Genre: 1920’s Historical Cozy Mystery
St. Paul, 1926—where ambition comes at a cost, especially for a woman.
Charlotte Van Elsberg is determined to become the city’s first female private investigator and help women in need. She’s already landed her first case: a grieving mother who wants answers about her daughter, Eleanor Kimball, a debutante killed in a suspicious car crash. Was it truly an accident or something more sinister? Char intends to find out. There’s just one hitch—Char’s husband.
Will Van Elsberg, a seasoned investigator, knows the job too well. It’s no profession for a petite young lady, and he’s not about to let his wife charge headfirst into danger. Char has other ideas. She agrees to hire bodyguards to satisfy his objections.
However, despite the addition of her “new team,” she soon learns that this job is a lot harder than it appears. Doors slam in her face, alibis don’t add up, and everyone appears to be hiding something. Does she have the grit and determination it takes to solve this case?
The more she digs into Eleanor’s carefully polished life, the more she uncovers the young woman’s secrets. Hidden truths that someone is desperate to keep buried. Evidence worth killing for. Now that Char is asking questions, who is determined to stop her from revealing the missing pieces?
If you love Prohibition-era intrigue and twisty whodunits, dive into this 1920s cozy mystery filled with clever clues, hidden secrets, and a bold female sleuth. Grab your copy today and start sleuthing!
Excerpt
“Last night went well,” Will said, commenting on my new bodyguards the next morning as we lingered over strong black coffee in the breakfast room. Golden sunlight filtered through the tall windows from the sun streaming between the mature oaks on the edge of our property. “Sean and Alice seemed to get along fine. What do you think?”
Sean’s manners had come across as overly polite compared to his outburst in the den and I suspected that he was playing to an audience of one. The real test would come when Alice was alone with him. Would he be respectful or try to boss her around? I had my doubts about the former.
“I think I need to let them two sort it out and get going on my investigation,” I replied staring into my glass of fresh-squeezed orange juice. “The truth is, I don’t know where to start.”
“Get to know your victim,” Will offered. “Learn everything you can about her—where she lived, her friends and relatives, the places she liked to frequent. The information will provide valuable clues about her life and possibly reveal why she was killed.”
Will set down his cup and leaned back as Gerard approached the table and placed a plate of scrambled eggs, bacon and toast in front of him. Will looked at me curiously. “You said she was engaged?” He paused to grab a bottle of Heinz Tomato Ketchup.
From the corner of my eye, I caught Gerard wincing at the idea of smothering one’s eggs with that vile concoction. I agreed but kept my opinion to myself. Will loved ketchup, especially this brand, and poured it on his breakfast nearly every morning.
“Take a good look at her fiancé,” Will said seriously. He shook the bottle, poring ketchup all over his eggs and filling the air with a pungent tomato aroma. “In my experience, when you’re investigating the murder of a woman, the guilty party is quite often someone close to the victim. That doesn’t make the fiancé automatically guilty, but it does make him a primary suspect until your investigation proves otherwise.”
“Okay,” I said, jotting down his instructions in my journal as Gerard set a plate of poached eggs and toast in front of me. Interviewing everyone who knew the deceased would be a huge undertaking. Was I up to the task? More importantly, would I gain anything useful from it? The thought exhausted me, and I hadn’t started yet.
“Go back to the scene of the crime,” Will continued and scooped up a forkful of eggs. “Study it, leaving no stone unturned. No detail is too small. Sometimes I find evidence that the police missed.”
I picked up a slice of toast and concentrated on smothering it with Welch’s Grape Jelly to avoid watching Will eat his red eggs. “Is there anything else I should know?”
“Read the autopsy report,” he added as he picked up a crisp piece of bacon with his fingers. “The family might have requested their private physician to look it over and interpret it for them but unless they knew medical terms they wouldn’t have a copy of it themselves. You need to grease a palm or two at the coroner’s office to obtain a look at it.”
Oh sure, I’ll just drive to downtown Minneapolis and find someone in the coroner’s office to give me a look-see at that report.
I let out a sigh and took a bite of my toast, pondering how I would actually go about getting someone in the coroner’s office to give me access to the report, much less interpret it for me. I had no idea. “Do I need to read the autopsy report? Is it imperative to my case?”
“It’s another piece of the puzzle, darling,” Will said, his voice softening at my frustration. “If the police ruled her death an accident, the family would want to know if she’d suffered a medical issue at the time, causing her to lose control of the car. If there is a report, you should find out what’s in it.”
Folding my arms, I sat back and stared at him as discouragement began to seep into my mood. Had I made a mistake wanting to become an investigator? The job was clearly more than I’d bargained for.
Buy on Amazon Kindle | Paperback | Bookshop.org
