A Faire Day for Murder, the follow up to Inside Passage to Murder has been published and is available on Amazon.com!
Blurb:
The brutal murder
of an old man in his isolated farmhouse and very few clues leaves local law
enforcement with no alternative but to ask the Psionic Corps for help. Ian Houston with his paranormal abilities is
called in but his presence isn’t welcomed by all. The sheriff is convinced the owners of the
nearby renaissance faire are behind the murder, especially since the victim was
about to evict the faire from his land just as their season was getting underway.
Ian is not
convinced the case is so straightforward, especially since there are other
people with just as motive for doing away with the old man; the neighbor whom
he has had a long-going property dispute, the son who will inherit his lands
although the farm isn’t very profitable; one of the many participants and
patrons of the faire whom the old man harassed over the years. To keep innocent people from being charged
with murder, Ian must join the renaissance faire as a cast member to see if
there is a murderer lurking among the ren folke.
A second murder
confounds the investigation and the mystery becomes even more confused. Meanwhile the sheriff is moving closer to
charging the renaissance faire owners with murder.
Chapter 1:
Tom Eskew shifted in his favorite easy
chair, situated in front of the television. The cushion sagged so much he felt
his ample butt was only inches from the floor and the springs were poking him
through the threadbare fabric. He did
not care.
No one else, not even his son John,
was allowed to sit there.
He pointed the remote control at the
television and began punching buttons to turn up the volume. The channel changed instead.
“Shit,” he mumbled. “I’m gonna miss Wheel of Fortune. I’ll never understand how to work this damn
thing.”
After a minute of trial and error, Tom
managed to find the correct channel and appropriate level of house-shaking
volume so he could hear.
“Finally,” he said, just as the first
puzzle appeared on the screen. The phone sitting on a table next to his chair
shrilled.
“Damn it,” he growled. “Right in the middle of my show.”
The old man picked it up and squinted at
the numbers on the caller ID.
Another waste of money, he growled to
himself. What’s the use of having this feature on his phone if I can’t even see
it?
“Hello!” Tom barked into the receiver, his fleshy
bulldog-like jowls quivering as he spoke.
It wasn’t a greeting as much as it was a challenge. “What?”
He shouted as he tried to hear the caller over the TV.
“I
said I ran off the road a few miles from the house, Dad!”
“What
the hell did you do that for?”
“Don’t worry about me, Dad. I’ve already called Sheriff Weaver and he’s
on his way!” John went on without responding
to the insult.
Tom
berated his son, shouting questions and issuing threats if the truck John had
been driving was damaged in any way.
“I
think it’s totaled,” John replied.
“Well,
you’re gonna pay for it. I’m not buying
another damn vehicle.”
Shouting
a final threat in the phone, Tom slammed the receiver back into its
cradle. He sat back in his chair and
glared back at the TV.
Commercials?
What was that last puzzle? I was about to solve it. He threw his
hands up in disgust.
A
sound behind him tore his attention away from his beloved program.
“What
now?” He craned his neck to find the
source of the sound. All the windows had
been opened to let in the cool air from the outside, with screens to keep the
bugs out. Everything seemed to be in
order. He was just about to turn back to
the television when a movement behind him caught his eye.
He
had no time to turn before a shot fired from a gun took the top of his head
off, splattering the television screen with blood. The rest of his body slumped back into the
chair.
