by
Tamatha Cain
Genre:
Historical Fiction, Mystery
Love
is a song played on repeat…
A
cryptic blog post leads cold case podcasters Melody and Dorian on a
twisty journey back in time to uncover the mysterious story of a
forgotten missing woman.
In 1969 near the
Florida/Georgia Line, idealistic young Betty Langdon and fast-rising
R&B singer Dominicus Owens begin an irresistible but dangerous
interracial romance that ends under mysterious, heartbreaking
circumstances. Betty is forced to return to her rural home to care
for her manipulative mother, while Dominicus goes on to mega-stardom
with his band The Downtown Sound. She follows his skyrocketing career
from behind the front desk of a dying highway motel--until one day
decades later, she disappears.
Now, a popular true crime
podcast produced by college friends Melody Hinterson and Dorian
Santos takes on the cold case of a missing local woman. The duo’s
carefully-balanced workplace dynamic is weirdly off-kilter lately,
but they can't take their eyes off the investigation as the
intriguing new story suddenly boosts the show into the national
spotlight. When the investigation uncovers the missing woman's
diaries full of family secrets and the century-old legend of a
fortune hidden in an old chimney somewhere in town, the truth behind
the podcast's mystery suddenly becomes personal, and Melody must make
life-changing choices before the final episode airs.
But who
owns the rights to a secret?
Amazon
* B&N
* OrangeBlossomBooks
* Books2Read
* Bookbub
* Goodreads
A sound came from
somewhere down the sidewalk. The other girls sauntered into the saloon, the
cheers of an already rowdy crowd pouring out the doors along with the sound of
guitar sound checks. As the doors closed behind them, the sound from down the
road rose again. Voices. Voices singing.
The dark asphalt road glowed with puddled yellow light. Betty strolled to the
nearest light pole and stopped, listening. Her head bobbed along with the
music, the harmony buzzing through her belly. She walked to the next light
pole, stopped again, one hand against the humid wood. My Girl. She loved that
song—the harmony so sweet, it brought a craving to her tongue. She swallowed
hard.
She looked back toward the saloon, then forward again toward the sound. It was
coming from one of the small shotgun houses on the other side of the street. It
wasn’t a record. People were singing. No instruments, only voices. A cappella.
Like the hymn mama suggested last week at choir practice, mostly to put that
haughty organist Vera in her place. Betty leaned toward the source of the
sound, then pulled back, anchored to the post.
Whoa, whoa, whoa…they improvised,
somehow, in harmony.
The voices sang on about
all that honey and those envious bees. Tantalizing. Her mind filled in the
trumpet hit. She set her jaw tight and tilted her head, then stepped out toward
the next light pole. She stopped between posts, pressed her clutch against the
front of her skirt, clenched her knees together with a shudder. Her shoulders
swayed to the rhythm, a rhythm snapped by fingers on a porch across the street.
There were figures. Five men on the porch, singing and snapping The Temptations
song. Her mother didn’t even like their name, let alone their music.
But her mother wasn’t here.
Betty couldn’t turn away.
Her eyes adjusted to the light of a single bulb and the glowing tips of
cigarettes fluttering like fireflies. A man stood in each corner of the tiny,
weathered porch, singing their parts, their heads tilted toward the front door
as they found the harmony.
Against the front door
frame, a tall, narrow man leaned on his shoulder while he crooned the melody.
The bare bulb shone down like a spotlight between them. Betty closed her eyes
and imagined herself part of an audience, like on the Ed Sullivan Show. Her
shoulders rocked as she swayed.
The melody trickled down and stopped, giving way to a melodic hum.
“Live, from the porch on Edison Avenue!”
Her eyes flew open. They’d seen her. She froze.
“Hey, that’s alright now! We love an audience. Don’t we, boys?”
The harmonizing stopped
and they chimed in agreement.
“Sure we do!”
“Yes, indeed!”
“Any requests?”
The tall one came down the stairs and stood across the street. His eyes glinted
golden brown in the yellow moonlight and a wave of black hair swooped up from
his smooth brown forehead. He wore a collared shirt with short sleeves tucked
into pegged trousers. She looked at the ground, but her eyes found the grass at
his feet. His shoes were wingtips, brown, and polished to a high shine. She
focused on them, studied them, to keep from looking up at him. But she didn’t
walk away.
“Now, you’re not lost are you, ma’am?” he said. His voice was warm and
smoky.
Tamatha
Cain writes about ordinary people in extraordinary situations. She
believes that before she gave up a thriving business to pursue
writing full-time, her most compelling lines of prose were probably
found in the pages-long love notes she wrote to bewildered boys back
in middle school. Her writing has appeared in The Experience Art and
Literary Magazine, The Florida
Writer, American Cake Decorating, and others. She won the 2020 Royal
Palm Literary Award for Unpublished Literary Mystery and The
Experience Poetry Competition. She writes reviews for Southern
Literary Review and serves as a judge in the RPLA Awards. She is a
member of WFWA and FWA. (She
did eventually hone the love notes enough to impress her high school
sweetheart, and now they have three grown kids). Learn more about her
on her
website or
follow her on Twitter or Instagram.
Website
* Facebook *
Twitter * Instagram
* Bookbub
* Amazon
* Goodreads
Good Excerpt.
ReplyDeleteinteresting title
ReplyDeletePretty cover, great excerpt, Song of the Chimney Sweep sounds like an exciting mystery for me to enjoy!
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing it with me and have a sunhiny day!
This is a great excerpt
ReplyDelete