Three Times Lucky

Three Times Lucky Plot Summary

Introduction

In the sweltering heat of a North Carolina summer, eleven-year-old Moses LoBeau stands behind the counter of the Tupelo Café, her world about to crack wide open. Born during a hurricane that swept her downstream as a baby, Mo has spent her life searching for the upstream mother who let her go. Raised by the enigmatic Colonel—a man whose own memories vanished in a car crash—and the flamboyant Miss Lana, Mo has learned to find family in the most unlikely places. But when a stranger with cold eyes and a gold badge walks into their café, trouble follows like storm clouds gathering on the horizon. Detective Joe Starr brings news of murder from Winston-Salem, and suddenly the sleepy town of Tupelo Landing becomes a stage for secrets that have been buried for twelve years. As Mo and her best friend Dale stumble into a mystery that reaches back to the night she was born, they discover that sometimes the truth you've been searching for is the last thing you want to find.

Chapter 1: Strangers in a Small Town: Detectives and Desperados

Detective Joe Starr pushed through the café door at exactly seven minutes past noon, his dirt-colored Impala settling into dust outside. The lunch crowd froze like deer in headlights as he surveyed the room with winter-sky eyes. Mo LoBeau stepped up on her Pepsi crate behind the counter, all eleven years and infinite attitude of her. "Give me a burger all the way and a sweet tea," Starr said, his voice cutting through the suddenly thick air. "Sorry, we're out," Mo replied, not liking the starch in his shirt or the way he didn't smile. "You want the special instead?" Starr's gaze traveled the café walls, lingering on the black-and-white photo of Miss Lana dressed as Mae West. "She looks familiar," he said, and Mayor Little's cheerful chatter couldn't quite mask the tension creeping through the room. When the Colonel emerged from the kitchen—tall, angular, wearing a green plaid robe—the temperature dropped another degree. These two men circled each other like wary cats, all politeness and sharp edges. Starr's questions came casual but pointed: about the Thunderbird in the parking lot, about a murder victim named Dolph Andrews, about vintage cars that had gone missing. The Colonel's answers came smooth as glass and just as brittle. He'd bought the car in Robeson County, cash transaction, maybe two years ago. But Mo knew he was lying—the Underbird had arrived just days before. The Colonel never lied, which meant something was very wrong. As Starr circled the car outside, writing down license numbers, Mo felt the ground shifting beneath her feet. The stranger wasn't just passing through. He'd come hunting, and somehow their little family had wandered into his crosshairs.

Chapter 2: Secrets Beneath Still Waters: Murder in Tupelo Landing

The phone call came at dawn, shattering Mo's sleep like glass. Miss Rose's voice carried the impossible news across the wire: Mr. Jesse was dead, found floating in his own rowboat at Fool's Bridge. Not just dead—murdered, with the back of his head caved in by something heavy and unforgiving. Mo's world tilted. She'd served Mr. Jesse lunch just yesterday, enduring his complaints about the banana pudding and his stingy tip. Now Detective Starr was calling it homicide, setting up roadblocks and questioning neighbors about suspicious activity near the creek. At Mr. Jesse's funeral, the revelations began to tumble like dominoes. Young Thes Thompson stood before the congregation and dropped a bombshell: Mr. Jesse had been sliding hundred-dollar bills under the church door every Saturday night for eleven years. Fifty-seven thousand dollars of secret donations from a man everyone considered the town miser. The questions multiplied like storm clouds. Where had a hermit like Mr. Jesse gotten that kind of money? Who had wanted him dead badly enough to crack his skull with an oar and set his body adrift? And why did Detective Starr keep asking about a boy in a black shirt seen near Mr. Jesse's place the day of the murder? Mo watched Starr's cold eyes scan the funeral crowd, knowing the killer was probably sitting right there among them. But she also knew something else, something that made her stomach clench with dread. The boy Starr was hunting—blond hair, dark shirt, nervous as a cat—sounded exactly like her best friend Dale.

Chapter 3: Young Sleuths and Old Lies: The Desperado Detectives

Dale's confession tumbled out in Mo's bedroom at three in the morning, whispered fears of prison and disgrace. He'd borrowed Mr. Jesse's boat without asking, planning a fishing trip that never happened. When guilt and the promise of reward money drove him to return it, he'd walked straight into what would become a murder scene. The truth was worse than theft. Dale had worn his brother Lavender's oversized sandals to hide his identity, leaving confusing footprints that made Starr suspect an accomplice. He'd argued with Mr. Jesse, exchanged harsh words about his father, and stormed away through the woods just hours before someone caved in the old man's skull. "We'll find the real killer ourselves," Mo declared, and the Desperado Detective Agency was born. They hung their hand-lettered sign in the café: Murders Solved Cheap, Lost Pets Found for Free. Dale would handle the pets; Mo would crack the case that could send her best friend to prison. Their first break came from an unexpected source. Skeeter McMillan, future attorney and current seventh-grader, used her cousin network to trace the serial numbers on Mr. Jesse's church donations. The money was stolen goods, part of a bank heist from twelve years ago. The guard who died in that robbery was Mr. Jesse's cousin, and the loot had been buried under Mr. Jesse's house all along. But knowledge was dangerous in a town where everyone watched everyone else. As Mo and Dale dug deeper, they realized the killer wasn't just anyone—it was someone who knew about the money, someone who'd been watching and waiting for the right moment to claim what they thought was theirs. The net was closing, but around whom remained the deadliest question of all.

Chapter 4: Ghosts of the Past: The Colonel's Hidden History

The folder fell into Mo's hands like a piece of destiny, thick with newspaper clippings and bearing a name that chilled her blood: Slate. Hidden in the Colonel's closet, covered in years of dust, it contained the fragments of a life he couldn't remember—articles about a bank robbery, a murdered security guard, and a slick-talking defense attorney who'd gotten the killer a light sentence. The attorney's name was never mentioned directly, but the trail led backward through twelve years of buried truth. The Colonel had been someone else once, someone who'd defended monsters and lived to regret it. The car crash that brought him to Tupelo Landing hadn't just stolen his memory—it had saved him from a past that was coming back to claim its due. Deputy Marla's true nature emerged like a snake shedding its skin. The woman who'd played protector was really predator, working with escaped convict Robert Slate to recover the money from that long-ago heist. She'd been watching the family, learning their weaknesses, waiting for the perfect moment to strike. The phone calls came scratchy and threatening, demands for half a million dollars that the Colonel supposedly had hidden away. But it was all based on old rumors and false assumptions. The suitcase of cash that local gossip claimed he'd brought to town was nothing but baby supplies and a father's desperate love for a child pulled from floodwaters. When the Colonel finally escaped from Slate's makeshift prison, his warning came urgent and broken through the storm-lashed phone lines: "Don't trust anyone." The past had found them at last, and it wore a badge and a smile that had fooled them all.

Chapter 5: Vanishing Acts: Miss Lana's Disappearance

The café looked like a bomb had exploded inside when Mo and Dale returned from the festival, their hearts full of triumph from raising money for Lavender's race car. Furniture overturned, cushions slashed, papers scattered like confetti across the floor. And in the center of the chaos, a note that froze Mo's blood: "STARR—WE BOTH NEED SOMETHING. YOU HELP ME AND I'LL HELP YOU." Miss Lana was gone, vanished into the approaching hurricane with only signs of struggle and a pool of blood on the kitchen floor to mark her passing. The woman who'd raised Mo from infancy, who filled their home with laughter and Broadway show tunes, had been dragged away by monsters wearing the faces of protectors. Deputy Marla's mask slipped completely when Mo and Dale found her ransacking the Colonel's quarters. The sympathetic orphan became a cold-eyed killer, gun drawn and patience exhausted. She'd been playing them all along, feeding information to Slate, sabotaging the investigation while pretending to help solve it. The confrontation was brief and violent. Mo's karate training and Dale's perfect spiral pass combined to send Marla crashing into unconsciousness, but not before they learned the terrible truth. The friendly deputy was part of a twelve-year conspiracy to recover stolen money, and she'd kill anyone who stood in her way. As Hurricane Amy bore down on the coast, Mo tied up the corrupt cop with the Colonel's neckties and slashed her patrol car's tires with a bayonet. Miss Lana was out there somewhere in the storm, prisoner of a killer who believed in a treasure that existed only in small-town rumors. Time was running out, and the only people who could save her were an eleven-year-old girl and her terrified best friend.

Chapter 6: Hurricane Warning: Racing Against the Storm

Hurricane Amy hit like God's own fist, turning the world into a screaming chaos of wind and rain. Trees became missiles, roofs became kites, and the search for Miss Lana became a race against nature's fury. Hidden in Dale's house with his abusive father bound and helpless on the floor, Mo listened to the Colonel's desperate plan. The breakthrough came from memory and sound. The creaking Mo had heard during Slate's phone calls wasn't just any metal-on-metal screech—it was the distinctive cry of Miss Blalock's broken windmill, calling across the abandoned farm where no one had lived since the old woman's death. That's where Slate had taken Miss Lana, to the one place no one would think to look. They found blood at the farmhouse but no bodies, pizza boxes and signs of occupancy in a place that should have been empty. Miss Lana had fought back, leaving her handprint in blood on the faded wallpaper before Slate moved her to his final stronghold. The trail led back to where it all began—Mr. Jesse's house by the creek, where stolen money had waited buried for over a decade. The storm masked their approach as Mo and Dale crawled through the hurricane to find Slate digging up floorboards with desperate fury. He'd come for his treasure at last, half a million dollars in rotting bills that represented twelve years of obsession and murder. But he hadn't counted on two children with nothing to lose and everything to fight for. The battle was brief but decisive. Mo's flying kick sent Slate headfirst through the floor into the crawl space beneath the house, where he thrashed like a trapped animal while they held him down with furniture. The stolen money was finally found, but Miss Lana remained missing, and the storm showed no signs of mercy.

Chapter 7: Truth Washed Ashore: Family Found and Chosen

The final revelations came like waves breaking on a storm-torn shore, each truth more devastating than the last. The Colonel's lost memories returned in fragments of newspaper clippings and old wounds, revealing that he'd once been the lawyer who'd defended Slate and gotten him a reduced sentence for murder. The car crash hadn't just stolen his memory—it had saved him from a killer's revenge. Miss Lana emerged from the hurricane's fury in Joe Starr's custody, battered but unbroken, her own escape from captivity a testament to the fierce love that bound their unlikely family together. She'd fought back against Slate with a lamp, leaving the blood that had terrified Mo, then fled through the storm to find help. The truth about Mo's origins spilled out like water from a broken dam. The Colonel and Miss Lana had been lovers twelve years ago, planning to elope to Paris when Slate's threats changed everything. The hurricane that brought Mo downstream also brought the Colonel to his moment of choice—flee to safety or stay and build something new from the wreckage of his old life. In the café's reopening celebration, with the town gathered around them like family, the last secrets finally surfaced. Mr. Jesse's cousin had been the bank guard killed in Slate's robbery, and the stolen money had waited under the floorboards all along. Deputy Marla and Slate faced murder charges while the real family—chosen rather than born—began to heal. Mo's search for her upstream mother ended not with discovery but with recognition. Standing in the creek, holding another message in a bottle that turned out to be her own words floating back to her, she finally understood the truth. Family wasn't something you were born into or found by accident. It was something you built with love and defended with courage, one day at a time.

Summary

The storm passed, leaving Tupelo Landing changed but not broken. Mo LoBeau learned that some mysteries are solved not by finding what's missing but by recognizing what's been there all along. The Colonel's lost past became a bridge to a better future, while Miss Lana's unwavering faith proved that love could survive even the deepest amnesia. Dale discovered that courage wasn't the absence of fear but the willingness to stand up when it mattered most. In the end, the upstream mother Mo had spent eleven years searching for turned out to be a phantom, a desperate woman who'd made the ultimate sacrifice to save her child during a hurricane. But the family that found Mo in the flood—a broken lawyer with no memory and a young woman with endless hope—proved that the bonds you choose can be stronger than the ones you're born with. Sometimes being three times lucky means learning that home isn't a place you come from, but a place you help create, one meal and one memory at a time.

About Author

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Sheila Turnage

Turnage delves into the intersection of regional identity and storytelling, weaving humor and historical nuance into narratives that capture the essence of rural North Carolina. Her writing, deeply influenced by her anthropological studies, unearths the realities of human experiences, as seen in her children's book, "Three Times Lucky", which earned her a Newbery Honor. This award has driven her to maintain high literary standards in her subsequent works, ensuring that each story resonates with authenticity and depth.\n\nHer literary style is defined by vibrant characters and meticulous historical research, reflecting the resilience and charm of her native region. Turnage's works, such as "Island of Spies", delve into historical fiction by exploring little-known events like the Nazi U-boat attacks on the East Coast during World War II. Meanwhile, her Mo & Dale Mysteries series combines mystery with humor, making complex themes accessible to young readers. This approach not only entertains but also educates, allowing readers to explore historical contexts while enjoying engaging narratives.\n\nThe author’s commitment to community and lifelong learning is evident in her ongoing participation in creative writing courses. By sharing her expertise and receiving feedback from fellow writers, she enriches her craft, benefiting both her writing and her readers. Turnage’s bio illustrates a dedication to storytelling that transcends genres, offering audiences of all ages a window into the world of North Carolina’s past and present, while encouraging a broader understanding of human resilience and history.

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