The fourth book in the Aurora Teagarden series, 1995

My thanks to

the Reverend Gary Nowlin

attorney Mike Epley,

Arkansas state park ranger Jim Gann,

chemist Glenn McCelland,

Dennis of the Georgia State Forensic Department,

and Dr. Aung Than

for their help with various parts of this book.

Mistakes are my own, not theirs.

THE JULIUS FAMILY vanished six years before I married Martin Bartell.

They disappeared so abruptly that some people in Lawrenceton phoned the National Enquirer to tell a reporter that the Juliuses had been abducted by aliens.

I had been home from college for several years and was working in the Lawrenceton Public Library when-whatever it was-happened to T.C., Hope, and Charity Julius. And I was as full of speculation as anyone else.

But as time went by with no trace of the Julius family, I forgot to wonder about them, except for an occasional frisson of creepiness when the name “Julius” came into a conversation.

Then Martin gave me their house as a wedding present.

To say I was surprised to get a house is an understatement: “stunned” is more accurate. We did want to buy a house, and we had been looking at fancier homes firmly anchored in the newer suburbs of Lawrenceton, an old southern town that itself is actually in the regrettable process of becoming a commuter suburb of Atlanta. Most of the houses we’d been considering were large, with several big rooms suitable for entertainment; too big for a couple with no children, in my opinion. But Martin had this streak that yearned for the outer signs of financial health. He drove a Mercedes, for example, and he wanted our house to be a house where a Mercedes would look at home.