The Murder in Skoghall (Illustrated) (The Skoghall Mystery Series Book 1) by Alida Winternheimer Page A

drank beer with the girth of his arms in direct proportion to the girth of his gut. Half Irish and half Norwegian, he got his red hair from both sides, and exuded a jocular masculinity prone to jokes about clergymen, bars, and genitalia. When he wasn’t arranging pipe fittings by width and thread type, he was either cleaning and oiling his hunting rifle with a cotton swab or pairing his socks and rolling them into balls before lining them up in his dresser drawer. He and Beckett had arrived in Dave’s pickup truck, a rust-bitten workhorse with a dent in the fender. The bed was loaded with bricks and the tools they would need to build a hearth for the stove.
    “Come on. I’ll show you.” Jess led them into the house and upstairs to her office. She explained her vision of putting the bookshelves now in the music room up there with the stove. “Am I crazy?” she asked. “Is it too much?”
    “Yes,” Dave answered without hesitation.
    “It depends,” Beckett said, “on the floor joists, where the load-bearing walls are, all that.”
    Dave walked over to the roll top desk and slapped it soundly. “This baby is pushing two-fifty. That parlor stove in the smokehouse is over three-hundred if it’s a pound.” He scratched the stubble on his jaw. “I sure wouldn’t put all that plus books up here in one room.”
    Beckett was about to disagree, but Jess cut him off. “I’m convinced. I do not want my floor caving in. What about putting it in the music room downstairs?”
    “That would be a heck of a lot better,” Dave said. “We could add a support in the basement if we need to.”
    “Great.” Jess led the way downstairs. She had crated Shakti so she wouldn’t get in the way and the puppy whined and scratched at the floor of her kennel whenever they passed the living room’s doorway.
    “Can I let her out?” Beckett asked.
    Jess shrugged why not and followed Dave outside to look at the stove again. It became clear why Beckett let him take charge of organizing the hardware store as he went over everything they would have to do, from scrubbing layers of soot off the stove to shoring up the floor. While they stood in the smokehouse, planning the stove’s relocation, Tyler pulled into the drive. He had offered to come by and help if the café was quiet. Jess left the smokehouse to greet him.
    He put a hand around her waist and pulled her into a hug before giving her a kiss hello just as Beckett and Shakti came out of the house. Shakti leapt off the porch steps and ran as fast as her little legs would go around the sugar maple. Jess caught Beckett’s eye and thought she sensed disapproval. Was Beckett helping her because he was interested, or was he just a nice guy? She hated ulterior motives as much as she hated feeling caught in an awkward situation. Shakti zoomed over to Jess and leapt against her legs, ricocheting and changing course to run a lap around Dave. The impact jolted Jess into Tyler,. He caught her and made a show of getting her steadily on her feet again. She thanked him and stepped away, feeling Beckett’s gaze still on her as surely as she felt the pink rise in her cheeks.
    “Hey, Tyler,” Dave said. “Here to do some heavy lifting?”
    “Whatever’s needed.”
    Jess wanted to protest, to remind Tyler how moving the desk had hurt his back, but realized that was probably not okay in the company of men, men who, she had the uneasy feeling, were somehow rivals.
    “The more the merrier,” Dave announced and, as though oblivious to any tension between Beckett and Tyler, began issuing orders. “All right, we’ll get that stove out into the yard. Then Jessica can start cleaning it with a steel brush while we lay the hearth in that little room. And we’ll check the basement for support.”
    Jess looked at Beckett, trying to read his expression. Tyler slipped his arm back around her waist, and Beckett turned away. “I’ll look at the basement,” he shouted over his shoulder as he went