Contents (42)
- Praise for Death in the Family
- Books by Tessa Wegert
- Contents
- ONE
- TWO
- THREE
- FOUR
- FIVE
- SIX
- SEVEN
- EIGHT
- NINE
- TEN
- ELEVEN
- TWELVE
- THIRTEEN
- FOURTEEN
- FIFTEEN
- SIXTEEN
- SEVENTEEN
- EIGHTEEN
- NINETEEN
- TWENTY
- TWENTY-ONE
- TWENTY-TWO
- TWENTY-THREE
- TWENTY-FOUR
- TWENTY-FIVE
- TWENTY-SIX
- TWENTY-SEVEN
- TWENTY-EIGHT
- TWENTY-NINE
- THIRTY
- THIRTY-ONE
- THIRTY-TWO
- THIRTY-THREE
- THIRTY-FOUR
- THIRTY-FIVE
- THIRTY-SIX
- THIRTY-SEVEN
- Acknowledgments
- What’s next on your reading list?
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Wegert, Tessa, author.
Title: The dead season / Tessa Wegert.
Description: First edition. | New York: Berkley Prime Crime, 2020. |
Series: A Shana Merchant novel
Identifiers: LCCN 2020022052 (print) | LCCN 2020022053 (ebook) | ISBN 9780593097915 (trade paperback) | ISBN 9780593097922 (ebook)
Subjects: GSAFD: Mystery fiction. | Suspense fiction.
Classification: LCC PS3623.E422656 D42 2020 (print) | LCC PS3623.E422656
(ebook) | DDC 813/.6—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020022052
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020022053
First Edition: December 2020
Cover image © Carmen Spitzmagel/Trevillion images
Cover design by Erin Fitzsimmons
Title page photograph: Shutterstock/Sarah Mika
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
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Contents
Cover
Praise for Death in the Family
Books by Tessa Wegert
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Acknowledgments
About the Author
For Karl, Leila, and Karel with boundless love
Swanton, Vermont
August 1995
The forest circled John R. Raleigh Memorial Field like a scythe, its tree line cutting an arc into the park’s sun-scorched grass. The grass was where I played Little League, back before I decided there were better ways to spend my time in Swanton.
There was no game being played on the day we walked those woods, but there had been. Just two hours earlier, dozens of children and their parents had swarmed the field, mothers chasing toddlers through the silver dust blowing in from the limestone quarry at the end of the road. Nodding absently when their older children, fed up with watching baseball, begged to explore the woods. That’s why what we found there was so alarming. Whoever left it intended for kids to see it. Kids like us.
“Check it out.”
I stopped. He was a few steps ahead of me, and his body blocked my view, but I was conscious of a new sound linking up to the chatter of crickets at our feet and warblers in the leafy, wind-jostled canopy of trees overhead. The flies, mechanical in their buzzing, hovered just beyond where he stood. I closed the distance between us and looked down, first at the toes of my size-three Keds, filthy now—Mom would be pissed—and then at the box. Large. Plastic. Containing something that made my insides squirm.
“Ew,” I said, pressing my chin against his shoulder. He smelled sweaty, which was new; at nine and a half, six months younger than me but tall for his age, he was well on his way to puberty. “What is it?”