Pat Bertram's Blog, page 237

Three

Three is a powerful number that satisfies our deepest needs for symmetry. Three gods ruled the earth—Zeus, the god of heaven; Poseidon, the god of the sea; and Pluto, the god of the underworld. People worshipped the moon goddess as a triad, representing three phases of the moon. There were three Fates, three Furies, three Graces, three Harpies, three primary colors. Three times three was also a mystical number, hence the nine muses.

A few obvious threes from popular culture:

Three wishes. Three bears. Three little pigs. The Three Stooges. Three outs. Best two out of three. Three Faces of Eve. Three Days of the Condor. The Three Musketeers. Third time lucky. Love triangle. (The triangle itself is a divine symbol signifying the power of three.) Three is also a visually pleasing arrangement. And the number three signifies harmony.

So, to make your stories more powerful, harness the power of three.

1. When describing a character or scene, mention three attributes. Also, if a particular attribute needs to be fixed in the reader’s mind, mention it three times (and only three times) during the course of the book, and it will stick.

2. When devising a plot, follow the storyline of The Three Bears. The first time the hero tries to reach her goal, she fails but learns the risks. The second time she tries, she confirms that she’s doing things wrong, but she learns from her mistakes. The third time she tries, she gets it right.

3. Look for patterns in your story. If your character has given his love flowers and perhaps made love to her in a flower garden, mention flowers once more to solidify the pattern.

I could give you more ways to make your stories more powerful, but since I’ve given you three suggestions, that should be enough. And if it isn’t, you can find more uses for this powerful tool here: The Most Powerful Tool at a Writer’s Command

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Pat Bertram is the author of the suspense novels Light Bringer, More Deaths Than One, A Spark of Heavenly Fire, and Daughter Am I. Bertram is also the author of Grief: The Great Yearning, “an exquisite book, wrenching to read, and at the same time full of profound truths.” Connect with Pat on Google+

Tagged: devising a plot, The power of three, the rule of three, the three bears plot, three, three gods, using three in writing

What is Wrong With Using a Prologue?

Most agents, editors, and publishers frown on prologues because they claim that readers skip them.

Perhaps that’s true. I myself am not a fan of prologues. Some writers have the appalling habit of using a prologue as an information dump, telling readers things they think they need to know rather than presenting the material a bit at a time when it is needed. Some writers have the even more appalling habit of augmenting a poor beginning with a prologue that is not really a prologue but more of an interlogue, an excerpt taken from the middle of the book, copied and pasted into a prologue. While this excerpt might create suspense and keep us reading through a less than stellar beginning, it is not necessary to the story since the material is a duplication, and we feel cheated when we reread it during the course of the book.

I don’t even have much use for true prologues, which present events that happen before the story begins. The main rule in writing is “everything in service to the story.” If a prologue does not advance the story, if it is not as exciting as the rest of the book, then it should be removed and any essential information presented during the course of the story.

Sometimes, however, a prologue is necessary, especially if important events take place years before the main story. Occasionally, to get past the stigma of a prologue, authors will label the pre-story chapter “Chapter One.” To call a prologue “Chapter One” does not make it any less of a prologue, and it confuses readers, who think they are reading one story and find out they are reading another.

Despite the cautions about prologues, I used one in Light Bringer. It is a true prologue in that the events take place thirty-five years before the present day action, but I do something that is frowned on even by those who see nothing wrong with prologues: I introduce a character who does not appear in the body of the work, only mentioned in dialogue.

When I rewrote Light Bringer before submitting it to Second Wind Publishing, I considered getting rid of the prologue but I kept it for three reasons: I wanted readers to experience for themselves the events that precipitated the story, it was the way I originally conceived it, and I loved the image of tiny footprints in the snow. The prologue might seem like a darling, a word used by William Faulkner to describe the parts we love but that have no real function in the story, but without the prologue, the story loses some of its immediacy. Being told of a radiantly special baby being found on a doorstep is entirely different from experiencing it for ourselves through the eyes of the staid woman who found her.

And if readers skip my prologue? Well, there’s not much I can do about that. The truth is, there is there is nothing wrong with a prologue as long as it has a hook at the beginning, has conflict, and is written with immediacy as a scene, just as with any other chapter.

If you’d like to read the prologue, click here: Light Bringer by Pat Bertram

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Pat Bertram is the author of the suspense novels Light Bringer, More Deaths Than One, A Spark of Heavenly Fire, and Daughter Am I. Bertram is also the author of Grief: The Great Yearning, “an exquisite book, wrenching to read, and at the same time full of profound truths.” Connect with Pat on Google+

Tagged: Light Bringer, prologues, using a prologue, what is wrong with using a prologue, writing a prologue

Embracing Life in the Face of Death

I happened to come across a transcript of an interview where a woman had asked an advice columnist about confronting her cheating husband. The woman is dying of cancer with only a few months left to live, and though her husband is attentive, loving, and caring (he takes care of her in addition to caring for her), he is having an affair. When she first found out, she was heartbroken, but after a few days she realized he deserved to have someone help and support him during such an emotional time. Her question revolved around whether or not she should confront him. Should she tell him she understands? Should she let him know that she forgave him and didn’t want him to feel guilty?

Thousands of people left comments, most condemning the husband for having an affair, though some condemned her for her attitude, thinking she was too insecure to stand up to him. It does sound terrible, doesn’t it, the husband cheating on his dying wife? And maybe he is a cad, but as his wife said, “He has been amazingly supportive of me during this time. We have no kids, and as my health has declined, he has sat with me through endless doctor appointments, hospital stays, and sleepless nights.”

The advice columnist and the respondents to this article seemed to miss the salient issue, that death changes the world of those involved. We all know the stages someone who is dying undergoes — denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. But what no one talks about is that when a couple is deeply connected, both people are affected, and in many ways, the person being left behind is the one who suffers most. You not only have the care of the person you deeply love, you have to watch them suffer, have to see them waste away, maybe even have to endure unpleasant personality changes caused by both the illness and the drugs they need to keep the pain at bay. And there is nothing you can do about it. You can make them as comfortable as possible, but nothing you do will ever change the facts of your life. S/he is dying, and you have to live.

Many things happen during this horrific time. As your spouse retreats from life, you retreat from death. This is not a matter of vows, but a matter of self-preservation. Too often, you feel as if you are also being drawn into death, and even though part of you doesn’t care, the more visceral part of you cares deeply.

At some point during a long dying, there is a disconnect. You disconnect from yourself, your life, your dying spouse. It’s not conscious, in fact often you don’t always know what is happening, but the truth is, distancing yourself emotionally from the unbearable situation is the only way you can survive. And your hormones go wacky. Sometimes your libido disappears; other times it goes into overdrive. Sometimes you are tormented by overwhelmingly painful arousals. Sometimes you fall in love or desperately need to feel someone’s arms around you, especially if your terminal partner cannot bear being touched any more. This does not mean you love your spouse less. It means your lizard brain, your body, your visceral nature are all screaming in the face of death and will do anything to keep you connected to life.

Although not everyone has an affair during a long dying, all of us in that situation have done things we were not proud of. As I wrote in Grief: The Great Yearning, “It’s been said that every behavior is a matter of survival, which I suppose is true in my case. I could feel myself fighting to live, to gain more autonomy, but that struggle manifested itself in impatience, irritability, and resentment. I think I was angry at his condition and took it out on him. When I remember all the years I swallowed my feelings in deference to his illness, it appalls me that at the end, I couldn’t sustain it. I am so not the person I thought I was!”

When the wife is gone, and he reconnects to himself and life, if the man in question is a good person dealing with an untenable situation, he will probably be wracked by guilt for what he did to his wife. He needs to know that she knew, that she understood and forgave him, but she doesn’t need to do it while she is alive. She can write a letter for him to find after she is gone. Because that is the truth. She will be gone. And he will still be here, dealing with grief, regrets, guilt.

Admittedly, I don’t know the entire situation, but neither does anyone else who responded to the article. But I do know what it’s like to try to live while someone is dying, and the truth is, you will never know what you are capable of, both heroic and base, until you yourself are trying to embrace life while someone you love deeply is, however unwillingly, embracing death.

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Pat Bertram is the author of the suspense novels Light Bringer, More Deaths Than One, A Spark of Heavenly Fire, and Daughter Am I. Bertram is also the author of Grief: The Great Yearning, “an exquisite book, wrenching to read, and at the same time full of profound truths.” Connect with Pat on Google+

Tagged: an affair while spouse is dying, caring for a terminally ill spouse, dying wife cheating husband, stages of death, watching someone die

If I Could Change a Single Moment of the Past

If I could change a single moment of the past, it wouldn’t be a moment of my life. The traumas and failures in my life have never been the result of a single moment but of life’s unfolding drama or mistaken assessments on my part. The single moments that did have an impact didn’t change my life, just gave me a few uncomfortable weeks or months, so it’s not worth the trouble to go back and redo those moments and put up with any ripples and upheavals that might result from such changes.

I would instead bestow this power to change a single moment on another, someone I’ve only talked to a few time, someone whose name I don’t even know.

At a local employee-owned grocery chain, I occasionally see an employee sitting by the door, giving us customers a friendly good-bye as we leave. Generally, these “sitters” are workers who have been injured and can’t stand all day, so this is a way of giving them a rest on the clock.

One such woman is radiantly beautiful, looking to be about twenty when in fact she is in her forties. A couple of years ago, her boss needed someone to move a heavy object, and since no one else was available, she volunteered. In that moment her life changed from one of a vibrant health to one of chronic back pain and doctors who can’t agree on treatment.

The last time I saw her, I didn’t stop to talk, merely said in passing, “I was hoping I’d never see you again.” Those words echoed in my mind as I crossed the parking lot, and I was appalled by what I had said. I meant, of course, I was hoping I wouldn’t see her at her post and that she finally was through with her ordeal. I might have let the remark go, but she is of a different race than I am, and I was afraid she’d take it as a racial slur if not a personal insult. So I went back to the store, but she and her chair were gone.

Yesterday I saw her again and finally got a chance to apologize. She said she knew what I meant and hadn’t taken offense. We talked for a while, and she mentioned that her grandmother’s funeral had been packed to overflowing. The woman had been active in the civil rights movement in Mississippi, was loved by all who met her, and since she lived to be 106, she had plenty of opportunity to meet people.

If the grandmother is anything like the woman I met, it’s no wonder she was so beloved. This woman’s smile is enough to brighten anyone’s day, even mine when I was in the worst phases of my grief. Although she is very sweet and kind, and not at all bitter, she is always aware that one single moment changed her life forever, and if it were ever possible, she’d go back and change it.

It is that moment of change that I would gift her with if I could.

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Pat Bertram is the author of the suspense novels Light Bringer, More Deaths Than One, A Spark of Heavenly Fire, and Daughter Am I. Bertram is also the author of Grief: The Great Yearning, “an exquisite book, wrenching to read, and at the same time full of profound truths.” Connect with Pat on Google+

Tagged: changing a single moment, changing the past, civil rights movement, employee-owned grocery chain, life-changing experiences, Mississippi

Life is a Great Big Canvas…

The words might not have originated with me, but the photo art is mine. I was trying to cheat and do a quick post since it’s so late, but this little bit of fluff took longer than a written post would have done!

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Pat Bertram is the author of the suspense novels Light Bringer, More Deaths Than One, A Spark of Heavenly Fire, and Daughter Am I. Bertram is also the author of Grief: The Great Yearning, “an exquisite book, wrenching to read, and at the same time full of profound truths.” Connect with Pat on Google+

Tagged: Danny Kaye, Danny Kaye quote, Life is a Great Big Canvas, throw all the paint on it you can

My Own True Grit

I started watching True Grit today, but had to stop because I couldn’t see the screen for all the tears. My deceased life mate/soul mate and I lived not far from Ridgeway where True Grit was filmed, and the scenery in the movie made me homesick, not just for the Rockies, which formed the backdrop of my life, but for him. As the movie played, I could almost hear his voice telling me about the filming of the movie, and I could almost feel the soft cool air of Colorado wafting through the open window.

Sometimes I have the urge to settle near there again when my responsibilities to my father end. The air would feel familiar. The light would be soothing to my eyes. The mountains would offer comfort and perhaps protection from harsh winds. But then what? I’d be alone with the mountains, and mountains, no matter how welcome or familiar, can’t offer companionship. Without my mate, I’d still feel lonely, still feel as if I were homeless, because he, of course, was my home.

In Figuring Out Where to Go From Here, I realized I didn’t have to settle anywhere, but could live on the go, writing as I went. It will be possible, at least for a while, especially if I can get some sort of crowd funding. And perhaps I will discover home within myself or even discover that the journey itself is home.

I haven’t been writing about this journey lately because my 96-year-old father is doing exceptionally well, so much so that it seems foolish to talk about my future since I might not be free of responsibilities for a long time. Besides, I don’t want my father or anyone else to think I am hurrying him off this earth. If the universe is unfolding as it should, then my soul quest (or at least the road trip part of the quest) will happen when the universe and I am ready.

Still, it is nice to know what I’m going to do when the time comes — put my stuff in storage and head out on my journey, broadening both my internal and external horizons. Since I want to live by whim, to relearn spontaneity and perhaps find serendipity, there really isn’t a lot of preparation for me to do in the meantime except to continue to get rid of that which is unnecessary so I can hit the road unencumbered by superfluous possessions, outdated issues, and useless notions. Eventually, I will need to prepare various giveaways and promotional materials, perhaps even a marketing plan, for visiting bookstores along the way, but now is not the time for planning but for dreaming.

The beauty of such a quest as the one I’m dreaming of is that if I am particularly homesick for areas where we lived, I could go and stay there for a while, recharge my soul’s batteries, and then continue on when wit, whim, and my own true grit dictated.

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Pat Bertram is the author of the suspense novels Light Bringer, More Deaths Than One, A Spark of Heavenly Fire, and Daughter Am I. Bertram is also the author of Grief: The Great Yearning, “an exquisite book, wrenching to read, and at the same time full of profound truths.” Connect with Pat on Google+

Tagged: Colorado air, finding home, homesick, Ridgeway, Rocky Mountains, soul quest, True Grit

Grief Update

I haven’t been posting any grief updates lately because I haven’t had much to tell. There has been no great pain or sorrow, no major traumas or dramas, no new adventures to undertake — just living my every day life of quiet sadness and loneliness.

Although I haven’t had any major grief upsurges for a while, I do often think of my deceased life mate/soul mate, even talk to him. Oddly, now that the agony of grief has mostly subsided, it feels as if he is back at home, waiting for me to finish my present tasks and return to him. I know he isn’t there, of course, but without the pain to simultaneously bind us and separate us, he doesn’t feel quite so gone.

I am still very confused by death. How can he be dead? Where is he? Is he? Perhaps he is waiting for me, perhaps he is simply gone . . . deleted. I won’t know until my life is ended, and perhaps not even then. Whatever exists beyond our cloak of materiality and physicality, beyond our brains and our minds, might have consciousness, or might simply be pure energy that returns to the Everything.

I’ve never known where to put his death in my head. I can’t be glad about it, yet at the same time, he couldn’t have continued to suffer. But more than that, if he is in a better place, why I am still here? And if life is a gift, why was it denied him? I’ve held on to the idea that dying relatively young was unfair to him, that he is missing something, and a lot of my grief was on his behalf, but the other night I realized it truly doesn’t matter whether we are alive or dead. Well, his death matters to me, but it doesn’t matter to the universe, and it probably doesn’t matter to him. Nor does my continued life matter in the vastness of life/death. A few years extra of life is but a dandelion seed in the winds of time. Almost totally matterless. Maybe even meaningless. In which case it truly doesn’t make any difference that I am alive and he is dead. (Well, except for the part where I miss him, but this insight wasn’t about that.)

Even if life is largely matterless and meaningless, I am still alive and at least for now, that does make a difference to me and those I am in contact with. But it’s good knowing I neither have to be glad nor sad for him, that I can continue to live without feeling bad that he is dead. Knowing this also makes it easier to remember him, to recall what we had, to celebrate his place in my life. I am still sad, of course, and maybe I always will be. I miss him, wish desperately for one smile, but gradually I am letting go of my worries for him. He doesn’t need them, and they are an unnecessary relic of our life together. And for all I know, he could be perfectly content, sitting by some cosmic lake, two ghost cats purring in his lap.

Someday, as my grief continues to wane, I might even get to the point where I find renewed life, but I still take comfort where I can find it, and for now I take comfort in thinking that life and death are somehow one.

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Pat Bertram is the author of the suspense novels Light Bringer, More Deaths Than One, A Spark of Heavenly Fire, and Daughter Am I. Bertram is also the author of Grief: The Great Yearning, “an exquisite book, wrenching to read, and at the same time full of profound truths.” All Bertram’s books are published by Second Wind Publishing. Connect with Pat on Google+

Tagged: confused by death, dealing with grief, death, death of a soul mate, grief and loss, life and death, meaning of life and death

Foreshadowing and Backshadowing: Making Our Writing Seem Inexorable

I’m not one of those authors who are so overflowing with ideas that they can sit down and just let the words spew out of their fingers onto the page. I have to think of everything, which is why beginning a novel or creating a new character is so hard. I am faced with a universe of choices where all things are possible.

What am I going to write? How am I going to write it? First person or third? Sassy, sarcastic, serious? Who is going to be the main character? What does she most desire? Who or what is stopping her from fulfilling this desire? What does she look and act like? What are her internal traits, both her admirable ones and less admirable ones? Who are her allies? Who are her mentors?

And those choices lead to other choices. What does the character need? (As opposed to what she wants.) Is she going to get what she wants or is she going to get what she needs? For example, maybe she wants to be a homebody, to marry the boy next door, but what she and the story need are for her to become a senator and possibly leave the boy behind.

And so the choices continue, each choice narrowing the story’s universe a bit more.

One of the best parts of writing for me is when the weight of those choices become so great that the answer to future choices can be found in past ones. It gives the story a sense of inexorability, as if there were always only one way to tell the story.

For example, yesterday I wrote about creating a new character. Although Lydia was not originally my creation, but instead was an offscreen character created by Lazarus Barnhill in the first book of Rubicon Ranch, the serialization I am writing online with other Second Wind authors, I have adopted her as my own. Even if readers don’t remember who Lydia is, she will still pull the first book into the third, connecting them in a seemingly inexorable way, by making the sheriff confront his past. Ideally, it will seem as if this was our intention all along, with the first book foreshadowing the third when it is actually the third book backshadowing the first.

Lydia being a previously mentioned character narrows my choices, since she already has a name and a past, but there is still plenty of scope for choices. And in the end as in the beginning, writing is about the choices we make.

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Pat Bertram is the author of the suspense novels Light Bringer, More Deaths Than One, A Spark of Heavenly Fire, and Daughter Am I. Bertram is also the author of Grief: The Great Yearning, “an exquisite book, wrenching to read, and at the same time full of profound truths.” All Bertram’s books are published by Second Wind Publishing. Connect with Pat on Google+

Tagged: creating a character, inexorability, mystery serialization, overflowing with ideas, Rubicon Ranch, writing and choices

Creating a New Character

J J Dare, author of False Positive and False World, delights in creating evil characters. A fellow collaborator in the Second Wind serialization, Rubicon Ranch, J J Dare created the monstrous victim in Rubicon Ranch: Necropieces, the second book of the series, along with a couple of his offspring. She calls her evil characters Bad Wasps.

We’re starting a new book,  Rubicon Ranch: Secrets, and seeing how much fun J J Dare has with her evil characters, I’d considered exchanging my ongoing character for a bad wasp, but my character, Melanie Gray, still has so much to accomplish that I can’t just dump the poor woman. She needs to find out who killed her husband and why, and she needs to resolve her feelings for the misogynistic sheriff.

I considered writing another character in addition to Melanie, and I almost gave up when I couldn’t think of a character I’d be willing to spend the next year with, but then I discovered Lydia Galvin. Or rather rediscovered her.

Lydia was an offscreen character in the first book of the series, Rubicon Ranch: Riley’s story — Sheriff Bryan’s lover. Told from the sheriff’s point of view, she was a grasping woman who wanted him to divorce his wife and marry her, but when he wouldn’t fall in with her schemes, she ended up turning him in to the disciplinary committee.

Here’s the excerpt (written by Lazarus Barnhill):

“Anyway, Lydia Galvin . . . Lieutenant Lydia . . . she and I had an affair. What Lydia wanted was love. And she wanted me. She could not believe I didn’t love her to the extent she loved me. She wanted me to leave Monica. When I wouldn’t, she threatened to tell her. I told Monica first, as a preemptory strike. Lydia had visions of confronting Monica. Boy was she surprised when Monica confronted her. Monica told her to be content with what she had with me, that she was going to mess up all our lives if she kept on.”

Bryan paused for a reaction from Melanie, but her serene face gave no indication of her thoughts.

He took a sip of tea. “Somehow Lydia got the idea that if she came between me and my career, between me and my marriage, I would magically realize how much I cared for her. Once she told the right people on the force what was happening, the disciplinary procedures couldn’t be stopped. And of course discipline issues on the police force become public record. I had been the beloved, fair-haired boy before. It was so totally different to become the pariah. Lydia came to me—even after I had cleaned out my office and watched them paint over my name on my parking space. She came to where I was standing and said, ‘Can’t you understand how much I love you?’”

“What did you say to her?”

“I said, ‘I’m still licensed to carry a sidearm in California and if you come near me again I’m going to shoot you between the eyes.’”

On rereading the passage, I realized how much of a philanderer’s point of view it portrayed. In trying to see the situation from Lydia’s side, I got the impression of a woman, perhaps a bit lost, perhaps hard used by the sheriff who obviously wanted only one thing from her, and it wasn’t the love she so desperately craved. It must have hurt her deeply to try one last time to connect to the man she loved, and to have him threaten to kill her. Might this (and whatever in her background that made her so desperate for love in the first place) have turned her into a stonehearted woman willing to kill to serve her ends?

I’ll find out in the coming months as I develop the character. It should be fun to discover if she’s a bad wasp or merely a woman who’s had too much pain in her life.

f you have not yet checked out Rubicon Ranch, you can do so here: Rubicon Ranch.

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Pat Bertram is the author of the suspense novels Light Bringer, More Deaths Than One, A Spark of Heavenly Fire, and Daughter Am I. Bertram is also the author of Grief: The Great Yearning, “an exquisite book, wrenching to read, and at the same time full of profound truths.” Connect with Pat on Google+

Tagged: developing a character, mystery series collaboration, online novel, point of view, Rubicon Ranch, Rubicon Ranch: Secrets, Second Wind Publishing

Rubicon Ranch: Secrets — The Story Begins!

Rubicon Ranch is a collaborative and innovative crime series set in the fictional desert community of Rubicon Ranch and is being written online by the authors of Second Wind Publishing. The very first chapter of the very first book (Rubicon Ranch: Riley’s Story) was posted on October 24, 2010, and we are still going strong! In fact, we are getting better and better. Seven authors, including me, are involved in the current story — Rubicon Ranch: Secrets, which is shaping up to be a psychological thriller.

The  body of a local realtor is found beneath the wheels of a blow-up figure of a Santa on a motorcycle. The realtor took great delight in ferreting out secrets, and everyone in this upscale housing development is hiding something. Could she have discovered a secret someone would kill to protect? There will be suspects galore, including a psychic, a con man, a woman trying to set up an online call-girl service, and the philandering sheriff himself. Not only is the victim someone he had an affair with, but he will also have to contend with an ex-wife who has moved back in with him and a jilted lover, both with their own reasons for wanting the realtor dead.

Although some of the characters were introduced in Rubicon Ranch: Riley’s Story, the first collaboration in the series, and further developed in Rubicon Ranch: Necropieces, Rubicon Ranch: Secrets is a stand-alone novel, so don’t worry if you are new to Rubicon Ranch. A new chapter will be posted every Monday on the Rubicon Ranch blog. I’m posting the first chapter here, but if you don’t want to miss further chapters, please go to the blog and click on “sign me up” on the right sidebar to get notifications of new chapters.

We hope you will enjoy seeing the story develop as we write it. Let the mystery begin! Whodunit? No one knows, not even the writers, and we won’t know until the very end!

(If the Christmas theme seems unseasonal, well . . . considering how long it takes to write a book at the rate of a chapter a week, in a few months, the season will catch up to us!)

Chapter 1: Melanie Gray

by Pat Bertram

Sunday, December 22; 7:05pm

Melanie Gray typed THE END, then sat back and studied the words on the computer screen. She’d found no satisfaction in telling the story of famed horror writer Morris Sinclair’s macabre life and death, and she felt no elation now that she’d finished the task. The evil man should have been buried in unhallowed ground and left to rot rather than be immortalized in a book, but she’d needed the money her publisher had offered. With the generous advance, she would be able to devote herself to finding out who killed her husband five months previously and, more importantly, why the murderer wanted Alexander dead. Morris had wooed death his whole life, so it was no surprise that death had come for him, but Alexander’s murder could not be so easily dismissed.

Tears stung Melanie’s eyes. She scrubbed the tears away, furious at herself for still grieving. She’d always considered herself a strong woman, up to any task, and yet she couldn’t write “the end” to her grief.

Damn you, Alexander! How could you do this to me?

She rose stiffly, stretched to get the worst of the kinks from her body, and tottered to the front closet for her coat. Except for a few hours of fitful sleep each night during the past nine weeks, she’d spent all her time at the computer, and she was sick of it. Sick of Morris Sinclair. Sick of death. Sick of Rubicon Ranch.

She opened the front door and blinked at the shadowy figures gliding through the darkness. Morris’s fans had descended on the neighborhood when news of his demise had hit the airwaves, and they had stayed when they learned that not all of Morris’s body pieces had been recovered. Dressed as vampires and zombies and ghouls of every imaginable—and unimaginable—ilk, they roamed the neighborhood and the nearby desert looking for necropieces in some sort of grisly treasure hunt.

Melanie hesitated, wondering at the wisdom of going out so late in the evening, but the twinkle of Christmas lights adorning a nearby desert willow made her set aside her caution.

Alexander had always loved Christmas, and no matter where in the world they happened to be living, he managed to find a tree and decorate it. If Alexander still lived in her memory, he’d want her to wander through the neighborhood so he could see the lights.

Smiling at the whimsical thought, she locked the door behind her and strolled down the driveway to Delano Road. Even with half the houses lit up with holiday decorations, the neighborhood seemed dark. Too many people had left the area, temporarily abandoning their homes, though the flickering of candlelight through closed curtains hinted that squatters had taken up residence in some of the empty houses.

Melanie stood at the curb, trying to decide whether to go right or left. “It’s your fault, Alexander,” she murmured. “Until you died, I never had a problem making decisions.” But now, it didn’t make any difference whether she went north or south, whether she left Rubicon Ranch or stayed. Without Alexander, everything seemed uniformly bleak.

A house across the street all at once came ablaze with thousands of small white lights. Melanie cut across the road and headed for the brightness, wishing Alexander could see the decorations for real. Lights outlined the driveway, every bush, every rock, and dripped from the eaves like dazzling falls of lace.

She walked leisurely, savoring the radiant display on Alexander’s behalf, then hurried past the next dwelling, which was dark, and slowed again at the following house to look at the whimsical blow-up figure of Santa on a motorcycle.

After the brilliance of the lights at the first domicile, she had to wait a moment to let her eyes adjust to the relative dimness of this scene. And then she wished she hadn’t hung around to get a better look. Santa, with a wide grin and an upraised hand, seemed to be gleefully running over the prone body of a woman. A mannequin, it looked like.

Melanie drew in a sharp breath. Who would create such a morbid tableau for Christmas? But then, seeing a vampire with glowing teeth run past her, she sighed. Anyone in this insane neighborhood could have done it. After Morris Sinclair’s demise, Rubicon Ranch had become a bacchanalia of death, a celebration of the worst in humanity.

A car moved along the street behind her. The headlights illuminated the scene as clearly as if it were day, and suddenly something seemed wrong. So very wrong.

The woman being run over by the cheery Santa looked stiff in the way of death, not stiff like a mannequin.

Melanie told herself to continue on, to forget the gruesome sight and enjoy the rest of the decorations, but her leaden feet refused to do her bidding. Finally, wishing she were anywhere but here, she crept closer to the scene.

She caught a faint whiff of death—like meat just beginning to go bad—and her heart beat faster.

No. No. She’d had enough of death. Alexander. Poor kidnapped little Riley Peterson. Morris Sinclair. How could so much death be associated with a community as small as Rubicon Ranch?

Melanie bent over the body and touched a finger to the side of the woman’s neck to check for a pulse, though she already knew the truth.

She fumbled in her coat pocket for her cell phone and wondered if the sheriff would continue to believe in her innocence. Hell, she didn’t believe it herself. Maybe she was some sort of Typhoid Mary when it came to death. She’d been the one who found Riley Peterson’s body out in the desert, stuffed in a television console. She’d been the one to lead the sheriff to the desert where they’d found the body of Riley’s birth father. She’d been the first one to come across a necropiece—a dismembered foot—after Morris was killed. And now once again she had found death.

She punched in 999, but when the call didn’t connect, she realized she’d used the emergency number for Britain. She cleared the number, then punched 119. Crap. Wrong again. That was the emergency number for Mozambique. Where was she? She took a deep breath, and let it out slowly.

Rubicon Ranch. Rojo Duro County. Mojave Desert. California. USA. Ah, yes. 911.

Melanie made the call, gave the information to the dispatcher, then pulled her coat more firmly around her to protect her from the chill of the high desert winter night.

She’d expected to wait a half an hour or more until the sheriff or his deputies could make the thirty-mile trip from Rojo Duro, but only ten minutes had gone by when a dark SUV pulled up to the curb, and Deputy Kelvin Midget slid out from behind the wheel more nimbly than seemed possible for such a massive man.

The SUV didn’t have official county plates, so Melanie supposed the vehicle was the deputy’s private ride. She felt a spasm of guilt at cutting into the man’s personal time, but then she remembered what Deputy Midget had once told her—that he’d lost his wife to pancreatic cancer about three year and a half years ago, and had come out west to start over so he could heal. Maybe, like Melanie, he had no real life but was just going through the motions of living.

“What seems to be the trouble, Ms. Gray?”

Shivering, Melanie pointed to the body.

Midget picked his way through the xeriscaping, got down on his haunches to check the woman’s neck as Melanie had, then rose to his feet without using his hands to shove himself upright.

“Did you see what happened?”

“No. Just found her lying here is all. Checked her pulse. Called it in.”

Midget walked around to the other side of the body, scanning the ground, his dark brow furrowed. “Did you find her purse?”

“No, but I didn’t look for it.” Melanie wondered about the deputy’s concern for the woman. It seemed more than simply a law enforcement officer’s professional interest in a crime scene. “Did you know her?” she asked.

“Didn’t you?”

“I don’t think so. I don’t know many people in the neighborhood.”

“Seth—Sheriff Bryan—thinks you notice everything.”

“Well, the sheriff thinks a lot of things that aren’t true.”

Midget made a small sound that might have been a chuckle. “Hit a nerve, did I?”

More to get away from the uncomfortable topic of the Sheriff than because she wanted to identify the woman, Melanie circled the body so she could get a better look. The woman did appear familiar at that. Aquiline nose, close set eyes, coiffed hair, manicured fingernails with a shimmering design painted atop the polish, high heels, tailored business suit.

Melanie backed away from the body. “I think she might be a real estate agent. I’ve seen her around the neighborhood.”

“Nancy Garcetti,” Deputy Midget said. “She sold me my house. Poor woman. She was such a terrible judge of character. Looked at the superficial and assumed she knew what the person was about. Kept notes of everything. You sure you didn’t find her purse?”

“Maybe the person who murdered her took it.”

“What makes you think she was murdered?”

“What else could it be? Nancy got tired, so she decided to take a nap by the wheels of Santa’s motorcycle and froze to death?” Regretting her caustic tone, Melanie huddled deeper into her coat. Had she become so used to murder that all death seemed so unnatural? But death was unnatural. A deletion of life. A void.

“People die from many causes,” Deputy Midget said. “It’s possible she had a heart attack. A stroke. Some sort of accident. A mugging gone wrong. Could be anything. We won’t know until the ME gets here.”

A tan Navigator parked behind Midget’s SUV, and Lieutenant Rosaria Frio stepped out of the vehicle.

The lieutenant looked even more like an Hispanic Barbie doll than when Melanie first met her. No emotion showed on the law enforcement officer’s beautiful face, and the dim light made her skin look plastically perfect. Only the glitter of the lieutenant’s dark eyes and her easy stride confirmed her humanity.

She greeted Deputy Midget with a nod. “You got here fast.”

“I just bought a house here in Rubicon Ranch over on Adobe Pobre Court. I told you about it. Got an awesome deal from a couple who could hardly wait to get away from the area. They said there was too much crime.”

“Imagine that.” Lieutenant Frio turned to stare at Melanie. “And here is our one-woman crime spree herself. Or maybe cadaver dog would be a better description.”

Melanie returned the Lieutenant’s gaze, but refrained from answering in kind. Lieutenant Frio seemed to have taken her in dislike when they met after Riley’s murder and her manner had only grown colder with the passage of the months. Melanie didn’t entirely blame her. If their places were reversed, she’d probably be just as skeptical as the lieutenant about her penchant for finding corpses.

Lieutenant Frio walked to body and stood over it for a moment, then slanted a glance toward Melanie. “Sheriff Bryan will be here shortly. He and his wife were dining out, and he needs to take her home first.”

Melanie remained impassive. She already knew the sheriff and his wife were back together. Melanie had talked to him a couple of times to get details for her book, and he had told her his wife had decided the celebrity-ridden area might not be such a backwater after all. He’d sounded apologetic, but other than behavior that bordered on unprofessionalism, he had nothing to apologize for. They hadn’t had an affair, not even a fling. Just a little bit of flirtation and a lot of anger.

“Can I go?” she asked.

“I’ve questioned Ms. Gray,” Deputy Midget said. “If we need her again, we know where to find her.”

Lieutenant Frio turned her implacable gaze toward Melanie. “Don’t leave the county.”

If anyone else had deadpanned such a remark, Melanie would have assumed it was either a friendly suggestion or possibly a joke, but coming from the lieutenant, the command sounded like a jail cell slamming shut.

Melanie wanted to run back to her place, but she forced herself to walk since she was sure the lieutenant would see haste as a sign of guilt. She tried not to look at the houses she passed. The joyful decorations suddenly seemed obscene.

She didn’t believe Deputy Midget’s suggestion that Nancy had died of natural causes. The missing purse hinted that something grimmer was going on. What secrets Nancy had kept in her purse? Everyone in Rubicon Ranch seemed to have something to hide. And someone—perhaps someone in one of these very houses—might have a secret they would kill to protect.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of the suspense novels Light Bringer, More Deaths Than One, A Spark of Heavenly Fire, and Daughter Am I. Bertram is also the author of Grief: The Great Yearning, “an exquisite book, wrenching to read, and at the same time full of profound truths.” All Bertram’s books are published by Second Wind Publishing. Connect with Pat on Google+

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