The First in the Ruby Hobbs Series is Live!
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When Ruby hears that Miss Hazel Potts, the biggest grump in Port Blanchet, has been rendered unconscious after being crushed under a deluge of newspapers at the PTA paper drive, Ruby questions whether the unfortunate event was really an accident.
Could it be that Hazel's nephew, who aspires to become the next Mr. Elvis Presley, has finally gotten fed up with his aunt's interference with his debut into show business? What about those rumors Hazel has been spreading about the mayor and the beautiful Mrs. Minot being on a left-handed honeymoon? Could the illicit couple have decided to shut Hazel's yapper for good?The more Ruby digs, the more she realizes just how many people wish Hazel Potts ill. Then, when another unlikeable local ends up dead, Ruby is more certain than ever that something sinister is afoot in the sleepy town of Port Blanchet.
This is a novella-length humorous cozy murder mystery set in the 1950s.
About the Ruby Hobbs Mysteries:Ruby Hobbs, the widow of the late Port Blanchet Chief of Police, is unwilling to spend her golden years simply volunteering with the township bookmobile, looking after her motherless grandchildren, and indulging her menagerie of cats.
Instead, she takes on all the unsolved cases that seem to crop up with regularity in her small town on the shores of Lake Huron, much to the chagrin of her son, George, who's taken up his father's mantle as Port Blanchet's new Police Chief.
This series of novella-length humorous cozies are set in the 1950s and feature a large cast of quirky characters and period detail.
Read an Excerpt:
If there was one thing Alma Finch enjoyed nearly as much as bragging about her seventeen grandchildren, it was dispensing a tidbit of juicy gossip. Normally, Ruby was not one to encourage this unsavory tendency, but in this case, Ruby was prepared to appreciate Alma’s loose, although not always reliable, tongue.
“It’s a real shame,” said Alma. “After all Mrs. Prill has been through, for her husband to take up with another woman like that.”
Ruby was unaware that Mrs. Prill’s life, up until the present, had been one of trial and sorrow, but Ruby dared not derail the conversation by enquiring what Alma meant by “all Mrs. Prill has been through,” so she simply asked, “Another woman? Are you saying that Mayor Prill has another woman?”
Alma clicked her tongue and sighed with the bone-deep weariness of a soul burdened down with the weight of human fallibility. However, she was not quite yet ready to name names.
“If Hazel wasn’t including Mrs. Prill when she said, ‘those two,’” Ruby persisted, “who did she mean?”
“I think she meant that Minot woman,” Alma said.
“Catherine Minot?”
“That’s right,” said Alma.
Ruby was on nodding terms with the Minots. Catherine Minot was an extraordinarily pretty blond woman in her early thirties with a handsome brunette husband of the same age. The Minot’s union had been blessed with three pretty blond children and four pretty brunette ones. The Minots sat together three pews ahead of Ruby every Sunday morning. The children were invariably rowed up by order of age in a well-behaved line like little ducks in a row.
The impression Ruby had always gotten of Catherine Minot was one of extreme self-containment. Mrs. Minot had a brittle smile and eyes which betrayed nothing when they looked at you. Ruby found Catherine Minot a trifle unsettling.
“Are you trying to say that Catherine Minot and Julius Prill are on a left-handed honeymoon?” Ruby asked Alma.
Ruby found it a little hard to fathom that if Catherine Minot had been looking to grope for trout in a peculiar river, she’d have chosen Port Blanchet’s mayor as her catch. Julius Prill might carry considerable weight in the community, but he also carried considerable weight around his middle. And not only was Mr. Prill the shortest grown man Ruby had ever met in real life and well past his physical prime, but he was also what Ruby’s grandson Ferris would describe as Dullsville. Julius Prill was a real snore.
Nevertheless, Alma seemed sure of her information, so it was not prudent to dismiss her suspicions out of hand.
“It’s not for me to suppose what Mr. Prill and that woman get up to when Mrs. Prill goes off to her bowling league on Friday evenings,” Alma told Ruby, “but I see Catherine Minot skulking around to the back door at a quarter past seven every Friday night, bold as brass—”
Alma lived right across the street from the Prills. There was no question that she was in an ideal position to observe the comings and goings of the Prill household.
However, this observation of Alma’s was not quite as conclusive as it might sound. Alma’s eyesight was so poor that she might have mistaken anyone for Catherine Minot. In fact, it might just as well have been Reverend Murphy or the Fuller Brush Man going around to Julius Prill’s back door every Wednesday evening at a quarter past seven if Alma was going solely on what she thought she saw from her vantage point peeking out behind the lace curtains in her front room in the house across the street.
Unfortunately, Alma was touchy when it came to her eyesight. If Ruby questioned Alma’s powers of observation, she was liable to get her head bitten off. Instead, Ruby asked, “You think Hazel knew about Julius and Catherine? You think she knew they were carrying on?”
“I’m sure she did,” said Alma. “Hazel told me herself that she caught Mrs. Minot and Mr. Prill canoodling on the divan in the Prills’ front room, but she made me swear not to tell a soul.”
Either Hazel was a very poor judge of who she ought to be divulging secrets to, or Hazel had told Alma precisely because she knew Alma could be relied upon to blanket the story across Huron County.
“I reckon,” said Alma, abruptly changing gears, “if there’s anyone Hazel ought to have been worried about causing her harm, it’s that nephew of hers.”
“Sylvester?”
“That boys a ne’er-do-well.”
“What makes you say that?”
“He wants to be like that Mr. Presley.”
“Mr. Presley?”
“That vulgar fellow who was on the Milton Berle Show the other night. The one who sang about his hound dog accompanied by so-called dancing. It was indecent. I had to switch off the set.”
Ruby pleaded ignorance of the existence of this Mr. Presley’s appearance on the Milton Berle Show. She saw no merit in admitting to Alma that Ruby herself had not turned off the television during Mr. Presley’s performance. Not only had Ruby continued to watch Mr. Presley perform, but not long into his performance, she’d found herself rocking back and forth to the beat. She’d amused herself at the time by wondering if the impulse was why this new style of music had been christened Rock and Roll. She didn’t think much of the lack of initiative evidenced by repeating the same lyrics three times over, but there was no denying that the tune was catchy or that Mr. Presley was easy on the eyes.
“I think many young people of today enjoy the music of Elvis Presley, but what makes you think Sylvester might be any danger to his aunt?” Ruby asked.
“Sylvester wants to run off to Nashville and go into show business. That slimy Mr. Wiley says he can make Sylvester a star.”
Mr. Fred Wiley, to whom Alma was referring, had shown up in Port Blanchet a few weeks previously. Mr. Wiley had gotten wind of Sylvester’s talent through the grapevine, or so he claimed, and he was determined to make the boy a star.
Ruby had taken an instant dislike to the man on their first meeting when he’d impertinently addressed her as “young lady,” as if she should take that as a compliment. He was a short, excessively well-fed man who coated his considerable bulk with overpowering aftershave, oiled his hair to an obscene shine, and smiled too much and too broadly.
Ruby didn’t trust the man. Nevertheless, Mr. Wiley had proven his determination to sign up Sylvester as his protégé by installing himself as a boarder in Hazel Pott’s shabby establishment.
He must be sincere if he was willing to put up with Hazel’s cooking.
“But how does Mr. Wiley’s interest in promoting Sylvester’s music pose any danger to Hazel?” Ruby asked Alma.
“Because Hazel won’t let him promote Sylvester’s music. She’s supposed to be making sure Sylvester keeps out of trouble.”
“But if this Mr. Wiley is determined to help Sylvester launch his career, how can Hazel stop the boy from leaving? Sylvester may be under eighteen, but not by much. She could hardly report him as a run-away and expect the police to haul the boy back to her doorstep.”
“Hazel won’t let Sylvester have the allowance his parents have been sending him, so he can’t run off to Nashville until he gets his hands on it.”
Sylvester’s father, Hazel’s brother, was an army officer stationed in France, and his wife had gone abroad with her husband. Colonel and Mrs. Potts had left Sylvester to stay in Port Blanchet with his Aunt Hazel while he finished High School.
Unlike Hazel, Colonel Potts was well-to-do, so ostensibly, Sylvester’s allowance was a generous one.
Sylvester, who’d recently turned seventeen, had dropped out of high school the previous year, the very day of his sixteenth birthday. Entreaties to finish his education had fallen on deaf ears. Sylvester had been working behind the counter at the local soda fountain for the last year and some months.
“Wouldn’t Mr. Wiley look after the financial end of things?” Ruby asked.
“It seems not.”
Apparently, Fred Wiley was flush with ambition but short on the cash to finance Sylvester’s debut in show business.
“But Sylvester must be saving up his wages,” Ruby said. “Won’t he eventually be able to run off to Nashville no matter what Hazel does? And how would putting Hazel into a delirium help his cause?”
“Sylvester doesn’t like his aunt,” Alma insisted.
“Lots of people don’t like Hazel, but that doesn’t mean—”
“You must not know what Sylvester said to Floyd?”
Ruby told Alma that she was unaware of any suspicious communication between Sylvester and Floyd. However, considering both young men were tenants of Hazel’s boarding establishment, it was certainly believable that Sylvester might confide in Floyd about his frustrations with his aunt.
“What did Sylvester tell Floyd?” Ruby asked Alma.
“Well, Sylvester said that if his Aunt Hazel didn’t stop stealing his money, he was going to do something about it.”
This is a novella-length humorous cozy murder mystery set in the 1950s.
About the Ruby Hobbs Mysteries:Ruby Hobbs, the widow of the late Port Blanchet Chief of Police, is unwilling to spend her golden years simply volunteering with the township bookmobile, looking after her motherless grandchildren, and indulging her menagerie of cats.
Instead, she takes on all the unsolved cases that seem to crop up with regularity in her small town on the shores of Lake Huron, much to the chagrin of her son, George, who's taken up his father's mantle as Port Blanchet's new Police Chief.
This series of novella-length humorous cozies are set in the 1950s and feature a large cast of quirky characters and period detail.
Read an Excerpt:
If there was one thing Alma Finch enjoyed nearly as much as bragging about her seventeen grandchildren, it was dispensing a tidbit of juicy gossip. Normally, Ruby was not one to encourage this unsavory tendency, but in this case, Ruby was prepared to appreciate Alma’s loose, although not always reliable, tongue.
“It’s a real shame,” said Alma. “After all Mrs. Prill has been through, for her husband to take up with another woman like that.”
Ruby was unaware that Mrs. Prill’s life, up until the present, had been one of trial and sorrow, but Ruby dared not derail the conversation by enquiring what Alma meant by “all Mrs. Prill has been through,” so she simply asked, “Another woman? Are you saying that Mayor Prill has another woman?”
Alma clicked her tongue and sighed with the bone-deep weariness of a soul burdened down with the weight of human fallibility. However, she was not quite yet ready to name names.
“If Hazel wasn’t including Mrs. Prill when she said, ‘those two,’” Ruby persisted, “who did she mean?”
“I think she meant that Minot woman,” Alma said.
“Catherine Minot?”
“That’s right,” said Alma.
Ruby was on nodding terms with the Minots. Catherine Minot was an extraordinarily pretty blond woman in her early thirties with a handsome brunette husband of the same age. The Minot’s union had been blessed with three pretty blond children and four pretty brunette ones. The Minots sat together three pews ahead of Ruby every Sunday morning. The children were invariably rowed up by order of age in a well-behaved line like little ducks in a row.
The impression Ruby had always gotten of Catherine Minot was one of extreme self-containment. Mrs. Minot had a brittle smile and eyes which betrayed nothing when they looked at you. Ruby found Catherine Minot a trifle unsettling.
“Are you trying to say that Catherine Minot and Julius Prill are on a left-handed honeymoon?” Ruby asked Alma.
Ruby found it a little hard to fathom that if Catherine Minot had been looking to grope for trout in a peculiar river, she’d have chosen Port Blanchet’s mayor as her catch. Julius Prill might carry considerable weight in the community, but he also carried considerable weight around his middle. And not only was Mr. Prill the shortest grown man Ruby had ever met in real life and well past his physical prime, but he was also what Ruby’s grandson Ferris would describe as Dullsville. Julius Prill was a real snore.
Nevertheless, Alma seemed sure of her information, so it was not prudent to dismiss her suspicions out of hand.
“It’s not for me to suppose what Mr. Prill and that woman get up to when Mrs. Prill goes off to her bowling league on Friday evenings,” Alma told Ruby, “but I see Catherine Minot skulking around to the back door at a quarter past seven every Friday night, bold as brass—”
Alma lived right across the street from the Prills. There was no question that she was in an ideal position to observe the comings and goings of the Prill household.
However, this observation of Alma’s was not quite as conclusive as it might sound. Alma’s eyesight was so poor that she might have mistaken anyone for Catherine Minot. In fact, it might just as well have been Reverend Murphy or the Fuller Brush Man going around to Julius Prill’s back door every Wednesday evening at a quarter past seven if Alma was going solely on what she thought she saw from her vantage point peeking out behind the lace curtains in her front room in the house across the street.
Unfortunately, Alma was touchy when it came to her eyesight. If Ruby questioned Alma’s powers of observation, she was liable to get her head bitten off. Instead, Ruby asked, “You think Hazel knew about Julius and Catherine? You think she knew they were carrying on?”
“I’m sure she did,” said Alma. “Hazel told me herself that she caught Mrs. Minot and Mr. Prill canoodling on the divan in the Prills’ front room, but she made me swear not to tell a soul.”
Either Hazel was a very poor judge of who she ought to be divulging secrets to, or Hazel had told Alma precisely because she knew Alma could be relied upon to blanket the story across Huron County.
“I reckon,” said Alma, abruptly changing gears, “if there’s anyone Hazel ought to have been worried about causing her harm, it’s that nephew of hers.”
“Sylvester?”
“That boys a ne’er-do-well.”
“What makes you say that?”
“He wants to be like that Mr. Presley.”
“Mr. Presley?”
“That vulgar fellow who was on the Milton Berle Show the other night. The one who sang about his hound dog accompanied by so-called dancing. It was indecent. I had to switch off the set.”
Ruby pleaded ignorance of the existence of this Mr. Presley’s appearance on the Milton Berle Show. She saw no merit in admitting to Alma that Ruby herself had not turned off the television during Mr. Presley’s performance. Not only had Ruby continued to watch Mr. Presley perform, but not long into his performance, she’d found herself rocking back and forth to the beat. She’d amused herself at the time by wondering if the impulse was why this new style of music had been christened Rock and Roll. She didn’t think much of the lack of initiative evidenced by repeating the same lyrics three times over, but there was no denying that the tune was catchy or that Mr. Presley was easy on the eyes.
“I think many young people of today enjoy the music of Elvis Presley, but what makes you think Sylvester might be any danger to his aunt?” Ruby asked.
“Sylvester wants to run off to Nashville and go into show business. That slimy Mr. Wiley says he can make Sylvester a star.”
Mr. Fred Wiley, to whom Alma was referring, had shown up in Port Blanchet a few weeks previously. Mr. Wiley had gotten wind of Sylvester’s talent through the grapevine, or so he claimed, and he was determined to make the boy a star.
Ruby had taken an instant dislike to the man on their first meeting when he’d impertinently addressed her as “young lady,” as if she should take that as a compliment. He was a short, excessively well-fed man who coated his considerable bulk with overpowering aftershave, oiled his hair to an obscene shine, and smiled too much and too broadly.
Ruby didn’t trust the man. Nevertheless, Mr. Wiley had proven his determination to sign up Sylvester as his protégé by installing himself as a boarder in Hazel Pott’s shabby establishment.
He must be sincere if he was willing to put up with Hazel’s cooking.
“But how does Mr. Wiley’s interest in promoting Sylvester’s music pose any danger to Hazel?” Ruby asked Alma.
“Because Hazel won’t let him promote Sylvester’s music. She’s supposed to be making sure Sylvester keeps out of trouble.”
“But if this Mr. Wiley is determined to help Sylvester launch his career, how can Hazel stop the boy from leaving? Sylvester may be under eighteen, but not by much. She could hardly report him as a run-away and expect the police to haul the boy back to her doorstep.”
“Hazel won’t let Sylvester have the allowance his parents have been sending him, so he can’t run off to Nashville until he gets his hands on it.”
Sylvester’s father, Hazel’s brother, was an army officer stationed in France, and his wife had gone abroad with her husband. Colonel and Mrs. Potts had left Sylvester to stay in Port Blanchet with his Aunt Hazel while he finished High School.
Unlike Hazel, Colonel Potts was well-to-do, so ostensibly, Sylvester’s allowance was a generous one.
Sylvester, who’d recently turned seventeen, had dropped out of high school the previous year, the very day of his sixteenth birthday. Entreaties to finish his education had fallen on deaf ears. Sylvester had been working behind the counter at the local soda fountain for the last year and some months.
“Wouldn’t Mr. Wiley look after the financial end of things?” Ruby asked.
“It seems not.”
Apparently, Fred Wiley was flush with ambition but short on the cash to finance Sylvester’s debut in show business.
“But Sylvester must be saving up his wages,” Ruby said. “Won’t he eventually be able to run off to Nashville no matter what Hazel does? And how would putting Hazel into a delirium help his cause?”
“Sylvester doesn’t like his aunt,” Alma insisted.
“Lots of people don’t like Hazel, but that doesn’t mean—”
“You must not know what Sylvester said to Floyd?”
Ruby told Alma that she was unaware of any suspicious communication between Sylvester and Floyd. However, considering both young men were tenants of Hazel’s boarding establishment, it was certainly believable that Sylvester might confide in Floyd about his frustrations with his aunt.
“What did Sylvester tell Floyd?” Ruby asked Alma.
“Well, Sylvester said that if his Aunt Hazel didn’t stop stealing his money, he was going to do something about it.”
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