A missing woman, a chatty dead girl, and a detective who’s running out of time by donalee Moulton

 

Cardinal has landed. 

This is my newest book, and the most recent in BWL’s Paranormal Canadiana Collection. Set in Nova Scotia, Cardinal follows private detective Em Montgomery as she hunts for a missing woman. She expected dead ends. She did not expect a dead girl who refuses to stay buried. The detective finds herself knee-deep in fog, small-town secrets, and the uneasy sense she’s being watched by more than wildlife. 

I thought I’d share the opening pages with you.

 

ORDER HERE

 PROLOGUE

Thorburn Exchange, Pictou County, Nova Scotia

Tuesday, April 23, 1889

 

Catherine McIntosh kicks off her blankets. Again. She’s hot, and in the whirl of a restless sleep, her body seeks cool air. Any relief from the overwhelming heat. The eight-year-old doesn’t understand why it is so hot. Why she is so hot.

Her mother gently pulls the blankets back over her daughter’s feverish body. Catherine is sick, has been sick for days and days now. This started so simply, so normally. A sore throat, a mild fever. Catherine is long past that. Now her entire body aches and a red rash has spread across her little arms, legs, torso. Her fever fills the room with an anguished heat.

 

No one is saying the words every parent dreads to hear, but in her heart, this mother knows those words to be true. Scarlet fever.

Catherine’s mother refuses to hear the whispers consuming her daughter’s bedroom. Defiantly, she makes plans for Catherine’s ninth birthday a month from now. There will be cake. There will be games and songs and a present. Something special. Perhaps they can afford a doll. Catherine loves dolls.

At some unknown hour, Catherine’s mother falls into a fitful sleep. When she wakes, she faces the cruelest of realities. Her daughter will never turn nine.

 

Catherine has stopped tossing and turning. Her fever has vanished. The red sandpaper that covered her body has disappeared. Soft white skin remains. A smile spreads across Catherine’s face. Then she sees her mother crying. Catherine goes to comfort her. To hug her.

There is no hug. There is no comfort. Catherine does not understand what is happening. She is, after all, only eight years and eleven months old. Catherine sits beside her mother. Sees the rumpled quilt on her bed. Sees someone lying in her bed. Catherine wonders who it might be. Tries to hug her mother. Again.

She hears someone calling her name. It must be her father, but it doesn't sound like her father. It doesn’t matter. Catherine is not leaving her mother.

Ever.

 

Greenvale Road, Pictou County, Nova Scotia

Thursday, April 23, 2026

 

Yellow birch trees bend a welcome in the wind. Balsam firs wave a needled hello. There is a lilt in Nell Gillis’s step, a half-smile on her face, a lightness in her being. Nell feels at home. She is not sure why. This is not her home.

The granite headstone looks its age, and ageless. Moss has nestled in the carved letters and ridges that give the memorial its foundation. Nell stretches out her hand to caress the stone, a prayer ready on her lips. Her hand stops inches from the stone. There is a brightness to the mossy granite as if somehow sunshine emanates from within.

Nell withdraws her hand. She reaches instead to the ground and gently places a ragdoll at the base of the headstone. It settles alongside dozens of other offerings: a stuffed elephant and a cuddly teddy bear, bouquets of artificial flowers, dolls of all hairstyles and attire. Someone has cut a small spray of mayflowers. The sweet, spicy scent tickles Nell’s nostrils. Nell made her gift back in Halifax more than one hundred and seventy kilometers away. She wanted to replicate what a doll might have looked like when plastic and assembly lines didn’t exist. When Catherine McIntosh was a little girl.

This is Nell’s fourth visit. It will be her last. Nell raises her head from the gifts spread on the earth before her. She realizes she has not been paying attention. She has been inside her head. She has forgotten that where there is sunshine, there are shadows.

The last thing Nell Gillis remembers is a loud, unearthly growl.

Catherine McIntosh's grave in Nova Scotia today.