Title ‘A Recipe for Murder’
Author Jo A. Hiestand
Genre Mystery
Book Blurb
December bullies its way into the village in a swirl of snow and biting wind, threatening to cancel the annual St. Nicholas festival. But winter’s slap pales when a body is discovered in the candlelit church. Someone is not living up to the seasonal wish of ‘peace on earth, good will towards man.’
But the village harbors more than Christmas gifts, DS Brenna Taylor discovers as she and her colleagues from the Derbyshire Constabulary begin working the case. There is the feud between two rival authors; a wife’s open disdain of her husband and his secret comfort in the arms of another woman; the pent-up emotions of a vicar’s wife forced to conform to idealistic conceptions; the tacit threat of a troubled teenager and his delinquent girlfriend.
Brenna also discovers emotions she didn’t know she had when DS Mark Salt, her harassing macho cohort, makes overtures of genuine friendship. Now Brenna must not only examine her love for her boss, DCI Geoffrey Graham, but also consider the likelihood of its ever being returned.
As if sorting through the affairs of the heart and the tangle of motive and suspects in the case weren’t hard enough, a series of arsons threatens the very village itself. And Brenna wonders if they are looking for two felons or just one very disturbed individual.
Excerpt
I had never believed in ghosts. They seemed more the stuff of fiction and ancient castles than of churches. But as the massive door closed behind me with all the heaviness of a coffin lid settling into place, I considered there might be some basis for the stories after all.
It was the hinges that first startled me—great, metal things groaning into the stillness like an atmospheric prerequisite of a gothic novel. The disturbance echoed against cold stone and hard wood; it multiplied into a dozen voices that tumbled down the aisles or rolled up the tower steps, dying as they nudged a bell into song. A deep tone, soft as an angel’s voice, sighed from the tower and cajoled sympathetic ripples from neighboring bells. In the ringing chamber below, their ropes swayed as if pulled by invisible hands, the sallies dancing ghost-like in the dark.
I could relegate these phantoms to their nether lands by flipping on the lights. But I wanted to experience it as it probably had happened. So I sank against the wooden slab, letting my eyes adjust to the gloom, letting my mind reason through my sensations.
Scents of pine, hot candle wax and wood polish floated over to me, and I breathed deeply of the fragrances that stirred a thousand Christmas memories—the pine tree decorated with gingerbread men and orange pomanders, the bayberry candles gleaming against frosted window panes, the tins of homemade chocolates and spiced tea, Uncle Ernie’s after shave lotion that clung to me after his bear-hug greeting. Yet, just as quickly as the images rose before me, they dissolved. A window rattled and the candle flames cringed. An organ pipe droned with no mortal hand upon the keys. And a whisper—as though from a great distance—moaned somewhere beyond the pinprick of light. A sighing of wintry wind buffeting the windows, or a lamenting banshee?
I had no real desire to find out, to leave the relative security of the door, however cold it was, and cross the vast expanse of darkened floor. But a path of water droplets taunted me, cajoling me to follow them into the darkness. Remnants of an innocent visitor, or the reason I was there? I tapped the snow from my boots, and pulled on my paper shoe covers and latex gloves. Flicking on my torch, I stretched out my arm and felt my way forward as though blind or sleepwalking.
Even through my half-frozen boots I could feel the texture of the flagstone floor, the rough and smooth stones, the grade of the rocky slabs that had tilted during the centuries, asserting their individuality among a sea of apparent flatness.
A rectangle of brass gleamed among the sober tones, repelling the surrounding stone, sanctifying this body-sized space. I detoured from my path and shone the light on it. The monumental brass depicted an armored knight. The wording, as were parts of the tablet’s edging, showed slight wear from the thousands of feet that had walked across it. The knight, however, still stared distinct and unmarked into the future. Between the raised lettering above his head small drops of water had accumulated. I bent down to sniff them but could detect nothing odd. Snow from a recent visitor? If so, how fast had it melted in the mid-50 degree temperature of the chancel?
Clumps of melting snow lead me past great, white bulks of carved chests, gargoyles and alabaster statues that jumped out of the shadows. A sliver of gold flashed out as the torch discovered two gold candlesticks, then left them as I threaded my way between the low houselling benches and the white nave altar cloth, floating phantom-like in the gloom, the silvers, peacock and cornflower blues, reds and golds of the needlework mesmerizing. Wondering what it would look like at evensong, I snapped off the torch. The satin cloth shimmered like moonlit white sands; glass beads and gold sequins sparkled as if on fire. Its beauty was almost enough to lure me back to a church service.
But I wasn’t there to worship. Shifting shadows thrown by the candlelight gestured toward the murkiest part of the church. On the far side of the wooden pulpit, a black bulk in the gloomy reaches of the chantry screen called to me. Snapping on the torch again, I walked over to the shape.
It revealed itself slowly, bits at a time, as though being pulled from the night—first the good, sturdy boots, then the black slacks still damp from snow, the dark jacket and finally a ghost-white hand. All part of the inert body lying facedown on the floor. All expected but the scattering of holly, a sprig of pine, and the glint of metal above its back. The knife seemed jammed into the flesh, for the victim’s jacket nearly swallowed the knife blade. Yet, I kneeled beside it, reached for the left hand and felt for a pulse. There was nothing I could do. Had he, before joining his ancestors, been my whispering phantom, urging me to capture his killer? I gazed again at the knife blade, and waited in dead silence for Graham’s arrival.
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Author Biography
Jo A. Hiestand grew up on regular doses of music, books, and Girl Scout camping. She gravitated toward writing in her post-high school years and finally did something sensible about it, graduating from Webster University with a BA degree in English and departmental honors. She writes a British mystery series (the McLaren Mysteries)—of which three books have garnered the prestigious N.N. Light’s Book Heaven ‘Best Mystery Novel’ three years straight. She also writes a Missouri-based cozy mystery series that is grounded in places associated with her camping haunts. The camping is a thing of the past, for the most part, but the music stayed with her in the form of playing guitar and harpsichord, and singing in a folk group. Jo carves jack o’ lanterns badly and sings loudly. She loves barbecue sauce and ice cream (separately, not together), kilts (especially if men wear them), clouds and stormy skies, and the music of G.F. Handel. You can usually find her pulling mystery plots out of scenery—whether from photographs or the real thing.
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Title ‘In A Wintry Wood’
Author Jo A. Hiestand
Genre Mystery
Book Blurb
DS Brenna Taylor and DCI Geoffrey Graham are summoned to investigate a drowning in a wintry pond during a family 12th Night party. The case quickly turns personal for the CID team, for one of their own detectives becomes prime suspect. Brenna finds herself caught between the police investigation and her belief in DS Mark Salt’s innocence. Yet even her faith is strained when Mark’s parody of “The 12 Days of Christmas” hints that he was having an affair with his murdered sister-in-law, Mercedes. It’s easy to believe Mark’s guilt: he attracts women like Christmas presents entice kids. As the investigation progresses, other ‘attractions’ in his past are revealed, and Mark’s guilt intensifies with each one. Now that Brenna finally views Mark as a human being, will she lose him if he’s charged with murder?
Excerpt
The copse sat in a hollow of land at the base of three hills. From my scant observation and even scantier information, the Salts’ family farm occupied the western hill, and the estate harboring the pond occupied the eastern. The third hill I had no knowledge of, but it lay to the north, undisturbed by road or building, essentially pristine since its birth, with a healthy mixture of deciduous and evergreen trees spotting its soil. The brook ran down this third hill, then flat for several hundred yards before it twined itself around the foot of the remaining hills. It was here that the vegetation had come into its own, growing thick and claiming the land even among the boulders that lay like broken teeth along the tongue of water.
What a spot in which to bird watch! I thought, envious of Mark’s property, then focused on police matters as I ran to catch Graham up.
Following a police tape already laid out, we meandered in a fairly circular route toward the brook. This left the immediate vicinity around the pond undisturbed of our foot traffic and helped conserve the scene, keeping contamination to a minimum. I ducked under a low pine bough and scrambled down the slope as I glanced to my left. Mercedes’ snowy path was evidently intact, as were several tracks of larger prints that ran laterally alongside or entwined with hers. I wondered if someone had accompanied Mark to the scene, but Graham hadn’t relayed that to me. We climbed several meters up the side of the north hill, pushing back thick vegetation, then walked parallel to the hill’s base for several minutes. The snow lay deeper here among the low-growing shrub and grasses. Here we were above and approaching the brook, and I heard its voice as it babbled over the moss-coated stones. The stream lay deeper in some stretches of its run, altering its course as it slid over rocks or tree roots or packed earth. We crossed and climbed up the rocky embankment before again turning down toward the pond. Now on the opposite side, I could hear the brook’s song more clearly as it gushed through a funnel of large boulders. When the water had escaped its containment, it seemed to relax and flowed more leisurely and quietly. Graham turned and said something about spending half his working day getting to crime scenes, then grabbed onto an oak bough as he scrambled down the slope.
Even if spatters of florescent orange from police personnel jackets hadn’t shown through the bare trees, I could’ve found the spot. Police work lights illuminated the area and a camera flashed in the gloomy surroundings. I looked for Mark as Graham and I entered the clearing through a break in the stand of conifers.
Mark stood at the edge of the clearing, a statue among the milling Crime Scene investigators and police officers. He nodded at me as Graham and I came up to him.
The pond spread before us like the cap of the wood mushroom, flat and white under its own cap of ice. A gaping hole in the ice indicated where Mark’s sister-in-law, Mercedes, had plunged to her death. The edges of the hole were jagged and rigid, like mushroom gills.
Mark and Graham stepped aside as officers moved in equipment to secure the body. I noticed a pile of work garments—white paper jumpsuits, shoe covers and face masks—and asked Graham if he wanted to suit up.
“I’ll watch from the sidelines, thanks. The photos and video will be enough.”
As if prodded by Graham’s statement, the technician moved his tripod, ready to photograph the body as it was recovered from the pond.
“Let’s get out of the way. They really don’t need me.” Which wasn’t exactly true. He might not do the hands-on recovery of the body, but as the officer in charge of the operation, Graham held the responsibility and reported to the Detective-Superintendent. We walked to a large willow and watched as several constables prepared to drag the pond.
It was fed by the stream on its northern edge. The stream then escaped the stagnant water at the pond’s southern edge, gurgling freely through its rocky journey to the river. Clumps of willow, aspen and birch circled the pool while burdock, water chickweed and ragged robin would cling to the damp fringes in summer. Beyond that, wood dock and black mustard would bloom. Now, of course, nothing but brown, dried stalks showed pencil-like through the patches of snow. I scraped the toe of my boot across a mass of frozen leaves, brown and frozen together, and thought Mercedes had indeed found a charming spot in which to sketch.
“You know for certain she’s here, then?” I asked as we watched the hook of the recovery tool as it was lowered into the hole.
Mark nodded, his eyes fixed on the pond. “I saw her about a foot below the surface of the ice.” He broke off, swallowed and wiped his mouth. His skin had lost its color, and it seemed to have leached all his energy. When he spoke again, his voice was faint. “I didn’t want to risk lying on the ice to drag her out. It seems like it’s thawing in a few spots.”
The edge of the pond, where the water was shallowest, showed signs of melting ice, and the ground was damp. And a few areas of the ice surface seemed a different hue and texture, as though the sun had chosen those spots to thaw. On the whole, the pond seemed solid enough, but crawling onto the icy surface was not the way to test it.
“Besides,” Mark said, “there didn’t seem to be any hurry. I didn’t have to worry about CPR.”
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Title ‘A Touch of Murder’
Author Jo A. Hiestand
Genre Mystery
Book Blurb
Det Sgt Brenna Taylor and DCI Geoffrey Graham lead the Derbyshire CID team on an investigation of a Valentine’s Day murder in a bell tower.
Excerpt
The person must’ve exited the tower because the breeze had ceased, along with the faint aroma of crushed pine needles. The bell ropes stood still again. I wished Graham would arrive so we could proceed. “I heard that the head wound of the deceased doesn’t match the angles of the ladder or the hatchway opening in the ceiling.”
He shrugged. “All in good time, Brenna. You know it’s Valentine’s Day?”
“So?”
“I thought we’d have time for a quick kiss.”
“Keep your mind on the job, Mark. You’ll be a happier lad in the long run.”
“God, you’re grumpy.”
“Grumpy!” I practically shouted, then, noticing some of the lads looking my way, said more softly, “Why do you say that?”
Mark pointed to my gauze-wrapped right hand and wrist. “Must hurt.”
“Not particularly,” I lied. “It’s nothing I can’t work through. Anyway, we need to move. They’re about to measure the rope.”
“I’m all for progress.”
We moved to the corner and watched as two forensic techs set up a ladder. Mark said it seemed to be the usual type of rope used in change ringing, a cream-colored flax. The sally-a fluff of maroon and white worsted wool woven into a striped spiral pattern near the rope’s end-looked more like a giant drop of blood than the convenient hand grip for the bell ringers. The rope undulated slightly as an officer on the top rung of the ladder lay the tip of his tape measure at the small ceiling hole. He pulled out the end of the tape, keeping it taut. The tech on the floor held the other end of the tape at the end of the rope and called out “Seven feet.” When he’d reeled in the measure, he noted the length of the sally. Three feet. The two techs then ascended the vertical ladder on the tower wall and disappeared into the room overhead, probably to measure that area and get dimensions of the bells. It’d please Graham.
Detective-Chief Inspector Geoffrey Graham is part of our police team from Buxton, and my superior officer. And I was waiting for him to arrive and take charge.
I’d heard the resignation in his voice when I’d rung him up at home and imagined the clenched jaw, the closed eyes as he silently cursed the situation. It was only marginally better when he appeared. If not smiling, at least he wasn’t frowning.
“Right, then.” Graham came over to me, and I suddenly felt vulnerable, as though the entire case rested on my observations. Mark had chosen Discretion over Ardor and gone to look at the blood spattering at the base of the wall ladder. “You have a name for me?” He was wearing the white paper suit we dress in when we enter a crime scene. It preserved the evidence and controlled cross-contamination from any bits we might inadvertently bring in with us. He stood beside me, overwhelming me with his intelligence and masculinity, watching as the chamber exploded with light from the photographer’s lamps, towering above me, making me feel small and insignificant, and strangely protected. Both his presence and voice seemed to fill the small space.
“Mind the bits of glass, sir.” I pointed to a patch of brown glass fragments near the body and around the base of the ladder.
Graham carefully stepped around them as a crime scene tech snapped a photo “So, who is our deceased?”
“Roger, Lord Swinbrook. He succeeded to the peerage on the death of his father ten years ago. Age forty-six. Married but no children. Owner of Swinton Hall. He’s just home from an evening’s Valentine celebration with his wife.” A fragment of Valentine verse, long slumbering in the depths of my mind, mentally echoed again from my childhood. The poem had been printed on red paper, the lettering crude and black, looking like they’d been formed from dried streaks of blood. Now, twenty years later, the scene before me forced the embarrassment of my teen years into my consciousness.
Roses are red,
Violets are blue,
I’d kill myself
If I looked like you.
The rhyme had been illustrated with a cartoon of a fat girl lying on her back, a knife sticking out of her chest. The poem was signed with a smear of dried snot.
I recall standing at the letterbox, the valentine in my hand, tears streaming down my cheeks, and my brother asking me if I was all right. I’d jammed the filth into my jeans pocket, wiped my eyes and forced myself to smile. Of course I lied, telling him it was a funny valentine and I’d laughed so hard I was crying. Samuel had said something about girls being too weird to understand, took a bite of his apple, and returned to banging out a Mozart rondo on the piano.
I shook off the childhood mockery as Hargreaves stepped around the body on the floor. “That’s the way DC Byrd found him, sir. With the spilled beer all over him and the floor, and the pearl necklace on his chest.”
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Title ‘The Stone Hex’
Author Jo A. Hiestand
Genre Mystery
Book Blurb
Things seem comfortably routine one Ash Wednesday evening in the English village of Hollingthorpe. The regulars have come to turn the Devil’s Stone, the age-old custom of shifting a one-ton boulder in the churchyard. An odd, back-breaking tradition that defies logic, except that to dispense with it always brings misfortune on the villagers during that year. Yet, within minutes of shifting the great boulder, misfortune strikes. One of the participants lies beside the stone, very bloody and very dead.
In the midst of the police inquiry, one of the Team is attacked—left for dead, beaten in the same manner as the original murder. Add a missing boy days later and a convicted felon who has it in the Det. Chief Inspector Graham… Things threaten to spin out of the Team’s control.
This quickly comes true in a midnight, rain-lashed forest. And through it all, the killer silently slips into and out of their lives, thumbing his nose at the entire CID team, ready to strike again.
Excerpt
They hanged witches some time back, during the superstition-swathed years of the early 1600s. Up around Bakewell and farther north into Scotland. Hanged evildoers on gibbets, their bodies chained to the pole, as if afraid they would escape even in death. Hanged up at wastelands and village outskirts and crossroads. A tacit message-‘Traveler, shun the road to ruin.’ Creaking corpses swaying in the wind, as though they had become a wagging, cautionary finger. Hanged out in rain and snow and baking sun, crow-pecked and mid-day silhouetted like a black sun in an eclipse. Hanged around the scenes of their crimes, viewable day in and day out, loitering throughout a slow-grinding year. Eerie shapes slowly materializing like specters through fog-choked dawns and black-as-hell nights.
Witches-practitioners of black magic, partnered with the devil. Possessing the ability to conjure and enchant, to ruin crops, sicken livestock, take human life-all manner of mischief to beleaguer the Living. And before we’d finished this case, I would swear we were plagued with a newer form of the old devilry.
The devilry manifested itself as a monstrous boulder and murder, both at the foot of a holy place. This hallowed spot was the churchyard of St. Michael’s Church, a late medieval edifice of grey stone squatting near the zenith of a heavily wooded hill. The building shone eerily against the blackness of the March evening, seeming to float above the dark clusters of shrubs and winter-dead flowers hugging its foundation. Moonlight broke sporadically through the ebony jumble of clouds, flooding selected earthly objects with a silvery iridescence. So intense was this contrast of darkness and light that police work lamps were needed to illuminate the scene. Then, as quickly as the light had identified the church, it shifted, abandoning the massive structure to the unease of encroaching shadows. Fading into the darkness and the dense wood beyond were the bell tower and its menagerie of gargoyles, centuries old, stanch affirming icons amid Doubt. Below and to the left of the tower the graveyard’s tombstones poked through the inky curtain of night, emphasizing this bizarre yet suitable spot for a death, mutely advertising previous travelers on life’s journey and tonight’s rude betrayal of the Holy.
“Rather grim, isn’t it, Taylor?”
“Sir?” I jerked my head up from my contemplation of the dead body to stare at the speaker.
Graham had come up beside me when I’d returned, rather sheepishly, from physically expressing my horror of the crime scene and the condition of the body, and now stood beside me. His tall frame cast an even longer shadow under the flood of light from the police lamps. He was dressed casually in jeans, cream-colored Aran knit pullover, and once-white trainers. Both shoes and jeans were streaked with mud, and there were dark stains on the elbows of his pullover, as though he’d been wrestling in a marsh. His chestnut hair was mussed and speckled with mud. Mud also dotted his cheeks. Graham looked as far removed from my well-tailored, quiet boss as I could ever imagine. I was about to ask the reason for his casual attire when he nodded toward the body. “Bloody awful, isn’t it? No pun intended. I nearly lost my stomach, too.”
I nodded, the back of my hand against my lips, as though that would stem the abdominal churning. Right now I was merely thankful that Mark and any of my other male colleagues hadn’t witnessed my less-than-dignified lurch to the nearest tree, for I’d taken enough ribbing years ago as the only female in a male-dominated police class. I didn’t want this latest escapade to become new material in their joke book.
“Do you know who he is, sir?”
Graham nodded, his gaze on the police constable cordoning off the crime scene. The blue and white police tape fluttered in the breeze that swept down the hill and stirred the boughs of the conifers and oaks. It held the scent of an imminent storm. “Yes. The victim is Enrico Thomas. I didn’t know him personally. He’s a newcomer to the village. Well, newcomer after I left for university God, how long ago was that?”
“Sir?” I know I shouldn’t have asked, since it was bordering on personal information, but he’d opened the door.
He looked at me, his green eyes dark in the light from the work lamps. “Hollingthorpe. This village, Taylor. I lived here as a child. I left when I entered university. My parents continued living here, of course, and I’d return during holidays, summers and such. But they retired years ago and moved. I’ve come back several times since then, when there was something special going on, like tonight. But it’s not the same, is it? Coming home, I mean.” He paused, waiting for a response, perhaps a confirmation that he hadn’t somehow missed out on something.
I smiled tentatively, not knowing what to say. Instead, I sought the anchor of police work. “And what was special about this evening? You merely mentioned on the phone that you were here, doing something in the village. You didn’t state exactly what it was.”
He gestured at the boulder, which sat like a beached whale in the churchyard. I estimated it weighed about a ton. “Turning the Devil’s Stone. That’s what brought me back.”
“Pardon?” I blinked several times, trying to recall anything in my eclectic store of knowledge about a stone or the devil, but I couldn’t.
Graham smiled. “That great hunk of rock, Taylor. The boulder in our crime scene. The Devil’s Stone. Every year on Ash Wednesday the villagers of Hollingthorpe gather their crowbars and ropes and collective strength and turn over the stone.”
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Title ‘Searching Shadows’
Author Jo A. Hiestand
Genre Mystery
Book Blurb
An ancient custom of Watching the Church Porch… A ghost sighting… A fortuneteller unable to forecast her death… Misfortune strikes and threatens villager and police alike.
Excerpt
“How’d you find her?” I finally asked, tilting my head to look at Scott.
“Sort of an odd chain of events.” We’d walked some distance from the house, standing by the front gate. By this time, half past seven, the morning sun was peaking above the line of trees to the east and had just touched the farthest section of the main street through the village.. “I was first at the scene. Byrd came a bit later, suited up, and told me to ring you up.”
“Fine, but what brought you?”
“The victim’s friend had been ringing the house for hours. The phone was constantly engaged, which the friend thought odd. We’re talking hours, Brenna¾last night and this morning.”
Even the chattiest of girlfriends wouldn’t tie up a phone that long.
“The friend came over here and knocked on the door. There was no answer. That worried her because she assumed that if the phone was engaged, her friend should be home and could answer the door. She listened for a few moments but it was too quiet. Odd way to describe it, but that’s what she said¾too quiet.”
I glanced again at the front of the structure. The house could’ve been built during Henry VIII’s reign, if one judged by the exuberance of the vegetation smothering its foundation and walls, but by style proclaimed it to be a late Victorian worker’s cottage. Perhaps it’d been built for an estate worker and his family, or a railway worker when the line came to Buxton in the 1860s.
“The friend tried calling again,” Scott went on. “This time on her mobile phone, standing outside the front door. The line was still engaged. Most of the windows had the curtains drawn, and one hadn’t. She couldn’t see inside because she’s short. She finally got so worried that she called the station at six o’clock.”
“And you got here at half past six.”
“Hell of an early hour, isn’t it?”
I knew what he meant. It was a terrible way for him and the friend to begin their days.
“I was dispatched to take a look. I walked around and was able to see in by one of the windows that hadn’t had the curtains drawn.” Scott pointed to a window farthest from the road. “I found the bedroom window open. A Crime Scene Investigation tech will have to check for scuff marks on the wall below the window, but it’s low enough that a taller person may not’ve had too hard a time gaining entry that way.
“Anyway, I could see her lying in a great deal of blood. I ran around to the front. Luckily the front door has a vertical inset of glass near the knob. I broke the glass, unlocked the door and gained entry. Since her eyes were open and there was all that blood, I assumed she was dead, but I felt her neck for a pulse. Nothing. I could also tell from the knife and the wound position that she’d been murdered. There was nothing I could do for her at that point.
“I radioed in, letting them know I’d found an unresponsive person on the floor. I then cleared the house and¾”
“You’re joking. Without backup?” I pulled a face, not wanting to think of what could’ve happened to him. “What if the killer was still inside? You could’ve been a second victim, Scott.” By which I implied the same upheavals to Constabulary morale, the same fears that enveloped friends, family and colleagues. We’d experienced enough of that turmoil in March when Graham had been in hospital. And, though I didn’t say it, if Scott had been seriously injured or killed, I don’t know if I could’ve survived mentally or emotionally.
Scott chugged on as though his safety was of no concern to any of us. “I needed to make certain the house was safe, Bren. I didn’t want him creeping up and attacking me while I examined the body. If the weapon had been a firearm, I might’ve waited for backup, but since a knife had been used¾and a kitchen knife, implying the murderer wasn’t a professional and hadn’t brought his own¾I felt safe in searching the house. I could’ve held my own in a knife attack.
“After I’d cleared the house, I radioed in, cordoned off the residence with crime scene tape, and guarded it until you and Byrd arrived.” Having related the episode, his breathing became slower and his face muscles relaxed. There was no suggestion of the humor that permeated many crime scenes¾jokes that were needed to distance the officers from the heartbreak of the tragedy. “I hated getting that close to the body, but I looked carefully at the floor while I walked up to her. I don’t think I trod on anything vital.”
“You said it was a kitchen knife? One of hers, I suppose.”
“Don’t know. I didn’t look around her kitchen. The blade is probably jammed in quite far. I could also tell from the angle of the handle, and therefore the angle of the blade and the thrust of the attack, that it wasn’t a self-inflicted wound.”
“No question of suicide.”
“Not with the angle and the back wound.”
“I assume the phone was off the hook because she was calling for help,” I said, recalling the office scene. “Do you know her name?”
“I didn’t disturb a thing, Brenna. Just ascertained the circumstances and rang up headquarters. The friend that alerted us supplied the victim’s name. It’s Varian Wells.”
“Varian!” I echoed. “What an unusual name.”
“That’s not all that’s unusual. She’s a psychic.”
I blinked in amazement. “I don’t mean to be crass, but if she was any good I wonder why she couldn’t forecast her own death.”
“The thought had occurred to me, too.”
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Title ‘An Old Remedy’
Author Jo A. Hiestand
Genre Mystery
Book Blurb
Year after year, the villagers near Stanton Moor celebrate May Day with bonfires and the laying of rowan branches to seek protection for home and cattle. But the men who gathered this May evening hadn’t come for blessings. They had come for murder. The dead body is discovered on a lonely moor, decapitated in the fashion of a Muslim killing of sacrificial sheep or chickens. Which focuses the suspicion on the Muslim community, since the victim and his family are Pakistanis. Does someone in the village resent these outsiders? Or is their small import shop too much competition for another local business?
In the midst of the tangle of smugglers, murder, and village secrets, Brenna Taylor of the CID Team fights to keep focused on the case and nab the one person who may be responsible for the trail of villainy that threatens to engulf everyone-cop and villager alike-connected with the moorland murders.
Excerpt
Darkness claimed the valley and now reached out in lengthening, murky fingers to the hilltops. Barely visible above the farthest hill, a sickle-shaped moon rode low in the ashen sky, trapped in the leafy branches of willows growing in clumps around the perimeter of the stone circle. It was a remnant from Druid times, many believed. And even now many avoided the area after sunset, acknowledging in private what they scoffed at in public¾that the Old Magic still lingered in the stones, that the spirits still inhabited the trees. Especially when night embraced the circle. In another hour the darkness would be complete, having swallowed any distinguishing mark on the moor or in the village lying snug against the winding road beyond the purple expanse. Dark but for the dots of fire that even now pricked the gloom.
I glanced at the sky to judge if I could afford to linger a bit longer, perhaps search out another owl or whippoorwill. But I didn’t want to be trapped on the moors at night. I’d passed the Seven Sisters stone circle earlier in the day while traipsing across the heathery land in search of birds, filling my soul with the peace of the outdoors. Even in the reassuring light of morning, the circle had exuded a sense that bothered me, the feel that something evil or otherworldly lived there, among the grasses and pines and rocks. I’d no wish to be caught there in the dark.
That malevolent sense evidently didn’t bother the group standing in front of a small fire. I glanced their way as I passed silently in the thickening dusk. Apparently they were there to celebrate the Night and to continue the Custom. After all, it was the time of year to set fires. Large, barn-consuming sized fires on hilltops, or small, discreet blazes on the moors, nestled in hollows or at the base of ancient standing stones. These they kindled where dozens¾hundreds¾ had been birthed before, the charred stumps of wood and sooted stone faces the only remains of the myriad celebrations. For fires were the custom on May Day evening, the beginning of summer, the time to drive cattle and sheep onto new grass for grazing, the time to seek luck and blessing.
But they weren’t here as herdsmen or come to lay rowan or whitethorn branches as a home blessing. Something¾my cop’s sixth sense?¾ whispered that. Someone poked the fire and the flames shot heavenward. One silhouetted figure reached toward another equally indistinguishable shape and somewhere in the obscurity a laugh erupted. I hurried past them, glad of the somber shadows sitting on the land, overcome with the unexplainable need to remain hidden.
Later, in my room at the bed-and-breakfast, I sat on the window seat, my forehead resting against the cool windowpane, and gazed out at the murky landscape. Stanton Moor, the Seven Sisters, the village road had all receded into nothingness under the blackness of night. The bonfire had dwindled to a speck; the rest of the village lay quiet, dark and sleeping. I listened for a time to an owl calling from the shadows near the pine, took off my robe, and slid into bed, the man’s strange laugh still echoing in my mind.
*
They’d found the body early in the morning, with the dew still clinging to the heather and refrigerator. It’d been an accident, the finding of the body, for the hikers who’d rung up the local police station¾disgusted with another old appliance dumped on the moor¾had thought they were merely reporting one more fly tipping eyesore. It wasn’t until the constable arrived, opened the fridge door, and discovered the plastic bag holding a human arm that we were called in. The CID team, B Division of the Derbyshire Constabulary.
Graham was at the scene when I arrived. He smiled when he saw me, then apologized for calling me back to the job. As he examined my face, his eyes narrowed slightly, perhaps trying to ascertain if I was merely saying one less day off didn’t matter or if I meant it.
The odd thing was that I did mean it. Put it down to any warhorse genes I might possess, or to missing the team even for those few days. We’d grown close, working together. Margo Lynch, a coworker quickly turned best friend and confidant, shared in girl talk, cups of tea, and murder theories with equal enthusiasm and diligence. Mark Salt, the original Mr. Love ‘Em and Leave ‘Em, had been a thorn in my side from the start of my career. He’d overcome the trait and was now a good, levelheaded detective. And, of course, there was Graham. Geoffrey Graham, the glue that held us together, the lodestar that guided our investigation, the minister-turned-detective who was as enigmatic about his career switch as he was about his private life. This was the team I’d missed; I was pleased to respond to the bugle again with them.
Graham related the little they knew of the situation, taking in the scene and watching the Crime Scene Investigation Officers move smoothly through their routine.
We must’ve looked odd, white paper-suited creatures poking about in the knee-deep heather, photographing the refrigerator, taking measurements, the pale rays of sunlight glancing off our face masks, the blue-and-white police tape cordoning the area around the fly tipped appliance. Aliens moving across an ordinary landscape.
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Ebook –
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