My name is Calamity Barnstable, though if you expect me to answer, you’d best call me Callie. Along with my best friend, Chantelle Marchand, I’m the co-owner of Past & Present Investigations, located at 300 Edward Street in Marketville. We aren’t licensed private investigators, but we do dig into the past, often with surprising results.

This time around we’ve been hired to find Brandon Colbeck, who, at the age of twenty, left home in March 2000 to “find himself.” Now, I have to think if Brandon wanted to be found, he’d have called someone in his family by now, but I’ve made a commitment and I’m going to see it through.

This morning I met with Sam Sanchez, the owner of Trust Few Tattoo. Unlike many of my generation, I don’t have any tattoos, so until today I’d never even been inside a tattoo parlor. But Brandon had a very distinctive tattoo, and I’m a firm believer in following up every lead. The problem is, I’m positive Sam was holding something back. Whether that something has anything to do with Brandon remains to be seen.

But it’s not just Sam who’s been less than forthcoming. Despite their assurance that they want to find out the truth about Brandon’s whereabouts, I’m convinced that his mother, sister, and stepfather are all harboring secrets of their own.

Come to think of it, I suppose that’s what I really do. I dig up secrets. Secrets folks would prefer to leave in the past. It’s my job to bring them into the present.

Read more about Callie and the Past & Present team in A Fool’s Journey, the third book in Marketville Mystery series, released August 21, 2019.

In March 2000, twenty-year-old Brandon Colbeck left home to find himself on a self-proclaimed “fool’s journey.” No one—not friends or family—have seen or heard from him since, until a phone call from a man claiming to be Brandon brings the case back to the forefront. Calamity (Callie) Barnstable and her team at Past & Present Investigations have been hired to find out what happened to Brandon and where he might be. As Callie follows a trail of buried secrets and decades-old deceptions only one thing is certain: whatever the outcome, there is no such thing as closure.

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About the author
Judy Penz Sheluk is the author of the Glass Dolphin Mystery and Marketville Mystery series, and the editor of The Best Laid Plans: 21 Stories of Mystery & Suspense. Her short stories can be found in several collections. Judy is also a member of Sisters in Crime, International Thriller Writers, the Short Mystery Fiction Society, and Crime Writers of Canada, where she serves as Vice Chair on the Board of Directors. Find her at judypenzsheluk.com.

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