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Books and Paintings by JoAnne
Category:
Mystery/Suspense
Publisher: Melange Books
Type: Fiction
Pages: 231
Copyright: July 17, 2014
ISBN-13: 9781612359502
Price: $4.99 (eBook)
7 crime/mystery tales of betrayal when lust, lies, and deceit are unleashed.
Blurb for “Too Solve His Mother’s Murder”
After his Air Force career was interrupted by his mother’s untimely murder, Steven Moore, returned home. Met with a cold reception of lies, secrets, and threats, he is determined too find Wanda’s killer, even at the cost of his own life. Was Wanda a victim of the legendary Hatchet Man? Was this loving and devoted mother killed because of her shady past, or for her inheritance? Between finding the truth and falling in love, Steven stops at nothing, too solve his mother’s murder.
Blurb for “The Other Couple’s Child”
Charlotte had it all. A loving and devoted husband. Supportive family and friends, and a house full of beautiful children. Everything was perfect for this Super Mom, until a medical procedure turns her life upside down, and spirals into a child abduction case. Time is running out. Will police arrive in time to save Charlotte and the other couple’s child?
Blurb for “3381 Market Street”
Katherine Sims, a young widow working for a brokerage firm in a small southeastern town, is tired of the excuses concerning Charlie’s absence. She knows something terrible must have happened to her favorite nephew with the sad blue-eyes. After exposing the killer, Katherine’s life is turned upside down and she finds herself fighting for her life. Filled with maniacal suspects, a Satanic Cult, and danger around each corner, this story depicts one woman’s courage too avenge a child’s murder, while finding unexpected love.
Blurb for “The Tarot Card Murders”
New Detective, and ex-navel man, twenty-six-year-old Nick Difozzio, returns to his small county determined too abolish crime. Not until death knocked on his door, did he know the face of evil. Will the decorated veteran destroy the Lycanthropes, or will he succumb to their murderess desires and become one of them? He took an oath too protect, honor, and uphold the law, but can he defy the lust, riches, and power offered, or are the ‘dark forces’ stronger than his will?
Excerpt
Excerpt: He pulled off the road at his destination, driving his truck into the wilderness as far as the terrain allowed. Parking, he began searching for the dry creek bed he knew was there. It didn't take long for him to find Wanda’s murder scene.
Descending into the stream bed that, in early spring filled to the banks with melted snow water, he noticed an array of Oswego tea and Joe-pye growing in the area. Beside them, a trumpet creeper entwined a butternut hickory tree. Perched high in the same tree a pair of orchard orioles noisily fed insects to their young. Even without the yellow crime scene tape, the area was marked clearly by the long burn spot where Wanda’s corpse was incinerated.
Scanning the area, he noted how secluded the location was from the road, with the nearest residence miles away. Those facts alone increased his confidence that the killer was familiar with the area and not a stranger, as local authorities reported. Still, who would kill a nobody like Wanda? She was a hermit, a lost soul of society. Having no respectable friends, her active clientele in recent years consisted of seedy characters decent folks avoided, but these were always persons from whom she shielded Steven from as a child.
Steven walked down the center of the narrow creek bed that, during spring rains, quenched the thirsts of coyote, red fox, and bear, and searched for clues the local cops might have overlooked. Soon he discovered an oval shaped, Topaz gem, lying amid sandy soil and pebbles. Retrieving the object, he compared it to his own High School graduation ring. Damn. Mother must have really struggled with her attacker to damage her killer’s ring. Unsure as to whom he could trust and whom he could not, believing the murderer was a local, Steven thrust the jewel into the pocket of his Levis.
Suddenly, Steven was startled by the sound of a twig snapping. Turning just in time, Steven ducked a swinging tire iron. Jumping aside, he rebounded from the ground to punch hard with both fists. Outweighed by sixty pounds, Steven assumed his boxing stance ready for anything the masked gorilla offered. Staying in close vicinity, but just outside his attacker’s reach, Steven worked to exhaust rather than overpower his foe.
The attacker, however, began swinging wildly, putting everything he had into each swipe of his iron. With the men stirring up dust and trampling the wild flowers, small creatures scampered away. Steven, hearing his attacker’s breath growing heavier, saw an opportunity and fought harder. Finally landing a solid punch to the jaw, the man staggered backwards and, at the same time, was relieved if his weapon.
“You broke my nose,” the fat man wailed. Enraged, he grabbed his weapon from the ground and charged with greater force than before. Still, he was unable to subdue the fast stepping, well-trained Airman.
Bursting abruptly from the surrounding brush, two hunters, thirty two-year-old Allan Travis and his twelve-year-old-son, Aden, interrupted the fight, scaring the attacker. In a second, Steven’s assailant vanished in the opposite direction.
“Hey, buddy, you okay?” Allan asked.
Breathing hard and drenched in sweat, Steven nodded. “I...am…now...thanks to...you...”
“Why was that man wear’n a mask, Daddy?” Aden asked.
Steven answered for the boy’s companion, “To hide his identity. Someone hired him to work me over, but I don’t scare easy.”
“My boy and I hunt these woods all the time. It used to be a nice spot until that whore got killed here,” Allan explained.
Shocked from actually hearing the word his mother was known by, Steven gritted his teeth and adamantly said, “Don’t call her that. Wanda was my mother.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t know she had kin around here,” Allan apologized. Humbly, he added, “I didn’t mean no disrespect.”
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