Shadows of Blackwood Bluffs
When maritime restorer Julian Vance receives his deceased sister's survey pack, subtle discrepancies in ocean tide records lead him to a concealed camera card and a deadly family conspiracy.
Fictional story. Contains themes of grief, family conflict, land fraud, and wrongful death.Chapter 1: The Weight of Salt and Cedar
The smell of damp cedar shavings and mineral oil filled the small maritime workshop at Cypress Bay. Julian Vance stood over the overturned hull of a twenty-foot wooden rowing skiff, his sanding block moving in rhythmic, mechanical strokes. Outside the salt-crusted windows, the Pacific churned against the gray granite headlands under a sky the color of wet slate. It had been four days since the county coroner declared his twin sister, Nora Vance, dead from an accidental fall off the granite precipice at Blackwood Bluffs. She had been an environmental land surveyor, mapping coastal wetlands for public conservation, intimately familiar with every loose stone and tide pool along the Oregon shore.
A sharp knock echoed against the heavy workshop door. Julian didn't stop sanding until the door creaked open, admitting a gust of chilly coastal rain and his older half-brother, Marcus. Marcus wore a tailored charcoal overcoat that looked foolishly out of place against the grease-stained sawhorses and hanging brass lanterns. He carried a sleek leather binder tucked beneath his arm, his expression strained into a posture of practiced, somber urgency.