A Drop of Sweat: A Winnie Parsons Mystery: Winnie Parsons Mysteries, #3

By Robin Brande

Cutting-edge scientist Dr. Benjamin Rook returns home to the peace and solitude of his remote mountain laboratory—only to discover that someone destroyed his entire lab and everything he worked on for the past fifteen years.

 

Without any clues who might have done it, Ben turns to Dr. Winifred Parsons for help. She is a retired scientist herself, but more than that, Winnie Parsons is clairvoyant.

 

Winnie discovers there were a few witnesses after all—although no one else would ever guess it. No secret can stay hidden for long once Winnie Parsons is on the case.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ryer Publishing
• Release date: Oct 30, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201018122

Robin Brande

Award-winning author Robin Brande is a former trial attorney, entrepreneur, martial artist, law instructor, yoga teacher, wilderness adventurer, and certified wilderness medic. Her novels have been named Best Fiction for Young Adults by the American Library Association. She was selected as the Judy Goddard/Libraries Ltd. Arizona Young Adult Author of the Year in 2013. She writes fantasy, science fiction, contemporary young adult fiction, and romance.   

Book preview

1

Winnie sat in the narrow inner courtyard between her front gate and her front door. The pathway between the planting beds was hard brick, but she always brought a soft, plush pillow with her to sit on. She was past the days of ever subjecting herself to discomfort if she could help it.

The pillow was actually a dog bed that Clover her yellow Labrador had rejected within a day of Winnie bringing it home. Something about the shallow sides, or maybe the texture of the corduroy fabric along the rim … Clover was a girl of strong opinions, and Winnie had no desire to try to boss her.

They lived as companions and roommates, both admiring and respecting each other. Clover especially admired Winnie’s ability to toss cubes of cheese and slices of carrots into the air when she was cooking. Every evening Clover sat diligently on the long blue runner rug in the kitchen between the sink and the stove while Winnie cooked dinner, waiting for that magic toss.

But now, midmorning, after their walk from the house to the University of Arizona campus where they always completed the same three-mile loop, and after their respective breakfasts of kibble and oatmeal and coffee, Winnie sat on the rejected dog bed and Clover lay sleeping on the brick pathway in the sun, and they breathed in the fresh, flower-scented air and thought their own deep thoughts.

Even in January, Winnie’s flower garden prospered. She no longer spoke to the plants out loud, ever since her neighbor to the south had built an extension onto her house that brought her patio right up against Winnie’s tall stucco wall—the woman was an orthopedic surgeon at the university hospital, and had proven herself nosy and judgmental almost immediately after moving in—but Winnie still spoke in her mind to the courtyard’s climbing sweet peas and bougainvillea, complimenting them on their stunning purple and magenta blossoms, and thanking them for their beauty.

She grew daisies here, too, and hollyhocks, pansies, and petunias. On the other side of the house, where the sun shone longer throughout the day, she grew fruit trees and vegetables and tall, cheerful-looking sunflowers that poked their heads above the wall.

Winnie needed color in her life, and sometimes the desert landscape of Tucson felt too brown and drab and dry.

Winnie favored life. It was the simplest thing in the world to surround herself with evidence of it inside the wall surrounding her modest, comfortable home, when outside this wall the world sometimes wanted to show her a much darker picture.

That was on her mind this morning, the ugliness of some people. She had received an email from her friend Dr. Amanda Birkauer, Assistant Director of the U of A’s Consciousness Studies department—also known as the