Above The Fold: A Day McKelvey Mystery (Day McKelvey Mystery Series)

St. Augustine’s social elite have come together at the gala Menendez Ball celebrating the historic founding of the town. Thirty-five-year-old newspaper reporter Day McKelvey is assigned to cover the event, unaware that both a killer and a victim lurk among the costumed crowd. The following morning, Day literally trips over the body of one of the ball’s more prominent attendees, college President Burnett Lansing, still clad in his Spanish costume and with a dagger embedded in his abdomen. Robbie Flynn, a young student whom Day rescued from a life of juvenile crime, had been overheard making threats against the president after being expelled from the college, charged with cheating on an exam. His dilemma seems resolved when Lansing’s secretary, Donetha Raymer, discovers evidence to clear him of the cheating charge, but she is murdered under circumstances that point to Robbie as the killer. Day's boss aasigns her to gather background information for a feature on the dead president, and, convinced that Robbie is innocent, she interviews everyone associated with Lansing in an attempt to unearth clues to the real killer. She is distraught that the man with whom she’s been having a clandestine affair, Lieutenant Sam Stansfield, focuses on her protégé as the murderer. She finds others with possible motives for someone to murder the college president: His wife, the college chancellor who was passed over for the presidency, and an attractive professor with whom Lansing was rumored to be romantically involved. But they all seem to have ironclad alibis. In her initial interview with the now-deceased secretary, Donetha Raymer, Day obtained a yearbook from Lansing’s college days. In it, one particular page with pictures of first year med students has been dog-eared and a photograph of a young man named Lawrence Becker has been circled. Day assumes he and the late president were probably friends. While Day is trying to distance herself from the separated-but-still-married, Sam, she seems to run into him often. Sam knows she is covering the background of the murdered president, and he reveals to Day that the police have discovered an offshore bank account in Burnett Lansing’s name, into which large sums of money have been regularly deposited and withdrawn. Police surmise that both blackmail and a possible gambling addiction are at the root of this discovery. Upon learning that the killer was probably someone of financial means, Day adds to her list of potential suspects the local bird carver, the reclusive Woody Wainwright, who is actually the scion of an extremely wealthy family and who lives aboard his boat near where the body of the president was found. Another attendee at the Menendez Ball was the renowned plastic surgeon Lane Hollingsworth, whom she interviews for an article on his pro bono work on an injured local girl. Day begins to suspect that the yearbook photo could be this doctor who may have changed his name and appearance. Amid all of this speculation, Day’s best friend Rhonda, once again playing matchmaker, arranges a blind date for Day with a recently widowed pilot for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission. Contrary to previous setups by Rhonda, Day finds Andy Thompson interesting and congenial. But will she live to see the prospective relationship flourish, or will Day's probing into the murders convince the killer of the the need to silence her forever?