Lady in Red

In this ninth and final novel in the Gideon Detective Series, Vincent James Gideon, after retiring five years earlier to spend his senior years fly fishing on the Portland River, elects to take on one more case for the Black Rock Cove Police Department. Little did he know it would be the most unusual case the veteran detective has ever agreed to unravel.

Sebastian Westfield, the grandson of Connor Westfield, is living life in style with the hefty allowance given to him monthly by his grandfather. The problem is, one night started like all the rest, with his arrival at Sid's Cabaret in Portland, the home of famed theater star, Valentina Clemente. When the evening first started, he could remember everything. However, the next instant, his mind goes blank. He can't remember what happened the rest of the night when an assassin took his grandfather's life in Black Rock Cove, or how he ended up on the floor of an abandoned farmhouse a few hundred yards away from his grandfather's house the next morning.

As he awoke, he sensed a chill in the air, a shimmer of mist.  The trees of the forest by the lake became slightly out of focus, like that of a poorly taken photograph. It wasn't until Sebastian got closer, it congealed into a form… a woman dressed in red with silver skin and a predator's smile.

All became silent while he watched the woman skirt along the edges of the stagnant lake. Then, without warning, he found himself on his back, looking up at a person wearing a red and black ski mask. He shook his head back and forth and heard the words from what he thought was the woman in red, but the words were said in a man's voice with a rasping tone of a one-pack a day smoker. "Have you come to play, Sebastian?" Sebastian couldn't find words to say and only opened his mouth to scream.

Then without warning, he found himself back on the dilapidated and deserted farmhouse floor. Abruptly, a chill rose up his spine making him shiver. Something was here with him. He could feel it! A voice, hoarse and faint echoed around him, coming from the adjacent room in the farmhouse.  Sebastian slowly turned his head over his shoulder, and the whispering came to a stop. The air chilled to ice and his labored breathing was the only sound he could hear. It was hanging down from the ceiling, crawling ever so slowly, closer and closer… dark and brooding.

Crick. Creakkkk. Screechhhhh.

"Stop it! You're not real. Leave me alone!" Sebastian had played in the old farmhouse as a child and knew it was but a few hundred yards to his grandfather's house. Without hesitation, he rushed out the door and hurried down the pathway, his heart pounding the entire way.  The sun already climbed into the morning sky.

On reaching the courtyard, he stopped and vividly pictured the old place during his childhood. The walls didn't seem so gray when he was a young boy, nor did they look so small. In his mind, he pictured the place as though it were a castle where his cousin and he were the prince and princess of the home.

The door opened. Mister Albert was there with the bad news. "Mister Sebastian, where have you been? Your grandfather has been murdered!"