Some Days, the Dead Have More to Say Than the Living
Most mornings I wake up knowing more than I did when I fell asleep. Not because I’ve been studying—though Lord knows my daddy would’ve approved of that—but because he visits in the night. Daddy died ten years ago, yet I still hear him, plain as the birds outside my window, offering his opinions on whatever I’ve gotten myself tangled up in. Some folks would call that haunting. I call it inconvenient.
Today I’ve got a ten o’clock appointment with Dot Cowsley, Daddy’s old secretary at Frye, Frye, and Humphrey. I don’t just visit Dot for the information she keeps in those folders. I visit her for the way she keeps it—carefully, reverently, like every name on every page belonged to someone who mattered. Given what’s been going on at the old schoolhouse, I need somebody who treats the past that way.
Yesterday was Midsummer. Dot mentioned it in that low, careful voice she uses when she’s about to tell you something that doesn’t belong in the official record. Apparently, some folks still mark the occasion out by the river—fires in the night, drums just faint enough to explain away. Her mother used to hustle her inside before she could fully take it in. Just the midsummer cleaning, she’d say, though there was always a tremor underneath the words.
New Orleans still practices forms of it, Dot told me. Spiritualism. The old ways dressed in new clothes. I thought of Ms. Joscelyn Byrd then—the woman at the center of the schoolhouse trouble—and wondered which kind of old ways she’d been keeping.
On my way out, Daddy’s voice drifted through the hallway the way it always does: That was about as helpful as pajamas on a peacock.
I nearly laughed. He always did have a gift for the useless image. But here’s what he never understood, what I’ve had to learn since losing him—sometimes you sit across from a woman and let her talk about midsummer fires and an uneasy mother and drums by a river, and you don’t learn a thing you can name. You just learn the shape of something. And the shape is enough to go on.
Daddy was an impatient man. I am trying not to be. The schoolhouse will give up its secrets. They always do, if you’re willing to stay in the room long enough to hear them.
MURDER AT THE OLD SCHOOLHOUSE
Series: A Mosey Frye Mystery, Book 6
Genre: Cozy Mystery
Release: June 2026
Format: Print, Digital
Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Bookshop.org
On St. John’s Eve, a night steeped in folklore, Police Chief Gus Olivera discovers the body of librarian Joscelyn Byrd ritualistically dressed in white at the base of a bell tower. The murder stains a property recently listed by real estate agent Mosey Frye—who knows that, in Hembree, land is never just dirt; it’s a ledger of old debts.
As Gus searches for a killer among the victim’s former mentees, Mosey follows a different trail—one buried deep in the town’s past. Her investigation exposes a century-old railroad fraud tied to the powerful Hillyard family, an empire built on stolen money and carefully buried crimes.
Then Mosey’s friend Nadia vanishes after recognizing a Hillyard heir at a gala, and history turns personal. With Gus bound by the limits of his badge and Mosey free to move through Hembree’s secrets, their uneasy rivalry sharpens into a race against time.
Because some betrayals never stay buried—and the truth always leaves a mark.
About the author
Kay Pritchett, born and raised in Greenville, Mississippi, came to fiction after years of carrying stories in her imagination. Her Mosey Frye Mystery series—now eight books strong—combines humor, atmosphere, and character-driven intrigue. Amateur sleuth Mosey Frye and police chief Gus Olivera anchor her narratives, alongside her clear sighted friends Nadia and Saffron; the incisive coroner Eads McGinnis; and a late comer to the series, the imaginative Dr. Lauren Wilson. Pritchett writes with the aim of giving readers a classic whodunit experience, touched with the Southern landscapes and textures that shaped her youth. Her first collection, Murder in High Cotton (2022), reflects her Delta roots, as do all her novels, including the newest, Murder at the Old Schoolhouse, released on June 10, 2026. She lives in Fayetteville, Arkansas.