Making a Change for the Stranger: Deb Powers, Otherworldly PI: Case #1: Deb Powers: Otherworldly PI, #1

By Kari Kilgore

Meet the New PI in Town, Whether She Likes It or Not

Deb Powers leaves her old life as a private investigator behind. Hoping mountain life in Estonoa, Virginia, suits her better.
Determined not to let her troublesome sheriff cousin draw her right back in.
Deb never expects an odd case of disappearing tools to sneak right past her common sense.
And open her eyes to all of the weird at the heart of her new home town.

 

Also available in the collection Investigations Beyond Belief

 

An excerpt from Making a Change for the Stranger:

A Case Too Odd To Ignore

 

"That is more than a little strange," Deb said. "I'm still not committing to anything, but what are you thinking? Want me to head over and check it out?"

Terri blushed, and Deb knew the truly big ask was about to step out into the open at last.

"Sure, that makes sense. But that really would be going back over ground we already covered. Trouble is we have so much ground to cover in the whole county that we're short-handed most of the time. I don't have anyone trained to do what you do. And yes, I do know you're damn good at it."

"Enough flattery, Sheriff Walsh. Cousin or not, cut it and get to the point. There have to be private investigators around here I'm sure."

Terri held both hands up.

"Absolutely, and fine investigators they are. They'd be none too happy with me if they knew I wanted to bring you in instead. But the truth is there's something strange here, Deb. I feel it, I know it in my bones. I don't trust anyone besides you to handle this one."

• Language: English
• Publisher: Spiral Publishing, Ltd
• Release date: Aug 4, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201241087

Kari Kilgore

Kari Kilgore started her first published novel Until Death in Transylvania, Romania, and finished it in Room 217 at the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colorado, where Stephen King got the idea for The Shining. That’s just one example of how real world inspiration drives her fiction. Kari’s first published novel Until Death was included on the Preliminary Ballot for the Bram Stoker Award for Outstanding Achievement in a First Novel in 2016. It was also a finalist for the Golden Stake Award at the Vampire Arts Festival in 2018. Recent professional short story sales include three to Fiction River anthology magazine, with the first due out in the September issue. Kari also has two stories in a holiday-themed anthology project with Kristine Kathryn Rusch due out over the holidays in 2019. Kari writes fantasy, science fiction, horror, and contemporary fiction, and she’s happiest when she surprises herself. She lives at the end of a long dirt road in the middle of the woods with her husband Jason Adams, various house critters, and wildlife they’re better off not knowing more about. Kari’s novels, novellas, and short stories are available at www.spiralpublishing.net, which also publishes books by Frank Kilgore and Jason Adams. For more information about Kari, upcoming publications, her travels and adventures, and random cool things that catch her attention, visit www.karikilgore.com.

Book preview

Making a Change for the Stranger

For Jason

---

Who knows the unusual perspective of being

an insider/outsider as well as I do.

Making a Change for the Stranger

Deb Powers, Otherworldly PI: Case #1

Kari Kilgore

Spiral Publishing, Ltd.

Making a Change for the Stranger

Most days, Deb Powers loved everything about her new life back home.

She’d set up shop in the cozy walk-out basement in her Great Auntie Zelda’s house, giving her a lovely view of the sleepy little town of Estonoa, Virginia, where she and her twin sister Katie spent the first year or so of their lives.

Or at least that’s what their parents and truly intimidating swarm of aunts, uncles, and various flavors of cousins had always told them. An embarrassing array of photographs and grainy old VHS videos seemed to back up that claim, though neither Deb nor Katie remembered any of it.

But they did remember coming back to visit the lush mountains and creeks, the secretive valleys and hollers. For holidays or vacations, and for joyful birthdays or heartbreaking funerals.

The place their parents always seemed to miss and long for from the far less wild surroundings of Deb’s Cincinnati childhood. The strange northern land her family escaped to, following the irresistible song of more jobs and better opportunities, at least back in those days.

Now Deb couldn’t deny an immediate sense of peace, of belonging, every time she looked out across the hilly streets full of low brick buildings and a few white wooden houses. The endless variety of spring green decorating the ring of mountains sheltering Estonoa kept her staring out the basement’s row of windows when she really should be working.

She pretended to herself that the next important thing to concentrate on might be...more storage space for her office. She’d brought several sensible black bookshelves with her, and they looked wonderful packed full of books and knickknacks, set against walls she’d painted a rich cinnamon brown.

Much like her private investigator job back in her adopted-in-adulthood home of Atlanta, Deb didn’t expect many walk-in clients in her new career as a computer and technology consultant. But she’d brought in a comfortably overstuffed blue sofa for one wall, and two decidedly less comfortable repurposed dining room chairs.

After all, a woman who’d made damn sure she could be her own boss and work from home since she graduated from college wasn’t exactly