The Skeleton Key

A sealed wing, a dead docent, and a small-town cozy mystery with skeletons behind every door. The Vane mansion is finally opening for Corliss Landing's historic house tour. Its grand rooms are ready for visitors. Its private wing is meant to stay shut. Locksmith Rachel Harlow is hired to certify the doors, keep the crowds out of trouble, and leave the family's secrets alone. Then a tour docent dies, and a lock Rachel has already examined gives her reason to doubt the tidy explanation. A sealed room is only sealed until someone finds a way in. An old-fashioned warded lock may hold the answer—if Rachel can work out whose key it was meant to stop. The trail reaches back to a disappearance in 1957 and an entry written in her grandfather's careful hand. Her father Walt can no longer speak, but the shorthand he left in the family Ledger may say more than anyone in that house wants heard. With Nate Brandt beside her in the archives and Tumbler taking an unsettling interest in the closed wing, Rachel begins to read the silence around the records. What did the docent recognize? And who will do whatever it takes to keep the tour from opening the wrong door? The Skeleton Key is Book Three of The Master Key Mysteries, pairing historic-house intrigue with fair-play clues, family bonds, wry humor, and gentle romantic tension. For readers who love: • Historic mansions and rooms with a hidden past • Cold-case connections and old-fashioned lock puzzles • Family records that reveal more than their writers intended • Clean whodunits with a warm cast and a curious cat