Dead Dancing Women

By Elizabeth Kane Buzzelli

Following an ugly divorce and the death of her father, Emily Kincaid decides what she needs most is peace and quiet and time to think, so the part-time journalist and full-time struggling mystery writer relocates to a remote house in the woods of northern Michigan. When a severed head shows up in her garbage can, Emily knows she’s been singled out, and suddenly her peaceful solitude feels a lot like isolation and vulnerability.

Discovering that the victim was a member of the Women of the Moon, a group of older local ladies who sing and dance around a bonfire in the woods late at night, Emily’s at a loss to know why anyone would want to hurt one of them. The women claim it’s a harmless act in praise of Mother Earth, a way to feel young again, but certain townspeople don’t see it that way. As Emily digs deeper, more of the women are turning up dead.

Knowing she’ll have to root out a killer to save her peaceful paradise, Emily teams up with the cantankerous Deputy Dolly and begins navigating between eccentric town gossips and reclusive neighbors who would rather be left alone. When the killer gets too close for comfort, Emily knows she’ll have to put aside her fears before the natural life she’s chosen comes to a grisly and very unnatural end.

Rave reviews for the Emily Kincaid Mysteries:

Dead Dogs and Englishmen
A Kirkus Reviews Best Book of 2011!

“Buzzelli will have you packing your bags for a move to northern Michigan.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“Emily is a detective for our times: She can’t afford health care, but she can make flour out of cat tails and work three jobs at once.” —Christian Science Monitor

Dead Sleeping Shaman

“Buzzelli’s well-crafted third Emily Kincaid . . . [features] sharp prose and spirited characterizations.” —Publishers Weekly

“The appeal of this third in the series comes both from Emily—a likable character forging a new life after her divorce—and the evocatively described, nicely detailed small-town setting.” —Booklist

Praise for A Most Curious Murder:

“Fans of [Lewis] Carroll will delight in Zoe’s flights of fancy, and the northern Michigan setting in all its splendor is a charmer . . . an entertaining series with a quirky premise and captivating characters.” —Library Journal

“This quirky, clever cozy series launch . . . [is] hard to resist.” —Publishers Weekly

“Quirky main characters, lyrical dialogue and a story sure to appeal to bookworms as well as cozy mystery fans are all elements that give this novel a distinctive voice. A clever mystery and intriguing supporting cast round out the mix.” —RT Book Reviews (four star review)

About the Author:

Elizabeth Kane Buzzelli lives back in the Michigan woods between Mancelona and Kalkaska, on a small lake, much like the protagonist of her Emily Kincaid mystery series. She teaches creative writing at Northwestern Michigan College extended education.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Beyond the Page Publishing
• Release date: Aug 4, 2016
• ISBN: 9781940846958

Book preview

Chapter One

This Monday was like all Mondays up in northern Michigan. No better. No worse.

Another garbage day where first I lugged the battered garbage can a black bear’d been tossing around for the last few weeks up the drive, then back down again. In between I hunted for the lid and fought off the scavenger crows. Spring, summer, winter, autumn, some things didn’t get any better no matter how you tried your best to overcome them.

Some days things got worse.

I knew I was in for it. I could feel that something around me in the woods as I climbed my drive up to Willow Lake Road to get that fought-over garbage can. I could feel it in the traitorous, looming September air with needles of cold at its heart. Autumn. Prelude to death, I thought morosely as I climbed. Garden going to die; the ferns, grasses, and the last of the purple knapweed clinging to sheltered places on the hills—soon all gone. Then the trees, not dying but going to sleep. And the animals nervous—hunting season coming.

Autumn depressed me, despite all the raging color in the woods.

It was autumn when I first arrived up here, three years ago. Brought by serendipity; a few wrong turns; a mad desire to get away from my ex-husband, Jackson Rinaldi, back in Ann Arbor; a need to breathe air a million people hadn’t breathed before me; a sudden, if unwanted, infusion of cash from my dead father—all those things and more.

I found my little house on its wild lake by driving north after clearing out my father’s home, coming on photographs of happy childhood times I could barely remember, selling off furniture his hands had made, and closing more doors on my past than I’d known existed. It seemed natural to turn north at Grand Blanc, toward the woods, to take my tears where they didn’t require explanation. Getting lost was the serendipitous part. Wrong turn after wrong turn brought me to a faded For Sale sign and a driveway angling downhill; to my little golden house standing empty, alone in its sandy plot with the beginnings of a garden at the back and a sea of bronzed ferns at the front. I’d explored around the house, peeking in windows, following a narrow path through the ferns down to a wild lake where geese honked angrily at me and a beaver surfaced to give me the eye. I returned to Ann Arbor only to quit my job at the Ann Arbor Times and claim my division of the spoils from my marriage to poor Jackson, who still didn’t understand what I’d gotten so angry about.

I had this new place where I still wasn’t certain I belonged. This new writing life that wasn’t getting me anywhere—fast. And a lot of time left over to feel grateful for the quiet, sometimes too lonely, life I was leading.

I was halfway up the drive when I heard the crows. They’d be waiting, screeching because I dared to snatch my garbage can back before they’d finished picking every morsel they could gather. I’d learned quickly to resent the beady-eyed birds, who attacked anything left dangling from the can, attacked boxes I dared set on the ground, tore at black plastic bags with pointed beaks, then squawked and squeaked at me, making me feel as if, but for a technicality—being alive rather than dead—I’d do as well as any bloodied meat wrappings.

Corvus americanus. Forked tongues, bristling nostrils, convex beaks and all. I’d researched them because I believed one must know thine enemy. They would wait like thugs to hassle and harass me, though it was only my empty garbage can the eternal dispute was about.

I climbed through an Ottoman mosaic, a patchwork of brown and dying ferns bent like weeping ladies; through bright red sumac; through the smells of autumn: fallen leaves, rotting weeds, damp air. Off to my right I could see my little lake between the trees. A flat, slate-colored oval of water. Above my head, the dark sky hung close and huge, threatening rain at any moment. The day was muddy gray, but still the pretty part of fall, before the leaves turned dark and old, before icy winds knocked them down, leaving gray branches bare and vulnerable, before somebody turned on the north wind and let loose the tons of snow that would lock me in the house for days, pacing and muttering about unhappy women who left good jobs and a not-so-bad husband (except for that one bad habit of his), and went to live on an iceberg.

I took deep breaths of cool air that tasted like water and reluctantly reached the top of the drive.

As I suspected, more crows than usual. Crows in the trees and sitting on overhead wires. Crows in the road. A convention of crows. A conglomeration of crows, staring without shame, without blinking. I was the thing caught in the headlights, frozen for the first minute before I waved my arms wildly, trying to scare them off because they scared the heck out of me.

A few of the black menaces flew up to perch on low, bloody maple branches. Some hopped into a thicket beneath pines. Some strutted aggressively from the center of the road, toward me rather than away. Their beady black eyes bulged. They made rude, angry noises, telling me to get lost, get off their turf, buzz off, lady. I stood and gave them as good as they gave me, muttering, making comments about their funny gait, about their ruffled feathers.

Carrion eaters, I grumbled and scuffed the toe of one tennis shoes in the gravel beside the road.

I figured I’d better grab my garbage can and get out of there fast, though I couldn’t help waving my arms one more time and yelling Shoo! like an old lady running kids off her lawn. It did little good. The crows flapped their shaggy wings right back, and leaped, startled and irate, into the air. The cawing, squalling noise was deafening.

A dead possum lay on the far side of the road, salt-and-pepper-furred testament to an attempt to cross in widening headlights the night before. Maybe the possum was the real cause of the morning’s crow chaos, I thought. But the crows weren’t bothering with the possum. It was me they kept their glazed eyes on, and my garbage can. They cawed in unison, commenting, I was sure, on my crummy jeans, my University of Michigan sweatshirt, my hair that hadn’t seen a Traverse City beautician’s hand since July. They laughed at my dirty tennis shoes, muddy from working in the garden, grabbing slugs off my late tomatoes, dropping them to dissolve in a plastic carton of kosher salt. And maybe they made a comment or two on my supposed sex life, my abortive mystery novels that always brought letters from agents like This book just doesn’t excite me enough to offer representation. In fact, there is a familiar ring to the story. Sorry. Try us again with your next book. As if I churned out a book a week and they would remember my name or care if I showed up with another book or not. As if they cared that I was beginning to be a laughingstock among my few acquaintances up here who knew how hard I worked to turn out these things—each one a masterpiece, I assure you. Or maybe not a laughingstock because northern Michigan people were too kind. Maybe they just pitied me since they would see me at the top of the drive, pull their pickups or their SUVs over to have a talk, and offer me a mystery plot that just might do the trick for you, Emily, though it always came from a TV show they’d watched the night before.

Maybe crows can’t know that much, but bright or not, these particular crows were daunting. I was making a grab for the empty garbage can when Simon, my mailman, drove around the curve with yellow flashers pulsing on top of his yellow Jeep. He aimed his car toward me, pretending he was going to run me down. I, in turn, pretended panic and jumped out of his way. Simon threw back his head of long, thick blond hair and laughed.

Morning, Emily, he called out his open window and bent to collect my mail from the seat beside him. I took the two official-looking letters—one a bill from the electric company, the other from a department store in Traverse City—and asked him how he was doing. I had time to talk. It was either Simon or a chapter of yet another mystery in which I was killing off a poor soul in the first chapter—a lot of carnage for nothing since the books didn’t sell.

I leaned in his window.

How ya doin’. Simon lowered his head and reared back, away from me. I intimidated Simon. He knew I was some kind of writer or painter or something because I got mail from arts and literary agencies and had books sent to me from bookstores. Being a female artist alone in the Michigan woods meant one of two things to him: I was nuts, or I was a man hater. Either way, Simon, who was all of twenty-three, wasn’t willing to take his chances.

Got a lotta crows today. He squinted pale blue eyes out at the birds leaving the trees to creep along the ground. Don’t think I’ve ever seen so many all at once. What you got in your garbage, Emily? Big Macs? He laughed and bent down, coming up with a squirming black-and-white puppy in his large, cupped hands.

See what I found? Wandering out on Double Lake Road. Near Arnold’s Swamp. Not a house anywhere. Somebody must’ve dropped him off. Couldn’t leave him like that.

A darling puppy. Big brown eyes. A tiny pink tongue sticking out. He looked at me, blinked a few times, and woofed a sad woof.

You keeping him? I asked.

Simon looked down at the black-and-white mottled face. The puppy woofed again, almost to himself.

Got six dogs. Simon shook his head. I was thinking about you. I never seen a dog with you. And being all alone, well, I thought maybe you’d need one.

I shook my head. Every thwarted instinct in me quivered. What I required was certainly a dog, I wanted to tell him, a little live thing greeting me when I came into my empty house, or sitting at my feet out in my studio. Somebody to talk to other than myself, though I did a lot of that.

But what I couldn’t allow into my life right then was anything needing care. I had enough trouble caring for me, getting my life straight, learning what that life was going to include. No. I looked away from puppy, who, I swear, was smiling at me.

Nope, I told myself. Nothing demanding food and water and needing to go out nights. I’d left Jackson over stuff like that and wasn’t about to fall into that trap so soon again.

I don’t think so, I told Simon and backed away quickly before the puppy could snag me with his sad black-and-white face. If things had been different. If my books sold. If I were at all sure of my future . . .

Better to have a dog, Simon said and shook his own shaggy head. Could be killed in your bed some night. A dog gives you warning.

Really? Anybody been murdered lately up here?

Nope. None yet. But you never know. There’s old Mrs. Poet, from in town. Ain’t been seen in about a month. Had it on the TV. Still can’t find her. Then there’s escaped criminals coming down from up in Marquette. There’s men that go bonkers. Plenty of reason to have a good dog in the house. Look at old Harry, over there. You never know when old Harry might decide to go off.

He pointed across the road toward the narrow, overgrown, dirt driveway headed with a battered black mailbox standing on a half-rotten, leaning post. A vague path led back through two rows of mossy elm trees, to where Harry Mockerman lived. Harry might not have pulled down a Nobel Prize for brain power but he was savvy enough to scrounge work cutting trees, selling wood, doing odd chores for ladies of the woods (as he called me and any others around like me, of which there were a few).

Nothing wrong with Harry. I stood up for Harry because he taught me how to identify morels in May and puffballs in August and find wild leeks all summer, and other things, like tiny milkweed pods, which, when cooked in three quarts boiling water, drained, and fried in butter, tasted like, oh, maybe chicken.

Simon curled his lip at me and shook his head as if I’d just confirmed how nuts I was, trusting a shuffling old guy who wore a shiny black funeral suit to cut down trees in case one fell on him and killed him and nobody knew where to find his burying suit. Or sometimes brought over a Mason jar of his woodchuck stew as a neighborly gesture. Stew made from a woodchuck he’d killed with a slingshot (he bragged to me one time). Ya jist add a whole tamata, one patata, a onion, some peppa, a little bit a salt, an’ a lot a watta.

Simon’d once mentioned finding a jar of stew sitting under the mailbox with the name Mailman written across the lid. He said he took the stew and left a thank-you, but when he got home and offered it to his dogs they howled and backed away.

Well, I thought Harry’s stew was delicious and in return I’d baked Harry a loaf of bread, which probably sent Harry howling and backing away, but still he was kind enough to thank me for the neighborly gesture.

No sale, I said and pointed toward the dog.

I’ll keep trying to find him a home. Simon sighed and put his car in gear. If you change your mind, just leave a note in the box and I’ll bring him down.

I patted the soft round puppy head, enduring a long-suffering look and a few sweet licks at my hand. I reluctantly backed away, waving good-bye as Simon drove off.

The sky was darker now. Wind picking up. The maples and the pines in my woods began to dance the way they do during storms. Dancing and sometimes falling ungracefully into heaps, which occasioned my notes in Harry’s mailbox to bring his chain saw and come see me because I had a job for him.

The breeze was already wet, as if it had been raining elsewhere and I was getting the residue, a dampness left over from Lake Michigan storms, serious storms that headed up toward Lake Superior to worry ships, wreak havoc, and cause gloomy songs to be written.

I stood still for a few minutes, waiting to see if anyone else would stop by and have a word or two, keep me from going back down the hill to my writing studio and the new novel about a New York writer who was suspected of a murder because a friend of hers was killed in the same manner the writer used to kill off a character in a book. I was having strange, mystical feelings of déjà vu, as if I’d heard the plot before, and hoping I hadn’t taken it from one of my neighbors and was rewriting an old Jessica Fletcher rerun, or an Alias.

I looked down Willow Lake Road in one direction, then the other. Nobody was going to come and save me from working on the book or on the article I’d agreed to write for a local magazine, about a group of survivalists living back in the woods, down the road from me. I had to make phone calls. An interview to arrange. I wasn’t exactly looking forward to doing either.

The trees along the road waved and bent in the wind. Clouds scudded by in brightly lighted puffs. Crows leaped about or hunkered down along the telephone wires, their thick plumage poking straight up in the damp wind.

I gave an involuntary shiver as I made a move for the garbage can. Willy, the garbage guy, had uncharacteristically put the lid back on instead of leading me on my usual treasure hunt. I wrapped my arms around the can and lifted. The can had an odd, off-balance feel to it. Something left inside. I tipped it one way then the other, causing whatever was in there to roll like a basketball from side to side. Odd, I thought. I didn’t remember a cabbage, or anything round, that I’d thrown away

Better be careful, I yelled at the crows creeping toward me, though they gave me only cheeky stares in return. You hang around and Harry’s going to make crow stew out of you.

I laughed as I set the can down to see what choice tidbit had so unsettled the crows. I pulled off the lid with a wide, round gesture.

I laughed again as I looked in to see the discarded morsel causing the morning’s greedy uproar.

I was laughing still as I stared into the wide blank eyes of an old woman’s severed head.

Chapter Two

I danced an amazed dance. A leap in the air, a twirl, all the while holding the can lid in my hand and yelping words I didn’t know I knew. I must have kicked the garbage can at one point in my dance; it fell over and away from me. The head rolled out onto the pavement, wild gray hair swaying oddly in a clotted clump. It came to rest with the dead face turned toward me, on its side, cloudy eyes looking straight into mine.

The smell I’d been ignoring got to me now, making my stomach do things I didn’t want it to do. Maybe I hadn’t wanted to notice but the crows sure did and were going crazy around me. Crows in the air, wings flapping. Crows hopping in the road. Crows. Crows. Crows. Rain coming down. Trees going crazy . . .

A rocking head . . .

I took in a lot of deep gulps of air, hoping to keep my breakfast down. This wasn’t a thing to be alone with. I had to think. Police, of course. I’d go back down to my studio and call Police Chief Lucky Barnard in Leetsville. And I’d call Bill Corcoran, editor at the Northern Statesman, a newspaper I did freelance work for, and let him know what happened out here. Geez—geez, how many dead heads turned up in garbage cans?

Still, I couldn’t leave the head in the road. Alone. There was something so sad about it—the poor woman. Dead. Unreal. But . . . not alone. A car might come by. Or those damn birds might make off with it. I wasn’t about to touch it, so I carefully retrieved my garbage can and upended it over the head, figuring no one would drive over it . . . her . . . that way.

I ran down the drive to my studio and called the police chief in Leetsville.

At first Lucky Barnard was reluctant to believe me.

Having a little joke on me, Ms. Kincaid? he asked when I said there was a dead head lying on Willow Lake Road, at the top of my drive, under my garbage can. Something for one of your books?

I sighed and looked around my writing space for solace. No, Chief. I mean, I’ve got a dead head under my garbage can. I think you’d better get out here.

I took in a smiling photo of Georgia O’Keefe, hanging beside my desk. She was flirting with Stieglitz, her husband, this woman who lived by her own standards, everything going into her work, her amazing photographs. My saving places—O’Keefe; the Flannery O’Connor painting beside her; my lithograph of Emily Dickinson’s house. Part of my little coterie of artists who sustained me when I needed sustenance. Like now.

Hmmm, Lucky said.

I threw in more detail, hoping to interest him; desperate to be taken seriously. Very dead, Chief. An old woman’s head . . .

Hmmm, he said again. I heard him turn away from the phone and ask someone a question.

Okay, Ms. Kincaid. My deputy is somewhere out there right now. I’ll have her come by.

Relieved at first, because I’d gotten to the point where I was thinking I’d have to bury the head and forget it, I then remembered who he was talking about—his deputy. Deputy Dolly Wakowski, scourge of the backwoods roads. A squat little woman with the thin voice of a marionette. Dolly Wakowski wore her police uniform like a suit that didn’t quite fit, shrugging her way around in her ill-fitting blue shirt then shifting her drooping gun belt back and forth as she stood beside your car, giving you a ticket and a lecture because the two-lane back roads up here were dangerous but also easy to speed on, and Deputy Dolly was determined to keep us all alive.

Deputy Dolly, a lot like Barney Fife, only not as pretty. I’d heard she was condemned to ride the back roads forever since she’d smashed one of the Leetsville police cars while chasing a teenaged candy store bandit. A little gnat of a woman, she’d already given me three speeding tickets, leading the people down at Buster’s Bar, where I sometimes went for the fish fry on Friday nights, to let me in on the flash-your-headlights warning if Dolly was spotted in the area.

Sure thing—I’d be thrilled as thrilled could be to show her my dead head. Still, at that point, even Deputy Dolly was looking good to me. Anybody. Just so I didn’t have to go back up there and be alone with . . . whoever the poor soul was.

I’ll be right on out. I’ll put a call in to Doc Stevenson, the county coroner. You go back to the road, okay? Watch that garbage can and wait for the deputy.

• • •

When I got back to the top of my drive a police car was parked across the road with red lights flashing. The crows were gone. Deputy Dolly was bent over, the rear of her—with gun belt dangling—turned my way. She gingerly lifted one side of the garbage can and peeked underneath.

It’s there all right, I called out.

She gave a whoop and dumped the can sideways, exposing the head as she jumped back with one hand on her chest and one hand flying to her gun.

You scared the hell out of me, Dolly chirped as she pranced in my direction, frowning and angry.

I hunkered down in my denim jacket, hands clenched in my pockets, and kept my eyes on her. It was a lot colder now. Light rain still falling. I looked over at the poor head in the road and had the urge to take my jacket off and cover it.

You’re Emily Kincaid, Deputy Dolly said and came closer, slowing down, looking hard at me. I remember you.

I choked out something about being happy to see her, which was asinine under the circumstances and would have been asinine anyway since I would never be happy to see her.

Dolly whipped out a small notebook, felt in her shirt pocket for a pen, then in her pants pocket, came up with one and frowned at me again. This, I was thinking, is a formidable woman.

She asked questions and wrote down my answers. A car approached. Dolly ran into the road and furiously waved the car back, motioning for the old man behind the wheel to turn around, get out of there.

Have to get this road blocked off as soon as the chief gets here, she called—well, growled—back at me and gave what passed for a smile. She was walking toward me when I noticed a flash of movement across the road, somewhere down Harry Mockerman’s drive. A flash of black, like the shadow of an animal. Or just a wave of leaves in the growing wind. I took a step into the road and raised my arm to hail Harry, but there was no one there. Nerves, I told myself. Between the head in the road and Deputy Dolly, no wonder I was seeing things.

A blue sedan sedately rounded the far curve. No flashers. No sirens. Nothing to denote eagerness or urgency. The police car pulled to the side of the road across from where Dolly and I waited, not talking to each other. Chief Lucky Barnard, a big, sturdy man, got out and looked one way then the other down Willow Lake Road. Where is it? he called as he ambled toward us.

Dolly pointed to the place in the road where the head lay. The chief walked over, bent down and looked the poor thing squarely in the face. He straightened up fast, then tiptoed to where we waited.

Recognize who it is? the chief said to Dolly. She nodded.

He nodded, too.

Who? I asked, tired of their silent cop routine.

The chief scowled and wiped at his nose. Might as well know, I guess. Everybody’s going to, soon as word gets out. Old Mrs. Poet. Ruby Poet. Disappeared, oh, back a few weeks. Had a big search for her. Did everything we could. Always thought she got lost in the woods. Old, ya know. Probably got disoriented. But how the hell did her head end up in your garbage can? He shook his own head again. I just don’t see . . .

Probably some animal found it, Dolly said. The two stood looking over at the dead Mrs. Poet. They toed the ground awhile, chewing things over, ruminating.

Some animal? I said finally, just a little incredulous. Found it and put it in my garbage?

Well, I guess not, the chief said. But then, there’s got to be an explanation.

Yup, I said.

We’ll just wait for Doc Stevenson, the chief said. He’ll be able to give us a better idea of what happened to the poor old soul. He reared back on his heels. A big man who’d once been a Marine, he’d put the fear of God into many a Leetsvilleian. Now he fixed me with a long look.

How’s your mysteries coming? I read a lot of mysteries. Haven’t read one of yours, have I?

He gave me what passed for a smile, I supposed. Maybe a smirk.

I shrugged and shook my head, leaving it at that, though my face was burning. He knew damned well none of my books had been published. Everybody up here knew everything about everybody. Well, almost everything. I’d always imagined there were a lot of secrets hidden in some of the blank-windowed, backwoods houses; maybe even in some of those prim houses along the town streets.

This wouldn’t be something from a book you’re writing, would it?

I don’t dig up dead people just to see what’ll happen, I said, being as inane as he was.

A long blue Oldsmobile pulled in and parked behind the chief’s car. An elderly man in a windbreaker over a rumpled blue suit got out.

That’s Doc Stevenson, the chief said. We’ll have him take a look and tell us what he thinks. Why don’t you go on back down to your house now, Ms. Kincaid? Take the day to rest and come on into town in the morning, tell us what happened out here. Help a lot if you’d do that. Dolly would be glad to give you a ride in, if you need one. Wouldn’t you, Dolly?

She screwed up her face at him.

Rather than see an argument break out over me, I assured Chief Barnard I could get into town on my own. We agreed on ten o’clock and I started down my drive, happy to get out of the rain that was falling harder now and hoping, somehow, to get the vision of that poor woman’s dead head out of my mind.

Oh, Miss Kincaid . . . eh . . . Emily, the chief called after me. We’ll be taking your garbage can along with us. Hope you got another one.

I nodded. Take it, I called back. It wasn’t a trophy I’d planned on keeping.

Time to buy the bear a new can to kick around.

Chapter Three

I shuddered as I stepped back into my tiny, overcrowded living room. It was depressing to think of that poor woman, Mrs. Poet. I didn’t know her but the name was familiar, probably from that search a few weeks back. For days local TV reporters followed police into the woods before being shooed away, left standing with cameras rolling, microphones in hand, explaining why they couldn’t go into the woods, trying to make a story where there was none. I hadn’t paid much

Reviews for Dead Dancing Women

[squeex_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A mystery about a mystery writer trying to write a mystery. Excellent! Emily has moved to a small town to try and write a mystery, one that will actually be published this time. Only she finds herself in the middle of one. Women are being killed and the only thing connecting them is that they belong to a group who respect and worship, in their own way, the Earth. I loved the characters in the book. Emily can make friends with the oddest of characters. There's the reclusive ornery neighbor, Harry, who helps Emily around her place and brings her the occasional possum stew. Harry is my favorite I think. I know the next books will be just as excellent. I need to see how Emily gets on with her ex-husband who has decided that her little slice of heaven could be just what he needs to work on his book about Chaucer...and moves close by. The mystery is well done, the characters are fully fleshed out and I want to move to this area of Michigan. All my criteria met. Five all my criteria met beans....