Sixteen
year old math whiz, Autumn, days reading
about serial killers and dreaming of becoming an FBI Profiler. She never dreams
her first case will be so personal. Her world is shattered when she comes home
from school and discovers her murdered sister’s body on the living room floor.
When the initial evidence points to a burglary gone wrong, Autumn challenges
the police’s theory because of the personal nature of the crime. Thinking that
finding the killer will bring her family back together, she conducts her own
investigation using her affinity for math and forensics, but her plan backfires
and her obsession with the case further splinters her family. When her investigation reveals the killer is
someone she knows, Autumn offers herself up as bait and sets a dangerous trap
to unmask his true nature and to obtain a confession for her sister’s murder.
Author Bio:
Susan grew
up in South Texas, about ten miles from the U.S.-Mexican border. As a child she
spent the summers in Mexico with her grandparents and extended family. During
these vacations, she frequently created mysteries for her siblings and cousins
to solve. These mysteries were her first stories. Nancy Drew soon became her
childhood hero and inspiration to write mysteries for young adults.
Her greatest
joy is her daughter who is quite the storyteller and likes to come up with the
characters’ names for mom’s stories.
When she’s
not writing or studying, you can find her looking after her personal mini-zoo
which consists of two fish, one thief of a dog, and some hermit crabs.
Susan loves
estates sales, traveling, spending time with her family, and discovering new
books at the Columbus Metropolitan library.
Susan
graduated from the University of Texas, is currently pursuing an MFA from Seton
Hill University, and dreams of one day owning a touch screen murder board like
the one on her favorite TV show, Castle.
Excerpt:
“Autumn,
yesterday you had told us that when you arrived home the front door was open.
Is that correct?”
I leaned in
toward the voice recorder on the table and said, “Yes.”
“Are you
positive about that? We interviewed some of the neighbors, and none of them saw
an open front door at your house?” No doubt Mrs. Jimenez had told them that.
Now that she was retired, she had nothing better to do than watch her
neighbors. I wondered if she had mentioned seeing anything to Detective
Kasanoff. Maybe she saw something unusual that day, a stranger in the
neighborhood, a suspicious car, anything.
“The door
looked closed, but when I touched my key to the lock, it opened.”
“Do you know
who was the last person to leave the house that day?” I looked over at my
parents. Mami had her head buried in her hands. She shouldn’t be here, hearing
about all of this. Papi had his arm around her and gave me an encouraging
smile.
“I was.”
“What time
did you leave that morning?”
“About 8:00
a.m.”
“Did you
leave through the front door?” I didn’t like where this was going.
“Yes, and I
locked it behind me,” I offered before he had a chance to ask the question.
“How can you
be sure? Look, I know how it is. It’s easy to get on autopilot in the morning.
You do the same thing every morning, you get into a routine.”
I looked him
straight in the eye and said, “I don’t forget things, Detective. I know I
locked the door that morning.” He studied me for a moment and flipped through
his papers.
“That’s
right. Here it is. You’re some kind of math genius. You almost made the US Math
Olympiad Team last year.” I wanted to reach across the table and strangle him.
Someone had butchered my sister in my own living room, and he was reading up on
how I’d choked on a freaking geometry question during last year’s Math Olympiad
final round and failed to make the team?
“I’m gifted,
Detective. I’m not smart enough to be a genius.” He broke into a smile. The
first I’d ever seen from him.
“Is there
really a difference?”
“Yes, about
five IQ points.” He wrote something down.
“Let’s move
on. You said you had come home because you’d left your math questions on the
kitchen table that morning. Is that correct?” “Yes.”
He lifted
the folder up and produced some papers that were protected in a plastic bag. He
placed them in front of me. “Are these the questions you were referring to?”
I looked at
my parents, and both of them had their eyes glued to the plastic bag in front
of me.
Without
touching the bag, I looked at the front page and saw the first question. It was
the Bernoulli equation question that Celeste had asked me that morning over
breakfast.
“Yes, those
are the ones.”
“Care to
know where we found them?” What did he mean? I’d left them on the kitchen table
when I went to brush my teeth after breakfast.
“On the
kitchen table?” I asked, trying not to sound sarcastic.
“No. In your
backpack. The backpack we found at the scene yesterday.” He looked over at my
parents this time. My eyes grew wide, and my mouth fell open.
“Mr. or Mrs.
Covarrubias, did either of you put these math papers back into Autumn’s
backpack after breakfast?” Papi left for the bakery every morning at 5:30 a.m.
so he wasn’t even home. Mami had left right after Celeste and I had eaten
because she had a dentist appointment. Maybe Mami’d seen the papers and stuck
them in my backpack. Celeste had left about ten minutes before me. Her
boyfriend Voss had swung by to pick her up. He did that every day.
“Mami, did
you put the papers in my backpack?” Her eyes were swollen, and I swear she was
two seconds away from passing out. Her gaze wandered around the room until it
fell on me. She shook her head. My heart sank.
“Then it had
to be Celeste. She must have put them in there.”
“Her
fingerprints weren’t found on the papers.” How was that possible? The oils from
her hands would have been transferred onto the paper if she’d stuck them in my
backpack. It couldn’t have been her then. That left no one, and I had no
answer. That wasn’t good.
“Autumn,
look, I’m going to be honest with you. There are some things that just don’t
add up here. We have witnesses that say you and your sister were arguing at
school that morning and that she looked very upset. Care to explain what that
was all about?”
I could feel
the cell doors closing in around me. This was a witch hunt, and I was about to
be burned at the stake.
My parents
were staring at me, begging me with their eyes to explain what was going on.
The question mark stabbed my heart. They knew that Celeste and I hardly ever
fought. The last time had to have been when I’d accidentally given her a black
eye when I was five and was trying to learn to hit a baseball.
I looked at
the detective and said the only thing I knew to say. “Detective Kasanoff, I
want a lawyer.”
Laura
“Luna” DeLuca lives at the beautiful Jersey shore with her husband and
four children. She loves writing in the young adult genre because it
keeps her young at heart. In addition to writing fiction, Laura is also
the sole author of a popular review blog called New Age Mama. She is an
active member of her local pagan community, and has been studying Wicca
for close to eight years. Her current works include Destiny, Destiny
Unveiled, Phantom, Morrigan, Player, and Demon.
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