APPRAISAL FOR MURDER

Jolie Gentil moves to Great Aunt Madge s bed and breakfast at the Jersey shore, taking her cat Jazz, and joining Madge s pair of prune-eating dogs. Jolie does not view this as a retreat from her embezzling ex-husband, just a smart change. She had no idea her life was about to get even more complicated. Jolie finds work as a real estate appraiser, but a low-life named Joe Pedone demands that she repay some of her husband s gambling debts and she runs into Michael Riordan, her high school crush. She s not sure which one is more trouble. Jolie appraises Michael s mother s house and finds his mother dead in bed. Soon the mundane work of appraising real estate and dodging suggestions that she go to the ten-year high school reunion are mixed with calls from reporters, scary suggestions from Pedone, and requests that she help the local busybody with First Presbyterian s social services work. Jolie balances her fear of Pedone, conviction that Michael is innocent, and sometimes uneasy friendship with long-ago friend Scoobie. She plots ways to prove both friends innocent, but someone would rather see her dead._,