Finding Miranda

by Chacon, Iris

  "I didn't come to see Harry. I came to see Sylvie."

  Walt shook off Dan's grip and entered the building. Once inside, he worked his way through the throng toward Sylvie's chair. The high-society, glammed-to-the-max crowd scorned his horse-ranch attire with looks and whispered comments. Walt ignored them and presented himself before Sylvie's chair. He removed his hat, took her hand, and pulled her up to walk with him to the closed casket.

  They gave no greetings to one another but stood together in silence beside the easel displaying Harry's portrait. Sylvie unconsciously leaned against Walt. When she sniffled, he folded her against him in a brotherly hug.

  Gently, Walt told her, "Whatever's in that box, it ain't Harry. Y'hear me? Harry ain't here. You need to remember that."

  "I know," replied Sylvie between weepy hiccups. "The preacher said the same thing. I guess Daddy's with Mama now. In heaven."

  Walt smiled to himself. "Well, I don't know if I'd give Harry quite that much credit."

  Across the room, Dan Stern joined Les Larrimore in watching Walt comfort Sylvie over the casket. Leslye whispered, "I thought you said she hated him."

  Dan shrugged. "That's what she says. Avoids him and his place like the plague."

  "Well, Danny boy, you better be sure she's had her shots. That plague looks contagious to me," said Leslye.

  Dan's expression turned anxious. He moved toward Sylvie and Walt. Coming to Sylvie's side a moment later, Dan gently extricated her from Walt's arms and tenderly ushered her away. "Come sit down, sweetheart," Dan told her. "You look a little woozy."

  Dan lovingly helped Sylvie into her chair. Leslye sat in the adjacent seat. Dan said to Sylvie, "Les will get you something to drink." He glanced at the lady lawyer meaningfully. "Right, Les?"

  Leslye stood and found herself staring into the shirtfront of Walt McGurk, who had followed Sylvie and Dan. "I'll be right back; you just rest, dear," Leslye told Sylvie. Looking up at Walt towering over them, she said, "Good night, Mister McGurk. Thank you for coming." She stepped around him and left in search of a beverage.

  Walt scanned the room. Sylvie was surrounded by elegant strangers and watchdogged by Dan Stern. Walt shoved his Stetson onto his head and ambled toward the exit.

  Halfway there he stopped, decided he was not leaving, and marched briskly back to Sylvie's chair. He elbowed his way to her and, when Dan refused to yield a place to sit, Walt squatted on the floor in front of her. This put Walt on Sylvie's eye level, and he pinned her with his eyes like a lepidopterist skewers a butterfly.

  "Sylvie, you know half of my ranch is yours now. Harry's half," Walt said.

  "I guess so."

  "Well, if you’re in a bind, I’ll buy you out fair and square. Cash on the barrelhead."

  Dan said, "Really, McGurk! I don't think this is the time—“

  "I'm talkin' to Sylvie," Walt said, cutting Dan short.

  Sylvie didn't feel like discussing business at all, and certainly not while Walt and Dan were going at each other in front of the jet set. "Can't we discuss this later?" Sylvie said to Walt. "I mean, it's not like I need the money."

  Walt's mouth moved as if he would argue with her, but he realized the room had gone silent. The "mourners" all seemed to be staring at him. He stood abruptly, withered the room with a look, and strode for the door.

  Leslye arrived with a cup of water for Sylvie. Dan gave Les his chair, and he left to follow Walt, saying to the ladies, "I'll just make sure he finds his way out."

  Les urged Sylvie to drink, but Sylvie merely held the cup and watched the door through which Walt and Dan had gone. Leslye patted Sylvie's shoulder and said, "It's all right, darling. Don't let Harry's pet jailbird upset you."

  "Harry's what?"

  "Jailbird," said Les. "Everybody knows Harry got him out of jail and set him up in that horse-breeding business." Bitterness tainted her voice as she continued, "One of your mother's charity cases, I expect. Harry never learned to tell her no."

  Sylvie looked at Les in absolute confusion.

  "Honey, they say McGurk killed a man," Les told her. "After all these years, I can't believe you never knew. I thought Harry would've told you all about it."

  Stunned, Sylvie gulped the water from the cup like an android. Without looking at Leslye, Sylvie handed her the empty cup. "I guess Harry and I never really talked much," Sylvie said.

  Out in the parking lot, Walt was reaching to open the door of his truck when Dan Stern wedged himself between Walt and his goal. "Who do you think you are?" Dan sneered from six inches away.

  "Harry's partner, Slick Face. Who do you think you are?" Walt responded.

  "Les and I were Harry's partners, Dogpatch. Real partners, in multi-million-dollar joint ventures, not some two-bit horse farm in Podunk Holler. You're not a business partner, you're a joke."

  Without raising his voice, Walt responded, "And you're a brass-plated thief."

  Dan took a good Ivy League swing at Walt, but Walt sidestepped it and landed a solid back-alley uppercut to Dan's jaw. Dan went down on one knee and stayed there, wiping blood from a split lip.

  Standing over Dan with his fists poised for more, Walt said, "Harry never had to worry about finding my hands in his pockets. Tell me, did Harry kill himself when he learned you two had stole him broke, or did you blow him away because he caught you at it?"

  "It was a gas leak," Dan insisted, favoring his swollen, bleeding lip. "An accident. Happens every day. You can ask the police, the Marine Patrol, the coroner, anybody." A new gleam entered Dan's eyes, and he smiled wickedly. "But you won't. You don't think I murdered Harry. This," he gestured at the two of them, "is all a smoke screen to hide how you tried to get Harry's half of the ranch from Sylvie before Harry's body was even in the grave. Y'know, if I were going to be suspicious of anybody, Dogpatch, I'd be suspicious of you. We both know you're capable of murder, don't we?"

  Walt moved as if he wanted to kick Dan's perfectly capped teeth down his throat, but he decided against it. He swung into his truck instead.

  As the truck roared out of the lot, Dan stood and wiped his face with his Hermes handkerchief. Then he dusted the knees of his trousers and re-entered the funeral home.

  End of Sample Chapters

  of

  Sylvie’s Cowboy

  by

  Iris Chacon

  PROLOGUE: THE STUDIO

  In the oldest and most perfect pottery studio in the universe, the walls glowed with ethereal light. The ceiling was high enough to be hidden by clouds. The only flaw in the studio’s splendor was its single door, which was narrow, wooden, plain, and scarred. Through that door bustled a peculiar, small person sporting a cocked stovepipe hat. He closed the door and waited politely for the Potter to acknowledge him.

  The diminutive visitor looked like a 19th century sidewalk newsboy, or he might have been a taller-than-average leprechaun. Truly, he could be both, either, or neither, as the situation demanded. He was older than he looked by several million years, but he could pass for middle-aged on any planet. His name was Orkney.

  Orkney watched in silence as the Potter fashioned a teapot and then its lid. He watched the Potter paint the raw clay and then set the two pieces into a kiln for firing.

  A glance at the nearby workbench revealed a freshly painted vase, an urn, some candelabra, cups, saucers, a platter, but no other teapots.

  When a minute had passed, or it may have been a year or a decade (time having no meaning in the studio), the Potter lifted the fired teapot from the kiln and set about painting a face upon it. Orkney neither moved nor spoke during all that time.

  “Good to see you, Orkney,” said the Potter, at whose smile Orkney nearly floated with happiness.

  “You called, Guvnor?” Orkney said, sounding like a London street urchin—which he could be if called upon.

  “Time to go to work again, my son,” the Potter said, putting the finishing touches on the teapot’s facial features. “It’s been thirty-two years, seven months, four days,
and six hours since the last job, by human reckoning.”

  “Human. So it’s to be earth again, sir?”

  The Potter put down his paintbrush and stepped back to evaluate his creation. He produced a neon green card from among the folds of his robe and flipped the card toward Orkney. Orkney remained absolutely still while the card wafted across the room and lodged itself securely in the band of his stovepipe hat. “That’s the name and address where you’ll deliver this teapot,” said the Potter.

  Orkney retrieved the card from his hatband and read it. He blew out air. “Coo! This bloke? They think ‘e’s bonkers already, Guv. This’ll get ‘im locked up for sure!”

  “Just deliver the teapot.”

  Orkney looked at the teapot with its newly painted face. “But i’s still wet!”

  A gust of wind swept through the studio, billowing fabrics and rustling small items on the workbench.

  “It’s dry now,” the Potter said. He placed the lid on the teapot then handed the pot to Orkney.

  As Orkney accepted the teapot, it grinned and winked at the Potter.

  CHAPTER 1: THE DELIVERY

  Lloyd had a philosophy: If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. If it ain’t on clearance (defined as at least 70 percent off), don’t buy it. If it’s less than 50 years old, it’s too good to get rid of. If it’s more than 50 years old, it’s an antique and therefore too valuable to get rid of. It was a blessing that Lloyd had never married because his philosophy probably would have driven some poor female to commit murder sooner or later.

  That’s not to say Lloyd was undesirable as a man. Indeed, women above the age of 50 found him adorable and wanted to mother him. Women in their 40s found him polite, attentive, an excellent listener, and the perfect date for weddings, graduations, awards ceremonies, even funerals. Thirty-something ladies felt he wasn’t career-driven enough, but he had a respectable investment portfolio and a cute butt. Twenty-somethings at the gym on Lloyd’s workout days sent text messages to their friends about his great body—sometimes they even posted Lloyd videos on YouTube.

  Despite his positive attributes, however, Lloyd had reached the age of thirty-two years, seven months, four days, and six hours without finding Miss Right and converting her into Mrs. Lloyd Schifflebein. Yes, Schifflebein. A surname decidedly lacking romance in addition to being difficult to spell and way too long a signature for checks and the backs of credit cards.

  Supposing Miss Right were willing to overlook the awkward appellation, there was one other impediment to wedded bliss. Lloyd devoted his whole life to his children. Children he didn’t yet actually have, but he was working on it. He had been working on it all his life. He had filed his first formal application to adopt on his 20th birthday, having been turned away on his 18th and 19th. This devotion to his as-yet-unadopted children led many people to deduce that Lloyd Schifflebein was crazy. Big and strong, sure. Cute, maybe, but loony nonetheless.

  On the afternoon of Orkney’s mission to Lloyd’s house, Lloyd had laid aside his carpentry tools, locked his woodworking shop, and settled in the kitchen to brew a cup of tea and make an important telephone call. An ancient teakettle on the old Kenmore stove began to bubble and then whistle, blowing steam. Lloyd was lifting the kettle from the burner when his doorbell rang, startling him into dropping the kettle, which shattered into snowflake-size pieces on the tile floor. Lloyd had never seen stainless steel behave that way. It should have been dented or bent, but shattered? And where was the water? How weird.

  Lloyd bent to pick up the mess, but the doorbell clanged again. He sighed and stepped over the debris on his way to answer the door.

  He opened his front door to find Orkney on his threshold with a brown box in hand, clipboard under one arm, and pencil behind one ear.

  “Delivery for Schifflebein,” said Orkney. “Sign ‘ere, if ya please, Guvnor.” Orkney offered Lloyd the clipboard and pencil. Lloyd signed, then he exchanged the clipboard and pencil for Orkney’s brown box.

  “Well, g’day, Guvnor, and good luck.”

  Abruptly, thunder boomed out of a clear sky.

  Orkney startled and glanced heavenward. He removed his hat respectfully and backed away from the door, keeping one eye on the heavens.

  “No! Not luck, sir. I didn’t mean luck, sir. I meant to say, uh, Lor’ bless ya. G’day and Lor’ bless ya, sir.”

  Lloyd, too, examined the clear skies and even held out his open hand to check for precipitation, but there was none. He turned to thank the strange little man, but Orkney had simply disappeared. Lloyd stepped outside the door and glanced up and down the street, but there was no sign of a delivery truck or driver. More weirdness. What a day. Shaking his head, Lloyd returned to his kitchen with his brown box.

  He left the box on the counter, swept up and discarded the remains of his erstwhile teakettle, and walked down the hall to his home office to make his phone call. He opened a four-inch-thick file folder on his desk, found a number, and punched the digits into his phone.

  “May I speak with Mrs. Walken, please?” he asked the answering receptionist. “Retired? But she couldn’t have been more than 50! ... Oh, really. Well, she sure didn’t sound 62. My goodness.”

  He paged quickly through the thick file and found his answer. “Wow, I guess it has been, goodness, twelve years now that she’s been handling my file. ... Schifflebein, yes. You know my case? ... Really! Everybody, huh. ... Well, do you know who’s handling my file now that Mrs. Walken has retired? ... Uh-huh. ... Uh-huh. ... Well, would you please ask whoever draws the short straw to call me? ... Yeah, that’s still my number. You have an amazing memory. ... Really! Taped to the desk. Goodness. ... Thank you very much, then. I’ll wait for your call, her call, or his call, somebody’s call. ... Right. ‘Bye.”

  Lloyd put down the phone, slumped in his chair with long legs extended before him. A black-and-white rabbit hopped through the office door, across Lloyd’s ankles, and onward to the futon against the opposite office wall.

  “Montalban, don’t eat my bed,” Lloyd said absently. The rabbit reversed course, crossed Lloyd’s ankles going the other direction, and left the room.

  After several minutes of staring at nothing, Lloyd slapped his knees as if encouraging himself. He rose and returned to the kitchen, where he removed a paring knife from the cutlery drawer and proceeded to open Orkney’s brown box. He lifted the brand new teapot and placed it on the stove with its brightly colored face visible from the center of the room. “Goodness, this is providential,” he said. “Who sent you?”

  The teapot didn’t answer, and there was no return address on the brown box. In fact, there was no address at all on the brown box. Lloyd turned the box over and around, but it was blank on all sides. “My goodness,” Lloyd murmured.

  At the Department of Children and Families, the receptionist delivered a Pepto-pink message slip to the desk of a supervisor. “Walken’s nutty guy called,” the receptionist said. “Who do I give it to?”

  “I’ll take it,” the supervisor said, and rose from her chair to take the message in hand.

  The receptionist returned to her desk, and the supervisor walked down an alley between cubicles to the lair of Hepzibah Stoner, Social Worker Extraordinaire.

  Stoner was the unofficial hit-woman of DepChilFam (as she liked to call it, having become accustomed to such amalgamated nomenclature while serving in the United States Marine Corps). Stoner had the compassion of Florence Nightingale, the relentless determination of Indiana Jones, and, sadly, the face and physique of Winston Churchill.

  The supervisor leaned into Stoner’s cubicle and placed the phone message on the desk. “Kook call,” said the supervisor. “Walken strung him along for twelve years hoping he’d give up, but he doesn’t get it. Name’s Snicklebean, or something like that. Everybody’s talked to him at one time or another, but nobody’s had the guts to just tell him no and put him out of his misery. Something about the guy seems to turn people soft. Find the file. Go see him. Tell him to get lost, and
close the file.”

  “You got it,” said Hepzibah Stoner. “Snicklebean is history.”

  CHAPTER 2: THE PLAN

  Lloyd had been working for the Miami-Dade County Parks and Recreation Department for almost as long as he had been applying to adopt kids. On the official civil service rolls his position was Facilities Maintenance Technician, Level III, but he simply told people he was a handyman.

  His best friend since childhood was one of his co-workers (a Facilities Maintenance Technician, Level II), a black woman named Rembrandt Jackson. If Lloyd didn’t love her so much, he would have envied Remmy. She had five children under the age of 12.

  On the day after Lloyd’s file was assigned to Hit-Woman Hepzibah, Lloyd—unaware that he had been targeted—was meeting his pal, Remmy, for lunch. They parked their County truck at the Rolando Castillo Memorial Park and walked across the grass that Lloyd would be mowing after they finished eating.

  Remmy headed straight for the only bench that was nestled in a shady patch. Other people, sitting on other benches around the small park, were courting sunstroke in the Miami summer heat. The only shady bench was vacant only because of the large “Wet Paint” sign taped to it.

  Remmy reached the bench slightly ahead of Lloyd, deftly flipped aside the sign, and sat down.

  Lloyd joined her on the bench, but he could not condone dishonesty. “Remmy, please. ‘Wet Paint’?”

  “It will be,” said Remmy. “Right after I finish my lunch.”

  She dug in her ottoman-size thermal lunch box and from it produced plastic bags of carrots, celery, cherry tomatoes, cauliflower, and broccoli florets, all sliced into bite-size pieces. She withdrew a large mixing bowl from the bottom of the lunch box, dumped all the veggies into the bowl, then emptied an entire bottle of blue cheese dressing on top of it all. She set a can of Diet Pepsi next to the empty dressing bottle on the bench beside her.