Excerpt, Guest Post, & Giveaway: Murder is Personal (Jake Powell Mysteries #1) by BJ Condike
Book Details:
Genre: Mystery, Thriller
Published by: Big Pine Press
Publication Date: September 15, 2026
Number of Pages: 347 pages
ISBN: 979-8996292103
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Jake Powell came to Rattlesnake Bend to disappear.
The small Texas town was the perfect place to outrun his past: no questions, no connections, no reminders of the life he left behind in Massachusetts. He kept his head down, worked for a local woodworker, drank beer at the Cock ‘N’ Bull, and tried to forget April Hunter – the woman he abandoned without explanation years ago.
Then April arrives in town wearing a yellow raincoat.
Twelve hours later, she’s dead.
With the sheriff convinced he’s guilty, Jake starts digging for answers on his own. What begins as a murder investigation spirals into a maze of family secrets, corporate corruption, anonymous threats, and lies buried for decades. The deeper Jake digs, the closer he gets to exposing his own dark secret – plus one more that could destroy him.
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Chapter 1
I’ll take blame for some of it. A lot of it, maybe. But part of it was simply bad karma, or bad juju, or just bad luck.
Like how I found myself in Rattlesnake Bend.
It had been the perfect hiding place, a backwater Texas town south of Fort Worth and north of Waco. In short, nowhere.
Everything was fine until that one odd thing happened. But odd things happen in threes.
The first one was working in Red Cloud’s woodshop on my day off. Red wanted to spend his Tuesday catching stripers on Serpent Lake. I had nothing going on, so I said yes. The second was an all-day drizzle, a rarity for North Texas. That was another reason Red wanted to fish that day. He said the weather would improve the bite. The third strolled into our shop wearing yellow.
I didn’t recognize the raincoat she wore but knew the face. My ex-girlfriend April Hunter. She was a long way from Massachusetts. And she shouldn’t have been there.
But there she was in the viewing window, her L.L. Bean slicker as out of place in our store as a peacock in a chicken coop.
My hands shook as I avoided sawing off my fingers. Steeling myself, I braced for a different kind of pain. April and I had been together for ten years, but that was a long while ago. Our reunion was bound to be awkward, or worse, volatile.
April tucked wayward strands of blond hair behind her ear. Her face wrinkled in puzzlement, then morphed into surprise. She gestured toward the workshop door.
I raised a finger in a “one-minute” mime and shut down the machines. The motors faded from a whine to a whisper to dead silence. My gut tensed as if expecting a punch.
I entered the retail area. She stood perfectly still, posed like a cigar store Indian in Birkenstocks and jeans, head cocked, one eyebrow raised.
“Well, if it isn’t Jake X. Powell,” she said. Just two old friends in a chance meeting. But it was more than that.
“April?” My voice cracked in three places.
My middle initial is subject to change, like the “x” in a math equation. That day it was an S as in Jake S. Powell—the S was for “Suave.”
I cleared my throat and spoke an octave lower. “What are you doing here, two thousand miles from home? Still combatting corporate America? Saving the gay whales?”
She grimaced. “I’m still writing, if that’s what you’re asking.”
April was a freelance reporter in Boston. She’d been the local incarnation of Lois Lane when we lived in Rollstone, an aging factory town an hour outside the city. Her passion for reporting bordered on obsession.
One day I left a note and took off in my Chevy van. I couldn’t tell her why. She’d never believe me. And never forgive me.
Eventually I landed on the Texas prairie, melting into the landscape. Until now.
“So what’s the Ghost Queen doing here?”
“Ghost? You’re accusing me of ghosting you?”
“April, you’re the only person I’ve ever known to ghost someone they’re living with.”
I must have raised my voice, because a customer tricked out as a Kardashian cowgirl glanced in our direction. The twenty-something brunette continued to browse but stayed within earshot.
This was the reunion I had long yearned for, yet also feared. I had rehearsed it a thousand times. But her sudden appearance had rattled me. And I was blowing it.
April bobbed her head from side to side. “Maybe I do owe you an explanation, but…” She paused. “You owe me one too. You skipped town and all you left was a ten-word note.” She stepped closer. “Three years—” She poked my chest with a fingernail. “—and not one call.” The blood-red nail stung like a hornet. “Not one text.” Poke. “Not even a postcard.” Poke. “And your cell. Stopped. Working.” Poke. Poke. Poke. “You mean to tell me you’ve been here the whole time?” Her tone said it was inconceivable anyone would want to visit the tiny town of Rattlesnake Bend, let alone live there.
“I’ve been lots of places. This is just the most recent stop on my magical mystery tour.” The music and lyrics sprang unbidden in my head. I almost started singing.
“Unbelievable!” She said, her smile gone. “I mean, what the hell, Jake. You disappeared! Even your aunt didn’t know where you went.”
I shrugged.
“Why, Jake? You never gave me a reason.”
I shook my head, offering no explanation. Whatever I said would have been a lie, even if it was better than the truth.
Her shoulders sagged and she looked down. “You left right about …you know my dad died, right?”
I nodded. Yeah, I knew.
I never meant to harm anyone. Only one person knows what happened, but she’ll never tell.
And now my three-year disappearing act had been wasted. The one person I had strived to avoid had found me, was standing in front of me. And the right words wouldn’t come. Maybe there weren’t any right words.
I closed my eyes and inhaled. The familiar scent of patchouli-laced perfume held hints of rain, mesquite, and prickly pear. Waves of memories flooded in but ebbed away on a tide of regret. I couldn’t get involved with her again. The old Jake had loved her, but the new Jake was with Carlota.
Our eyes met, and I exhaled.
The brunette cowgirl no longer hid her interest and openly stared. She hovered over Red’s most expensive pieces, jewelry boxes inlaid with turquoise and pipestone. The fringe on her western costume swayed with every movement. Our cashier Rosie squinted at me from the register. She’d give me hell later for distracting a customer.
I pulled April behind a display of Texas-shaped cutting boards and dropped my voice. “I can’t explain. I just had to leave.”
She rested her hand on my chest. My six-two frame dwarfed her by a foot. “Can’t we go somewhere and talk?” she whispered. “Please?”
I must have been overtired because I relented. “Sure. Why not? The store closes in an hour. Let’s meet at the Cock ’N’ Bull.” I pointed in the pub’s direction. “It’s around the corner. Six o’clock.”
“Um, I can’t meet you at six. I have a—a thing first. Can we get together later? Say, nine?”
I sighed. “What is it this time? Save the horny toads?”
“No! I have a reason for being in this one-horse town.”
“Prairie chickens?”
“Stop it, Jake! I didn’t come here looking for you. I was only killing time before my appointment and there you were.” She paused and bit her lower lip, a sure sign her mental gears were turning. “You know, I don’t know the area. Maybe you could come with me…”
“Hmm. Who is this appointment with? And where?”
“Some anonymous tipster. We’re supposed to meet at a place called Castro Park.”
“That’s on the lake. Why would you want me there—to be, like, a bodyguard?”
She responded with a sheepish smile and a small shrug that asked, “Pretty please?” better than mere words could express.
There were two reasons to refuse. One of them was Carlota, and I couldn’t mention the other. Besides, April was a professional journalist. She’d done things like that a thousand times. She never needed me before; she didn’t need me then. I could just imagine Carlota’s eruption if she knew I was skulking about at night with my ex.
“I don’t think so, April. I’ll meet you later, but you’ll have to make your cloak-and-dagger rendezvous on your own.”
“Yeah, right. Thanks for nothing, Jake.”
“So, will I see you?”
“Maybe. I guess.” She said it without conviction.
We exchanged cell numbers, and she left the store wearing an annoyed expression. She raised the hood of her raincoat against the dampness and didn’t look back.
That was the last time I saw her alive.
This is a deleted scene from an early version of Murder Is Personal. It provides detail to the main character Jake’s backstory regarding his state of mind and motivation for future actions.
Chapter 2. Jake is waiting for April to show at the Cock ‘N’ Bull pub in Texas, downing tequila shots and brooding over her apparently standing him up. The situation evokes a memory from their past in Massachusetts…
Flashback
“Good afternoon. Hunter Modeling School. This is June.”
I had called the school’s main number in the off-chance April had stopped there on her way to our date. It was a surprise when June answered instead of the receptionist. June was the de facto manager, as her mother, the school’s owner, had abdicated that responsibility long ago. Although June’s voice sounded like a Hunter girl, it had an edgy, chippy tone her younger siblings lacked. Asking June for anything was like asking the cable company for help.
“Hey, June, it’s Jake. I know it’s after hours, but I’m trying to find April. She’s not answering her cell. By any chance is she with you at the school?”
There was a long pause. I could imagine her boiler’s internal pressure building as she decided how nasty she would be.
“I’m not your secretary, Jake, and I’m not What’s-Her-Name’s keeper. I’m not anything to you, remember? You made that perfectly clear long ago.”
“I just want to know—”
“I know what you want, and I don’t care! She’s a poor excuse for a sister, and I don’t want anything to do with her. Now don’t call me again.” She disconnected.
Being snubbed by two Hunter girls on the same day was a jolt to my normally robust ego. I waited at the bar and fumed, drinking Black Russians to pass the time. An army of Cossacks later, I decided Aprilstanding me up deserved direct action.
I revved up my Chevy van and began trolling local restaurants. I found her Ford Custom 500 at Queen’s Corner, the largest American food establishment in the area. The sprawling edifice had once been an inn for dusty travelers in colonial days.
I asked forgiveness from the hostess and surveyed the main dining room. April was part of a merry crowd of seven clustered around a circular booth. She sat next to a guy with a goatee and a nose ring. The three women and four men joked with each other and guzzled cocktails. The people I recognized worked at the tree-hugger magazine April wrote for. My gut clenched to think she could have such a good time without me.
After a few minutes she noticed me hovering near the waitress station. As she narrowed her eyebrows, I gave her a head-and-eye-roll gesture to follow me and headed out of the dining area.
After a few minutes she marched into the lobby.
“What are you doing here?” she demanded.
“Right back at you, April. We had a date, remember? Like, two hours ago. You could have sent me a text.”
She expelled an exasperated sigh. “I guess so, but I’m in a meeting.”
“You mean the party at the round table?”
She shook her head. “What’s the matter with you, Jake? I’m late, that’s all. You’re turning into the Great American Stalker.”
“Nothing’s the matter. Except this is the third time this week you’ve stood me up. I’m beginning to question the allure of my personal charm.”
She stood there, blinking her almond eyes at me, nervously glancing back toward the dining room. My personal charm waned like the last quarter of a winter moon.
“So, are we going out to eat, or what?” I said.
“I already ate.”
I stared at her for a moment, then turned and left. The velvet quiet of the parking lot replaced the restaurant’s raucous clatter. No door opened behind me, no voice called my name, no high heels tapped echoes in the silence.
April had been inexplicably distant the past few weeks, sending me into a blue funk. I resolved to commiserate with Jose Cuervo so I would be comatose by the time she got home. She wouldn’t talk to me anyway, and I couldn’t face a forced confrontation.
Our situation had to change, and soon.
BJ Condike learned his writing craft at SMU in Dallas, and has won numerous local and regional short story contests. BJ’s stories have appeared in several anthologies published by Granbury Writers’ Bloc, the North Dallas Chapter of Sisters in Crime, and Key West Writers Guild where he serves as vice president. He is active in several writing clubs in Texas and Florida, and is currently marketing his debut novel Murder is Personal. In his spare time he plies the waters of the Florida Keys in his fishing boat Sea-Quel with his wife ML and their Welsh corgi Sophie.
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