Great news! High Peaks
Publishing has started work on the second book in the Covington Mystery Series,
"An Empty Seat on the Ferry." We expect to have a cover design before
too long. Publication is still a ways off, of course, but to help tide you
over, I'll be posting some excerpts in this space. Here's the first one:
Excerpt #1, Rob and Jennie
Rob Covington sat in the shade
of a white oak tree in the back yard of the three-bedroom Victorian cottage
where he lived with his wife, Jennie, and their daughter, Anne Elizabeth, near
the eastern end of Martha’s Vineyard. It was a warm Saturday afternoon in early
June and the sun had risen brightly in the eastern sky, making the water of
Nantucket Sound sparkle like miniature white Christmas lights.
He was half-way reading the
newspaper and half-way falling asleep while Jennie was inside the cottage
putting their three-year-old daughter Annie down for an afternoon nap.
When his head wasn’t nodding
forward and he could keep his eyes open, Rob was scanning the headlines of the
Vineyard Daily Packet, the local newspaper where he worked part-time as a
columnist and correspondent. It had been three years since Rob and Jennie had
used clues found in a time capsule to help solve a 40-year-old murder mystery in
a small town in Maryland, then written a best-selling book about the case and
moved to the Vineyard to relax, refresh and live off their royalty checks and
savings until the next big thing came along.
Jennie had been researching
local history looking for material for another book. She had loved being a
reporter but a lot of newspapers were suffering hard times, shutting down or
laying off, and with hundreds of journalists out of work, finding a job was not
that easy. Even if she had gotten hired, there was no security in the
profession any longer so keeping a job was even harder than finding one.
Besides, writing the book with Rob’s contributions had really ignited her
creative instincts, so she decided that was her best career opportunity. She
had several ideas but hadn’t settled on one just yet.
*
* *
Jennie emerged from the cottage
wearing a pair of bright red yoga shorts, a white halter top and white Reeboks
with no socks. Her long, wavy chestnut hair was tied up in a kind of pony tail
held together with what looked like a pair of chopsticks. She was carrying a
folder full of newspaper clippings under her arm while grasping two bottles of
Blue Moon Belgian White Ale and two beer mugs with handles. Inside one of the
mugs she had placed a small carving knife and half an orange.
“Hey sailor, buy you a drink?”
she said to Rob. “I’ve got some free time on my hands and you look like a guy
who could use a little snort.” She walked over to his chair, leaned down and
snorted loudly right into his ear.
“Jesus, Jennie,” Rob said,
jerking his head away and almost falling off his chair, which tipped
precariously to one side. Then, seeing the beer, he asked, “How many of those
have you had already?”
“Not quite enough,” she said.
Jennie sat down, placed the
beers on a glass-topped table between her chair and Rob’s and poured them
slowly against the sides of the glasses. She sliced through the orange and cut
two good-sized wedges—one for her beer and one for Rob’s. She hooked one onto
the lip of Rob’s mug and dropped the other one down into hers, then took a long
drink.
“Nectar of the gods,” she said,
smiling. “You’ve got to love those Belgians.”
“Especially the ones who live
in Canada and work for Molson-Coors,” Rob said. “You should read a label some
time. There is nothing Belgian about that beer except the name.”
