A Brilliant Plan

Accused of murder and entangled in a web of deceit, Calendar Moonstone, a celebrated jewelry artist, finds herself at the heart of a high-stakes investigation. With a detective who's as charming as he is suspicious, a meddling mother, and a 'boyfriend' whose alibis are as shaky as his knees, Calendar must use her sharp wit and hidden talents to clear her name. But as she delves deeper into the art world's underbelly, she uncovers secrets that could either save her or expose her own dangerous past. Can she outwit her pursuers and solve the murder before her own brilliant plan unravels?

FOR TWENTY-TWO minutes, my mother deliberately omitted the fact that the police were waiting for me in the den with some questions regarding a murder.

After a long drive from L.A. down to San Diego, in Thanksgiving traffic hell, I parked my little red Mazda Miata in front of the House of the Moon. I angled the rear mirror and gave my face a quick check. Arranging my shoulder length blonde hair to look suitably timid, I smacked my lips several times to give them more blood and applied a gentle finger massage to the overnight pouches under my sapphire blue eyes.

My parent's house was a wooden conglomerate of assorted architectural styles with one thing in common: asymmetry. The rainbow colored street facade sported one door, that's all, no windows. From the front door, you stepped directly into the kitchen. There were two and a half stories on the left and two on the right. A mock porch was on the left of the building and a row of marble pillars and arches was on the right. Dad had made a clear statement with this house: 'We. Are. Different.' The neighbors with the perpetual worries about property values and zoning called it the 'Moon-Shed'; the bitter neighbors spoke about the 'Moon-Dump.' My sister Sunny and I just called it 'home.'

A Brilliant Plan

Art femaleprotagonist Crime Mystery Humor