The Heavy Hearts (The Mercy and Justice Mysteries)

There are few things worse than the loss of a child.

 

When Sally Mayfield, Vincent Trent's fiance, has a miscarriage, their grief is palpable. As a priest, it's my job to comfort in times of loss like this.

 

But Sally didn't simply have a miscarriage. Blood tests find an abortion-inducing drug in her system. Vincent is hurt and angry. Sally swears she didn't take anything, and claims someone must have given her the drug without her knowledge or consent. Not only that, she points the finger at the one person she can think of who hated her baby so much.

 

Her own mother, Samantha.

 

Under the fetal homicide law, the death of Sally's unborn baby at fourteen weeks isn't murder. But the stabbing death of her mother definitely is. 

 

Now, the grief-stricken father stands accused. Everyone who knows Vincent says he couldn't possibly be guilty.

 

I firmly believe that he's innocent.

 

But I've been wrong before . . . 

 

There are few things worse than the loss of a child.

 

When she loses her baby and an abortion-inducing drug is found in her system, Sally points the finger at her mother, Samantha.

 

After Sally secretly records her mom admitting to slipping her the drug without her knowledge or consent, I have no choice but to arrest her. In doing so, I ignite a controversy that threatens to divide our small community–a controversy fanned by Samantha herself, who twists the facts to her own advantage. 

 

It doesn't help that the woman's an old friend of my boss, the Mayor.

 

The case against Samantha falls apart due to lack of evidence. Soon after, she's found dead in her home, stabbed to death. Vincent Trent is identified as the young man seen running from the scene. I have no choice but to arrest him.

 

The evidence is circumstantial, but damning. In my heart, I know he's innocent.

 

But proving that is another story . . .

The Heavy Hearts is book ten in The Mercy and Justice Mysteries, a contemporary small town mystery series. The series is a sequel to The Father Tom Mysteries that begins with The Penitent Priest and includes the same cast of characters. It features Father Tom Greer, a Catholic Priest who is also an amateur sleuth in the tradition of Father Brown, and his wife Helen Greer, female Chief of Police and detective in the tradition of Kinsey Millhone.

 

Susan Mathis was born in and grew up in an extremely small town in Alachua County, Florida where her family has lived for more than 100 years. When Susan was still very young, James (J.R) Mathis was born in a somewhat bigger small town about 100 miles south of where she lived. Within a decade, James' small town would become part of Orlando, the biggest tourist destination in the United States. He was not amused. That is how, while Susan was running barefoot, swimming in lakes full of alligators and feeding chickens, James was sitting in his bedroom reading books faster than his father could bring them home from the library.

Were James and Susan to write their love story, it would definitely be an enemies-to-lovers trope. They met in the library where he was working. He found her demands for books that he had to pull and bring to her so unreasonable that he actually turned her into the head librarian. She in turn was so anxious to drive him away that when some friends secretly set them up she laid out an entire speech about how miserable her life was (she is typically very upbeat). Little did she suspect that he had a passionate attraction to misery and they were married just over a year later.

Fast forward 26 years, three children, four grandchildren and 20 years of James working for the Federal government. He was diagnosed with a highly treatable but still very scary form of cancer. As so often happens, this brush with mortality inspired him to do something he'd always wanted to do, write a novel. After the publication of the second Father Tom Mystery, Susan joined him as coauthor. As far as the Mathises are concerned, writing together is the most fun a couple can have sitting at a computer.