The Poisoned Orchard — Ursula Curtiss

The mousy young woman who knocked at Sarah Malcolm's door that snowy January evening carried to suggestion of misfortune to come. From her tentative smile and her satchel-like handbag, Sarah thought that the woman was selling something until she asked for Sarah's cousin Fen. But Fen, married ten months ago to Blaise Roland, now had her own home. The next morning Fen told Sarah that the woman was driving west with an unpreposing male companion and had stopped to borrow some money. They had been friends in grammar school before Fen, tragically orphaned, had come to Albuquerque to live with the Malcolm's.

Now, since the incident of the visitor, violence seemed to be in the air. Night intruders threw rocks at Roland house, and Fen's face had been cut by the flying window glass. The body of an unidentified young woman, shot through the head, was found in a car in the hills nearby. The police had reason to believe that there had been a man with her. And there were other happenings, puzzling and sometimes sinister.

Here is a compelling story of deceit and death, and of the subtly destructive relationship between the two cousins -- strikingly beautiful Sarah and Fen, the vibrant gamine. Gradually secrets were revealed. Odd pieces of information began to fall into place until at last a dark and terrible picture emerged.