Dead Mans Bones (China Bayles Mysteries #13)
by By Albert, Susan Wittig
Category: Fiction , Mystery & Detective , Women Sleuths

China Bayles already has her hands full balancing her job, her family, and her friends' romantic entanglements. Then her teenage son finds some skeletal remains during a local cave dig - remains from a not-so-distant, not-so-accidental death.It's a disturbing development, but China doesn't let it distract her too much from happier events, like the opening of the new community theater donated by the elderly Obermann sisters. Unfortunately, Jane Obermann - a haughty shrew to the locals, and an overbearing bully to Florence, her frail younger sister - made the donation with the condition that the first production be a play she has written about the Obermann family's aristocratic history.But the premiere party ends abruptly when a local ne'er-do-well handyman with a grudge against the sisters is shot dead by Jane - apparently while breaking into the Obermann estate. It would seem to be a clear-cut case of self-defense, but China senses something else behind the shooting. Now, the key to catching a killer might be the mysterious bones in the cave - a clue from the past that could help China solve a mystery in the present.