Title: GHOST NOTES
Author: Beth Henderson
Genre: Romantic Suspense
Book Blurb:
Jace Hastings, rising music star, is presumed dead in a vehicle collision, courtesy of a stalker with deadly designs. Ten years later, P.I. Gaelen Wyndom can’t believe someone wants her to find him.
Pelham Flannery rejoined the world from ICU, fully aware someone had tried to kill him. To live, he went under the radar, distanced himself from music, and disguised everything that would give away his identity as Jace. After a decade, is it safe to come out of hiding?
Gaelen, delighted to be trained as a professional investigator by her new husband, continued in her new career after he was killed. Assigned to locate Jace Hastings, she isn’t told who wants to find him, but she puzzles it out. If she’s right, it’s the man who tried to kill him before. Which means she needs to find Jace Hastings and save him.
Excerpt:
“I don’t understand.”
“What part?”
She sighed, irritated. “Any of it. The man is dead. Has been for nearly ten years.”
“Then prove it to the client,” the man across the desk from her said. “He believes Hastings is still alive, just in hiding.”
“Then he’s hiding for a reason. A good reason.”
“That’s not our call. We’re simply being paid to find him.”
Her sigh was louder this time. She shifted in her chair. “But he’s dead. It was in all the news reports at the time.”
“Was it?” He rifled through the papers in a folder on his desk. Considering the myriad ways technology had opened sleuthing far beyond the paper trail, he was way behind the times. He left those searches to the minions. Like her.
His index finger poked the printout to her left. “Here’s the original report. She was killed outright because she was behind the wheel. He was taken to the hospital.”
“I remember,” she said. “He wasn’t expected to live the night.”
“But apparently he did. Here’s her death certificate. The funeral notice. The media coverage of both the investigation and her funeral. There’s a single line about him in one of the tabloids, that he’s in intensive care, and that’s five days after the accident.”
“Which doesn’t prove he recovered.”
“Doesn’t prove he died, either. That’s your job. Find him whether he’s alive or buried. But…”
He paused for effect. Dramatic bastard.
“…he’s alive. The client is very emphatic that that’s the case.”
She was silent for a full minute, studying his face, the way his hands shuffled the copies of various reports and tucked them back in the bright red folder. Bright red because he liked color coding, and red not only indicated that he felt this was a high-profile case but that he was gouging the client for big bucks because he scented scandal in everything they’d told him.
“Why me?” she asked.
He leaned back in his chair. The leather groaned beneath his weight. “Not that I want this to sound like it’s sexist—”
Which meant it was very sexist.
“—but you’ve got all the qualifications necessary to draw our man from hiding.”
If he was hiding and not dead, which was far more likely.
“Meaning I’m female,” she said.
“A female with all the attributes our man was known to appreciate. You turn heads, Gaeley.”
She hated when he used the pet name. The one her husband had called her.
“Plus, you’ve got pipes.”
“Pipes! I haven’t sung in over five years. I didn’t have pipes then, so I really don’t have ’em now.”
“You got ’em,” he insisted. “You sang at the Christmas party last year.”
“Holiday party,” she corrected, “and it was a group sing-along.”
“Yours was the only voice I heard,” he said, his grin wide and a bit lascivious.
Pig. “I gave up singing because I was merely passable at it. That means not good enough to make a living from it. And besides—”
“Bullshit. You gave it up because you make far more money being one of my hounds. There’s no besides about it. You know why?”
“I’m on tenterhooks,” she said dryly.
“Because I don’t want you to follow the money on this one, honey. I want you to follow the music. That’s how to find Jace Hastings. Follow the music.”
****
“You’re killing yourself.”
The man once known as Jace Hastings looked up at the woman resting her weight on her forearms atop the baby grand. Her stylishly cropped blonde locks were streaked with attractive silver highlights, and her loosely fitted, cream silk blouse had been accessorized with a black-and-sand figured scarf wrapped to encircle her neck, then spill in two trailing tails down her front. As usual, her makeup gave the illusion of a flawless complexion and directed the attention toward her sage green eyes.
He cleared his throat. She gave him a look he was quite familiar with, huffed in disgust, and shifted her stance so her hip leaned against the side of the instrument instead, leaving the top once more a smooth sheet of highly polished onyx, free of obstruction.
Except for what he’d placed on the surface, that is. Sheets of wide staff manuscript paper with his sketched-in arrangement notes dancing along the lines were spread before him, a pencil resting atop the partially worked-out score. A keyboard and a drink were currently all he required to feel like a whole man.
Or a close replica of one these days.
“You are such a stickler,” she grouched. “I do own this thing, so if I want to lean on it, it’s my prerogative.”
“But I’m the one who plays it, tunes it.”
“Loves it more than you do your mother,” she snapped.
He grinned at her. Ran his fingers over the keys. “You’ve never admitted to being my mother in thirty-five years, C.C. I believe you’ve said you were my aunt upon occasion, or a close friend of the family.”
“Also, that I was at school with your mother,” she admitted. “Which I was, considering I am your mother.”
“Okay,” he said, relenting. “In what way am I killing myself?”
“By cutting yourself off from the only thing that matters,” C.C. insisted.
“Music.”
“Of course, music. You can’t just jettison it, Pel. It’s in your blood. Your father’s a musician. I’m a singer. You can’t help but eat, sleep, and breathe music. It’s bred into you.”
Pelham Flannery laughed. “Bullshit. Both of your parents are rabid political activists. Do you care a hoot about politics, any politics?”
The answer was reluctantly given. “No.”
“Dad’s entire family are equally rabid when it comes to religion. When’s the last time he set foot in a church?”
She wilted further.
“Which means…”
“Oh, go to hell,” she snapped.
“Already been there and have the scars to prove it,” he said trying for flippant. Just trying for it. Flippant wasn’t easy to pull off anymore.
Buy Links (including Goodreads and BookBub):
Amazon getbook.at/GhostNotes
November is a time to be thankful. What are you most thankful for this year?
This year…well, after spending an unplanned week in the hospital this past spring, one of the things I’m thankful for is that though the creaky joins remain, I’ve shed some of the things the doctors were dealing with and am still here to tell more stories. The second thing is that I achieved what I decided I wanted when 12 years old: to be a published novelist. Yeah, it took another thirty years to actually have a publisher go to contract on a manuscript, but this year my thirty-ninth novel was released, with number forty to follow next year. It’s even better that 5*s grace the reviews for those stories. Which means, I’m even more thankful to have such intelligent readers rewarding me with them.
Why is your featured book worth snuggling up to?
Well, if you’re looking to warm up should you live where late autumn and winter have you choosing which sweater to wear – INSIDE – Pel and Gaelen’s story could give you the sense of warmth simply because it takes place during the summer in both Phoenix and Surprise, Arizona! Trust me, it’s fry an egg on the sidewalk type of hot there. Mostly, I’d recommend GHOST NOTES because there’s a mystery to solve, a hero to keep alive as well as get him performing again. To get his life back to what it was before a stalker nearly killed him. The heroine is a PI who has been hired to find him. The more she digs into things, the dicier they become. They are a delightful couple, and part of that is the music that runs through the story. It even gave me a chance to hire on characters from another of my books as secondary characters.
Giveaway –
One lucky reader will win a $100 Amazon gift card.
Open internationally.
Runs November 1 – 30, 2024
Drawing will be held on December 2, 2024.
Author Biography:
Beth Henderson’s fiction spinning career as a published author will celebrate its thirty-fifth birthday in May 2025. She’s written under several pseudonyms, and probably has never seen a genre niche she didn’t want to try on for size. That means she’s written romantic comedy, historical romantic adventure and mystery, romantic suspense (with and without comedy), Weird West and Victorian Steampunk, 1920s Dieselpunk adventure comedy, YA romantic comedy, and urban fantasy PI mystery comedy. She sorta likes comedy. She’s a regular online workshop presenter with several RWA online chapters, Outreach International, and Savvy Authors. She’s even written non-fiction books on how to write genre fiction.
Social Media Links:
Beth Henderson on Facebook http://bit.lywriting /2GvFyog
Beth Henderson on Twitter @Beth__Henderson