Death Indoors: Target Practice Mysteries 4 Read online

  Contents

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Back Cover

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Author's Note

  Author Bio

  Copyright

  To my long-suffering mother, I told you I wouldn't dedicate every book to John.

  Thank you to the archery community, which has been supportive and interested. Thank you, Steve Yee and Steve Anderson, who gave me additional information on youth sponsorship.

  I can never thank Teresa Johnson enough. You have been the best accountability partner ever.

  Thank you Lori, A.J., and Holly for being the best.

  To my supportive family, thank you for only being slightly shocked when I said I was going to write even more books.

  Thank you to my amazing cover artist and editing team. You are the ones that made the book shine.

  When opportunity "nocks"...

  Di is competing in her first tournament of the competition season, but an annoying coach is distracting her and every archer around her. When he is found dead of a heart attack brought on by Taser, then Di, Liam and Great Dane Moo hatch a clever plan to discover which of the many suspects with motive and opportunity helped the coach shuffle off his mortal coil.

  A wholesome, cozy murder for every sleuth in the family

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  This is the fourth book in the Target Practice Mysteries series

  Target Practice Mysteries 4

  CHAPTER ONE

  Looking through my binoculars at the target, it was easy to see Mary's arrow had dropped right into the center. Another ten points for her, and she was well on her way to outscoring her first round and hitting her goal for the first day of the tournament. Next to me, Mary's chair creaked, but I waited until her second arrow hit the center of the second target, another ten points, before I lowered my binoculars to tell the person that the seat was taken.

  Instead I saw Liam and threw my hand over my mouth to hide a squeal. "You're here! You're early." I threw my arms around him for a hug.

  He held me tight until Moo, the black-and-white Great Dane that had been sleeping on a bed on my other side, got up and wedged his blocky head between us.

  Liam let go to scratch Moo behind the ears. "Hey, buddy, you happy to see me?"

  I looked Liam over. His beard was trimmed short and professional, and so was his hair. "You cut your hair." I didn't care one way or the other--he was handsome in any form--but it was better to point out the haircut than blubber over how ridiculously happy I was that he was here.

  "Mom said if I wanted to ditch the Lumberjack nickname, it might help to look more professional and less wild."

  "I wasn't expecting you for a few more hours. Where's Orion?" I looked out toward the glass windows that separated the archery range from the hallways.

  "He's parking the car but should be here soon. We decided to leave early enough to see Mary shoot, plus Loggin made last-minute arrangements to shoot the afternoon line with you. He went over to the practice range to warm up. Should you be doing the same?" Liam raised an eyebrow at me.

  "Soon. I wanted to sit here and support Mary." Remembering her, I turned back to the shooting line and found her watching me. I gave her a quick wave, and she turned back to chat with her fellow competitors. "She's doing really well. I can't believe she's shooting so well after only being back to training these past few months."

  Liam held a hand out for my binoculars. "She's been an elite archer for a decade, so the little break shouldn't slow her down much. Plus, you guys have been training like crazy."

  I nodded. We'd been hitting the range daily, with Sundays off, pretty much since I moved here. A few weeks ago, I'd gotten a brand-new setup. "They've been dragging me off the range each night. Have I mentioned how much I love my new bow?"

  "Yes, about five million times." Since he had been in Salt Lake, we texted several times a day, and he usually called me on his way to work from the speakerphone in his car. "Jess is keeping an eye on you for overtraining, right? Are your shoulders okay? The weight's not too heavy, is it?"

  I rolled my eyes at him and leaned over to bump his shoulder with mine. "Yes, Jess and Mary are keeping on top of all that. I can't sleep on my right side anymore, but they say that's normal. I ice my shoulder for a bit each night, and they keep a close eye on my arrow count."

  "Good, I want this to be the best birthday for you."

  I blushed. I had spent the last year trying to forget my thirtieth birthday, so it would be hard not to top that one. "You remembered."

  The whistle blew, and the archers went down to score and retrieve their arrows before the next end.

  Liam looked downrange then back at me. "I'm surprised there aren't more pe--"

  I cut him off with a shush. "Don't you dare say that to Jess. You know this location wasn't announced until after Christmas, so most of the people that needed this event had already made travel arrangements to compete at another site." This event was the national championships for our indoor season, but rather than having one event in one location, the same event was held over the course of a month in twenty different places, then the scores would be combined to determine the winner. "Most of the entries are YAP kids," she said, referring to youth archery programs, "and the college team Bruce is working with at the state university. They need this event for national ranking."

  Liam nodded along, and I realized that he probably knew far more about this event than I did, having worked in this industry his entire life. I wanted to hug him around the neck again, but that seemed inappropriate, so I tried to think of something that he didn't already know. "Did Jess tell you that some of the families coming from Denver are going to rent rooms here? They're driving up this morning and spending the night."

  He nodded, his eyes on the archers as they came back from the line.

  Mary picked up her bow to shoot.

  "How is the college team coming along?" He turned to look at me.

  "Good. The center sends out a shuttle to the campus twice a week to pick up kids, but a few more drive over. Most of them are bowhunters, so it was easy enough for Bruce to move them over to target-style setup then clean up their form a bit. Only a few are competing, but I think by next year they will have a solid team."

  "Hmmm." Liam watched Mary shoot.

  After she was done, she waited until the archers on either side had finished their current shot. Then she stepped off the line, set her bow on her stand, and stepped over as Orion joined us. Liam and I came to our feet since there were only two chairs.

  Mary turned and hugged Orion while holding her arrows and quiver out of the way, then gave Liam a quick half hug on her non-quivered side. "You guys are here early."

  Orion chuckled, showing a line of perfect white teeth. "I wanted to see you shoot some, chickadee. How's it coming along?"

  She pursed her lips before answering. "I dropped a couple of stupid points early on, but I've since pulled it together. It's not where I should be, but since I just started training again, I think it would be unrealistic to expect better."

  Jess joined us, and Liam turned to her. "Great turnout, considering how late the event was announced."

  Liam gave me a wink off to the side as Jess broke into a huge smile and started an explanation of how the tournament was shaping up.

  Mary pulled me back a few steps and whispered in my ear, "Go."

  "What? I was going to stay and support you."

&n
bsp; "Orion can do that. Thank you for hanging out with me so far, but, um..." She looked over at Orion and smiled. "You should go warm up and grab lunch. Do whatever you need to do to prepare. I'll be fine."

  The whistle blew, and Mary speed-walked back to the line to walk to the target with the other archers.

  I grabbed the binoculars off the chair and handed them to Orion. "You're in charge now. That's Mary's chair, and you can have the other. I've been told to go warm up and grab lunch."

  "Awesome, thanks." Orion settled in the chair, kicking his legs out and crossing his ankles.

  "Don't shoot too much, just enough to warm up and burn off some nerves. Get some protein at lunch, but nothing too salty. Once this round is done, I'll try to catch you at the practice range," said Jess. Although we had been friends for more than a decade, she was also my coach. She got to boss me around on the range. As the director of technology at the training center, there were times I got to boss her around, too.

  "You got it, Coach."

  I picked up Moo's leash from where it was clipped to Orion's chair and turned to Liam. "You want to come with me?"

  He fell into step next to me, his arm brushing up against mine. "Why else would I be here?" he asked, sending chills down my neck, as we squeezed between spectators.

  Most of the morning line were either locals who drove up this morning and would head home after shooting or a few people that drove or flew in yesterday from farther away. I'd been surprised how many spectators there were.

  "There must be four people watching for every one archer," I whispered over my shoulder as I squeezed in front of him to get by a family of eight with matching shirts that said "Straight Arrow YAP."

  Liam put his hands on my shoulders as we wove in front of the spotting scope of a man who was jotting down the arrow location in a notebook. "Youth archery parents and coaches can be a bit intense."

  We cleared the crowd and left the range. My office was across the hallway from the range. The large windows gave me a great view. I opened the door and stepped inside. Flipping on the light, I dropped Moo's leash, and he jumped up into a filthy armchair he'd claimed as his own the first day we met.

  I grabbed my bow, which I left set up in my office, and the bow stand from behind the table and handed the bow to Liam. "Here."

  He held it out, feeling the balance, then drew back the string a few inches, flipped it around and checked over the sight and stabilizers. "Looks great. Nice balance. How are you liking that sight?" He handed it back.

  "It's awesome, very smooth to adjust. Jess and I set it up the day I got home from the OIT Show. We only tuned for about a week, because she wanted to give me a lot of time to get used to it. I love it so much. Thank you."

  "Don't thank me. Thank Mom--she's the one that set up the sponsorship."

  "But you're the one that recommended it. I'll make you proud today."

  A strange look crossed his face. His brows pinched together, and he pursed his lips briefly. "Di, can you sit down? I want to tell you something, and I want you to really hear me." He closed the office door and sat in the plastic chair in front of my desk.

  I grabbed the desk chair and sat while I balanced the bottom limb on the top of my shoe to prevent scratching the limb tip. "Don't look so serious."

  "I always look serious. This is your first tournament in how long?"

  I looked at the ceiling, doing the math. "I was twenty-two, and it was the college outdoor nationals in May, so like eight years and... eight months? I think." I looked back at him.

  "So basically nine years. And I know you've been training really hard and you're naturally really driven. I want to make sure that you know that Westmound, Mom, Orion, even me, none of us are relying on you to win or set any records--"

  I cut him off, waving one hand in the air breezily. "Of course not, I'm not Mary yet. But I'm shooting really well, and I looked at the scores from last year--"

  "You looked at scores?"

  I grimaced, having been caught. Jess and Mary both had given me long talks about ignoring my scores and focusing on good form and a strong mental game, but I had been shooting well and thought it wouldn't hurt to peek. "Don't worry. I've got a handle on this."

  "We sponsored you because you work for us and you are a great example to the younger girls. I don't want you to put pressure on yourself."

  I gave him a big smile. "Don't worry. I've got this under control." And when he saw how well I shot this afternoon, I was going to knock his socks off.

  He looked at me, searching my face. I kept smiling and focused on radiating calm, collected energy. "Trust me" energy. He didn't seem convinced, but he dropped the topic. "Do you want to warm up or grab lunch?"

  I hopped up and pulled Moo out of his chair then handed Liam the leash. "Since my hands are full." I grabbed my quiver from underneath the desk and checked in the pocket that my finger tab was in there. It was the one piece of equipment I had kept from competing in college. The smooth, well-worn leather was comforting.

  "You still using that old thing? Didn't we send you a new finger tab?"

  I gasped and held the quiver to my chest. "Yes, but this one's special."

  He chuckled at me, and I glared back, though I struggled to hide a smile that pulled at my lips. "Plus the one you sent was a bit bigger than Jess liked. She ordered two more in a smaller size. I'll be breaking them in next week to prepare for the tournament in Vegas next month." I cut my eyes to him and raised my eyebrows defiantly. "But I'm keeping this one in my desk."

  He chuckled. "I wouldn't dream of trying to take it away. You ready?"

  I shook my head and followed him into the hallway, carefully weaving the bow with its long stabilizer and the quiver on my shoulder out the door without smashing anything into the door frame. I turned to try and lock the door behind me without the quiver sliding off my shoulder when Liam took the keys from my hand.

  "Thanks. And..." There was a lot I wanted to say, like how much I'd missed him, especially in the past two weeks while he was in Salt Lake. I wanted to tell him not to leave again, even though I knew he had to. "I'm really glad you're here," I said finally. "How's work going?"

  He patted my back briefly as we walked toward the short range which was set up to be the practice range this weekend. I preferred the long range since it was across the hallway from my office. Mary, the on-site athletes (or OSAs, as we called them), Minx and Tiger, and I practiced there most days, with Mouse joining us for long weekends. The short range was used for private lessons and tuning, since an equipment room was attached. Sometimes we switched between the ranges to either escape people or find people.

  "Work is work, but it's going well."

  "And you think you'll be done by Vegas?"

  "That's the plan." He placed a hand on my lower back and guided me through the doorway ahead of him.

  His fingers were warm enough to register through my Westmound jersey as we stepped into the practice range. The room was warm and crowded. Mouse tipped her head back in acknowledgement and blew the whistle for the archers to pull their arrows. The back wall was crowded with open bow cases and people milling about for space.

  As the archers present crossed over the shooting line, I went over to check on Mouse. When I'd met her last month, she had been more timid, but since the New Year she had started coming to the training centers from Friday to Monday to train and gained a great deal of confidence. The rest of the week she attended community college at home. In exchange for training, lodging, and eating at the center, she worked at the center; this weekend her job was running the practice range with Tiger, a full-time OSA, during the morning line while Minx, the remaining OSA, shot.

  "Hey, Mouse, how's the practice range going?"

  She blew out a heavy sigh and rolled her eyes. "So totally boring. No one was even here until twenty minutes ago, so I got to practice a bit. But then my old coach showed up, and he's a total dillweed. No running!"

  The last bit she shouted at two kids who we
re racing back from the target. "Kids." She rolled her eyes again.

  I bit back a snicker. She had only turned eighteen the previous month after graduating high school a year early. She was naturally tiny and could easily be confused for a youth archer. "Which one was your coach?"

  "His name's Coach Ron, and he thinks he's so awesome, but he's a total tool. I went to his program when I started to get good, but my parents pulled me out after a few months. He had a few favorites, and he ignored the rest of us." She pointed her whole arm across the range. "He's in the blue shirt."

  I grabbed her hand to lower it. "Yes, I see him."

  He had a blue shirt on and his back turned to me. On the shirt, bold white letters professed, "Coach Ron's YAP The Best in the Nation." As he turned, I spied a rather sizable belly, his feet planted widely as he pointed, and his voice carried across the range, but not clearly enough for me to hear it. The tone was harsh and clipped, and something in it set my teeth on edge.

  People grabbed their bows and headed to the waiting line. Mouse leaned in to whisper at me, "He's such a blowhard. I hope he isn't anywhere near me today. He's loud and shouts at his archers on the line. I've been messing with him since he arrived, telling him to step back even when he's completely behind the waiting line. It's driving him nuts." She smirked at me and blew two whistles for the archers to approach the line.

  "Mouse, come on. You're more mature than that. Just because he's a douchecanoe doesn't mean you get to be a jerk, too." I felt a million years old giving her this speech, but I knew Jess would have a cow if I let Mouse continue.

  She giggled at the word "douchecanoe" then rolled her eyes at me. Everyone was looking at her, waiting to shoot. She blew the single whistle, and those practicing on the line started shooting.

  "I'll behave, but you just wait. You'll hate him, too. Now quit goofing off. Go shoot."

  I went to Liam, who was hanging toward the back of the room. Moo looked uncomfortable, hiding behind Liam and shifting his weight between his front legs. I dropped my bow stand next to Liam and squeezed onto the shooting line in an empty spot. Putting my finger sling from my thumb around the bow then to my index finger, I squared my shoulders and prepared to shoot when Coach Ron stepped up a foot behind me and loudly said, "Excuse me."