Mallets Aforethought
A Home Repair is Homicide Mystery
Chapter One
The body was all withered sinews and leathery skin, seated on a low
wooden chair in the tiny room whose door my friend Ellie White and I
had just forced open. Slumped over a table, one arm outstretched,
the body wore a sequined chemise whose silver hem-fringe crossed its
mummified thigh.
Masses of bangles circled the knobby wrists and rings hung loosely
on the long bony fingers. From beneath black bobbed hair the hollow
eye sockets peeked coyly at us, the mouth a toothy rictus of
mischief.
Or malice. A candle burnt down to a puddled stub stood in an ornate
holder by the body's arm. A tiaralike headpiece with a glass jewel
in its bezel had fallen to the floor.
Ellie and I stood frozen for a moment, neither of us able to speak
for the horridness of the surprise. Then:
"Oh," breathed Ellie, sinking heavily into the window seat of the
dilapidated parlor we'd been working on. It was Saturday morning and
around us the aging timbers of Eastport's most decrepit old mansion,
Harlequin House, creaked uneasily.
Only the wind, I told myself ... read full excerpt from Mallets Aforethought ebook
