The Fog Ladies: Family Matters (A San Francisco Cozy Murder Mystery)
by Susan McCormick
About The Fog Ladies: Family Matters
The Fog Ladies: Family Matters (A San Francisco Cozy Murder Mystery)
Publisher: Wild Rose Press (October 7, 2020)
Paperback: 338 pages
ISBN-10: 1509233075
ISBN-13: 978-1509233076
Digital ASIN: B08FGMFBW3
Till death do us part, with kitchen shears. What drives a family man to kill his wife? This question haunts Sarah James, a medical resident who meets the unhappy family at a resort near Big Sur. She witnesses how ugly a marriage can be. But murder?
Sarah and the spunky Fog Ladies—elderly neighbors from her San Francisco apartment building—set out to discover the truth. Their probing finds the threat is perilously close to home, endangering another troubled family struggling to survive.
Excerpt!
“So where does he say he was really?” Mrs. Carmichael asked.
“In the park,” Mrs. Honeycut said. “He says he was sitting in the park and no one saw him.”
“Oh, come on. In the park? Is he kidding?” Mrs. Carmichael looked around for confirmation.
“He wasn’t just sitting in the park,” said Mrs. Noonan. “He was writing.”
“Writing?” said Sarah. “He was writing in the park?”
“Yes. He told his mother that he didn’t like to write at home because it made his wife mad. So instead of going to yoga, which he’d been doing every Tuesday night for years, he would go to the park and write. Especially now that it’s summer.”
“That’s the stupidest thing I ever heard,” said Mrs. Carmichael. “What a lame-brain alibi. He said he was sitting in a park in San Francisco on a sweltering evening? Writing? Couldn’t he come up with anything better?”
“Apparently not. And that’s the problem,” said Mrs. Noonan.
Mrs. Honeycut added, “Either he did it and he can’t think fast enough or he didn’t do it and no one’s going to believe him.”
“Wait a minute,” said Sarah. “How does he know no one saw him? Someone might have seen him.”
“Nope. He told his mother that he can’t think when it’s noisy, so he finds the most deserted area of the park and sits there. He said he’s never seen anyone,” said Mrs. Gordon.
“What a crock of a story,” said Mrs. Carmichael. “He did it. You’d think he could have thought up something better for a million dollars.”
“That’s another thing,” Mrs. Honeycut said. “He claims he didn’t even know his wife had the insurance policy. Said it was through her work and she never told him. Nonetheless, he’s the beneficiary.”
“Who else would have done it? Is there anyone else on the policy?” asked Sarah.
“Just the boy. Ben,” said Mrs. Gordon.
“No one else could have done it,” said Mrs. Honeycut. “The door wasn’t forced. There was no sign of a struggle. It’s not like she opened the door to a stranger at night.”
“You heard what Julia said. Paul doesn’t lock the door when he goes to yoga. He said the lock makes a loud noise when it turns, so they keep the door unlocked so he won’t wake his wife in case she goes to sleep before he comes back,” said Mrs. Noonan. “It sounds preposterous, I know. But that’s what he told his mother.”
“Oh, this gets better all the time,” said Mrs. Carmichael. “He left his wife and child in their unlocked home and went to sit in a park at night, and when he came back, he found his wife in a bloody pool in the kitchen. Is that correct?”
“I know it doesn’t look good,” said Frances Noonan. “But remember, I know his family. You’ve all met Julia. Sarah, you met the man. He couldn’t have done this, could he?”
Enid Carmichael watched Sarah intently. She was hesitating, that was for sure.
“You must have formed some type of opinion,” Olivia Honeycut persisted, “some judgment of the situation.”
Still the girl didn’t answer. How could she not have an opinion?
“I only met them briefly,” she finally said. “I honestly believe that man loved his wife and was trying desperately to change her mind about leaving.”
“Desperate.” Mrs. Carmichael latched on to the word. “What would a desperate man do?”
The Fog Ladies all turned to Sarah.
“I don’t know,” Sarah said. “I just don’t know.”
About Susan McCormick
Susan McCormick is a writer and doctor who lives in Seattle. She graduated from Smith College and George Washington University School of Medicine, with additional medical training in Washington, D.C. and San Francisco, where she lived in an elegant apartment building much like the one in the book. Susan served as a doctor in the U.S. Army for nine years before moving to the Pacific Northwest and civilian practice as a gastroenterologist. In addition to the Fog Ladies series, she also wrote Granny Can’t Remember Me, a lighthearted picture book about Alzheimer’s disease and dementia, and The Antidote, a timely middle grade medical fantasy released May 2021. She lives in Seattle with her husband and two sons. She loves giant dogs and has loved an English Mastiff, Earl, and two Newfoundlands, Edward and Albert.
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Thank you for hosting The Fog Ladies today, with this book set in an elegant apartment building in San Francisco and along the treacherous Northern California coastline. The ladies love a good mystery, all the better when it involves fog.
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