PROLOGUE

At twelve midnight on the eleventh of the month as the tower bells chime and the moon reflects ten thousand moons in the ten thousand windows of the city, chasing shadows across nine dark storefronts along the square, some certain moonbeam banks an eight-point ricochet and snaps a seven-second beeline to the six-story building on Fifth Street, where it shoots through a four-by-three-foot ground-level window of two-layer glass, straight to the basement floor where one wide circle of blood is spreading out around the body of one man.

One the Gun.

He has one minute to live.

ONE

The bells are still chiming as he opens his eyes.

But now he is standing.

This is strange.

Strange enough that the walls to his left and right grab his ears and give a twist, trying to throw him back down onto the floor.

One the Gun shuts his eyes and tries to steady himself. Listens to another strike of the bell. Opens his eyes. The room stops spinning.

She’s standing in front of him. This is strange, too, as she certainly wasn’t here a moment ago. Such a look on her face. Eyes the color and size of oceans.

Two the True Blue.

He doesn’t understand the light in the room. It’s bright as day even as the midnight bells ring.

He doesn’t understand the room. This is not the basement.

The troubled look on his assistant’s face: She looks the way he feels. He sputters out the only thing he can think to say, “Miss Blue?”

“You looked so odd just now,” she says. “Are you alright?”

“Of course!” he says, to shrug it off like a man—but actually, yes, truly, really, he’s alright. He’s not dead. Wasn’t he just dead? About to be dead?

Two the True Blue has this radio show she listens to every Friday night and talks about constantly called Who Is the Villain?, a trite piece of schlock where the detective—one of those fakey radio detectives with nothing but brawn and clever quips—solves a different overblown case each week. The narrator’s always saying ridiculous stuff like “the dame had the kind of eyes that made you want to melt like honey on a hot biscuit.” And the victim’s always coming to in a hospital bed asking, “Where am I? Where am I?” One the Gun tries to know where he is so that he doesn’t have to ask this. He’s not in the basement. He’s in a room full of light.

Blank white walls and a couple windows. The open blinds shred the sunshine and leave it in stripes on the floor. A couch and chair, a beat-up old filing cabinet in the corner. Bookcase and desk. He’s in his office.

One the Gun shakes his head. “I just got a little dizzy all of a sudden. I’m fine.”

He needs to sit down.

“I think I’ll just sit down.”

One the Gun sits down.

He takes the couch where clients generally sit when they come to him to solve their very ordinary and unradiolike cases like is my wife cheating on me?, or is my clerk siphoning twenty bucks a week from the company till? Sometimes he gets more interesting assignments, yes, sometimes even a murder. One the Gun is on a murder case right now—no, not his own murder, that’s a different case altogether. In fact it’s not a case at all, in fact it didn’t happen at all, he’s pretty sure it didn’t happen at all.

“Sir?” Two the True Blue’s giving him the big blue eyes again.

He kicks out a laugh to show her he’s fine and not at all hallucinating his own death in the middle of the night—day—in the middle of the day. “Don’t mind me. It’s just been . . .” He thinks about it. “A long morning.”

She smiles. “Shall I continue?”

He doesn’t know with what. He says, “Of course.”

She takes a seat opposite him in the chair, looks down at the notepad he didn’t notice before in her hand. “Well, the coroner’s office confirms that the victim was killed with poison. It’s a hard one to pronounce, but here goes.”

She’s telling him things he already knows, things she reported on yesterday, but he doesn’t care. He settles back against the couch, happy to be here and not . . . wherever he . . . probably wasn’t before.

“Police say that specific poison was also found in the storeroom in the form of rat poison. I have a box of it for you on the desk. The storeroom was unlocked at the time, but this poison is also not uncommon and could have been brought in by someone from the outside.”

She shifts and crosses her legs under her pale peach cotton skirt. Two the True Blue has a heart-shaped face and the kind of beautiful innocence that would make any altar boy give up his ticket to heaven just to steal her lollipop. It’s not just her innocence that’s beautiful either. She’s all-over beautiful. Just look at her there, smiling that smile that melts you like honey on a hot biscuit.

“The poison usually takes about twenty minutes to activate in the body. Once it went to work on the victim, it would have been quick,” she says. “A few shocking moments of agony followed by violent convulsions, followed by unconsciousness, and finally death.”

He can tell she’s enjoying this. Delivering the fiendish details of this murder case. Maybe that’s why she’s going on about things she already told him yesterday. It probably makes her feel like the sidekick in that radio show she laps up every Friday night like honey on a hot biscuit. One the Gun wonders if he ate breakfast this morning. He remembers nothing of the morning. Did he have some sort of stroke? Temporary insanity? Did he go out last night and get tight and pass out, and was the whole death thing nothing but a booze dream?

He stands and starts pacing. His shoes hitting the worn wood floor say this isn’t a dream. So does this very real office, dinky as a broom closet in a fleabag motel, with only space enough for one desk, which he and Miss Blue have to share. It’s barely enough room for adequate pacing, but he can’t sit still.

Two the True Blue glances from her notes, eyebrows up, but Gun’s eyebrows and smile indicate that he would simply like to pace a bit while listening to her very interesting reporting and could she please continue.

“I’ve made appointments for you to talk to the witnesses and suspects,” she says. Little punch of relish in her voice when she says suspects. “The doorman of the place, the bartender, that priest. I haven’t reached out to the widow yet because I thought you might want to play a little more casual with her.”

“Good choice,” he says.

Two the True Blue always makes good choices. She’s the best assistant a third-rate gumshoe could have. She comes into the office every day at eight when he’s still at home sleeping, types up any notes he’s recited into the dictation machine the night before—notes that generally come with instructions for her and research to do, which she does—and by the time he arrives at the office, usually around noon, she has all the information he needs, all his notes prepared, and his appointments made for the day. She’s indispensable. Not to mention pretty as a stuffed pigeon on a fancy hat. Sophisticated like.

She stands and crosses to his desk in the corner. “I’ve jotted your appointments on the calendar. Want to have a look?”

He joins her, standing over the desk looking down. Her finger with a clean, filed nail points at a notation on the page. One o’clock time slot. Meet with doorman at café.

“I hope this works,” she says. “He’s on duty at the Dive Inn starting at three, and I wanted to give you a chance to really talk. He’s an important witness. He was the one who discovered the body.”

It’s déjà vu. That’s all this is. He didn’t really experience this whole conversation yesterday, he’s just feeling like he did. Maybe this déjà vu feeling is an aftereffect of the weird nightmare he had last night: the office . . . the power going out . . . him in the basement with the flashlight . . . the gunshot . . .

“Of course,” he says, “that sounds perfect.” The words coming out of his mouth feel like words he already said.

“Good. And then you’ll want to go over to the church,” she says. “The victim will be there in an open casket if you want to view him. And I’ve made an appointment for you to speak with the priest at two thirty. He was one of the last remaining patrons that night at the Dive Inn. Later this evening you’ll go over to the Dive where you can speak to the bartender who was also on the scene at the time.”

She’s standing so close her shoulder brushes his. She smells like jasmine.

“Miss Blue?”

“Sir?” she asks.

“You ever get the feeling you’re having déjà vu?”

“Mmm, every twice in a while,” she says. “Oh, and don’t forget to break for dinner. You know how you get on task. Now this poison.” She turns to the bookcase beside the desk. With one hand on a shelf, she rises on tiptoe, lifting off one foot and using the ball of the other to raise herself even further and reach for the thick volume of The Compleat Illustrated Pharmacopeia on the high shelf. Sliding the book out and grabbing hold of it, she drops back onto both feet, teeters. Not truly like she’s going to fall, but One the Gun, right behind her, catches her in a way that makes her tip back into his arms.

For just a moment she’s in his arms.

Then the office door opens and a man walks in. He’s annoyingly dashing with his gray tailored coat, homburg, and neatly trimmed whiskers.

Three the Goatee.

“Sweetie!” Two the True Blue steps out of One the Gun’s grip, passing him the book. It’s heavy in his hand. “We can continue talking about the poison later,” she tells him, then turns back to her beau. “Lunch?”

Three the Goatee is shooting a suspicious single eyebrow, as carefully groomed as his whiskers, at One the Gun.

Watching the two of them is like watching a movie Gun has already seen.

“Oh, now.” Miss Blue waves the incident away with the back of her hand. “I slipped pulling down a book. He caught me from falling.” And then again: “Lunch?”

A hug, a peck on the mouth, Three the Goatee’s shoulders relax, and he smiles. “Lunch!”

As Two the True Blue turns to snag a light jacket and pocketbook from the hook on the wall by the door, Three the Goatee angles his eyes back to One the Gun. He snaps a courteous, if chilly, nod of recognition. “Gun.”

A short, formal nod back. “Professor.”

Then Two the True Blue beams warmth on them both. “Sir, I’ll be back in the office within the hour. Give a call with whatever you need.” And the couple is off, leaving One the Gun alone at the start of a very strange day.

***

Excerpt from Who Killed One the Gun? by Gigi Little. Copyright 2025 by Gigi Little. Reproduced with permission from Gigi Little. All rights reserved.

Chapter One

December 25, 1934
Knightsbridge, New York

“I need you to come to Paris.”

“You need what?” he asked.

Detective Steven Blackwell stared at the younger version of his mother standing in the room that had been her studio. Jaw dropped, eyes like saucers. He could barely speak.

“I need you—and your friend Olivia, if you like—to come to Paris. There’s been a murder and the police aren’t doing anything,” said Evangéline. “I thought I heard a voice a minute ago. Was that Olivia? Why don't you get her? She’s probably wondering what’s going on.”

In a daze, and feeling like he had no control over his actions, Steven turned away from the vision of his mother and stumbled out into the hallway. He saw Olivia still waiting in the doorway at the end of the hall. Her hand flew to her chest, and she heaved a great sigh. “Oh, my God, you’re okay! What’s going on? I thought I heard voices. Is somebody here?” As he came closer, she noticed the look on his face. “What’s wrong? You look funny.”

“It’s my mother. My mother’s here.”

“What?”

“She looks as real as you do, but she’s young, around our age. She said she needs me to go to Paris. And you should come too.”

“What?” For one terrifying moment, Olivia wondered if a year of grieving had unhinged Steven’s mind. How could his mother be here? Evangéline Neuilly Blackwell died last January.

Steven repeated Evangéline’s instructions. “She said I should come get you.” He held out his hand. Olivia took it and stepped over the threshold into 1934.

They moved slowly down the hall then paused at the doorway to look at each other. Steven squeezed her hand. Olivia nodded. They both took a deep breath then entered Evangéline’s studio.

There in the shadowy room stood a beautiful woman, shoulder-length copper hair shining in the lamplight. She was slender, taller than average, and wore a stunning emerald dress, the kind French women wore to perfection. A wool coat with a fur collar had been thrown over the back of a chair. She held out her hand toward Olivia.

“Hello. I’m Evangéline Neuilly. I’m so happy to meet you.”

Olivia had always wanted to meet Steven’s exotic-sounding mother—a famous French artist—but that possibility had died along with Evangéline. Or so she had thought. Olivia told herself to close her mouth, which had fallen open, and shook the woman’s hand. “Olivia Watson.”

Evangéline looked at Steven. “I can tell you’re surprised to see me. I must not have told you about my ability to time travel. Surely, you wondered why you can? And if your father or I also had that ability?”

“Eh, no. Not really.”

Evangéline rolled her eyes and gave Olivia a look that said, Men, huh?

Olivia couldn’t help grinning.

“Well,” Evangéline opened her arms wide, “here’s the answer to your unasked question. You got it from me.”

Olivia recovered first. “So, Evangéline, you traveled here from...when?”

“1895. And I really need your help. Both of you.” She shook her head and waved her hand back and forth. “I know. I know. You have a lot of questions. Let’s go downstairs and have something to drink. I’ll tell you what has happened.”

They trouped down the stairs and into the living room.

“I know I must have lived in this house for some time and I assume I decorated this room....” Evangéline turned to Steven for confirmation.

“Yes, we lived here about twenty years or so before you....” He swallowed hard.

“Before I died,” she whispered, then patted his hand. “Pauvre chouchou. Poor sweetheart. I’m so sorry. But, don’t tell me. I don’t want to know when. Of course, I have an idea. But not the exact date.” She opened a door in the sideboard. “Bon! A bottle of red.” She handed the wine to Steven.

Still dazed, he opened it and poured a glass for each of them. Evangéline curled up in a leather chair. Steven and Olivia sat facing her on the couch.

His mother took a sip and pursed her lips. “Not bad. So, listen, we must act fast. A young girl has been killed but the police do nothing. They say it was an accident. We know it was not. I want you to find out who killed Madeleine Gervaise.”

His cop’s instincts kicked in, and Steven found himself intrigued. Who was Madeleine Gervaise? How did she die? Why do the police think it was an accident? And what was her connection to Evangéline?

Suddenly, Steven remembered something Sherlock Holmes once said: “When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.” And with that assurance, he snapped out of his stupor and accepted his mother’s bewildering appearance. He leaned forward.

“All right, let’s say, for the sake of argument, that I can and will go to Paris. Answer these questions.” He ticked them off his fingers. “Why do the police think it was an accident? How do you know it wasn’t? When did this happen?”

Evangéline placed her feet on the floor and mirrored him, ticking her answers off her fingers. Olivia almost laughed at the two of them. Talk about a chip off the old block, as her grandfather used to say. “She fell on one of the tall staircases in Montmartre. The police say she slipped on the ice. My friend Henri knows the human body and how it works. He says the...how do you say ‘marks of black and blue’?”

“Bruises,” Olivia chimed in. “We also say black-and-blue marks.”

“Ah! Bon. Henri says the bruises prove someone pushed her. It happened late Sunday night, early Monday morning. Today is already Wednesday. That is why we must move fast.”

Steven groaned, thinking of the days lost. “Is Henri a doctor?”

“No, an artist. But, believe me, Steven, he knows the body. If Henri says she was pushed, she was pushed.”

“So, again, if we were to do this, how would it work?”

“We must go with all speed. That means we must travel in Olivia’s time in one of those fast aeroplanes. That’s how I got here so quickly.”

“Wait, how do you know about Olivia?”

“Oh, mon Dieu, the questions! It is a long story but if it will help speed this up...last summer, I traveled to 1934, to America, with someone on business that had nothing to do with you or my future. When I was in New York City, I saw a photograph in a newspaper of the painting I’m working on right now. The article said a museum in Chicago had bought it and gave information about me, you, and your father. While my friend was completing his business, I had a couple of days to myself, so I took a train here and came to this house. Naturally, I was curious, so I came in and looked around. You really shouldn’t leave your doors unlocked, you know. Anyway, I saw the photograph of Olivia on your dresser. You have her name and the year 2014 written on the back. I realized you had inherited my ability to time travel and that Olivia also had the gift.” Evangéline blew out her cheeks. “Can we not return to the problem at hand now?”

Steven grinned. “Yeah, okay. You know, I always thought you learned English when you moved here with Dad. You speak really well.”

She rolled her eyes. “As you must know, my father is a professor of English at the Sorbonne. He taught me when I was a child.” She took a drink of her wine. “Now, to our problème...I went through the portal in Paris, from 1895 to Olivia’s time.”

“Why did you go into Olivia’s time?”

“If you keep interrupting me, we will never get anywhere. Just listen.” Evangéline took another drink of wine and went on. “Time is of the essence, as it’s already been almost three days. We must travel into 2014 and go to New York City as quickly as possible. Someone there will help us with what we need. Tomorrow night, we’ll fly to Paris. Once we’re there, we’ll travel back to 1895.”

“You make it sound easy. But I have so many questions,” Steven persisted. “How are we going to pay for all this? How do I get a passport fast enough to fly tomorrow? What about other things we might need?”

His mother tilted her head toward the ceiling and sighed. “You think I have come all this way without a plan? Before I left, Henri gave me a sketch. There’s a man in New York City—you will soon learn we have travel agents in cities all over the world who help us. This man in New York City, a place called Brooklyn, is selling the sketch for me, so we’ll have plenty of money. He’ll make a passport and other documents for you, Steven, just as someone in Paris made mine so I could come here.” Evangéline turned to Olivia. “Do you have a passport? Do you drive an automobile?”

“Yes. And I have a car.”

“Can you take us to New York City tomorrow morning so we can get Steven’s documents and the money to buy our tickets for the aeroplane? We must leave for Paris tomorrow night.”

“Sure. Listen, Evangéline, I’m sorry to hear about your friend Madeleine.”

“Thank you. She was lovely—a dancer and one of Henri’s favorite models. Such a waste.”

“Who is Henri? And why would anybody buy one of his sketches?”

“Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. I think he is well known in your time, Olivia.”

“Toulouse-Lautrec?” Olivia gasped. “He’s a friend of yours?”

“Yes, and he’s now your employer.”

Olivia’s jaw dropped.

Evangéline reached out toward Steven with her empty wineglass then settled back in the chair after he’d refilled it. “Now, let us talk about tomorrow. You must both pack a small bag. Steven, bring any tools or objects you will need to investigate. I don’t know what they might be, but that is most important. When we travel to my Paris in 1895, you can borrow clothes belonging to my friend Théo. He’s away on business right now. His wardrobe is filled with additional items—suits, shirts, collars, and so forth. There’s a cloak and hat as well. Olivia, we’re about the same size. I’m happy to share my clothes with you. I have plenty of skirts and dresses. I have an extra cloak, too. Just bring your personal things.”

Suddenly, Steven realized he had been given a gift. After a long, difficult year of grieving, he had the chance to spend time with the woman who would become his mother. How could he possibly say no?

“I’m sorry, but I have to interrupt again,” Steven said, grinning at Evangéline. “Before it gets too late, I need to call the chief to tell him a family emergency has come up and I need a few days off.” He stood and headed for the phone, then stopped. He turned around and walked back to Evangéline. “I know this is going to be weird for you. You don’t even know me yet. But I have missed you so much!” And he bent down and kissed his mother’s cheek.

***

Excerpt from Murder at the Moulin Rouge by Carol Pouliot . Copyright 2025 by Carol Pouliot . Reproduced with permission from Carol Pouliot . All rights reserved.

Chapter One

Jennifer surveyed the café with satisfied proprietary eyes. The freshmen at the two corner tables were an excellent sign. Having arrived in Williamstown the day before, having unpacked their carefully faded blue jeans and dispatched their carefully dry-eyed parents, having found their way to the registrar’s office and the bookstore with barely concealed terror, they had, no doubt, asked whomever they could find where, you know, it was happening. And they had been sent straight to Café Galadriel to nurse their bludgeoned intellects and wounded sexuality on Jennifer’s coffee for the next four years.

Around them, the unmatched wooden chairs and tables of the café held the usual Monday afternoon crowd. Brownley (Philosophy) and Krasner (Sociology) sat over a game of chess. The Western Massachusetts Women’s Anti-Violence Task Force occupied the round table in the center of the room. Samir Molchev, self-styled seeker of truth, was alone at a corner table reading Suzuki’s The Field of Zen. On the salmon walls, a pre-Raphaelite poster of the Lady of Shallot hung beside a poster of Che Guevara. It will be a great day, read the sign above Wendy’s bakery display case, when schools get all the money they need and the Air Force has to hold a bake sale to buy a bomber. A tattered sofa occupied one wall of the room, the coffee table in front of it piled with backgammon sets and old copies of Ramparts magazine. A Bob Marley tape played on the stereo.

It was the moment of the year when the café was moving into autumn, away from its summer tourist mode. Behind the cash register, Wendy was packing away the pitchers that had held iced tea and cold cider. Her summer uniform of paisley sun dresses had given way to long sleeves and flowing, ankle-length dresses. Short, with a rounded body and small face, Wendy’s size was belied by clothes that began at her shoulders and fell draping to the floor. Her curly, dark red hair followed the same line, rippling down her back and ending just above her waist. Jennifer, whose knowledge of poetry had outlasted work on her dissertation, would have occasion to wonder in the coming weeks if Wendy hadn’t modeled herself on the Tennyson heroine behind her on the wall.

Jennifer herself was at her usual spot, the table by the Vermont Castings wood stove that, in the winter months, would reduce heating bills while contributing to what she thought of as the café’s fake authenticity. She was dressed, as usual, in dungarees, Indian cotton, and the sandals she insisted on wearing until the snow fell, but her short summer haircut was growing out, and her thick brown hair was starting to take on its haphazard winter unruliness.

“I remember you guys,” Jennifer was saying. “You were all practicing to be Leon Trotsky, and you polished your rhetoric and your steely gaze on girls like me who were stuffing envelopes for the cause.”

Beside her, Zachery Lerner grimaced.

“We weren’t really that bad. We were just showing off for each other.”

“Well, you could have fooled me. But anyway, I think it’s amazing that Williams College actually hired you to teach the impressionable young.”

Zach’s reputation had preceded him, not only at Williams but among anyone who remembered the decade just past: Berkeley in the late sixties, a first book on working class resistance to the war, three years in Leavenworth for refusing induction. Jennifer had recognized him, both by reputation and by the studious features that reminded her of all the budding revolutionaries she had always figured she would marry. His curly hair, already a premature salt-and-pepper, circled a rounded face with deep-set brown eyes and broad features. The lumberjack clothes that covered his burly frame would clearly win no friends among the board of trustees. His face, under horn-rimmed glasses, was that of a Russian Jewish revolutionary, which, at several generations removed, he was.

The front door of the café opened with a loud kick. Annie McGantry, Flanders’ organic farmer and herbalist, wedged the door with her shoulder and pulled a trolley topped by a large, covered barrel through the doorway and into the room. She spotted Jennifer and made her way to the table. She eased the barrel off the trolley, made sure that both the trolley and the barrel were standing safely upright, and threw herself into an empty chair.

“Goddamn. Can you believe I ran out of barrels?” she greeted them. “You should see the Kirby cukes this year—it’s like they don’t want to quit. I tell them, ‘Come on, how many pickles do we need? I need to finish canning the tomatoes, so stop putting out, you little sluts, and save some energy for next year.’ I’ve already brought four barrels to the co-op. I can’t start selling them for a week—they won’t be fit for eating. But at least they’re out of my hair. Anyway, here’s your barrel. I put them on your September bill.”

Jennifer groaned. “You brought them here when I can’t sell them for a week? Do you know how much we’ve got piled up in the kitchen already? Susan Broady delivered all the—”

“I promise you you’re not as crowded as the co-op is. I’m, like, buried. You know, I peed on the seeds before I planted them,” she reflected. “I think that’s why everything’s doing so well.”

Jennifer grimaced. “Don’t tell me what you put in the brine, okay?”

Zach regarded Annie with curiosity. Annie was pretty, with strong, if currently grimy features, and she looked to Zach’s urban eyes to be precisely the kind of unwashed earth mother he would have expected to find in the Berkshires. He glanced briefly at the blue jeans stuffed into Wellington boots, the small breasts and narrow hips, the muscled forearms and dirty fingernails. He found himself impressed by the uncompromising look in the light grey eyes.

“Annie manages the co-op.” Jennifer turned to Zach. “She has a back room filled with medicinal herbs, so watch out if you get a rash in her vicinity. Three hundred years ago, she would have been burned as a witch.”

“So,” Zach indicated the pickles. “Tell me what you put in the brine. I love pickles. Or is it a secret old family recipe?”

“My family? Shit. My mother’s only old family recipe was for spoon bread.”

“Well, my grandmother bought pickles in barrels on the Lower East Side. So, what’s in the brine?”

“Salt, of course. Pickling spices. Apple cider vinegar.”

“My bubbe would have been horrified at pickles made with apple cider vinegar. She would have put them in the same category as whole wheat bagels.”

Annie eyed him, suspecting that he was only half teasing her and not entirely clear about what was wrong with whole wheat bagels. Still, she liked his solidity, and she had always been partial to curly hair. He looked utterly unmovable. Annie took it as a challenge.

“She never tried my pickles, then,” Annie drawled. Her voice took on a Southern mountain twang that did not seem quite in keeping with the ANIMALS ARE PEOPLE TOO bumper sticker on her pick-up truck. But it had, Jennifer knew, been her mother tongue. Annie was the offspring of a hard-drinking truck farmer and a deaconess in the Bethel Baptist Church, her small soul the preferred battle ground of her parents’ adversarial marriage. In the end, her father had won. Annie had scraped the mud of Mount Haven, Arkansas, off her first pair of Birkenstocks, hitchhiked to San Francisco for the Summer of Love, and sworn she would never set foot in a church again.

“Honey, you come over one night, and I’ll teach you the art of making pickles, Annie-style. Hell, you can harvest the rest of the damned cucumbers while you’re at it. I could use the help, and you,” she regarded the intellectual paleness of his skin, “could use some time in the great outdoors.”

There was movement at the corner table. Samir Molchev rose from his chair and placed his book in a cloth satchel embossed with Indian appliqué. Jennifer watched him come toward them, his tall body graceful in jeans and a long, white, collarless shirt.

There really was such a thing, Jennifer decided, as being too good-looking for your own good. Or anyone else’s, for that matter. It was as if Samir knew that his body was perfect: broad, graceful shoulders, a soft swirl of hair just visible through his open collar. Soft black hair fell to his shoulders, framing pronounced cheekbones and black, slightly slanted Tartan eyes. All he needed, she thought, was a gold leaf halo and scarlet robes, and the resemblance to a Byzantine icon would be complete.

Beside her, Annie stiffened. “It’s late,” she announced. “I have to get back.” Annie rose, strode across the room and into the café kitchen, and returned with a ladle and an empty mason jar. She raised the lip on the barrel, extracted half a dozen pickles with her fingers, and placed them in the jar. She ladled brine over them, screwed the top onto the jar, and set the jar in front of Zach on the table. “Here you are. A sample. Let it sit for a week before you open it.”

Samir came up behind her. “Peace, all.” He raised his hands in greeting and eyed Zach with curiosity.

Annie ignored him. Zach reached out a hand.

“I’m Zach Lerner. Good to meet you.”

“Zachary Lerner?” Samir asked slowly. The black eyes blinked.

“Yes, that Zachary Lerner,” Jennifer put in. “Williams has stolen him away from Berkeley.”

“And you should hear the Eisenhower Professor of American Democracy on the subject,” Zach smiled. “‘Just what we need, another draft dodger on the faculty!’”

Samir regarded Zach in silence.

Annie stirred impatiently. “Jen, I gotta go. Where should I put the barrel?”

Samir pulled his eyes away from Zach. “Let me get that into the kitchen for you.”

Annie narrowed her eyes. “Don’t bother.”

“Peace, sister. I’m just trying to help you.”

“I’m not your sister, and I don’t need your help.”

“Just leave it, Annie,” Jennifer said hurriedly. “I’ll get someone to help me with it later.”

Annie turned back to Jennifer as if the exchange with Samir had never happened. “Thanks,” she drawled. “I’ve got chickens wanting their dinner.” She nodded to Zach. “Remember, don’t eat those pickles for a week.”

The three of them watched her has she grabbed onto the trolley and wheeled it purposefully out the door. None of them had any reason to suspect that forty-eight hours later one of them would be dead.

***

Excerpt from Part of the Solution by Elana Michelson. Copyright 2025 by Elana Michelson. Reproduced with permission from Elana Michelson. All rights reserved.

ONE

Over the Water

Grief is a scab that I can’t stop picking at, no matter how hard I try. It pokes at me now as I sit in my truck on the deserted ferry dock, surrounded by dense morning fog and waiting for the boat to take me across an expanse of dark water to a house rumored to be cursed.

My fingers trace a photograph taped to my dashboard. My hand trembles, likely from an empty stomach or sleeplessness, as both are constant companions. But I outline the beloved face, forever frozen, like a precious object in amber. Lost to me in the real world, calling to me from the next.

The ferry slides into the dock in front of me with a bump against the pilings. A lone figure moves across the empty deck, while an old, grizzled seaman stays inside the tiny wheelhouse. One captain and one first mate.

Tying the ferry off with ropes thicker than my arm, the mate’s actions are practiced and steady. He lowers a ramp and waves me forward. Ever so slowly, I roll across the water, fighting against holding my breath—the superstition I’ve clung to my entire life every time I cross a bridge. The thirty-minute sail to Salish Island, and tiny Monk’s Rock where my new job awaits, won’t allow me the indulgence, so I might as well continue to breathe despite my need to cling to anything, even a silly belief, to keep me safe.

After parking the truck as the mate directs, I wait as he shoves bright orange chock blocks around all four wheels, as if, without a barrier, my vehicle might drive itself into the sea.

I open my door a crack; our eyes meet. “Can I get out?”

“Of course.”

The first mate is rugged, with an air of confidence like he’d be good in a crisis. Smooth skin on his cheeks. Bright, inquisitive eyes. Broad shoulders visible under the bulky uniform of dark green waterproof overalls and a yellow slicker.

He holds out his hand as I step out. “Careful. Parts of the deck can be slippery when it’s this wet.”

Electricity flies between our fingers, and I pull away as if he poses a threat. I don’t want to feel desire. Intimacy is dangerous. But what does it mean that I’m looking at men again?

He gives me an odd look. “We’ll be underway in a few minutes.” He walks back to the ramp, where two men unload a battered white cargo van. The three of them quickly stack boxes to one side, lashing them in place. No doubt provisions for an island that’s home to five hundred hearty souls—and me. At least for the time it takes to complete the finish carpentry in one enormous house.

I’d once been a very good carpenter. Before my life exploded into hospitals and medical visits, overwhelming helplessness and all the endless paperwork connected to dying. Since then, I’ve done a poor job of putting myself back together. The rough pieces of grownup life refusing to fit a new pattern now that I’m alone.

My mentor Bill Thomlinson had started this project less than a week ago but fell and broke his leg in multiple places. After he came through the surgery, metal pins in place, he convinced the homeowner to take a chance on me.

“You need this,” he said to me over the phone, his voice surprisingly strong for someone coming out of anesthesia. “I’m done watching you flail. This job can save you. Don’t let me down.”

Now I stand on the deck of a private ferry while the engines roar out a steady vibration under my feet, and wonder if I’ve made a terrible, terrible mistake.

Crossing to the rail, I pin my eyes where the horizon must lie out beyond the mist. Clouds above and waves below. Indistinguishable from each other because of the heavy air, thick like smoke. My stomach lurches at the thought of everything that swims underneath my feet and the unknown depth of the sea.

Breathe in . . . breathe out . . . focus on the future. Focus on the work.

All I know about the job ahead of me is that the original carpenter vanished, forcing the owner, Cameron Lang, to bring in someone else, but then Bill ended up with pins in his leg. Given that I haven’t slept in so long that I shouldn’t be trusted with power tools, I hope that whatever the curse is, it doesn’t come in threes.

When I feel like I’m losing my mind, it helps to ground myself with something physical, so I grip the hard, cold rail in my hands. No matter how much ending my life is a viable choice, some small part of me refuses to let death win again.

The fog brightens, and we cross a physical line in space, plunging into a blue so pure it hurts my eyes. I gasp and grip even tighter as the sky separates from the water, which now spreads out below me in an endless black void.

“Not quite got your sea legs?” The first mate watches me with barely disguised curiosity.

Salt spray traces tears down my cheeks. I must look like I’m crying. “I didn’t expect to come out of the fog so abruptly.”

“It does that sometimes. Now you see it, now you don’t. No matter how often we sail through a bank, it always feels like magic.”

“I can imagine.”

He lingers nearby. Maybe there’s little to do once the ferry is underway. Although small talk is beyond my ability, part of me longs to hear his voice again, even if I say things that sound insane.

The temperature drops as we head further out to sea.

We’re soon dodging between uninhabited land masses. “Some of these islands are so low they disappear in high tide.” He gestures to the slopes of land. Rocky outcroppings just under the surface. Dangerous, like unexploded mines in the sand.

Panic rises. The water below us taunts me—my troubles will be over if I simply fall into a watery grave. The voice becomes louder and more insistent that I should do something I can’t take back. To keep my mind off the words in my head, my eyes search for the defiant piece of US rock thrusting out of Canadian waters. If I can make it back to dry land, I can get through another day.

“That’s what you’re looking for.” The first mate’s breath tickles my ear as he comes closer, speaking over the hum of the engines, the slap of water on the hull, and the cry of seagulls. My gaze follows his arm to the far-off outline of Salish Island, where Monk’s Rock perches off the northern-most end, tethered to each other by the narrowest of bridges.

“Take this.” He presses a business card into my hand. “Just in case.” Under his name is a single word, handyman, and a phone number.

“Adrian Han?” I look up, his eyes capturing mine. “I thought you were the first mate.”

“I’m a lot of things.” His words are casual, but something reflects in his expression, an emotion I can’t put my finger on.

“You might realize at some point there’s a project you need help with. Nothing against your skills. Everyone needs another set of hands once in a while.”

“I have a helper.”

“Chuck, yeah. I’ve worked with him before.” His tone is carefully neutral.

My new boss made the arrangements for Chuck to help me with anything that requires two people. Am I going to regret his choice?

“How do you know why I’m here?”

Adrian’s carefree expression returns. “Emily Grace Turner. Carpenter. Here to finish the End of the World.”

It’s a jolt that he knows anything about me when I’ve worked so hard to become invisible. He reads me again, and his tone turns reassuring. “It’s a small town—people talk.” He gestures toward the wood rack that fits over my camper shell and the bumper sticker: Proud Member of the Carpenter’s Union. “Plus, your name was on your ferry registration.”

I chuckle for thinking his words are sinister until a darker emotion, one that looks like fear, crosses his face. “That house—” His lips purse as if he holds something back. “Just call if you need help. Anytime.”

The island takes clearer shape, and Adrian returns to the wheelhouse, his absence palpable, as if a physical hole remains in the air after he’s gone.

He’s taken his fear with him, except for the small part he’s left behind with me.

***

Excerpt from The Haunting of Emily Grace by Elena Taylor. Copyright 2025 by Elena Taylor. Reproduced with permission from Elena Taylor. All rights reserved.