Meet Lucy Mondello - Guest Post & Giveaway

MEET LUCY MONDELLO

Mary Marks

Hello, hon. My name is Lucy Mondello.

I’ve been married to my husband Ray for nearly fifty years. We both grew up in Wyoming and moved to LA where we raised five wonderful sons. Over the years I’ve come to realize an interesting thing about growing older. I no longer have to be afraid of what people think of me. I can pretty much do whatever I want and people will hardly notice. (Well, Ray notices, but he’s a pretty tolerant guy.)

I mean, unlike other cultures where older people are looked up to, seniors in America are virtually invisible. Unless, of course, they’re Willy Nelson.

I met Martha Rose seventeen years ago in a PTA meeting where our kids went to school and we’ve been best friends ever since. One recent Tuesday, we all got together to work on our quilts like we normally do. Martha, Birdie, and our newest friend, Jazz Fletcher. Jazz designs men’s wear, but he’d started a second business sewing custom made clothing and accessories for dogs (he has the cutest Maltese named Zsa Zsa) .

Anyway, we were all sitting around shooting the breeze when he told us about two unsuccessful attempts to deliver a package to a client nearby. Something seemed off, and Martha got suspicious.

As soon as she suggested driving over to check on the woman to see if she was okay, I got one of my bad feelings (I have ESP). I said we should call the police, but nobody listened to me. So against my better judgment we all drove to this woman’s house. I was right. Turns out she’d been murdered.

Well, my husband had a cow when he found out, because this wasn’t the first time I’d been involved in a something like that. Birdie and I had helped Martha solve four other murders. Ray was clear as day when he told me not to get involved, seeing as how a couple of times I’d been in actual danger and he feared for my life.

I tried my best to stay out of it. Honest. But when the police suspected Jazz of being the killer, I couldn’t stand by and do nothing. And dang if I didn’t get caught up in the excitement of looking for answers once again. Of course, I never did tell Ray what we were up to.

Poor Martha has had several close calls. As a matter of fact, you might say I’ve saved her life a couple of those times. Coming from Wyoming, Ray and I know our way around guns, and own a couple. So in the past, when things got a little dicey, I insisted Martha take my Browning semiautomatic .22 caliber pistol for self defense. It’s a good thing I did, because she’s had more than one occasion to use it.

And that’s the part of being invisible that works like a charm . Nobody really notices three “ladies of a certain age” when they run around looking for clues and talking to people. And if they do notice, they don’t take us seriously. Except, maybe, for the killer.

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