Ghost Daughter

 

Ghost Daughter (The Alice MacDonald Greer Mysteries)
by Helen Currie Foster

About Ghost Daughter

Ghost Daughter (The Alice MacDonald Greer Mysteries)
Cozy Mystery
7th in Series
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Stuart’s Creek Press, LLC (June 15, 2021)
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 342 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1732722919
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1732722910

Coffee Creek lawyer Alice MacDonald Greer knows a dangerous client secret when she hears one—especially when it disappoints impatient heirs.

Wealthy widow Ellie Windom asks Alice to help change her will, revealing she’s found her long-lost daughter, and hinting at valuable hidden art in Santa Fe. But there’s trouble with Ellie’s warring sons.

When Ellie is found dead at her ranch, her skull cracked—and a horse in the house—police can’t find a murder weapon and the obvious suspects all have alibis.

Determined to carry out Ellie’s final wishes, Alice races to find the hidden art, eluding intruders and carjackers. But who are the thieves trying to beat her to the hidden art? Is the art a treasure or a clever forgery? Is Ellie’s death connected to the murderous attacks on a lover from long ago?

The search sends Alice and her companions road-racing up Santa Fe mountains, fending off attackers in Austin, and escaping across the Texas Hill Country…rewarded occasionally with some delicious barbecue.

 Character Guest Post

[Interview with George Files, Senior Detective, Coffee Creek Sheriff’s Department, who has encountered Coffee Creek lawyer Alice MacDonald Greer during murder investigations.]

I’m George Files, Senior Detective, Coffee Creek Sheriff’s Department. Coffee Creek’s in the beautiful Texas Hill Country, which I personally find the only place to live. Being a homicide detective in a small town has advantages: I know everyone. The disadvantage? I usually know the murder victims. That’s more painful than investigating the death of some faceless stranger. 

Murder is how I met Alice MacDonald Greer. I generally avoid lawyers; usually they’re objecting to my evidence in court. But Alice has pointed me to key evidence in several cases. I checked out her history. Her friends talked her into moving her Austin law practice to Coffee Creek a few years ago after her husband Jordie’s helicopter went down over the North Sea. Description? Medium height, brown eyes and hair, pretty athletic. Mid-forties. She’s attractive, no question, but to the disappointment of local males she’s currently dating Ben Kinsear. Not a bad guy.

I confess Alice intrigues me. She’s got two college-age kids, and a small ranch with a few burros on it. She seems normal. She doesn’t look reckless. So how does she stumble over so many dead bodies? How does she get in such dangerous fixes? How does she string together such weird clues? 

Remember the case of the murdered rancher, found at the foot of the cliff with the prehistoric cave paintings? Alice figured out the significance of the buried little gold pocketknife atop the cliff. What was she doing up on the cliff? Well may you ask. But she wound up linking an old murder with a new murder. That’s why she calls these episodes “ghost” mysteries. Do you remember when that singer-songwriter got poisoned at the recording studio? Alice figured out there’d been an old murder, even found the body, and that helped solve the new murder. 

I guess I’d say Alice is a noticer. Talking about weird clues: I don’t usually converse with women about their bathroom experiences, but Alice told me about being in the restroom at the cowboy action shooting competition and noticing the red boots in the stall next to her were facing the wall, not the door. No spoilers here, though.

Her clients tell me she’s dogged in protecting them. She’s very loyal to her friends and her wild barrel-racing secretary, Silla. But in my opinion Alice needs to use much more caution. I’ve seen her confront some bad-ass characters with no defense except a flare gun, if you can believe it. Which is why her old pickup has bullet holes in the truck-bed. 

Alice represents the Beer Barn, my favorite roadhouse. It’s typical of the area: the three owners are a Czech, a German, and a Mexican-American. That means great draft beers. But I admit the town’s got some quirky characters who get seriously riled up about land and water rights, wills and property. That’s Alice’s area. She’ll tell you people misbehave lethally over land and money. That keeps her busy, I guess. And me, too. In her latest escapade she was nearly the murderer’s second victim. Fortunately, we showed up in time. But no spoilers.

Sorry—that’s my phone. You got what you need? Remember, Alice is a noticer. Gotta go.

About Helen Currie Foster

Helen Currie Foster lives and writes north of Dripping Springs, Texas, in Texas Hill Country, supervised by three burros. She’s deeply curious, more every day, about human history and prehistory and how, uninvited, the past keeps crashing the party. In each of her Ghost mystery novels, small town lawyer Alice Macdonald Greer must unravel a murder with its roots in the past…long ago.

[If more is needed] Foster earned her BA from Wellesley College, MA from the University of Texas, and JD from the University of Michigan where she grew fascinated with dirt and water law. After practicing environmental law and regulatory litigation for thirty years, she found the character Alice had suddenly appeared in her life. She’s active with Austin Shakespeare and Heart of Texas Sisters in Crime.

Author Links:

Website www.helencurriefoster.com

Facebook https://www.facebook.com/helencurriefoster

Amazon https://www.amazon.com/Helen-Currie-Foster/

GoodReads https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/13556923.Helen_Currie_Foster

Twitter https://twitter.com/foster_currie

Purchase Link – Amazon Paperback –  Kindle

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