A Welcome Grave

Some time after midnight, on a moonless October night turned harsh by a fine, windswept rain, one of the men I liked least in the world was murdered … The detectives went looking for suspects - people whose histories with Jefferson were adversarial and hostile. At the top of that list, they found me.

Private investigator Lincoln Perry was once a rising star in the police force. But his career as a cop came to an abrupt halt when he assaulted prominent attorney, Alex Jefferson - retribution for Jefferson’s affair with Perry’s fiancee, Karen.

Now Jefferson is dead, the victim of a vicious murder. Convinced Perry has no connection with her husband’s killing, Karen asks him to find Jefferson’s estranged son, Matthew, partial beneficiary of his father’s fortune.

Though he knows he shouldn’t, Perry accepts the case. It should be simple enough, a routine ‘locate’, and there’s plenty of money for the work. The encounter with the son should be simple too, a brief exchange of information and maybe an empty condolence before Perry heads home in his truck. Instead, Perry finds himself loaded into a police car headed for jail while Jefferson’s son is zipped into a body bag.

And that’s only the beginning of Lincoln Perry’s troubles …