Simon Said

She had a cameo choker around her neck and a bullet in her skull...The heiress had been dead for over seventy years.

Eyebrows are raised as yellow crime-scene tape drapes across the once-distinguished Colonial Bloodworth House. For the mansion, nestled cozily amidst the tranquil academia of Kenan College, may have once been the scene of a brutal murder.

The decayed body was found when archeologist David Morgan conducted a dig beneath the original three rooms of the 1785 house-- he was only hoping to unearth some Colonial-era artifacts.

Professor Simon Shaw, Kenan College's youngest full-time professor, knows more about the house than anyone-- he even wrote a book about the historic building-- so naturally, Morgan enlists his professional friend for a little detective work. What Morgan has found, it seems, are the remains of the estate's heiress-- an unsolved missing persons case since 1926. As Simon digs deeper into this decades-old murder, he finds that someone still very much alive wants to put a permanent stop to his investigating...

Sarah R. Shaber lives in Raleigh, North Carolina, where she works in advertising and public relations. She is the winner of the 7th Annual St. Martin's Malice Domestic contest for the Best First Traditional Mystery.