Cindy Brown, Writer
Coming May 2026
from Ooligan Press
Available once again:
The Ivy Meadows Series
"Combining humor and pathos can be risky in a whodunit, but gifted author Brown makes it work." Mystery Scene Magazine
The six books in the Agatha-nominated Ivy Meadows series are "endlessly entertaining and full of humor, (but) not afraid to tackle serious topics and confront contemporary issues…" Kings River Life Magazine. Previously published by Henery Press, the first four mysteries are once again available
(and the other two are coming soon)!
PROLOGUE
Friday, December 14th, 2018
Late night
Eastbank Esplanade. Esplanade. E-S-P-L-A-N-A-D-E.
Sometimes she spelled things when she was scared. Made her feel less dumb. Braver, even. Didn’t help with the cold or the rain, though.
She pulled her hoodie tight. It didn’t help either. The storm had soaked her through. She could have worn her garbage bag, but she didn’t want to meet him wearing a garbage bag. Instead, she spread the thin plastic under Elijah to keep him off the wet ground. It was pretty dry under the bush otherwise.
He reached for her as soon as she set him down. “It’s just for a minute,” she said, wiping the rain off his face. “I’m going to get some money, and then we can get pancakes.” That one waffle place was open twenty-four hours, she was pretty sure.
“Pancakes?” Elijah lit up like she was talking about Christmas. Maybe they’d have Christmas this year.
“With syrup and everything. But you got to be quiet until I come back, okay?”
“Quiet,” he said and sat down on the garbage bag. Such an easy kid.
With a backwards glance—yeah, that bush hid him good—she picked her way along the concrete path toward the dock. Streetlights glanced off puddles, sharp points of light in the black night. It was so dark in Oregon this time of year. She couldn’t remember Mississippi ever being this dark. Mississippi. M-I-S-S-I-S-S-I-P-P-I. She wasn’t dumb. She was a good reader. She’d teach Elijah to read, was already working on it with taking him to the library and all. He loved the library, loved the picture books—especially Goodnight Moon. She hated that book, though, with its great green room and fireplace and mittens and kittens.
No, she didn’t hate it. It just made her sad. But she was doing something about that. Right now.
He wasn’t at the dock yet—no one was—but this was where he wanted to meet. He’d do what was right for Elijah. His kid too. And once she had the money, she’d get Elijah a kitten. Maybe paint his bedroom green. When he got a bedroom.
She walked down the gangplank, holding tight onto the metal railings. They were so cold they felt hot, burning against her palms. Maybe she was dumb, coming here in the rain at night. Maybe she should have asked to go to a restaurant somewhere? No. They needed to meet in private. Besides, what if he didn’t show? She didn’t have money to spare on whatever the restaurant would make her buy.
Her feet touched down on the dock, slick underfoot. Nothing to hold onto here. The river ran dark and swollen underneath her. She imagined she could hear its voice, a pulsing shush. It wasn’t scary like she thought it would be. More like a heartbeat, almost comforting. She sat down on the wet dock and waited.
He was late, enough that she stood up and started pacing to keep warm. She was just about to go back and get Elijah—she’d kept an eye on his bush—when he came walking down the gangplank. Strolling, like it was June instead of December, and she hadn’t been waiting in the cold and rain with her baby boy under a bush. But she needed him, so she walked up to meet him.
She’d thought he might argue, but she didn’t think he’d hit her, so the fist took her by surprise. Threw her off balance. She went down; the back of her head hit something metal on the dock. She lay there for a minute—a minute?—with a dull ache underneath her eye where he’d hit her. The cold rain on her face felt good for a change. Then she tried to get up. The pain charged at her, bright and hot. She stumbled backward and fell again, this time into water so cold it stole her breath. She tried to say “help,” but the water stole her words too.
The river tugged at her, insistently. She couldn’t move. Something was wrong—wrong with her head especially—but the pain was gone. Just the river’s heartbeat in her ears, inviting her to sleep.
The moon appeared above her. No, it was his face, peering over the dock. She reached up to him, but he was gone. Goodnight Moon.
Goodnight Moon. Good night. She was so tired.
Shush, said the river. Rest in me. Like something from Sunday school, long ago.
She gave in, let the river cover her head. Then panic drove her back up to the surface. Where was Elijah?
Elijah.
Shush.
E-L-I-J-A-H.
Shh.
E-L-I-J . . .
CHAPTER 1
Saturday, December 15
Early morning
The dream grabbed at Ster like an undertow. It pulled him and pushed him and made it hard to see the light, to reach air.
Then he was out of it, on the surface, breathing and awake.
He opened his eyes. A lamp shone next to him, but otherwise the room was dark—the fire not even glowing. He’d fallen asleep on the couch in the living room again. No one to wake him, to tell him to go to bed, or to remind him that he’d wake up cold and cramped if he didn’t. Just him and a book—not even a real book these days. His audiobook had turned itself off, but the CD cover lay on his stomach. He picked it up. Crime and Punishment. Right. No wonder he fell asleep. Dostoevsky could really go on.
But what woke him? He listened. Nothing but the slap of rain on the gutters.
Maybe it was just the dream, a log settling in the fireplace, or a mouse. God, he hoped it wasn’t a mouse. His housekeeping—never great to begin with—had really slipped lately. Takeout cartons and dirty dishes were piled on the coffee table, along with a pizza box that’d been there at least a week. A mouse would serve him right.
Setting the CD cover on the coffee table, he sat up, feeling the night’s three—four?—drinks swimming in his head. He squinted at the clock on the wall. Five o’clock. Should he go back to sleep on the couch or get up and go upstairs to bed?
His back answered for him—the couch was old and lumpy—so he was swinging his feet to the floor when he heard it. A knock, barely loud enough to be heard over the downpour.
This couldn’t be good. No one knocked on your door with good news this early in the morning. Wide awake now, Ster heaved himself off the couch and padded to the door.
This couldn’t be good.
As he bent to the peephole, the dream washed over him again. Streetlights arcing over him, a shadow eclipsing the light, the wet thud that reverberated in his head. This, this knock, couldn’t have anything to do with that night, right?
Holding his breath, he looked through the peephole. Nobody there.
Relief swept over him so strong he swayed on his feet a little. Probably imagined the whole thing, some leftover from the dream. He straightened up and turned away.
Then, a mewling from outside. A cat? He didn’t like cats. But cats didn’t knock. Ster flipped on the porch light and opened the door.
A kid stood on the soaked-through rattan mat, too short to be seen through the peephole. Two, maybe three years old, wearing a brown fuzzy hoodie with little animal ears.
No one else in sight.
Instinct kicked in. Ster ducked into the shadows pooled on the porch, reaching for the Glock on his side. It wasn’t there. Of course it wasn’t. Adrenaline shot through him like it’d been pumped directly into a vein. This had to be some sort of setup, a trap or—
The kid let out a wail. Was he in danger? Ster squatted down to the boy’s level. He looked okay, except for the snot running down his face, mixed with . . . blood? Dirt? He couldn’t tell.
“Shh. It’s okay. Where’s your mommy?”
He cried harder. Jeez, the kid had lungs on him. “Shh, it’s okay.”
“No,” he said in between sobs. “No. Bad . . . man.”
Ster straightened up quick. He surveyed the area, as best he could from the porch. No bad man. No mom. No anyone. Just the sheeting rain and an abandoned kid in a bear costume, like a scene from some weird horror movie.
“Shh,” he told the boy, who was still crying. “I need you to be quiet.”
The boy stopped crying. “Quiet,” he said.
He grabbed the flashlight he kept by the front door and shone it around the front yard, into the bushes, even up in the trees. Nothing. He listened hard. Just rain sounds; water hammering the porch roof, pinging off gutters, gushing from rainspouts. It didn’t make sense. Why would a bad guy leave a kid on his porch? Why not just take him? And if it wasn’t the bad man who left him there, then who? Who in the hell would leave a little kid outside by himself on a freezing-ass night like this? And why his porch?
Maybe it was some crackheads messing around. “Hey!” he yelled. “Who’s out there? Joke’s over. Come and get him, now.”
No response.
He couldn’t shake the horror-movie feeling. A prickle worked its way up his neck, the way it did back when he was a cop called to a too-dark house.
Then, movement behind a car on the street.
“Stay here.” Ster turned off the flashlight and stepped off the porch. Icy rain smacked him in the face, running into his eyes and making it even harder to see. God, he wished he had his gun. He crept toward the Chevy, staying to the shadows.
He looked back at the kid, just for a split second. A shape streaked out from behind the car.
Son of a bitch. He should have known it’d be a cat. He flipped on the flashlight. No one, nothing else anywhere around the Chevy. He searched the street, the neighbors’ yards. No one. Just a little kid standing on his porch, waiting for Ster to come home.
