Bad Luck and Whiskey

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The creepy late-night phone calls are beginning to put a strain on Delia (DC) Courte’s sense of humor.  The poems that arrive at her newspaper office are disturbing.  Printed to look like birds in flight and dedicated to the recently drowned, they appear before anyone finds the bodies.

 

Dangling over the spot where lies one drowned body is a red thread strung with a crow feather and a green crystal bead—just a coincidence, or maybe a sick joke.  Sheriff Billie Byrd’s conclusion crumbles when she discovers another such ornament hanging over a second drowning victim.  This version sports two green beads.

 

DC has a minefield of suspects to navigate, from an ex-Air Force pilot with a beast in his head to an alcoholic who is certain the crows are talking to him.  They want to know where he has hidden his wife’s body.  But, he would never kill her ... would he?

 

DC’s late-night caller wants her to turn frustrated literary ambitions to a serial killer's biography.  If she continues to refuse, will hers be the next body pulled from the river?