STORIES

“mixture of humor, gut wrenching terror & emotional heartbreak amongst the action and romance” Review

Review of Also Known as DNA

by Terry at Affinity eBooks

AKA Investigations Series Book 2

Jobeth O’Brien and her partner, Phoebe McMasters, are enjoying a peaceful life together on Manor Lane in Colorado after moving from Oklahoma. Jobeth has her P.I License and has her own agency, AKA Investigations. Their new start together is suddenly interrupted by ghosts from the past.

First of all, Jobeth’s estranged sister Izzy turns up out of the blue. At first Jobeth and Izzy don’t appear to get on too well together. But as they get to know one another, that changes. Izzy turns out to be more like Jobeth than either of them thought.

Phoebe’s past comes back to haunt her. In fact, it causes heartbreak for both Phoebe and Jobeth in a big way.

Ginger, Jobeth and Phoebe’s detective friend, has moved to Colorado with them and occupies the cottage behind their house. Ginger is looking for love. Will she find it? Ginger and Izzy appear to get on well together. But Izzy is a lot younger than Ginger and she’s not into relationships. Will Ginger get her heart broken?

It will take the ingenuity of all four of these women to get rid of the ghosts from the past. But will they be able to keep themselves alive to outwit the deranged felons?

***

Even though the plot to this story stretched my imagination a bit, I actually thoroughly enjoyed the story.

I loved Jobeth, Phoebe and Ginger from Armchair Detective and to have them back again is a true pleasure. Izzy has joined the three other women and her character has fit right in with the others. They all interact so well together and play an essential part in furthering the story.

I don’t want to add any spoilers in here, but suffice it say that the story is a rollercoaster ride of twists and turns throughout. There are so many ups and downs, the book is a real page turner from start to finish.

There is a mixture of humor, gut wrenching terror and emotional heartbreak amongst the action and romance. If anything, this story is even better than the first one. Both books are standalone, but I would strongly advise reading Armchair Detective first. It gives more of the characters background. Plus you would be missing out on another good book if you don’t.

I’m hoping there will be another in this series soon.

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November 24th, 2012

authors, books, Colorado, fiction, Human Nature, Kate Genet, Kelli Jae Baeli, Psychology, relationships, Uncategorized, writing

Prequels, Sequels, & Spinoffs

Syzygy. Amazingly, the only English word with three Y’s also happens to describe a rare astronomical event involving three heavenly bodies. A syzygy is the alignment of three celestial bodies in a straight line…

On December 3, 2012, Saturn, Venus & Mercury will align. On that same night, 3 women align to see that justice is done.

Ponzi Bonnet thought she had found the perfect husband. A psychologist could certainly understand her damage. But her suspicion of infidelity turns out to be something far worse. Far more sinister. And he had to be stopped.

This new book I’m working on–and almost finished with–is altogether different from any of my others. For one, it’s darker. I usually like to write “dramedy”– an equal mixture of drama and comedy. And I lean toward romantic – suspense – adventure -style plots. The plot in Syzygy is adventuresome, but perhaps that’s where the similarity ends. It deals with some darker subjects. Some disturbing places in the human psyche. I’m not sure of it…I haven’t even let Kate read any of it. She will be acting as my first Beta reader, because I want an impression based on the entire book, without any foreknowledge of content. (Just like most readers get to approach a book). But this has also made it more challenging, because I can’t discuss it with her to help me work things out–to be fair, or to perhaps torture me, she is also keeping mum on her current book (Irrevocable). I will be Beta reader on that one too.

So here’s what happened….I had been working on the 3rd in my AKA Investigations series and I was having trouble with it. Not surprising, after having so much trouble in the last couple of years with the writing…huge changes, huge challenges, and so much had been happening in my life to suck the muse right out of my head…(any of you who read my blog regularly are familiar with what I’m referring to). So I continued to struggle with this one…and then I realized what the problem was. Oddly, I was having trouble getting my MAIN characters in the book after the halfway point. Not a good sign. One of the subplots had started growing and I found that my main characters were being left out in favor of a couple of minor characters. So I thought, well maybe there’s another book here…maybe I’m trying to write two books. So I snatched out the plotline and characters from that portion and put it in a separate file and began to work on it–feeling like I was sort of “cheating” on my other characters by doing so. But it was pushing me to be written. Those characters were being insistent. They had a story to tell and they wanted me to tell it.

So. I was surprised about this new book. It wasn’t even on the docket.

SIDEBAR. I have been trying for years now to get all the other books written that are waiting in line. Some half-done, some just ideas. Like Quintessence, Somewhere Else, Curse of Madagascar, Another Justice, The Girls in the Band, and newer ones like, Hanging the Moon [with Kate Genet], Behind the Left: Authoring the Apocalypse, and a sequel to Resurrection Sticks –and those are just the fiction ones

This book, Syzygy, is also a concept-novel. A concept I came up with–not sure if anyone else ever came up with it too, but for me at least, it’s a new idea…it’s what I might call a spinoff-prequel. The new book sprang from the events and secondary characters of the original one. I started thinking about how interesting it would be to know more about those characters–like, what was happening in THEIR lives, that was just outside the purview of the plot in the book I was working on? What might that scene be like if it was written from the point of view of that other character? So then, an entirely new story evolved, but it was based on the original story in the AKA book. Only, it focused on those secondary characters, making them main characters, and then the main characters from the AKA book became the secondary characters in the new book. So here, I have a timeline of events, and in Syzygy, I’m telling the story of Ponzi Bonnet, Kenda Harper, Anna Dew, Garrison Bishop and Payne Hollister. And in AKA, I’m telling the story during the same timeline but through the characters of Jobeth, Phoebe, Izzy and Ginger. It almost means I need to write both of these books and release them at the same time, but that might be too maddening. So I think I will finish and release Syzygy first, since its timeline might be a little earlier, by about a week or two, than the AKA book. It would also give away less than the AKA book would, if I did that one first. I don’t want to have one book serving as a SPOILER for the other.

I feel like I’m rambling. I’m on first cup of coffee…NOTE TO SELF. Don’t ramble. anyway…

It’s a different sort of challenge, as it’s almost like writing a series, but slightly different…I have to think about what I write in Syzygy affecting what I’ll be writing in the 3rd AKA book. I have to make sure I don’t contradict things. Like I can’t have two different things happening to a character at the same time

(or can I?….. STOP IT.)

All of this has me thinking that there are all these other stories that can stem from stories I’ve written. The other perspectives. The other characters who play a minor role, but have an entire world of their own going on during those events. It’s also a way to create a thread of interest in readership–those who enjoy my books will find alternate stories that are peripheral to the ones they’ve already read. I find the whole concept fascinating. I hope a reader would, too. I have recently been concerned about my literary diversification–I do myself no favors by gaining a reader who then reads a certain genre of mine and realizes there aren’t any more of those yet, but that I jumped over and wrote nonfiction, or in some other genre…. (That’s another blog I wrote half of, but haven’t posted yet).

Jeez. I’m scattered.

Did I mention we’re moving 2 hours away in a week?

Yeah. got that nonfiction stuff to deal with too.

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September 23rd, 2012

books, Colorado, fiction, Human Nature, humor, Kelli Jae Baeli, writing

Lunacy Factor: Make My Day

Disclaimer to Grammar/Editing Police: this is a rough draft. I am foregoing the edit because I’d rather spend that time on the book itself right now.

(excerpt from AKA Investigation Book 3, in progress)

Izzy pulled out the coffee carafe, and paused to look at Ginger. “What are you doing?”

Ginger had been standing, immobile, by the door. “I’m trying to remember where I put my keys.” She had once again been unable to sleep until almost three. It was affecting her brain.

“They’re not in the basket?”

“No.”

Izzy poured coffee in the waiting cup Ginger had provided. “Not in your pocket?”

“No, I’ve already looked in all the obvious places.” She came back into the room and scanned it, as if hoping the keys would jump up in the air so she could catch them.

“Don’t worry. Maybe you’re just getting senile.”

Ginger turned slowly, one eyebrow cocked, and probably loaded. “That might be humorous coming from someone my own age, but from you, it’s just a sharp stick.”

“Don’t hate me for being younger,” Izzy said, sipping coffee.

Ginger moved into the living room area, and began accosting the sofa cushions. “Most people are visual. And those images attach to something. With me, it just goes in, floats around, then when a stiff wind comes along, whooooosh–it’s gone.”

“Well, maybe you should plug the leaks. Wear earplugs…I mean, that’s a 99 cent fixer-upper.” Izzy chuckled. “Or you could just put two marbles in your ears.”

“Oh I can’t do that, they’ll fall in and then that noise of them rolling around would keep me up at night.”

“You’re up at night anyway. You’re like a vampire.’

“A non-visual, marble-headed vampire.”

Izzy righted the askew cushion and plopped onto the sofa. “I’m sure some bleeding heart liberal group will take you on, don’t worry about it.”

“Ah!” The keys had fallen off the by the door hook and landed in one of Izzy’s shoes. “I’m late. I’ll call you later.” She scooted over and kissed the top of Izzy’s head.

As Ginger pulled out of the drive, she wondered if her sleepless night and her delay was really self-sabotage. Like a petulant school girl, she didn’t want to go to work today. Today was Officer Awareness Day. She was aware of being an officer, and didn’t need to be reminded, thank you very much. But the Denver PD had initiated the program that demanded detectives spend one day of the month patrolling, like they did when they were beat cops. No matter what, this day was always bizarre. For some reason, it was like the universe knew she was out of her comfort zone, and it wanted to make the most of the torture session.

Today, Ginger was to patrol a neighborhood that was largely a retirement village. She could only imagine the heyday the universe was going to have with that one. Senile old people. There but for the grace of whomever, go I, she thought.

The prophesy was fulfilled in a big way.

Her first call was to a high rise apartment building where the AARP crowd thrived. Two 70 year old women were involved in a domestic dispute, according to a giggling dispatcher.

It seemed that one woman was trying to ram the other woman with her Hoveround. The recipient of this scooter-attack had called Denver PD. Ginger said into her shoulder-mic, derisively, “Really.”

“Yes. REALLY. I promise,” the dispatcher said.

It was the same address she had been called to last month, only that time, Miss Rita-of-the-Hoveround had blown herself up when she smoked too close to her oxygen tank. There had been a small fire on the carpet that looked like the long fuse of a detonation device, and Miss Rita was found on the floor with burns on her right arm. While Ginger was interviewing her around the ministrations of the paramedic, she had the cheek to ask for a cigarette. Apparently, she needed one because blowing herself up had caused her some stress.

This time, however, Ginger had to steal the key to the scooter until Miss Rita calmed down.

No sooner had Ginger paid for her first cup of coffee at the local Starbucks, than she got another call about the accident at a private garage only a few blocks away. The old woman had hit the garage door opener twice accidentally, so it closed and she didn’t realize, and backed right through it. “My foot slipped off the brake,” the woman said defensively.

“So you hit the gas?”

Ginger left the scene with a caveat emptor: senior citizens should never be allowed to operate motorized vehicles.

Then at the next call, Ginger was summoned to another high rise apartment building a few miles away. An old man had dropped his cell phone down the elevator shaft. This particular elevator was notorious for stopping between floors, and that’s how it was when she found it. She’d have to jump down under it to get the phone. Good thing it was on the first floor, so that the only way it could go when someone pushed the button, was up. She considered just calling the fire department, but the old geezer was beside himself, since his phone was his lifeline–by the looks of him, a lifeline he sorely needed. The man said, “I’ll hold the door for you.”

Ginger said, “No, I’ll block it open because you’ll get distracted and wander off and I’ll be trapped under the elevator and get squished.”

She placed the trash can between the doors, and made quick work of hopping down and grabbing the phone, and climbing back out. When she handed him the cell, he said, “What are you doing with my phone?”

Rolling her eyes, she just bid him a good day and went out to the car to write it up.

It was like it was a full moon. But it was daylight. So is the day preceding the night of a full moon still part of the lunacy factor? Apparently so.

She cruised by the other cop on that beat, waved to him cordially. It was that rookie named Josh, who rode with her on one of these Awareness patrols, while he was still in training. He used to be an Army scout. She soon learned why he was an Army scout. His platoon-mates wanted him dead.

She had figured that one out a few months ago, when he drew down one night on a plastic coyote that the residents had placed outside to scare the geese away. Somehow, he saw the thing and was startled, so dropped to the ground with his gun out. The coyote wasn’t moving, so he crawled over and poked it with his gun. He told Ginger later he thought it was a chupacabra.

She had asked him another night where his weapon was, and he found it slid around to his back, because he had not worn the keeper tabs on his belt, and had pulled his coat over his weapon, too, leaving the access zipper closed. That boy was one shift shy of having his own placard on the Line of Duty death wall.

Ginger cruised the serene streets of Windsor Meadows, passing, as usual “Pregnant Don” on his way to the community center. The man had a pot belly that looked oddly like he was with-child. She honked and waved at him as she went by.

Later in the evening, with the winter chill swelling the air, she got a call that there were people moving around in an old woman’s attic. When Ginger investigated, she discovered there were no people in the attic, and indeed, no attic. She told the woman she had scared them away and they wouldn’t be bothering her anymore, and hoped she remembered to take her medication. This was the same woman that another officer had said kept her important papers hidden in the oven once, got hungry and preheated it, and caused a fire that burned up all her important papers. Ginger, herself, had dealt with her. Once, she reported that “hoodlums” were rattling the doors as they went down the hall of the floor she lived on. Ginger was familiar with this complaint. The lady called dispatch frequently with the same report. So Ginger had gone down the hall and rattled the doors herself. The woman never came out to check on the noise.

A fellow veteran officer, Chad Bentley, had joined her that time, and saw her rattling knobs. He laughed. “What are you doing?”

“Terrorizing a crazy lady.”

When she went in to talk to the lady, giving her the obligatory I ran-the-hoodlums-off-and-they-won’t-be-bothering-you-anymore spiel, she noticed the refrigerator in the middle of the kitchen. “Why is your ‘fridge in the middle of kitchen?” she asked her.

“How else are you supposed to clean behind it?”

Heavy sigh. But Ginger could tell, the fridge was kept right there in the middle of the floor and the woman just walked around it. Ginger was afraid to ask how she actually got it there.

Then came a man named Barry who said there was voodoo in his apartment.

“Where?” Ginger asked.

He showed her. It was in his chair, on his carpet.

It was dirt. The path through his apartment was thick with dirt. Voodoo dirt. He said the woman upstairs, a Miss Beecher, was putting voodoo on him, among other things. She assured him she would go up there and talk to her. When she knocked, the woman saw her and sighed. “What now?”

Ginger had trouble concentrating because Miss Beecher had one of those egg vibrators on the table next to her chair. She almost forgot why she was there. Must have been her lack of sleep. “Um…Mr. Barry says you’re putting voodoo on him, and he wants you to please stop.” Ginger was smiling as Miss Beecher commenced with the eye-rolling. “He said you were after him and tried to kiss him, and so if you would just stop trying to kiss him, that would really help me out.”

The old woman giggled. “He tried to kiss ME one day and I said you do it again I’ll punch you in the mouth. Maybe that’s what is really bothering him.”

“Well, now, it’s voodoo.”

Ginger went back down to Mr. Barry’s apartment and gave him the update. “I yelled at Miss Beecher and she’s agreed to stop the voodoo.” Ginger knew she wasn’t lying. She really had asked her to stop.

Mr. Barry was not convinced. “You said that last time! They always say that, but it keeps happening!” He then informed Ginger that she needed to be arrested for murder because she wasn’t doing anything about it. “Nobody’s dead! How can I be arrested for murder when no one’s dead?”

There was indeed a reason why they called it lunacy. It was from the word, lunar, meaning moon. As that full shining orb hung in the night sky, her evening was further entertained by an old guy who drove his car up on the sidewalk and hit a fire hydrant. She did have to call the fire department for that one. Water was spewing everywhere. While briefing the supervisor, she said, “Yah, if you can’t see, it’s best to drive really fast and buy a really big car.”

During the down times, Ginger entertained herself by recalling the other crazy calls she got during Awareness night. She and Officer Bentley had once tracked down a suspected drug dealer who was fenced in, and running around a tree, in an effort to find a way out. They both just stood there watching him. “If you run around a tree enough times,” Ginger had intoned, “you become invisible.”

“Oh, to be 17 again,” Bentley added.

“I know, right?

“You don’t grow brains until about 30.”

“And sometimes not even then.”

When Ginger cuffed him, and started to pat him down, she said, “Got anything that’s gonna poke me, stick me or piss me off?”

He did, of course, have all three.

The last call was about a complaint that a Mrs. Gentry reported, saying that not only were the neighbors stealing her electricity, but now they were trying to steal her brains. In the report, Ginger added, It is this officer’s opinion that this has already occurred.

Before clocking out back at the station, Ginger would also have the unenviable task of looking over the reports of the other officers on that shift. She dreaded reading the Box-O-Rocks collection. That was the moniker given to Rookie Josh, because he was as dumb as a box of rocks. The boy had no acquaintance with commas and periods, and it sometimes completely changed the meaning of his reports. He couldn’t spell either. And it always took him two hours to write his reports out. Probably why he waited until the end of shift to do it. Once, Ginger had told him, “Learn to use commas and periods. Don’t worry about the semicolons and stuff, but jeez.” She made the mistake of saying, “Every time you take a breath, use a comma.” She then read through his next report and said, “Do you have COPD?”

With the morning sunrise blazing above the horizon, Ginger made her way back to the precinct.

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September 23rd, 2012

book trailer, books, challenge, change, Colorado, danger, fiction, Kelli Jae Baeli, relationships

Resurrection Sticks -Book Trailer

my novella, Resurrection Sticks

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August 10th, 2012

authors, book trailer, books, Colorado, fiction, Kelli Jae Baeli, writing

Book Trailer for Also Known as DNA

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August 5th, 2012

authors, books, Colorado, fiction, Kelli Jae Baeli, relationships, writing

Excerpt from Also Known as DNA

Book 2 of the AKA Investigations series

~ 1 ~

Ceremonial Tarp & Dangle

I’m hanging upside down, wrapped in tarp, like some retarded Houdini.

How did this happen? Well, it all started with me, on the way to my car after a close call. Back to minding my own business. I always mind my own business because I know there are plenty of other people out there who will mind it for me, if I let them, and I don’t feel they’re more qualified to fuck up my life than I am.

Only that morning, I was meeting with a client. Which was, in a way, minding someone else’s business. But that’s the business I’m in. So I can mind someone else’s business and be minding my own business.

Glad I got that cleared up.

Lila Dixon was what one might call a tall drink of water. I never knew what that meant until I met her. She towered over me, and if I weren’t female, I’d say she threatened my manhood. Lila was also regal, and a perfectly lovely woman, but with some unpleasant truths rooted in denial. For instance, she thought it was okay to drink a couple bottles of wine and then drive. Maybe because she was so tall. But I wasn’t on her payroll to play DUI hall monitor. I was there to help her get something useful on her husband, so that she could finally get away from him, legally.

The briefing complete, she signed the tab and left me to finish my short drink of water, going out the rear door to her car, which she had clandestinely parked a block away, just to assuage her paranoia that the dreaded churlish hubby might follow her. I pulled my eCig out of my coat pocket and refilled the mouthpiece with chocolate mint eJuice. I had discovered the wonderful world of electronic cigarettes a few years ago, while searching for a way to quit. Now, I continued to enjoy them, since all the negatives about tobacco cigarettes didn’t exist with the electronic ones. It was just vapor, with the flavoring of your choice. Mine, being chocolate mint.

Lila Dixon’s plan to avoid discovery by her husband had apparently failed, I realized, her paranoia justified, as I saw him come in the front door, hairy knuckles dragging the floor, and recognized him from the photos. It was indeed the churlish one: Lila Dixon’s husband. The way he was looking at me during his approach made me realize he was on to me. He must have waited for her to leave, so he could rough me up, before going home to do the same to her. I pictured him chasing her with one of those cartoony Flintstones clubs. No time now to worry about her future roughing, I had my own to worry about.

I got up and headed for the door, but couldn’t get there through the salad bar, so detoured. The ladies room was just around the corner and I palmed the door open and went inside. He wouldn’t dare follow me in here, in a public restaurant, I told myself. I’m always telling myself these things so I won’t come unglued in a crisis.

I noticed that this restroom smelled purple, like some do. Not sure what the smell of purple is, but I always thought that particular scent just smelled like purple. I stepped into the first stall, and slammed the crooked metal door closed behind me, forcing it into the position to accept the sliding latch, ramming the latch closed just as the restroom entry door burst open and slammed into the wall.

Coarse, meaty hands darted under the door of my stall, and I leapt onto the toilet seat, one foot slipping into the bowl. I pulled my sodden shoe out of the water, and regained my breath, searching frantically for a way out. He shook the door violently, cursing me, and my eyes ascended to the small window above the sink on the other side of the stall. When I looked down again, he was crawling under, shoving his huge shoulders between the door and the ugly yellow linoleum, still reaching for me, straining, pushing at the bottom of the door. The latch wouldn’t stand for that very long, I knew. Why didn’t he just kick the door in? I wondered inanely. Maybe he thought it would make too much noise. The window I spied was small, yet still an escape hatch. The only one to be found. My escape hatches had always been small, but I’d always been able to find them. I’d be damned if I’d break that tradition now.

I climbed the metal wall, boosting myself with the chrome plumbing that rose above the toilet, flushing it accidentally. I’ve escaped down the toilet! my mind screamed absurdly at him, feeling a little crazy with fear. My first question was answered when he wobbled out from under the door and began to fling himself against it. I guess he didn’t care about the noise after all.

Once at the top, I tried to scale the wall without alerting him to my whereabouts, climbed onto the sink at the other side of the second stall, and pulled the window lever down, pushing the single pane open. Thankfully, there was no screen. Or lock. I took hold of the metal sill, hoisting myself up, my sneakered feet scraping the cinderblock wall, as I alternately pushed myself upward and glanced back at him. He had still not figured out that I was out of the stall, but the door was caving in nicely.

I managed to get my hips onto the sill and flail for a handhold on the dirt and leaves outside the ground-level window. I heard the door crash in, and craned my neck to see him struggling to his feet and watching me, his face red, his brows pulled together like the laces of my shoes.

In what seemed a nanosecond later, I felt his big hand close around my left ankle. Instinctively, I kicked at him, feeling myself being dragged back in. The sill scraped painfully across my hip bones and onto my stomach, stopping just under my breasts, and I was suddenly glad I was not flat-chested. I swung my right leg, sodden sneaker and all, as hard as I could toward his head, making contact, but to no avail. I was reminded of my encounter with the Pit Bull in the Stacey Cartwright case, and wasn’t sure if this situation was any less frightening than having a mean dog dangling from my arm as I tried to climb a chain-link fence.

Outside, my hand fell on a broken red brick left over from the construction of the building, no doubt hidden for years behind the shrubbery lining the ground-level windows. When he jerked at me again, I twisted like a cat, felt myself falling. My feet hit the edge of the sink, and I landed with my behind in the bowl, the faucet grinding into my back.

I winced at the pain the awkward landing caused, and when he stepped closer, I lifted the brick, surprised I still clutched it, and brained him. He staggered back, holding the side of his head and I jumped down from the sink, and whacked him again before he could recover. He fell against the wall of the injured stall, and it creaked with his weight. I hurried over to get one more lick in, and when he slumped, I started to climb the sink again, but then stopped, rolling my eyes at myself. I backtracked and went out the door, pausing only long enough to throw the brick at him. It landed on his chest.

The parking lot was just around the building, and in it, my Escalade. The trip to freedom was interrupted by a powerful odor and the sensation of someone’s arms around me. It wasn’t a hug.

When I woke up in the abandoned factory, I was of course unaware that it was an abandoned factory because I couldn’t see through the tarp that had cocooned me, as I dangled in the air by my feet.

What would Jim Rockford do? I don’t think my fictional TV idol had ever been hung upside down with a tarp around him. So I had to just imagine what he would do. And first, he would wait until his captors took the tarp off. Then he would find a way to…to get away.

I am fucked.

But then I heard voices and knew that any escape would be something I figured out on my own without the aid of TV detectives and their clever screenwriters.

“Catch of the day,” one said.

I felt pressure near my chest and looked down, which was really up, due to my unfortunate inversion. I saw the blade poke through and rip an opening up over my head, as I leaned away from the sharp steel of the hunting knife. Blessed oxygen poured over my face and I sucked it in like a black hole.

Even upside down, I recognized Jimmy Dixon, his beefy countenance usually found only in livestock yards.

“How’s it hangin’, Sherlock?” he grinned.

With forced candor, I said, “I am not having a good day.”

They both laughed. Jimmy had some nasty contusions on his face from my recent bricklaying. The other one, I didn’t recognize, so I figured he was the one who did the chloroform honors in the parking lot earlier. “We haven’t met formally.” I said to the accomplice. “I was distracted by unconsciousness…” He just grinned but didn’t offer his name.

“What are we going to do with you?” Jimmy Dixon wondered, without sincerity.

I was willing to lend a hand. “I have a suggestion.”

They laughed again, Dixon saying, “I bet you do.”

“I’m not okay with endangering my life for a disgruntled housewife. She’s not paying me shit anyway. Cheap bitch.” He seemed to like where I was going with this. “In fact, I think she underestimates you, Mr. D. I should be working for you instead. Got any little jobs that need to be taken care of?”

My head was pounding from the blood pooling there, and I was having trouble hearing him as he answered, “Yeah, you could take care of my wife.”

I pretended hesitation. “Is there anything in it for me?”

“Sure. You get to be put back on your feet again. Breathing.”

“That seems fair.”

They laughed, and the Chloroform Guy went over to the wall and untied the rope, slowly lowering me to the ground.

Just like that. It was too easy, but I wasn’t prepared to complain just yet.

As Dixon cut my bindings, and I kicked the tarp away, I checked out my surroundings. Door at the other end, too far away. About as far away, I recalled, as the fence was in that tractor yard during my Cartwright case. The one where the Pit Bull made his home, and anticipated a warm lunch from the armchair detective who made a wrong turn in her escape from another angry husband.

My fetters gone, I sat up and waited for the blood to drain back to my torso. Dizzily, I hefted myself up to stand in front of him. “Everyone has their transgressions. So what did she do to you?”

He lit a cigar and blew the Captain Black smoke in my face. “She wouldn’t let me have a girlfriend.”

“That’s just selfish.”

He grinned, enjoying the repartee. “I want her out of my life. Can you handle that?”

“To save my own skin? Hell yes.”

They both laughed again. We were all having such a good time. The only thing missing was wine and cheese. He pulled out a folded piece of paper. “Here’s her schedule. All the places she goes to spend my money.”

“I’m on it,” I said, taking the paper. I pulled my iPhone out of my pocket, and punched up the recorder app, bold as neon, started recording and then switched to a contact list. “How do I reach you?” He stood there and watched while I touched in the number and saved it. “Now, Mr. Dixon, sir, when you say you want me to get rid of your wife…I don’t want any nasty misunderstandings later. You mean you want her—“

“Dead.”

“Well that’s clear enough.” I poked the iPhone back in my pocket. “I’ll be in touch.” Then I just headed for the door, as if I had a set of brass balls and knew how to shine them.

“Hey—“

I felt my renewed hope begin to dwindle. I stopped and turned to face him.

“Don’t fuck me over, or you’ll be back in that tarp, skiing behind my boat.”

I made a clicking sound and pointed a finger-gun at him. “Got it.” Then I turned and continued to the door. I actually made it all the way outside without a single piece of lead in my back. Perhaps I’ve underestimated the kindness of strangers.

As I walked, I pulled out my phone and stopped the recording, tapped play, and listened to him convict himself. Loved my iPhone.

I continued up Jason Street to Lipan, and called a cab, waiting in front of Stomp Them Grapes, a homebrew wine making supply place. After my recent tarping, a glass of wine sounded pretty good to me.

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