I gotta say, limbo isn’t as bad as the nuns made it out to be when I was in grade school back in Jersey. Every afternoon when the sun dips lower on the horizon, I repeat my survival mantra—if I have to spend my life somewhere, on hold, waiting for something to happen, nothing beat a California beach town. Especially since I can make ends meet by bartending at The Shack on the sand. Down the highway from San Diego. It’s how I spend my days. Slinging drinks, chatting up the customers, playing my favorite music. ABBA.

I turn up the volume on the old CD player. Music blasts out of the speaker on a shelf behind the bar. Dancing Queen…only seventeen…oh yeah… I love it.

“I hate ABBA. Put on something else.” One of my regulars, wiping the sweat off his bald head, nudges his empty glass a few inches away as he reaches forward to lower the sound level.

“Don’t touch that!” I slap his hand as a warning.

He leans back and motions to my vibrating cell on top of the speaker, “You gonna answer your phone?”

I ignore him. Whoever it is would call back. Probably a scammer.

A cute, sunburned surfer plops onto a barstool. “What’ll you have?” I give him my best grin.

“Stella. And more ABBA.”

I clap my hands, swaying to the beat of the tune. “Now here’s a true music lover.”

I take two bottles from the refrigerated case, pop the caps, and place one in front of the cute customer, taking a sip from the other.

“Drinking on the job?”

I shrug, stare at the tide rolling across the wet sand, threatening to destroy some kid’s sandcastle, the sun three quarters into its long descent into the west, the air breezy. “Today’s special. My birthday.”

“Well then, happy birthday!”

I start to sing along with the music. Take A Chance on Me… Two forty-something women at a table out on the sand join in and in seconds the place is rocking. I’m clapping and twirling, the surfer beating a rhythm on the bar. Cheering, yelling, and applauding put a period on the end of the song.

“That was some performance. You belong on the stage,” the surfer said, tilting his beer upward until the last drops roll into his mouth.

I’m outta breath, but I smile. My cell phone rings again. I grab it off the speaker, ready to delete whoever or whatever it is, but then the call ends. I tap Recents but the number is unfamiliar. Unlike the area code. My insides churn, gripping, the beer sloshing in my stomach regurgitating into my throat. I must have made a noise because the surfer stops as he slides off the stool.

“It’s…a call from…New Jersey,” I say. “Used to be my home.”

“A birthday call. Sweet. Hey, there’s no place like home. Family.”

I grasp the full bottle of Stella and down half of it. Yeah. Home.

THE FIRST TO DIE
Genre: Domestic Suspense
Release: November 2025
Format: Print, Digital
Purchase Link

Connie Tucker, a free-spirited beach bartender, has been estranged from her family in New Jersey ever since her actress mother, Simone, disappeared one night during a violent storm at the theatre where she was rehearsing. Uncontrollable and in a rage at the loss of her parent, fifteen-year-old Connie is exiled to California, due to her delinquent behavior, to live with an aunt she doesn’t know.

Fifteen years later, Simone’s murdered remains are discovered at a construction site and Connie returns to the east coast for the funeral—she owes it to her mother. The cold case unit will take over now and solve the crime. But then she discovers a message her mother left behind. It feels like a dispatch from the grave.

Connie must face her tortured past, the guilt of concealing a devastating secret, and the part she played in her mother’s disappearance. Unearthing buried family history and childhood demons, she confronts the agonizing reality that she doesn’t know where she belongs, where to call home. Who to trust. When a second suspicious death occurs, Connie races to unravel the events of the night Simone disappeared. Her mother was the first to die…but not the last.

About the author
Suzanne Trauth is the author of the suspense novel The First to Die, the Dodie O’Dell mystery series—Show Time, Time Out, Running out of Time, Just in Time, No More Time, and Killing Time—and What Remains of Love, an historical romance (Firebird, American Book Fest, Chanticleer book awards), as well as plays and non-fiction books. In her previous career, she spent many years as a university professor of theatre. When she is not writing, she coaches actors. She lives in Woodland Park, New Jersey. Visit her website: www.suzannetrauth.com or connect on Facebook.