Help me solve this mystery and win a signed paperback copy of your choice of Forbidden Mind, Forbidden Fire (in about a month) or Bits of You & Pieces of Me. I’ll also throw in some Three Lost Kids and Forbidden bookmarks!

Here’s the mystery:

The world of my Forbidden trilogy had me completely absorbed when a knock on the door broke my concentration. It must be one of the neighbor kids looking for our girls.

“Madelynne, can you get the door?”

She ran our of her room and greeted a man who stood on our porch with two packages. “Certified mail for Kimberly Kinrade.”

I had mail? Cool! I went to sign for them, thinking my parents had sent me early birthday presents, but why would they send it certified? I closed the door and took my two presents to the couch to open.

One bubble envelope and one purple letter envelope. They both had the same return address, but they weren’t from my parents.

Clue #1: the return address

Candies R Us, Inc.

371 Lakeport Blvd., #379

Lakeport, CA 95453

I opened the bubble envelope first, and found a Snickers bar and a blank, white sheet of paper folded up. Nothing else.

This is so bizarre. Why would someone send me a Snickers bar? I don’t even like Snickers.

I opened the letter, thinking it would explain why they had sent me a candy. Maybe they packaged it and forgot to sign the paper?

The envelope contained another white sheet of paper. Blank. Someone had taken the time to pay for a certified letter that I had to sign for… and only sent a blank sheet of paper. Why?

The postage for the Snickers package was $7.42 and was sent from Lakeport, California.

Clue #2

I lived in Lake County (which is the where Lakeport is) several years ago, and my best friend lives near there, but I have no contact with anyone else and she didn’t send this.

Clue #3

This is less of a clue, and more of a mystery. We just moved a little over a month ago (We don’t live in California) and almost NO ONE has our address. I’ve used a P.O. Box for everything and the only people who have this new address are my best friend, my parents (who live 14 hours from Lakeport and my mom just had surgery… so not a contender), my publishing company (not in California, and not likely to spend $12 to send me random blank notes and Snickers bars,) and one other person who lives in Washington.

My address is not listed, yet these were addressed specifically to me.

Clue #4

The manilla bubble package had pre-printed labels on it, but the purple envelope was handwritten and looks female.

What My Kids Think:

Assassins have been sent to kill me and they poisoned the Snickers. Time to test for poison and call the police!

What I’ve done:

I contacted the address listed, it’s a UPS store and the box number is attached to a business (not Candies R Us). They are calling the business (they aren’t allowed to disclose the name of the business) but they know the business and are confident the business is not in any way involved in this. They have not heard of this happening to anyone else.

I’ve googled Candies R Us, Inc. and didn’t find anything useful.

Here’s the mystery you need to solve.

WHO sent me these packages and WHY? And HOW did they get my address?

To win the signed book, you must solve the mystery. If no one can solve the mystery, I will award a signed copy to the person who has the best theory!

So, let’s see who’s the best P.I.!

UPDATE as of Monday 4:14 p.m. PST

I opened the Snickers bar. All I found was a smooshed Snickers and no evidence of tampering. (But no one is eating it.)

I also used water, fire and pencil rubbings on the paper and nothing! I’m out of ideas!!

Great comments and ideas, keep ’em coming!

Update Wednesday, April 4, 2012

No other information has come in about these mysterious packages. I have not discovered any other clues, and none of my testing has revealed any secrets. I haven’t received any other strange packages in the mail, unless you count small pieces of paper insisting on money for esoteric things such as light and water.

So… I’ll give it a week. If anything more happens, I’ll let you know. If nothing else happens and we can’t truly figure out the who, how and why of all this, I’ll pick a winner from the collective comments to win a signed book!

UPDATE: May 8, 2012- WINNER

I waited and waited and waited, and nothing. I have no idea who did this or why, and nothing else has happened. I think it’s time to accept the fact that I’ll likely never know, and that will bug me endlessly. But you all have been fantastic and it’s time to award a free signed book! So…. the winner is….

Terri Dion!

Congratulations. You have been emailed, please reply so I can get you your book! πŸ™‚

Thank you to you all for commenting, coming up with creative ideas and helping to figure out the mystery of this! You all are amazing and I’d like to reward each of you. So if commented on this post originally and you email me within the next 7 days with an ebook request of one of my published books and your reading preference (mobi for Kindle, epub for Nook), I will send you a free ebook as thanks for getting involved.