Sally Peale flattened herself in the back corner of Maureen Mitchell’s bedroom closet, hiding behind the longest evening gown.
“This makes no sense, Sally,” Maureen’s nephew, Brian, shouted from somewhere near at hand. “I know you’re upstairs. You can’t escape.”
Detective Macy paced beside my aunt's bedside. "Did you see your assailant? His face…Anything?"
“No." Aunt Grace shakily wiped several tears from her pale wrinkled cheeks. "I was asleep. It wasn't until I felt my pillow being pressed over my face that I knew someone else was in the room."
Griffin lifted the huge knocker on the door of the House of Screams and let it drop with a resounding boom. Seconds later a little window in the door slid open, and a horribly scarred face with dead eyes stared out. "Not open 'til eight tonight," it said.
A chilly breeze blew through the open window, but Martha McGuire didn't move an inch. Slumped over her laptop, she had written her last mystery novel.
Detective Abby Adams studied beautiful Gina Grove. Was she acting or telling the truth?
“Tom Harrison’s review in last evening’s paper rips you pretty badly,” Abby said.
Roy heard his wife even before she burst into his writing room. Though Elaine padded about either in slippers or barefoot, the floorboards still creaked whenever she ascended the stairs of the old house. Noises...always shattering his concentration.
Sheriff Estelle Moon finished her inspection of Laura Taylor’s bedroom window. “No sign of forced entry. You sure it was locked?”
“I thought so,” the attractive sixtyish woman said. “But it was wide open when I returned home, and my jewelry was gone. So was my lovely music box.” She wiped away a tear.
The writer’s dinner was in full swing when I leaned close to Chelsea Yates and told her I felt ill and had to leave.
“Oh, Amanda, must you?” Chelsea’s hazel eyes fastened on me, disappointment clouding her face.
Afraid so, Ms. Perfect Mystery Writer, I wanted to say, but didn’t. I had something better planned for her, something that would put a little crimp in her pocketbook, and a bulge in mine.
Janice Dillon flinched as Tony Rosaro charged past her and out the door of Kim Brennan’s half of the duplex.
“Help…murder!” Janice cried, running into the yard.
Tony swung a wild glance back in her direction, then jerked open the door of his red sports car and piled inside. Once…twice the engine sputtered. Then it died.
“Was that wise, Mary?” asked the statuesque, gray-haired woman sitting beside her.
Mary Callison widened her blue eyes. “Was what wise?”
“Bringing that cash box out here and opening it in front of the grocery delivery man like that,” Hazel Finch said.
