THE EDITOR OF THE ALPINE ADVOCATE GOES DIGGING FOR A MURDERER. At forty-two, newspaperwoman Emma Lord decides she needs time off to do some soul-searching. But her old Jag breaks down in the picturesque Pacific Northwest town of Port Angeles, and instead of finding herself, she ,s helping friends find the truth about a grisly discovery: a skeleton in their basement. The bones belong to those of an unknown young woman, buried in a crumbling mansion nearly a century ago. A crushed skull, a garnet earring, a locket containing a telltale keepsake *all whisper of tragedy. Ancient photographs reveal more. But Emma has to fish in dark and dangerous waters to get the whole story of a wealthy, ruthless family, a story that twists and turns to a shocking conclusion that should never be told.... Mary Daheim and I go back a long way -- well, seventeen or eighteen years. That's a long time for a publishing association. Years before I became Mary's editor on the Emma Lord/Alpine series for Ballantine, I was an editorial assistant at another trade house -- and that's where we met, long distance. She lives in Seattle; I live in New York; even eighteen year ago, the phone lines stretched in both directions. At the time Mary was writing successful historical romances for my then-boss, a senior editor. One day Mary and I revealed our unbridled passion for reading crime fiction. Little did I dream then that, soon after I arrived at Ballantine, Mary would become a crime writer herself. Of course, now she's a nationally renowned one . . . and I especially treasure her novels about Emma Lord, the editor-publisher of a small-town weekly newspaper in fictional (but based on fact) Alpine, Washington. The paper is called The Alpine Advocate, which is also the title of the first novel in the series. For any readers who haven't visited Alpine, I heartily recommend starting with Book One -- and then continuing forward (in alphabetical order) to THE ALPINE BETRAYAL, THE ALPINE CHRISTMAS, THE ALPINE DECOY, THE ALPINE ESCAPE, THE ALPINE FURY, THE ALPINE GAMBLE, THE ALPINE HERO, THE ALPINE ICON, THE ALPINE JOURNEY, and (coming soon) THE ALPINE KINDRED. --Joe Blades, Associate Publisher F THE ALPINE ADVOCATE GOES DIGGING FOR A MURDERER. At forty-two, newspaperwoman Emma Lord decides she needs time off to do some soul-searching. But her old Jag breaks down in the picturesque Pacific Northwest town of Port Angeles, and instead of finding herself, she ,s helping friends find the truth about a grisly discovery: a skeleton in their basement. The bones belong to those of an unknown young woman, buried in a crumbling mansion nearly a century ago. A crushed skull, a garnet earring, a locket containing a telltale keepsake *all whisper of tragedy. Ancient photographs reveal more. But Emma has to fish in dark and dangerous waters to get the whole story of a wealthy, ruthless family, a story that twists and turns to a shocking conclusion that should never be told.... THE EDITOR OF THE ALPINE ADVOCATE GOES DIGGING FOR A MURDERER. At forty-two, newspaperwoman Emma Lord decides she needs time off to do some soul-searching. But her old Jag breaks down in the picturesque Pacific Northwest town of Port Angeles, and instead of finding herself, she, s helping friends find the truth about a grisly discovery: a skeleton in their basement. The bones belong to those of an unknown young woman, buried in a crumbling mansion nearly a century ago. A crushed skull, a garnet earring, a locket containing a telltale keepsake *all whisper of tragedy. Ancient photographs reveal more. But Emma has to fish in dark and dangerous waters to get the whole story of a wealthy, ruthless family, a story that twists and turns to a shocking conclusion that should never be told.... Mary Richardson Daheim  started spinning stories before she could spell. Daheim has been a journalist, an editor, a public relations consultant, and a freelance writer, but fiction was always her medium of choice. In 1982, she launched a career that is now distinguished by more than sixty novels. In 2000, she won the Literary Achievement Award from the Pacific Northwest Writers Association. In October 2008, she was inducted into the University of Washington’s Communication Alumni Hall of Fame. Daheim lives in her hometown of Seattle and is a direct descendant of former residents of the real Alpine, which existed as a logging town from 1910 to 1929, when it was abandoned after the mill was closed. The Alpine/Emma Lord series has created interest in the site, which was named a Washington State ghost town in July 2011. An organization called the Alpine Advocates has been formed to preserve what remains of the town as a historic site. Chapter One   I HAD BEEN warned. Sooner or later, it was bound to happen. My beautiful secondhand Jaguar would develop mechanical problems. Apparently, it finally had. It wouldn’t start. To me, that’s a mechanical problem.   I’d parked the Jag at the end of a long row of cars