A Day in the Life of Liv McKay by Vickie Fee

The name of my business is Liv 4 Fun, and while I love my job as a party planner, it isn’t all fun and games. Take this morning, for example. I was meeting with Mr. and Mrs. Erdman at their home trying to hammer out the details of an anniversary party for two extremely difficult and disagreeable clients. They’re proof of the adage that opposites attract yet they’ve somehow managed to stay married for almost forty years. I guess it’s lucky they found each other since I’m doubtful anybody else would put up with either of them. I was sitting on a chintz sofa in their living room, struggling to force a smile despite a splitting headache. I was thinking my day couldn’t get any worse—but I was wrong.

I followed the Erdmans into their garage to measure the inside of their deep freezer, since Mrs. Erdman was now insisting on jumbo-sized ice sculptures as the centerpiece of her increasingly eccentric party demands. Instead of catfish or venison we discovered a couple of dead guys, which was unsettling—and also inconvenient since I desperately needed the storage space for ice sculptures. If I’d known how this day was going to play out I would have canceled my appointment with the Erdmans, pulled the covers over my head, and stayed in bed.

I rounded out the morning by enduring an interrogation from Sheriff Dave Davidson and fielding phone calls from every busybody in the miniscule town of Dixie, Tennessee. It turned out the young men whose bodies I’d stumbled over worked for my husband’s family trucking business. The two of them were involved in some shady activities that soon lead the FBI to eyeing members of my own family as suspects. While my loved ones can sometimes tax my nerves, if not my sanity, I wasn’t willing to see any of them locked up in prison or a loony bin just yet.

I decided to see what information I could ferret out about the victims, hoping if I could put Sheriff Dave onto the scent of a viable murder suspect it would cause the law to lose interest in arresting my relatives. My best friend, Di Souther, kindly jumped in to help me with the investigation. While like the Erdmans Di and I are polar opposites in some regards, unlike the Erdmans we actually get along—for the most part. However, Di can get touchy if she thinks I’m being too nosy about the status of her puzzling relationship with the handsome sheriff.

Having grown up in Dixie, I thought I knew pretty much everything about almost everyone. But I was beginning to see an alarming amount of darkness lurking just beneath the surface of our sweet little town. Being rank amateurs when it came to investigating a murder seemed to be working both in our favor as well as against us. Di and I managed to dig up some dirt the sheriff hadn’t yet plowed through, but I was starting to worry that we might be digging our own graves. . .

---

You can read more about killer parties, Southern charm—and murder in Death Crashes the Party, the first book in the “Liv and Di in Dixie” mystery series, published by Kensington and set for release on December 29, 2015. The second book, It’s Your Party, Die If You Want To, will be released in October, 2016.

About Death Crashes the Party

In the quirky, close-knit town of Dixie, Tennessee, party planner Liv McKay has a knack for throwing Southern-style soirées, from diamonds-and-denim to black tie affairs, and her best friend Di Souther mixes a mean daiquiri. While planning a Moonshine and Magnolias bash for high maintenance clients, Liv inconveniently discovers a corpse in the freezer and turns her attention from fabulous fêtes to finding a murderer. Together, Liv and Di follow a trail of sinister secrets in their sweet little town that leads them from drug smugglers to a Civil War battlefield, and just when they think they’re whistling Dixie, Liv and Di will find themselves squarely in the crosshairs of the least likely killer of all. . .

# # # # # # # # # # #

GIVEAWAY: Leave a comment below for your chance to win a signed copy of DEATH CRASHES THE PARTY. (US and Canadian entries only, please.) The giveaway will end January 5 at 12 AM EST. Good luck everyone!

Meet the author
Vickie Fee grew up on a steady diet of Nancy Drew, daydreams and sweet iced tea. After earning a journalism degree from the University of Memphis, she spent many years as a reporter covering small Southern towns populated with colorful characters, much like those in her book’s fictional town of Dixie, Tennessee. She’s a past president of the Malice in Memphis chapter of Sisters in Crime and current member of the Wisconsin Sisters in Crime and the Guppies chapters. She now lives in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan with her husband and is working on the next book in the Liv and Di in Dixie mystery series. Connect with Vickie at www.vickiefee.com, on Facebook and on Twitter at @vickiefeeauthor.