The Blue Corn Murders: A Eugenia Potter Mystery (The Eugenia Potter Mysteries)

The Blue Corn Murders: A Eugenia Potter Mystery (The Eugenia Potter Mysteries)

Kernels of Truth.... When Eugenia Potter stumbles upon some ancient pottery shards on her ranch, she feels a profound connection with the past.  And a deep desire to learn more about the relics.  Now, she's heeding the call of her soul--by visiting an archaeological camp amid the magnificent cliff dwellings of Colorado's Mesa Verde. But strange things are happening at Mesa Verde, from the director's increasing mental confusion to a visitor's grisly death.  Even a Talking Circle--a traditional ritual facilitated by the passing around of an ear of blue corn--doesn't reveal the source of the trouble.  And when a busload of teenagers on a hiking trip disappears without a trace, Mrs. Potter begins some digging... to unearth a cruel scheme, a long-buried secret, and the deadly fruits of a killer's dark hungers. "[Mrs. Potter is] an appealing addition to the ranks of amateur detectives, a kind of combined Nero Wolfe, Miss Marple and Lord Peter Wimsey." -- McCall's Kernels of Truth.... When Eugenia Potter stumbles upon some ancient pottery shards on her ranch, she feels a profound connection with the past. And a deep desire to learn more about the relics. Now, she's heeding the call of her soul--by visiting an archaeological camp amid the magnificent cliff dwellings of Colorado's Mesa Verde. But strange things are happening at Mesa Verde, from the director's increasing mental confusion to a visitor's grisly death. Even a Talking Circle--a traditional ritual facilitated by the passing around of an ear of blue corn--doesn't reveal the source of the trouble. And when a busload of teenagers on a hiking trip disappears without a trace, Mrs. Potter begins some digging... to unearth a cruel scheme, a long-buried secret, and the deadly fruits of a killer's dark hungers. Nancy Pickard is a two-time Edgar Award nominee and winner of the Macavity, Anthony, and American Mystery awards. The creator of the successful Jenny Cain series, she lives in Prairie Village, Kansas. At the edge of a pasture, where the grass was golden and where it stood high enough to stroke the tips of her fingers, Eugenia Potter heard and felt something crunch under her boots. "Wait," she asked her companion. She bent down to part the silky blond grass with her hands, prompting a memory of combing her daughters' long straight hair for them when they were young. In the narrow part she had opened up, down on the ground, something darker than dirt caught her eye. She picked up the object she had broken by inadvertently stepping on it. "My word, it's pottery." She glanced up at the rancher standing beside her. He was seventy years old, tall as a door lintel and broad as the door that fit into it, with a face as lined, brown, and cracked as the bit of ceramic she cradled in her hands. From top to bottom he sported a cowboy hat made of tightly woven and polished straw, an indulgent smile, a white cotton shirt frayed at the collar, a monogrammed leather belt with a silver buckle as big as her hand, thick work jeans, and cowboy boots so worn, they looked as if he had put them on when he came of age and never took them off. A bit shabby around the edges from hard work and long bachelorhood, he didn't look much like the millions of dollars his neighboring ranch would sell for if he ever sold it--which he always swore he would not. He wanted more land, in fact, and specifically hers--Las Palomas ("The Doves"), which abutted his spread in the high Sonoran desert south of Tucson, Arizona. She knew that. And judging from the expression on his weathered face, he was not about to be deterred by a handful of shattered red and buff pottery. "Why should you keep workin' so hard, Genia?" His single-minded query completely overlooked the startled expression of joy in her blue eyes. Not that he wasn't aware of the eyes; at sixty-four, the widow now rising to her feet there in the clear hot September morning cut a fine figure in his estimation. He'd known her late husband, too, and in his opinion Lew Potter had been a fool to up and die on this lovely lady eleven years ago; if it had been him married to her, instead, he'd of stuck around, that was sure, no early heart attack for him. He approved of the natural look of her, the graying blond hair caught up so prettily in a bun at the top of her head, and the softly tanned complexion with only a touch of lipstick and a bit of some sort of delicate gray color there at the eyelids. She was attired much as he was--boots, slacks, long-sleeved shirt, wide-brimmed hat--and he approved of that, too. In fact, he approved of nearly everything about Genia Potter except for her unaccountable inattention to the important things he had to say. He even approved of the mysterious way she didn't sweat. It was a puzzle to him how she managed to look so crisp and fresh in the middle of a dusty pasture of native grass and cactus, on a morning hot enough to stagger a cow. Raising his voice, he pressed his case. "You can lease the wh