About the Book

Young attorney JD Thompson looks forward to a quiet Thanksgiving week when a raging storm floods Central Texas, confining him and his partners to the Victorian mansion where they work and live. The fine print of their agreement with the house’s owner kicks in, and he and his partners must run a disaster shelter for the town of Beauchamp. The flood waters creep closer to the house, the food supply dwindles, and power and internet fail while people and their pets grow clamorous, but JD’s real problem is a lost child who doesn’t belong to anyone in the shelter. Can JD protect the boy and find his family, or will the storm claim one more life in a long list of tragedies?

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Excerpt

The next day, when I brought back lunch from the Happy Family Restaurant, Dianne yelled from her office, “JD, can we use that photo of you dancing at my cousin’s wedding?”

“Sure,” I said on autopilot as I danced around four kittens swarming me or the open door; I’m not sure which.

I set the bag of community egg rolls and won ton soup on the front desk and went to my own office. I answered three emails before my sense of self-preservation kicked in.

Dianne and Chantal sat with their laptops open on the far side of Dianne’s glass worktable. Despite ancestries from opposite sides of the globe, they looked like my twin sisters caught in the act of something, their eyes wide and shoulders hunched. Something told me Dianne didn’t want my picture for the company social media. Chantal was helping Dianne with the upcoming flood of tax work, but she didn’t need my photo for that.

Officer Al, formally known as Officer Alejandro Quintanilla-Villanueva, sat near the door. He swallowed his egg roll and replied with all the aplomb a young, recently minted officer can muster, “Dianne and Chantal are helping me with my inquiries.”

“Oh? Am I part of a lineup?” I asked.

Chantal, earnest as a nun, said, “Not like that at all! No one will recognize you.”

I picked up Dianne’s white and gold cat Nevada from the last chair in the room and put her in my lap. “Obviously there’s a story.”

They shared glances. Chantal turned her laptop around so I could see her graphics work.

It doesn’t often happen, but I was struck silent.

“I blended you with this Spanish soccer star.” She opened another photo. “I couldn’t use him—”

“Because everyone would say, ‘That’s Fernando Torres,’” I said. “So why have you joined Fernando and me in this unholy Photoshop-imony? Though we do look…is dashing the word? If older.”

“I was going for silver fox,” said Chantal. “Though still somewhat golden.”

“Something to aspire to,” I agreed. “Why do you need a silver-gold fox?”

Glances flew around the room again, an undertow of things unsaid.

Dianne sighed. “I see we’re going to have to tell you everything.”

I smiled and stretched my legs. The office felt cramped with four people in it, not to mention four kittens. Two tabbies, brown and orange, wrestled across Dianne’s keyboard. Another tabby slashed at ankles from under the desk.

“Officer Alejandro has a case like my tía, a lady who invested money in an online romance.”

He nodded. “The financial detectives in the Austin Police Department are investigating an international crime network, and one of the victims lives in Beauchamp. I talked to her, and she insisted that they and I were lying. She knew this man loved her and would come here to join her, as soon as he paid off debts and bribed officials for a visa. She sent him $12,000. He was more real to her than me, sitting in the same room with her. She’d never do anything to hurt him. What do you do when the biggest obstacle is the victim?”

Chantal declared, “Well, we’re doing something about it.” She gestured to her laptop. “Meet Diego García Aznar.”

“Don’t show him to my mother,” Dianne said. “She’ll have me engaged to him in a week.”

“Don’t show him to my dad,” I replied. “He’ll think it’s his long-lost son.”

Chantal mused, “I think we should send him to JD’s dad and see what he’ll pay for Diego never to show up on the doorstep as his son.”

“I think you should remember I’m an officer of the court and Al is an officer of the law,” I advised. “And that my father’s also a lawyer, a bad choice for scams.”

“I’m joking.” But she eyed Al hard, to make sure he knew.

Officer Al forced a grin. “JK, right. The photo does look a lot like JD.”

“Him and that Spanish soccer star. But older. You think your aunt will go for him, Dianne?”

Dianne said, “For certain. Crop the other people out, though. She’d recognize our relatives.”

About the Author

After stints in professional orchestras, law firms, cat rescue, bookkeeping, and technical communication, M. R. Dimond returned to a childhood dream of writing fiction, which has turned out to be about musicians, lawyers, veterinarians, accountants, and cats. Her Black Orchid Enterprises Mystery series, set in her near-native Texas, currently contains three novels with more soon to come.

She has had short fiction published in Strange Horizons, Dancing USA, and various anthologies (most recently in Dreaming the Goddess; Hook, Line, and Sinker; and Riddles, Resolutions, and Revenge), as well as nonfiction articles in various publications.

She holds an MBA from University of Tulsa and is a veteran of writing workshops, including Clarion, Viable Paradise, Jim Gunn’s Center for Science Fiction, and Taos Toolbox. She lives in the wilderness east of Austin, Texas, with her husband and many foster cats.

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