Carolyn Cavanaugh

Memory's Deceptions Carolyn Cavanaugh

A blazing pistol wielded by an angry woman snuffed out the life of Jimmy Reilly, the vengeful king of underworld gaming who ruthlessly crushed his rivals, ignored the law, and some say, got away with murder. -The Evening Post, Saturday, November 24, 1935

He's upstairs boys, Laura Sullivan is quoted as saying when the police arrived at the house by the river where Jimmy Reilly lay dead on the bedroom floor. Laura had shot him three times. She was that kind of woman, or so the newspaper suggested.

Charlotte Reynolds was yet to be born when her older cousin Laura was acquitted of this crime, but by the time Charlotte turned six, she knew that Laura was the one who pulled the trigger and got away with it. Laura's lawyer had pleaded self-defense because Reilly had beaten her, and the jury agreed. What Charlotte couldn't know then was that she would meet her killing cousin the very next year, and that some fifty years later her niece, Karrie Webster, would write a book about their notorious cousin and ask her aunt to help unravel Laura's sordid past. When long-kept secrets are exposed, an even worse crime occurs, one which leaves them thinking it may have been better to let Laura's sleeping dogs lie.