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    The Last Violin
    The Last Violin
    The Last Violin
    Ebook68 pages57 minutes

    The Last Violin

    By J. M. Davis

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    About this ebook

    A violin and three gold coins hold the key to solving a sixty-eight-year-old mystery. Hundreds of people have traveled to a small Southern town in America in hopes of proving the young man found dead in the city park in 1911 was their long lost relative. Or were they trying to make a claim on the gold the young man supposedly hid before his death? No one has been able to prove a verifiable link to the unidentified body, and the hidden gold has not been found.

    Sixty-eight years after the death, a young woman has traveled from England to set the record straight. Rebecca believes everyone had it all wrong. She has an interesting theory, but can she prove her version of what happened? She needs a little help from the one man in town who is the most skeptical of all, with good reason.

    A novelette, approximately 10,000 words.
    Included in this eBook is an additional 5000 word excerpt of Portrait of Conspiracy

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherJ. M. Davis
    Release dateMar 30, 2017
    ISBN9781370510153
    The Last Violin
    Author

    J. M. Davis

    Jim Davis is the author of Portrait of Conspiracy, Tough As They Come, A Woman To Die For, Murder and Mayham, The Ghost of Leonard Korn, The Durley Incident, No Tears For Jack, Prom Friday, The Storekeeper, and The Last Violin.Over a period of two decades, he traveled to twenty foreign countries and made the first cellular telephone call in the country of Russia. In 1988, he thought he'd found Elvis alive on the Island of Tortola. Awakened from a dream, he learned an Elvis Impersonator had begun singing in the bar located directly beneath his second floor room.Jim lives with his wife in the Boston Mountains. He writes mystery/suspense novels, novellas, and short stories.

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      Book preview

      The Last Violin - J. M. Davis

      THE LAST VIOLIN

      J. M. Davis

      Smashwords Edition

      Copyright © 2017 by J. M. Davis

      Cover Design by Madison Designs

      This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.co or your favorite retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author. All rights reserved.

      This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

      Other titles by J. M. Davis

      Portrait of Conspiracy

      Tough As They Come

      A Woman To Die For

      Murder And Mayham

      The Ghost of Leonard Korn

      No Tears For Jack

      The Durley Incident

      Prom Friday

      The Storekeeper

      Dedication

      To my wonderful wife, our two amazing children, and our grandchildren.

      Table of Contents

      THE LAST VIOLIN

      About the author

      Excerpt: PORTRAIT OF CONSPIRACY

      THE LAST VIOLIN

      Robert Alrick removed the last file from the back of the lower left drawer and read the label before opening it. The file appeared to contain research material used to write a story about an unidentified young man found dead in the city park. On top of a stack of black and white photographs were pages of his great-grandfather Edward’s handwritten notes used to write the newspaper article published in 1911. He thumbed through the pages of notes. A reference to the hidden gold had been underlined in pencil. Would the gold ever be found? He placed the notes back on top of the photos and closed the file.

      Instead of tossing this folder into the wastebasket, he placed it inside the center file drawer in the desk and locked it. The contents of the file would be a surprise for the next proud owner of the desk. Maybe the next person who read the contents could unravel the mystery that had brought so many people from around the world, over the past 68 years, to search for hidden gold in a small southern town. Previously known only for its large architecturally appealing hotel and European-styled train station, the mysterious death had placed the town of Horby on the world map.

      After sitting for more than an hour cleaning out the desk, he stood and stretched. The wooden floor of the antiquated newspaper office squeaked when he moved toward the half wall that separated the front office space from the printing presses in the back portion of the building. He knew he was taking his final look at the machines that had been used to print The River County News each week since the early 1900s. On the other side of the half wall to his left was a floor-mounted paper cutting machine. Next, lined up in a row beside it were a linotype machine, a large cylindrical press that had been installed in 1903, and a newspaper folding machine. On the other side of the room were four platen presses used to print business cards and letter-sized documents. The most modern piece of equipment in the building was a Heidelberg platen press, which at one time had been the fastest of its kind in the world. But now, even it was out of date and only worth its weight in scrap steel. Everything in the building, all remnants of an era long past, including drawers full of hand-set type, had been sold for scrap value and was scheduled to be hauled away by the end of the week. He turned toward the large glass window that faced Main Street, a narrow two-lane paved road that once bustled with activity. The clothing store and pharmacy across the street were closed long ago and boarded up like every other store along the street.

      Horby, founded by Almund Nils in 1873, had prospered, until a new four-lane highway bypassed it in 1968. The resulting lack of traffic took its toll, and the town’s decline came about more rapidly than anyone anticipated. Businesses no longer contributed advertising revenue, but his father continued to print the weekly newspaper until a month before his death. Robert had promised his father he would publish the final edition of The River County News: eight pages filled with local news and his father’s obituary, pre-written by his father two days after being told his condition was terminal. Now that he had fulfilled that promise, the machines would

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