Home Repair is Homicide #5
Bantam
November 2002
On Sale: October 29, 2002
Featuring: Jacobia Tiptree; Ellie White
320 pages ISBN: 0553582267 EAN: 9780553582260 Paperback Add to Wish List
When ex—Wall Streeter Jacobia “Jake” Tiptree bought a
charming 1823 fixer-upper in tiny Eastport, Maine, she
figured she’d also bought herself a tranquil, stress-free
life. But Jake soon learned that appearances can be
deceiving, and that even small towns have their share of
dark secrets — including murder.
People hardly ever lock their doors in Eastport. So when
Jake and her best pal, Ellie, arrive at Faye Anne Carmody’s
kitchen door, they knock and walk right in. But though
Christmas is just two weeks away, what they find is far from
festive: a dazed Faye Anne covered with blood, and her
no-good husband — the town butcher, Merle — nowhere in
sight. Nowhere, that is, until Jake discovers his body —
tidily wrapped in his own butcher paper....
It doesn’t take long for news of the murder to race through
the small town, and just about everyone has a theory about
the grisly crime that has robbed Eastport of its least-liked
citizen. But while police chief Bob Arnold considers it an
open-and-shut case, Jake and Ellie aren’t convinced of Faye
Anne’s guilt. Jake has enough going on in her life without
trying to investigate a murder. After all, she’s just
married her longtime love, Wade, and the pair plan to spend
the winter rehabilitating the paint-encrusted windows in
Jake’s old house.
But Jake has to admit that there are a lot of details that
don’t add up: for example, Faye Anne’s complaint that she
was being stalked, and blood-splattered evidence at the
crime scene that just doesn’t make sense. Then there is the
diary that Faye Anne’s secret, sometime boyfriend claims is
hidden somewhere in her house. Could Faye Anne’s own journal
be the key to unlocking an even more fiendish murder plot,
or is her double-crossing lover trying to frame her?
When yet another Eastport citizen turns up dead, Jake
realizes the murderer’s trail began long before the night
Merle Carmody died. But what keeps eluding her and Ellie is
the motive behind the mystery. The truth is so close, they
can almost taste it — but can they stop the shrewd killer
before he chisels another victim’s name onto a tombstone?