Guest Post: Excerpt from Death at Rock Bottom: The Reluctant Psychic Mystery series by Kris Bock

 

Please welcome back talented author Kris Bock to the blog today. Back in April, her new series, The Reluctant Psychic Mystery series, launched on 4/28 with A Stone-Cold Murder. She provided an excerpt of the first chapter of that book here. Today she brings us a first chapter excerpt from the upcoming second book in the series, Death at Rock Bottom. Published by Thule Publishing, the read is available in digital format at Amazon and will release Wednesday.

 

In Reluctantly Psychic Mystery series, a quirky loner who can read the history of any object with her touch gets drawn into mysteries at the museum of oddities where she works.

 

Petra Cloch has the psychic ability of psychometry – she can glimpse the history of an object by touching it. Powerful emotions leave behind the strongest vibrations. If Petra touches a watch or ring someone has worn for years, she can sense the wearer’s personality and what they care about most. If she touches an object used as a murder weapon, she might sense the emotions of the killer and the killed – but that doesn’t mean she can identify the killer.

 

To save her sanity, Petra avoids close relationships except with her many pets. She studied geology, because rocks rarely speak to her. Her new job is supposed to focus on the rocks and minerals wing of a peculiar private museum in a small southwestern town. But she can’t avoid the echoes of violence all around her. If she doesn’t want killers to go free, she’ll have to prove there is something wrong by finding evidence beyond the psychic senses she hides.

 

Death at Rock Bottom

After solving the mystery of her predecessor’s death, geologist Petra Cloch wants to focus on her job as the rocks and minerals curator at a quirky, small town New Mexico museum. But her friend and colleague Liberty is suspicious of the supposedly accidental death of Frank Underwood, a retired petroleum engineer and rockhound who died while hiking. Frank acted odd in his last weeks, talking about something incredible he found in the desert and whispering about aliens. Was he showing the first signs of dementia, or were more sinister forces at work?

 

Petra wants to help Liberty uncover the truth, and before long their book club has somehow become a crime-fighting club. Petra uses her gift and her brains to fight through the confusing and contradictory clues along with her newfound family, but has someone gotten a taste for murder?

 

Death at Rock Bottom excerpt from Chapter 1

 

Every rock has a story, but most people don’t know how to read them.

I hear their stories even when I don’t want to.

Liberty, my friend and colleague at the Banditt Museum, unlocked a display case where a hundred or so arrow and spear tips were displayed. “I’ve tried to identify these based on styles, but a lot of them were collected decades ago by people who didn’t keep a record of where the items were found.”

A bigger museum would probably reject any donations without provenance, but the founder and owner of ours, Peyton Banditt, was like one of those Storage Wars dealers who’d buy the contents of a whole storage unit sight unseen hoping one box might hold something valuable. Only instead of then trying to sell the good stuff and dump the rest, Peyton crammed it all into the museum.

I looked at one of the larger spearheads, made of dark reddish-brown stone. The blade had rippled sides leading to a pointed tip. My bachelor’s in geology did not mean I could identify every rock and mineral by sight, but that was chert, common in the Southwest and often used in projectile points. I laid my fingers over the spearhead and settled into the image. I was up on a mesa, looking out over the landscape as I knapped the stone, flaking pieces off the edges to get it sharp and shaped properly for smooth flight.

I opened my eyes and cleared my throat. “Authentic.”

“Are you all right?” Liberty asked.

“It was a lovely scene. Peaceful.” The man working the spear tip knew who he was, how he fit in with his tribe, what the world meant. Must be nice.

On the other hand, I had running water and was much less likely to be killed by a wild animal or dysentery.

Liberty flipped the spearhead over, checked the catalog number, and made some notes as I thought about what I’d learned. My interest was less in the items in front of us and more in how I could read their stories safely. When I hold an object that spent time in human hands, I pick up emotional echoes of the past, residue left behind by the people who used or wore or loved the item.

That sounds cooler than it is. I spent my childhood pushed around by people who wanted to use my talent for their benefit, and most of my adulthood hiding the skill. But then I got a job at an odd little museum in a small New Mexico town, picked up a cluster of fluorite crystals while cleaning my new office, and discovered a murder weapon. Trying to figure out what to do about that led me to a conclusion: I might not always like my gift, but it’s better to know how to use it.

Now Liberty was helping me experiment. She was the only one at the museum who knew I could pick up echoes of the past through psychometry. I wasn’t in a hurry to tell anyone else.

Liberty straightened, turning her head slightly. “Someone’s coming.” The museum was a maze of rooms and hallways connecting in odd ways, so we couldn’t see past the dogleg turn in this hallway, but we could hear the tap tap of heels coming toward us.

I stepped back from the display case, instinctively distancing myself from objects I’d been reading. Liberty closed and locked the case.

A woman I didn’t know swung around the corner and jerked to a stop. She scowled at Liberty. “There you are.”

“Hello, Vanessa,” Liberty said. “You were looking for me?”

“Obviously.” She crossed her arms and tapped her toe on the floor. She was thirty-five or forty, with carefully styled auburn hair. She wore a black suit that managed to look businesslike and sexy at the same time, with its short skirt and the white blouse with the top three buttons undone. She looked like someone I’d expect to see on TV rather than in a small town in New Mexico, where most people wore shorts and T-shirts at this time of year.

Liberty glanced at me. “This is Petra, our newest curator. Petra, this is Vanessa Underwood.”

Vanessa flicked a glance my way and dismissed me as irrelevant. “I want to see the rock Frank gave you.”

I looked at Liberty to see if that made any sense to her.

She appeared equally baffled. “What rock?”

Vanessa’s chin jutted forward. “Frank said he brought the rock to the museum.”

Liberty shook her head. “If he donated a rock, I assume that would have gone to the rocks and minerals wing. That’s Petra’s area now, but she’s only been here two months.”

Vanessa kept staring at Liberty. “This would’ve been in the last few weeks. And he’d bring it to you.”

“Sorry, I can’t help you.” Liberty added dryly, “But I am sorry for your loss.”

Vanessa blinked a couple of times. “Yes. Thank you. It’s hard. Obviously.”

“Frank was a good man,” Liberty said.

Vanessa looked sideways and down. “He was—in his way. But he was acting awfully odd lately. You know how he was.”

Liberty made a noncommittal humming sound.

Vanessa looked straight at me for the first time. “My husband decided to believe in aliens.”

“Oh?” I didn’t know what else to say.

“He was really strange lately,” Vanessa went on. “He claimed he had to escape aliens during one of his rambles in the desert. The next day he barely remembered anything about it. But he kept going out looking, and—Liberty can tell you that part.” She gave Liberty another dirty look. “And he said he brought the rock here—the one the aliens wanted or something. I need to know …”

Liberty gave a little shrug. “I swear I don’t know anything about that rock. But you probably shouldn’t claim Frank was crazy for believing in aliens if you’re going to demand the thing that proved he was right.”

“He wasn’t—I think he was getting dementia or something. But I still want to see that rock. It was … important to him, so I want to make sure … It should be displayed in his memory.” She looked from Liberty to me. I had the feeling she was checking whether we bought her story. When we didn’t respond, she glared. “You better not try to keep it for yourself, or I’ll—I’ll sue.” Her voice rose on those last words. She swung away and strode off, the tap tap of her heels fading after she was out of sight.

Finally I said, “That was strange.”

Liberty let out a little huff of laughter. “Which part?”

“All of it, and I have a pretty high bar for strange. Who’s Frank?”

“He was a petroleum engineer before he retired. Then he got interested in alien life, but not like how Vanessa made it sound. He was involved with SETI—the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. It was started by NASA, and lots of scientists volunteer with it. They’re looking for evidence of intelligent life on other planets, but that means things like listening for signals in space. Frank didn’t believe in alien abductions, as far as I know.”

“So this rock …” I didn’t know how to finish that sentence.

Liberty spread her hands. “I have no idea. I certainly can’t imagine it had anything to do with an alleged alien abduction.”

“And Vanessa was Frank’s …”

“Wife. His second wife. They married about five years ago.”

I frowned over that. “I guess grief affects people in strange ways.”

“Yeah. If it is grief.”

“You don’t like Vanessa.” It didn’t take psychic powers to realize that.

“No. I’ve always thought she married Frank for his money.”

“How did he die?” I asked.

“About a week ago, Vanessa reported him missing. Search parties went out and eventually found him in the desert. He’d been dead for almost a day. The theory is that he got dehydrated and lost. Extreme dehydration can interfere with one’s ability to think clearly. It can happen even to young, healthy people. Frank was in his late sixties.”

“That’s tragic, regardless of how it happened.”

“It’s possible he had dementia, but I never saw any sign of it. It would’ve had to get bad fast to make him behave that oddly now.” She spoke slowly, as if figuring out her thoughts as she said them. “When I heard he’d died, I was shocked, and sad, because he was in great shape—he hiked all the time—and he should’ve had years left. It never occurred to me to wonder …”

“About aliens?” I asked cautiously.

She laughed. “No. I’m quite certain life exists elsewhere in the universe. There are two trillion galaxies, each with billions of stars. It’s egotistical to think we’re the only place with life. That doesn’t mean I think little green men kidnap people and probe them.

I nodded, relieved. I had to believe in paranormal powers, since I had one, but I placed alien abductions alongside folktales about werewolves and unicorns, in the category of highly unlikely.

“No,” Liberty said, “I’m wondering about foul play of the human variety.”

 

Learn more The Reluctant Psychic Mystery series or order copies. Available in ebook and print at all major retailers.

 

 

Amazon Associate Purchase Link: https://amzn.to/44U5PFy

 

Kris Bock©2025

Kris Bock writes adult mystery, suspense, and romance novels, many with outdoor adventures and Southwestern landscapes as well as other books. Learn more at www.krisbock.com.