...The flashlight dimmed. I looked down at it in surprise. Didn't I just put new batteries in? I cursed out loud a couple of times and then rammed the thing against the cement wall. Hard. All I succeeded in doing was cracking the plastic casing. The quality and quantity of light did not change, but remained a dull trickle of pale yellow. I muttered to myself and kept picking my way down the basement steps. When I reached the bottom I held onto the wall with my left hand and used the pin point of light to look around. This is where she said she'd be, that mysterious middle of the night caller who had awakened me from a sound, albeit short, sleep a little more than half an hour ago.

"Underneath the barn," she had said.

"Underneath the barn?" I didn't know barns had an underneath.

"Just take the steps down at the side of the building. I'll be waiting."

I poked through bits of straw and hay and dried manure and wondered if this whole thing were a practical joke concocted for my birthday. Except my birthday was seven months ago. Well, the joke was on me. Here I was up to my sneakers in crud with a weak flashlight looking for what? I shook my head realizing that I should have had it examined long ago.

The weird middle of the night muffled voice had talked about life and death, and how I was the only one on the face of the earth who could help. Yeah, I bet you say that to all the girls.

But there was something about that whispery voice, something familiar when she woke me with, "Summer? Summer Whitney? I need to see you."

I'm naturally curious. That's what makes me a good Private Investigator. I knew I'd never sleep anyway, not after a call like that, so I got up. At three forty-two with only about two and a half hours of sleep under my belt as it was, here I am pulling on my black jeans and turtleneck, grabbing my flashlight, my revolver, stuffing my blonde hair under a black knit cap and setting out for the mysterious farmhouse with its mysterious basement where I was supposed to meet this mysterious caller.

Something was foul and it was more than just the cow patties. I could smell it. I could feel it. Call it instinct but suddenly I knew I was not alone in this basement. I felt that familiar chill which is half excitement, half dead-awful fear.

Carefully, as silently as I could, I aimed the thin flashlight beam around the room. I whispered "hey" a few times. No answer. Finally, the tiny bean flickered onto a face. The face was attached to a body, the body of a woman, hanging by her neck from the rafters. Dead. And I knew exactly who it was...

Mystery author Sharon Sullivan Colebrook hit SELECT ALL, then pressed DELETE. For several minutes she stared at the entirely empty screen, the cursor blinking in the top left corner. She was excessively tired and even the bones around her eyes ached. Beside her on her desk was half a cup of cold coffee in a Skull and Crossbones Mystery Reading Group Mug.

She sat in the fading light of a Tuesday evening in spring in the fair weather city of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. Her husband Jeff Colebrook was working late at the newspaper, and she had the entire evening to write. An entire evening spread out before her, but still something was nibbling at the edges of her thinking. She couldn't concentrate, couldn't get her mind around another Summer Whitney adventure. Absently, she rubbed her forehead. Outside, lights were beginning to flicker on here and there among the houses in the city.

She and Jeff lived on a quiet street in the Oak Bay area, a house they never would have been able to afford had it not been in the Colebrook family for generations. Jeff's parents lived here until they moved to the lake full time. Her office was in a second floor room in the back overlooking a small back yard, Jeff's boyhood room. She ran her hands through her hair and re-clasped the wispy ends into a ponytail.

It was the phone call that was making her like this, all jittery and headachy, unable to work. Her husband had said she should go. "Why not?" he had said. "What's keeping you? I'll even come with you."

"You will?"

"Sure. We could make a vacation of it. I've always liked Maine."

"You hate Maine."

"No, I love it. Really, I do."

It was not like she had never gone back. When the odd book tour took her through New England she always visited her aunt. The two would sit on the screened-in porch, iced teas balancing on the wide arms of their wooden chairs, and look out at the ocean while they talked. She always made it a point, too, to at least get in a meal with her father who lived in Portland, Maine. Once they even went as a family. More than a decade ago, she and Jeff and their then eleven year old daughter Natasha had driven across the country in an old Dodge van that kept breaking down. They stayed in a motel in Beach Haven, Maine, despite protests from her father that he had plenty of room.

A snapshot of Natasha and her latest boyfriend Jordan was pinned to the cork board next to her computer. The two, clad in khaki shorts and wool sweaters were sitting in some outdoor restaurant in France, mugs of beer on the table in front of them.

Sharon was twenty, younger than Natasha now, when she had dropped out of Bible college and headed for western Canada. She had applied for and been accepted into a journalism exchange program in Vancouver, B.C. Upon graduation, she got a job at the Vancouver Sun where she met and married Jeff, also a reporter. A few years later the couple and their small baby moved to Victoria where Jeff took on the job of assistant editor at the Victoria Times-Colonist. When Natasha was ten, Sharon wrote her first novel, a sprawling family saga dealing with the war years and beyond. It sat in a drawer. Then she wrote her second novel, a whimsical look at the newspaper business. It also sat in a drawer. Her third, a light detective story featuring a private investigator named Summer Whitney was picked up by a publisher of mysteries in California. That story launched a series that had met with moderate success among readers of the genre.

Sharon took off her glasses and pressed her fingers against her eyes. Would this headache never go away? The phone call had come late last week. She had been sitting here at her computer when she learned that her aunt had died, leaving everything jointly to her and her brother Dean. She had gripped the receiver feeling suddenly ice cold. "Katie's dead?"

"Yes, ah, you didn't know?"

"No, Iƒthis is news to me."

"I'm sorry. I thought you would have known. She died peacefully in her sleep about two weeks ago. She was quite elderly, you know."

"Yes, I know."

"Mrs. Colebrook?"

"I'm still here."

"It looks like you and your brother are her sole heirs."

Sharon looked down absently at her fingers.

The lawyer cleared his throat. "We were, ah, wondering if you could give us the phone number for Dean Sullivan. It's not noted here."

"I don't have a number for him."

"Address then?"

"I'm sorry. I don't know where he lives."

"Ah, I see."

"Is there anything else?"

The lawyer cleared his throat again. "Well, ah, yes there is. The house in Beach Haven, the one called 'Trail's End' in Miss Sullivan's will, it would be helpful if you someone could come out here and go through it. Either you or your brother. We could put the entire thing up for auction, but I'm sure you'll be wanting to go through the house yourself. It's worth quite a bit being ocean front. And there may be some family things you would want to keep."

"My father's out there."

"Yes we know that. But he has declined."

Sharon sighed. "It's probably out of the question, my going. Now, I mean. I have my work. A deadline."

Later, when she told Jeff, he had smiled widely and congratulated her. "If your writing won't make us rich, maybe rich relatives will!"

Sharon hadn't smiled, hadn't returned his embrace, hadn't responded even when he began talking on and on about the two of them flying out to Maine and "making a vacation" of it.

"It might take a while," was all she could say. "We might have to be there a while."

"So, what does that matter? We can take the computer and I can work from there. So can you, for that matter." He winked at her. "Maybe the place will be good for the old creative juices. You can have Summer Whitney solve that old family murder."

"What old family murder?"

He put his hands up. "You're the one always telling me that your Aunt Katie used to go on and on about some murder."

"Oh that."

"What, 'oh that'?"

"My Aunt Katie was a teller of tales, Jeff."

Sharon gazed out the window, now. A soft, spring rain was falling. She could hear it on the rain gutters. Jeff was right, of course, they could go. Natasha was still travelling around Europe with her boyfriend. And who knew how long they'd be gone? Maybe a trip away would be just what she needed to get her thoughts together for this new book.

Still...