Eight Mystery Writers You Should Be Reaing Nowwww

by Michael Guillebeau

“Look at her wig!” Demelda demanded. “It proves everything.”

  “What does Aunt Cress’s wig prove? Besides that she can’t grow hair?” Virginia snatched the headpiece and handed it to her uncle.

  “There’s dried tomato paste in the hair!”

  “Mother, I don’t see how you can tell tomato paste from—” Virginia began.

  “What did you say?” Cressida whirled away from her husband and seized Demelda’s satin slash. Derek thrust the wig back at Virginia.

  “Let me go you killer!” Demelda shrieked.

  “What did you say?” Cressida repeated, as Demelda struggled not just against her sister’s grip now, but also Derek’s stronger arms.

  “Isn’t it obvious?” said Demelda. “That jealous harlot somehow tricked you into killing your own son, but you left the evidence in your wig. You didn’t wash out the tomato paste!”

  “There. You said it again,” said Cressida. “Who told you it was tomato paste?”

  Unexpectedly, Demelda faltered. “I … I suppose it must have been Manny or Leigh,” she said.

  “No,” said Virginia, still examining the wig as if it might actually be evidence of something. “They keep saying Kev was killed with a can of soup. You told them it was tomato paste.”

  “Well, I’m sure I heard it somewhere,” said Demelda. “What does it matter?”

  “What did he do to you?” Cressida sobbed. “What did Kevin ever do to you, Demelda? To you or to anyone?” She staggered away from her sister. Derek caught her.

  “What’s going on?” said Virginia. She tried to give the wig to Derek, but he let it fall.

  “The press misreported the murder weapon,” said Cressida. “Only a few people knew the truth. There’s only one reason for your mother to be so certain Kevin was killed with tomato paste.”

  “Don’t make this my fault,” shouted Demelda, but her voice shook, and now she teetered in her high heels.

  “It’s the money, isn’t it?” Cressida said. “You killed him because he’d have made Carolyn his heir when they married instead of Virginia. You liked him leaving everything to his favorite cousin. Don’t you know he already changed his will?”

  “Never mind the money… the money he hash now,” slurred Demelda, her voice fading. “It’s what he wash going to make when he went into film and overshadowed Virginia for good! Thatsh the real problem. This is about her career. Why should he be the famous one? I haven’t worked all my life to make her a character actress. He simply would not see reason.”

  Demelda sagged against Virginia and groaned. “Oh oh oh!” she moaned, throwing a sequined arm around her daughter.

  Virginia lowered her to the ground. “Mother, stop it. Is there a doctor?”

  “Who would’ve thought the old man to have had so much blood in him?” wailed Demelda, her voice rising again for a moment before dropping to a whisper. “The evidench is all right there in the wig. The wig and the port wine . Maybe you can’t see it, but everything leaves a trace. Every contact leaves . . .”

  “What was in those pills I gave you?” Virginia demanded. “Was it really your anxiety medication?”

  Demelda’s eyes fluttered open. “No.” she said. She arranged her free arm across her forehead before closing her lids again. “My sleeping pills. Been carrying them in the anxiety bottle so you wouldn’t annoy me with questions.”

  “How many have you taken?”

  “Been popping them like candy, and I still can’t get decent rest. I simply can’t believe … all that blood… My God, it is Robert Redford.”

  La Quatrième Soupçon

  “It’s completely inadmissible in court,” said Manny. “I don’t care what Demelda knew about any tomato paste. No judge I know of would admit the confession of a seventy-year-old woman stoned on sleeping medication.”

  Virginia groaned. “I can’t believe she switched the pills in her bottles. Why?” She punched in her door code and let them all in.

  “Manny’s right. She didn’t do it,” said Leigh.

  “It’s that blame thing,” Manny agreed. “She’s run out of other people to hold responsible, she’s on a wicked bad trip, and she’s accusing herself.”

  “Well thank you for staying with me at the hospital. Maybe having her stomach pumped will convince her not to do that again. If she gets to come home. She seemed to know so much.”

  “She certainly knows something,” Leigh agreed. “But I doubt she has the physical strength to pound in somebody’s face, especially not someone young and strong, like Kevin was.”

  “Can I get you something to drink,” Virginia offered, “Or are you going home to turn in? I haven’t seen this side of three a.m. in quite some time.”

  “Not much point in sleeping. I’ll take coffee if you’re brewing,” said Leigh.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Of course we’re sure,” said Manny. “We’re not leaving until we’ve torn this house apart looking for that damned port-wine shirt.”

  “I’m surprised the police don’t already have a warrant. But about that … I’ve been thinking. I’m not sure Mother even owns—”

  “I told you,” said Manny. “The lady doth protest her guilt too much, methinks.”

  “She was doing Lady Macbeth, not Hamlet’s mother.”

  Manny waved Virginia off. “You’re the actress. That’s your job. I’m the lawyer, and I’m telling you, there isn’t enough criminal evidence in Demelda’s hysterics to cause even the media to take interest.”

  “That’s true. They were notably absent. Do you want coffee?”

  “Yes, please. Where should we start looking for this imaginary blou— Leigh! Get down! He has a gun!” Manny threw himself on the floor and the women instinctively followed suit.

  “Who’s there?” shouted Virginia.

  “Get up, all of you. Hands where I can see them,” bellowed L.E. Carmody, president of the Broadcasting Syndicate of America. He fired, and a vase exploded. “Up! Now! And throw me your phones.” This time, he pinged a bullet off a decorative tureen dangerously close to Leigh.

  Virginia, Manny, and Leigh stood. They surrendered their phones. “What are you doing here?” Virginia asked. “How did you get in?”

  Carmody towered over them. Today he wore a powder blue shirt covered in orange musical notes with a hot pink BSA logo embroidered on the pocket. “Your mother was kind enough to leave the door and alarm codes in her purse,” he said. “And you were all so distracted that I had plenty of time to find them. I was hoping for a mere house key. Now shut up, and let’s negotiate this like civil people.”

  “You’re shooting at things in my house, but you’re asking us to be civil?”

  Carmody blew up another vase by way of reply.

  “Fine, we’ll sit!” said Leigh.

  “Can’t we please go to the kitchen?” said Virginia. “If there’s something to negotiate, let’s do it over coffee. I have an idea of what you want, but I still can’t understand why.”

  Carmody considered briefly, then waved the gun in the direction she had indicated. Virginia stumbled in the doorway, and Manny caught her. “Don’t try anything,” Carmody barked.

  “Nothing!” said Virginia. “I fell. That’s all. Watch your step. There’s a loose baseboard.” In the kitchen, she kept her hands visible and showed Carmody the inside of her cupboard with elaborate care.

  “I don’t need anything,” he snapped, when she asked who wanted cream and sugar. “I’ve already helped myself.”

  “So I see,” said Virginia. An empty bottle of Demelda’s sauvignon blanc stood on the counter. Virginia picked it up and studied Carmody.

  “Put that down!” he ordered her.

  “Relax. I was trying to figure out if you’re as much of a snob as Mother is. I’ve got a nice port if you drink sweet wines.”

  Carmody flinched as if Virginia was the one holding the gun. “Never mind the port! I know one of you tripped an alarm, and I need to decide whether I’m shooting you before the
cops come roaring up.”

  “This is about Kevin’s show, of course.” said Virginia. She delivered three cups of black coffee.

  “It is. It certainly is.” With some hesitation, Carmody took one hand off his weapon long enough to pull a sheaf of documents out of his pocket. “Initial at all the highlights and sign the bottom of each page.” He threw them on the table.

  “Would you sit?” said Virginia. “At least pretend this is a real meeting.”

  “Fine, but I’m not giving away my leverage.” Carmody lowered himself into a chair, which creaked under his weight.

  “Wouldn’t dream of asking. Do you have a pen, by the way, or do you want to march us all down to the office so I can find one?”

  After another lengthy pause, Carmody again held the gun one-handed long enough to produce a neon pink BSA pen from his shirt pocket. “Now sign,” he said.

  Virginia picked the pen up but didn’t write. “Please, tell me why you want me.”

  “Because you’re the closest thing I can get to having Kevin back. If the Kevin McArthur Hour goes off the air, BSA is through. The big three are ready to suck me up.”

  “But did you kill Kevin? I need to know before I can even read this.”

  “What do you think? He was my star. Why the hell would I kill my star? But that doesn’t mean I’m not ready to shoot you if you don’t all develop a vested interest in keeping your mouths shut about tonight. I know what you can give me. What have your friends got to offer?”

  Virginia gripped the table edge with her free hand. “I’m not Kevin, Mr. Carmody. He drew stories out of his guests by knowing how to turn himself off. He became invisible when they sat down beside him. I can’t vanish like that. I’m too much like my mother. When I’m in a piece, I’m in it. You’ve seen how different the KM episodes I co-hosted were from all the rest.

  “My roles may be small, but people always remember them. I’ve been in the theater and heard the guy down the aisle say, ‘Virginia Irwin played her? I had no idea she was in this! I shouldn’t be surprised, though, because I couldn’t look away from the screen when she was on.’ He couldn’t look away when my stereotyped, clumsy maid was on the screen.”

  Carmody started to interrupt, but Virginia smacked the table for silence. “Look at me. You’re the one who wanted to go fast,” she snapped. “If I’m taking over this program, we have to play to my strengths, or you’ll still lose your network.

  “So far, BSA has stayed alive because it’s the place people go for in-depth secrets about the big names. They watch my cousin because he brings stars down to earth. Famous people turn human in his limelight.

  “But what if it worked the other way around? What if people watched to see themselves turn into stars for an evening, instead? We’d still do the celebrity features, but we’d space them out more. We’d add a new spot, something like … Everyday Heroes … no, that’s been done … you get the idea … I’d bring on perfectly normal folks and tell their stories, elevate them, show how even the least of us can rise above. That’s what we’d call it. Rise Above.

  “Take Leigh here. Not a lot of people know it, but she’s a vet. I’d bring her on…”

  “A veterinarian?” said Carmody.

  “A veteran. Saved twenty kids in an Afghan orphanage. She doesn’t talk about it, but she’s got PTSD and an honorable discharge to her name. Some nights, she wakes up—”

  Manny slammed Carmody with his coffee cup, first in the wrists, then in the skull. Carmody screamed, and the gun flew loose. Leigh snatched it. After a moment’s hesitation, she gripped it in both hands and pointed. Carmody screamed again as Virginia swung her own mug, shattering it across his nose. Then Manny, Leigh, and Virginia fled the house to call the police, leaving a bleeding, scalded Carmody behind.

  La Soupçon Finale

  “A veteran? Twenty kids in an Afghan orphanage?” said Leigh several hours later.

  “Sorry. I was getting into the role too much.” They were at Manny and Leigh’s house now, hoping for a phone call. They were all still on edge, though L.E. Carmody had been arrested when he took his facial blisters and broken nose to an emergency room. “The part about me getting inside my characters was true.”

  “I’ve never seen you work up close like that. I didn’t realize what you were doing until you started spewing nonsense about Leigh,” said Manny. “We were all hypnotized.”

  “Why do you think I hit the table? I was afraid I’d startle him into firing, but I had to get one of you to pay attention somehow. I was running out of saleable clichés.”

  “I hoped he was right and you’d tripped an alarm in the doorway,” said Leigh.

  “No. I’d have needed to be at an exit to do that. I loosened my shoe. If Manny hadn’t pounded him with the coffee cup, I was going to try the point of the heel.”

  “And you think he killed Kevin,” Manny said. “It seems to me like he had a pretty good reason not to.”

  “He absolutely killed Kevin. The reason was a fabrication.”

  Leigh shifted closer to her husband. “Why murder the host who’s keeping your network alive?”

  “I don’t think he meant to. Carmody’s an angry man, but squeamish. You saw how he preferred shooting furniture to bodies in my living room. I think he dropped in on Kev and tried to manipulate him while Kevin worked around him in the kitchen. Kevin pushes … pushed Mother’s buttons all the time by acting like she wasn’t talking. But Carmody’s fury turned violent.”

  “But why?” Leigh repeated.

  “This was Kevin’s last season,” said Virginia. “I doubt Carmody knows that’s information I’m privy to, though. Kev was sick of keeping BSA afloat for that creep and wanted to go out on a high note, while he was still popular. I had no idea how bad it was at the network, or I’d have suspected Carmody sooner.

  Kevin was going to get into films. Mother eavesdropped and found out, and that’s what had her so jealous. But she didn’t hear everything. Kevin and I only told Carolyn that he wasn’t going in on the acting side.”

  “What do you mean?” Manny asked.

  “He and I wrote a script together,” said Virginia. “It got optioned last year, and it’s beginning to look like it will really be produced. Kevin wasn’t going to overshadow me. He never overshadowed me. We’d have been a stronger team than we ever were. I’m sure Mother went over to badger him and found Carmody there already. Or maybe she invited Carmody herself. I wouldn’t put it past her.”

  “And then she watched him …” Leigh didn’t finish her sentence.

  “Maybe. Or maybe she arrived when it was all over, and it was as easy for Carmody to get inside her hysteria as it was for me to get inside his. He could have convinced her to swipe one of Aunt Cressida’s wigs and pose as her sister long enough to meet Carolyn at some halfway point.”

  “And you think Carolyn’s still alive.”

  “I hope so. I hope he was too prudent to kill except in anger. Besides that, Mother obviously thought Carolyn would make a nice scapegoat, and I don’t think she’s had the wrong pills in that bottle for more than a couple of weeks. They’d be handy to dope someone up. She’s been floating those outlandish theories at me. I thought it was her paranoia, but maybe she’s really been looking for something people would believe when Carolyn turned up. I hope Carolyn’s mother…”

  The phone in Virginia’s hand rang, and she answered. A few seconds later, she burst into tears. “Oh thank God,” she said. “I was afraid he’d …. well, you know … before he came to my house. Especially after Mother … yes ... thank you, Mrs. Routledge. Please, give her my love.”

  “You were right?” said Leigh.

  “Yes. They found her. She’s alive.”

  “How did you know?” Manny asked.

  “They’d have gotten to her eventually, now that they’ve arrested Carmody.”

  “But how did you know she was in his wine cellar?” Manny repeated.

  “Mother as much as said it at Aunt Cress and Uncle D
erek’s night before last. She guaranteed Carolyn was holed up in a cellar somewhere. Then there was that nonsense about the port-wine blouse, and she was muttering about port wine again before she passed out at the funeral.

  “She’d only have said ‘port-wine’ about a stain, though. She would have used ‘royal purple’ to describe her own clothing. I was trying to figure out what had gotten the name of a sweet wine stuck in her head, and something clicked when I realized Carmody had drunk a bottle of her sauvignon blanc.

  “You saw how he reacted when I offered him a port. He got scared. It was enough to make me hope Mother had helped him stash Carolyn, and her port obsession stemmed from something she saw then. She may be out of her mind, but she’s still a wine snob. She hates sweet reds and can’t abide ports. She’d consider it far more gauche to own a port-wine blouse than to lose one.”

  “And Demelda is never unfashionable in her own mind,” said Leigh.

  “No,” Manny agreed. “She’s so fashion forward that the rest of us may never catch up.”

  “Kevin won’t, anyhow,” said Virginia. “And it’s a shame, because this was going to be his year. He had a god-awful gold lamé suit, and he was so looking forward to outshining her at his wedding.”

  EXCERPT

  The Marriage At the Rue Morgue

  "Powell (Divorce: A Love Story, 2011) bounces from arch humor to tragedy and back again. Lovably eccentric characters maintain a s light edge over sentimentality in what is most likely the finest simian cozy to date." — Kirkus Reviews.

  "This intriguing whodunit is an appealing read." -- Publishers Weekly

  Chapter 1

  Lance Lakeland dodged as a well-aimed fecal mass sailed past him.

  “Thanks for the warning, Noel,” he called as he headed towards me. “Integration not going so well?”

  “Slow.” I had been toting breakfast to the enclosures before I stopped to check in on our newest monkey. The pungent smell of overripe fruit mingled with the earthy scent of Ohio forest as I leaned across the chow bucket and Lance bent down so I could peck his cheek. “Anyway,” I asked, “what’s up?”