Off-Season at Merganser Landing
(2026)(The fourth book in the Off-Season Mystery series)
A Story by Wanda Fellows
Merganser Landing sits at the end of a twenty-two-mile dead-end spur, on a mountain lake at forty-five hundred feet, and in September the whole place closes on a printed schedule. Boats come out of the water Thursday through Sunday. The water taxi makes its last run at four. The RV park gets padlocked, the forest gate swings shut on the fifteenth, and the store goes to winter hours Monday — after which thirty-eight people have the lake to themselves until spring. Danny Reyes arrives with her Airstream, her terrier, and a column to write about a town in the act of shutting itself down. She gets four good days of it: propane deliveries, burn barrels, Dorrie Lusk's store with the beige wall phone and the only warmth for miles. Then the man who holds three hundred and twelve of the town's keys is found at the bottom of the boat ramp.
The charming countdown stops being charming the moment there's a body — every departure time on that printed schedule turns into a grid a liar has to fit inside. Danny's problem is worse than usual, and it's her own fault: something she said to the deputy in the first confused hour has been quietly propping up somebody's morning for six days, and taking it back means walking into a sheriff's office and admitting she is the reason the case went sideways. Meanwhile the town's real subject surfaces slowly and painfully — a dead man who plowed everyone's road at two in the morning, and a whole community that never once asked what all that generosity was buying him. With the road closing behind her and a crane invoice from two counties over her only real lever, Danny has until the gate shuts.
Genre: Cozy Mystery
The charming countdown stops being charming the moment there's a body — every departure time on that printed schedule turns into a grid a liar has to fit inside. Danny's problem is worse than usual, and it's her own fault: something she said to the deputy in the first confused hour has been quietly propping up somebody's morning for six days, and taking it back means walking into a sheriff's office and admitting she is the reason the case went sideways. Meanwhile the town's real subject surfaces slowly and painfully — a dead man who plowed everyone's road at two in the morning, and a whole community that never once asked what all that generosity was buying him. With the road closing behind her and a crane invoice from two counties over her only real lever, Danny has until the gate shuts.
Genre: Cozy Mystery
Used availability for Wanda Fellows's Off-Season at Merganser Landing