Murder, Take Two. Carol J. Perry

      Chapter 1

      “Hello. Lee? Roger Temple here. I guess you’ve heard about our nephew.”

      I hadn’t heard from Roger Temple—or from his identical twin brother, Ray—for nearly a year, but I knew from Roger’s “cop voice” that this wasn’t a casual, just-to-say-howdy call. The Temple twins are retired Boston police officers who’d taken a course on television production I’d once taught.

      I’m Lee Barrett—nee Maralee Kowalski—thirty-three, red-haired, Salem born, orphaned early, married once, and widowed young. I’ve worked in television, mostly in front of the cameras, since graduating from Boston’s Emerson College. I’d been a show host on a Florida home shopping channel, a network weather girl, and even had a brief, ill-fated stint as a call-in psychic, but for a short time I’d worked as an instructor in television production at the Tabitha Trumbull Academy of the Arts—Salem’s newest school—known locally as “the Tabby.” The school was located in the sprawling old building that had once housed Trumbull’s department store in downtown Salem. Now it bustled with the activities of aspiring dancers, poets, painters, actors, and more.

      “What’s going on, Roger?” I asked. “And what’s this about your nephew?” I sat at my kitchen table, waiting for the microwave to ding, telling me that my frozen macaroni and cheese dinner was ready. I remembered that the