Title: A Penny Urned (Den of Antiquity)
First published: September 1, 2000
Description: Pickled...Then PottedAll that remains of Lula Mae Wiggins-who drowned in a bathtub of cheap champagne on New Year's Eve-now sits in an alleged Etruscan urn in Savannah, Georgia. Further north, at the Den of Antiquity antique shop in Charlotte, North Carolina, plucky proprietor Abigail Timberlake is astonished to learn that she is the sole inheitor of the Wiggins estate. Late Aunt Lula Mae was, after all, as distant a relative as kin can get. Arriving in picturesque Savannah, Abby makes a couple of startling discoveries. First, that Lula Mae's final resting pot is more American cheap than Italian antique. And second, that there was a very valuable 1793 one-cent piece taped to the inside lid. Perhaps a coin collection worth millions is hidden among the deceased's worldly possessions-making Lula's passoing more suspicious than orginally surmised. With the strange appearance of a voodoo preistess coupled with the disturbing disappearance of a loved one-and with nasty family skeletons tumbling from the trees like acorns-Abby needs to find her penny auntie's killer p.d.q...or she'll be up to her ashes in serious trouble!
Subjects: Fiction, Mystery, Fiction, mystery & detective, general, Southern states, fiction