The Legacy

By Meurice Jeffers Lake

Nicole Marra is a college student volunteering at a local hospital on her summer break when she meets a girl with a serious problem.

Mysterious love letters hold a clue that could save a life. Nicoles amateur investigations take her across the ocean to England and a love story that happened a long time ago. However, danger follows her every move as she gets closer to solving the mystery.

A thrilling adventure story that holds the reader in suspense as the young college student solves a pernicious scheme.

This book is geared for children nine to twelve years.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jan 31, 2015
• ISBN: 9781503535893

Meurice Jeffers Lake

Meurice Jeffers Lake is a graduate of Georgian Court University. She resides in Mountainside, New Jersey. She is the mother of three children and the grandmother of six. She spent most of her life teaching elementary school and has a great love for children. She also traveled extensively and wrote about her experiences. She is the author of The Lighthouse Secret.

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Copyright © 2015 by Meurice Jeffers Lake.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Rev. date: 01/22/2015

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Contents

Chapter I: A New Friend

Chapter II: Love Letters

Chapter III: An Investigation

Chapter IV: Strange Encounters

Chapter V: A Trip To England

Chapter VI: Off To Paris

Chapter VII: Reunion

Acknowledgements

Dedication

To mom my partner

and

Tara my inspiration

Chapter I

A NEW FRIEND

Crash! Bang! Watch out! Hey! Nicole Marra was exiting a hospital room where she worked for the summer as a volunteer candy striper, when her cart was knocked over by a man running for the elevator. He bolted down the hall and slapped the elevator button without so much as a beg your pardon. He was a surly looking character in torn jeans and dirty, ripped sneakers.

Nicole picked up the magazines and juice containers and returned the cart to the storage room. That was her last room to visit and she was finished for the day. She was home on summer break from college where she was studying liberal arts. She would enter her sophomore year in September but hadn’t decided on a major as yet. She had another year to think it over.

Nicole’s mom died when she was eight years old, leaving her father to raise her with the help of his sister, Carol. David Marra was a dec tie on the Carson City police department and was very proud of his only child.

Nicole had many attributes. One of them was her sense of compassion. It was this quality that came to the forefront on this warm sunny day in June. She had volunteered to be a candy striper at the hospital one day a week while she was home. She loved wearing the cute little uniform and giving the juice out to the patients on the fifth floor. She was getting to know them and their likes and dislikes. Some people liked tomato juice, while others preferred orange or apple. She knew which magazines to offer to the ladies and which ones the gentlemen preferred. She thought this was a good way to get the feel of what hospital life was like if she decided to go into a health related career. She did like people after all and was glad to be of service to the sick.

As the automatic door opened at St. John’s Memorial, she saw a young girl about her age, sitting on a bench crying. She looked so pathetic. Nicole sat down next to her and tried to console her.

The girl’s name was Laura Wilson, she told her between sobs, that her mother was seriously ill and in need of special medical care that was very costly. She, herself, was a clerk in a local store and didn’t earn very much money. "I just don’t know what to do. Mom is such a good person. I can’t imagine what it would be like