Excerpt of The Jig Is Up by Lisa Q. Mathews

Chapter One

“Mommy, the shamrock’s not smiling.”

I took another swig of cold coffee from my travel mug and twisted toward the back seat, where my seven-year-old daughter, Bliz—aka Mary Elizabeth—looked confused in the semidarkness. “That means there’s no vacancy, sweetie. The shamrock sign only smiles when there are hotel rooms left.”

On cue, the interior of the Subaru turned neon green. Then black. Then green again. The crazy sign probably kept the Smiling Shamrock Bed & Breakfast guests awake all night. Or flashed in their nightmares.

My older daughter, Maeve, looked up from her phone and unslumped herself from her neck pillow in fourteen-year-old fashion. “Thought we were going to Gram’s.”

She sounded cranky, and I didn’t blame her. The trip to Shamrock had taken double the usual time.

“We are. Just pulling over for a second.”

Apparently, I needed the GPS to direct me through my own hometown. It was so foggy I couldn’t see two feet past the windshield.

Neither rain, nor fog, nor gloom of night . . . Was that how the line went? I’d passed it engraved above the old General Post Office Building in Manhattan a million times on my way to work.

Nope, I’d forgotten the snow part. At least we hadn’t dealt with that tonight. Just double the gloom, which had fittingly led us to the crunchy gravel driveway of the Smiling Shamrock.

I jumped at a sharp rap on the window.