https://www.amazon.com/Murder-Midnight-Disease-Marcia-Gerhardt-ebook/dp/B078XM1DYP
This book is on sale on Amazon for $0.99 (regularly $14.99) 1/21/2019 - 1/27/2019!
What’s more important? Taking care of a mental younger brother, or your career?
As a PI, Giles Faulkner is approached to investigate a possible homicide following Houston Rodeo. Giles jumps at the opportunity to prove she is more than the “girlie detective” her male comrades had labeled her.
But so far, only wives of cheating husbands had hired her. Not exactly an ego boost and her funds were shrinking at an alarming rate.
The rodeo death was a young woman who fell from the smoking balcony. Her name was LeeAnn. Her death was labeled by those same “weenie detectives” (Giles’ slur) as suicide She was going to prove them wrong. The only stumbling block was her younger brother, Robby, who suffered from schizophrenia, bi-polar disorder, and a condition known as The Midnight Disease, or Hypergraphia; the urge to scribble on paper day and night, leaving the victim a puddle of confusion and hysteria.
As if planned, and only 10 days into Giles’ investigation, Robby stages a melt-down on top of the roof of his boarding house and threatens to jump. Knowing she must hospitalize her brother, she delivers him to his psychiatrist who secures him in the psychiatric ward at Ben Taub. Giles could not participate, knowing from experience she would break down and cry at the sight of Robby in a straight jacket. But only days later, Robby manages to escape. Giles panics. The police are understaffed. Finding Robby is not at the top of their list.
Giles divides her days between interviewing Rodeo big wigs, friends, neighbors, and relatives of LeeAnn, while reaching out to Robby’s favorite coffee digs and bars. A man on a motorcycle seems to follow her every move. A threat? When he finally introduces himself as Keymap, Giles is only irritated. He is related to her dead aunt, who, on her deathbed, made Keymap promise to keep an eye on Giles. Not necessary, thinks Giles, who has proudly taken care of herself and her brother most of her life.
Only when Giles is kidnapped, left wounded, and presumably dying beside a remote lake teeming with alligators, does she know she is on the right track. Clearly, if someone goes to the trouble of turning her into gator bait, LeeAnn’s death was no suicide.
With no stars in the blackened sky, she crawls , bleeding, to the empty highway. But just when she thinks she is dead anyway, Keymap, roars up on his motorcycle, a team of medics driving behind him, their van’s headlights fogging yellow in the dark.
After days in the hospital, visited by Keymap every day, Giles still wants him out of her life, allowing her to find her brother and the person who killed LeeAnn. When she finds LeeAnn’s cowboy hat underneath Robby’s bed, Giles feels threatened again. Did Robby know LeeAnn, and if so, could her brother be the killer?
