Preview: The Accused Coroner Chapter 1
Fenway Stevenson Mysteries Book Seven
Coming March 9, 2021 • Preorder Now
The choir rose in their black-and-burgundy vestments and began to sing “Amazing Grace.” The reverend backed away from the pulpit, clasping the worn Bible with both weathered hands, still looking soberly at the congregation after his words of comfort.
Fenway Stevenson shifted in the hard wooden pew, five rows from the front. She hadn’t realized how noisy her favorite black dress was until she’d sat down in the echo chamber of the Ladera Heights First Baptist Church. Even with the choir singing, it sounded like she was ripping up newspaper.
A man in a charcoal gray suit, the shoulders too broad for his frame, sat across the aisle. One of the few white people in the church, he was next to an older woman who was probably his mother. He looked oddly familiar. Then Fenway placed him: Dr. Richard Ivanovich, her opponent in the coroner election back in November. Fenway blinked and looked harder, just to be sure.
He looked uncomfortable. What was he doing here—not just in this church, but in L.A.?
She stared at him for a long time before realizing the hymn was over and the preacher was walking back to the pulpit.
The woman next to Fenway—about her age, though a good six inches shorter than Fenway’s five-ten—kept looking at her out of the corner of her eye. The church was overheated in the chill of the January day, and the woman fanned herself with the funeral service program.
After the hymn and the benediction, the organ started playing another piece that Fenway didn’t quite recognize, and people stood and began to filter out. Some of them walked up to the front row—where several...Read More
