Bruised Spines and Broken Alibis: A Small-Town Hot Springs Cozy Mystery
About Bruised Spines and Broken Alibis: A Small-Town Hot Springs Cozy Mystery
Bruised Spines and Broken Alibis is Book 2 in The Remedy Shelf Society Mysteries, where the town’s polished “healing” image starts to crack, and Greta Lorne learns that some people don’t come to a hot springs resort to relax. They come to hide. Winter is easing its grip on the mountains, and The Remedy Shelf is busy again.
Tourists drift in for book recommendations and cinnamon scones. Locals come for routine, warmth, and the small mercy of being known. Greta has started to settle into the rhythm of her rebuilt life, even as she and her friends keep one eye on the resort that owns too much of the town and smiles too easily when trouble strikes.
Then Greta finds a girl in the fiction aisle. She’s reed-thin, wearing a gray hoodie that looks borrowed, with a hospital wristband still on her arm and a patchwork of bruises she tries to hide by keeping her head down. She won’t give a real name.
She calls herself Abilene, like it’s the first word that came to mind and she’s daring the world to challenge it. She doesn’t want the police. She doesn’t want questions.
She wants a quiet corner, a warm drink, and a book that will help her stay upright for the next hour. Greta has seen this before. Not the exact details, but the body language.
The controlled breathing. The way Abilene flinches at sudden movement and watches the windows like she’s counting exits. Greta’s instincts scream at her to do something, and the part of her that rebuilt The Remedy Shelf to be a safe place refuses to send the girl away.
Greta offers the only deal she trusts: you can stay, but you won’t be alone. She texts Nia. She calls Samira.
Joan quietly positions herself where she can watch the door without looking like she’s watching the door. And Atlas, the one-eyed orange shop cat, does what he always does when someone is rattled. He parks himself on Abilene’s feet and refuses to move, like an anchor with whiskers.
They barely have time to decide what the next step should be when the town gets its next tragedy. A local man is found dead in what the authorities are quick to label a suicide. The ruling arrives fast, tidy, and convenient.
Most people accept it because accepting it is easier than asking what kind of town lets a person fall through the cracks without anyone noticing. Deputy Leo Maren, still fighting the old guard and the resort’s political gravity, isn’t convinced.