Don't Believe Your Lying Eyes — Blair S. Walker

Every month for the last eighteen years, the payments for unit twenty-five at a storage facility in West Baltimore have arrived without fail. After the money orders mysteriously stop, a grisly surprise is found inside the abandoned space: the mummified remains of black socialite Adrienne Jackson. The victim's fiance was none other than one of Baltimore's most prominent politicians, who has since remarried a much younger woman. Adrienne's disappearance during an apparent robbery in 1984 shocked and saddened the people of Baltimore. Now her murder has reopened old wounds, and cast a shadow of suspicion on a pillar of the community.

Into this lurid state of affairs steps Baltimore Herald reporter Darryl Billups, who is set to marry his longtime, live-in girlfriend, Yolanda, and become an instant father to her wonderful four-year-old son. Nervous about the upcoming wedding after fifteen years of bachelorhood, he welcomes any distraction and eagerly throws himself into the sordid case.

Yet after receiving sensitive inside information from a contact in the police department, Darryl discovers there's much more to the story than meets the eye. Maneuvering through a world of lies and deception, privilege and power, Darryl uncovers secrets and bombshells that will lead him to an unlikely suspect -- one who will shake the foundations of a proud city...and one that just may cost Darryl his life.