The Lights

Six hundred thousand lights. One old man with a switch. One window that should have been lit.

For sixty six years, Ray Gernert has lit up the whole ridge above Hill Road by hand. Every night at six o'clock he walks into a little red shed, pulls the chain on a bare bulb, and throws a knife switch as long as a man's arm. A thousand people at the gate watch for that bulb. When the shed window lights up, they count down from ten. Bulb first, then the switch. Ray has never missed a night, and he has never been late.

This year retired accountant Walt Brubaker is making change at the cocoa stand on opening night, and his son's future father in law, a retired lineman from Hawaii who has never seen snow, is carrying the cocoa. At six o'clock the hill comes on right on time. The shed window stays dark. And Ray Gernert is lying on the floor under his switch.

The coroner says it was his heart. Walt keeps looking at that window. Kimo keeps looking at one brand new wire nut on a fifty year old job. Then there is the video of the whole hill blinking on at ten after four, in broad daylight, when Ray never tested anything in his life.

Ray left sixty six ledgers in a closet, one line for every night since 1961, written in pencil and added to the penny. On the last night of every season for fifty nine years, there is one more line after the cash: less E. An envelope went out the back door every New Year's Eve, carried on foot through the snow, and Ray never told a soul where it went.

The electrician Ray fired has no alibi. His granddaughter has a secret bank account. A light show company wants the farm for two million dollars. The neighbor across the road has written the newspaper about those lights every Thanksgiving for fifty years. Meanwhile Walt's wife Grace and Kimo's wife Leilani are fighting a very polite war over the wedding, Freddie is parking a thousand cars in a reindeer hat, and Margaret the goat has learned to open the truck door.

Walt has until Christmas Eve, when the whole county comes back to the hill.

Inside you'll find:

• A retired accountant who reads a dead man's books the way other detectives read a crime scene
• A gentle giant from Hawaii seeing his first snow, and the best new friend Walt has made in years
• Two grandmothers in waiting, one wedding, and a cookie exchange that nearly ends in bloodshed over the coffee urn
• Scrapple, shoofly pie, sand tarts, a church Christmas pageant with a donkey named Pharaoh, and Second Christmas in Pennsylvania Dutch country
• Big laughs, real heart, and a fair play puzzle with every clue on the page

No graphic violence, no explicit scenes, no bad language. Just a good mystery, a Christmas you can smell from the hayfield, and a small town full of people you'll want to visit again.

The Lights is Book Six in the Vera Crus Funny Cozy Mystery series, and it stands on its own. Pour the cocoa. Watch the window.