidst a confusion of relatives, she also discovers that members of David's family are lifelong friends with Vicky, the new love of Charlie's brother, Ron. And Vicky appears increasingly suspicious.

A cryptic message in a fortune cookie sends Charlie again to England to visit her favorite aunt. She's having lunch in a local café when construction workers come upon a human skeleton behind a wall. The police are called to a more urgent case, so Charlie begins sleuthing around on a cold-case crime website, only to discover Aunt Louisa was one of those questioned when the victim disappeared. Can she save her aunt from arrest, or will the real killer come after them both?

It's Christmas in Albuquerque; Charlie and family are ready for a quiet holiday at home. But right away, her hopes fade when Charlie's brother and PI business partner, Ron, brings in two new cases, one of which made national headlines. Five years earlier, with the tide of media attention and public sentiment against her, Tali Donovan was acquitted of killing her two children and went into hiding. Now, on the anniversary of the children's disappearance, their father wants answers.