Skeleton in the Closet

Book 0: A Sharon McCone Mystery

by Marcia Muller

Genres: Female Sleuths

Synopsis

Sharon McCone is excited—and relieved—to move her detective agency into the perfect new office space. Unfortunately, real estate woes aren’t the only headache that the new building brings into Sharon’s life.

Possible nineteenth-century ghosts and a shady “intra-reality organization” ensure that Sharon’s new office will bring as much excitement as any of her clients.

A Blackstone Audio production.

Release date: October 2, 2012

Publisher: Grand Central Publishing

Print pages: 24

Sample

We all have skeletons in our closets. Dark memories of even darker deeds that stab at our psyches like bony, accusing fingers. I myself have my fair share of these demons, and I know they must be closeted away where the world cannot learn of them. I also know, despite their frequent sleep-disturbing appearances, that they are not real. Not any more, at least, over the passage of time.

I’ve come to terms with my nightmare skeletons. What I’d never expected is that one day I would come face-to-face with a real one.

Finding new office space in San Francisco is a complicated proposition, especially for a firm like mine. McCone Investigations currently has five full-time operatives, three part-time operatives who come in on a case-by-case basis, a secretary, a bookkeeper, and an office manager. We require a big conference room for group and client meetings. Sophisticated phone and computer connections. A small kitchen for when we’re working overtime—which is usually. And then there’s me, the proprietor. I need a lot of personal space to pace, lie on the floor and think, occasionally exercise, and sometimes scream in frustration.

Sounds like it should be a snap, but at the time we went looking we were the wrong size for what was available: neither small nor large enough, and used to paying a decent rent. We could afford the overinflated prices of this economy, but paying them left one with a distinctly unpleasant feeling of being taken. Besides, we liked the ambience of old Pier 24½, from which the city was about to evict us so they could raze it and replace it with some civic disaster.

My office manager, Ted Smalley, had been hunting for weeks, operating against a December 31 deadline. He’d seen some spacious, beautiful suites that made his mouth water, but none were within the budget I’d set. He’d seen some dismal wrecks—one crawl. . .