Debra Gaskill's Blog, page 3

Call Fitz Chapter 3

I’m trying something new: posting a chapter of my first PI novel CALL FITZ here on my blog for you to enjoy. Can’t wait to see how it ends? The entire book is available for purchase on my website, www.debragaskillnovels.com.

Chapter 3

The hallway was bathed in the sun’s last orange gasps when I came to and pushed myself up off the dirty floor. I touched the goose egg on the back of my head as I stood. Shit, that hurts. It wasn’t bleeding, unlike the inside of my mouth. I ran my tongue along my teeth—at least they were all there.

I patted myself down, searching—thank God, the Glock was still inside my hoodie. I pulled it out of my shoulder holster and checked the clip. No bullets were missing; everything looked good. I shoved it back inside my jacket.

Why would someone want me off the Cantolini case? A hooker is dead and her loser boyfriend is in jail. This certainly doesn’t involve anybody who mattered in Fawcettville.

So who was sending a message? And why?

The mob? Nah. After too much vino, everybody in New Tivoli bragged they had out-of-town family who were mobbed up, but nobody believed it. Organized crime was for towns like Cleveland, Pittsburgh and Youngstown, not small towns like Fawcettville. This was where the working class stiffs came to get their tiny piece of the fading American dream. Besides, Gina Cantolini’s family didn’t even live here anymore. If they had and if they were mobbed up, two things would have happened: she would have been married off quickly or her baby’s daddy’s body would have been found in the trunk of his own car and she would have been set up as a cute young widow somewhere out of state.

I continued to think as I walked down the stairs to the square, where my black Excursion was parked. I slid into the driver’s seat and caught a glimpse of a bruised and scratched left cheek in the rearview. Great. That must have happened when I got slammed against the doorframe.

I hadn’t had many dealings with Poole during my days on the force, maybe an occasional bar fight or public intoxication. Other cops, though, told me he could be a real bastard and I knew through them he could be violent.

Could the man who cold-cocked me have been Poole? Why would it be him? The other man in his woman’s life is on ice and most likely would be convicted. If Poole were smart, he’d sit back and keep his mouth shut. There was no need to smack an investigator in the skull.

And Mac Brewster? C’mon. I wasn’t even going to waste my time on that Boy Scout. No way Mac could be dirty. His intention of getting Gina Cantolini in a room alone would probably be to get her to turn her life over to Jesus. Whatever Gina was telling Michael Atwater about Mac was more than likely a lie.

I needed to think a little bit more about which way to go on this case.

But first, I needed to see Grace. I slipped my key into the car ignition and pulled into traffic.

*****

The symphony was rehearsing down at Memorial Hall, where this weekend’s benefit would be held. Grace was sitting in the center of the stage alone, playing the prelude to Bach’s Cello Suite No. 1. The other symphony musicians milled around the jumble of the chairs and music stands on the stage or sat listening in the first few rows of seats.

A single spotlight reflected blue highlights off her dark curly hair and regal cheekbones. Her eyes were closed in concentration as her body swayed with each draw of her bow. She wore a white camisole beneath a gauzy white shirt that didn’t restrict her movements; tight jeans accentuated her long legs.

In her presence, I always felt troll-like. Maybe I was: no neck, big shoulders, thick bowed legs and standing at the higher end of short, I had my father’s round pugilist’s face, my mother’s dark Italian hair and her father’s big chest. My nose reflected my football and personal career: it was slightly off center from more than one break. For some reason, women liked me. I wasn’t a slob like Ambrosi though, I kept my gut in check during my daily workouts, and got my back waxed regularly at Gracie’s insistence. If she asked, I’d dye my graying hair for her.

I still wore a stained Kent State Football hoodie, despite being kicked off the team some thirty-plus years ago, clinging to it, Gracie said, like a toddler’s security blanket.

I sat down toward the back in one of the aisle seats and watched, transfixed, as she coached the mellow tones from her cello. The other musicians were drawn in, too, with each note. Before long the idle conversation stopped as the music swelled and rolled through the hall. With a final flourish of Grace’s bow, a last, rich note hung in the air for a moment and faded.

Automatically, I stood and walked from the back of the hall, clapping. Others on stage also applauded, joining the musicians in the seats. I was halfway down the aisle, ready to call out her name as the applause died down.

But the ovation didn’t come to a complete stop. One tall thin man, wearing black pants and a gray shirt, walked from the back of the stage, clapping slowly. His brown hair was just starting to gray and his hands looked soft. He had a sweater across his shoulders and his expensive shoes shone. Grace turned around as he approached and smiled at him.

My stomach dropped. Maybe Maris Monroe was right. Who is this asshole?

He leaned over the music stand and ran his finger across the top of the sheet music. It didn’t take much for me to imagine him running that same finger down her naked spine in the bed we once shared.

“Good job, Dr. Darcy,” he said.

She tipped her chin up toward him and beamed.

OK, this shit’s got to stop. I stepped into the light. A few other musicians recognized me.

They stepped back out of my way, their eyes widening. Apparently our marital discord was no secret.

“Yes, my wife is an excellent musician,” I said loudly.

Grace stood and waved Mr. Suave away. “Give me a minute,” she said softly.

Quickly, he and the other musicians disappeared from the hall. Grace lay her cello down on its side and walked to the edge of the stage, holding the bow. She sat down, letting her feet in their gold ballet flats hang over the ledge. I walked nearer, opening my arms. She jabbed the bow into the center of my chest like a rapier. No surprise there—Grace was also the college’s women’s fencing coach.

I stopped in my tracks. She laid the bow beside her on the stage, but I didn’t dare come closer.

“You’re still doing time for me, aren’t you, Nicco?” She was the only one who called me by my first name. I’d never been just Fitz to Grace.

“Who’s he?” I jerked my thumb toward Rico Suave, who stood just off stage, his arms crossed. His icy blue eyes were trained on me. Like some baton-waving Nancy boy could scare me. Meet me in the alley motherfucker, I wanted to say, I’ll kick your ass.

“He’s Peter van Hoven, the new conductor,” she said. “This weekend’s benefit is also a welcome for him.”

“Looks like you’ve already made him feel quite at home.”

“What do you expect me to do? Sit around like a nun until you figure out how to sign the divorce papers?” She raised one hand to write in the air.

“Gracie, please.” I stepped closer and quickly got the bow in the chest again.

“No. I was warned when I started dating you and I didn’t listen. ‘He’s as faithful as a tomcat,’ she said. ‘Don’t let him break your heart.’”

“Who said that?”

“Your mother.”

I sighed. “She’s been pissed off since I told her I wasn’t going to be a priest and wanted to play football.” My three brothers and two sisters all had large Irish-Italian Catholic families. The fact that I didn’t get married until well into my forties kept her hope alive that someone from the family would don the clerical collar. As always, I disappointed her.

“Nicco, don’t jerk me around. Just sign the papers and we can both move on with our lives. It’s not like we’ve got any big assets to split.”

I moved into Gracie’s Tudor home six weeks before our wedding with a single suitcase and the service revolver I got at retirement. When I left, I left with the same things. We had no children’s lives to destroy, no dog to argue custody over. Grace was a dedicated to her career as I was to mine, although, if this divorce went through I’d sure as hell miss the cat, Mozart.

“You going out with him?”

“Maybe. That’s none of your business. What happened to your face? Did some pissed off husband find you in one of those dive bars you frequent?”

“No, I fell.” She didn’t need to know the details. Not now.

“So, are you still seeing her?”

“Gracie, I told you. She was a client. She’d been drinking—she was out of control. I didn’t mean for it to happen.”

“And I didn’t mean to walk into your office at two in the afternoon and find you in flagrante delicto at your desk.”

My arms sank to my sides. “We weren’t—never mind. I know what it looked like.” I turned away. “You’re right. I can’t ask you to live like a nun, just like you said. I’ll talk to you later, Gracie. We’ll get this worked out.”

“Soon?”

“Yeah.” I felt like I’d been kicked in the gut. “Soon.”

*****

I visited Mike Atwater’s house right after my workout the next day. The Atwaters lived outside of Fawcettville in a bungalow that had seen better days. A plaster gnome in a fading red hat and flaking paint sat by the front porch steps, holding a large mushroom with “Welcome” carved into it. On the other side of the step was a deer, equally fading and flaking, with big cartoon eyes and smile. Back in the day, when I’d brought a juvenile Mikey home from whatever late-night scrape I’d found him in, the bungalow was better kept than the others in the working class cluster of homes up and down the road.

Today, the yard hadn’t been mowed in a long, long time and weeds grew through holes in rusting metal barrels along the driveway. The paint was chipped and there was cardboard in one of the upstairs windows.

A tall, rawboned woman opened the door. Her graying hair was trying to escape from the haphazard bun on top her head; her jeans were faded and the sleeves on her Steeler’s sweatshirt were pushed up her scrawny arms.

She had the look of a woman who was used to bill collectors coming to her door—or the police coming to see her about her kid.

“If you’re a reporter, I’m done talking to reporters,” she said flatly.

“Susan Atwater?” I handed her a business card. “I’m Nick Fitzhugh, Fitzhugh Investigations. Mike’s attorney sent me. I was wondering if you had some time to talk to me?”

“Jim Ambrosi?” Susan leaned out the door and looked from left to right. I nodded. She waved me inside. We walked wordlessly through the scruffy living room toward the kitchen; Susan pointed to a wooden chair that didn’t match the table. She took a seat across from me and pulled a green melamine ashtray toward her. Smoke from a lone cigarette wafted in lazy spirals toward the ceiling. Susan looked at it sadly before picking it up and inhaling.

“I suppose you want to know what kind of an awful mother I was to have a kid who ends up in jail for murder,” she said, raising her chin and exhaling.

“No ma’am,” I said, pulling a notebook from my hoodie pocket. “I want to know about Gina and Michael’s relationship.”

Years ago, Susan Atwater hadn’t looked so ragged. Unfortunately, she and her husband Bill always managed to catch a ride in the last car of the latest economic roller coaster, the last of the working poor who would see benefit from any rising financial tide. From Ambrosi, I learned Bill lost his job in the 2008 crash. Susan had worked as a cashier at the grocery store for years but they had no savings and no retirement accounts, having spent them bailing out their son on more than one occasion.

Bill’s new job in the Pennsylvania shale fields started recently and he only made it home on the weekends. Susan was still working at the grocery store to keep herself busy while Bill was gone—and make payments on those past due bills.

“That girl.” Susan shook her head. “I never liked Gina Cantolini, but you can’t ever tell your kids those things. I was the same way. My mama didn’t like the boy I came home with—Michael’s daddy—and it made me stick to him that much more. We ran off to Jellico Tennessee and got married when I was fifteen. Michael came along six months later. Michael’s the same way. He falls for that girl and falls bad. I thought I’d be smart when he brought her home, and keep my mouth shut. I saw that girl was nothing but trouble and I never said anything. Maybe I should have.”

“What kind of trouble?”

“Mr. Fitzhugh, my boy’s no angel. His daddy and me, we did everything we could to keep him on the straight and narrow, but Michael, he went down his own road and none of those roads were the right way. Gina was one bad road all by herself.”

I nodded. I wasn’t going to tell Susan I knew all about her boy—or his girlfriend. “Why was Gina a bad road?”

Susan took another drag from her cigarette and stubbed it out in the ashtray.

“She’d tell him those two babies were his, then she’d tell him they were Jacob Poole’s, then she’d cry and apologize and they’d fight—sometimes she and Michael, sometimes Jacob and Michael— and somebody would get arrested.”

“Whose do you think they are?”

Susan stood and walked to the living room. She came back with two framed photos.

“See this? This was taken about fifteen years ago at a family reunion.” She held out a family photo of men of various generations, clustered around an old white-haired man in a recliner, hunched over the oxygen tank in his lap. I picked out Michael, then a surly teen, from among the other older guys, all of them with various shades of the same flaming red hair.

“OK.”

“Now look at this one.” Susan showed me the other photo. Two children sat on Santa’s lap; the photo was snapped as one of the boys howled while the other stared terrified into the camera.

“You see it?” Susan sat the photos down on the kitchen table and picked up her cigarette again, arching her eyebrow. “They both have brown hair, don’t they? Ain’t no Atwater boy been born without red hair in four generations.”

“You don’t believe they’re your grandchildren, do you?”

She shook her head. “Not by blood, no. But here—” she pounded her chest with her thin, bony hand. “They are.”

“Where are the boys?”

“I’ve got them. They’re at school right now. I went to get them the night Gina was killed. Family Services thought it would be best, since they were here a lot of the time anyway.”

“Who’s got the girl?”

“Jacob does.”

“Jacob Poole’s family doesn’t keep the boys at all?”

“Not since she told them they were Michael’s boys. But they were behind the deal to get the DNA testing done.”

“Where do they live?”

“Akron, Canton, I don’t know exactly. The boys don’t know who they are anymore.”

“Did you see anything odd when you picked up the boys?”

Susan sighed and was silent for a moment. “I knew what Gina did when money got tight. I wasn’t happy about it, so I kept the boys as often as I could, just to make sure they didn’t see a lot. But when I went over there to pick those boys up after their mama died, I saw something that really upset me.”

“What was that?”

“She’d put locks on the outside of their bedroom doors, so they couldn’t get out. Those boys were locked in their bedrooms. She’d put those bolt locks on the outside of their doors, up high where they couldn’t reach them. What kind of mother does that? What if that house caught fire?”

“What do you think that meant?” I kept looking at my notebook as I wrote.

“That she was turning tricks inside the house, or selling drugs or something at night and she didn’t want those boys to see it. Those locks weren’t there last week.”

“Do you know anything about a cop who was bothering Gina? Michael claimed she was being harassed by a police officer.”

Susan clenched her fists on the tabletop and leaned toward me, her eyes filled with intensity.

“Somebody needs to look into that. One day I was there and this big, black cop just walked into Gina’s house, swinging his big ole flashlight and yelling if he didn’t get a goddamned blow job right now, he’d be busting somebody for prostitution.”

“What happened?” I stopped making notes.

“We were back in the kitchen, but I could see him from where I was sitting. She went running to the front room. I heard her say ‘Not now. The boys’ grandma is here. Come back later.’ And he left. When Gina came back into the kitchen, she was shaking. She said he came by at least once a week asking for sex. Said he’d threaten to beat her up if she didn’t give him what he wanted.”

“What did he look like?”

“Big wide shoulders. Tall.”

“What about his hair?”

“Bald as a cue ball.”

Mac Brewster’s head didn’t have a hair on it.

Call Fitz —Chapter 2

I’m trying something new, posting a chapter a week of my first Niccolo Fitzhugh novel, CALL FITZ. If you like what you’re reading here, you don’t have to wait to see how it ends: CALL FITZ is available through my website or  here on amazon.com

Michael Atwater looked scared, scared as any dumbass should have been. I saw it in his eyes as Ambrosi and I walked into the conference room where he sat waiting on us.

His leg was shackled to the ring in the floor and his hands were cuffed as a deputy stared at him from his chair in the opposite corner. The sheriff’s office would have claimed that was “customary procedure,” but the truth was Fawcettville didn’t get a whole lot of homicides over the course of a year and they wanted to look good.

Atwater’s orange prison garb nearly matched his ginger hair and the two-days’ growth of beard on his face. His looks were fading from back in the day when I’d arrested him more than a time or two, starting back when he was a juvie. If his parents had a bigger influence than the scum buckets he’d chosen to run around with, Michael Atwater might have been a family man by now, working in somebody’s machine shop, paying his bills. Guess that’s what happens when you work harder at being a criminal than getting a job.

“Fitz.” The deputy nodded at me as he walked out the door.

“Gardosi,” I replied.

“So how’s business?” he smirked. “Maris Monroe still paying you well?”

Amazing how small towns—and small town cops—never forget or forgive a sin. Maris Monroe was seven years ago, a full year before I married Grace.

“No, Gardosi,” I said, setting my briefcase on the conference table and staring him dead in the eye. “I’ve moved on. To your wife.”

Gardosi slammed the door as Atwater smirked, relieved not to be the object of attention for a moment.

Jim Ambrosi sighed heavily as he sat down across from his client.

“Michael, this is Mr. Fitzhugh,” Ambrosi began.

Atwater tried to stand to shake my hand, but his manacles wouldn’t let him. I waved him back down into his seat.

“We’ve met,” I said. “Trust me. So tell me, Mikey, why you shouldn’t be convicted of killing Gina Cantolini.”

Ambrosi shoved the original police report my way and I took a few minutes to read it.

According to the report, the victim’s body was found when organizers began to tear down the bandstand a little after midnight. She had been strangled and beaten, but not near the bandstand. There were no fingerprints, so investigators surmised her attacker wore gloves. She was also shot once in the chest with a .38. Her cheap Wal-Mart top was torn, either as she was trying to escape or as she was initially grabbed.

Time of death was estimated to be about ten p.m. Investigators were still looking to find out where exactly Gina Cantolini was murdered. They were also still looking for a gun.

Her purse was found dumped in the alley behind the Mexican restaurant, the cash gone.

One of the festival organizing committee remembered seeing her earlier in the evening with a redheaded guy who fit Atwater’s description. They had been arguing.

When the suspect was found at home in his second floor apartment six blocks away, he passed out on the couch with scratch marks on both arms and a bloody lip. Two hundred dollars was wadded up in the pocket of his jeans and a still-glowing joint was burning into the edge of the coffee table. The only lawful thing Atwater did was now biting him in the ass: his legally registered .38 was missing.

I shoved the report back at Ambrosi.

“Doesn’t look good,” I said.

“But I didn’t do it!” Atwater cried.

“You were seen arguing with the victim.” I began to tick off on my fingers all the reasons why any jury would convict him.

“She told me my boys weren’t mine! I got served with a warrant for my DNA!” Atwater cried. “I was pissed off!”

“A lot of men would kill if they learned their children weren’t theirs,” I said, ticking off another finger. “You’re also behind on child support payments. I could understand that. Why make payments on kids that aren’t yours?”

“I tried to give her money Saturday. She wouldn’t take it.”

“Two hundred dollars?” I asked. “How do we know that money wasn’t in her wallet to begin with? What man would allow the woman he loves to work as a hooker?”

“No, no, no. That’s not true.” Atwater shook his head in denial. “The money was mine and I wanted to give it to her.”

“You are aware child support payments need to be made through the courts,” I said. “That protects you as well as her. How far behind are you?”

Atwater shrugged.

Ambrosi scrawled a number on a piece of paper and shoved it my direction.

“About seven hundred dollars?” I asked Atwater, after reading the note.

Again Atwater shrugged.

“And those scratches on your arm, that bloody lip… Did Gina give those to you when she tried to fight you off?”

“Naw, I fell.”

I arched an eyebrow.

“No, seriously, I did! I was drunk and high down at the festival and I tripped over a curb.”

“You were seen arguing with the victim, who just told you the children you believed were yours might belong to another man. You’ve got cuts and scratches all over you and I’m supposed to believe you tripped on a curb? To add to it, the gun she was shot with is the same caliber as one registered to you and is now conveniently missing. If I were a juror, it looks to me like Gina was fighting back. You’re behind on your child support payments and you have a long criminal history, for everything from drugs, to burglary to assault and domestic violence and that’s just what I can remember. When did I first arrest you, Mikey? When you were eleven? I’ll bet the jury wouldn’t be out more than twenty minutes.”

“Mr. Fitzhugh—Fitz—”Atwater stammered as he reached for my arm. “I didn’t kill Gina. I wouldn’t have done that. We all know Gina wasn’t perfect, but I loved her. I loved her like I ain’t never loved nobody else. And I loved them two boys, too! They was my whole life! Look at Jacob Poole and look at that cop! They’re the ones what killed her!”

“What cop are you talking about?” I asked. Monroe had a lot of good guys on the force, but there were always a couple assholes, no matter where you worked.

“Whaddaya mean, what cop?” Atwater’s shackles chimed as he threw up his hands.

“There’s thirty six full-time patrol cops in Fawcettville, four detectives, the chief, the assistant chief, Lieutenant Baker, two sergeants and nine dispatchers. That’s fifty-four folks,” I said. “I think you understand I need you to be a little more specific.”

Atwater leaned toward me. “The big guy. The black guy.”

“Brewster? Mac Brewster?” I was incredulous. The guy had been a patrol officer for years. He was known in the community for his work with the kids in the Tubman Gardens neighborhoods, active in his church, an all-around good guy. He coached a Special Olympics softball team, for Christ sake.

Atwater nodded at me somberly, but didn’t say a word.

“What did Brewster do to Gina?”

“She told me there was a cop who would come over to her house and ask for, um, stuff.”

“What kind of stuff?”

“You know. Sex stuff. If she wouldn’t do it, he would threaten to arrest her.”

I looked at Ambrosi, who nodded. For once, I could see why Ambrosi wanted me on the case. This sloppy has-been really did believe his client was innocent.

“What about Jacob Poole?” I asked. “What’s his connection to Gina?”

“He is the father of the victim’s other child, the daughter,” Ambrosi said slowly. “There is a history of domestic violence there as well. She currently has a restraining order against him, but it gets broken on a regular basis.”

“He breaks it or she does?”

“They both do,” Ambrosi said.

I understood. This whole domestic violence thing usually put the cops in a bad position when the call from a hysterical female came in. I’d seen enough situations to know that the blame could sometimes be spread around equally. I’m not saying women deserved to get beat—not at all. People need to know how to work things out by talking, sure. I’m just saying that it was rarely the clear-cut situation when Johnny thought Maria deserved a black eye because his spaghetti wasn’t al dente again. It was just easier when I was on the force to just arrest them both and let the lawyers fight it out.

“OK. Let me do some investigation and I’ll let you know,” I made a few notes and shoved them into my briefcase.

I stood up and Atwater grabbed my hand.

“You gotta find out the truth, Mr. Fitzhugh. I didn’t kill Gina. I didn’t kill her.”

Something in the stupid kid’s eyes made me want believe him, despite all the damning evidence. I only hoped Ambrosi’s check didn’t bounce when this stupid hope gave way to disappointment. It wasn’t my job to believe in somebody. It was my job to find out the truth.

*****

Back at the office, I fired up my laptop and searched the clerk of courts web site for arrest records on two of the parties involved in Gina’s death.

Gina’s legal source of income was her monthly welfare check and had been for years. Her vice was liquor and pills. When there was more month left at the end of her money, she turned to hooking. More than once I’d seen her working some of the downtown bars.

No doubt she’d started life like all of us, all smiles and hope for the future. Then somewhere along the line, something happened. She discovered booze and barbiturates, enough to numb whatever was eating her from inside, nobody ever knew what. Of course, nobody from the New Tivoli neighborhood ever cared to ask either, particularly after her family left. As long as Gina didn’t bring her addictions and her illegitimate babies to their neighborhood, but left it on the outer edges of the Flats, the house-proud Italians of New Tivoli didn’t want to know about Gina Cantolini.

Gina’s arrest record bounced between prostitution, public indecency, public intoxication, and domestic violence, peppered with a couple misdemeanor-shoplifting charges. In several of the public intox and the domestic violence incidents, Jacob Poole and Michael Atwater were also arrested.

Between the three of them, I could see a dysfunctional love triangle of drinking, fighting and making up. What was her hold over those two men? Her kids? Her bed?

The office door clicked open and I looked up from my computer.

Dammit.

“Hey, baby,” Maris Monroe slid one round hip over the corner of my desk and leaned over to move one of my greying black curls from my forehead. She smiled and made sure I got a good look at what filled her low-cut top.

I leaned back in my chair.

“What are you doing here?” I asked.

“I heard you were at the jail today.” She hoisted the rest of her behind onto my desk and swung her long, tanned legs toward me, moving smoothly and quickly enough for me to get a quick shot of red panties beneath her too-short black skirt. Her curly brown hair was tied back in a ponytail. She was the Chief’s second wife, arm candy fifteen years his junior he thought he needed to share his golden years with, not the woman who raised his children and helped him move up the career ladder. Now he was saddled with a barracuda he couldn’t control and couldn’t afford to dump, much to his chagrin.

“So? Who told you?”

She reached over again, and tousled my greying hair. “A little bird.”

“You don’t need to be here, Maris.” I patted my mop back into place.

“Oh, come on, Fitz. You know you’re the only one I want.” She pushed the laptop back so she could scoot directly in front of me, giving me another shot of those red panties.

“Go home, Maris.”

“I heard you were staying here now, all by yourself.” Maris leaned close. Close enough for me to smell her perfume. Her words were soft and sultry. I shut my eyes and clenched my fists. In another life, I’d already have my hands up that skirt and we’d be halfway to paradise.

Not now. Not ever again.

“You need to be home with your husband. Grace and I are still trying to work things out.”

Maris sat back and crossed her legs, smirking.

“Really? I hear she might have another opinion of that.”

“What do you mean?”

“I hear she’s stepping out. I hear Dr. Grace has a date this weekend.”

“With who?” I asked. I clenched my jaw.

Sit back, old man. She could be baiting you. It could be a lie.

Maris shrugged. “Somebody with the college, maybe. Somebody with the symphony—I don’t know. I just heard she had an escort to this weekend’s benefit.”

The annual symphony benefit was one of Fawcettville’s social highlights, when the community’s leading lights came down from their hillside homes, the last event before the snow began to fall from the sky and Fawcettville locked itself down for the winter. The chief would be there, along with the mayor and city council, and the town’s big donors. I’d forgotten it was this weekend. Grace got me into a tuxedo five years running for the event. She’d always looked striking in whatever gown she’d chosen.

I closed my eyes and remembered those nights after the benefit was over and the gown was in a wad on the floor.

“Grace wouldn’t do that to me.”

“Oh she wouldn’t, huh? You’re sure about that.” Maris slipped off the desk, tucked her black leather designer bag beneath her arm and walked toward the door. “When you figure out that she’s moved on, I’ll be waiting,” she called back over her shoulder.

And she was gone.

I pulled the laptop back from the edge of the desk and sighed. Grace wouldn’t be going to the benefit without me, would she? She couldn’t be dating already, right?

I tried to focus on Jacob Poole’s court record, but couldn’t do it. After a couple hours, I hit the power button on the laptop and shut the lid.

Go ask her. Head over to the college and find out. If she were dating somebody, she’d tell you, I thought to myself.

Yes, and if she is, that means it’s really over, my heart answered.

I had to know. Maris Monroe would lie to me, just to get me back in the sack and twist my life up more than it already was. I didn’t need that kind of poison in my life. Rather than believe Maris, I’ll go straight to the source. Good thing about the Internet, it was open all night. I could finish my research on Atwater, Poole and Cantolini later. I needed to talk to Grace now.

I slid on my hoodie and walked out the door. I turned to lock the door when a thick hand grabbed my collar, shoving my face against the doorframe. I felt the cold barrel of a gun between my shoulder blades. Any sudden move I made toward my Glock .45 caliber, tucked into the shoulder holster inside my hoodie, would not have ended well. I let my hands hug the wall.

“I’d leave it alone, if I were you.” The voice was deep and raspy, one I couldn’t recognize.

“I never touched her—I don’t care what she told you,” I answered.

“Huh?” The hand at the base of my skull released for a minute and I tried to turn. The goon pushed back, slamming my face into the door again, making me see stars.

“Maris Monroe. She was here earlier. I told her to go home to her husband,” I said, tasting blood inside my mouth. “I never touched her.”

“I don’t give a rat’s ass about your women. It’s that case you took.” The gun barrel pushed harder in between my shoulders.

“What about it?”

“Drop it. Drop it now.”

“Why? What’s it to you?”

“I’m just here to deliver a message.”

The gun butt came down hard on the back of my head and as I fell to the floor, the lights went out.

Call Fitz Chapter 1

I’m going to try something new—I’m going to post chapters each Saturday night of my first Fitz novel, CALL FITZ. If you’d like to read more, the complete book is for sale on Amazon.com as both an Ebook and a paperback book. This is the first book in a series that will include three books—so far. The second book is called HOLY FITZ and is also available on Amazon. The third book, LOVE FITZ, will come out in late May. Enjoy!

Chapter 1

Gina Cantolini was a whore, but she didn’t deserve to die like that. I mean, the girl had a lot of friends.

It was Fawcettville’s annual Italian Fest, where they closed down four city blocks and the scent of marinara, cannoli and cheap Chianti hung like a fog around the stone Civil War soldier standing at attention in the center of the square. Every wop or wannabe in town was there.

Which was amazing because nobody ever saw Gina’s bloody body underneath the bandstand set up in the middle of the street. Her one sandal-clad foot must have stuck out from beneath the canvas skirt at the back of the stage for hours.

It doesn’t say much for me that I, the only PI in town, didn’t see it either, even as I leaned out the office window to look out over the crowd, a bottle of Jack and a glass sitting on the sill.

My office is up above Grundy’s Fine Watches and Jewelers on the town square. It’s not much to look at, all dark wood, used furniture and bad paint straight out of a film noir. Since my wife dumped me, I’ve been sleeping on the waiting room couch at night, eating at a variety of downtown diners and showering at the YMCA after my morning workout.

That night, blue, flashing lights woke me up about 1 a.m. I looked out the window to see a couple cruisers and the coroner’s van behind what was left of the bandstand. I wasn’t on that payroll anymore, so I didn’t give a shit. I’d made it through the requisite twenty years it took to get a cop’s pension. I went back to sleep.

Police picked up the suspect, Michael Atwater, within a few hours after finding the body, according to the TV news the next morning. I knew Atwater from my days on the force. A kid from a decent, hardworking family who was known for making really stupid choices, Atwater wasn’t the type to kill anybody, but you never know. Maybe he tried to steal Gina’s purse and she fought back. Maybe he wanted something that wasn’t on Gina’s usual menu, or maybe he just refused to pay and things got out of hand. Either way, a twenty-five-year-old hooker was dead and a small time thug was behind bars for her murder.

Seemed pretty cut and dried.

And, again, not my problem.

So, two days later, I was surprised when his attorney, James Ambrosi, Esquire, was waiting in the hall at my office door when I got back from the Y. He was leaning against the wall, reading email on his smart phone.

“So, Jimbo,” I said, pulling the office key from my hoodie pocket and sliding it into the lock. “What brings you here?”

Ambrosi was closer to the end of his mediocre legal career than the beginning. He was a slob, like his clients, and his breath smelled like convenience store cigars. His suits were cheap and what was left of his comb-over was gray. He was on the lower rungs on the town’s legal ladder, the kind of lawyer who could get a halfway decent plea agreement negotiated for you, but probably couldn’t be counted on to provide a stellar defense.

In all my years on the force, I spent a lot of time in courtrooms, explaining how or why the asshole at the defense table ended up there. I don’t think Ambrosi cross-examined me more than a handful of times and every time his client ended up doing hard time.

Me, I didn’t do a lot of defense work in my newest profession.

Most of my clients were suburban wives with enough money to pay me to verify what they knew in their hearts: hubby had a little something on the side. If it wasn’t the wives themselves that called me, it was their lawyers.

Most of the wives wanted to pay me back the same way their husbands had betrayed them.

It’s why I’m sleeping on the waiting room couch.

Ambrosi didn’t speak as we walked through the door. I tossed my gym bag into the corner, next to an end table filled with old Field and Stream magazines.

“Coffee?” I asked. As he followed me into the office, I shoved a cup his direction, so as to keep his cigar breath at arm’s length.

“Sure.” Ambrosi accepted my offering and sank into one of the ratty chairs in front of my desk.

I poured myself a cup and seated myself.

“So, what brings you here?” I repeated.

“Mike Atwater, the kid they picked up for Gina Cantolini’s murder.”

“You representing him?” Poor kid. You’d think his parents would find a real lawyer.

“Uh huh.” Ambrosi took a sip of his coffee. “You know me, Fitz, I don’t give a shit one way or the other if my client is guilty or innocent. I just want him to get a decent defense.”

I nodded. “Of course. I understand.” With the least amount of effort on your part, I’m sure.

“And we both know that most of the clients that troop through my office probably did it. This time, though, I think this guy’s innocent. I need somebody to look into what’s going on. Naturally, your esteemed firm of Fitzhugh Investigations came to mind immediately.”

“You know most of my stuff is matrimonial, right?”

“You could do this, Fitz. I know you could, you being a retired cop and all.”

I flipped the daily pages on my desktop calendar. Cases were a little thin right now—the blank pages confirmed that. I could use the money, especially if I needed to pay for my own divorce lawyer.

“Why do you think this kid is innocent?” I asked.

Ambrosi sank into the shoulders of his cheap suit and sighed.

“He wouldn’t kill Gina. He’s the father of two of her three children.”

“He is? I did not know that. But, sad to say, it happens all the time.” I shrugged.

“But my client was crazy about Gina and crazy about those two kids.”

I shrugged again. “Doesn’t mean they couldn’t have argued and it got violent. Were they living together?”

“No. She’s no a Sunday school teacher—we both know that. She had another boyfriend. Maybe a third, both of them violent.”

“Give me their names.” I pulled pencil out of my desk drawer and found a piece of scrap paper on the desk.

“Poole. Jacob Poole—that’s the one my client told me about. She had a restraining order against him and he’s the father of one of her kids.”

“So who’s the other one?”

“My client claims it’s a cop.”

I arched an eyebrow. Chief Nathaniel Monroe hated my guts—and I hated his.

The reason I’m sleeping on the waiting room couch was the same reason my career at the police force ended. Women and an inability to say no to them at one time were the reason I got discharged from the air force (the wing commander’s wife) and, in college, why I lost my scholarship (the football coach’s wife).

I left the Fawcettville police force after getting caught with the luscious and lonely Mrs. Maris Monroe.

The chief was going to fire me, but I filed my retirement papers twenty minutes before he called me into his office. He’d been gunning for me ever since. It wasn’t my fault he couldn’t keep his wife happy in the sack. I wasn’t the first—I was just the first to get caught.

What if Monroe had a crooked cop on his staff that killed a hooker? I’d love to embarrass that bastard one more time.

“I’ll take the case.”

*****

The next day, I walked the three blocks from my office to meet Ambrosi and my newest client at the county jail.

Fawcettville was one of those eastern Ohio towns that had weathered more than one economic rise and fall and it showed. The first economic wave brought the Irish, along with Eastern European and Italian immigrants, like my ancestors, to work in the potteries, making the dishes that filled kitchens all over the world, making Fawcettville famous—and prosperous. When the potteries shuttered their doors, the wops and the Pollacks, the krauts and the micks all found work in the blast furnaces and the foundries of the steel mills that sprang up in the triangle between Akron, Pittsburgh and Steubenville.

When I was a kid, most people worked in the steel mills. My dad, Sgt. Aidan Fitzhugh was a beat cop, like his dad and his dad before that. We were the only Irish family in the Italian neighborhood everyone called New Tivoli and my Ma, Maria Gallione Fitzhugh made Sunday dinners of pasta, drowning in marinara and meatballs, washed down with gallons of dago red wine.

It was Ma who insisted I carry her father Niccolo’s name. In a tough Italian neighborhood in a tougher Ohio steel town, a kid named Niccolo Fitzhugh got made fun of a lot—“Nick the Mick” was the most common taunt my small, scrawny self endured. Then puberty discovered me and I discovered high school football and the weight room. “Nick the Mick” just became Fitz.

Neighborhoods back then were marked by their ethnicities. The krauts, the Poles and the hunkies lived in the Flats, down by the creek that ran through town. The hillbillies, the blacks and the Mexicans lived further out, toward the edge of town in a ratty neighborhood that edged next to the mills and the industrial area, called Tubman Gardens.

Further away from the creek, up the steep eastern Ohio hills that rose above Fawcettville was where the mills’ executives and middle management lived. The doctors, the lawyers, folks with degrees and letters after their names, lived up those hills in big sprawling houses. It was a symbol that you made it when you could leave the old bricked streets, with their old wooden houses and tiny yards and move to the suburbs on the hills.

Then that light, too, went out when I was in high school. The mills closed and Fawcettville got real ugly real fast. Most everyone began referring to it as “F-Town,” for obvious reasons. It was fucked economically.

It was the dirty windows of empty storefronts, filled with cobwebs, abandoned display cabinets and peeling paint, that I was running from all those years ago when, after losing my Kent State football scholarship, I got on a bus for Lackland Air Force Base and a hitch in the air force. When I came back in the eighties, things were looking up yet again. This time I had my training as a security policeman in my back pocket and, thanks to my dad, a job on the Fawcettville police department waiting on me.

I looked up at what used to be the hometown department store as I strolled toward the jail. Thanks to the latest economic incarnation, the search for natural gas deep in the shale beneath the ground, money was flowing back into Fawcettville. What I knew as Kleinman’s Department Store was now broken down into a series of artist’s studios, where every wannabe Da Vinci and Grandma Moses could set up their easel and paint for a small rental fee. Their art now filled the windows of the first floor gallery, some of it exceptional, most of it crap. I turned the corner and passed the Mexican joint where Lupe, the owner’s daughter, automatically opened a cold Dos XX for me when I walked in the door. Next to the Mexican diner sat a drug store, a tattoo parlor and a cell phone store. There was a coffee shop known for its Hungarian pastries and, across the street, sat the old jail, built shortly before the Civil War soldier in the center of town.

I stopped in front of the old Victorian structure, which was now a four-star restaurant called Ye Olde Gaol. I jammed my hands in my pants pocket and sighed.

Six years ago, I’d asked Dr. Grace Darcy, Ph.D., to marry me there. She was tough talking, tall, with dark cascading hair and brown eyes that shot with fire when I pissed her off, which was often. As the principal cellist in the Fawcettville symphony and a professor of music at the college, she was infinitely a better catch than I was.

I’d married up, no doubt. How could I have fucked it up so badly?

I shook my head and stepped across the bricked street toward the seventies’ era jail, all razor wire and concrete. Michael Atwater and his illustrious legal representative were waiting for me there.

The Mittens

The phone call came as I was leaving my son’s house after a day of babysitting my grandchildren.

My favorite llama, named Sarah Ferguson for her friendly, willing personality, had been found lying outside the barn door with a broken leg.

Fergie, as we called her, was our first llama, purchased twelve years ago, along with a gelded male named Artie, to help calm a herd of hyper-reactive female alpacas by serving as their guards.

Fergie and Artie protected the females by working in amazing tandem. When a predator—a coyote, stray dog, or other animal—deigned to wander into the pasture, one would gather the females and their babies, called cria, into the barn as the other chased the intruders to the fences, attempting to literally stomp the life from them. The slower intruders never made it to the safety of the fence and freedom—the faster ones who did, knew not to return.

Over time, Artie became the aggressor, the advance guard and storm trooper who took on any animal not a recognized part of the herd—especially when there were young llamas and alpacas. Raccoons, possums—even, in one unfortunate confrontation, a mama skunk and her line of babies trekking across the back pasture—felt Artie’s two-toed front feet on their backs as Fergie stood in the doorway of the girl’s side of the barn, head up, eyes following Artie as he kept them all safe.

I’d used her to carry camping gear on hikes in western Ohio. At llama shows, I took Fergie through the performance course, through showmanship classes and halter classes. I have a photo of her with a 4H kid, who’d dressed the ever patient llama as a pirate, complete with three-corner hat, a modified jacket around her front legs and an eye patch.

As Fergie aged, arthritis set in and the animal every first year 4H kid took to the fair was retired.

We gave her NSAIDS for her pain, but it became more and more clear that at one point, we’d need to make the decision to put her down.

Now, as I stood in my son’s living room, I realized the decision would probably be made sooner than I thought.

Her right front leg was broken, the bone sticking through above the knee. Back home, my husband Greg had friends to help load her into the livestock trailer. Our vet heavily sedated her to keep her pain at minimum. At last thought, Greg pulled the comforter off our bed and wrapped it around Fergie to keep her warm on the way.

An hour later, I was waiting at the OSU veterinary hospital when Greg arrived. The truck was still backing into the vet hospital’s receiving bay as I opened the trailer and jumped in.

“Oh, Fergie,” I bawled. Despite the sedation, she tried to raise her head.

I haven’t been in farming long. We got into the business of raising alpacas in 1999 and added llamas soon after that. Preceding those animals that, my daughter raised the annual 4H steer and a herd of milk and meat goats, which paid for her first year of college.

What I did learn was what most farmers knew all too well: If you’re going to have livestock, at some point, you’re going to have dead stock. When it became came apparent the leg couldn’t be repaired, we made the decision to put her down. We donated her body to the hospital for veterinary students to study.

That weekend, I had a book signing in Indianapolis. When I returned Sunday night, and Fergie wasn’t waiting for me at the fence, I sat in my car and sobbed in a most unfarmerly way.

Time went on. New llama babies were born. The next spring, we sheared everyone when I got a call from the mill where I sent my llama and alpaca fiber to be spun into yarn.

“We found some red and gray llama fiber. We think it belongs to you.”

When I arrived at the mill two hours later, it wasn’t hard to determine whose fiber that was. It was Fergie’s, two huge trash bags filled with her fiber which had been processed into rovings.

There are several steps in taking in animal wall or fiber from the animal’s back to yarn.

The first involves skirting, where the fiber is handpicked to remove vegetation, mud, or even feces that may have gotten stuck in the animal’s fiber. The second step is to wash it. This can be a delicate process—if you don’t do it correctly you could end up with a wad of felt that can’t be used for anything. The third step is the picking: fibers are run through a picker which removes smaller pieces of vegetation and starts the process of getting the fibers lined up in one direction.

The third step, carding, is where Fergie’s fiber processing stopped. A carder takes fiber, which is been run through a picker and continues the process of lining up the fibers. Fiber that comes through a carder comes out in one of two forms: a long continuous roving, if done by an industrial carder or, a small, cigar-sized bundle called a rolag, If done by hand.

Apparently, the machinery had broken down at some point between the carder and the spinner. While I had picked up the finished yarn, the mill had forgotten to give me Fergie’s rovings.

So here I was with a large, wonderful gift from beyond the grave. When I got home, I opened the bags, pulled out an armful of rovings—probably 10 pounds in all—and cried. They still carried her particular llama scent.

Even better, I now had the opportunity to have something from Fergie that would last forever. Over the next year, I hand-spun thousands of yards of Fergie’s rovings into yarn as I tried to decide what to make. A sweater? A pair of mittens? A hat? After spinning, I had enough for a sweater, but still could not decide on the pattern. A raglan sweater? A cardigan? Knit side to side or with circular needles to minimize final sewing? I started several sweaters and then, unhappy with either the fit or the pattern, I ripped the stitches out only to start again.

Last November, I took my four-year-old grandson Louie camping. It was to be the last campout of the year. And while I planned for what could be indoor activities in the RV, I also packed a small project for myself. I packed what was left of Fergie’s rovings and my drop spindle.

During our camp out, we hiked through the woods, threw rocks into the lake from the beach, and rode bicycles down the lane. As always, the best part was sitting around the fire and roasting marshmallows. While Grandpa and Louie roasted marshmallows, I took out my drop spindle and began to spin. Louie was soon fascinated.

“Show me, show me! Please, grandma!”

And so, I did. As he spun the spindle, I drafted the fiber and twisted it; Louie watched as it went from fuzzy and thick to thin, tight and fine. He turned the spindle, I spun the yarn and we both wound the finished product on the shaft. He was so fascinated that the next morning, he wanted to do it again. So, we did.

By the time we dropped him off at his parents the next day, we had managed a ball of yarn about the size of a tennis ball. It not nearly enough for a sweater, but Louie wanted something out of the yarn he had made.

Coming home, I pondered what to make of this precious yarn. I still had not completed the sweater I promised myself, and I still had a little more roving to spend. In a week, I had completely spun up what was left of Fergie’s roving’s—enough for a pair of mittens for Louie.

When I handed those mittens to Louie, his eyes got big.

“Remember our camping trip? Remember spinning the fiber? These mittens are from your yarn that you made.”

I know Louie will outgrow those mittens at some point, If he hasn’t already. I do hear from his mother he wears them whenever possible, even indoors. I tell him stories about Fergie and what she was like. I show him photos of the day, when he was two, Louie led Fergie around the paddock and she kept her nose close to him as they walked.

I am still working on the sweater. Maybe someday I’ll finish it, but right now I’m hoarding what is left of her yarn and still trying to decide on a pattern.

One thing those stray bags of roving have done is connect two generations to the earth and its processes of life, death, and renewal through one beloved llama. I know in that way, Fergie the llama will live forever.

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year!

As I look back on 2015, I have a n awful lot to be thankful for, both personally and professionally. I hope you do too!

For me, 2015 was a year of loss. Some of it was difficult—I lost my mother, with whom I had less than a positive relationship, but some of it was positive—twenty pounds of positive!

I made the choice last January to begin eating healthy and walking along the many bike paths around the area. I’m down to the last ten I need to lose, so once New Year’s Day rolls around, I’ll start the process anew with determination and grit. (Like everybody else, it’s so hard to resist all the wonderful holiday treats!)

And, like most folks, I never lost the weight exactly where I wanted to. I went down several clothes sizes, but I also lost weight in my fingers. While the purchase of new clothing was delightful, I might just need to spend money to resize my wedding rings!

I had a wonderful early Christmas with my son Scott, his wife Whitney and their two children Louie and Lena, and spend Christmas Day with my daughter Becky and mother-in-law Bonnie in Washington D.C. I’m truly blessed to have my children and grandchildren in my life. I’m hoping your holidays were as warm and wonderful as mine were.

One of my goals last year was to put out four books—which I nearly accomplished. I published an ebook anthology of my Addison McIntyre series, called Death Comes to Jubilant Falls and edited a free anthology of holiday stories and poems for the writer’s group I lead, called The Gift.

I also published my first thriller, Call Fitz, which went on to win Best Thriller at the Queen of the West Book Bash in Cincinnati, Ohio. Such a great honor to be recognized by my readers!

My final goal of 2015 was to complete and publish my second thriller in the Niccolo Fitzhugh story, Holy Fitz. Research stumbling blocks, extensive appearances throughout the fall and other personal things kept me from publishing it in time for holiday sales, but I am proud to say that I did complete it before the end of this year. It’s been through two thorough edits with my two wonderful (but unbelievably tough) editor and this week I’m starting on the rewrite process.

The cover is also complete, thanks to my graphic designer (and daughter) Becky Gaskill.

My hope is to have Holy Fitz available for preorders very shortly and published by the end of January.

I have big plans, too, for 2016, in addition to knocking off those last ten pounds.

On a personal level, I’m due for a household purge. The kitchen is filled with too many things that never get used (pumpkin-shaped cake pan, anyone?) and too many duplicates—although one can never have too many wine bottle openers. I hope to go through each room of the house this year and make massive donations to Goodwill.

I’m also committed to better record-keeping and improved productivity. It was a great goal to try to publish four books in one year, but that was too high to achieve and didn’t leave room for snafus like I experienced. This year, I plan to complete three books: the third book in the Fitz series, Love Fitz is underway and will be available this spring. Two other books—a fourth Fitz book and a possible return to the Jubilant Falls series are also on the calendar for 2016.

One of the biggest goals I hope to accomplish in 2016 is putting out Call Fitz as an audio book, with the help of my son Scott Shelton. It’s a massive experiment, since so many folks are consuming their fiction via audiobooks, but one I think I’d like to try. I’ll keep you informed on how that project is coming.

What are your goals for the new year? I’d love to hear about them!

Here’s to a Happy New Year!

Goodbye

He was my champion.

I was her pain in the ass.

When my father died, I found the articles I’d written stabbed against a cork board with his used insulin needles. I’ve always felt that was an affirmation that our love of words, writing and literature was in our blood, that I was truly his daughter. I believe he was deeply proud of what I’d become, coming from being a young mother, divorced at 21, to a military wife, a newspaper reporter, editor and mystery novelist.

When Mom got cancer, she told those around her to not contact me, that she would keep me informed as to the progress of her disease. Ever intent on staying within her favor, those around my mother complied, not informing me as she lay dying.

Enablers can be guilty of abuse, too.

My brother and sister didn’t contact me when she died. Instead, my son was relegated to making that phone call.

If I hadn’t searched for her obituary online, I wouldn’t have known what time the services were.

Not that I’ll go.

Welcome to the long term effect of asking children to choose up sides in a divorce. Folks may believe that the kids will “get over it,” but a lot of times those walls stay up and the temperature stays chilly. My parents made sure of that. And when families are in crises, the polarity rises, the hurt comes back and, at least in my case, the one who wants it all to come out in the open gets shoved to the back of a very dark, very damp basement.

Reading the condolences is like fingers on a blackboard to me. They speak of her vibrancy, her humor and what a wonderful person she was.

If I went to her funeral, I wouldn’t keep my mouth shut.

The folks who wrote those condolences were never the recipient of long, enforced silences, refusals to discuss the past and, at the base of it all, the story no one ever talked about, but one she cooked up, accusing my father of sexually abusing my sister during a bitter custody battle.

After my father died and the walls stayed up, I quit trying to get answers as to why it happened or what it would take to make it better.

Those who wrote those condolences were never the ones to hear the words like: “If I had it to do all over again, I’d never have you kids.”

Her answer after being asked if she’d ever remarry: “I’d never subject a marriage to you three kids.” Of course, when she did remarry, we did just fine.

On my daughter’s diagnosis with mental illness: “She’s not sick, she’s a spoiled brat.”

On my decision to become a reporter: “My secretary makes more money than you’ll ever make at that newspaper.” (My stories will be on microfilm at the public library for the next 100 years or so. Who’s going to look into your accounts payable?)

On the day I was named Citizen of the Year for my small village: “I’m so glad you decided to have this on my birthday” and promptly, loudly complained to the event organizer about the  flowers you’d just been given. “Here. Water these—they’re dry.”

Or when my father died: “I’m sorry I made you an orphan.”

Maybe twenty years ago, I should have accepted those words and receded into the woodwork, ignored the scapegoating, the gas lighting and accepted the isolation which in the end, left me here alone long before she died.

After a while, people stop listening. They don’t want to hear you complain about a wound that still festers—but they also don’t ever do anything to help the wound heal, either. Even friendship has its limits and I have watched a very dear friend get sucked into the circle of those who matter and away from me, the one who clearly doesn’t.

I found it grimly funny that when my brother and sister did not attend my father’s funeral, it was generally accepted that they were his “victims.” No doubt, when I’m not seen at my mother’s funeral, I will not be a victim, I will be the ungrateful daughter, the bitch and the one who’s trying to make the situation center around me.

Is it any surprise that my novels center around family secrets and the damage they can do?

I’ve made arrangements with the funeral home to sit beside my mother’s cremated remains before the service starts, before family gets there.

I’ll be leaving a note that simply says “Mom, I’m sorry I wasn’t good enough for you. You missed a lot.”

Enter to get a free copy of CALL FITZ!

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by Debra Gaskill

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I’m a writer. What’s there to be scared of?

What do I fear as a writer? That���s simple���errors. Having spent twenty years as a newspaper reporter and editor, I know the repercussions of getting something in print and getting in wrong.

When I was a managing editor of a newspaper, I would wake up in the middle of the night, in a cold sweat, convinced I���d left something critical out of a story (or one of my reporters had) or I���d made some horribly egregious error that would show up on Jay Leno���s ���Headlines��� segment on the Tonight Show.

Don���t laugh. It happened.

The same is true in mystery writing. There is no more critical and well-informed audience than mystery readers, who can parse every detail and every clue to the Nth degree and who, more likely, are correct.


For example, take when my first book, BARN BURNER, was published. The reaction, while positive as to the story, the characters and pacing, was swift as to the errors. And what readers picked out as errors just blew me away.

���You���ve got the fire chief wearing a yellow helmet. The chief always wears a white helmet.���

���That kind of gun wouldn���t leave shells behind.���

���Any cop who knows his stuff wouldn���t put himself in that situation.”

Suffice it to say that I had believed that I was objective enough to look at my own writing and catch my own errors.

Nope.

The good news: As a self published writer, I can pull a manuscript down from its publishing platform, make the corrections and re-upload the manuscript. The new correct manuscript is generally back up for sale within 12-24 hours.

The bad news: Those reviews that note my errors are there to stay.

The lesson: Get an editor, let them rip your manuscript to shreds and then respect their suggestions. They can look at your work with a clearer eye.

As a journalist, I have no problem asking questions or doing research. I���ll call anybody and ask anything. That���s a very valuable skill to have as a fiction writer, too. I just didn���t do it as often as I should have in BARN BURNER.

Since then, I���ve made more than a few trauma surgeons nervous, especially when asking about gunshot wounds. (���You sure this is fiction?���) I also corralled a friend���s husband at a cocktail party, and asked him uncomfortable questions. My friend���s husband manages a hog farm and I was considering having a body disposed of by being thrown into a pen of hogs in one of my books.

Hogs will eat anything. Living as I do on a farm, I���ve heard more than one story about this, but I���d never thought much about ��it until I had a bad guy who worked at a hog farm.

I cornered my friends husband at this cocktail party and asked, point blank, ���So, Ian, how long would it take for a hog to eat up all trace of a dead body?”

And while Ian (and my husband and most of the people at the cocktail party) were horrified, most people have no problem talking about themselves or their profession and are glad to share with you. They may even come up with ideas to make your story better. Just make sure you���re asking questions at socially appropriate times.

I���m in the midst of writing my sixth novel, CALL FITZ, ��about a private investigator trying to keep an innocent man out of prison for a murder he didn���t commit.

I recently spent an afternoon with a volunteer firefighter discussing the damage a Molotov cocktail would do in a certain situation, specifically an older office building with older wooden furniture. I learned what would burn easily and what wouldn���t���surprisingly, the older furniture I���d filled this fictional office with were less likely to burn if they didn���t have an easy ignition source, like a cheap rug or curtains.

It was possible for a Molotov cocktail to hit the floor, flash and then burn out without doing significant damage, depending on what the liquid ignition is.

So I added some stuff to Fitz���s office: a cheap Chinese rug and flimsy curtains, and two suspects who threw the firebombs in through the front office door and the back office window, to make it more likely Fitz would face more danger and raise the stakes in the mystery.

And, according to my firefighter friend, it did.

Writing can be a grand and glorious adventure���if you get the details right. Ask questions, even when you think you know the answer. There might be something you get wrong, and that could be scary.

Deb Gaskill is the author of the Jubilant Falls series, six novels which center around the staff of a small southwestern Ohio newspaper staff and the crimes they solve. She is at work on her first PI novel, tentatively titled CALL FITZ. Follow her blog AT��https://debragaskill.wordpress.com.

So much for plans…

What is the adage ���When men make plans, God laughs?��� I think that���s one of those things my grandmother used to tell me.

My last blog entry was full of all my mad creative plans for weaving a rug.

Then I went to Washington DC to visit my daughter��� and promptly picked up the stomach bug that was going around her office. I spent the weekend puking into her toilet, then puking into a pan at the emergency room. Sunday I was too weak to leave, so spent the day (and evening) lying on her couch, so weak I couldn���t fully appreciate fellow Springfield, Ohio native John Legend���s Oscar win for his song ���Selma.���

It took a full week to recover and it wasn���t until this past weekend that I finally got it together enough to weave my rug��� I went with a random warp of 8/4 carpet warp at six ends per inch in six different colors and wool loops strung together in matching tones and it���s beautiful.

I���ve got enough wool loops to make one more rug and then it���s on to a stash-busting blanket of some sort.

But I���m back. The writing is going well and the creative juices are still flowing. Now, if only we could do something about this snow���

An anthology of all five Jubilant Falls mysteries is available for Kindle on Amazon.com for $5.99. Also, BARN BURNER, THE MAJOR���S WIFE, LETHAL LITTLE LIES and MURDER ON THE LUNATIC FRINGE are also available on iTunes.