Third Lock Mystery, Book One
The Spare Key
A Third Lock Mystery
The spare on her tagged board is lying next to a body.
The Kindle edition is included with Kindle Unlimited.
Bess Ward cuts keys and opens other people’s doors. She does not leave her tagged spares on mill-office floors.
In Third Lock, a Great Lakes canal town that still smells of oil and wet wood, the mill pay-office is found locked from the inside. Ray Deller, the museum director, is dead. Beside him is the spare Bess hung Tuesday at 4:20, after she filed that cylinder herself.
Only three keys should exist. One is in the lock. One is Bess’s spare, which is not on the board. The third is unaccounted for.
Chief Rourke would like the storefront to be the answer. Deputy Dan Holt would like a door that makes sense.
The Spare Key is Book 1 of the Third Lock mysteries: a clean, closed-case cozy about keys, copies, and a locksmith who did the job.
From the book
Hands tell you if a person has been working.
Chapter 1
I name them the way other people name cousins because a cousin will lie to you and a tag will not.
Chapter 1
From the sidewalk they read the right way. From inside they read the wrong way, which is how you know you are the person with the keys.
Chapter 1
Details
- Series
- Third Lock Mystery, book 1
- Formats
- Kindle and paperback
- Published
- September 15, 2026
- Paperback ISBN
- 979-8995176664
- Publisher
- Anchorline Publishing