The
Witch’s Daughter
A
Cavendish Brown Mystery
Book
1
Ron
D. Voigts
Genre: Paranormal Mystery
Publisher: Champagne Book Group
Date of Publication: March 2, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-77155-176-2
ASIN: B00U0W28LC
Number of pages: 219
Word Count: 72K
Cover Artist: Ellie Smith
Book Description:
Investigative reporter and recent
widower, Cavendish Brown, is unemployed and floundering. Coerced into returning
to his childhood home by the town's eccentric matriarch, Cavendish finds
himself involved in murder, deceit, and a not-so-subtle attempt at matchmaking.
Joined by Jane, a disturbed
psychic, and Alexandra, a young Goth woman with uncanny abilities, they follow
leads into the hills of West Virginia to catch the killer. A sheriff who shoots
first and asks questions later makes solving the case difficult for the trio.
Adding further complications is an ex-girlfriend with a mob hitman on her trail
who seeks Cavendish’s help.
Immersed in a never-ending spiral
of clues and secrets, he must unlock the darkness that surrounds the enigmatic
Jane, stay ahead of the law, and come to terms with his own grief.
Excerpt:
I stood on the spot with the shovel
we had found earlier, staring at the ground where Jane told me to dig. My heart
pounded in my chest, and I considered whether this was a good idea. “If a body
is here, it might have been buried a hundred years ago. People do die and are
buried. It could be sacrilegious to uproot somebody. There are laws about doing
things like that.”
Alex sat on the chopping block. She
took a long draw on her cigarette, exhaled the smoke and watched it linger in
the still air. “I’m sure whoever it is won’t mind.”
How stupid would it sound to tell
anyone I was out in the woods with a chain smoking Goth girl and a psychic who
could divine the past by touch, digging up a body? If one was buried here, it
may lead to a story. The headlines would read “Editor, Goth Girl and Psychic
Dig Up Civil War Hero.”
I took a deep breath and scooped
out the first shovel of dirt, paused and peered in the hole. No body. I dug and
tossed a few more spades full. Nothing. I scooped out more earth, still finding
nothing. My pace became less ginger. Dig. Toss. Dig Toss. Dig. Thud!
Whatever I hit seemed solid. I
worked the shovel more carefully, taking smaller bites of dirt. Something pale
contrasted against the dark earth. Using the tip of the shovel, I moved aside
more ground until I exposed something long and slender. I’d seen skeletons
pictured on anatomy charts at the doctor’s office and more than a few body
parts while in Afghanistan, doing a stint in the Army, but I was no expert on
bones. “I found a tibia or maybe a femur.”
Alex tossed her cigarette, ran over
to the hole and stared into it. She knelt down and brushed back dirt with her
hand. “It’s a root.”
“Can’t be.”
She grabbed it, and what looked
like a bone bent as she tugged on it. I knelt next to her and examined it
closer. It sure looked like a root.
Jane, who had been poking a stick
at something in the grass, came over and pointed to a spot about two feet over.
“Dig here. Not there.”
I repositioned myself and began
digging again, wondering how many more roots I would dig up that looked like
bones.
The air grew heavy, and my clothing damp as I
dug. The sounds of the forest became distant, and all I heard was the shovel
striking the ground and my heart beating. The last time I’d worked up a sweat digging
a hole was boot camp at Fort Jackson. I didn’t like it then, and my current
sentiments were the same. I tossed a shovel full of dirt and spotted something.
Rather than shout for Alex and
discover I had found another root, I took it and rubbed the soil away.
Definitely this had to be a bone. Picking through the dirt, I found more bones,
like from a chicken.
Alex came over and looked down into
the hole. “Phalanges or metacarpals.”
Surprised she’d know the correct
names, I stared at her. “Really?”
“I took an anatomy class in
college.”
I stepped back and let Alex pick
around in the hole. She found more small bones and sorted them on the ground
until they began to form the arrangement of a hand. “I’d say a body is buried
there.”
Alex took the shovel and removed
dirt from the excavation. She took her time and paused occasionally to peer
into the hole. Where I was a bulldozer plowing through the soil, she worked
more like a seasoned archeologist on a dig.
As a reporter on the Gazette, I
often teetered on the fine line separating legal from criminal. My informants
were druggies, boosters and mechanics. I’d done interviews at crack houses,
brothels and chop shops. When I came to Maiden Falls, I figured those days were
behind me. Things here would be safe, mundane and predictable. Yet, here I was,
digging up a dead body.
Alex found more small bones and
placed them with the first ones. “Hey, we keep this up we’ll have a complete
Mr. Bones in no time.”
A chill passed through me. This was
a Frankenstein movie, and we were the grave robbers. We’d take the body parts
to the mad scientist and get a bag of coins. Things could not be creepier, and
I really didn’t want to see a dead body, even if the flesh had already gone to
the worms.
We took turns digging, and I worked
more cautiously. Alex did the detailed stuff like cleaning the dirt off the
bones and arranging them with the others. She named them as she found them.
Humerus. Ulna. Clavicle.
“Were you pre-med at college?”
“No.”
Jane sat in the grass nearby and
watched. She seemed indifferent about the body we unearthed, and I speculated
what conditions had molded such a strange being.
“Look here.” I pulled back a
tattered shirt and pointed to a broken rib. “Looks like someone shot him.”
Alex looked closer. “Maybe.”
“Do you have a better explanation?”
The trauma of seeing exposed human
bones no longer seemed as threatening. I stood back and let Alex continue the
exhumation. I feared the moment when we’d get to the head. A grinning skull
with hollow eyes gave me a chill.
About
the Author:
Originally from the Midwest, Ron D.
Voigts calls North Carolina where he and wife have a home just off the Neuse
River. Ron’s writes dark mysteries with a supernatural flair, but his reading
in more eclectic tending towards whatever catches his interest. When not
writing and reading, he enjoys watching gritty movies, playing games on the PC,
and cooking gourmet meals.
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