subtitle: Minokee Mysteries, Book Two. This is the sequel to Finding Miranda, which is book one in the Minokee Mysteries series.
Shep and Miranda canoe downriver from Minokee, to view a new sinkhole that has opened up on Tom Rigby's farm. A profes...
AUTHOR'S NOTE: Thank you, Wattpad readers, for giving my first book, Finding Miranda, such a warm reception. You have asked about a sequel, and you have been very patient with me. So, I'm happy to give you your first peek at the second Minokee mystery: THE MAMMOTH MURDERS.
Have fun and happy reading! Don't forget to vote and share your comments. You readers always help to make a good story better, and I appreciate it.
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The Mammoth Murders. Chapter 1 - The Daredevil.
Had Miranda Ogilvy known of the danger at home, she might have driven faster that afternoon when she left her job in Live Oak, headed for the settlement called Minokee.
Live Oak, Florida, was a small town by almost anyone's definition. It was a bit smaller than Lake City or Gainesville or Ocala, and much, much smaller than Jacksonville, to the east, or Tallahassee, to the west.
Live Oak had a town square, with an old, red brick, cube-shaped courthouse, white-columned like Tara in Gone with the Wind. Live Oak had traffic lights, sidewalks, grocery stores, and even a public library.
Minokee had none of those things.
Minokee was even smaller than Live Oak.
In the local vernacular, Minokee was "not big as a minute."
Minokee had cypress and live oak trees, spiky palmetto clusters, and ferns. It had snowy egrets, arc-billed ibis, pink spoonbills, blue herons, redheaded woodpeckers, sandhill cranes, ospreys and bald eagles.
Instead of sidewalks beside its only two streets, Minokee boasted deer paths and pig trails through the surrounding cypress wetlands, oak tree hammocks, palmetto scrub, and pine barrens.
Minokee owned no public building, such as a courthouse, a post office, or a library. The community boasted only a dozen ancient, wood-shingled houses, each squatting behind wide, shady verandas.
Miranda Ogilvy worked in the Live Oak public library. Minokee lay sixty miles southeast, geographically, and seventy years earlier, culturally.
Every person (and many animals) in Minokee knew Miranda, even though she was the newest resident.
New neighbors were rare. Nobody moved to Minokee unless somebody old (usually very old) died. Miranda had relocated from busy, cosmopolitan Miami to her deceased aunt's creaky, sun-bleached cottage in quiet, isolated, ultra-rural Minokee.
It was part of the magic of Minokee that everyone loved the shy librarian and treated her as family. Back in Miami, Miranda had been virtually invisible.
Even at the small public library in Live Oak, Miranda's primary co-worker would seldom remember Miranda's name or notice her presence.
However, one Minokee resident had taken exceptional notice of Miranda, ever since the first time he jogged by her house and discovered its new owner hiding under a leafy castor bean bush.
