Card Me This: Aunt Gertie's Cozy Murder Mysteries
By Oscar Tate
Fleece, Fraud & Foul Play
Some secrets are woven too deeply to unravel without tearing the fabric apart.
For forty-one years, seventy-three-year-old Gertrude Fold has assessed the fleeces at the annual valley wool fair. She knows the weight of an honest clip and the rich scent of fresh lanolin in the morning air. She also understands the precise tension required to keep a rural community stacked together like a dry fieldstone wall.
But this year, the foundation cracks.
When Marcus Dray, a strict federation wool auditor, is found dead in Banner Farm’s shearing barn days before the auction, Gertrude knows the official story is a bad grade. While the police search the grounds for a missing hand blade, Gertrude quietly looks for the true discrepancy. Armed with decades of private judging records and accompanied by her fiercely independent grey cat, Issy, she begins her own cold audit of the valley’s history.
What she uncovers is a twenty-year-old pattern of grading fraud, passed down through legacy mentorships and desperately protected. Someone has been inflating their premium wool classifications, silently stealing the margins from honest neighbors. And they were willing to silence an auditor with a single blow to keep the ledger balanced.
As the fair opens and gossip-driven misdirection floods the tea tents, Gertrude must carefully skirt the edges of the truth. She wipes her palms on her coat, straightens her files, and prepares to deliver her final assessment.
Fleece, Fraud & Foul Play
Some secrets are woven too deeply to unravel without tearing the fabric apart.
For forty-one years, seventy-three-year-old Gertrude Fold has assessed the fleeces at the annual valley wool fair. She knows the weight of an honest clip and the rich scent of fresh lanolin in the morning air. She also understands the precise tension required to keep a rural community stacked together like a dry fieldstone wall.
But this year, the foundation cracks.
When Marcus Dray, a strict federation wool auditor, is found dead in Banner Farm’s shearing barn days before the auction, Gertrude knows the official story is a bad grade. While the police search the grounds for a missing hand blade, Gertrude quietly looks for the true discrepancy. Armed with decades of private judging records and accompanied by her fiercely independent grey cat, Issy, she begins her own cold audit of the valley’s history.
What she uncovers is a twenty-year-old pattern of grading fraud, passed down through legacy mentorships and desperately protected. Someone has been inflating their premium wool classifications, silently stealing the margins from honest neighbors. And they were willing to silence an auditor with a single blow to keep the ledger balanced.
As the fair opens and gossip-driven misdirection floods the tea tents, Gertrude must carefully skirt the edges of the truth. She wipes her palms on her coat, straightens her files, and prepares to deliver her final assessment.