Mummy's Locket (Mallory Grayson Mysteries Book 1)

Mummy’s Locket

A buried family secret resurfaces in Mummy’s Locket, the first book in Nan S. Russell’s Mallory Grayson Mysteries series.

After the death of her beloved grandmother and the loss of her inheritance, thirty-year-old Mallory Grayson leaves behind a sheltered life and moves to the quiet town of Jasper Falls, New York. Hoping to rebuild, she opens a vintage shop filled with what remains of her family heirlooms. But her fresh start takes a chilling turn when the mummified body of her great-grandmother, missing since 1933, is discovered.

As Mallory follows clues hidden in old possessions, a secret room, and long-buried family history, she uncovers a blackmail scheme, painful truths, and a murder that still casts a shadow over the present. With an ex-fiancé returning and the risks growing closer to home, Mallory must decide whether to protect the secret she has inherited or reveal the truth at any cost.

Step into a mystery where cursed love, buried secrets, and elevated courage collide. Read Mummy’s Locket today.

Excerpt from the book

This isn’t the life I imagined. I push the preset for music. Too uplifting. I try again, then hit off. Trucks, motorcycles, beat up cars, fancy cars – a plethora of vehicles are stopped on this one-way, dirt road entrance. I reach the back of the line, turn off the engine, and stare out the window. Even this early April morning with its vibrant blue sky, frothy clouds, and new-growth evergreens can’t ease my angst. Leaving home was hard. Starting over is harder.

I’m a Grayson and Graysons don’t sell at flea markets, or online, or scour estate and garage sales for items to resell. It’s temporary I tell myself, keeping the mantra of my favorite Hawaiian T-shirt on mental replay: No rain, no rainbow. I’m not what you’d call a people person. It’s exhausting to talk to so many of them, maneuver crowds, and engage in a peculiar dance for a few dollars that wouldn’t buy a sit-down breakfast or a decent bottle of wine.

I open late. No one seems to notice. Or care. Most days are organized chaos here, but even more so today. It’s Free Admission Sunday, a once-a-month endeavor at Three Corners Flea Market, family owned and operated thirty years. Open weekends, it’s a popular stop en route to the Finger Lakes and wine country, averaging three thousand shoppers a day.

A whiff of butter-flavored popcorn overwhelms my empty stomach – not in a good way – as rusty speakers serenade shoppers with The Beach Boys’ “Help Me Rhonda.” For me, it’s song eight of thirty-two that loop all weekend. On Sundays, families come. So do out-for-a-stroll couples, beautiful-day-for-adventure folks, crafters, amateur home decorators, and Antique Road Show dreamers. The hard-core collectors, resellers, and dealers arrive Saturday at first light to line up for opening.

My booth is on the corner of Puppy and Sunflower. North-south dirt lanes have animal names and east-west plant ones, making it easy for shoppers to find their way. There are booths with vinyl records and comic books, electronics, furniture, clothes, jewelry, coins, ephemera, art, crafts, and a mixture of things old and new.

Today, I have an eclectic array of music boxes, costume jewelry, miniature oil lamps, kaleidoscopes, knickknacks, framed art miniatures, and collectibles. All vintage. At Three Corners Flea that label means twenty years or older, or pre-1995. My booth’s small, with three gently worn ten-foot tables in a U-shape, one folding metal chair, and a frayed green canopy supported by dented aluminum poles. More expensive options exist, even indoor space, but this is all I can afford as an April through October vendor.

A little boy, no older than four, hands me a 1980s heart pin, “How much?” he asks, his father behind him, “It’s for Mommy.”

I make eye contact with Dad as I bend to the boy’s level and smile, “What’s your name?”

He looks up to see his father nod, then answers, “Joey.”

“Well, Joey, I’ll take three dollars for it.”