A church fundraiser should bring a community together.
This one uncovers a secret buried for nineteen years.
Retired forensic accountant Pepper Ramirez-Flynn knows that losing the serve does not mean losing the game. Sometimes it only means the advantage has changed hands.
At First Fellowship’s Side-Out Saturday pickleball fundraiser, the church’s new treasurer asks Pepper to audit a mission fund nobody can fully explain. For nineteen years, Palmetto Island has donated money to support beloved missionary Brother Eli Dunmore—and received one moving letter from him every Homecoming Sunday.
Then a sinkhole cracks the parsonage foundation, and workers discover human remains beneath a nineteen-year-old slab.
The numbers lead Pepper through inaccessible accounts, an anonymous roof payment, missing offerings, altered handwriting, and church records guarded by people who believe protecting the congregation matters more than exposing its past. Everyone has something to hide: an embattled pastor, a territorial administrator, a treasurer demanding answers, and longtime members whose faith is tangled with loyalty.
With Birdie defending the church she loves, Theo beside her at the kitchen line, and Ledger keeping watch, Pepper must separate financial concealment from murder—and discover who has been writing Eli’s letters all these years.
Because numbers don’t lie.
People do.
Perfect for readers who love clever senior sleuths, fair-play clues, coastal small-town mysteries, cold cases, pickleball, loyal greyhounds, and cozy mysteries where following the money leads to the truth.
Genre: Mystery
This one uncovers a secret buried for nineteen years.
Retired forensic accountant Pepper Ramirez-Flynn knows that losing the serve does not mean losing the game. Sometimes it only means the advantage has changed hands.
At First Fellowship’s Side-Out Saturday pickleball fundraiser, the church’s new treasurer asks Pepper to audit a mission fund nobody can fully explain. For nineteen years, Palmetto Island has donated money to support beloved missionary Brother Eli Dunmore—and received one moving letter from him every Homecoming Sunday.
Then a sinkhole cracks the parsonage foundation, and workers discover human remains beneath a nineteen-year-old slab.
The numbers lead Pepper through inaccessible accounts, an anonymous roof payment, missing offerings, altered handwriting, and church records guarded by people who believe protecting the congregation matters more than exposing its past. Everyone has something to hide: an embattled pastor, a territorial administrator, a treasurer demanding answers, and longtime members whose faith is tangled with loyalty.
With Birdie defending the church she loves, Theo beside her at the kitchen line, and Ledger keeping watch, Pepper must separate financial concealment from murder—and discover who has been writing Eli’s letters all these years.
Because numbers don’t lie.
People do.
Perfect for readers who love clever senior sleuths, fair-play clues, coastal small-town mysteries, cold cases, pickleball, loyal greyhounds, and cozy mysteries where following the money leads to the truth.
Genre: Mystery