Speech, first chapter printed out, stashed in purse. Check.

Raincoat to wear over blazer. Flats to walk across campus. Check.

Suitcase stowed in trunk of Volvo. Travel mug, phone, charger in console. Yep.

E-ZPass thingy repositioned. Headlights on. Morning radio jocks prattling away before dawn on the classic rock station, anything that will keep me awake as the boring turnpike miles stretch ahead of me.

Off I go.

I’m driving to the university where I lost a best friend back in 1992. It’s been twenty-four years since the Challenge Fire sparked, killing twelve people at the far reaches of the campus. Twenty-four years since student reporter Kate McDonald disappeared, her body never found among the fire victims.

I’m used to operating behind a byline, “Laura Cunningham, Staff Writer,” digging out political corruption for a big Philadelphia newspaper. But today, I’m an author in the spotlight, front and center at the launch of Bloodstrains, the book I’ve written about the fire that demands that the flawed and incomplete 1990s investigation be reopened and questions finally answered. Chief among them: What happened to Kate that terrible day in March 1992? And did the founder of The Challenge, a residential counseling facility, really die in the blaze?

Only at the insistence of my publisher’s marketing team am I returning to the scene of the horrific event that’s haunted me all these years. True crime’s always a hit with readers, they say, though I’m skeptical about the always part. You’re here to right wrongs, they say; that much I agree with.

What they don’t know about me: I have stage fright. I’m already nauseated, and I haven’t even gotten onto the highway for the three hour-plus drive to Central Pennsylvania. Hope I don’t have to pull over to throw up.

Hope no one notices the bags under my eyes. I haven’t slept more than three hours a night since my last pregnancy. Drew is eight now, my budding soccer star. He’ll be crushed if his dad doesn’t make it back from Manhattan in time for his game this weekend. Frankly, if not for Drew, I’m not sure I’d care whether David, my husband, comes home from his job at The New Yorker and the woman he’s sleeping with in NYC. Thank goodness for David’s mom, who’s picking Drew up from school today and keeping him and his big brother overnight. Last night, I arranged with my neighbor to have Drew for a sleepover with her son. My fifteen-year-old basketball whiz, Damian, slept at the house of a high school buddy. I’ve never met the kid, let alone his family. It was easier than trying to track down my first husband, Nick, Damian’s dad.

More points off my Mother of the Year nomination.

As I merge into turnpike traffic, I dictate a text to my mother-in-law, reminding her that she should fetch Drew at school at 3:30, and that Damian has basketball practice and should be home by 5. Read him the riot act if he’s late, I tell her.

I’ll text Damian later. That is, if I survive this drive, and the book launch, and the crowd. But the people who buy Bloodstrains might somehow realize they have information we all overlooked. I have to pull myself together and make my case for taking a fresh look at the Challenge Fire.

As the sun peeks out, the radio plays Eric Clapton’s Tears in Heaven. Seems like I heard the song constantly the days after I last saw Kate.

Seems appropriate this day especially.

Chasing Ashes
Genre: Thriller
Release: November 2023
Format: Print, Digital
Purchase Link

In 1992, shortly before a tragic fire on their college campus, Laura Cunningham saw her best friend, Kate McDonald, for the last time. The fire’s 20th anniversary elicits Laura’s guilt and ignites her passion to learn what actually happened to Kate. Now a journalist, Laura teams up with her hot detective ex-husband to pursue cold leads in hopes of sparking interest in the decades-old mystery of what happened that day.

Meet the author
Joanne McLaughlin writes sharp mysteries, sexy vampire tales, and sweeter short fiction. The crime thriller Chasing Ashes is just out (November 2023), published by Celestial Echo Press. Joanne’s vampire trilogy—Never Before Noon (2016 / reissued 2020), Never Until Now (2018), and Never More Human (2020)— is available on Amazon, as are the short stories Peppina’s Sweetheart and Grass and Granite. On her journalist side, Joanne is a longtime editor of prize-winning news and features for newspapers and public media. She lives in Philadelphia, where she indulges her love for home design and her two little granddaughters.