Death in a Funhouse Mirror (50 page)

I felt a surge of something like panic. My ESP isn't finely tuned but there might have been a flashing sign over the couch saying "run." I didn't know what was coming but I wanted to rush out of the house, jump in my car, and drive away as fast as I could. Instead I put out a hand and went across the room to meet her.

"Thea, this is Julie Bass. Julie, my daughter, Thea Kozak."

She smiled up at me and held out her hand. "I'm so glad to finally meet you. I've heard so much about you from your mother." She had a light, breathless, little-girl voice. With my mother hovering behind me, I leaned down, took her tiny, cold hand in mine, and was pulled into a maelstrom of chaos, deception, and death.

 

 

K
atharine
C
lark (a pseudonym for author Kate Flora) was an assistant attorney general in Augusta, Maine, before moving to Massachusetts to marry, later working in public interest law and general private practice. She retired to raise her children and to write. As Kate Flora, she is the author of seven Thea Kozak mysteries and two Joe Burgess police procedurals, as well as the true crime work,
Finding Amy: A True Story of Murder in Maine
. She is a former editor and publisher of Level Best Books, and former international president of Sisters in Crime. She divides her time between Maine and Massachusetts. Flora teaches writing for Grub Street in Boston.