LET'S FAKE A DEAL

Who knew organizing garage sales could be a dangerous occupation?

In her new career as a garage-sale manager, Sarah Winston has run into a lot of mysteries (The Gun Also Rises, 2019, etc.), but she’s never been arrested—until she’s about to open a sale of surplus items for a couple who claimed to be downsizing. Officer Jones has gotten a tip that everything on sale is stolen property, and Sarah realizes that Kate and Alex Green have conned her and vanished, leaving Sarah holding the bag. Jones, dismissing Sarah’s protestations of innocence, throws her in jail. Luckily, her crime solving has given her some connections, and when a friend on the force can’t help, he calls mob lawyer Vincenzo DiNapoli, who springs her. Sarah quickly realizes that to clear herself, she’s going to have to solve this case with a little help from her friends. Since she doesn’t want to smear the reputation of her boyfriend, the district attorney, she goes to work herself, armed only with a bad cellphone picture of the fraudulent couple. Her former husband was an Air Force officer, and her friends on the nearby base include Michelle Diaz, who has troubles of her own because someone’s filed a complaint against her. As a woman, Michelle has to work twice as hard and put up with harassment from jealous male officers who make nasty comments when she meets Sarah for a drink. After one of them ends up dead in Michelle’s car, Sarah adds the murder to her long list of things to clear up. She’s shocked to learn how easy it was for the Greens to make her look guilty, but she does dig up some clues showing that the duplicitous couple had done it before and hinting at a possible Air Force connection. Happily, her friends support her, and a planned sale of cat-themed items keeps her from falling into despair as she pursues the mysterious couple and a murderer.

Plenty of mysterious circumstances and garage-sale tips keep the angst-ridden story moving at a headlong pace.