The Box

The Phaedra Chronicles #2

by Charlotte Van, Art Saborio (illustrator)

New relationships can be a challenge, especially when one person wants to

move forward, but the other wants to hold onto the status quo. That’s what Tyler

told me our problem had become.

He was heading out on the 2-month long farewell tour for his metal band

Eros, and I was left with no work from SIA, the investigations company I work

for, feeling seriously uncertain about my ongoing career as a PI.

Amidst all that, Ty and I had been having contentious episodes, which

added to the anxiety over my future. I didn’t need him pushing me to make

decisions I wasn’t ready to make. I dug in my heels…but so did he.

And then my brother Nick delivered a trunk that I’d inherited from my

great aunt Mary - a trunk I’d never before bothered to open. It contained items

from her time working for the OSS after World War 2 as part of the Monuments,

Fine Arts & Archives Section G-5, going through a trove of items stolen by the

Nazis in an effort to return those items to their rightful owners.

But the trunk contained a mystery that Aunt Mary had uncharacteristically

stolen from the salt mine repository at Altaussee where she worked, and she’d left

it to me, convinced that I would be able to solve that mystery, at the same time

warning me of someone’s obsession with obtaining it by whatever means

necessary. But decades after she’d taken it, who could possibly still be alive to

carry out their obsession?

That’s how I came to be in possession of the enigmatic copper box with a

distinctive design on its top and no visible means of opening it.

It was going to require all my investigative skills, my tenacity, and my

dogged curiosity to solve the mystery of The Box.

But was I being unnecessarily paranoid, like Tyler was accusing me of, or

was my gut instinct correct - that someone, so many years later, did indeed want

that damned box desperately?

Well, that wasn’t going to stop me!

142 pages, Kindle Edition

Published January 25, 2024

About the author

I was fortunate enough to have been born in San Francisco at just the right time to be starting college when the whole Haight-Ashbury/Hippie thing began. While I was never deep into all that, I did end up in a longterm relationship with a guy who was working in the music biz there as the music equivalent of back-of-house. As a result, as the saying goes, I got to see all the cool bands.

That experience, coupled with learning a lot by osmosis about how the music business works from my husband’s subsequent years in the world, gave me the insight I’ve put into “The Phaedra Chronicles” stories. And my own years-long love of detective fiction and the “Thin Man” movies gave rise to making that love the inspiration for Phaedra’s choice of careers.

Beyond “The Phaedra Chronicles” books, I have several projects in the works.

One is the updating and editing of a fantastic manuscript written by my father back in the late 80’s and left to me when he passed - with a main character who is a tribal police chief as well as a powerful hereditary medicine man. I look forward to completing this project and publishing it before year’s end.

Another project I’m working on is “Sonoma Wine Country Recipes”, a collection of recipes, almost all of which are my originals, created when I was manager and chef for the marketplace, deli and commercial kitchen at a Sonoma winery.

And then there’s the collection of stories my son and I wrote when he was little. As soon as he could talk, he would tell me stories he made up, usually based on what he took in all around him. In late 2001, when he was 7, a cat lover, and already proficient on our Mac, he created a make-believe world inhabited by cat-people. The main character throughout what would end up being a years-long series of stories was named Measte (Mees-tee), who was loosely based on my son himself. And he created a group of Measte’s friends, the most creative of whom was named Foobah - quite a goofy character. What made these stories special was that my son (Hunter Longston) would sit down at the computer and start typing a new story line. He’d write a few paragraphs, then call me over and tell me it was my turn. I’d do a few paragraphs, trying to pick up on his plot idea and run with it. Then back to him, etc, and so on. We wrote the stories together for several years off and on, and Measte grew along with Hunter.

The book I’m putting together of “Measte & Friends” will be a collection of those stories, a fun journey through a young boy’s imagination, holding his mother’s hand while he travels. I look forward to completing the project so I can share it with you.

So that’s what keeps me busy from day-to-day, and I love that I’m able to share what I’ve transferred from my head to the written page. Follow me here and on my Facebook author page to keep up on what’s coming when, with maybe a few extra tidbits here and there. And I’d like to hear from you, too.