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PROLOGUE
Whoever said life was a mystery to be lived and not a problem to be solved was only half right. Life should always be lived to the fullest but unsolved murders were most definitely both mysteries and problems to be solved.
CHAPTER1
FIONA
Angel’s Rise, Maine
John had come to the end of his tether. They’d found him—bursting into his house, surrounding him, guns blazing. Cursing, he swung out of his study, getting off two shots that hit their marks. The assassins that had come through the side door were down. It was his only means of escape.
Dashing out the door, he emptied his clip, laying down a quick pattern of gunfire. The gun was only going to be helpful in getting out of the house. He didn’t have enough firepower to hold them off indefinitely, much less beat them back. No, he had to get clear and lose them in the wilderness beyond his cabin.
The side door was the one that led to a narrow expanse of manicured lawn which fed right into the forest. John ran as hard as he could, grateful that the bullets that whizzed past him missed and slammed into the trees as he made his way deeper into the woods.
They were closing in from both sides and the rear. The only way he had to run was up toward the falls. He tried changing course, but a bullet flew past him like spider lightning streaking across the sky. He dodged back to his original course and hoped that those in pursuit would find the terrain too rough to follow.
Dragging air into his lungs, he could hear his pursuers closing in. He continued to charge up the hill, heading for the cliff. There was no deep pool at the bottom of the falls—only jagged rocks and the fast-flowing river that fell from the towering precipice.
John charged out of the woods, the ground beneath his feet hard and unyielding stone. He tried to avoid the slick, wet rocks closer to the falls and the river far below. He could hear the men closing in. He moved as fast as he could, trying to get to the treacherous narrow path that would lead down to a small grotto behind the thundering water as it…
Fiona Fowler jumped when the timer on her phone went off. She’d been up since three a.m. trying to get her latest book written. “Damn!” She was just about to kill off the victim in her newest book. Poor John Bartleby. He would be killed in the most horrific way in the most beautiful scene she could conjure. It was a good thing life didn’t imitate art.
John Bartleby was not a good guy—he was a wastrel and a cheat. His sister, on the other hand, her protagonist, was kind and intelligent and about to embark on the adventure of her life.
But the book had to be set aside—at least for now. She had things to do, and it would just have to wait. She needed to rush down to Holy Grounds, the town’s gourmet coffeehouse that had been built inside an old, deconsecrated church to grab a latte for herself and a plate of morning goodies for the girls.
She saved her work and stowed her laptop before rushing down to the barista bar. Fiona had a couple of cold cases from which they could choose: a murder, a disappearing heiress, and the one she hoped they’d find interesting—the theft of Nagisa, the angel said to have created Angel Falls and blessed the first settlement of Angel’s Rise. She’d stood vigil on the breakwater for centuries. Made of bronze, weathered over time, and life-sized, she’d gone missing during a dark, stormy night in 1927—the height of Prohibition—and was never seen again.
Fiona raced down the stairs from her loft over her bookstore and ran out to Coach Way, the main drag of Angel’s Rise. She looked up along the street and smiled. She was glad her friends would be visiting today. The weather promised to be sunny and cold—at least it would be once the fog burned off. Spring had not yet sprung, but seemed to be venturing out in a gingerly, peek-a-boo way.
“Good morning, Joyce!” she said, entering Holy Grounds.
“Morning, Fiona. We’re just putting the last touches on your order. Is this for those friends of yours? The one you solve cold cases with—that’s what they call them, right?”
“Right. We get together every other month and take on a cold case. It’s my turn. We’re going to have lunch at Seraphim.”
“Oooh, fancy! I haven’t had a chance to eat there yet. Everybody who has says it’s amazing. Isn’t the chef some Michelin-starred guy who flamed out in New York?”
“What I heard was Stuart worked for one of the big celebrity chef’s restaurants. He earned them a Michelin star while the guy whose name was on the restaurant was off doing some competition for the Food Network. The guy didn’t even thank him, so Stuart decided to come open his own restaurant. He saw Seraphim’s and said he fell in love with it.”
“God only knows why. That place has been closed for a long, long time.”
“I never understood why.”
“The story was it was raided during Prohibition, but they didn’t find any contraband. They were going to do a more thorough search eventually.”
“Was that when Nagisa went missing?”
Joyce nodded. “Yes, so the cops all turned their attention to finding her. The feds got mad and closed the place down. The guy who owned it got killed—some say by one of the gangsters whose booze he lost.”
“You gotta love small towns and their stories. Anyway, I’m taking my friends there for lunch. I’ve got three cold cases to present to them. Nagisa is one of them.”
“Oh Fi, if you could find her—or even what happened to her—that would be amazing.”
Fiona shrugged. “We’ll see. But I have to tell you, those three ladies have a real collective nose for mystery and murder.”
“Aren’t they writers like you?”
