[Dead Cold Mystery 21] • A Christmas Killing

Statistically people don’t get murdered on Christmas day.

Lilith Jones was a statistical anomaly. Her mother found her face down on the frozen sidewalk, by the light of the single streetlamp on Pugsley Avenue, with her neighbor’s scissors stuck in her back.

The scissors belonged to her neighbor, and so did all the fingerprints on them. Her neighbor, Pat Perkins, hated Lilith. She hated her because her own husband, her brother and her daughter all loved Lilith. Lilith was charming, beautiful, smart and adorable.

Now she was dead, too.

But Pat, who was unlovable, ugly and stupid, had vanished without a trace, taking her Toyota RAV4 with her. BOLOs were issued nation wide, her financials were checked and rechecked, her phone was tapped, but it was like she had vanished off the face f the Earth.

When Stone and Dehan take the case, it’s a mystery, but the deeper they dig the more impenetrable it becomes, until they find Pat’s lover, Bobby Hansen. Then the terrible truth begins to emerge…