The Case of the Magic Gold Mirror

By Anna Patterson

Now he was comfortably talking about a subject which was not comfortable in any way. But David is such a friend! , he thought.
How did he manage that since Richard's own life had always been a struggle, but he would just shrug his shoulders and say, “Richard, you are such an innocent darling in ways.”
"What do you think of these wedding plans? Shouldn't they have been called off, Richard asked.
The wedding, David smiled. How important. Must not let three murders, not one, but three stand in the way of such a thing.
They both laughed. Richard said, these brides can be ferocious if their wedding plans are thwarted.
Well, they continue and it is this weekend, isn't it.
Yes three days away.
He thought of this other problem with coming down to the old homestead at this time, the wedding, a thing promised some time ago. It was felt they could not postpone the wedding, even for the murder investigations. So friends, caterers and guests would be arriving in mass in one day. How could things like this continue, but there was no way it could be postponed.
After all there were about 700 people invited to what had started as a small assembly. Efforts to get them to move this event to a nearby hotel had been totally rejected, so they would all be here.
Richard said, "I think they are ghouls really. They know a murder happened here."
David agreed. "Where is their sensitivity?"
"They have no feelings for the dead aunt, that is for sure."
"How strange!"
Richard shuddered. "Let's hope there is not another murder, a wedding is enough to add to this complex situation!"

• Language: English
• Publisher: Anna Patterson
• Release date: Jan 18, 2012
• ISBN: 9781466016248

Anna Patterson

About the Author: Anna Patterson grew up in the Ozark Hills with a dream of becoming an archeologist. She was able as a young adult to put the desire to good use exploring the mountains and river line of the Ozarks for early artifacts from the past. Many times in her treks deep into the wilderness forests, she was able to seek out and see first hand abandoned cemeteries of pioneers and Indians there and Ghost towns which had been abandoned during an earlier time. But it was her desire to know more about the early civilizations which resulted in her entering into her studies in history, art, and especially ancient civilizations in college. Her life as a writer brought her to many years of work in Journalism from college papers to work as a reporter and at one point Society Editor. She is now pursuing her desire to write fiction novels and feels that this allows her to put to use her life’s study of antiquities. She and her husband live in a house over 100 years old with their two Yorkies and two cats.

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THE CASE OF THE MAGIC GOLD MIRROR

The Late Screen star's Murder

By Anna Patterson SMASHWORDS EDITION

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Published by Smashwords

Copyright 2012 by Anna Patterson

Smashwords Edition License Notes

This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This e-book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author's work.

If you enjoyed this book please return to Smashwords.com to discover other works by this author.

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Dedication: This book above all, is dedicated to my husband, Bill, who has always believed in me.: A special thanks to Cover Model, LeDanna Kennon and Photographer, Robert Kennon.

The author wishes her readers to know that all of the people and incidents in this book are fictional. But the situation involving just one mysterious artifact can be real and what has yet to be uncovered in this type of exploration (whether willing or unwilling) into the paranormal continues today to defy explanation.

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THE CASE OF THE MAGIC GOLD MIRROR

The Late Screen Star's Murder

By Romance Novelist Anna Patterson

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Prologue: What in the world is this?

Could this be Love at last, for the both of them? Why not?

It was like an earthquake. Stone stood there looking at her for a long time He had tried, he told himself.

Beth just would not bend to his will and he couldn’t make her. He would have to let her go. But he just couldn’t do that. Besides, even though it was true from the moment they met that they melted together like hot lava, there was something really seriously against this relationship: in fact, it was three murders!

Beth Hammond was literally working by the moonlight displayed in the beautiful night sky beyond the open patio doors, and it was a full moon, but she wasn't expecting visitors in this small, old fashioned studio room.

Beth felt his presence even before she saw him. How could she mistake that look and that feel of intense joy when Stone Phillips first touched her? It was so magical and mysterious. His soul literally took possession of hers and she welcomed him to do so.

When she first met him, she wasn't looking for romance, or for something paranormal to enter her life. But he was an explosion to her senses, and her body touched fire when it touched him. At first, it started like this: she heard a soft sigh in her studio.

It was Stone who sighed. The light caught her hair and vaporized it into soft kissable tresses from another time. She had a whitish face, pale in the encroaching moonlight displayed in the open windows.

It was too late for both of them when they reached that point and when they looked at each other they both sighed with longing primate urges, but not awkward in that little room of passionate artistic sometimes desperate desire.

Did you hear me, he said. I called out. Why do you leave this desolate place so open? Don't you realize a monster could just walk in intent on ravishing you or something?

I have a gun, she said. Like a fool she looked across the room at the bookshelves there. She hoped he would not realize she was lying to him. And she was so tired. It was probably too far a reach, she knew. He laughed, seeing this, and he looked at her with sympathetic eyes, saying, You won't need it. I come in peace, actually.

The artistic young woman, Beth Hammond, felt as if Nature itself had entered her small workroom. Something so strange, she felt as though she was suddenly lost in a forest of strange trees. She looked up and peered into the semi-dark studio. A man was walking quickly towards her. Her violet eyes matted suddenly with tears of fear and foreboding, Mr. Phillips? she frowned in the gloomy room. She had steeled herself for this dangerous meeting and her run in with this successful businessman,

Yes, she could recognize him from seeing him in countless magazines concerning archeology. It was Stone Phillips, looking for his lost art treasure.

Who did you expect, Jack the Ripper? he asked. He was dressed casually, but she knew his pants and shirt were not off the rack. She wondered in a curious way, how much it cost, and she blushed. He smoothed back his own dark black hair and looked at her in curiosity as well. What he saw made him smile.

He laughed then and it echoed in the little bare room. Besides you don't look like you have a gun on your person, not in that outfit. She blushed as she looked down at her shirt, covered in clay smudges, and her skirt, very short.

Thankfully, she had shorts under the skirt. But she hoped it didn't show. She realized she even had clay on her knees. This was going badly, very badly, but she tried for composure.

He was right she didn't have a gun, that ruse fell flat, but she kept her knives over on the shelves and wasn't sure if she wouldn't protect herself with these, if need be. Right now, her carving knife was so small it wouldn't hurt anybody.

So pretending a self assurance she was far from feeling, she cleaned up and faced the nightmare before her. She stiffened her narrow shoulders to face this latest problem in her life.

I want my mirror, he said. She could not make out the color of his eyes, but felt them in steely intensity on her efforts to clean up hastily. And her clay splotched knees that she was wiping off nervously with a shop rag nearly gave way completely, forcing her to sit down in the straight back chair she had near the table.

I know, she said. She knew someone would come looking for it. It was rare indeed. Antique restorer Beth Hammond thought of her preliminary analysis of the piece about a month before this, before she even started restoring it. She had stopped right there.

There was something about it, which stopped her from restoring this unique relic, an elaborate miniature mirror dating back to Medieval Europe she thought, but on further inspection, she knew, it was much older. It was at that point in her own study of the piece, that she confronted her friend Joe Thweat about this rare find he had brought to her.

To her horror, he said, "Actually Beth, I have thought of asking it back from you as soon as I get the money to do so. I heard from a little bird I know (if you know what I mean) that it might not be what I thought it to be.

In fact, Tina told me the man we got it from said he was worried it might be stolen. They have been urging us to get it back. So sorry, Beth, I think the mirror is stolen, and then he added, Don't blame me, I trusted my source, I really did, but she let me down."

Beth exploded with rage at that point. I don't need this. Is this another strange friend of Tina's? Why do you involve me in this sordid girl's life? How am I supposed to take this? You are my best friend, and now you tell me this piece might have been stolen and then you sold it to me. When did this little situation come to light and when were you going to tell me? She couldn't even remember what he said at the time.

She was so angry; she hadn't been back to his apartment for a further conversation. So much was happening, all of it bad. She felt she had dropped into a pit of horror and could not escape. She asked her uncle, who was the true art restorer of worldwide reputation to put the piece in his safe, and he did this.

She was not sure what to do from that point. Her uncle, Hershel Hammond, would know. Right now, she just had too many problems. The man, who suddenly showed up at her shop, was her worst dread, now realized. She would straighten this out, hopefully, without anyone going to jail for theft of what her uncle had told her was really perhaps an Egyptian artifact!

Now she was falling deeper into trouble. The owner of the mirror was here to claim it. Now what? How was she supposed to get Stone Phillips, a jaded cosmopolitan businessman, to understand this situation her friend, Joe, had put her in? What could she do?

She had to do something, and she had to do it fast. This wasn't helping her uncle's reputation, or his pocket book. She had planned to be a help to him, not a liability.

She had only found out the true facts a few days ago, and now a private detective Phillips had hired had lead him to this tiny workshop of hers as he looked for his stolen keepsake, the mirror.

He looked at her then in the moonlight of the huge old windows of the studio. She was working at a small table there. Beth tries to control her shaking hands; she realized she is a nervous wreck. Then she saw the man, just standing in the shadows of her shop looking boldly at her. She gulped down a scream because she recognizes him from magazines about the art business.

Hey, I can explain everything, she starts to tell him. She feels stupid now, but she is terrified and full of grief at that first terrible glance of his. She is trying to keep her ailing uncle's business afloat, and she can not think straight when she and Stone meet this way. How can she go with him to question the friend who sold her the mirror?

She can't even remember what his first words to her were because the phone rings like a bomb going off in that still place. What? she says into the phone. She can't believe her ears. There is clay paste still on her hands and vaguely she sees that she has it all over the old fashioned phone in her hand.

He is dead, her voice sounds mechanical, His girlfriend too. Someone has murdered them.

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Chapter 1: The Meeting at the old place

There is a small community in Arkansas nestled in hills and trees. It sits just beyond an old fashioned store with a main street and many unique shops there. It has stayed basically the same for many years, and everything is called by its name, Menfield. There is a Menfield Airport, Menfield