The Auction: Unlikely Shorts, #1

By Liz Graham

Sold! To the lady in the black robe and sunglasses...

 

All Diana's material possessions are up for auction, from her furniture to her vast collection of designer shoes. She has no money to buy them back, yet like picking a scab off an unhealed wound, she is compelled to attend the sale, if only to bid adieu to her former life.

 

But her ex-neighbors are making the occasion a 'Girls Weekend Out in NYC', and Diana is loath to face their scorn. With all her enemies present, it turns out she's not the only person in disguise, and what happens at the auction house will change her heart in a way she would never have dreamed possible.

 

It also opens a whole new slew of questions about her husband's death...

 

The Auction is a short story that belongs with The Unlikely Heroine Series. It occurs just after Book 1 An Imperfect Death.

• Language: English
• Publisher: OneEar Press
• Release date: Oct 10, 2020
• ISBN: 9781777321222

Liz Graham

Liz Graham is the author of the Carmel McAlistair Mystery Series (Cozy Cat Press); the Imperfect (Diana Quenton) Suspense Comedies and the Retro Romance Series (Clean, Small Town). She lives in St. John's Newfoundland, a place which encourages indoor pursuits like writing because the weather truly sucks there.

Book preview

The Auction

An Unlikely Short

Liz Graham

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OneEar Press

The Auction

Copyright © 2020 by Liz Graham

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

ISBN: 978-1-7773212-2-2

First Edition: September 2020

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Other Books by Liz (EM) Graham

Chapter One

Diana didn't have to be here in Maurice’s apartment. She could have stayed in the little run-down cottage by the sea, but that would have been even drearier. There, she would be miserable, cold and lonely, without even the company of Mrs. Hastings, her former housekeeper who was off enjoying the Florida sun in her enforced retirement.

The phone buzzed and vibrated on the table. Dan again, but he wasn’t looking for her company, just the return of his credit card. She flicked the phone to silent and sighed. She had to face the fact – in this new world that was Diana’s present, real friends were scarce.

She’d been hanging about Morry’s ratty Manhattan dwelling for weeks now, waiting for the insurance to cough up the five million owing to her from Mark’s death. The proof was irrefutable. His sandal with foot still attached had been bagged by the FBI and the affidavit sent, yet they still insisted on genetic testing as proof that it was truly his appendage. Mrs. Hastings had been required to return to the mansion to root around Mark’s shower drain for hair samples, and she’d grumbled about that experience for a full two days.

The studio/loft apartment on Manhattan’s upper, upper west side was beginning to close in on her. The heavy velvet curtains had long ago faded