Marcia Talley--Circles of Death

DEBORAH CROMBIE: Marcia Talley was one of the very first friends I made in the mystery writing world--at my first Malice Domestic, in fact. Although her first Hannah Ives novel, SING IT TO HER BONES, was published a couple of years after my first novel, she has now beaten me to #20 in her series, with CIRCLES OF DEATH!

But I am celebrating right along with her, because sitting down with a new Hannah Ives is like a get-together with great friend you've been longing to see.

MARCIA TALLEY: Whenever I turn in the final manuscript of a novel, I pour myself a congratulatory glass of wine, sit back and start to worry that I’ll never come up with a good idea for the next one.  About two weeks into this worry-fest for my twentieth Hannah Ives mystery, I met Donna Cole through mutual friends.  Donna is the multi-award-winning investigative reporter whose dogged reporting on the death of thirteen bald eagles on Maryland’s Eastern shore in 2018 brought global attention to a ‘dirty little secret’ that I’ll get to in a moment.

And Donna lives in my neighborhood!  She is the U.S. Navy veteran, bird of prey rescuer, wildlife photographer, breast cancer survivor, neighbor and friend who inspired and informed my novel.  You can keep up with Donna (but you’ll need track shoes!) at https://www.annapoliscreative.com

(Donna Cole)

Anyway, we got together, and Donna introduced me to RSAs--Reserve Shooting Areas--farmland that is set aside as hunting preserves where outfitters are permitted to bring city slickers in on excursions to blow the smithereens out of ducks that have been raised specifically for that purpose.

In order to control predators that take a toll on their stock, some unscrupulous RSA managers have resorted to the use of carbofuran, a poison so deadly that less than a quarter-teaspoon can kill a human.  And it’s not just the intentionally poisoned predators we have to worry about.  Secondary fatal poisonings of domestic and wild animals often occur, specifically raptors (bald eagles and golden eagles), domestic dogs, raccoons, vultures and other scavengers who happen to feed on the carcasses of poison victims. I’ll let my character, Natural Resources Police officer Roger Erickson, explain: 

‘We call it the Circle of Death,’ Roger continued after a moment. ‘A deer is poisoned with carbofuran and dies. A coyote feeds on the carcass of the deer and dies. A fox feeds on the poisoned coyote, walks one-hundred yards away, and dies. Because the fox received a lower dose, it might travel five or six hundred yards before succumbing. A bird that feeds on the dead fox might manage to fly half a mile before dropping out of the sky.’ He paused, removed his hat and tucked it under his arm, then wiped the sweat off his forehead with the back of his sleeve. ‘The circle of death keeps moving outward. Last year we had a case where there was a five square mile radius where we kept finding dead animals. The crime scene kept getting bigger and bigger. And I’m quite certain we never found them all.’

Carbofuran has been banned in the U.S. since 2009.  In Maryland it is illegal to buy, sell or use it, but not (go figure!) to own it.  Who knows how much of the deadly stuff is still stashed away in barns out there?  So, it seemed natural that Hannah, who has a vacation cottage on Maryland’s eastern shore, would end up discovering carbofuran on the farm adjacent to her property where she and her young friend, Noel, are investigating the poisoning of four bald eagles.

For me, researching a book is half—maybe even more than half!—the fun.  While researching Circles of Death, I became fascinated by the people, like Donna Cole, who rescue sick and injured raptors—sometimes risking their own lives and limbs to do so—and transport them to raptor rehabilitation centers.  I was grateful to be granted the unusual opportunity to tour Owl Moon Raptor Center, where I shadowed rehabilitators Suzanne Shoemaker and Malia Hale for half a day while they cared for sick and injured raptors. Owl Moon rescues, rehabilitates, and reconditions raptors with the goal of returning them to the wild. It is totally staffed by volunteers and supported by private donations. https://owlmoon.org.

(Malia and Suzanne care for a red-tailed hawk.)

(Cyrano!  This is the eagle I call “The Colonel” in CofD.  He’s a male; a female would be at least 1/3  bigger.  Cyrano’s beak had been severely injured by a steel fishing line; it was repaired by a local dentist with dental crown material colored with yellow hi-lighter.)

(Release Day!)

As fans of Hannah know, over the course of the last three novels, she has been using her skills as a forensic genetic genealogist to solve cold cases with a team calling themselves the Silent Sleuths.  It was fun reuniting the team for this novel: investigative journalist Izzy, who leaps at the opportunity to cover the poisoned eagle story; retired police officer, Jack, whose marriage is falling apart; and Navy chaplain, Mark, who is presiding over the Christmas pageant from hell. Together, they unravel a murder nearly three decades old and, in the process, help Noel find her roots.

DEBS: This line in Marcia's essay popped out at me: "So, it seemed natural that Hannah, who has a vacation cottage on Maryland’s eastern shore, would end up discovering carbofuran on the farm adjacent to her property where she and her young friend, Noel, are investigating the poisoning of four bald eagles."

Because of course it did, and this is why Hannah is always so appealing as an amateur sleuth. It's her combination of natural curiosity, her interest in people, and her talent at research that bring the reader right along with her in every book.

Here's a question for readers from Marcia: In my first draft of Circles of Death, 3 of the 4 eagles died. I was encouraged to cut back to one dead bird, with 3 of the eagles very sick. I was OK with that—and it worked out well, plot wise—but it occurs to me that we write about murder—people die right and left in our novels —and yet we sometimes get more pushback whenever an animal is killed, and even more if the victim is a dog or a cat. Would you have made the same decision on the eagles?

And more about CIRCLES OF DEATH:

Hannah Ives and her husband are staying at their idyllic vacation cottage on Maryland’s eastern shore, when a young friend, Noel Sinclair, stops by for a visit. As Hannah shows Noel around the property, they notice some bald eagles in a neighboring cornfield who look seriously ill.

Could these magnificent birds have been poisoned? Hannah’s investigation soon clashes with powerful commercial agricultural interests. Meanwhile, Noel uncovers some shocking news of her own when she and her sister receive the results of their DNA tests. As Hannah tries to discover who is tormenting the birds while delving into Noel’s family tree, the last thing she expects is a deadly connection between the two…

Severn House
ISBN: 978-1-4483-0797-5

Kirkus says: “Two mysteries plotted with an eye for the details of both subjects set this series apart.”

Marcia Talley is the Agatha and Anthony award-winning author of twenty mystery novels featuring Maryland sleuth, Hannah Ives, including CIRCLES OF DEATH, DISCO DEAD and DONE GONE. She is editor/author of two collaborative serial novels, NAKED CAME THE PHOENIX and I’D KILL FOR THAT set in a luxury health spa and an exclusive gated community, respectively. Her short stories appear in more than a dozen collections and have been reprinted in many best-of-the-year crime story anthologies.

Marcia is past-president of Sisters in Crime, Inc. and currently serves on the National Board of Mystery Writers of America. She divides her time between Annapolis, MD and a quaint, Loyalist-style cottage on Elbow Cay in the Bahamas.

Disco Dead--Marcia Talley

DEBORAH CROMBIE: It is always a huge treat for me to host Marcia Talley, one of my oldest and dearest friends in the mystery world, and a new Hannah Ives novel is always a cause for celebration. Here's a snippet from just one of the glowing reviews for Disco Dead, her 19th Hannah Ives mystery:

“...As good as the puzzles in this series are, most readers probably don’t come to the Ives books for the mysteries—they come for the characters. Hannah is a perfectly drawn lead, a part-time crime solver who must juggle friends, family, and serious medical issues, along with all manner of everyday concerns. She may be an amateur sleuth, but she lives very much in the real world ... Some long-running series have their ups and downs, but the Ives series has been remarkably consistent.”— David Pitt for Booklist

Sitting down with a new Hannah is like sitting down with a friend you've missed for a cup of tea (or in our case, a glass of wine!) but you don't have to know Marcia, or to have read the previous books, to be instantly drawn in. 

Here's Marcia to tell you more!

Disco Dead (a tip of the hat here to Elaine Viets for the perfect title!) was supposed to be my pandemic novel, the one where Hannah, confined to her home by the Covid lockdown, becomes an armchair detective working on a cold case via the Internet with a small group of volunteers.  My agent and my publisher had other ideas, however. “Nobody wants to re-live the pandemic, Marcia … they want to escape it.”

Sigh.

The cold case idea had grabbed me, though, as had the idea of Hannah using the skills she’d developed over the past several novels as a genealogical researcher to solve a case. Like I did, Hannah started by researching her family tree and got sucked, big time, down the genealogical rabbit hole. In Disco Dead, she gets to dive even deeper.

It all begins innocently enough.

Perhaps I should let Hannah explain.  Here’s the conversation she has with her daughter in the parking lot outside Trader Joe’s:

Emily locked her car and insisted on escorting me to mine. As we crossed the parking lot, shopping cart clattering along the tarmac, she said, ‘So, what are you doing?’

‘You’ll mock.’

‘No, I won’t.’

‘I’m visiting cemeteries. Taking pictures of headstones.’

Emily frowned. ‘That’s seriously creepy, Mom.’

‘You wouldn’t believe how many people on GenTree are looking for photos of their ancestors’ headstones,’ I informed her. ‘I’ve gotten requests from as far away as Thailand.’

‘How . . .?’ Emily began, but I anticipated her question.

‘A while back, I signed up with FindAGrave.com.’ I slotted the shopping cart between my Volvo and a pickup truck, dug my iPhone out of my handbag and tapped the FindAGrave app. ‘Requests are sorted by zip code. You can choose to claim them or not. Look,’ I said, turning the screen in her direction. ‘Here’s the list of requests for the 21037 zip code I’m working with today.’

Emily shielded her eyes from the noonday sun and squinted at the tiny screen. ‘St Luke’s Cemetery I know, but where’s Bayview?’

‘Just off Central Avenue, down in Mayo.’

‘Honestly,’ Emily said after a moment. ‘Couldn’t you have a hobby like normal mothers. Scrapbooking? Candle making? You like to garden. Why don’t you take up bonsai?’

‘I knit,’ I protested.

‘You know what I mean.’

‘Don’t sell it short,’ I said. ‘I stroll around outside, get sun, fresh air and exercise. It’s quiet, nobody to bother you and nobody to talk to but dead people.’

Emily raised both hands, palms out. ‘And everybody always says I march to a different drummer.’

 ‘The acorn doesn’t fall far from the tree,’ I said, matching her cliché for cliché. ‘Wanna see how it works?’

When Emily nodded, I drew her attention to the app again, swiped a couple of screens forward. ‘I locate the headstone, take a picture and upload it to the database while I’m standing right there in the cemetery. It’s a slick piece of software.’

Emily studied the photo on my screen – a 1943 headstone for a woman who had lived to be 102 before ‘falling asleep in the arms of Jesus’ – then surprised me by laughing out loud. ‘It’s still weird, Mom.’

‘My good deeds for the day,’ I said.

Emily helped load groceries into the Volvo, then turned to go. ‘St Luke’s. Isn’t that where that famous general is buried?’

‘James Taylor Johnson,’ I said as I opened the driver’s side door and slid onto the seat. ‘Yes. Old Bloody Jim.’

‘Well, say hello to the good general for me, will you?’

‘Of course. But he won’t be saying much. He’s been dead for one hundred and sixty years.’

Usually on these expeditions, as Hannah says, there’s no one to talk to but the dead, until the day she encounters Isabel “Izzy” Randall laying flowers on the grave of Amy Madison, a St John’s College senior who died in 1978.  As a former investigative reporter for WBNF-TV in Baltimore, Izzy covered the case.  “Her murder was never solved,” Izzy tells Hannah, “and I can’t get it out of my mind.” It’s been more than forty years since Amy’s body was found floating in the Magothy River north of Annapolis, but Izzy never fails to bring flowers to Amy on her birthday.

Sitting at opposite ends of a memorial bench in the churchyard, Izzy fills Hannah in on the long-cold case. Amy had last been seen alive dancing with a young man at Doot’s, an Annapolis disco bar popular with college students and the under thirties crowd.  After a year-long investigation and few leads, the case went cold. “Nobody seems to care about Amy any more,” Izzy laments.

Following their initial meeting, a friendship develops between the two women which leads to Hannah being invited to join Silent Sleuths, where her online research skills compliment the background and experience of the other members of this small, but passionate group of “citizen detectives” who tackle unsolved “orphan” cases like Amy’s. Jack Shelton, a former Annapolis homicide detective, knows how to get his hands on police files, and Mark Wallis, a Navy chaplain, has a masters degree in criminal psychology.  It isn’t long before the Sleuths begin to suspect that Amy’s murder may have been the work of a serial killer.  Izzy’s intense personal interest in Amy’s case trumps the golden rule of armchair investigators:  never go “real life” by contacting victims’ families or any suspects. Naturally, Hannah  . . .

But that would be telling!

In spite of the serious subject matter, I enjoyed writing Disco Dead.  I’ve lived in Annapolis since 1971, so it was fun revisiting those early years when Annapolis was a little sleepier and less yuppified than it is today. Doot’s Bar is a product of my imagination, but other Annapolis restaurants, shops and institutions will be recognized by anyone familiar with the town.

I particularly enjoyed selecting appropriate titles for the chapters of Disco Dead, each being a popular disco song.  Dancing Queen, Mama Mia, Staying Alive were no-brainers, but there’s also this stroll down memory lane: Take a Chance on Me (ABBA), Where Do We Go From Here (The Trammps), I’m So Excited (The Pointer Sisters), Heaven Must Be Missing an Angel (Tavares) and Last Night a D.J. Saved My Life (Indeep), and several dozen others. Maybe you’ll start discoing and singing along! 

Marcia Talley is the Agatha and Anthony award-winning author of DISCO DEAD and eighteen previous novels featuring Maryland sleuth, Hannah Ives. She is editor/author of two collaborative serial novels, NAKED CAME THE PHOENIX and I’D KILL FOR THAT. Her short stories appear in more than a dozen collections.

Marcia is past-president of Sisters in Crime, Inc. and currently serves as president of the Mid-Atlantic Chapter of Mystery Writers of America. She divides her time between Annapolis, MD and a quaint, Loyalist-style cottage on Elbow Cay in the Bahamas.

www.marciatalley.com

Twitter: marciatalleybks

DEBS: ABBA! Those songs instantly take me back to living in Scotland, where they always seemed to be playing on the radio. Now I think I need to rewatch Mama Mia... REDS and readers, who's a disco fan?

Marcia Talley's Family Vault

DEBORAH CROMBIE: It is always such a treat for me to host my dear friend Marcia Talley! And I  have to admit that I've read an advanced copy of her newest Hannah Ives novel, TANGLED ROOTS, and I LOVED it. 

I've always said that reading a Hannah novel is as much fun as sitting across the table with Marcia for a nice long visit, and I love learning what leads to the plots in Marcia's books. I well remember discussing this one when it was just a gleam in Marcia's eye!

Here's Marcia to fill you in!

MARCIA: Last year about this time, after I delivered Hannah’s sixteenth adventure, Mile High Murder, to my editor, and while I awaited her feedback, I began visiting my relatives … the dead ones, that is.

My sister, Debbie, started me off on what is turning out to be an addiction by entering our family details into Ancestry.com and sharing editorial responsibility with me, the oldest of our siblings. Just like the ads on television, a leaf pops up, you click on the leaf, head off on an adventure of discovery to a new family fact, click on another leaf and so on and so on until four hours have flown by and your husband is wondering what on earth has happened to dinner.

Fortunately, there's already a lot we know.  We had a great-great uncle on our father’s side who was deep into genealogy and wrote a book about it. Then there’s our Mormon cousin who provided a family tree that takes our family back – I kid you not – to Ragnhild “Hilda” Hrolfsdatter, born in 1836 in Maer, Norway.

Most of the Duttons came over with the Winthrop Fleet in 1630, it appears . I confirmed family legend that I'm directly related to John Hart, a signer of the Declaration of Independence through his daughter, Susanna, and to John and Priscilla Alden of Mayflower fame. But we knew all that.

Fast-forward to the secrets?  Before he married my mother-in-law, my father-in-law had been married before. Who knew? And that first cousin once removed we know never married? Well, apparently he did, during WW2, in Iowa.

It’s the deaths that fascinate me.  Sometimes their tombstones tell the tale. In November 1910, baby Robert Culver, my second cousin once removed, lived only 6 hours. His mother, Helen, died a day later.

But, the real treasure trove are the death certificates you discover online. My second great grandmother Helen Drew lost four of her children, ages 15, 17, 20 and 25 in a single year during a typhoid epidemic. I. Can’t. Even. And two of these little angels only lived into their teens, drowning two years apart in separate accidents on Lake Michigan. 

My husband’s step-grandfather, drop–dead handsome James, was caught between train cars and decapitated. 

“Papa Hise,” another relative on his mother’s side, fetched the shotgun out of the attic, killed the family dog before the horrified eyes of his daughter, Odie Grace, then shot himself in the head. It took him two days to die. Then there was the Brelsford great uncle who went West to seek his fortune. When prospecting didn't pan out, he shot his car before turning the gun on himself. Better the car then the dog, I say.  

One relative was murdered at age 21. What's that all about, I wonder?  Another, a Rebel, died of smallpox in a Yankee prisoner of war camp.  My great grandmother, Marcia Jane Drew, for whom I was named, died at age 42 in Lowell Massachusetts during dental surgery, or so my grandfather firmly believed. And yet there’s her death certificate, staring me in the face: ovarian tumor. As a cancer survivor who confidently stated “there’s no history of cancer in my family” that would have been good to know.

About that time, I needed an idea for a novel, so I figured why look any further than my own family’s deeply tangled roots? My 3rd great grandmother, Sarah Drew, died of “suicide by hanging.” Really? At age 84? 

I definitely felt a novel coming on.

My deep research for Tangled Roots began with the obvious first step: I spit into a test tube and sent it off for DNA testing.  I spent the weeks before the results came in constructing my family tree on a popular genealogy website and soon, like Hannah, found myself sucked, head-first, down a rabbit hole.  Now, nearly a year later, I’ve reconnected with a long-lost cousin (Hello, Ellen!), discovered that a first cousin in fact wasn’t, learned that identical twins don’t just run in the family, they run rampant, and visited a cemetery not far from the King Arthur Flour Company in rural Vermont where generations of my family lie buried. Some of these genealogical adventures inevitably wove themselves into the fabric of Tangled Roots.

Hannah Ives’s sister, Georgina, has some astonishing news. A DNA test has revealed she is part Native American, and Hannah’s test has similar results. The link seems to come from their late mother. But how?

As Hannah dives into constructing her family tree, she uncovers a heart-breaking love story and a mysterious death, while DNA matching turns up two second cousins, Mai and Nicholas. Hannah and her niece, Julie, are eager to embrace their new relatives and learn about their surprising ancestry, but Georgina’s husband, Scott, isn’t so keen… Are more revelations about to come to light? And can Hannah untangle her family roots to uncover the truth behind a devastating tragedy?

 

Tangled Roots officially releases in the U.S. on July 1.  What to do in the meantime? I have to admit that genealogy is now a passion.  After building my own family tree, I’m helping friends research theirs.  When an elderly British friend told me she knew her mother had been married before, but she didn’t know anything about the man, not even his name, I immediately volunteered to help.  Several days later, I was able to give her a photograph of his tombstone in Flanders: over 4000 young British soldiers had died in combat on that same day in 1917.

If the contents of friend and family closets ever peter out, what with the popularity of Scandinavian Noir these days, maybe I’ll start writing under a family-inspired pseudonym – Hilda Hrolfsdatter has a nice ring to it, don’t you agree?  

You can learn more about Marcia Talley and her books by going to

www.marciatalley.com

or follow her on Twitter at

marciatalleybks

Marcia blogs with the Femmes Fatales at

https://femmesfatales.typepad.com/

DEBS: Marcia's family is certainly more interesting than mine--at least as far as I know! REDs and readers, what skeletons have you discovered in YOUR family closets?? 

DEBS PS: Marcia's book is available for pre-order from your favorite bookseller!

Marcia Talley--Mile High Murder

DEBORAH CROMBIE: One of the many perks of being part of Jungle Red Writers is having the opportunity to showcase your friends--especially when they have a new book! Marcia Talley and I met at Malice Domestic in...mumble mumble--a LONG time ago! Seriously, that would have been around 1994, right, Marcia? We were both newly minted authors then, and we have been friends and brainstorming buddies ever since. So I am more than thrilled to bring you Marcia and her newest Hannah Ives novel, MILE HIGH MURDER.

 

MARCIA TALLEY: I live in Maryland where marijuana has recently become available for medical purposes and where the legislature is actively considering legalizing the weed for recreational use. To date, nine U.S. states as well as the District of Columbia allow the recreational use of cannabis, but the plant is still listed as a Schedule 1 drug – along with heroin and cocaine – and as such, is against federal law. Banks that are part of the Federal Reserve System are prohibited from handling “drug money,” therefore in the states where it is legal, it is largely a multi-million dollar all cash business. Bags of marijuana lying around, I thought.  Sacks of money. What could go wrong?

During my research, I became fascinated by cannabis culture, that is to say the businesses that have sprung up, particularly in western states like Colorado, Oregon and Washington where they thrive, as a result of legalization. Canna-tourism is huge. Guests stay in “bud and breakfasts,” weederies sprawl over many acres and provide Disney-style tours, and (taking a page from the wine industry) restaurants offer food and cannabis parings.  At marijuana shops like Starbuds, Karmaceuticals, and Grateful Meds, budtenders are available to help you choose the perfect weed for what ails you.

The variety of products infused with cannabis is staggering.  Edibles like Berry Bomb Bites, Honey Pot, Mystical Blueberry Jam, Herba Buena Tea and Ganja Grindz Coffee should start your day off on a high note.  There are thousands of topical lotions and balms – Hannah can’t resist the Speakeasy Lip Balm.  Even your dog can mellow out on Bark Avenue Doggie Treats.

What could be more fun than sending Hannah and her friend, Maryland state Senator Claire Thompson, to a “bud and breakfast” in Denver, the Mile High City, to join a diverse group of pot pilgrims and medical refugees? Naturally, one of the group turns up dead, and a closer inspection of the body reveals the victim had been traveling under a false identity …?

I already hear you asking about the research I did for this one!  Let’s just say, quoting former president Barack Obama, “I inhaled frequently; that was the point.”

Research can be hell, folks!

DEBS:  That quote cracks me up. I remember we talked about this book at Bouchercon a few years back.  It sounded like a winning plot then, and how great that Publishers Weekly agrees. Mile High Murder is "witty and well-constructed,” they say and, “Fair-play clues lead to a surprising motive behind the murder [in this] timely and illuminating trip into the often befuddling world of marijuana legislation.”  

Booklist likes it, too.  “As the … series approaches its twentieth anniversary, it’s showing no signs of slowing down. Hannah [is] a woman who’s seen darkness in her own life but who hasn’t let it change who she is ... a sympathetic and likable protagonist, the kind of person we might like spending time with … [T]he mystery she solves here is a very entertaining one ... and its solution is both surprising and memorable.”

And, of course, one of the reasons I adore Hannah Ives is that reading Hannah is like sitting down across the table from Marcia with a cup of tea. (Or a glass of wine... Or...)

As you wait for your copy of MILE HIGH MURDER to arrive, please enjoy this excerpt:

FROM CHAPTER 4:

We’d been waiting outside the terminal for no more than five minutes when a long, white limousine that had been idling a few hundred yards away swept into an opening created by the departure of a yellow Hertz van and eased soundlessly to a stop. The vehicle seemed to go on forever, so long that its hood would reach our B&B hours before its trunk. I counted five windows, back to front. A logo painted on the passenger-side door read Happy Daze Tours, its letters curved in a semicircle under a colorful graphic of a five-fingered marijuana leaf superimposed over a bell.

‘Let me guess,’ I said.

Claire laughed. ‘Our chariot awaits.’

'What’s with the bell?’ I asked, referring to the logo.‘

'That’s the name of the B and B we’re staying in. Bell House.’

In Colorado these days, B&B stood for ‘bud and breakfast’ more often than not. Serious cannatourists flocked to such private establishments, the only ones where smoking, weed or otherwise, was permitted on the premises.

We watched as the chauffeur climbed out carrying a whiteboard that read Thompson in black marker pen.

'That would be me,’ Claire yelled above the noise of the traffic, thumbing her chest.

The driver grinned, revealing a row of impossibly white teeth. ‘Welcome to Denver,’ he said.

‘You must be Austin Norton,’ she said.

‘It’s the shirt. It always gives me away.’

Under an embroidered leather vest that flapped loosely at his sides, Norton wore a black T-shirt that read: IT’S 4:20 SOMEWHERE. He’d belted the shirt neatly into a pair of blue jeans that had been pressed into a sharp crease. I guessed he was around fifty. An aging hippie, I thought. His hair, prematurely silver, was tied back in a low ponytail.

‘Are we waiting for anybody?’ I smiled into his eyes, but saw only my own reflection in his mirrored sunglasses.

‘Nope,’ he said. ‘You’re the last.’ He took our bags and somehow managed to fit them, like pieces to an intricate puzzle, into a trunk already crammed with luggage. Then he held open the door, stood aside and invited us in.

The last time I’d been in a stretch limo had been with a guy named Ron at my high-school prom. This limo, too, had a bar – stocked with designer water – and circular bench seating. But there the resemblance ended. In the Happy Daze limo, LED lights pulsed green, like Kryptonite, turning Claire’s red jacket a dirty shade of gray. A wide-mouthed glass jar containing frosty buds of marijuana took pride of place on a low, central table.

A young guy holding a glass pipe scooted over to make room for us. ‘Welcome to the Mile High City,’ he said as we cut our way through the smog. He wore a Hawaiian shirt and a captain’s hat, soft and faded from repeated laundering, perched at a jaunty angle over his crewcut.

Claire eased into her seat, inhaled and sighed. ‘Ah, this is what I’m talking about!’

As for me, I tried not to breathe too deeply. All my fellow passengers seemed to be smoking something: the guy with the glass pipe; a young couple, their blond heads touching, sharing a hookah like a cream soda with two straws; two women sucking on vape pens. I understood about people going on wine tours of Napa or Sonoma, but they’re not opening bottles of merlot the minute they leave baggage claim. Still, it must be a relief to get high without being hassled by the cops.

‘You trip out early in Denver,’ the young guy said, as if reading my mind. He took a hit from his pipe, held his breath and closed his eyes.

Marcia Talley is the author of MILE HIGH MURDER and fifteen previous novels featuring Maryland sleuth, Hannah Ives. A winner of the Malice Domestic grant and an Agatha Award nominee for Best First Novel, Ms. Talley won an Agatha and an Anthony Award for her short story "Too Many Cooks" and an Agatha Award for her short story "Driven to Distraction." She is author/editor of two star-studded mystery collaborations, NAKED CAME THE PHOENIX and I’D KILL FOR THAT, and her short stories appear in more than a dozen magazines and anthologies. She divides her time between Annapolis, Maryland and a quaint Loyalist cottage in the Bahamas.

DEBS: Here's more about MILE HIGH MURDER:

It’s a fact that some of the cancer support group survivors Hannah Ives works with take marijuana. Recreational use of the drug may be illegal in Maryland, but a few patients, like Maryland State Senator Claire Thompson, are prescribed it on medical grounds. Claire has co-sponsored a Cannabis Legalization Bill and invites Hannah to be part of a fact-finding task force that testifies before the Maryland State Senate.

Before long, Hannah is in Denver, Colorado – the Mile High City – staying at a B&B with a group of pot pilgrims and medical refugees. But when one of the group is found dead, and a closer inspection of the body reveals the victim had been traveling under a false identity, Hannah is plunged into a dangerous cocktail of deception, drugs and death.

Stop in and chat with Marcia, who will be joining us from her "Loyalist cottage in the Bahamas." Sigh... 

PS: And she will answer questions about her "research."