Mystery Man. Diana Palmer

      Chapter One

      “It was a dark and stormy night…”

      A pair of green eyes glared at the twelve-year-old boy by the window who intoned the trite words in a ghostly voice.

      He shrugged. “Well, everybody starts a murder mystery that way, Janie,” Kurt Curtis told his older sister with a grin.

      Janine ran restless fingers through her short black hair, muttering at the few words on her computer screen. “I don’t,” she murmured absently. “That’s why I sell so many of them.”

      “Diane Woody,” he intoned, “bestselling authoress of the famous Diane Woody Mystery series.” He scowled. “Why do you use your pen name for your main character’s name? Isn’t that redundant?”

      “It was the publisher’s idea. Could you ask questions later?” she mumbled. “I’m stuck for a line.”

      “I just gave you one,” he reminded her, grinning wider. He was redheaded and blue-eyed, so different from her in coloring that most people thought he was someone else’s brother. He was, however, the image of their maternal grandfather. Recessive genes will out, their archaeologist parents were fond of saying.

      Their parents were on a new dig, which was why Janine was in Cancñaun working, with Kurt driving her nuts. Dan and Joan Curtis, both professors at Indiana University, were in the Yucatñaan on a dig. There had been several other archaeologists on the team, most of whom had to return to take classes. Since this was a newly discovered, and apparently untouched, Mayan site, the Curtises had taken a temporary leave of absence from their teaching positions to pursue it. It wasn’t feasible to take Kurt, who was just getting over a bad case of tonsillitis, into the jungles. Neither could they leave him in the exclusive boarding school he attended.

      So they’d taken him out of his boarding school for two months—with the proviso that Janine tutor him at home. They’d rented this nice beach house for Janine, where she could meet her publisher’s deadline and take care of her little brother. He was well now, but she had him for the duration, which could easily mean another month, and she had to juggle his homebound school assignments with her obligations. The dig was going extremely well, Professor Curtis had said in his last E-mail message through the computer satellite hookup at their camp, and promised to be a site of international importance.

      Janine supposed it would be. The benefit of it all was that they had this gorgeous little villa in Cancñaun overlooking the beach. Janine could write and hear the roar of the ocean outside. It gave her inspiration, usually. When Kurt wasn’t trying to “help” her, that was.

      She was just slightly nervous, though, because it was September and the tail end of hurricane season, and this had been a year for hurricanes. One prognosticator called it the year of the killer winds. Poetic. And frightening. So far there hadn’t been too much to worry them here. She prayed there wouldn’t be any more hurricanes. After all, it was almost October.

      “Did you notice the new people next door?” Kurt asked. “There’s a tall, sour-looking man and a girl about my age. He’s never home and she sits on their deck just staring at the ocean.”

      “You know I don’t have time for neighbors,” she murmured as she stared at the screen.

      “Don’t you ever stop and smell the flowers?” he asked with disgust. “You’ll be an old maid if you keep this up.”

      “I’ll be a rich old maid,” she replied absently as she scrolled the pages up the screen. “Besides, there’s Quentin.”

      “Quentin Hobard,” he muttered, throwing up his hands. “Good Lord, Janie, he teaches ancient history!”

      She glared at him. “He teaches medieval history, primarily the Renaissance period. If you’d listen to him once in a while, you might discover that he knows a lot about it.”

      “Like I can’t wait to revisit the Spanish Inquisition,” he scoffed.

      “It wasn’t as horrible as those old movies suggest,” she said, sitting up to give him her undivided attention.

      “I was thinking more along the lines of ‘Monty Python,’” he drawled, naming his favorite classic television show. He got up and struck a pose. “Nobody escapes the Spanish Inquisition!”

      She threw up her hands. “You can’t learn history from a British comedy show!”

      “Sure you can.” He leaned forward, grinning. “Want to know the real story of the knights? They used coconut shells for horses—”

      “I don’t want to hear it,” she said, and covered her ears. “Let me work or we’re both going to starve.”

      “Not hardly,” he said with confidence. “There’s always royalties.”

      “Twelve, and you’re an investment