Congratulations to Carol Sue, the winner of the digital copy of The Double Exposure Murder. Thank you to everyone who entered the contest. A friendly reminder that the book is available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, Kobo, and other online retailers. I hope the book is also in your local library’s catalog. If not, I’d appreciate it if you asked your librarian to order the book.
I have an extra guest post that wasn’t featured in the blog tour. It was “written” by Robyn Cavanagh, the star amateur sleuth of The Double Exposure Murder. Enjoy it and have a wonderful week!
Hello! I’m Robyn Cavanagh and I’m pleased to welcome you to my hometown of Garland. I’ve lived in this semi-rural community my whole life and have watched it grow from a quiet suburb on the Hudson River to a destination town for visitors from Manhattan and its boroughs thanks to the revitalized stores and restaurants along our main street, Hudson Road, and the numerous natural attractions Garland offers.
I’ve benefited from the Garland renaissance. After commuting to a job in Manhattan for twenty years, I now run two businesses from my home at 9 Lyons Lane. I complete many residents’ tax returns and manage the books for several of those Hudson Road shops. I’m also a part-time portrait photographer, a hobby I’ve turned into a second source of income. My dream is to reverse the cash flow and earn my bread-and-butter money taking photographs while keeping a hand in accounting.
A few of my clients are from downstate cities. They’ve either purchased weekend homes in Garland or moved here permanently. Despite the rise in our population, the town has remained a safe place to live. It was quite a shock, then, when bride-to-be Brooke Gibson was murdered on an early-summer Saturday morning. Many residents knew Brooke; she was a math teacher at Garland High School and worked summers as a server at the popular Town Tavern restaurant. My sister Meredith worked with her at Garland High and it was on Meredith’s recommendation that Brooke hired me to do her tax return and, when she got engaged to fellow teacher Frank Hunter, she asked me to take their official engagement portrait.
Brooke called me a few months later to take photos of 16 Clover Lane, the house she’d recently inherited from her great-aunt. Brooke planned to sell the home and wanted high-quality photos for the real estate listing. It was a different kind of photo session from the jobs I’ve done taking portraits of high school seniors, newborns, couples celebrating anniversaries, and families gathering for Christmas card photographs. I enjoyed photographing the cozy, daffodil-colored house and returned to Clover Lane a few days later to show Brooke the portfolio.
Brooke would never see the photographs of her inheritance. I found her dead in 16 Clover’s backyard shed, the shovel used to kill her lying beside her body.
Thank goodness the crime scene photographer took those pictures, but I couldn’t get the image of Brooke’s lifeless form out of my mind. Who would kill the confident, vivacious young woman? Meredith told me Brooke was loved by everyone in the Garland High family. Her fiancé, according to my sister, was devoted to Brooke.
A person isn’t accidentally battered with a shovel, so when Brooke’s mother asked me to help her collect the refunds from Brooke’s wedding vendors, I grabbed the opportunity to gather clues along with Brooke’s deposit money. Out of respect for her memory, I won’t share the not-so-nice details I learned about Brooke.
I was determined to help the police solve the murder case. I made many wrong assumptions, but with help from Meredith and my friend Will Vonderlin, and with a final sprint (literally), I caught the killer.
Jeanne Quigley - All Things Cozy 