My name is California ‘Cali’ May, and I’ve been given a controversial, uncontrollable gift. I can see the spirits of murder victims. I never asked for this gift. People look decidedly skeptical when I try to explain it, especially those who work in law enforcement.

The spirits only show up every couple of months. On the days without ghostly interference, I live a quiet life in Phoenix, Arizona. Each morning I untangle myself from the sheets, and gently hoist my miniature dachshund, Merry, off the bed and onto the floor. I shuffle into the kitchen of my pink stuccoed, red-tile-roofed cottage for coffee, and Merry heads for the doggy door. I often join her on my concrete patio in the fenced, pebbled backyard, to watch the sun slowly flood the canal that runs behind my house. Beyond the canal Devil’s Mountain rises with its jagged peaks, occasional saguaros, and its own spirits. Sometimes I bring my sketchpad and pencils out with me and spend a pleasant morning drawing the quail, occasional coyote, or roadrunners that travel down the canal from the mountain. Lately I’ve been drawing forensic portraits of murder victims for my local Saguaro Gulch police.

I began experiencing unexplainable visions of ghosts when my husband of thirty-five years and a former Phoenix Police Department Homicide Detective, Charlie May, died a few years ago. Up until then, I did not believe in ghosts. I was sure I was losing my mind. My loving but incredibly opinionated, thirty-year-old daughter, Sophie, was convinced I needed psychiatric help, or at the very least, medication. She even went so far as to insist she move in with me, an idea I squashed immediately. An acquaintance of mine, Native American Arizona State Park Ranger, Daniel Silvertree, offered an alternative theory. He believes my intense grief over the loss of someone so close to my heart triggered my sensitivity to spirits left behind by victims of violent death before their time; murder victims. It is comforting to think that I’m not crazy.

I am a nosy, middle-aged, retiree and now widow. I have a lot of time on my hands. My age and lack of commitments sometimes make me feel obsolete. I’ve spent the last couple of years struggling to shore up my self-confidence and looking for something meaningful to do.

Whenever I experience the vision of a spirit, I now know a dead body will soon follow and I immediately notify Daniel. Sometimes the spirit is that of the corpse, sometimes it’s not. If not, I’ve learned I have two related murders to resolve. Heaven forbid I don’t solve them, because the spirits continue to pop up until I do. They come in a variety of unpredictable ways: in the thunder and lightening of a Southwest monsoon (Death Remembers), in the middle of a dust devil (Killing Rose), or sobbing in the hallway of a historic Bed and Breakfast (Magnolia Murders). In my last adventure, they appeared on a stretch of sandy Florida beach over the body of my aunt (Evil in the Water), while I was visiting a newly discovered cousin.

I really shouldn’t complain. Have I found meaningful work? I believe I have. Spirits no longer terrify me. I try to accept them into my life even though their appearance heralds a risky, often dangerous search for a murderer. The local sheriff has given up trying to understand my detecting methods, Sophie remains her opinionated but loving self, and Daniel has become a trusted, (OK, I’ll admit it) loving friend.

You can read more about Cali in Evil in the Water, the fourth book in the “Cali May” mystery suspense series, released April 28, 2019.

Cali May researches her family tree and finds a long-lost cousin, Lola Penrose, living on the Gulf Coast of Florida.

Lola invites her to visit and stay in the Penrose Retreat House.

Cali arrives the morning after the murder of Lola’s Aunt Gracie, not only stumbling over the dead body but also into a group of brooding spirits who are there to help Gracie into the afterlife.

Did the murder have anything to do with the large, sealed clay pot, dating from the 1500s, Gracie found buried in her crawl space?

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Meet the author
By day Wendy Fallon is a technical writer, and by night and on the weekends she’s an artist and author of Southwest paranormal murder mysteries. Her inspiration is the Sonoran Desert in and around Phoenix, Arizona.

Fallon joined the National and Desert Sleuths Chapters of Sisters in Crime in 2015 to explore her dark side. In 2018 she launched her series, Cali May Mysteries, and has written four books and one novella, published by Short on Time Books. Her protagonist, Cali May, is a 50-something, recently widowed and retired art teacher from the Phoenix public schools, who discovers she can see the ghosts of murder victims. Fallon’s series includes: Death Remembers, Killing Rose, Magnolia Murders, and the most recent, Evil in the Water. You can read more about her on her website at wendyfallon.com.

All comments are welcomed.