Showing results by author "Judith White" in All Categories

In mid September of 1943, Detroit private detective Sam Flanagan is contacted by the husband of a woman who drowned in their backyard pool six weeks ago. Along with the Detroit Police Department, Wayne County Coroner Fergus Macgregor is calling it “accidental”. And without any real evidence pointing in a different direction, that’s all they can do. The husband, Victor Girard, just wants to make sure he knows the whole story behind this tragic occurrence. There are troubling thoughts that continue to linger in his mind.

Baker's Keyboard Lounge, Detroit's hotspot for jazz - it's there that Sam runs into his childhood friend, Johnny Delbeck, and Johnny's got a problem. A little over three months ago, Johnny and his wife, Grace, took in her niece. Myrna Lou Stevic had been nothing but trouble for her mother, Grace's sister, and her stepfather. One Monday in April, the seventeen year old was sitting on the porch of the Delbeck's Dearborn home one minute, and in the next, she was gone.

It's January 1943 and things are slow for Sam Flanagan, Detroit private detective. He's about to call it a day and return to the woman he shares a home with; his 82 year old grandmother, when in walks Chicago socialite Phyllis Killburn. She's the daughter of the late tire tycoon, Alden Whitaker, and she's got troubles. It seems her husband may be stepping out on her with another woman and he's keeping a big secret as to his involvement with the military.

Sam is hot under the collar, and it has nothing to do with the summer swelter! The frail woman waltzed into his office on a steamy Saturday in July, wanting Sam to exonerate her husband of the charge of murder. But the murders occurred over 19 years ago and the man in question was killed in prison some months back. But that wasn't the worst of it! It just so happens that her husband was Carlo "the Confessor" Andolucci, the once-notorious Purple Gang member.