The Brook Farm Murders — Lois Wells Santalo

On returning to her college for graduate work, Jill Szekely moves into a commune where mysterious deaths have recently occurred. Within hours of her arrival, her old friend Renee goes missing along with her three-year-old son. Even while the commune members work out a recovery trick, other strange events occur. A paraplegic teacher at the next-door school for handicapped children also turns up missing, and in the search for him, a body is found--but not his. What is going on here? Does it have anything to do with Bridey, the woman who killed her own retarded child and has now returned after serving her prison time? Or with Jacqui, the crazy lady hastily whisked off to the Kirkbride institution? Or with Marty Gross, the MIA newly returned from a long sojourn in an Israeli kibbutz? All of these people seem to be caught in a firestorm of controversy, Bridey because she claims she's not really guilty even though she confessed, so someone else is; Jacqui who may have been wrongly incarcerated, and Marty whose parents have been fighting to get custody of his son--and Renee's. A Tarot card spread predicts a major disaster, and indeed it seems in the process of occurring.Things happen with no seeming relevance to each other. Even Jill, with her previous experience of investigation, cannot figure out how the events all relate to one another--yet she feels sure they do. She is convinced there could not be so many crises in one place without a connection. Jill and her visiting spouse, concert pianist Zoltan Szekely, set out to discover what it is--and soon find themselves involved to the point where their own lives are in danger along with the lives of thirty handicapped children in the Teddy Bear Academy next door. .