Summary:
Secrets and Scrabble #1
Ellery Page, aspiring screenwriter, Scrabble champion and guy-with-worst-luck-in-the-world-when-it-comes-to-dating, is ready to make a change. So when he learns he's inherited both a failing bookstore and a falling-down mansion in the quaint seaside village of Pirate's Cove on Buck Island, Rhode Island, it's full steam ahead!
Sure enough, the village is charming, its residents amusingly eccentric, and widowed police chief Jack Carson is decidedly yummy (though probably as straight as he is stern). However, the bookstore is failing, the mansion is falling down, and there's that little drawback of finding rival bookseller--and head of the unwelcoming-committee--Trevor Maples dead during the annual Buccaneer Days celebration.
Still, it could be worse. And once Police Chief Carson learns Trevor was killed with the cutlass hanging over the door of Ellery's bookstore, it is.
**This story contains NO on-screen sex or violence.
I want to start by commenting on a couple of points.
1. I love a good cozy mystery, though to be completely honest, I never see them as "cozy" just mystery.2. I love the name Ellery Page. I don't know if it was intentional on the author's part by possibly making it a nod to the Ellery Queen Mysteries, but as a lover & collector of old radio shows and films, I thought of it right away.3. In the same fashion as 2, I loved that the cop's name is Jack Carson. Again I don't know if it was intentional but I immediately pictured the comedic actor Jack Carson of the 40s and 50s. From physicality to downplayed wit, it made perfect casting in my brain.4. The idea that Ellery inherits from his great great great aunt was a nice twist. Personally I was always closer to my great aunts(only one great not 3😉) than my actual aunt, but great-anythings tend to get overlooked or not used in fiction. Extra kudos for that.
Back to Murder at Pirate's Cove.
I won't say much about the mystery itself but I'll admit the "who done it?" crossed my mind early-ish in the investigation. Having said that, Josh Lanyon is brilliant when it comes to twists and turns that keep me on my toes so I was never 100% sure until the reveal.
The connection between the characters, and I don't just mean Ellery and Jack, is wonderful. Small town gossips, small town reporting, small town politics, and small town cops is all spot on. I can't speak for living in a touristy town but I can attest to small town atmosphere and everything Lanyon brings to the story definitely hits the nail on the head.
I guess I can't say too much more without leaking some spoilers and even though this is more than a year old release, I'm sure there are plenty who like me just got around to reading it. Normally I gobble everything by Josh Lanyon instantly but 2020 really screwed with my reading mojo so I just got around to Secrets & Scrabbles. I love the combination of mystery, wit, friendships, mayhem, possible romance and it's that blending that makes Murder at Pirate's Cove such a delightfully fun read.
Sunset Lake by John Inman
Summary:Reverend Brian Lucas has a secret his congregation in the Nine Mile Methodist Church knows nothing about, and he’d really like to keep it that way. But even his earth-shattering secret takes a backseat to what else is happening in his tiny hometown.
Murders usually do that.
Brian's “close friend,” Sam, is urging a resolution to their little problem, but Brian's brother, Boyd, the County Sheriff, is more caught up in chasing down a homicidal maniac who is slaughtering little old ladies.
When Brian's secret and Boyd's mystery run into each other head on, and Boyd's fifteen-year-old son, Jesse, gets involved, all hell breaks loose. Then a fourth death comes to terrify the town, and it is Brian who begins to see what is taking place in their little corner of the Corn Belt. But even for a Methodist minister, it will take more than prayer to set it right.
There really isn't anything I can add to my original review as to the greatness of this story. Brian, Sam, Boyd, Jesse, and even Mrs. Shanahan(Sam's aunt) are just as interesting the second time around as they were originally. Knowing what was coming and who did what didn't lessen the edge of your seat creepy factor either. Let's face it, the who, what, where, and why are the meat and potatoes of a good mystery and sometimes once you know the answers they can be not as fun anymore but not with Sunset Lake. "Fun" may seem an odd term for this kind of tale but when done right, I find mysteries are my favorite genre of choice to enjoy and John Inman has done it right. As for the narration, I've never listened to a book read by Randal Shaffer but he was quite perfect for this tale of the macabre and I can see this being a re-read/listen for years to come.
Original ebook Review August 2019:
A closeted reverend, his BFF(aka longterm secret boyfriend), the BFF's elderly aunt, the reverend's teenage nephew and his BFF are spending the summer preparing for the opening of the new church camp. Throw in the minister's brother the cop and it sounds like the opening of a bad joke but Sunset Lake is no joke. John Inman has once again showed his knack for death and danger with this incredibly well written murder mystery that may not be as creepy as some of his tales but it has it's fair share of gruesomeness to keep the reader leery of what awaits them on the next page.
Brian, the closeted minister, and Sam, the BFF/secret lover, are definitely a well suited item. I can understand why Brian is closeted and weary about being himself. Personally I don't think he gives his family enough credit but it isn't just his family, his biggest fear is his congregation and the church hierarchy and the possibility of them taking the church from him. I'm not a gay man so I can't speak from experience but I'd like to think if I was in Brian's place and my congregation couldn't accept me for who I am then I don't think I'd want to be their minister. The truth is for Brian it really comes down to being ready and only he can make that decision, which Inman really helps you see that through the minister's inner monologue.
As for Sam, I don't know as I could be as patient as he has been but what I loved most about this was the author didn't go the cliché route in having Sam pressure Brian to come out. Some authors go the way of an ultimatum for the sake of the drama element but Mr. Inman did not and that made Sunset Lake even more entertaining for me. Now that's not to say Sam is happy and content to be the secret lover but he understands Brian needs to be honest with himself, his family, and his parishioners at his own pace. Just how long Sam is willing to wait is something you'll have to read for yourself😉 but I will say that the lack of an ultimatum made for a welcome change.
Now let's talk murder. WOW! DOUBLE WOW! and WOW AGAIN! When evil comes to the little community of Nine Mile, it really comes full force, perhaps not in quantity but the quality of the evil is definitely not for the faint of heart. That's not to say Sunset Lake is the book equivalent of an 80s slasher flick but it's not pretty either😉. I obviously won't say who did it but I will say I was wrong in my guessing and theories up until about 5 or 6 pages before the reveal. Sunset Lake will keep you wondering, keep you intrigued, and keep you on the edge of your seat from beginning to end.
In my reading experience a limited number of authors, no matter how good they are, are true storytellers. What the difference is you ask? Well in my mind a storyteller not only pens a great read but puts you in it, makes the reader feel as if you are right there witnessing everything, if you turn left on the street corner on your way to the post office you'll run into character A, you'll see character B drive by when you step out to get the mail, and you'll do everything you can to avoid character C when you spot them coming out of the cafe😉. Sunset Lake is a perfect example of why John Inman is a storyteller and though it may seem kind of a creepy story to feel you are right there in the middle of, it definitely adds an extra layer of amazing-ness and "Oh crap I didn't see that coming". This is not a new release for the author but it did just recently come to my attention so if you are like me and missed it four years ago, be sure to give it a look-see because it is definitely a creepy romantic gem worthy of your time and money.
RATING:
A closeted reverend, his BFF(aka longterm secret boyfriend), the BFF's elderly aunt, the reverend's teenage nephew and his BFF are spending the summer preparing for the opening of the new church camp. Throw in the minister's brother the cop and it sounds like the opening of a bad joke but Sunset Lake is no joke. John Inman has once again showed his knack for death and danger with this incredibly well written murder mystery that may not be as creepy as some of his tales but it has it's fair share of gruesomeness to keep the reader leery of what awaits them on the next page.
Brian, the closeted minister, and Sam, the BFF/secret lover, are definitely a well suited item. I can understand why Brian is closeted and weary about being himself. Personally I don't think he gives his family enough credit but it isn't just his family, his biggest fear is his congregation and the church hierarchy and the possibility of them taking the church from him. I'm not a gay man so I can't speak from experience but I'd like to think if I was in Brian's place and my congregation couldn't accept me for who I am then I don't think I'd want to be their minister. The truth is for Brian it really comes down to being ready and only he can make that decision, which Inman really helps you see that through the minister's inner monologue.
As for Sam, I don't know as I could be as patient as he has been but what I loved most about this was the author didn't go the cliché route in having Sam pressure Brian to come out. Some authors go the way of an ultimatum for the sake of the drama element but Mr. Inman did not and that made Sunset Lake even more entertaining for me. Now that's not to say Sam is happy and content to be the secret lover but he understands Brian needs to be honest with himself, his family, and his parishioners at his own pace. Just how long Sam is willing to wait is something you'll have to read for yourself😉 but I will say that the lack of an ultimatum made for a welcome change.
Now let's talk murder. WOW! DOUBLE WOW! and WOW AGAIN! When evil comes to the little community of Nine Mile, it really comes full force, perhaps not in quantity but the quality of the evil is definitely not for the faint of heart. That's not to say Sunset Lake is the book equivalent of an 80s slasher flick but it's not pretty either😉. I obviously won't say who did it but I will say I was wrong in my guessing and theories up until about 5 or 6 pages before the reveal. Sunset Lake will keep you wondering, keep you intrigued, and keep you on the edge of your seat from beginning to end.
In my reading experience a limited number of authors, no matter how good they are, are true storytellers. What the difference is you ask? Well in my mind a storyteller not only pens a great read but puts you in it, makes the reader feel as if you are right there witnessing everything, if you turn left on the street corner on your way to the post office you'll run into character A, you'll see character B drive by when you step out to get the mail, and you'll do everything you can to avoid character C when you spot them coming out of the cafe😉. Sunset Lake is a perfect example of why John Inman is a storyteller and though it may seem kind of a creepy story to feel you are right there in the middle of, it definitely adds an extra layer of amazing-ness and "Oh crap I didn't see that coming". This is not a new release for the author but it did just recently come to my attention so if you are like me and missed it four years ago, be sure to give it a look-see because it is definitely a creepy romantic gem worthy of your time and money.
RATING:
A Carriage of Misjustice by Charlie Cochrane
Summary:Lindenshaw Mysteries #5
Murder doesn't care if you're a newlywed.
Detective Chief Inspector Robin Bright and Deputy Headteacher Adam Matthews have just tied the knot, and all they want to do is sink into blissful domesticity. Unfortunately, there’s no chance of that when a chilling murder at a rugby ground takes Robin miles away to help his old boss solve it.
The mystery seems impossible to crack. Everyone with a motive has an alibi, and those without alibis don’t have a motive. Robin’s determined that this won’t be the case he’s unable to unravel. Not when he’s got his old boss to impress and a new team to lick into shape.
Back at home, Adam joins a fundraising choir to keep himself occupied. Surely a case that’s so far away won’t draw him in this time? Fate has other ideas, though, and danger turns up—quite literally—on his doorstep. He’ll need Campbell the Newfoundland for both company and protection this time around.
It has been over a year since A Carriage of Misjustice was released and I'm sorry to say I just got around to reading it. 2020 really screwed with my reading mojo and 2021 hasn't fared much better but I do appear to possibly be coming out of the haze. Now, I'm the first one to admit, Robin, Adam, and the Lindenshaw Mysteries may not quite reach the level of "OMG!" that the author's Cambridge Fellows Mysteries does but it's a pretty close second. This newest installment is no less brilliant than the previous entries in the series.
Robin and Adam are still just as amazing together, even though truth be told their togetherness is less as Robin is called to take over the lead in a case in another town. Don't think that means Adam doesn't find a way(or perhaps more accurately the way finds him) to be on the fringes at least of his husband's latest case. Whether physically together or not, these newlyweds are just as fun as they've always been. Campbell the dog seems to enjoy his new role as protector now that his other dad is away, even joining in on choir practice occasionally😉.
As for the case, well you know I won't divulge anything here but I will mention how some might think the mystery is a bit overloaded on the suspect list but I like it that way. Sure some might call it convoluted at times with so many suspects but you know what? That just kept me on my toes more and kind of put me more into the story right along with Robin and his fellow coppers trying to weave their way around all the leads. Simply put: sometimes less can be more but this time more is perfect.
Charlie Cochrane has once again proven to me that UK mysteries in all forms are just a little more entertaining with the well balanced levels of mayhem, drama, AND humor. Brilliant on every page. Can't wait to see what shenanigans show up on Robin and Adams' doorstep next.
RATING:
Summary:
John Billings Mysteries #2
The year is 1895.
An ancient manuscript claiming to hold the secrets of God’s creation;
A cunning old woman trying to make sense of it;
A deluded psychopath intent on stealing it away from her.
Private detective John Billings and his assistant Bartholomew Trotter have been tasked with finding a mysterious ancient manuscript known as the "Codex of Solomon" – a book of magical spells much desired by secretive esoteric societies.
They're not the only ones hunting for this artifact. A deluded young psychopath has already committed murder to find it. And a stubborn old woman thinks that this manuscript will give her the respect she so craves.
This is the latest in a series of Victorian mysteries exploring the dark side of the late Victorian era. It follows on from the events described in A Glimpse of Heaven.
Original Review July 2021:
Once again Olivier Bosman has created an intriguing blend of mystery, friendship, realizations, humor, danger, mayhem, and this time around wonderful travel to distant lands. John Billings just gets better and better with each book. They mysteries are always brilliant and though I may have seen a couple of points coming I was always left with the feeling of "wellllll, maybe not, maybe it's this" because the author always keeps his readers on the edge of their seats.
As for John, well he just continues to grow and accept who he is and though there isn't anything real "big" on the personal front, he continues to move forward, perhaps a bit slower at times than you want him to but always onward. As to his trusty sidekick/assistant, Trotter, we see a few new peaks into who he is as well and I have a feeling, like John, he will continue to grow as the series and their caseload progress. Together their friendship may seem only work related but I think they both realize, perhaps not admit, it goes beyond the office and caseload. Whatever it is and however you see it, it definitely adds an extra layer of fresh fun to the series.
Now I won't go into the mystery part too much, I will say that though it is probably more gruesome at times than any of the other cases in John Billings workload, be it as private investigator or Scotland Yard detective, but I also think there is a bit more humor than any of the others mostly due to Billings and Trotters' dry wit. I may have had more moments of "ewww" but also more laughs. I think the combination of gruesome and humor is what really made this my favorite one yet. A Little Morbid is simply put: interesting and attention-grabbing making for a flat-out wonderful reading experience.
One last note, some might say this can be read as a standalone since the case he is hired to solve has a start and finish but the truth is there are elements that carry over from A Glimpse of Heaven, I won't say more to that so I don't spoil anything but for me I'm glad I read book one first. Truth is, I'm glad I read DS Billings Victorian Mysteries series first. John Billings has grown as a character both on a personal level of accepting who he is but also as a detective and investigator. There are friendships that carried over into his journey as a private investigator that also made me glad I read from the very beginning. Having said that, you won't be lost if you don't read DS Billings first but personally I'm glad I did.
Requiem for Mr. Busybody by Josh Lanyon
“Maybe you’ll be next, Mr. Busybody!”
From well-respected investigative journalist to resident busybody.
When former crime reporter Michael’s elderly friend Maurice suddenly disappears, he fears the worst. But Michael is unable to investigate, and no one is taking his suspicions seriously—least of all Nico, Maurice’s too slick, too smooth, possibly guilty boyfriend.
The only person Michael can think of who might listen is Leonard Drake, now a Lieutenant Detective with NYPD.
In fact, this excuse to contact his ex might just be what Michael has been waiting three years for.
I just want to start off by saying that Rear Window is my second favorite Alfred Hitchcock film so I was completely sucked into this nod to Hitchcock. Throw in a modern day setting, LGBT characters, and Josh Lanyon's talent for tangled-web-spinning, you are left with a perfect balance of original and homage to make a wonderful reading experience.
Speaking of characters, Michael and Leonard are a delight. I completely understand Michael's need to protect himself and thinking he needed to protect Leonard's future when Michael's life took a different path after getting injured as well as dealing with his own anger at the time over all of it. My grandfather was in a wheelchair due to MS, so I get how Michael felt at the time but I also get a little ticked off when they take it upon themselves to decide what's best for the other person so I also understand Leonard. There's always pluses and minuses on both sides of this kind of life changing situation and the author has tackled it quite well, quite believable, and doesn't drag the story down over it, unfortunately I've read those too but Requiem for Mr. Busybody is not one of those. Time has passed but does their futures still share a path? Well you know my answer to that: read for yourself to find out but if you are familiar with Josh Lanyon's work you know that the story is in the journey, not so much the ending and even though this is a short novella, the journey is still where the meat and potatoes are. You won't regret it.
As for the mystery? No spoilers. The danger level or the drama factor may not be as high but just because I found it to be a bit more on the lighter side then some mysteries doesn't mean there isn't sneakiness all around. There is. I loved the blend of mayhem, romance, friendship, and just the right amount of humor. Some might label it "cozy mystery" but whatever term you choose, I just call it fun and entertaining. Requiem for Mr. Busybody is definitely a winning read in my book.
RATING:
Murder at Pirate's Cove by Josh Lanyon
Prologue
The damp night air was bracingly cold and, as always, suffused with the distinct ocean smell. Supposedly that seaside scent came from bacteria digesting dead phytoplankton. Ellery had picked that tidbit up that afternoon from a Tripp Ellis thriller.
The streets were quiet and strangely deserted as he walked back from the pub to the bookstore. His car—well, Great-great-great-aunt Eudora’s car, if someone wanted to get technical—was still in the parking lot. Captain’s Seat, Great-great-great-aunt Eudora’s decrepit mansion, was about a fifteen-minute drive from the village. Walking distance for someone who hadn’t been on his feet all day and didn’t mind a stroll down a pitch-black country road. None of which described Ellery.
His thoughts were preoccupied as he turned the corner onto the narrow brick street that held the little bookshop that had brought him to Pirate’s Cove in the first place.
The tall Victorian buildings cast deep shadows. Most of the storefronts were dark or illuminated only by the faint glow of emergency lights, so he was startled to see the bright yellow oblongs stretching from the tall windows of the Crow’s Nest across the gray pavement.
That’s weird.
He was positive he had locked the place up after shutting all the lights off. A larger than usual electricity bill was the last thing he wanted.
He sped up, his footsteps echoing down the silent street as he hurried toward the Crow’s Nest. He grabbed the doorknob, guiltily recalling that the first words Chief Carson had ever spoken to him concerned replacing the sticky old lock with a new deadbolt. His dismay ratcheted up another notch as the door swung open on well-oiled hinges.
Oh no.
No way had he forgotten to lock up. He had lived in New York most of his life, for heaven’s sake. Locking doors was second nature to him. Sure, Pirate’s Cove was a small town, but all you had to do was flip through a couple of titles in the cozy-mystery section to know that evil lurked in the cutest, quaintest corners of the universe.
“Hello?” he called.
His uneasy gaze fell on the thing lying just a few feet inside the shop. A purple-plumed green tricorn hat. He looked past the hat, and his breath caught. His heart shuddered to a stop.
“No,” he whispered. “No way…”
At first glance there appeared to be a drunken pirate passed out on the floor of the Crow’s Nest. His disbelieving eyes took in the glossy boots, black velvet breeches, long, plum-colored coat and gold-trimmed vest, the scarlet lace jabot…
Scarlet.
Because the lacy folds were soaked in blood. The same blood slowly spreading around the motionless—terrifyingly motionless—form sprawled on newly sanded hardwood floors.
He put a hand out to steady himself—except there was nothing to grab—so he stumbled forward, landing on his knees beside the body. He instinctively reached to check for… But there was no need. The eerie stillness of the man’s chest, the glassy stare, the gray and bloodless face… Trevor Maples was dead. Tiny, twin, horror-stricken reflections of himself in those sightless blue eyes.
He drew back, climbed clumsily to his feet, and staggered out the open door to the uncannily silent street.
“Help!” he cried. “Help! Murder!”
One by one, the street’s lamps turned on as residents in the apartments above the shops surrounding the Crow’s Nest woke to the cries of death and disaster. The windows of normally sleepy little Pirate’s Cove lit up like the stars winking overhead.
Sunset Lake by John Inman
Chapter One
HERE IN Nine Mile, kinship still shapes daily life. Familial bonds are strong, and the ties of friendship are lifelong and rarely broken. We seem to possess the tattered remnants of a pioneer culture, with all the spirit and cohesiveness that entails, and at the same time, we find ourselves coexisting with satellite dishes and microwave ovens and shiny computer-driven automobiles that beep and boop and flash annoying little lights at us every time we do something stupid.
The people here are good, most of them. Kind, simple country folks. Many are farmers, and like good farmers everywhere, they have an undying, tongue-in-cheek faith in the ability of God or government, or both, to somehow mangle the next harvest and render it worthless.
In reality, these people haven’t changed as much as they might think they have. Their accessories have, certainly, but not the people themselves. Like the pioneers before them, their hearts are strong with reverence for country, family, friends, and church. And the land, of course. With citizens such as these, it is always the land that comes first. Always.
Put simply, they are nice, decent people. On the whole.
Exceptions, of course, can always be found.
And on this, the last day of her life, Grace Nuggett would meet one of those exceptions face-to-face.
It wasn’t the sort of day one would choose for the last day of life if one’s options were open. The rain had not yet come pelting down, but by the look of that dismal gunmetal sky above our heads, I figured it was only a matter of time before it did. From the occasional grumble of distant thunder, it seemed a safe bet Someone up there agreed with me.
Being the only Methodist minister in Nine Mile, and knowing full well the farmers were scanning the sky for the least little promise of rain to ease the long drought they had been enduring (God did it to them this time, since they couldn’t very well blame the government for the weather), I should have sent up a grateful prayer of thanks that the withered crops in the fields would finally get some much-needed moisture. But in reality, all I did was lean against the outside wall of my church, cross my arms, stare balefully at the sky, and sigh. If I were a farmer in need of sunshine, I would have had the pleasure of blaming God for this outrage, but being a preacher in need of sunshine in the middle of a drought, I didn’t quite dare. Not that I wasn’t tempted.
After two long months with nary a hint of moisture in the air, today, of all days, the sky had finally decided to open up. Sam had warned me, of course. He always does. About everything.
Sam is my go-to guy for all things mechanical, since I’m about as useful as a box of sick hamsters. Sam is also my best friend. We have known each other since we were kids growing up in this one-horse town. Looking at us, one would think we were polar opposites. Sam stands about five foot six, and I’m six four. Sam is well built, and I’m a beanpole. His hair is reddish blond while mine is black. The only thing we truly have in common, other than friendship, is the fact that we are both single. Which, of course, opens up a whole new can of worms since every woman at the church is constantly trying to set us up with a female relative or two. Or three. But so far Sam and I have held on to our bachelorhood with tooth and claw.
But that’s another story altogether.
“Give the farmers a break, Brian,” Sam told me. His voice was a booming, sonorous echo because he had his head buried in the church’s old upright piano. He had his head stuck in the piano because he was trying to tune the thing himself since the church couldn’t afford to pay an actual piano tuner to do the job.
I didn’t say anything, but it sounded to me like he was getting questionable results as far as the tuning went. His words, however, would later prove to be right on key.
“Set the date for the annual basket dinner,” he said. “That’s the only way the poor farmers’ll get any rain, and you know it.”
He must have heard my derisive snort, for he poked his head out of the piano and gave me a glare. A dust ball the size of a mouse was stuck in his hair. “Just wait. You’ll see. And while you’re waiting, hand me that velvet hammer. The one in the toolbox.”
I handed him the hammer, and here I was, two weeks later, propped against the side of the church like a tired wooden Indian, the back of my neck heating up, remembering how I had scoffed at Sam’s prediction.
Well, to make a long story short, I did see. All too well. As I watched, the good ladies of my congregation, with their starched Sunday dresses flapping like flags about their legs, tried rather unsuccessfully to place tablecloths and napkins atop the plank-covered trestles arranged in rows beneath the elm trees at the edge of the churchyard. Unsuccessfully because as soon as someone neatly spread a tablecloth, the wind would come along and flip it into the grass. Or happily toss the napkins into the air. Or simply poof the poor lady’s skirt up around her ears until she was forced to drop everything in an attempt to maintain her dignity, and the moment she did, the wind would take everything—tablecloth, napkins, paper plates and cups—and gleefully scatter them to hell and back.
At my back, through the walls of the old church, I heard the sweet voices of the Methodist choir practicing, yet again, one of the hymns they had chosen for this occasion. Behind the emphatic lead of the ancient upright piano—which still wasn’t tuned right, dammit—I heard the choir sing the old familiar lyrics I grew up with.
Shall we gather at the ri-i-iver,
The beautiful, the beautiful r-i-i-iver.
Before the verse was finished, a particularly energetic gust of wind rattled the elm branches, and rain began to splatter the sidewalk at my feet and plunk against the tall windows of the church. Then something a bit more insistent began plunking at the window beside me, and I turned to see Sam tapping at the glass from inside the chapel and pointing to the ladies out there beneath the trees as they frantically gathered up the tumbling paraphernalia of our ill-timed basket dinner. With squeals of laughter, they began scurrying, light-footed, through the wet grass toward the church to seek shelter from the quickening rain.
As luck would have it, the food was already in the basement.
“Just in case,” Sam had said earlier, with a wary eye on that ugly sky overhead as the ladies began arriving with dishes upon pots upon containers of every sort, filled with heaven knows what but all smelling so wonderful it sent saliva dribbling off the end of my chin as if the gaskets in my mouth had dissolved from the sheer splendor of it all.
As my nephew Jesse, fifteen years old and looking uncomfortably spit shined on this summer afternoon, and his friend Kyle, looking equally clean and miserable, ran past me to help the ladies do what they had to do, I realized it might not be a bad idea if I helped them a bit myself. They weren’t paying me to prop up the church. I was supposed to be the man in charge.
Before I could set off to assist the ladies of Nine Mile, a loud crack of thunder made me jump straight up into the air and bang my head on the underside of the electric meter nailed to the side of the church.
One of the ladies squealed in mock terror as she ran for the door, trailing a tablecloth over her head to protect her hair from the rain. Manly enough not to squeal, or so I hoped, I caught one last glimpse of Sam’s laughing face in the window as I sprinted for the door myself. Rather than mowing the good woman down in my haste to escape the now cascading sheets of rain, it seemed a bit more gallant to grab her arm and lead her safely, but hurriedly, up the church steps and into the vestibule. There we shook ourselves off like a couple of wet dogs and laughed at the silliness of the situation.
Never one to miss an opportunity to embarrass me, as old friends always seem to do, Sam gave me a good-natured ribbing as I stood in the vestibule, dripping. “Good Lord, Brian! It’s raining cats and dogs out there. Let’s have a picnic, shall we?”
Sam’s aunt Mrs. Shanahan, a rotund lady of eighty-some years with blue finger-waved hair that rolled across the top of her head like a corrugated tin roof, and possessing a voice that could crack obsidian, came to my rescue. Not. Mrs. Shanahan and I were adversaries from way back. She used to chase me out of her scuppernong arbor back in my youthful, barefoot days, and she had been chasing me one way or another ever since.
“Now, Sam. Mustn’t pick at the poor man just because he chose the worst day we’ve had in six months to hold our annual basket dinner. We’ll get by. We always do. Old Reverend Morton, now. He knew how to pick ’em. Always chose the prettiest day of the year. I asked him once how he managed to do that year after year, and he said he asked God to set the date for him. Now, there was a man of faith!”
He was also a pompous old windbag who inevitably smelled of garlic and cheap aftershave, I thought, rather uncharitably, I suppose, for a Methodist minister. Especially when referring to the man of God who had preceded me at my post for nigh on fifteen years. But it was true nevertheless. Reverend Morton was the dullest man to set foot on this planet since the conception of time, and if he ever spoke directly to God, and God actually deigned to answer, then I was a Kurdish camel driver on the road to popedom.
“But never mind,” Mrs. Shanahan yammered on, giving Sam a wink and me a snarl. “We’ll eat inside. Lord knows we haven’t had to do that for ages. Kind of defeats the purpose of an outdoor basket dinner, don’t you know. But what the hey? The food’s good. That’s what counts. Right, Jesse?”
A hand the size of a thirty-dollar pot roast came out of nowhere and slapped Jesse on the back. I could hear the boy’s teeth rattle from the impact. The poor kid looked vaguely appalled at being thusly singled out for an opinion, but he carried it off well enough. “Suppose so,” he mumbled to no one in particular. At the same time, he rolled his shoulder around to get some circulation back into it. “I like the rain.”
Mrs. Shanahan enthusiastically pounded his back again, this time nearly driving the boy to his knees, which elicited a snicker from his friend Kyle. She appeared oblivious to her own strength. “Of course you do, Jesse!” her voice boomed out. “You and everybody else within shouting distance come from good American farm stock. Ain’t a farmer been hatched yet that don’t like the rain. In decent doses, that is.”
The woman stuck her great arm through mine and dragged me toward the basement steps. “Come on, Reverend. Let’s get the tables set up downstairs. Gotta work before we eat, you know.”
Sam stood on the sidelines, watching this exchange with laughing eyes and a heart, I’m sure, that soared with happiness. Nothing amused him more than my own embarrassment. If you get to really know Sam, sooner or later he’ll tell you about the time I peed my pants in first grade. But let’s not get into that.
I was still being dragged along in Mrs. Shanahan’s wake when a sudden burst of lightning made her tighten her grip on my arm and hasten her step. She came to life like Frankenstein’s monster, I pleasantly conjectured, rather happy with my choice of metaphor, and at the same time, I wondered how the woman could so unfailingly steer my mind into such unchristian corridors. It was a talent at which she positively excelled.
Sam made a face as if he knew what I was thinking, which he probably did. He grabbed Jesse and Kyle around their necks and dragged them down the basement steps behind me. As we headed underground, the sound of thunder receded, to be replaced by the confused babble of a hundred happy voices all jabbering at once in delirious abandon.
The church basement was large, thank heavens, but still every corner was filled. Colorful print dresses were interspersed only occasionally with the more somber shirt and tie. It was a weekday, after all, and most of the farmers were in their fields, or had been until the rain started. Only their wives could afford the luxury of a day off. But even they had earned it. The array of supper dishes and cake plates and aluminum pots and pans of every shape and size confirmed that fact. Food was everywhere. The air was alive with the smell of it. These ladies hadn’t simply popped out of bed that morning and dressed for church. Most of them had been up half the night preparing dishes they could be proud of. Dishes, they hoped, that would pucker their neighbors’ hearts with envy.
Basically, they were showing off. But Lord, theirs was a vanity of which I fully approved.
It didn’t take us long, with all hands chipping in, to arrange the food on tables along the basement wall.
It was a mouth-watering assortment, to be sure. Meats first, then came the casseroles and veggies, and after that the delicacies I loved the best. Homemade pickles, wilted lettuce swimming in sugar and bacon grease (hellish in cholesterol but heavenly on the palate), tiny ears of young corn dabbed with freshly churned butter, garden fresh radishes and peppers dipped in vinegar, and a dozen other trifles.
After that, as you greedily meandered down the line of tables, you came to the breads and biscuits: Freshly baked sourdough that had been tenderly raised—covered with a dishcloth and placed in the sun for warmth—transforming it from an unappetizing wad of pale dough to one of God’s greatest gifts to man, next only to the sacred act of sex itself. Chunks of home-baked bread the size of concrete blocks that you pulled apart with your hands. Round slabs of cornbread baked in cast-iron skillets and sliced in triangles, pie-fashion. Muffins of every shape and flavor—apple, blueberry, carrot, gooseberry, hickory nut, pumpkin, zucchini, and some that were unrecognizable but delicious just the same.
After the muffins, as you neared the apex of this fattening runway, you came to the desserts. Pies of every flavor, with delicate designs carved into the crusts. An angel food cake standing a foot high if it was an inch and topped with strawberries from someone’s garden. Freshly picked cherries buried in coconut and whipped cream, cookies piled high on platters, a dozen different kinds, and at the end my personal favorite: a peach cobbler, baked, I knew, by Mrs. Shanahan, who with those pot-roast-size hands of hers could pull culinary wonders from her oven.
Guilt over calories consumed would come later. For now, everyone dedicated themselves, heart and soul, to the business at hand. We milled around like cows on a hillside, chewing our cuds, eyes half-closed in delirious bliss, as if this were the sole purpose for our existence. To eat. We did it with unbridled enthusiasm, occasionally exclaiming over a particularly delightful discovery and calling out to ask who made it. When the culprit was found, it was usually a stocky housewife with sunburned cheeks and eyes that crinkled at the corners from squinting in a truck garden for hours on end beneath a blazing summer sun. Hearing the compliments, a blush of pride from all the praise accorded her would raise the pink glow of those sunburned cheeks to a happy, fiery red. Then, to ease herself humbly from the spotlight, she would cry out in praise of some delicacy or other, and in so doing, pass the torch to someone else.
It was all very civilized and Christian. These people were, after all, friends. Many of them had known each other, like Sam and I, since birth. They understood that praise, like butter, must be spread around. One brief moment of glory was enough for anyone, but once your moment ended, lend it to someone else. Otherwise, the next time praise was being flung about like candy at a parade, you might find none of it flying in your direction. They were friends, yes, but they were friends who never forgot a kindness or a slight.
After a time, the clatter of forks on plates diminished, and snippets of conversations could be heard that didn’t always refer to the food at hand. The feeding frenzy was winding down.
I sat back, sandwiched as I was between Sam and Mrs. Shanahan, gorged like a tick about to pop. Casually, so as not to be unduly noticed, I loosened my belt a notch. Sam looked about as miserable as I did, although he was still chomping on a fistful of oatmeal cookies.
I tried not to puke watching him, and while I gave my glutted body a much-needed rest, I let my attention roam around the room as I studied the faces of my flock.
These were the people who worshipped in my church, who suffered through my sermons, who sometimes came to me with their problems. We seemed a cozy, friendly group, sitting there huddled together with our bellies full while the summer storm howled outside.
The farmers should be happy, I reflected, watching the rain slap against the little ground-level windows placed high along the basement walls. They had certainly needed this rain, even if I had not. But what the hey, rain or not, the annual basket dinner appeared to be a raging success. Perhaps the rain had brought us closer together, here in this crowded basement room, than we would have felt underneath the elms outside with the endless summer sky overhead.
Gradually, for lack of anything better to do and too stuffed to do it even if there had been, I tuned in to the voices around me.
Mrs. Shanahan’s, of course, was the first to pierce my awareness. She leaned across me and Sam to speak to Aggie Snyder, who was one of the farm wives and who, at the moment, was about as pregnant as a human being can be. Mrs. Shanahan blithely ignored Sam and me as if we were a couple of fence posts someone had had the audacity to sink into the ground smack in front of her face.
“Lordy, Aggie, I feel as full as you look! And this girdle is cutting me in two. ‘Comfortable support for a lovelier you,’ the box said. That’s a laugh!”
They come in boxes? I asked myself. Like stereos? In the meantime, Sam choked on a cookie.
Like Mrs. Shanahan, Aggie leaned over Sam and me as if we didn’t exist. “I don’t know why you bother wearing those silly things. I really don’t. You have a lovely, full figure. If you’re trying to catch a man,” she teased, “it will take more than a girdle.”
“Yes,” Sam whispered in my ear, “a bazooka,” causing us both to break into giggles.
Mrs. Shanahan cackled as happily as we did. “A man? I’ve had a man, and let me tell you, they ain’t all they’re cracked up to be. I married Mr. Shanahan fifty-seven years ago. He hung around for two months, bailed out one morning after breakfast, and I haven’t seen him since. The laziest creature that ever walked the face of the earth! Wouldn’t milk the cows ’cause he said it pained his knees. Wouldn’t hang my new kitchen curtains ’cause he said it pained his neck, don’t you know, reaching his arms way up over his head like that. That man had more pains than a window factory!”
She leaned in even closer to Aggie Snyder, pushing my back to the wall with her head a mere inch and a half from my lap. “A man, you say! What on earth would I do with a man?”
And what, I wondered as I studied those intricate blue waves that seemed to undulate across the top of her head with a life of their own, would he possibly do with you?
HERE IN Nine Mile, kinship still shapes daily life. Familial bonds are strong, and the ties of friendship are lifelong and rarely broken. We seem to possess the tattered remnants of a pioneer culture, with all the spirit and cohesiveness that entails, and at the same time, we find ourselves coexisting with satellite dishes and microwave ovens and shiny computer-driven automobiles that beep and boop and flash annoying little lights at us every time we do something stupid.
The people here are good, most of them. Kind, simple country folks. Many are farmers, and like good farmers everywhere, they have an undying, tongue-in-cheek faith in the ability of God or government, or both, to somehow mangle the next harvest and render it worthless.
In reality, these people haven’t changed as much as they might think they have. Their accessories have, certainly, but not the people themselves. Like the pioneers before them, their hearts are strong with reverence for country, family, friends, and church. And the land, of course. With citizens such as these, it is always the land that comes first. Always.
Put simply, they are nice, decent people. On the whole.
Exceptions, of course, can always be found.
And on this, the last day of her life, Grace Nuggett would meet one of those exceptions face-to-face.
It wasn’t the sort of day one would choose for the last day of life if one’s options were open. The rain had not yet come pelting down, but by the look of that dismal gunmetal sky above our heads, I figured it was only a matter of time before it did. From the occasional grumble of distant thunder, it seemed a safe bet Someone up there agreed with me.
Being the only Methodist minister in Nine Mile, and knowing full well the farmers were scanning the sky for the least little promise of rain to ease the long drought they had been enduring (God did it to them this time, since they couldn’t very well blame the government for the weather), I should have sent up a grateful prayer of thanks that the withered crops in the fields would finally get some much-needed moisture. But in reality, all I did was lean against the outside wall of my church, cross my arms, stare balefully at the sky, and sigh. If I were a farmer in need of sunshine, I would have had the pleasure of blaming God for this outrage, but being a preacher in need of sunshine in the middle of a drought, I didn’t quite dare. Not that I wasn’t tempted.
After two long months with nary a hint of moisture in the air, today, of all days, the sky had finally decided to open up. Sam had warned me, of course. He always does. About everything.
Sam is my go-to guy for all things mechanical, since I’m about as useful as a box of sick hamsters. Sam is also my best friend. We have known each other since we were kids growing up in this one-horse town. Looking at us, one would think we were polar opposites. Sam stands about five foot six, and I’m six four. Sam is well built, and I’m a beanpole. His hair is reddish blond while mine is black. The only thing we truly have in common, other than friendship, is the fact that we are both single. Which, of course, opens up a whole new can of worms since every woman at the church is constantly trying to set us up with a female relative or two. Or three. But so far Sam and I have held on to our bachelorhood with tooth and claw.
But that’s another story altogether.
“Give the farmers a break, Brian,” Sam told me. His voice was a booming, sonorous echo because he had his head buried in the church’s old upright piano. He had his head stuck in the piano because he was trying to tune the thing himself since the church couldn’t afford to pay an actual piano tuner to do the job.
I didn’t say anything, but it sounded to me like he was getting questionable results as far as the tuning went. His words, however, would later prove to be right on key.
“Set the date for the annual basket dinner,” he said. “That’s the only way the poor farmers’ll get any rain, and you know it.”
He must have heard my derisive snort, for he poked his head out of the piano and gave me a glare. A dust ball the size of a mouse was stuck in his hair. “Just wait. You’ll see. And while you’re waiting, hand me that velvet hammer. The one in the toolbox.”
I handed him the hammer, and here I was, two weeks later, propped against the side of the church like a tired wooden Indian, the back of my neck heating up, remembering how I had scoffed at Sam’s prediction.
Well, to make a long story short, I did see. All too well. As I watched, the good ladies of my congregation, with their starched Sunday dresses flapping like flags about their legs, tried rather unsuccessfully to place tablecloths and napkins atop the plank-covered trestles arranged in rows beneath the elm trees at the edge of the churchyard. Unsuccessfully because as soon as someone neatly spread a tablecloth, the wind would come along and flip it into the grass. Or happily toss the napkins into the air. Or simply poof the poor lady’s skirt up around her ears until she was forced to drop everything in an attempt to maintain her dignity, and the moment she did, the wind would take everything—tablecloth, napkins, paper plates and cups—and gleefully scatter them to hell and back.
At my back, through the walls of the old church, I heard the sweet voices of the Methodist choir practicing, yet again, one of the hymns they had chosen for this occasion. Behind the emphatic lead of the ancient upright piano—which still wasn’t tuned right, dammit—I heard the choir sing the old familiar lyrics I grew up with.
Shall we gather at the ri-i-iver,
The beautiful, the beautiful r-i-i-iver.
Before the verse was finished, a particularly energetic gust of wind rattled the elm branches, and rain began to splatter the sidewalk at my feet and plunk against the tall windows of the church. Then something a bit more insistent began plunking at the window beside me, and I turned to see Sam tapping at the glass from inside the chapel and pointing to the ladies out there beneath the trees as they frantically gathered up the tumbling paraphernalia of our ill-timed basket dinner. With squeals of laughter, they began scurrying, light-footed, through the wet grass toward the church to seek shelter from the quickening rain.
As luck would have it, the food was already in the basement.
“Just in case,” Sam had said earlier, with a wary eye on that ugly sky overhead as the ladies began arriving with dishes upon pots upon containers of every sort, filled with heaven knows what but all smelling so wonderful it sent saliva dribbling off the end of my chin as if the gaskets in my mouth had dissolved from the sheer splendor of it all.
As my nephew Jesse, fifteen years old and looking uncomfortably spit shined on this summer afternoon, and his friend Kyle, looking equally clean and miserable, ran past me to help the ladies do what they had to do, I realized it might not be a bad idea if I helped them a bit myself. They weren’t paying me to prop up the church. I was supposed to be the man in charge.
Before I could set off to assist the ladies of Nine Mile, a loud crack of thunder made me jump straight up into the air and bang my head on the underside of the electric meter nailed to the side of the church.
One of the ladies squealed in mock terror as she ran for the door, trailing a tablecloth over her head to protect her hair from the rain. Manly enough not to squeal, or so I hoped, I caught one last glimpse of Sam’s laughing face in the window as I sprinted for the door myself. Rather than mowing the good woman down in my haste to escape the now cascading sheets of rain, it seemed a bit more gallant to grab her arm and lead her safely, but hurriedly, up the church steps and into the vestibule. There we shook ourselves off like a couple of wet dogs and laughed at the silliness of the situation.
Never one to miss an opportunity to embarrass me, as old friends always seem to do, Sam gave me a good-natured ribbing as I stood in the vestibule, dripping. “Good Lord, Brian! It’s raining cats and dogs out there. Let’s have a picnic, shall we?”
Sam’s aunt Mrs. Shanahan, a rotund lady of eighty-some years with blue finger-waved hair that rolled across the top of her head like a corrugated tin roof, and possessing a voice that could crack obsidian, came to my rescue. Not. Mrs. Shanahan and I were adversaries from way back. She used to chase me out of her scuppernong arbor back in my youthful, barefoot days, and she had been chasing me one way or another ever since.
“Now, Sam. Mustn’t pick at the poor man just because he chose the worst day we’ve had in six months to hold our annual basket dinner. We’ll get by. We always do. Old Reverend Morton, now. He knew how to pick ’em. Always chose the prettiest day of the year. I asked him once how he managed to do that year after year, and he said he asked God to set the date for him. Now, there was a man of faith!”
He was also a pompous old windbag who inevitably smelled of garlic and cheap aftershave, I thought, rather uncharitably, I suppose, for a Methodist minister. Especially when referring to the man of God who had preceded me at my post for nigh on fifteen years. But it was true nevertheless. Reverend Morton was the dullest man to set foot on this planet since the conception of time, and if he ever spoke directly to God, and God actually deigned to answer, then I was a Kurdish camel driver on the road to popedom.
“But never mind,” Mrs. Shanahan yammered on, giving Sam a wink and me a snarl. “We’ll eat inside. Lord knows we haven’t had to do that for ages. Kind of defeats the purpose of an outdoor basket dinner, don’t you know. But what the hey? The food’s good. That’s what counts. Right, Jesse?”
A hand the size of a thirty-dollar pot roast came out of nowhere and slapped Jesse on the back. I could hear the boy’s teeth rattle from the impact. The poor kid looked vaguely appalled at being thusly singled out for an opinion, but he carried it off well enough. “Suppose so,” he mumbled to no one in particular. At the same time, he rolled his shoulder around to get some circulation back into it. “I like the rain.”
Mrs. Shanahan enthusiastically pounded his back again, this time nearly driving the boy to his knees, which elicited a snicker from his friend Kyle. She appeared oblivious to her own strength. “Of course you do, Jesse!” her voice boomed out. “You and everybody else within shouting distance come from good American farm stock. Ain’t a farmer been hatched yet that don’t like the rain. In decent doses, that is.”
The woman stuck her great arm through mine and dragged me toward the basement steps. “Come on, Reverend. Let’s get the tables set up downstairs. Gotta work before we eat, you know.”
Sam stood on the sidelines, watching this exchange with laughing eyes and a heart, I’m sure, that soared with happiness. Nothing amused him more than my own embarrassment. If you get to really know Sam, sooner or later he’ll tell you about the time I peed my pants in first grade. But let’s not get into that.
I was still being dragged along in Mrs. Shanahan’s wake when a sudden burst of lightning made her tighten her grip on my arm and hasten her step. She came to life like Frankenstein’s monster, I pleasantly conjectured, rather happy with my choice of metaphor, and at the same time, I wondered how the woman could so unfailingly steer my mind into such unchristian corridors. It was a talent at which she positively excelled.
Sam made a face as if he knew what I was thinking, which he probably did. He grabbed Jesse and Kyle around their necks and dragged them down the basement steps behind me. As we headed underground, the sound of thunder receded, to be replaced by the confused babble of a hundred happy voices all jabbering at once in delirious abandon.
The church basement was large, thank heavens, but still every corner was filled. Colorful print dresses were interspersed only occasionally with the more somber shirt and tie. It was a weekday, after all, and most of the farmers were in their fields, or had been until the rain started. Only their wives could afford the luxury of a day off. But even they had earned it. The array of supper dishes and cake plates and aluminum pots and pans of every shape and size confirmed that fact. Food was everywhere. The air was alive with the smell of it. These ladies hadn’t simply popped out of bed that morning and dressed for church. Most of them had been up half the night preparing dishes they could be proud of. Dishes, they hoped, that would pucker their neighbors’ hearts with envy.
Basically, they were showing off. But Lord, theirs was a vanity of which I fully approved.
It didn’t take us long, with all hands chipping in, to arrange the food on tables along the basement wall.
It was a mouth-watering assortment, to be sure. Meats first, then came the casseroles and veggies, and after that the delicacies I loved the best. Homemade pickles, wilted lettuce swimming in sugar and bacon grease (hellish in cholesterol but heavenly on the palate), tiny ears of young corn dabbed with freshly churned butter, garden fresh radishes and peppers dipped in vinegar, and a dozen other trifles.
After that, as you greedily meandered down the line of tables, you came to the breads and biscuits: Freshly baked sourdough that had been tenderly raised—covered with a dishcloth and placed in the sun for warmth—transforming it from an unappetizing wad of pale dough to one of God’s greatest gifts to man, next only to the sacred act of sex itself. Chunks of home-baked bread the size of concrete blocks that you pulled apart with your hands. Round slabs of cornbread baked in cast-iron skillets and sliced in triangles, pie-fashion. Muffins of every shape and flavor—apple, blueberry, carrot, gooseberry, hickory nut, pumpkin, zucchini, and some that were unrecognizable but delicious just the same.
After the muffins, as you neared the apex of this fattening runway, you came to the desserts. Pies of every flavor, with delicate designs carved into the crusts. An angel food cake standing a foot high if it was an inch and topped with strawberries from someone’s garden. Freshly picked cherries buried in coconut and whipped cream, cookies piled high on platters, a dozen different kinds, and at the end my personal favorite: a peach cobbler, baked, I knew, by Mrs. Shanahan, who with those pot-roast-size hands of hers could pull culinary wonders from her oven.
Guilt over calories consumed would come later. For now, everyone dedicated themselves, heart and soul, to the business at hand. We milled around like cows on a hillside, chewing our cuds, eyes half-closed in delirious bliss, as if this were the sole purpose for our existence. To eat. We did it with unbridled enthusiasm, occasionally exclaiming over a particularly delightful discovery and calling out to ask who made it. When the culprit was found, it was usually a stocky housewife with sunburned cheeks and eyes that crinkled at the corners from squinting in a truck garden for hours on end beneath a blazing summer sun. Hearing the compliments, a blush of pride from all the praise accorded her would raise the pink glow of those sunburned cheeks to a happy, fiery red. Then, to ease herself humbly from the spotlight, she would cry out in praise of some delicacy or other, and in so doing, pass the torch to someone else.
It was all very civilized and Christian. These people were, after all, friends. Many of them had known each other, like Sam and I, since birth. They understood that praise, like butter, must be spread around. One brief moment of glory was enough for anyone, but once your moment ended, lend it to someone else. Otherwise, the next time praise was being flung about like candy at a parade, you might find none of it flying in your direction. They were friends, yes, but they were friends who never forgot a kindness or a slight.
After a time, the clatter of forks on plates diminished, and snippets of conversations could be heard that didn’t always refer to the food at hand. The feeding frenzy was winding down.
I sat back, sandwiched as I was between Sam and Mrs. Shanahan, gorged like a tick about to pop. Casually, so as not to be unduly noticed, I loosened my belt a notch. Sam looked about as miserable as I did, although he was still chomping on a fistful of oatmeal cookies.
I tried not to puke watching him, and while I gave my glutted body a much-needed rest, I let my attention roam around the room as I studied the faces of my flock.
These were the people who worshipped in my church, who suffered through my sermons, who sometimes came to me with their problems. We seemed a cozy, friendly group, sitting there huddled together with our bellies full while the summer storm howled outside.
The farmers should be happy, I reflected, watching the rain slap against the little ground-level windows placed high along the basement walls. They had certainly needed this rain, even if I had not. But what the hey, rain or not, the annual basket dinner appeared to be a raging success. Perhaps the rain had brought us closer together, here in this crowded basement room, than we would have felt underneath the elms outside with the endless summer sky overhead.
Gradually, for lack of anything better to do and too stuffed to do it even if there had been, I tuned in to the voices around me.
Mrs. Shanahan’s, of course, was the first to pierce my awareness. She leaned across me and Sam to speak to Aggie Snyder, who was one of the farm wives and who, at the moment, was about as pregnant as a human being can be. Mrs. Shanahan blithely ignored Sam and me as if we were a couple of fence posts someone had had the audacity to sink into the ground smack in front of her face.
“Lordy, Aggie, I feel as full as you look! And this girdle is cutting me in two. ‘Comfortable support for a lovelier you,’ the box said. That’s a laugh!”
They come in boxes? I asked myself. Like stereos? In the meantime, Sam choked on a cookie.
Like Mrs. Shanahan, Aggie leaned over Sam and me as if we didn’t exist. “I don’t know why you bother wearing those silly things. I really don’t. You have a lovely, full figure. If you’re trying to catch a man,” she teased, “it will take more than a girdle.”
“Yes,” Sam whispered in my ear, “a bazooka,” causing us both to break into giggles.
Mrs. Shanahan cackled as happily as we did. “A man? I’ve had a man, and let me tell you, they ain’t all they’re cracked up to be. I married Mr. Shanahan fifty-seven years ago. He hung around for two months, bailed out one morning after breakfast, and I haven’t seen him since. The laziest creature that ever walked the face of the earth! Wouldn’t milk the cows ’cause he said it pained his knees. Wouldn’t hang my new kitchen curtains ’cause he said it pained his neck, don’t you know, reaching his arms way up over his head like that. That man had more pains than a window factory!”
She leaned in even closer to Aggie Snyder, pushing my back to the wall with her head a mere inch and a half from my lap. “A man, you say! What on earth would I do with a man?”
And what, I wondered as I studied those intricate blue waves that seemed to undulate across the top of her head with a life of their own, would he possibly do with you?
A Carriage of Misjustice by Charlie Cochrane
Chapter 1
Adam Matthews turned his left hand so that his ring caught the light. It was an elegant piece of metalwork, Welsh gold in a chunky, slightly squared-off design, exactly the same as the ring on Robin Bright’s hand. They’d not deliberately chosen an identical pattern for romantic reasons: that was simply how it had worked out. They’d both studied the jeweller’s brochure, both written a list of three favourite choices in order of preference, put the lists into sealed envelopes . . . and opened them to find they’d picked the same one in pole position, with remarkably similar ones in second and third place.
Great minds think alike and all that.
“Are you still admiring your wedding ring?” Robin said, from over the other side of the lounge, where he and Campbell the Newfoundland were having some bonding time. Nothing better than watching the Sunday lunchtime game on the telly, especially when it featured Liverpool against Spurs. Campbell in particular seemed besotted with Harry Kane.
“I’ll never stop admiring it. Even the kids in my class think it’s cool, and they’re hard to please.” Adam took another glance at the ring, then picked up the Sunday paper to flick through the sports pages. He wasn’t really reading, though—it was more of a prop to cover the inane grin that was about to break out all over his face and for which Robin would take the micky out of him. A grin he couldn’t help producing every time he thought about it. The fact that they’d gone and tied the knot at last.
What a day it had been: a small civil ceremony out at a local upmarket pub, the Sporting Chance, with only close family and friends, their mothers wearing enormous hats and looking stunning. But the star of the day had been Campbell, outdoing everyone in terms of style with a white bow tie around his neck and stealing the show as he trotted up the aisle with the rings in a bag—waterproof to avoid the slobber—in his canine jaws. He’d dropped them at Adam’s feet, then returned to sit on a blanket at the back of the room with nonchalant ease, as though this were the sort of thing he did every day. His presence had proved to be a bonus, because when the guests were fussing over the dog, they’d been leaving the groom and groom in peace.
The newlyweds hadn’t gone off on honeymoon, given that Adam couldn’t have got away during term time, so they were saving their leave for a proper holiday later in the year. So just a celebration that weekend, then straight back to school for Adam and the nick for Robin, on Monday morning.
That had caused comment at both workplaces—as had the fact they’d opted for a small, restrained ceremony rather than the big lavish do some people had expected. They’d made it clear that they’d been making a stand against the commercialisation of weddings, believing that so long as there was a ceremony, a photographer, a good meal, and a bit of a knees-up, all boxes had been ticked. Anybody who’d suggested they were being tight wads had got subtly reminded that they’d made sizeable charity donations in the names of those who hadn’t been invited.
Now, they’d been an officially linked couple for all of a week and the sensation still felt as shiny and new as it had the previous weekend.
“I could do with a few weeks to recover from all the excitement. Wha-at?” Robin paused, frowning. “Why are you making that stop it gesture? What’s the problem?”
“Don’t say anything about time to recover. Don’t tempt fate into arranging a surprise Ofsted inspection for me or a cold-case murder that rears its head again and means weeks of you working all hours God sends.” Adam touched the wooden table. He wasn’t really superstitious, but sometimes you were trying to appease your own conscience as much as some nebulous source of fortune, good or bad. Like wearing lucky socks to play sport: your brain tells you it made no difference but your heart won’t believe it.
“Okay. Do you want me to wish that a horrible case drops in my lap on the principle that it’ll ensure life’s nice and quiet?”
Adam grinned. “Don’t say anything. Put your mind to whether we want to have a religious ceremony to go with the civil one.”
“That’s trickier than solving a murder case.”
Both were regular if occasional churchgoers, and both would say they had a degree of faith, although they didn’t make a big thing of it. And both appreciated that only certain parts of the Christian communion wouldn’t turn their noses up at the union between two people of the same gender.
“Would Neil do us a blessing, do you think?” The vicar was pretty broad-minded and he’d never shown any disapproval towards Robin or Adam.
“Privately, maybe. If we asked for something small—smaller than even the wedding was—and maybe not in the church itself. I don’t think he’s got a problem with homosexuals but there are a few folk on the PCC who’d throw their toys out of their prams if they knew we were standing in front of the altar at St. Crispin’s making vows in the presence of God.”
“And the fear of the congregation?” Robin said, which was an old joke if still a relevant one even now.
“Some of them, but that’s inevitable. You know who I’m thinking of.” Like any parish, Lindenshaw had its share of people who would prefer it if there were no women priests, the only prayer book used was the one published in 1662, and everyone lived by the parts of the Levitican law that didn’t apply to them but stopped everyone else having fun. “I remember a few folk getting the hump on when Neil first arrived here and made them share the peace at the ten o’clock communion. They couldn’t have been more outraged if he’d taken the service in drag.”
Robin made the kind of face he produced when he had to clear up after Campbell had relieved himself in the garden. “Sounds like they’re due to be outraged again, then. Shall we make an appointment to see Neil?”
“Works for me. Although he probably can’t do anything till late spring. Lent coming up, and I’ve a feeling the church doesn’t do weddings then. I guess a blessing would come under that umbrella.”
“Our mothers would welcome deferring the event for a while. It would mean they can get new summer hats to go with the winter ones they wore last weekend.” The local milliner must have made a small fortune out of the Matthews and Bright womenfolk.
“Right. Before we start planning any of that, we have work to do this afternoon. Our good deed for the day.”
“So we have.”
The cottage three doors down was owned by a fiercely independent lady in her seventies, whom they’d told that if she ever needed anything done round the house or garden that didn’t need technical skill, just a touch of brawn, she shouldn’t hesitate to call on them. It would have to be serious for her to call in that offer, and the loss of three fence panels in a storm two days previously came into that category. They’d take Campbell—Mrs. Haig doted on him—and the pair could supervise Adam and Robin while they repaired the old panels and shifted them back into place. The fact that Mrs. Haig’s boiled fruit cake was legendary turned an act of kindness into a positive pleasure.
They got into their working clothes and set off.
An hour, a cup of tea, and a large slab of cake later, the old panels were out and the new ones ready to be installed.
“You’re doing a grand job, there,” Mrs. Haig said. “I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
“It’s a pleasure. Better than marking books or catching criminals.” Adam gave his husband a wink. “Neither of us take enough exercise.”
“I used to watch you running with Campbell.” She scratched the dog’s ear. “I suppose you’re too busy for that these days.”
“You’re right. We tend to take him for a walk together, don’t we?”
“Yes,” Robin replied. “It makes sure we spend time together too.” They had no need to hide their relationship from their hostess. Her brother was gay, a stalwart of musical chorus lines in London.
“You could join the church choir,” she suggested. “They always need tenors.”
“I’d love to, but I’d always be ringing Martin up to say I couldn’t make the practices. Armed robbery to sort out or whatever.”
Adam hid his grin in his teacup. The choirmaster fancied Robin and barely hid it.
“Yes, I suppose so.” Mrs. Haig frowned. “You work too hard, the pair of you. And here’s me eating into your weekend.”
Adam shook his head. “This isn’t work, it’s play.” And the sight of Robin in an old T-shirt, muscles rippling and working up a sweat was a sight to enjoy. Adam gave him an affectionate glance, which was immediately returned.
“These panels won’t install themselves,” Robin said hastily, perhaps with half a mind on some less strenuous but highly enjoyable activity that could go on later, assuming they weren’t too tired.
An hour later, they were home, tired but happy. Adam cleaned himself up while Robin brushed residual crumbs off the dog, then he could head into the shower while Adam had a well-earned sit-down. As he was getting dressed, Adam thought he heard Robin talking on the phone. Please God it was only Mrs. Bright touching base rather than work calling the bloke in. The fact that Robin wasn’t leaping up the stairs apologising and changing out of his old clothes so he could report for duty had to be a good sign, surely?
“What’s up?” Adam called over the banister, heart sinking when Robin entered the hallway. “Anyone would think you’d lost a tenner and found five pence.”
“Not quite. Not an ideal situation, though.” Robin weighed the phone in his hand like it was a piece of ordnance he’d like to chuck as far away as possible.
“That’s what Brits say when it’s the end of the world.”
Robin grinned. “It’s not as bad as that. I have to go off on secondment, as of tomorrow. Hopefully it’ll be a short one, but you can’t tell with murder. Or with peritonitis.”
Adam made a that’s gone right over my head gesture. “I’m sure that’s supposed to make sense, but you’ve lost me. Secondment to where?”
“Hartwood. It’s a town between Oxford and Birmingham, east of the M40. There was a murder there about ten days ago. Don’t know if you saw the story—bloke found dead in the loos at a rugby club.”
“I was a bit preoccupied last week, if you remember, but yes, I did see the story on the BBC site. Why can’t the local police handle it? Test Valley or East Midlands or whoever covers the area?”
“That’s a long story. Can I come and clean myself up and then I’ll tell you everything?”
“Might be an idea. You’re slightly fragrant.” Adam forced a smile. Going on a secondment? They really shouldn’t have tempted fate.
While Robin showered, Adam pottered about in the kitchen. He always found that a calming place, somewhere he could think clearly. No doubt that was associated with the house having originally been owned by his grandparents: many happy hours he’d spent there as a child, helping his granny to make the Christmas pudding on stir-up Sunday or learning firsthand the way to make a perfect Yorkshire pudding.
As he transferred from fridge to oven a defrosted casserole—courtesy of their domestic help, Sandra, who’d insisted on stocking the freezer when they’d been knee-deep in wedding preparations—Adam cast his mind back to the news story, but nothing much had registered about it. Still, it was easy enough to refresh his memory by researching the story on his phone. By the time he’d followed a few links, he’d built up a reasonable picture. Hartwood Wasps Rugby Club had used to be exclusively for gay and bi guys, but had decided to welcome everyone, initially because they’d had a bit of a crisis in terms of player numbers. They’d been so successful that they’d carried on with the strategy and were now heading up the leagues, making a tongue-in-cheek thing about their equality policy ensuring that straight players didn’t get given a hard time.
The Wednesday before last, a bloke called Nick Osment had been found dead in the changing room in the clubhouse, and so far the police had shown no signs of making an arrest. Plenty of appeals for help, though, and some noncommittal statements about following a number of leads.
Had they hit a brick wall so early in the investigation and needed a fresh pair of eyes? Robin had built up his experience of murder cases over the last few years, and he’d been a hundred percent successful on leading his team to finding the culprit, but surely he wasn’t the most experienced officer they could call on if a case had stalled? Or was there another reason, given the history of the club, that the local force had picked on this particular officer?
“This secondment,” Adam asked, as soon as Robin appeared, “they’ve not called you in because you’re gay? Rainbow rugby and all that.”
Robin shrugged. “On the surface, no. They needed to call somebody in, though—right bloody mess up at the local station—and I used to work with the detective superintendent there when I was a snotty sergeant and she was my inspector. Rukshana Betteridge. I’ve mentioned her.”
“You have.” They’d also discussed the fact that some people muttered behind her back that she’d only been fast-tracked because she was a woman, and mixed race to boot, but Robin wasn’t having that. She was simply a better copper than most of the blokes she worked alongside, and he’d learned a hell of a lot from her. “I particularly remember a story about you, her, and the nuclear-strength chicken vindaloo. Three hours on and off the loo, was it?”
“I was hoping you’d have forgotten that.” Robin gave Campbell a pat. “Your dads can’t get away with any misdemeanours, can they? Cowdrey rang me, and he says Detective Superintendent Betteridge—I’ll never be able to call her Rukshana to her face—got in touch and pleaded to have me help out. I’m hoping it’s my skills as a copper and my track record with solving murders that was the key thing, rather than who I bed.”
Adam nodded. He’d already got out and opened a couple of bottles of beer: Robin looked as though he could do with one. “So, what’s this right bloody mess you’ve got lumped with sorting out?”
“The detective inspector who reports to her, Robertson. His appendix went haywire back end of last week, and he’s developed peritonitis on top of appendicitis. They’ve operated successfully, but he won’t return to work anytime soon, no matter how much he wants to be. This bloke was running the investigation, and there’s nobody local to take his place. Even his sergeant’s been working nonstop on an abuse case.”
“Bloody mess is no exaggeration, then.”
“Yep.” Robin scratched Campbell’s head distractedly. “Cowdrey says it’ll be great for my career, but he also understands it won’t be easy, hard on the heels of last weekend.”
“I should have applied to the school for unpaid leave. We could have headed off to the back of beyond, in which case they couldn’t have got hold of us.” Adam put his arm around Robin’s shoulders and held him close. “It’ll work. We’ll make it work.”
Robin nuzzled into Adam’s chest. “Yeah, I know. I really wish I didn’t have to, but Betteridge was a good friend to me, and I feel I owe her. And there’s some poor dead sod who deserves justice.”
“Don’t apologise. Just catch the bloody killer quickly so you can get back here. This is not the sort of honeymoon I imagined having.” Adam chuckled, gave him a kiss, then had to pretend to give Campbell one too, as the dog was clearly feeling left out.
“I could tell Cowdrey to stick it. Politely, of course, because I’m neither that brave nor that stupid. He told me to take an hour to think it over.” Robin glanced at his watch. “I’ve still time to decide.”
“Hey, I was only kidding about the honeymoon. You go. It’s not like I’m some blushing bride and we only had our first night together once you’d put a ring on it. As far as I’m concerned, the honeymoon started ages ago and it’s never stopped.” Adam gave him a lingering kiss. “It would be worse if I’d fallen for a soldier.”
“You soft bugger. I’ll get onto Cowdrey right now, and put him out of his misery. He’ll be grateful, as will Betteridge.”
“Anything I can do to help, let me know. When does he want you to travel?”
“Tomorrow, preferably.” Robin grimaced. “I’m glad Sandra got all the washing and ironing up-to-date. I need to get rummaging in the airing cupboard and get a suitcase packed. There are other phone calls I should make too.”
“Make one to your mum and another to Pru. Subcontract all other communication to them.” Mrs. Bright and Robin’s favourite sergeant would be able to handle any task set. In fact, the maternal information network would ensure the news would be halfway across the county within thirty minutes of Mrs. Bright being told. Adam wondered if she stood on her roof using semaphore flags or an Aldis lamp, depending on the time of day.
“The first would work, but Pru’s likely to be too busy. Cowdrey said he’d like her to go with me. DS Betteridge wants me to have an officer I’m used to working with on my team, and it’ll be good experience for her.” Robin was clearly warming to the positive aspects of this assignment. “I’m sure that if I give young Ben a call instead, he can pass on the news to the team. He always hints he wants extra responsibility.”
“Will you still be calling him young Ben in twenty years' time, when he’s in his forties and losing his hair?” Adam snorted. “Maybe then he’ll regard you like you regard Betteridge.”
“If he does, I’ll be pleased.” Robin returned the kiss, grabbed his phone, and went to call Cowdrey.
The casserole wouldn’t be ready for a while, so Adam nipped upstairs to get Robin’s clothes out of the airing cupboard; he laid them out on the bed, trying to be helpful and also gathering his thoughts.
It had to be a good opportunity for both Robin and Pru in terms of career development. Showing their willingness to help out even if it meant personal inconvenience, the chance of working with a new team and a new area, and maybe learning things they could bring back and apply in Abbotston. Adam felt a swell of pride at the confidence Robin’s old boss clearly felt in her protégé, whatever other considerations might have come into play. Adam wasn’t going to get sidetracked into thinking about whether this might herald a move to Hartwood itself, with Betteridge taking Robin back under her wing in a police variation on the January football transfer window. Robin would certainly enjoy working with her again. He’d never expressed anything but praise for her and the way she’d fought her corner firmly but politely at so many turns.
Adam would have loved to have been a fly on the wall the day when she’d charmingly pulled up a young sergeant who’d referred to her having had an attack of feminine intuition with the words, “If a bloke made a leap of reasoning like that, you’d call it a hunch, so that’s what we’ll call it in my case, eh?”
Heavy pawsteps on the stairs, accompanied by snuffling, heralded the arrival of Campbell, who wasn’t usually allowed upstairs except on special occasions, of which this had to be one.
“Come to make sure I’m laying out everything your other dad needs? He doesn’t want that, thank you.” Adam wrested a small stuffed toy—albeit not horribly slobbery—out of the Newfoundland’s jaws. “I’ll get him to FaceTime you every day so you’ll know he’s safe.”
What would his colleagues say if they saw him having an earnest conversation with a dog? The children wouldn’t bat an eyelid, naturally. They’d understand such things were important.
“We’ll both miss him, only don’t let on too much, eh? I don’t want him giving up the chance simply to stop us being upset.”
Campbell glanced up, big brown eyes full of what might be interpreted as understanding, then nuzzled his nose into Adam’s hand. It was going to be just the two of them again for the next few weeks, and they’d need to take care of each other. Although there was a plus side to the situation: the murder having taken place so far away, the investigation of it really couldn’t draw him or Campbell in this time. Could it?
Adam stretched over to touch the wooden bedside table, aware they’d tempted fate already that afternoon.
A Little Morbid by Olivier Bosman
Prologue
Extract from Alick Lourie’s Diary, June1895
A Woman of My Ilk
She stood on the foredeck, her hands on the railings, the sea breeze blowing through her thin white hair. She looked perfectly ordinary. She wore an ill-fitting lime green skirt, frayed around the ankles, a blue-and-white blouse that didn’t quite seem to fit, and a motheaten black shawl draped around her shoulders. Just a poor, common, middle-aged woman who wouldn’t normally arouse my curiosity, were it not for her countenance. There was something about her posture. The way she stood rigidly upright against the wind, as if she were in command of the ship, guiding us all to our destination. This was a woman who knew where she was going. A woman in charge of her own fate.
It’s easy for us magicians to recognise each other. The hidden wisdom we carry inside us elevates us from the common man, and this is reflected in our posture. There is a certain aura about us, invisible to everyone else, which acts like a beacon, signalling to other magicians that we are of their ilk. It was this aura which drew my attention.
I stood on the starboard side, looking at her back, watching her shawl dance in the wind. She must have felt my stare poking her in the back (we magicians can do that), because after a minute or so she turned around and looked at me. I held my stare. I looked straight into her eyes for a couple of beats, then, unbuttoning my jacket, turned my back on her and strolled back into the cabin. Contact had been made. It wouldn’t be long before she approached and inquired about my identity.
I knew who she was, of course. There is only one magician that fits her description: Ruth Grenfell, the keeper of Solomon’s Sephardic secrets. She was fleeing to France. Just like I was. Except I was running away from the police. She was running away from people like me who are after her manuscript.
My heart pounded as I made my way to the ship’s lounge. There is no such thing as coincidence in a magician’s life. There is only fate and providence. So, Mrs Grenfell was on this steamer. That meant that her manuscript, the Codex of Solomon, the text which revealed the secrets of God’s creation, the very thing I’d been yearning to get my hands on, was somewhere onthis ship too! I was still reeling as I took my glass of port from the waiter and sat on the leather settee by the window.
It wasn’t long before I saw her stumble into the bar, scanning the customers in search of me. A waiter approached her and asked to see her ticket – the poor ragged creature was quite clearly not a first-class passenger. But having located me at my table, she elbowed him away and marched straight towards me.
“Do I know you, sir?”
I looked up at her, towering over me. Her tanned, leathery face was aged and wrinkled well before its time, and there was a frantic look in those brown eyes.
“You were staring at me!” she continued. “Outside, on the deck. Why were you staring at me?”
The waiter approached us. “Is this woman bothering you, sir?” He grabbed her arm. She quickly pulled it away.
“Not at all,” I said to the waiter. “Please leave us alone.”
The waiter nodded and walked away. I smiled at her. “I’m sorry to have dismayed you. I didn’t mean to stare. I must’ve been daydreaming. I have a habit of doing that.”
“So we don’t know each other?”
“No. But I’ll happily introduce myself.” I held out my hand. “The name is Simeon. Faust de Simeon.”
“Madam de Martos,” she mumbled, shaking my hand.
Aha, I thought. Travelling under a pseudonym. Just like me. Madam M. How suitably mysterious. “I’m sorry to have bothered you,” she said, embarrassed. “I clearly made a mistake.” She was about to walk away, but I detained her.
“Please stay. Sit down. Let me buy you a drink.”
She stopped and looked at me. “I’m not supposed to be in here. I have a second-class ticket.”
“You can stay as my guest. I insist.”
She hesitated, but she eventually sat down.
“What will it be? Port?”
“I wouldn’t mind a glass of absinthe.”
I clicked my fingers for the waiter and ordered the drink.
“You’re very kind,” she said. She was blushing. “You must think me quite mad. But I’ve had some bad experiences in England, with men following me. I think I may have become a little paranoid.”
“Please don’t explain. It was rude of me to stare, even if I did so inadvertently. It is I who should apologise to you.”
The waiter came back with the green beverage and placed it on the table. She picked up her glass and held it out to me.
“Cheers,” she said. She took a sip and replaced the glass on the table. “I won’t be any bother. I’ll just sit here quietly and do some work.” She took some embroidery out of an old-fashioned white linen reticule wrapped around her wrist, sat back in her chair and began to sew. This was a bit rude, I thought. I had rather been hoping for conversation. But eccentric people are seldom well-mannered, and I knew of something which might spark her interest in me. I took something out of my pocket. My little book. Barrett’s Magus, which has served wonderfully as a calling card on previous occasions. Taking great care to leave the cover visible, I stretched my arms over the table, opened the book and began to read. It wasn’t long before her eyes were drawn to the book’s title.
“What are you reading?” she asked, her face flushed with astonishment.
“What, this?” I turned the book around and looked at the cover. “Oh, it’s just a book about magic.”
“Magic? You’re interested in magic?”
“I am rather, yes. It’s an odd hobby, I know, but I’ve been making it my speciality these last few years.”
“You’ve been studying it?”
“Well, I studied divinities and ancient languages at Cambridge, and I was a member of an esoteric society in London.”
“Which one?”
“The Golden Dawn,” I lied.
“I’m interested in magic too!”
I raised my eyebrows. “You don’t say! Well, what are the chances!”
“I’ve been studying it for many years. Well, I ain’t been to college like you, of course, but I’ve been taught by some very knowledgeable men. There was my husband, Phineas de Martos. You’ll have heard of him.”
I wrinkled my brow. “No, I don’t believe I have.”
“Then, after he died, I studied with Frater Sapienti from the Sons of Cain and Daughters of Lilith.”
“Oh, I’ve heard of them.”
“Do you speak Hebrew?”
I pretended not to know what she was leading up to, but inside me, my heart was pounding. “Hebrew? Yes, I do a bit.”
“Because I have a book, you see.”
“A book?” My heart almost leapt out of my chest. I had to button up my jacket lest she should see it pound beneath my shirt.
“I don’t have it on me. It’s hidden somewhere safe on the mainland. It’s a very valuable book. But it’s all in Hebrew, and I don’t speak Hebrew. I don’t suppose you could...”
“Well, certainly, I could. Will you be staying in Paris?”
“I’ll be staying at Madeleine’s Hotel for Women in Montmartre. Oh, I would be so grateful if you could help me decipher the texts.”
She reached her arm across the table and grabbed and squeezed my hand.
“Well, my dear madam,” I said, smiling at her, “I’d be delighted to.”
Requiem for Mr. Busybody by Josh Lanyon
The phone at the other end rang long enough that I started to count, and then it clattered off the hook and a deep, pleasant voice said, “Drake. Homicide.”
Never one to waste words, NYPD Lt. Detective Leonard Drake.
Given that we hadn’t spoken in three years, I was caught off guard by how familiar his voice was. The warm rush of memories? Equally unexpected.
I released the breath I’d been holding. “Hey,” I said cheerfully. “Your misspent youth is calling.”
A couple of very long seconds ticked by before Len said slowly, “Michael Woolrich. There’s a blast from the past.”
Not that I expected confetti and kazoos, but that total lack of emotion was hard to read.
“To what do I owe this honor?” Len added.
“I don’t know about honor, but I might have a murder for you.”
Maybe I imagined the creak of a chair in the background, but Len’s voice was definitely more cordial, more relaxed as he replied, “Do tell.”
Murder was what had first brought us together. Our mutual raison d’être. Murder had been the only thing we had in common, as it turned out. That’s what I told myself, anyway.
“The victim—possible victim—is Maurice Moreau. He went missing—appears to have gone missing—four nights ago. I think his partner killed him.”
“And you know Maurice how?”
“He’s a friend.” I corrected, “He’s a neighbor I’m friendly with.”
Len repeated thoughtfully, “A neighbor you’re friendly with.”
“Yes.”
“Where are you living now?”
“The Fontainebleau in Chelsea.”
“Swanky.”
I laughed. “Maybe once. Maybe in the forties. But yeah, great atmosphere if you don’t mind a few ghosts.”
“And you think your friendly neighbor Maurice has now joined the celestial choir?”
I felt myself smiling at Len’s turn of phrase. You don’t expect metaphors from a cop, at least not outside Chandler, but Len was not your ordinary cop. For one thing, he was no-bones-about-it gay, and while yes, every police force in the country is trying to be—or appear that they’re trying to be—more diverse and less discriminatory, in my experience, openly gay officers are still a rarity.
“I’m afraid so. Yes.”
“Maybe he’s on vacation,” Len suggested. “Maybe he’s visiting relatives. Maybe he and the boyfriend are on a second honeymoon. What makes you think Maurice is dead?”
I didn’t really want to go into the Rear Window aspect, didn’t want Len to know how much time I spent observing my neighbors, didn’t want him to think I was developing voyeuristic tendencies in my old age. Although, Talese was right—all journalists are voyeurs at heart.
I said, “Partly because of the way Nico, Maurice’s partner, is behaving. Partly because Maurice once said if anything ever happened to him, look no further than Nico.”
Silence.
Len said in his slow, considering way, “That’s quite a revelation from someone you describe as a neighbor rather than a friend.”
“I know. And he was joking—mostly—when he said it. But…”
“But now that Maurice has ‘disappeared,’ you think maybe he was serious. You said something about the way Nico is acting. How is Nico acting?”
“Evasive, in my opinion.” Also dismissive, patronizing, bored, annoyed—but that was Nico’s usual attitude toward me, so I didn’t place undue importance on it.
Len’s tone remained neutral as he suggested, “Maybe Nico feels that Maurice’s whereabouts are none of your business.”
“Maybe.”
I waited. If Len was the Len I remembered… But three years is a long time. Len didn’t owe me any favors. And no one knew better than me how far-fetched my story sounded.
Len said finally, “I’ll be blunt. This is so thin, it’s transparent. Anyone but you, Michael, I’d be tempted to tell you to butt out of other people’s relationships.”
I winced, opened my mouth, but Len wasn’t finished. “You always had a nose for trouble, so unless you’ve changed a lot, I have to assume you’re maybe onto something.”
We could take it for granted I’d changed a lot. Physically, for sure, but also mentally, emotionally, and probably spiritually. Not that I’d ever been very spiritual, unlike Len, who was a practicing Episcopalian and sang in his church choir every Sunday.
“I could be wrong,” I said. “I hope I am. But if I went missing, I’d like to think someone out there might notice and at least ask a couple of questions.”
“And that’s about all I can promise,” Len said. “We’ll ask a few questions and see what the boyfriend has to say.”
Relief washed through me. Not just the relief that here was help for Maurice, help I couldn’t provide on my own. The relief of being believed, of being taken seriously again. I missed being taken seriously.
But the last three years had taught me to be cautious.
“If my name could be kept out of it, I’d appreciate it.”
“Of course.”
“Thank you, Len.” I meant it. “I owe you one.”
He said crisply, “No. You don’t owe me anything. I quit keeping score a long time ago.”
I was still trying to think of a reply when he hung up.
Bestselling author of over sixty titles of classic Male/Male fiction featuring twisty mystery, kickass adventure and unapologetic man-on-man romance, JOSH LANYON has been called "the Agatha Christie of gay mystery."
Her work has been translated into eleven languages. The FBI thriller Fair Game was the first male/male title to be published by Harlequin Mondadori, the largest romance publisher in Italy. Stranger on the Shore (Harper Collins Italia) was the first M/M title to be published in print. In 2016 Fatal Shadows placed #5 in Japan's annual Boy Love novel list (the first and only title by a foreign author to place on the list).
The Adrien English Series was awarded All Time Favorite Male Male Couple in the 2nd Annual contest held by the Goodreads M/M Group (which has over 22,000 members). Josh is an Eppie Award winner, a four-time Lambda Literary Award finalist for Gay Mystery, and the first ever recipient of the Goodreads Favorite M/M Author Lifetime Achievement award.
Josh is married and they live in Southern California.
John has been writing fiction for as long as he can remember. Born on a small farm in Indiana, he now resides in San Diego, California where he spends his time gardening, pampering his pets, hiking and biking the trails and canyons of San Diego, and of course, writing. He and his partner share a passion for theater, books, film, and the continuing fight for marriage equality. If you would like to know more about John, check out his website.
As Charlie Cochrane couldn't be trusted to do any of her jobs of choice - like managing a rugby team - she writes. Her favourite genre is gay fiction, predominantly historical romances/mysteries, but she's making an increasing number of forays into the modern day. She's even been known to write about gay werewolves - albeit highly respectable ones.
Her Cambridge Fellows series of Edwardian romantic mysteries were instrumental in seeing her named Speak Its Name Author of the Year 2009. She’s a member of both the Romantic Novelists’ Association and International Thriller Writers Inc.
Born to Dutch parents and raised in Colombia and England, I am a rootless wanderer with itchy feet. I've spent the last few years living and working in The Netherlands, Czech Republic, Sudan and Bulgaria, but I have every confidence that I will now finally be able to settle down among the olive groves of Andalucia.
I'm an avid reader and film fan and I have an MA in creative writing for film and television.
Josh Lanyon
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EMAIL: josh.lanyon@sbcglobal.net
John Inman
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Randal Shaffer(Narrator)
Charlie Cochrane
EMAIL: cochrane.charlie2@googlemail.com
Olivier Bosman
Murder at Pirate's Cove by Josh Lanyon
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Sunset Lake by John Inman
A Carriage of Misjustice by Charlie Cochrane
A Little Morbid by Olivier Bosman
Requiem for Mr. Busybody by Josh Lanyon
