The Spruce Street Tragedy

A city hiding its secrets. A killer hiding in plain sight. One old detective who sees everything.

Old Spicer has worked enough cases to know when something doesn't add up—and the murder of Margaret Ernst doesn't add up at all.

An elderly widow, strangled and bound on a sofa in her underground saloon, her rooms ransacked from ceiling to floor. The police are already spinning theories, already chasing shadows. But Spicer doesn't chase shadows. He reads rooms. He reads people. And the labyrinthine basement on Spruce Street—with its fourteen hidden doors, its secret tunnel, its half-filled glasses on the bar—is telling him a story no one else is listening to.

Someone in that building knows more than they're saying. The financial manager points fingers at the tenants. The tenants whisper about late-night visitors. A buggy with a packing box rattles away into the dark at one in the morning. And a monogrammed handkerchief—far too fine for this part of town—turns up where it has no business being.

Spicer has a second case pulling at him. A third trail crossing the first. And a growing certainty that whoever did this knew the old woman well enough to know exactly where she kept her money.

The police are satisfied with theories. Spicer won't be satisfied with anything less than the truth.

But can he untangle two crimes at once before the real killer disappears forever?