Book description
Casey Maldonado's life is over-at least as she knows it. In one brief
moment of fire and wrenching metal, everything important was gone. The
car manufacturer was generous with its settlement, but it can never be
enough. Her family and friends-not to mention her lawyers-want her to go
for more. More money. More publicity. More everything. But Casey is
done. No financial gain or courtroom retribution will bring back what
really matters. So she packs up, puts her house on the market, and
leaves town. Her only companion: Death, who won't take her, but won't
leave her alone. She stops on a whim in tragedy-stricken Clymer, a small
blue-collar town in the midst of Ohio farmland. Not only is HomeMaker,
the town's appliance factory and main employer, moving to Mexico, but
the town has been rocked by the suicide of a beloved single mother.
Casey is drawn to the town, and soon realizes that many of the citizens
don't believe the verdict of suicide at all. Death encourages her to
investigate, and she uncovers information that points to the factory.
Was the victim's death a cover-up? Did she truly have the means-as she
claimed-to keep the factory from leaving town? When Casey begins to
receive messages that she should leave well enough alone, she decides
she'd be better off back on the road, but the murderer can't let her go
with everything she knows…. A transient tries to solve a small-town
mystery with Death by her side. Casey Maldonado is on the run from her
past, trying to evade memories of the grisly deaths of her husband and
son as well as the owner of the Pegasus Car Company, who may be at
fault. The one thing Casey can't escape is Death, who haunts her in
physical form, disappearing and reappearing at the darnedest times and
leading Casey to...wait for it...Clymer, Ohio. Death, a cross between a
teenaged junk-food addict and a nosey grandmother, offers enigmatic
commentary but little comfort for Casey's survivor's guilt. Clymer's a
small town, and Casey quickly settles in at surrogate mothers Lillian
and Rosemary's B&B while she gets to know the locals, most of them
regulars at the town's soup kitchen, Home Sweet Home. Customarily
cheerful Eric Jones, who runs the place, is down in the dumps with the
rest of the town, mourning the untimely demise of his girlfriend Ellen
Schneider. Though her death was ruled a suicide, no one who observed her
recent upbeat attitude believes that story. Can it be that Ellen had
dirt on her former employers at HomeMaker, the town's big company? Casey
has to dig deep to find out what secrets this little town is hiding.
Judy Clemens was born into the Mennonite faith, but discovered her
motorcycle leanings later in life. At home in rural Ohio, she lives
with her husband and two children, where their livestock consists of
three housecats.
