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Charlotte returns to her Aunt Bess and Mackinac Island, a quaint retreat that welcomes summer tourists and allows no cars (just horses and bicycles) to renew herself and write about the island’s ghosts.
She’s come to help Bess with her heartache, an ended love with Shaun, and to renew a friendship with neighbor Hannah.
In winter Mackinac closes down and everyone looks forward to the ice bridge that freezes across the Straits of Mackinac.
Until Hannah disappears into the icy waters crossing it. Everyone says it’s an accident. But Charlotte and her admirer cop friend, Mac, don’t think so. Something isn’t right. Hannah was too smart to go off the path.
So it’s murder…but why…how…by whom?
In the end, it’s Mac – and perhaps Hannah’s ghost? – that saves Charlotte and Bess’s lives when the killer decides they’re too close to the truth and tries to kill them, too.
The Wild Rose Press
The Wild Rose Press
“It gets cold enough to freeze a dinosaur around here,” Mac said. “It feels like the winds are made of ice at times. But I like Mackinac Island in the snow and through the holidays with the decorations strung from light post to light post and the huge Christmas tree in the center of town. I like riding around on a snowmobile and skimming across the ice bridge to the mainland and St. Ignace bundled up in two coats and three pairs of gloves. I like not having much to do. You know, winter’s the only time we get the Island back to ourselves.”
Charlotte smiled. “After the boatloads of tourists leave, hey?”
“Yeah, after the fudgies leave.” He returned the smile as she sidestepped a pile of horse manure in the middle of the road.
A horse and carriage rattled by, bikes whizzed around them and it was as if she’d never left. She was twelve years old again running wild around a place that’d been magic to her. Her tension was already easing away.
She looked up and took in the stately Victorian homes that lined Lake Shore Road with their skillfully painted exteriors and their elaborate flower gardens that were now beginning to wilt. She’d always dreamed of owning and living in one. Now? Fat chance. Only princesses and millionaires could afford them. Oh, well. Perhaps someday.
She lowered her head and watched where she put her feet. A puddle of what appeared to be water but wasn’t cascaded down the gutters behind a horse taxi with a covered roof and four speckled white Clydesdale horses pulling it. The beasts whinnied and clomped their hairy hooves, looking around as if they were bored. It would take her a while to get used to the pungent horse odors again, she mused, but, eventually, she would, as she had when she was a kid.
“Fudgies,” she said, “they still call the tourists that?”
“Still do. As long as they come, buy and eat so much fudge, I guess we’ll always call them that. They’re our bread and butter, though, so we can’t complain. The Islanders wouldn’t have jobs, I wouldn’t have a job, if not for the tourists. Their money pays the Islanders’ bills.”
Charlotte nodded, knowing he was right. ****
Excerpt
SECOND EXCERPT:
After all she’d been engaged to Lucas for five years. And to break up with her in an e-mail? The least he could have done was telephone and tell her in his own voice. Well, it was over.
She fought back tears as her thoughts touched on her doomed wedding, her eyes hurting and her hands clenching on the ferry’s rail until her knuckles were white.
She shook her head, mumbling in a low voice. He’d taken a chunk of her life, a lot for a man to steal from a young woman. Oh, she hated him. Hanging would be too good for him. Electrocution would be too good. She wished she could –
“Miss, are you all right?”
She turned her head and met the eyes of a tall man standing behind her on the boat. The angry tears in her eyes kept her from seeing him clearly. Young, she registered, and though not excitingly handsome, his face was kind.
She glanced around and realized she’d been so preoccupied with her sorrow and dreams of revenge that she’d been leaning over the railing. Her cheeks were wet with tears she didn’t recall shedding. He probably thought she was going to jump or something.
No man was worth that. Not even Lucas.
But she would have liked to throw her ex-fiancé over the railing, though, and into the chilly waters below. Him and Rachel. She almost smiled at the thought of the two thrashing around in Lake Huron like abandoned baby dodos, the ferryboat chugging away as she waved goodbye to both of them.
She’d teach them to hurt other people. To hurt her.
“I’m…fine,” she sighed, composing herself, and faced the stranger. No doubt she’d had that murderous look on her face before, the one her mother warned her would scare off Santa Claus. “Just had some unpleasant thoughts on my mind, that’s all.”
She wiped her eyes and looked at the man again. He was around her age, somewhere under thirty, had brown hair that the lake spray had ruffled into unruliness and brilliant sky eyes that smiled when his lips did, as they were doing now. He wasn’t as handsome as Lucas, but attractive in a healthy puppyish kind of way. He looked sure of himself and casual in his lemon yellow shirt and faded jeans.
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