Emma Chizzit and the Queen Anne Killer

SALVAGED

Not one to spend her golden years rocking and reminiscing, Emma Chizzit is owner and one-woman crew of A-1 Salvage, looking for collectibles or hauling junk from old houses. Sure, some people get edgy--a woman her age in a battered pickup doing this kind of work--but you can't please everybody.

Hired to clean out an old Queen Anne house belonging to a prominent and scandal-ridden Sacramento family, Emma is delighted to find a hand-carved cradle--until she discovers a mummified baby nearby.

Her reward is brake-shrieking car chases, shady and sinister characters, an overeager cop with a crush on her...and a killer with a bloody notion of housecleaning.