“Neptune!”

I pulled my daughter’s giant gray cat out of the remote kit. Not an easy task, since he weighs close to twenty pounds, and he didn’t want to move. He yowled, and power-shed a cloud of fuzz down the front of my blue chambray WSV Radio logo shirt.

Still, he grudgingly allowed me to put him in the window, where he could menace his favorite birds. I’ll pay for this later, probably in tuna.

Right now, I had to get my act together for the Green-Up Day broadcast and cleanup.

Just about everyone in town would be at Schoolhouse Park later this morning, as my business partner Rob and I started our April Saturday with some bright pop music and happy talk. Rob’s the morning man and I’m the love-songs-at-night DJ, but when there’s a big event in town, it’s all hands and we go together.

It’s sure not the way I expected my life to turn out when I’d worked my way up to a nice comfortable midday DJ shift in New York City. But we plan, G-d laughs. My husband survived lymphoma and decided he wanted different things – mostly blonde and bodacious. Right about the same time my employer decided the Bully Ballers Show was a better bet than Jaye Jordan’s Light Rock at Work. I took my broken heart and my buyout and bought WSV, the tiny radio station where I’d worked twenty years ago on my way up.

Rob, my former boss, had moved on to running the town restaurant next door, but was more than happy to get back in the game. Well, after his husband promised to handle some of the lunch prep chores so he could do the show.

Most of a year later, we were doing okay. Some days, even pretty terrific. My daughter Ryan and Rob’s son Xavier became best buddies, I’ve re-connected with old friends and made new ones…and even started seeing my old crush from back in the day, who’s single now – and governor again.

Nah, I didn’t see that one coming either.

Anyhow, Green-Up Day is always a trip. Vermonters have been inside for something like seven months, and when the weather’s finally good enough to go outside again, even sensible folks get a little crazy. My ex’s 103-year-old grandfather and his 92-year-old sweetie are running the water station, and they’d been driving us nuts all week with “suggestions.” At this point, it’s more like supplying the landing at Normandy than making sure everyone stays hydrated for a few hours.

On the other end of the age scale, Ryan, Xavi, and their classmates from Madeline Kunin Elementary will be planting flowers around the abandoned schoolhouse that gives the park its name. Rob and many of the men will be cleaning up and rebuilding a stone wall.

And me? Well, my yoga buddies, plus Rob’s cousin, Toni de Fer, the Speaker of the State House (it’s a very small state!) and I are in charge of the weedwhackers. I’m really looking forward to laying waste to some overgrowth.

When we were getting ready yesterday, one of my friends looked at the underbrush and said “Jeez, Jimmy Hoffa could be in there.”

“Who knows what we’ll find?” I’d laughed.

Oh, such famous last words…

Live, Local, and Long Dead, A Vermont Radio Mystery Book 2
Genre: Cozy Mystery
Release: October 2024
Format: Print, Digital
Purchase Link

Vermont DJ Jaye Jordan’s Green-Up Day ends in murder when not one, but two, bodies turn up in an old park—and one of them was much too close to both her ex and her current man when it was alive and bodacious. Now Jaye, with the help of a colorful (and diverse) cast of townies, will have to clear her men’s names, unravel a World War II-era mystery—and get Grandpa Seymour to the Senior Prom on time.

About the author
Nikki Knight describes herself as an Author/Anchor/Mom…not in that order. An award-winning weekend anchor at New York City’s 1010 WINS Radio, she writes short stories and novels including the Vermont Radio and Grace the Hit Mom Mysteries. Her stories have appeared in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, Mystery Magazine, and Black Cat Weekly, online, and in anthologies – and been short-listed for Black Orchid Novella and Derringer Awards. Active in writers’ groups, she’s served as Vice President of the Short Mystery Fiction Society and is currently Co-Vice President of the New York/Tri-State Chapter of Sisters in Crime. As Kathleen Marple Kalb, she writes the Ella Shane and Old Stuff mystery series for Level Best Books. She, her husband, and son live in a Connecticut house owned by their cat.

Connect with Nikki on Facebook, X/Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube.