Today
I’m privileged to share an excerpt from The Seduction of Miriam Cross by WA
Tyson.
The Blurb
Can Delilah Percy Powers figure out who killed Miriam Cross
before she becomes the killer's next target?
Miriam Cross, author, feminist and
philanthropist, disappears from her Philadelphia home. A year later, a lonely
recluse named Emily Cray is brutally murdered in her bed in a small
Pennsylvania town. Miriam and Emily are one and the same. As Delilah and her
staff of female detectives - a militant homemaker, an ex-headmistress and a
former stripper - delve into Miriam’s life, they become submerged in an
underworld of unfathomable cruelty and greed with implications that go far
beyond the gruesome death of one woman or the boundaries of one country.
Eventually Miriam’s fight for justice becomes Delilah’s own...until Delilah’s
obsession with finding the truth may prove just as deadly.
Buy the Book!
Excerpt
Barb was the first to arrive to the eight o’clock staff
meeting. She walked into Percy Powers wearing nylon sweat pants and a
golf shirt, carrying something loaf-shaped and wrapped in foil. This she
put down next to a stack of papers on her tiny desk.
Barb unwrapped the banana bread and sliced it with a
knife from the kitchenette. She arranged the slices on a small platter
and set them out on the conference table.
“What’s the
occasion?” Delilah said, nabbing a slice.
“Peace amongst the tribes.”
Delilah laughed. “Good luck with that.”
Yes, it was true that Margot and Natasha frequently argued, but Delilah wasn’t
so sure breaking bread together would help.
As though on cue, the two women came into the
room. Margot was dressed in a long-sleeved black cardigan and gray
pants. She carried an oversized LL Bean tote bag stuffed with
papers. Delilah noticed her stiff gate and wondered whether she’d hurt
herself again. Last time, Margot had tried kickboxing at her gym and
pulled a hamstring.
Natasha didn’t bother with hellos. She grabbed a
piece of banana bread and stuffed it in her mouth. Then she pulled up a
chair, swung it backwards and straddled it. She was wearing her signature
cargo pants and a sports bra. Margot gave her an exasperated stare but
didn’t say anything.
Delilah sat down. “We’ll keep this brief.
The Cross murder. Let’s go through what we have so far.”
Delilah filled the group in on her visit to Miriam’s
house in Chestnut Hill. Barb and Natasha related the details of their trips
to Center City. When they were done, Delilah turned toward Margot.
“Any luck with the online research?”
Margot pulled a stack of papers out of her tote.
“Lots of interesting stuff. Whether it’s helpful or not is another
story.”
Margot passed a set of stapled pages to each of the
women. “Here’s what I was able to find on the Web. Facebook,
LinkedIn, author sites, Publishers Weekly. I didn’t print out everything,
just the stuff that would give us a sense of who Miriam was, what she did in
her free time, her work, that sort of thing.”
The women took a few minutes to skim the papers.
Delilah saw lots of stuff about Miriam Cross, the public persona. But she
wanted to know about the private Miriam Cross. The woman who
emerged behind closed doors. The woman who’d worn the lingerie and
dabbled in bondage.
Barb shook her head. Echoing Delilah’s thoughts,
she said, “Facebook pages are unremarkable. No candid photos, no ranting
diatribes, no political affiliations. We already know what she writes.”
“Actually,” Margot said, “that’s where it does get a
little more . . . interesting.”
Margot sifted back through her tote. She pulled
out several slim books, different colors and sizes. Delilah recognized
them from her English literature classes. Literary magazines, those
purveyors of a struggling art form: the short story.
“Miriam wrote short fiction?”
Margot nodded. “Under the pen name Erica Moss.”
“Emily Cray. Erica Moss.” Natasha grabbed
one of the books off the pile. “She had more fake names than my bookie.”
Natasha skimmed until she found the page with Erica’s
byline on it and then began to read silently. After a minute, her eyes
widened.
“Did you read
this?” she said to Margot.
“I did.”
“This is some heavy stuff.” She tossed the book
to Delilah. “Check it out.”
Delilah read about half the story. It was about
a futuristic state where women were slaves and a handful of powerful men
ruled. Delilah found it reminiscent of Margaret Atwood–very dark, very
ominous, very realistically drawn. Still, it wasn’t that far removed from
Miriam’s main body of work. “Why publish this under a pen name?”
Margot shrugged. “I wondered the same
thing. It’s very Miriam Cross, if not a bit darker. If that’s
possible.”
“The graphic sex,” Natasha said. “Rape.
Humiliation. If her novels were usually tame, maybe she didn’t want to
offend her readers.”
“Good point.” Delilah checked the date on the
magazine. Two Decembers ago. Around the time she asked Lucinda to
leave the Chestnut Hill home. “Did she publish any others?”
Margot nodded. “Six that I could find, all under
the pen name Erica Moss. All had similar themes: hopeless future states
where women are subservient to men. Almost militaristic in their feminist
ideology. As Natasha pointed out, all had almost startling sexual
undertones.”
Barb said, “How did you put it together that Miriam
Cross was Erica Moss?”
“I found a blog by her agent, Liam McMaster, linking
the two names to the same author.”
Delilah sat forward in her chair. “Did you call
Liam?”
“I did. He hasn’t returned any of my calls yet.”
Delilah considered the date. “When were the
stories published?”
Margot picked through the literary magazines.
“That one you have is the oldest.” She held up two more booklets.
“The rest came out a month or two later. And I found a poem online,
published under the pen name E. M. Moss. Last June, I think.”
Barb said, “Around the same time she left Chestnut
Hill.”
“Right-o, although she probably wrote it well
before. I called the magazine and they said there is a three-month lag
time before an accepted piece is published.”
“Interesting,” Delilah said. “Do you have the
poem?”
“Right here. I printed it out.” Margot
shuffled through her bag again. She pulled out a red folder. Inside
was a single sheet of paper. She handed it to Natasha. “You read
it.”
Natasha sneered. “Give it to the whore, Sister?”
“That’s not what I meant. I don’t have my
glasses.”
“Sure, that’s why-”
Delilah held up her hands. “Please.”
Natasha looked back at the paper. When she
spoke, her voice was tight with anger. “He comes. I break under his
tutelage, a slut, a whore”–Natasha glanced at Margot–“an angel, pure and
innocent and so full of need I swell and grow in fury and anger until I am no
more. He fucks me frontward, backwards, and I succumb to the
madness. Like Chinnamasta, split in two, cognition separate from
sensation, pleasure entwined with shame. I know only him.”
When she finished reading, Natasha looked up.
“What the hell does that mean?”
Barb said, “Darn if I know. Sounds like she was
writing with a particular person in mind.”
Delilah said, “Who is Chinnamasta?”
“I looked her up,” Margot said. “This gets even
weirder. She’s a Tantric goddess. I read varying accounts, but the
bottom line? She symbolizes both sexual control and sexual energy.”
“Like a sexual awakening?” Natasha said.
Margot nodded.
Delilah stood. Now some of this was beginning to
make sense. “Exactly like a sexual awakening. The lingerie, now the
writing.” She turned toward the group. “Miriam Cross took a lover.”
“Sounds like sexual infatuation to me,” Barb said.
Delilah’s mind flashed to the scarves and the
blindfold, the way everything was neatly and lovingly folded despite the
violence suggested by the items themselves, items of bondage.
“But to Miriam,” Delilah said, “a woman who never
married, who, according to her niece, was asexual, it must have felt like a
loss of control. A wild, sensual loss of identity.”
Natasha repeated the lines, “Like Chinnamasta,
split in two, cognition separate from sensation, pleasure entwined with shame.”
No one spoke. Delilah thought about Miriam, so
full of intellectual curiosity, political ideals. Who could this man have
been? Very special, indeed, to have captured Miriam’s heart and body so
fervently.
Delilah turned to Margot. “You called this
‘coincidental.’ Why?”
Margot looked from one woman to another, her gaze
finally resting on Delilah. “Chinnamasta is also known as ‘she whose head
is severed.’”
Delilah’s looked at her in surprise. “Come
again?”
“The goddess is usually pictured standing on a
copulating couple. But always, she has her own head in her hands.”
Author Bio:
Wendy Tyson's
background in law and psychology has provided inspiration for her mysteries and
thrillers. The
Seduction of Miriam Cross, published by E-Lit Books in November 2013, is
the first novel in the Delilah Percy Powers mystery series. She has also
authored Killer Image,
published by Henery Press, the first in the Allison Campbell mystery
series. Her second Allison Campbell mystery is due out this summer.
Find Wendy at www.WATyson.com.
About the Book
