Jennifer Crusie's Blog, page 46

This is a Good Book Thursday, September 14, 2023

So Vermillion is finished and Bob has it uploaded so you can buy it in paper and hardcover now. And I just plotzed. I have so much to do, and I just couldn’t do any of it. So I tried to read a novel and nope, couldn’t do that, either; my brain is too full of words on a screen to compute right now. I ended up watching Matt Smith’s first Doctor Who episode, which I think is called “The Eleventh Hour,” because it’s brilliant and so is he. That’s how bad my brain is broken: I’m watching TV for the first time in years. Literally years. Unfortunately, this isn’t a “This is a Good TV Show” post, so it’s over to you.

What good book did you read this week?

Working Wednesday, September 13, 2023

I lied. We have a full draft of Rocky Start but it’s nowhere near ready for copy editing. Rewrites, we are ready for rewrites. (That screaming sound in the background is Bob, who does not like rewrites. Well, hell, who does?).

So what did you work on this week, screaming or not?

Final Decision: Pub Shot 2023

So we were getting a clear winner there when Mollie chimed in and pointed out that head shots were out of date and that the half-body shot was current. Good news: I actually had that for the one that was winning here, so I got to please Mollie AND Argh:

But I think I might use the one where I’m cracking up (Patricia Gaffney is a very funny lady) as my avatar:

I’m not sure because Bob says it looks like I’m yelling at a raccoon.

But I thank you all for your input and support. You’re the best.

ETA:
I was pulling all the pub stuff together and realized that this is my thirtieth year of publication. Manhunting was published in 1993, and now Liz and Vince in 2023. Not sure what that means. Maybe I’ll just get Krissie down here and make Pat go out to lunch with us and they can lavish praise on me. With lots of snark. That could be fun.

Below: Avatars from the 90s, the 2000s, the 2010s, and the 2020s.

Can you tell that second one was a professional studio shot? I love the glassy eyes. And then in the next decade I loosened up and wrote a ghost story. Good times.

Today Was Headshot Day

Because I haven’t had a new head shot for about fifteen years, maybe twenty, today I dragged Pat Gaffney out to the little fake waterfall beside our favorite grill and said, “Headshots, I need them.” And she was, as always, a peach, and took a million of them.

Among them were a few flukes like this one, which I am going to send to Bob whenever I’m annoyed at him:

And this one, which will always remind me of how much fun I have with Pat:

But now I have narrowed the choices down to six. I think I know which one I like best, but of course Argh must weigh in on it.

I asked Bob which one he liked best and he picked this one:

So not a help. I e-mailed Pat and Mollie and Krissie, too, so now it’s over to you, Argh. Which one of those three headshots scares you the least?

Happiness is Finishing Something

We’ve finished One in Vermillion. We have a full draft of Rocky Start finished, ready for copy editing. I have two bathrooms and a kitchen in which everything is put away and clean, finished moving in. (And two bedrooms, a garage, and a living room/office that aren’t, but we’re celebrating here.). I have finished stroganoff, stir fry, and pasta in the freezer. I have finished the laundry that was blocking the hallway.

The happy word for today is “finished.” “Object achieved.” “That work is done.” “One more thing off that damn to-do list.” Okay, just “finished” is enough.

How did you finish finding happiness this week?

Rocky Start Chapter Four

This is the last chapter we’re putting up because these four chapters are going in the back of the Vermillion e-book, so you should get first look. (If you buy the print, you only get the first two chapters because paper and ink are very expensive and we don’t want to pass the cost on to you.)

After this scene, trouble ensues. Well, more trouble.


Chapter 4
MAX

I watched Rose go down the street for a moment, ignoring the old guy glaring at me from his truck. She was kind of hot, braless as she was under that loose dress—you can find out a lot when you’re searching for a wallet—and she had a nice swing to her step as she walked away. Insane and definitely bent, but cute. Then I looked at the old man in the truck who seemed impatient, so I retrieved the shoe box from inside the Amazon box and sat on the curb again. I tugged off my old boots and replaced them, wiggling my toes, reveling in the feel. Sometimes it’s the little things in life. I laced up and shoved the old boots into the box. I knew I should have changed out the socks, too, you learn that early in the Infantry, but as I said, Pike seemed impatient.

He was still frowning at me as I stood. “Where you headed?”

“Back to the A.T..”

“Get in. I’ll give you a lift to the highway.” This had echoes of the opening to Rambo, except I was too old and too tired to burn the town down and my knife was a lot smaller. More useful, but smaller.

I tossed the box with my old boots in a nearby trash can, put my ruck in the bed of the pickup, opened the door, signaled for Maggs to get in, and climbed aboard the old rust-colored truck. Maggs sat between us and I noticed she did smell a little raw. The girl was right. Maggs could use a good cleaning up. Of course, so could I.

Pike was rolling before I had the door shut, but he wasn’t moving fast as he did a leisurely U-turn to go back up the main drag. I noticed a pistol in an open top holster bolted to the driver’s side door, within easy reach of his hand and ready to be pulled. He noticed that I noticed.

“Name’s Pike. I’m the law.” He shot me a glance. “And you are?”

I’d had to give my name to Ferrell to get my boots, and I was pretty sure it was all over town by now, given the speed of the local grapevine, so I said, “Max Reddy.”

“Where you coming from?”

“Up north.”

“Where you going?”

“Down south.”

“Uh-huh,” he said, stopping at the lone stop sign on State Street and turning to look me over. “We don’t get many strangers here. No A.T. through hikers. Town’s too far off the trail.” He made it sound like I’d broken the law.

And we weren’t moving. Probably so Pike could stare at me. I noticed Rose was on the sidewalk, slightly behind us now and thought it interesting he hadn’t invited her in for the ride, although it would have been a tight fit with Pike, me, Maggs and her. That would have been even more interesting.

“I meander.”

“You meander,” he said as if evaluating the statement. “So, you’re walking the trail, is what you’re claiming.”

“Yes,” I said, watching Rose swing by. A lot of energy in that woman. Hips that moved, too.

“There aren’t any trails from here to the A.T. so you have to move cross-country, which is tough bushwhacking in these hills.” He nodded his head toward the west. “A.T. is five miles yonder where it cuts this road. Hikers resupply in Bearton farther down the line. Post office there is just a half mile off trail. Either you’re really lost or up to something.”

I pointed down. “My boots were mailed here.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

He was evaluating me now and those eyes were keen, but he finally put the truck in gear and drove through the intersection, arriving at the dead end just as Rose was going into her store. He turned right and drove out to the highway, stopped at the edge of it, and pulled off the road to let us out.

“Thank you,” I said, opening the door.

His next words got my attention. “I expect you’ll be moving on right quick now, won’t you, stranger?”

Subtle he wasn’t. “Did you find the guy claiming to be this Oz’s son?” I asked, trying to level the playing field.

“Funny thing about that,” Pike said. “I did not. He seems to have vanished.”

“Isn’t that kind of odd, given its your town and it’s not that big and they were in a pretty conspicuous vehicle?”

“Do not push me, son.”

“I have no intention of doing so.” I got out of the truck and called Maggs to join me.
He grinned at me. It wasn’t heartwarming. “Got your wallet?”

I patted my pocket, and yes, it was gone. Great. I nodded to him, grabbed the ruck out of the truck bed, and he pulled away laughing as I barely got it out.

There was a story there, and I was going to move on before I heard it. Rose could have the damn wallet. It didn’t have anything irreplaceable in it, just a cover ID and money, and I had more cash in the backpack. My old boss Herc could get me another valid, backstopped ID and mail it to my next pick-up spot. Hopefully one closer to the trail and with fewer crazies.

Maggs and I moved on, crossing an old wood bridge and then into the woods, heading uphill toward the southwest so we could shadow the main trail again. There was a narrow trail winding through the trees and undergrowth and I followed that. Maggs moved parallel to me, but off trail to the left, which was her way.

About ten minutes later, I hit the tripwire.

#

The forest became quiet as I stood there, balanced on one foot. The good news: I hadn’t been killed immediately by an explosion because I hadn’t broken the wire since I’d spotted it a fraction of a second before my right foot touched it. My momentum, plus my fifty pound backpack, caused me to stretch the wire, but my combat-honed, peace-dulled instincts stopped me before breaking it. I remained frozen in place, foot a couple of inches above the forest floor, pressing against the wire, and considered my next move.

The bad news was that I was going to have to do something about this.

Looking left and right, I saw that the wire extended to trees on either side, went through green metal o-rings screwed into the trees, made turns, and continued on as far as I could see which explained why there’d been no big bang. It was an alarm, not an ambush.

There’s a limit to how long I can stand on one foot. I started to wobble. I slowly, very slowly, brought my foot back. I wondered about Maggs, but she was trained, having gone to school for a heck of long time topped with a lot of real world experience, to avoid such things as trip wires and stupid owners.

Technically, I didn’t own Maggs. It was more that she tolerated my existence. I took a quick glance to the left and she was perfectly still just before the wire, staring at me, with a look in her eyes I interpreted as ‘Nice move, genius.’

“A warning would have been nice,” I called to her.

She ignored that. She was a retired working dog, so she probably felt warnings were part of her old life.

Clear of the line, I looked about a bit more closely and spotted the reason for the alert line.
Ahead of me were large swaths of cannabis, aka, weed, growing in the National Forest, where the undergrowth had been cleared out of a couple of acres hidden under the trees. The plants were not there due to nature’s whims. Someone had planted them, and whoever it was probably didn’t want me wandering through.

I considered turning back, but that would mean going back to the road and making an even bigger detour from the Appalachian Trail than I already had. I was tired and grouchy and hungry and there were a lot of weapons back in that town.

I stepped over the wire and continued on, a bit more wary. Maggs lightly hopped over the line, which she hadn’t hit in the first place. Because.

I envision my innate warning system like a geiger counter and right now it began a very slow, low clicking in my head. I didn’t think weed was legal in North Carolina or Tennessee. I hadn’t bothered to check the news since starting the trail months earlier, so maybe something had changed and pot was legal in one of those states. Maybe aliens had invaded. Maybe world peace had broken out and everybody was high.

I was doubtful on all three, particularly the last one. I just wanted to keep my own peace.
Sometimes I wonder if I’m living in some sort of sadistic simulation and whoever was running it liked to mess with me because as soon as I thought about peace, two young men, almost boys, appeared to my right front at twenty meters, one of them carrying an AK-47, the silhouette of the assault rifle unmistakable and one I’d seen far too often in my past. Carrying one was legal in both states, as opposed to growing weed, which is a head scratcher if you think about it. They saw me at the same time I saw them.

They appeared related, solidly built with the same curly dark hair, probably brothers. I sighed, debating whether to turn back to Rocky Start. I glanced over and saw Maggs on alert. I gave her a quick hand signal to lay low and remain in place because people often mistook her for a wolf. She crouched down and disappeared from sight in the undergrowth.

“Hey, you!” the one with the AK called out.

I turned around, ready to backtrack, resigned to a big loop around.

“Hey, I’m talking to you! Stop!”

He was yelling at me. I’d walked away from people yelling orders years ago, so—

A shot rang out and I froze. I felt, more than heard, the snap of a bullet going by, hyper-sonic. It wasn’t close. I knew what close was, and worse, what too close felt like, but still it was a bullet.

I turned around, not drawing the pistol inside my light coat because once you draw a weapon you use it, and when you use it, you kill, and I wasn’t in the mood to kill at the moment. Or die. It was just weed, after all.

The guy with the AK looked a little surprised, as if he hadn’t meant to pull the trigger, which really didn’t matter, because he had. Guns don’t shoot themselves. His buddy was slightly behind him, apparently not armed. AK guy was holding the rifle at hip level, approximately aimed in my direction. Worse, his finger was still inside the trigger guard. They both were dressed in dungaree coveralls with concert t-shirts underneath.

“Geez, Reggie,” the unarmed one said, shaking his head. “Why’d you do that? You might have hurt somebody.”

A genius at work. I held up both hands. “Sorry. I wandered off the A.T.. Got lost. I’ll leave.”
“You a cop?” Reggie asked, trying to regain some bluster.

Sure, a cop just wandering around in the woods with a rucksack on his back. “I got lost,” I repeated.

Reggie was shaking his head. “No way, dude. Can’t have you going around telling people about the farm.” The two stopped about ten meters away.

The other boy looked at him. “Come on, Reggie, just let him go.”

After all I’d been through over the years, the concept of dying over a field of pot in the middle of bumfuck nowhere because a guy named Reggie was a paranoid moron seemed ludicrous. Then again, I’d seen people die over much less in much worse places. It would probably give the entity running my simulator a good chuckle before it moved on to tormenting someone else.

I tried once more. “I’m through-hiking the trail. I’ll be out of the area before you know it.”

Reggie looked back at his buddy, who appeared a bit out of it, perhaps partaking of too much of their product. “He’ll rat us out, Marley. We ain’t nowhere near the trail.”

“Dude, he’s a stranger,” stoned Marley said. “He got lost. Chill out.”

Reggie was uncertain and uncertain people are more dangerous, especially when they have their finger on the trigger. A person who was certain would have already killed me or let me pass through without raising the stakes. Reggie was lost on a middle road that didn’t exist.

Reggie and Marley, the Weed Brothers.

“I don’t know, Marley, man,” Reggie said. “What do you think Pike would say if we let him go? Pike would want us to protect the farm and he said we should be extra careful now.”

Pike.

The local law grew pot. Pike had a weed farm and I’d just walked into it.

Great.

“We don’t tell him,” Marley was saying, which seemed reasonable to me. “He’s gonna be mad if he finds out you took his gun, and he’ll know you did if you use it.”

Marley had a portion of logic going inside his muddled head although he’d forgotten that his brother had fired a warning shot. Details make all the difference.

“We’ll tie him up and see what Pike wants to do,” Reggie said. “He’s been real upset since Oz died. And you know what he says about Outsiders.”

He made the last word seem like a profanity and definitely capitalized. I half expected a banjo to start playing. I didn’t want to see what Pike wanted to do, I’d had enough of Pike, he’d made it very clear he didn’t want to see me again, and no one was going to tie me up. I started walking toward the two which surprised both. “I don’t want any trouble,” I said.

Five meters.

“Stop,” Reggie said uncertainly, waving the barrel of the AK back and forth as if it were some sort of magic warding stick. Too much Harry Potter in his childhood.

“Let me just do this,” I said, which further confused both of them. But he still had that gun, finger twitching inside the trigger guard, and I knew I was going to have to get Maggs involved.

I whistled a two-tone note.

Maggs came fast and hard from the left, a big blur of fuzzy black streaking through the forest. She scared even me a little bit and we’d been together for two years. She was the fastest dog I’d ever seen. She went for Reggie because she knew what a gun looked like and if it wasn’t in my hands, then it was a bad thing.

Maggs didn’t like bad things.

She leapt and that was when the two stoners became aware of her, some latent caveman survival gene kicking in, way too late. Maggs hit Reggie in the shoulder with her chest, her jaws clamping on his neck but not closing as her sixty-five pounds of muscle and bone and claw and tooth took him down before he was halfway turned toward her.

She whined in pain as she did so, which upset me. Marley was turning in surprise to his brother but by then I had the Glock out and my finger was on the trigger.

But Marley was still trying to figure out what day it was, and Reggie had dropped the rifle and was on his back, whimpering in fear, as much he could with Maggs’ teeth on his throat, a command away from having it ripped open. They were just kids. My training and experience said to kill them, but common sense said they were idiots not enemies.

Worried about Maggs’ whine of pain, I tapped the barrel of my pistol hard against the side of Marley’s head as he was still trying to process what had happened—don’t do drugs, kids—and he crumbled to the ground, out cold. I knelt next to Reggie.

“I didn’t want trouble,” I said in what I considered a reasonable tone. “I don’t want any more. There’s no such thing as a warning shot, son. If you remember that, you’ll be a better person for this encounter. I’m taking the gun because I don’t want to be shot in the back and you don’t know what you’re doing with it. If I see you again, I’ll kill you. No warning, no hesitation. Just stone cold dead. Understand?”

He wanted to nod, but was too afraid of Maggs, her mouth clamped over his throat.

“Blink twice if you understand,” I said.

What was he gonna do with fangs pressing on his carotid? He blinked. I could smell urine and wasn’t sure which one of them it came from.

“Blink twice if you agree.” Because understanding wasn’t necessarily assent.

He blinked twice.

I stood. “Release,” I said in a command voice and Maggs let go. She looked up at me with those big brown eyes that could make the stoutest heart melt, even while she was ripping out a throat. “Good dog.” I knelt and checked her while Reggie watched, wide-eyed.

She’d caught her paw on the button of his coveralls and it had dug in under her pad. There was some blood. Nothing major. I stood, hefting the AK, and walked past them toward the gravel road they’d been coming up since it headed in the right direction, hoping my day was going to get better.

I figured it couldn’t get much worse.

Yeah. I know. Silly me.

This is a Good Book Thursday, September 7, 2023

The good book I’m reading this week is Rocky Start, which is a relief because I’m also reading Vermillion under the gun. Never again do we schedule books so close together. It seemed like a good idea because I hate waiting for the next book in a series–the next Murderbot isn’t out until November–but I need more time with Vermillion. I’m freaking out, Bob was patient while we had a disagreement over the giant red bear, and then he decided to gaslight me by animating the bear with lightning on the cell tower–you know, you really don’t want to know the details on that.

Distract me from the giant reanimated teddy bear: what did did you read this week?

Working Wednesday, Sept. 6, 2023

It’s September, my favorite month of the year. I’ve been in school for so much of my life, either attending or teaching, that for me September means the start of something new, infinite possibilities. Except this September I’m still scrambling to deal with the old while I start the new. We’re still working on Vermillion while I’m trying to rewrite Rocky Start. I’m sorting through boxes of my old life in NJ, trying to figure out what fits into my new life in PA. I’m neither here nor there. But I’m working on it.

What are you working on this week?

Rocky Start, Chapter Three

The teaser for Rocky Start that’s going in the back of Vermillion is three chapters, so here’s the third. Not that you asked.

Chapter 3
ROSE

I’d tried to make a plan as I’d followed Poppy and the new guy. First, I had to get a grip on my anger and outrage at getting hit. Anger and outrage are not attractive or charming, which is what I needed to be to get through life. My daughter called me Cheery Boost because I smile at everybody and make them feel better as a survival trait while I fix their problems so they’ll love me and not rat me out if the cops show up looking for me. Poppy said she did not intend to become Cheery Boost Two, which I agreed with. She didn’t understand that I was Cheery Boost One to keep her safe and fed so that she could leave town and be whatever she wanted to be. She was heading to college in eleven months with enough college loans lined up to bankrupt a small city, and once she was gone, I intended to become Resting Bitch Face and probably starve to death, but at least I wouldn’t have to be fucking cheerful while I starved.

The good guy and Stanley Ferrell were having a stare down when I walked in the post office, which wasn’t good, I didn’t need this guy annoyed. Poppy was kneeling next to the dog.

Stanley said to the good guy, “So you planning on staying long?”

The good guy shook his head. “I’ll be gone before dinner. Once I get my boots. Sooner I get the boots, the sooner I can be on my way. Not staying. Don’t want to stay.”

“And after I take care of your dog,” Poppy said. “Please?”

“No, thank you,” he said, so I put my hand on his sleeve and smiled up at him. Cheery Boost at work.

“Poppy will take good care of her,” I told him, upping the wattage on the Cheery.

It didn’t do a thing for him. “Maggs stays with me.”

Poppy started to protest, and I said, “Go home, Poppy, the man wants his dog with him.”

“But—”

“Stripes.”

Poppy huffed and went out the door, and I held out my hand to the good guy, smiling, of course, and said, “Hello. I’m Rose Malone. And you are?”

He looked at my hand as if having an internal debate, then sighed and took it. “Max Reddy,” he said and dropped it and then turned back to Stanley. “About my boots?”

Stanley looked at Max. “I told you; I can’t get your package because it’s in North Carolina.”

“You mean across the road.” Max closed his eyes for a moment, and that’s when I saw my chance to get close enough to lift his wallet to see if he and Junior were in this thing together.

Yes, I have trust issues.

“Stanley.” I leaned on the counter beside Max, brushing his sleeve. If men didn’t like it when you moved in close, they moved away.

Max did not move away.

Stanley frowned at me.

I smiled up at him, not easy when you’re 5’9” and the guy you’re smiling up at is 5’8”, but I have skills. “This man just saved me from somebody who hit me. I mean, look at my cheek! Max Reddy is a hero.” I leaned closer which made me shorter. “The government should reward heroes. You’re the government here, Stanley. You have the power to get him his boots. C’mon, be a hero, too. All he wants is the package that is legally his.” I smiled up at him again, just between us, a secret we could share. It’s a trick so old it has whiskers, but it always works.

“You know how Dottie gets,” Stanley said to me, but I could see a smile breaking through. He was a cheating husband; they always respond to flirting with women who aren’t their wives. Dottie was going to kill him for invading her space, of course, but that was his problem. My problem was getting Max’s boots for him so he’d trust me so I could steal his wallet.

“Stanley.” I leaned a little closer to Max, a little farther across the counter, too, tilted my head, and hit Stanley with my smile and my dimples. Those dimples are worth their weight in moisturizer. “You’re not afraid of Dottie. I don’t believe that for a second. A tough veteran like you? You’ve faced down much worse. And this hero needs his package. I bet anything he’s ex-military, all you guys have that devastating confidence. He’s your fellow soldier, Stanley. Esprit de corps. And he really needs his package. C’mon. Be a hero. Get the guy his boots.”

Stanley looked at me and sighed, probably knowing I wasn’t going to quit, and turned to Max. “You wanted some boots?”

“Yes,” Max said. “I wanted some boots.”

Stanley took off the napkin, grabbed a big key ring, lifted the countertop and headed across the street at a pretty good clip, probably trying to get there and back before Dottie caught him.

When he was out the door, Max looked at me, grim as ever. “Don’t bother trying that on me, it’s not going to work.”

I gave him my best smile. “Of course not, I can tell you don’t charm that easily.” I watched him relax a little. Compliments often did that for men. “That was a big ask, for Stanley to invade Dottie’s territory.” I looked across the street where Stanley was at the door, unlocking it. “I lied, he couldn’t take Dottie in a fight. Actually, I think he thought that was a plus in the beginning. Stanley likes strong women.”

Max frowned, looking confused. “In the beginning?”

I nodded. “They’re divorcing. It’s played merry hell with the mail. Some days, nothing gets delivered if they’re really feuding and don’t even do the coin flip.” I took a deep breath and moved a little closer. “So anyway, thank you very much for defenestrating Junior. Or whatever throwing somebody into a street is. I was rude back there and you were helpful. So it was my pleasure to charm Stanley for your boots, don’t mention it.” Then I stopped. “But I really did have that.”

“He had a gun and he was going for it. And you weren’t armed.” He looked at Lian’s taser in my hand. “Then.”

Junior had a gun? Maybe I hadn’t had that. Stop arguing, Rose, you had a Maltese Falcon. “I just needed to thank you.” I smiled and flashed the dimples again.

He was frowning at me now, negating all my dimple power, which was just wrong. I mean, I’m not young anymore, and I never was a beauty, but when I put my back into it, I can be cute as all hell.

“That guy who hit you said he was coming back,” Max said finally, after a few moments of silence. “Why was he going to shoot you?”

“I hit him with the Maltese Falcon. It’s a movie prop—”

He shook his head “I know what it is, why were you hitting him with it?”

“It was the first thing to hand—”

“No, I meant—”

Stanley came back into the office and handed a large Amazon box to Max. “You owe me, stranger. Good thing you’re just passing through.” He held out an electronic handheld device. “Sign here. You can use your finger.”

“Right.” Max slashed his forefinger across the screen while awkwardly holding the box.

“Have a nice day,” Stanley said in his usual, flat voice, indicating his being nice was over and we could leave.

“You’re a sweetheart, Stanley,” I told him. “Dottie is a lucky woman.”

Stanley cheered up a little at the first part, but the mention of his wife’s name put the dour back.

Max opened the door for me and stepped back so I could go out first. What Coral would call A Real Gentleman. So I tripped and fell into him, and he caught me with his free hand, jamming his foot against the door to keep it from closing, and I looked up and met his eyes and he really was grimly attractive, and for half a second I forgot why I’d fallen. I mean, I came to my senses, we needed to know more about this guy, but there for a moment, it was just nice to have somebody’s hands on me. Especially his. You know that chemistry thing people are always going on about? Turns out it’s real.

I said, “Sorry,” and patted his chest while I pinched his wallet between two fingers, and he moved away from me to call Maggs as I straightened, which pulled it from his jacket as I turned my back to him to drop it into my apron pocket. I went outside, and he and Maggs came out, too, and he closed the door behind us. “I didn’t know about the gun,” I told him. “So. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

“You know, Poppy would take good care of Maggs,” I told him. “Comb her out and clean her up. She’d feel so much better. You know where we are, right?” I pointed down the street to the shop, back the way I’d come. “The blue line runs down State Street and ends right at the shop. Through the shop, actually. You can’t miss it. It’s the least we can do for your help.”

If he took Maggs to Poppy, I could give him back his wallet after I checked it out. I’m not a thief.

He shook his head and sat down on the curb just as Pike’s truck rolled to a stop next to him, missing his feet by inches. He didn’t flinch.

We don’t know if Pike is officially the law. He supposedly has a badge, but I understand you can buy those online. He’s one of those guys who’s not so much elderly as seasoned, as if the years have worn away all the weakness and just left this teak-tough ancient force of nature that nobody messes with. He and Ozzie definitely ran Rocky Start together, so whether or not Pike is official law enforcement is kind of moot. It’s his law and he enforces it.

Pike looked down at Max now. “This the guy who helped you, Rose?”

“Hey, Pike,” I said, moving to the window. “This is the good guy. He helped me. Do not maim him.”

Pike shook his head. “Go home, Rose. I need to talk to him.”

“Do not hurt him,” I said. “I mean it, Pike. He helped me. That guy who hit me had a gun.”

Pike frowned. “He did?”

I nodded. “He drove off in a big SUV with some woman after telling me he was Ozzie’s son. Did Ozzie have a son?”

Pike ignored that. “What kind of gun?”

Like I’d know. I am personally anti-gun. I looked down at Max, who was reaching inside his own coat to pull out a very sharp knife. So that was two people carrying concealed knives in less than an hour. Plus, Junior with a gun. Of course, I was carrying a taser.

Welcome to Rocky Start.

“It was a Browning Hi-Power in a hip holster on the right side,” he told Pike.

Pike stared at him for a minute. Max started to cut the tapes on his box, ignoring him, which isn’t easy. Pike has a very sharp stare.

Max added: “They were in a black Mercedes G63. A classic. Ballistic protection, heavy suspension, souped up engine, probably run-flat tires.”

“You know this how?” Pike asked.

“I have eyes.”

“That so?” Pike said.

“That’s so,” Max said.

“Rose?” Pike said to me, his voice flat.

“Yes?”

“Go home.”

Right. Okay. I leaned over Max as he slit open the box. “Really sorry about this,” I whispered.

I started back down the street at a good clip as Pike said to Max, “You got a name? Any ID?” I wanted to make it back to the shop before the guy noticed his wallet was missing, him being the observant sort—there was a gun?—but he called, “Wait a minute, Rose,” and it was nice to hear him say my name until he walked over to join me, looking stern. Grimly stern. Didn’t this guy ever smile?

“My wallet,” he said.

I immediately moved into this-is-my-innocent-face. “Hmmm?”

“Cute. Give me my wallet, or I will take it.”

“I don’t know—” I started and then I stopped because he was patting me down. Everywhere. He hit the apron pocket just as he was getting to my good parts, so that was a let down, plus I’d somehow screwed up the lift, and that never happened, and—

“If you wanted to see the wallet, all you had to do was ask,” Max said as he took his wallet back.

“Really?” I said.

“No.”

“That’s what I thought.” I put my hands on my hips, trying for the spunky little woman this time since innocence wasn’t working. Well, the spunky little woman who was 5’9,” but still such a cute archetype; you’d have to forgive a spunky little woman—

“Don’t do that again,” he said and I gave up on the spunky little woman, too.

“I wasn’t after your money,” I said, trying for outraged virtue.

“I know,” Max said.

“I just wanted to know more about you.”

He leaned forward then, almost nose to nose with me and said, “You don’t need to know more about me.”

That’s when I began to think seriously about sleeping with him. Because men will tell you anything if you’re naked, not because I wanted him, I’d given that up a long time ago when I’d realized that I have a genius for finding the only cheating alcoholic in a room full of good men, and when that happens to you two or three or four times, you just say, “The hell with this” and concentrate on being a single mother and selling very odd secondhand—

He narrowed his eyes at me, and I realized that being naked might not work with Max, either, him being the suspicious type, so I put my hands on his chest to hold him off and when he moved away, I lifted his wallet again.

Maybe I could get him to pat me down again, too. That was fun.

“Whatever you’re planning, the answer is no,” Max said.

“That’s really mean,” I said, and walked away with his wallet.

Happiness is Help

I like to work alone. Really alone. In my bedroom with the door closed, Veronica on the bed beside me–she never interferes–a Diet Coke, and my laptop. Bliss.

Except I couldn’t figure out how to get the dishwasher to work, so I dragged Pat Gaffney into my kitchen to show me. She’s the one who helped me put my lawn furniture together, too. And an end table. And her husband Jon helped me by putting my living room bookcases together on his own so I could get my books out of the garage. And then there’s Bob Mayer, typing his half of our story. I love that, I love it that I get to read parts of my book that I’ve never seen before.

So I like to work alone, but my life is definitely better and I am happier when somebody I trust helps. Thank you, Pat, Jon, and Bob.

Did anybody help make you happy this week?

(Also, below is the second scene of Rocky Start, courtesy of my talented, helpful partner, Bob Mayer.)

Chapter 2
MAX

My dog, Maggs, and I had been shadow-walking the Appalachian Trail for months, and today we’d headed for the town my old boss Herc had sent my boots to. It was a pretty little place, spread out for a half mile covering a bend in the river away from the highway. When we got into town, I heard some shouting from a store, and then a guy stumbled backwards out of the door, dragging a crazed lady swinging a black statue. And then there was the big black Mercedes with the subtle but important modifications indicating it was armored, engine running, parked across the street.

All of that seemed odd, but none of it was my problem.

But then he backhanded her. I don’t care who started it or who was in the right or wrong, you don’t hit women. You might have to kill one if she’s trying to kill you, but that’s a different scenario. I went closer, noting that the woman was a furious, middle-aged version of the girl-next-door, all curly dark hair and flashing eyes. Cute in a she-demon kind of way, but then I’d been on the trail for months, some trees were looking good to me. I didn’t know who the guy was, but he had a telltale bulge under his jacket on his right hip.

He was reaching for that bulge as she swung the statue toward his balls, so I grabbed the guy’s collar and pulled him backward and behind me into the street to save both of them, just as a middle-aged Asian woman in a suit came bursting out of an office behind the SUV, yelling something about a pike.

The guy rolled to his feet while the crazy lady bitched at me for saving her, and then she said, “Look out,” and I had to deal with the jerk as he charged me. I got him with a leg sweep but he handled it like a pro, going with the fall, rolling and immediately back on his feet.

We were squaring off, when a woman in the Mercedes called out for Oswald Junior and brought him to heel, and he left, so he probably had some mother issues. Those are the worst. The SUV drove off, smooth on jacked up suspension to handle the weight, the powerful engine rumbling, so that problem was gone.

Two more women had come out of the shop, so I moved on down the street, away from the quartet of females ready to inflict pain: a blonde teenager who was obviously not afraid to use a shotgun; an older, stacked woman in the big black hat who was carrying a small version of the classic Fairbairn-Sykes fighting knife held in a way that showed she knew how to use it; the middle-aged Asian-American woman in the sharp suit with a taser in her hand and a look on her face that said somebody was going to die; and weirdest of all, the feisty, grown-up girl-next-door, swinging what appeared to be the Maltese Falcon.

Definitely not going back there.

I headed down the main drag. There was no sign of the Mercedes; it had turned, probably heading out of town if the people in it had any sense. All I could see was a handful of folks going about their business, most of them middle-aged or older, which made sense. Rocky Start did not look like the kind of place that kept its young. The trees were just beginning to turn at the higher elevations, and it was going to be a beautiful fall here in a week or two, but it would also be beautiful miles down the A.T. where I planned on being shortly, where there would be fewer armed women.

The guy bothered me. He was definitely hinky. The woman must have caught him by surprise—who expects a Falcon as a weapon?—but he’d recovered nicely and the stance he’d assumed to face me spoke of someone who’d had training.

The armored Mercedes also bothered me. It did not belong here. Very Important People rode in those, particularly VIPs who were worried about threats to their well-being.

Still, not my business.

I checked my map app and found out there were two post offices because the town was bisected by the state line between Tennessee and North Carolina. That explained the blue line running down the center of the appropriately named State Street and evidently up through the building called Oddities behind me. Two post offices seemed extreme, but I’d done contract work for the government and knew redundancy and stupidity were built into all elements of the bureaucracy. It had kept the country running this long through a lot of shit, so who am I to complain? Plus it had paid me pretty well for many years.

There wasn’t much of a town outside of this main drag, perhaps a block or two on either side. None of the buildings were higher than two stories, most of them old and worn brick, the ground floors small mom and pop shops. They dated back at least a century when these mountains had been harvested for timber before that same bureaucratic government stepped in and made things like National Parks and National Forests. Score one for the bean counters.

The two POs were directly across the street from each other, and North Carolina had a CLOSED sign on the door. Tennessee won by default, although I had little doubt that my boots had been shipped to the North Carolina side because that was my life.

Maggs and I stopped at the Tennessee PO, and I signaled for her to wait outside the door and went in. There was no one behind the counter, but there was a bell. Before I tapped it, given the weirdness I’d already seen here, I surveyed the place, noting a pair of expensive cameras in the far corners of the room. Pretty high tech for a small town. Then I leaned over the counter to take a look. Nothing suspicious to see except a M1014 Benelli semi-automatic shotgun with a collapsible stock in a specially made sheath behind the counter, ready for quick deployment. Not standard post office issue. Last I’d seen one, it was issued to Special Operations close quarter battle teams for clearing rooms with a half dozen blasts as fast as one could pull the trigger. I hoped my package wasn’t postage due.

I lightly tapped the bell. It took several seconds, then an older fellow in USPS uniform—blue shorts, white shirt, plus gray hair and bushy white eyebrows—came out. He looked me up and down, then nodded and swallowed, dabbing his lips with the napkin tucked in his collar.

“Max Reddy?”

I tensed, half-expecting dark figures to lunge out of the shadows. “Yes.”

“We got your package yesterday.”

I had to ask, although I didn’t want to. “How do you know it’s mine?”

“The wife and I know everyone in town and the package was sent care of the post office to someone we never heard of. Max Reddy. So we figured it was a stranger passing through. We don’t get many strangers. Passing through. None staying. You are him, right?”

“I am he,” I said, for lack of anything else and noting the emphasis on ‘none staying’. So far, this wasn’t turning out to be a friendly town. I waited for Postmaster Ferrell (according to his name tag) to produce the package, but he just stared at me.

“The package?” I finally prodded.

“Oh,” he said, as if surprised. “It was sent to Rocky Start, North Carolina. Across the street. My wife has it there.”

“That post office is closed.”

“Yes,” he said. “Post mistress is out doing the route. We flip every morning for that. She lost today. Made her none too happy, not that she’s ever happy. A dour and grim woman, she is.”

“Could you perhaps get it for me?” I asked.

He shook his head. “Nope. Not my jurisdiction. The United States Post Office is a branch of the federal government, son, and as such we are governed by very strict laws regarding the storage and delivery of mail.” He said this by rote, bored.

The door opened behind me and the young shotgun blonde came in, sans weapon, looking like she owned the place. Maggs padded after her from the porch. Which Maggs isn’t supposed to do. I waited for Ferrell to throw a fit about the dog being inside. I was, of course, wrong.

“Hiya, Poppy,” Ferrell said, changing demeanor in a flash.

The girl smiled at him. “Hiya, Mr. Ferrell.” Then she transferred her big eyes to me and lost her smile. “You’re not taking care of your dog. She hasn’t been groomed in a long time and she looks underweight. What’s her name?”
“Maggs. But—”

She shook her head. “Let me help clean up Maggs and feed her, I’m good at that.”

“Yep,” Mr. Ferrell agreed. “Poppy’s pretty much the town vet these days since that moron Alfie ran off to Peru with his assistant. Louise.” He said the name with loathing, and shook his head. “I give it six weeks and he’ll be back, tail between his legs, poorer and no wiser. No Louise, neither.” He looked at me. “She’s a dangerous woman, that Louise, with her womanly wiles.” He shook his head. “Women. They’ll turn on you in a second. No offense,” he added to Poppy.

“None taken,” she said, cheerfully.

“I’ll take care of Maggs,” I said, irritated by the accusation that I wasn’t taking care of my dog, even though the girl was right about the lack of grooming, although the same could be said of me. I turned back to the postmaster. “Could you unlock the door across the street so can I get my package?”

He shook his head. “The wife doesn’t like me messing with her stuff. She doesn’t like me much in general right now. That woman can carry a grudge. She should be back before dinner.”

I sighed. “You want me out of town? Get my package and I’m gone.”

He looked at me keenly. “You here because of Oz?”

“What’s Oz?”

“Not what,” Ferrel said. “Who.”

“Who is Oz?”

“Friend of ours.” He nodded at Poppy. “Died two days ago. Terrible thing, but he was getting on in years. Just keeled over. Message there for all of us.” He pursed his lips. “I hear tell there’s some stranger in town claiming to be Oz’s son, giving Rose at Oddities some trouble. That you?”

“Nope,” I said, and beside me Poppy shook her head vigorously in support, which helped alleviate some of my irritation.

“Good,” Ferrell said. “Don’t like vultures winging into town. Not much for strangers either.”

No shit. “Could I just get my package?” I pointed at my toe sticking out of the boot. “It’s boots. I need them.”

Poppy made a small distressed sound as she looked down.

Ferrell’s chin went up. “I also hear there’s a fellow who ran off the man claiming to be Oz’s son. That you?”

“Apparently.”

“Yes, it’s him, he’s the good guy,” Poppy said firmly. “But now I need to clean up and feed his dog as a thank you.”

I said, “No,” but the door opened again, and this time it was Feisty, out of breath and bosom heaving, her cheek red from where that jerk had hit her. “Hi, Stanley,” she said cheerfully, and Stanley said, “Hiya, Rose. Looking good.”

“Thank you, Stanley,” she said, practically twinkling at him. Just a cute woman in an apron who’d tried to beat up a guy with a Maltese Falcon and was now holding a taser.

And smiling at me.

I really needed to get out of this town.