Amazon
Category:
Mystery/Suspense
ISBN-10: 1461041651
Type: Fiction
ISBN-13: 9781461041658
Three murder mysteries and a science fiction mystery.
Aunt Betty’s Bible
When Lizzy Louden finds her aunt dead in her vegetable garden, she goes on the hunt for her killer even when the police say it was death by natural causes. Lizzy knows better.
The Missing Woman
Annette McShane has gone missing and her husband, Patrick, is the main suspect. When he is found murdered in his bed, the trail goes cold. Even the police are baffled.
The Dollhouse
Carol Abbots bought a dollhouse at the flea market. Strange lights and sounds emanate from the house. A person can get killed investigating the history of a dollhouse.
The Edge of Time
Dr. James Phillips is a particle physicist with a problem. Time and space are about to come to a halt and the universe will retreat to the dense matter it was before the Big Bang. The problem is that no one believes him and he can’t stop it.
Excerpt
From The Missing Woman:
It had been two days since Annette McShane was reported missing. It was Saturday when Patrick McShane had made the frantic 9-1-1 call to the local police. He hadn't seen his thirty-year-old wife since early that morning, he told police, and she failed to pick up their children from the swim club that afternoon.
A check by the police with friends, neighbors and anyone else with whom the woman might have interacted on a daily basis in the small town of Maple Shade yielded nothing. Neither she nor her 2006 Barcelona Red RAV4 had been seen since early Saturday morning.
By early Monday morning, Anthony Bello of the Maple Shade Police Department, the lead detective who was assigned to the case, arrived at the McShane house.
He tried to reassure the woman's husband.
"Every day people just walk away from a marriage, their parents, and their friends. After a few days, they come back. I've seen it happen again and again."
He watched Patrick McShane, a rather handsome man with light blue eyes and reddish-blond hair, as he toyed nervously with the handle on his mug that read, “Irishmen do it best”. He noticed how his hand seemed to shake when he picked up his cigarette, took a drag and laid it back in the ashtray.
“So,” asked McShane, rather impatiently, “where are they looking for her? Can I go with them?”
Detective Bello didn’t answer. He was only half-listening. He held the photograph of Annette McShane in his hand, staring at her image. She was a beauty, no doubt about that. She had long thick hair, dark brown and wavy. Her eyes were like almond-shaped amber, framed with lush eyelashes. Something inside stirred.
She was certainly someone he would love to have met at The Coppers Club, where he went when he was off-duty and where he met most of the women in his life. It was where he schmoozed them right into his bed.
Detective Bello considers himself quite the ladies man. At six feet four inches, he has thick black hair and large sympathetic brown eyes.
“Puppy dog eyes,” that’s what the women say; of course, his women consisted of the luck of the draw for the evening. But as he stared into the face before him, he had to admit, he never had a beauty like this one.
***
Patrick McShane looked across the table. He could read the detective’s eyes. He had seen that look before, many times.
***
“You can see why I want her back. She’s one in a million; beautiful, smart, sexy, and as if that’s not enough, she’s a wonderful mother to our children.
“I don’t know how she does it, but she keeps this house immaculate. I’ve been trying to keep on top of it for her. I know she’d want that.
“I’m not giving up hope.”
“Hmm, you certainly are a lucky guy,” said Bello.
The kitchen did, in fact, look as though it belonged in a magazine article, Good Housekeeping maybe. Bello thought of his own apartment, socks strewn about, laundry piled in the corner, and dishes from last week’s lasagna stuck to them, still sitting on the counter. Yes, this was a lucky man.
He looked up and locked gazes with Patrick McShane, who seemed to look right into his thoughts. Bello began to feel uneasy. Did his voice give something away, he wondered.
“Oh, I’m sorry. I just meant that I know how you must be feeling right now. I wouldn’t want to lose someone like this either,” he said almost with a tinge of embarrassment.
He was a professional, true, but he was a man first.
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