When I began writing Finding the Source, the eighth book in my mystery series, the only thing I knew for certain is that Isabel Long would be randomly approached by a homeless man who tells her his mother was murdered a long time ago and the case was never solved. Okay. That’s a start.

In the previous seven books, the victims have included a woman who walked home from her family’s general store and was never seen again — Isabel’s first case. Others have been the poetry-writing half-brother of two drug dealers, an SOB of a guy who supposedly was too drunk to get out of his shack of a house when it caught fire, the owner/editor of a small town newspaper etc.

But the mother of a homeless man?

My brain got to work.

I wanted this case to be very cold. Forty-three years was what I decided, just a random number really. Tom McKenzie was just a kid, only 12, when he came home to find his mother dead. So, he is now 55 and still struggling with this tragedy.

Isabel didn’t know Tom’s mother — I chose the name Abigail “Abby” McKenzie. She wasn’t even living in the hilltowns when the woman was killed. So, Isabel has to use the skills she acquired as a journalist to interview those who knew Abby well. And that’s how readers get to know her as well.

In an interview, Tom showed Isabel two photos of his mother. This is what Isabel observes. Abby is a thin woman, blonde, with an attractive face I’ve seen in classic paintings. In the second, she stands on a snowy sidewalk beside Tom, long before circumstances took its toll on his life and looks. His mother is a decade older but still an attractive woman. A holiday corsage of bells and holly is pinned to her plaid winter coat. Both are dressed for the cold. They smile in that one, too.

Tom told her: “She was a great mother. She really loved me.”

Her sister, Lucinda said she “was the life of the party.” Abby went to college but had to drop out after their father died and her mother needed help with the family’s little store, Parker’s, in Dillard’s small downtown. It was the kind of store where you could get penny candy, greeting cards, school and art supplies, and magazines. It had a soda fountain where people sat on stools and ate ice cream or drank milk shakes. Kids would walk there because it was close enough to the elementary school.

Later, Abby bought the store from her mother and turned it into a secondhand book store, Parker’s Book Emporium. Here’s more from Lucinda.

“Books were her thing. She was a big reader as a kid and always asked for books as gifts. When she had her store, she searched for books where people didn’t see their true value. I went with her a few times.” Lucinda smiles while she reminisces. “Abby would hunt yard sales for books. People would sell her books they found in their attics or when they were cleaning out a house after somebody died. Abby knew their value. She so enjoyed finding rare first editions. My sister was clever at keeping her excitement in check though. She didn’t want to tip off the sellers. My sister would have been a great poker player. She tried to be fair, but it was strictly business for her.”

Lucinda talks about her sister and the finds she made like the signed first edition hard cover of J.D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye. All I have at home is the dog-eared paperback from my college years. I am fascinated a bookstore like that would exist in a town like Dillard. Maybe it was different when the train, which now whizzes through with freight cars, actually had passengers and stopped there.

(By the way, I used my experiences book hunting for this story although, alas, not for a signed first edition of Catcher in the Rye.)

Abby made her serious money selling to collectors, including one who is a chief suspect. Unfortunately, Rudolph Fischer died a few years ago. Ah, but he does have a twin brother, Randolph, also an avid collector. Both are rich as dirt.

As for love interests, Abby had one marriage with Stephen McKenzie, who moved to Dillard when he bought the funeral store in town. Tom was the result of that marriage. Stephen was just too serious for Abby, not surprising given his line of business, but she came to regret it. Actually, they both did, but Stephen had found another wife rather soon. They had two kids. Tom said his stepmother resented his intrusion into their lives.

Is the second wife a suspect? You bet she is.

Here’s the link to buy Finding the Source in Kindle or paperback. Thank you if you do, and please, if you enjoy it, leave a rating.