A heartbroken Charlotte returns to quaint carless Mackinac Island and her lonely aunt…to fall in love again with the Island, its people and an Island cop…and to become dangerously entangled in a murder mystery.
She’ll fall in love again…with a man and the island. Charlotte returns to her Aunt Bess and Mackinac Island, a quaint retreat that welcomes summer tourists and allows no cars, 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–who saves Charlotte and Bess’s lives when the killer decides they’re too close to the truth and tries to kill them, too.
Excerpt
She heard her aunt open the door and let him in.
With trembling fingers, Charlotte dressed and went downstairs. Her aunt was weeping at the kitchen table. Mac was consoling her.
“You found Hannah?” Charlotte didn’t want the answer but she had to know.
“I’m afraid we might have. I’m sorry. Sit down. I’ll tell you about it.” He seemed exhausted.
Charlotte settled down beside her aunt. She readied herself for bad news.
“At dawn this morning the rescue team began dredging the lake beneath the abnormality we found yesterday. They dragged the water. Though they didn’t snag a body or a snowmobile, they’re pretty sure someone went under the ice. The underwater currents are powerful and swift moving so it’s possible we might not find a body until spring when the ice melts.”
Mac took something out of a plastic bag he’d had in his coat pocket. He laid it on the table in front of the two women. It was a bright red mitten, wet, trimmed with black thread, and unraveling along the edges.
“Do either of you recognize this?”
Bess gasped and reached out to touch it. “It’s one of Hannah’s. I gave her these mittens for Christmas. They’re brand new. Or they were.”
Charlotte recognized the mittens, too. When Hannah had unwrapped them she’d thrust them on her small hands and had pretended they were talking eyeless puppets. She’d had everyone laughing with her puppets’ lame jokes and antics.
“They found this mitten frozen into the ice on the edge of the irregularity. The rescue crew believes it belonged to the victim.” Mac glanced at the mitten in the middle of the table. “If it’s Hannah’s, then chances are good she’s the one who went into the water. I’m sorry. I loved the old woman, too, you know.”
Charlotte was in shock. After they’d found the unevenness in the ice she hadn’t wanted to believe that a person could be down there or that it would be Hannah.
Not Hannah...sweet old lady, her dear friend and like a mother to Bess all these years.
“She drowned?” Tears were trickling down Charlotte’s face.
“How did she wander off the path? It isn’t like Hannah to make such a mistake.” Bess groaned. “She’s smarter than that.”
“I don’t know what happened,” he admitted to both women. “We might never know.”
“With those undercurrents it’s possible, isn’t it, that we won’t ever recover Hannah’s body?” Charlotte asked. She’d read something once in a book about someone being swept under ice. They hadn’t recovered that body either.
“It’s possible.”
“So how will we be sure it was Hannah?” Charlotte was assailed by an unexpected vision of a crowd of phantoms in the mist hovering on the ice and smiling forlornly at her. One of them waved with one red mitten. It was Hannah.
Mac came to his feet and stuffed the mitten into its plastic bag and then into his coat pocket. “Well, if she never comes home we’ll know. The search team will continue to look for a while but I don’t think they’ll have much luck until the spring thaw. Then they’ll be able to dredge more successfully and send down divers. Right now it’s too cold and there’s too much ice.”
Mac turned to Bess. “We need to find out if Hannah has any living relatives. She never talked about them with me. Did she tell you anything about her family?”
“She didn’t have any children,” Bess said, wiping the tears from her eyes. “She had sisters but both are dead now. I don’t think she has any living relatives but I’m not positive of that. She didn’t speak of them anyway. She said the past was the past. You know how she was, Mac.
“But I guess we could go through her papers and her telephone numbers and try to dig up names. She’s got old friends here on the island from her childhood who might be able to help.”
“Those are places to start.”
Charlotte was lamenting that Hannah could be dead and was furious at the useless way she’d died. After she’d put her arms around her aunt and had given her a comforting embrace, she made a pot of coffee. It gave her something to do when all she wanted was to curl up somewhere and weep. Underlying her own sorrow, she was afraid for Bess. Between Shawn’s exit and Hannah’s disappearance, her aunt was going to be a real mess.
Hannah’s absence was going to hurt both of them so much.
Professional Reviews
ByCLOregonon July 3, 2015 5 stars
As with many Kathryn Meyer Griffith books, character is key, and the characters in this book were very likeable. Another critical element in her books is the setting, and as always, she created a environment that drew you in and made you want to linger in the pages.
The book takes place on a quaint little island and focuses on a woman who has just left the big city and moved in with her aunt. Not to give away too much, but there is a mysterious disappearance and the main character begins digging. As with most murder mysteries, disturbing clues begin to surface and the tension starts to build.
One of the main things I liked about this book was how it started out warm and comfortable, then the tension builds and builds until the final scene where you think you are going to drop dead from a heart attack. This is exactly what I look for in a murder mystery.
I highly recommend this book.
ByDeedraon May 4, 2015 5 stars
I loved this book!It was full of suspense and well written,with a bit of romance tossed in.Poor Charlotte has been dumped.She heads to her aunts house to regroup and falls into circumstances not of her making.The narrator,Ashley Arnold,was wonderful with the material.Highly recommended!
ByJanon April 17, 2015 5 stars
Excellent read with realistic people and setting. Follow along in their lives and trials. The location and it's peculiarities bring depth and intensity to a well written tale.
Ashley's audio performance highlights and strengthens the characters.
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