Mystery Woman PGallaher

For my brother, who left this world too soon I did not follow you to the fields to plow the dark, cool soil by night, after a day’s work for cash. But I know how your boy-frame hunched forward in the tractor seat to hug the wheel, how moonlight fell across your bare back, how the engine’s hum mesmerized you. Farm boy, at home in the family fields. I did not follow you on the open road sailing into the heartland to lush wheat ripe for harvest. But I know you drove fast with windows down, wind rushing against your face, plains sweeping toward Litchfield, Des Moines, Moline, big farm territory, wide-open sky. John Deere boy, at home in the vast Midwest. I did not follow you to West Tennessee as you greeted coffee-guzzling farmers mornings in the café, raising a flat palm. But I know the ring of your Hel-lo-o-o! as sunburned faces crinkled - chewing tobacco or smoking expensive cigars - men calling out, Hey Dave!...

TREACHERY IN TUSCANY A Jordan Mayfair Mystery Chapter 1 Sunday morning, my first glimpse of Florence since I was twenty-one. Sunday morning in the spacious piazza , quiet, except for the chime of church bells from an ancient bell tower. My jet-lagged brain tried to take in everything, all at once. No sign to identify the Convento di Santa Francesca Firenze , but the GPS on our rental car had directed us to the imposing fifteenth-century convent. A white Alfa Romeo with a blue stripe and the words “ Polizia Municipale ” along the side pulled away from the curb as we took our luggage from the trunk of our Fiat. A waif-like teenager standing some distance away waited until the police car had departed before she came closer to us. “ Convento ?” I said. She said something in Italian, to which I could only reply, “ Non capisco.” “ Sí. It is the convent,” she said. So my Italian left something to be desired. The girl gave the stark terra cotta façade a...