Carolina Crimes

by Nora Gaskin Esthimer

  CAROLINA CRIMES

  21 Tales of Need, Greed and Dirty Deeds

  Introduction by

  Jeffery Deaver

  Edited by

  Nora Gaskin Esthimer

  Compilation Copyright © 2017 by Triangle Sisters in Crime

  All rights reserved. No part of the book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

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  The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

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  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Carolina Crimes: 21 Tales of Need, Greed and Dirty Deeds

  Introduction by Jeffery Deaver

  All That Glitters by Sarah R. Shaber

  Writer’s Block by Toni Goodyear

  Lou’s Diner by Su Kopil

  Rolla by Jennifer Riley

  A Calceologist Has a Bad Day Jamie Catcher

  The Unbearable Sweetness of Ice Cream by Bonnie Korta

  Name That Killer by J.D. Allen

  Obsessions by Bonnie Olsen

  Set Them Free, If Need Be by Courtney Carter

  All Clear by Linda Johnson

  Solitaire by Judith Stanton

  Silk Stalking by Antoinette Brown

  Murder at Carson’s Mill by Don Marple

  The Windmills by Gina Lea

  The Case of the Battered Bungalow by Liz McGuffey

  Glitz and Glam by Sharon Bader

  The Two-Faced Dog by Ruth Moose

  A Look to Die For by Britni Patterson

  Dead Man’s Hand by Karen McCullough

  Intervention by Caroline Taylor

  Her Final Trick by Robin Whitten

  About the Contributors

  Other Titles from Down & Out Books and its Imprints

  Preview from Criminal Economics by Eric Beetner

  Preview from Polo’s Long Shot, a Nick Polo mystery by Jerry Kennealy

  Preview from The Black Kachina by Jack Getze

  Dedicated to Karen Pullen, with gratitude

  from her Sisters in Crime, the Triangle Chapter.

  INTRODUCTION

  Although I live in North Carolina, I suppose I’m not as Tar Heel as some. I think back to what I heard a native, somebody who was born and bred in the state, say once: “Just ’cause your kittens curl up in the laundry basket doesn’t mean they’re socks.” I love too the winking observation about a town not far from me, Cary, NC. The saw goes that the name stands for “Containment Area for Relocated Yankees.”

  But that doesn’t stop me from loving the state and the Triangle area—Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill and environs—in which I live. It’s got everything: an eclectic blend of North and South, Silicon Valley and tobacco farming, the world’s only decent barbecue recipe—it involves vinegar and brown sugar and NO tomato sauce—and sports to die for, including the best basketball team in the ACC—no, make that the country (I’ll keep my opinion on that otherwise to myself, except to point out I live in Chapel Hill, so enough said).

  The area also boasts some of the finest crime writers ever to set ink to paper and pixels to disk, as this Sisters in Crime anthology attests.

  I was particularly delighted when J.D. Allen asked me to pen an introduction—not only because I knew of the quality of the writers involved, but because I have always felt that SinC is one of the preeminent writers’ organizations in the nation. I’ve been involved with various chapters since the beginning, and I know the group has not only been a true champion of, obviously, women authors, who’ve been historically underrepresented in the world of crime fiction, but of improving the art of writing in general. Through its advocacy and through hosting programs on tradecraft, community literacy, marketing, publicity, the changing and often inscrutable nature of the publishing business, and many other topics, SinC has made untold contributions to our profession.

  I can’t think of a better collection of stories to illustrate the diverse voices of SinC writers. Just like a Carolina Sunday supper, these stories dish up a variety of styles, tones and tastes, from procedurals to cozies to dark psychological thrillers.

  We start with a fitting tale: Sarah R. Shaber has created a formidable protagonist, who patiently does her job in the face of attitudes like: “A woman policeman. It ain’t natural.”

  If I may belabor the dining metaphor, Jennifer Riley treats us to a dinner table story that starts homey and ends, well, a bit differently than we might be suspecting, while the more dangerous side of dessert is addressed, deliciously, by Bonnie Korta. One of my favorite books, Julie Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking, makes an appearance in Ruth Moose’s twisty offering.

  Fashion, in various forms, is the motif in several of the stories: Courtney Carter uses perfume to delightfully ominous advantage, while Jamie Catcher does the same with footwear. Britni Patterson takes us to a cosmetics convention—who would have thought what shenanigans might go on there?—and Sharon Bader takes on both fashion and siblings in her story.

  Sisterly rivalry is also a centerpiece of Caroline Taylor’s tale here, and I think we can all relate to the revealed twist at the end.

  Classic psychological suspense radiates from several of the stories: Su Kopil’s, for instance, which is chillingly reminiscent of The Twilight Zone. Linda Johnson gives us a new look at bullying—and nails life in the office cold—while Don Marple writes about a sentimental trip back home that takes a decidedly troubling turn. The world’s oldest profession is a theme of Robin Whitten’s story, a classic noir.

  In this day and age, technology often appears in crime fiction. A research lab is the scene of some troubling happenings in Bonnie Olsen’s tale. And you’ll never look at alternative energy the same after you read Gina Lea’s. A simple computer game leads to some disquieting consequences in Judith Stanton’s.

  Another type of gaming is the theme of Karen McCullough’s story—think twice before going to a casino again!

  Media are such a part of our world now, too, that we might expect an anthology to contain at least one offering on the subject, and Liz McGuffey steps onto our stage with winning results.

  The line between cozy and thriller can be a fine one, and there are elements of both in Antoinette Brown’s story, which is, forgive me, a truly “crafty” one.

  All crime anthologies must have a P.I. tale, and J.D. Allen has given us an evocative and compelling one; you’ll love her gumshoe.

  And if any of you are writers and have ever been troubled by writer’s block, well, there’s a suggestion or two for you in Toni Goodyear’s tale.

  As a suspense writer, I believe my job is to tease, not tell, so I’ve left these snippets a bit vague. I hope I’ve succeeding in whetting your appetite for the brilliant offer
ings contained in this volume. So, in keeping with my admittedly overused Tar Heel supper metaphor, I encourage you to do what I did: pour yourself a tall sweet tea or a couple of fingers of bourbon, sit back and dig in.

  —Jeffery Deaver

  All That Glitters

  Sarah R. Shaber

  I left my truck lights on, trained on the shack. The place was as desolate as ever. A shack cobbled together from logs and ragged boards, a rusty pick-up parked out front, the yawning mouth of a worthless mine a few yards away. And Dusty. Years ago, the old mule had passed away. The animal was too big to bury, so Zeke had piled rocks, dust and sand on his corpse. All that was left of him was skeleton with a few bones poking out of his makeshift grave.

  “Hello the camp,” I called out. There was no answer.

  I pulled my gun from its holster. I hated to. Zeke was an old, sick man, but the folks in town had said he was drunk and brandishing his shotgun, shouting about killing the imaginary outlaws he insisted were trying to steal his silver mine. As if anyone with any sense would want that barren hole in the ground. Just about as long as I could remember Zeke had insisted a bonanza of a silver strike was just days away and he’d die a rich man. There was sure no sign of it yet and he didn’t have many years left.

  “Zeke,” I called out. “It’s Chief Jensen. Come on out. You know you got to.”

  The shack door opened a few inches. “I’m nekkid,” Zeke answered. “Just give me a minute to put my trousers on.”

  I holstered my gun and climbed out of the truck. He met me at the door to his shack carrying an old lantern and tucking a greasy shirt into a threadbare pair of trousers with his free hand. His bare feet were dirty and what grey hair he had stuck out around his ears.

  “What do you want?” he asked.

  “I got to arrest you,” I said.

  “Oh, hell. No you don’t.”

  “Zeke, you threatened to shoot up the mercantile. And you were drunk. You scared the cashier nearly to death.”

  “If the store had had them little Baby Ruths I like I wouldn’t have lost my temper. Come on, Mariah, you don’t need to take me in. You know I wouldn’t shoot nobody.”

  “Go put your boots on. And don’t call me Mariah when I’m in uniform. It’s Chief Jensen.”

  Grumbling, Zeke set down the lantern and went over to an unmade cot heaped with an old Indian blanket and a pillow that had never been washed. I could hear him mutter as he groped under the bed for his boots. “A woman policeman,” he said. “It ain’t natural. It just ain’t.” He found his weathered and cracked boots and struggled to pull them over his bare feet.

  While I waited, I looked around his shack. How could someone live like this, I wondered. The dirt floor had been swept recently, but that was the extent of Zeke’s housekeeping. A pot-bellied stove that must have dated from the time of the Comstock stood in a corner. A cast-iron pot caked with cooked-on food rested on its single burner, while a crate of supplies sat on the floor nearby. An almost empty bottle of Four Roses whiskey rested on a three-legged table propped up on a stump.

  Zeke’d lived like this as long as I could remember, bringing slivers of silver scraped out of his old mine into town to buy his simple needs. It was a common belief that Zeke had been driven plain crazy years ago, obsessed by silver fever. No one dared to approach his property without hollering first because the old man was sure claim jumpers were after his mine and he intended to shoot first and ask questions later. He needed a bath, a decent hot meal, clean clothes and a serious talking to. Which is why I’d driven all the way out here to arrest him.

  Zeke jammed his battered felt derby on his head and followed me out to the truck. I wished I’d remembered to bring a blanket for him to sit on. His trousers were black with the charcoal he used to smelt his ore.

  We followed the track from Zeke’s claim a couple of miles to where it met with the state road, guided by a line of rocks painted white picked out by my headlights. Once we got into town, I pulled up in front of the police station, a small white-washed stucco building with bars over all its windows and Police painted in black letters over the door.

  “Where is everybody?” Zeke asked. “The whole damn town looks deserted. There ain’t no lights anywhere.”

  “It’s the blackout, Zeke. Don’t you remember?”

  “Remember what?”

  “The Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. We’re at war now.”

  I helped the old man down out of the truck. His arm felt like a stick of dry kindling.

  “You’re ribbing me,” he said. “When did this happen? Where’s Pearl Harbor?”

  “About three months ago. Pearl Harbor is a port in Hawaii.”

  “No joke.”

  I wished it was a joke.

  Vernal, the only other police officer in our tiny town, was waiting for us. Well, I had sworn in Coral, the girl I’d hired to take my place as secretary and dispatcher, but she wasn’t in uniform. I’d been able to hire Vernal because a childhood bout with polio left him with a bad arm so he couldn’t enlist or go work in the bauxite mines. He was just a kid but he had a lot of promise as a peace officer. Lord knows he was eager enough.

  “Hey, Zeke,” Vernal said.

  “Hey, boy.”

  Vernal took Zeke’s arm to lead him to the bathroom. “Come on now, I turned on the boiler so the water’s nice and hot,” he said to Zeke.

  “Don’t forget the carbolic soap and scrub brush,” I said.

  “You two is a barrel of laughs,” Zeke said.

  While Vernal supervised Zeke’s shower I sorted through the piles of old clothing in our storage room. We’d collected it for years for the hobos and drifters who used to come through town on their way to Reno looking for work or a soup kitchen. Since the war started we hadn’t needed used clothing like we used to. It seemed like every man and a lot of women in the country had enlisted or found a job. Which is how I got to be Chief of Police and Vernal got to be a police officer in spite of a crippled left arm.

  I handed a pile of clean clothes through the bathroom door to Vernal. Zeke was singing “The Last Round-Up” in a thin squeaky voice while he soaped himself up.

  “I’ll call the café to bring something over for Zeke to eat,” I said.

  “Don’t forget he ain’t got but five teeth.”

  So I ordered up green pork chili with fry bread and coffee for Zeke’s dinner. Tomorrow morning, when I released him, he’d be clean, dressed in fresh clothes and have a full belly. Which was all I could think of to do for that loco old man.

  I groped my way across the desert along a dirt road, again guided by a long row of white-painted rocks, to my family’s ranch house. It was just me living there now. I hadn’t been born to be a rancher. I didn’t inherit my father’s fondness for stepping in cow pies, harvesting hay in the blistering heat and stringing barbed wire. Neither did my brother, who got a job in a bank in Sacramento as soon as the economy perked up. Since I was the daughter of the family I stayed home to take care of our parents. Once my folks were gone I enrolled in secretarial school and then got hired by the police department. I leased out our grazing land to a neighbor and accepted a butchered steer for my freezer as part of the payment. My brother complained, but I told him if he wanted to come back and chase cattle around the desert all day he was welcome to it. He didn’t.

  I loved living alone under the tall desert sky. Unnatural for a young woman, I’d been told, but I didn’t care a whit what people thought of me. Never had. Which came in handy when I got appointed police chief of Desperation, Nevada.

  I stopped by the stable with an apple for a chat with Dickie, my dapple-grey cow pony. Then I opened the ranch house door and groped around in the dark for the light switch. I flicked it on and checked to make sure that my blackout curtains were drawn. I hated them for blocking out my view of the desert sky at night, clear and high and blinking with thousands of stars. So stupid, really; if the government thought that the Japs could bomb Nevada, they wouldn’t have built so
many airfields and training camps out here. But maintaining a blackout was good for morale, they said, and as police chief of my little town I had to enforce the law. Which meant I had to obey it too. I might as well get used to it. I had a feeling that before this war was over, the government would think of a lot more rules and regulations.

  It wasn’t against the law to sit out on my own front porch yet, so after I put on my pajamas, made a leftover steak sandwich and poured a tumbler of scotch, I went out there and rocked a while. After I finished my sandwich I poured myself another scotch and rocked some more, thinking about Zeke.

  Should I confiscate his shotgun? I hated to do that. On the one hand the old-timer was unpredictable when he was drunk, but on the other a man, and a woman for that matter, needed a gun out here. To kill rattlesnakes if nothing else. And Zeke did own a silver mine. A poor one, but still some wannabe outlaw might take it into his mind to try to steal what little silver the man had. If he couldn’t defend himself Zeke could get hurt and no one would know for days. If he would just quit going on a bender when he came into town for supplies it sure would be a help to me.

  As it turned out I didn’t have to worry about disarming Zeke. When I walked into the office the next morning Vernal met me at my desk. He touched his hat to me, like always.

  “Good morning, ma’am,” he said.

  “And good morning to you. How’s our prisoner?”

  “Not too good. He’s dead.”