A Piece Too Many

About this book

Pruett's Ferry, Vermont, autumn 1933. Teddy Lusk, twenty-three, broke and foul-mouthed, rents hand-cut jigsaw puzzles at ten cents a week from the back of her dead mother's shuttered drugstore, and quietly blackmails anyone careless enough to leave a secret in the box. Then the Deacon's widow returns a covered bridge with one piece too many: a sliver of old mahogany showing a man's cuff and half a signet ring, the ring of a Boston heir found dead below the mill dam in 1909. The cabinetmaker's apprentice convicted of that killing came home on parole two days ago. To Teddy the piece looks like money. To Augie Pelletier, the constable she has spent years mocking, it looks like justice. Somewhere in town is the rest of the puzzle, and someone who would very much prefer it stayed lost.