LynDee Walker's Blog, page 3
August 6, 2018
Blog Two
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Deleted Scene from Buried Leads
This is what folks in the publishing industry call “killing your darlings,” because I adore this scene, but it wasn’t strictly necessary to the mystery in BURIED LEADS. Maybe it will turn up in another of Nichelle’s stories someday—but for now, I hope y’all enjoy it.
-LynDee
DELETED SCENE from BURIED LEADS:
“Baseball with Parker”
He laughed. “Foul balls are not attracted to your head. There’s a law of physics I’m sure will back me up, but I didn’t pay enough attention in that class to remember what it is.”
“We’ll see.” I waved to a vendor and opened an overpriced bottle of Diet Coke before I turned back to Parker. “I don’t have enough fingers to count the number of baseballs and footballs I’ve been beaned by in my lifetime. Laws of physics be damned, flying objects are attracted to my head.”
He rolled his eyes and pulled a clipboard with a stat sheet on it and a pencil out of his canvas briefcase. “I’ll protect you.”
“Why doesn’t that make me feel any safer?” I dropped my bottle into the green plastic cupholder molded into the armrest. “I think it has something to do with your lack of enthusiasm—or possibly your lack of a glove.”
The announcer asked us to stand and the first bars of the anthem came over the PA system, followed by the ceremonial pitch. It was thrown by a gold-pigtailed little girl who’d won a reading contest in her school district to earn the honor. It made it about five feet past the foot of the mound, but she leapt and clapped, pigtails flying, like she’d struck out Jeter. Flashes popped from a half-dozen directions. That would make the wires overnight and show up in several sports sections in the morning.
The first four innings passed quickly, the Generals taking an early lead over Tampa Bay. I ate my hot dog (why do they taste better at the ballpark?) and cheered when necessary. Every foul hit by either team soared over the third-base line, but I flinched anyway. Parker chuckled and shook his head.
“Maybe we should go up to the press box,” he said when a Devil Ray popped one back a few rows above us in the bottom of the fifth.
“It’s more fun down here,” I said. “Football can be watched any old way. Baseball is better when you’re close enough to experience it.”
In the bottom of the sixth, the Rays were in position to close the gap on the scoreboard with a grand slam. The batter had a full count, and most everyone around us leaned a little farther forward in their seat with every breath. The pitcher tried a curve. A sharp crack echoed off the stadium walls as the bat connected with the ball. And I froze as it came hurtling at my face. Time slowed to a crawl. I could almost count the stitches on the thing. I dropped my head to my knees and threw my arms over it for good measure.
“I got it! I got it!” A man’s voice came from behind me, and I heard the snap of leather meeting itself as he pinched his fingers together inside a baseball glove.
“You’ve got to be kidding me.” That was Parker, muttered under his breath as Glove Man shouted excitedly. Parker’s pencil hit the concrete under my feet. I didn’t risk looking up.
A sharp slapping sound. A hiss of quick-caught breath.
“Hey, I called it!”
I sat up just in time to see Parker flip the ball easily into the guy’s glove. Mr. I Got It looked to be in his forties, wearing a starched Generals jersey over Izod shorts, and Birkenstocks on his feet. His cap looked a little ridiculous, sitting backward on his obviously-white-collar-businessman head.
“Keep it, man,” Parker said. “Not trying to steal your souvenir. Just wanted to make sure it didn’t hit my friend.”
The guy stared at the ball, then at Parker.
“Hey—are you Grant Parker?” He took the ball out of the glove and held it out. “Will you sign this for me?”
I smiled and turned back to the game.
“You’ve got me there.” I sipped my Coke when Parker resumed his seat. “I’ve never been asked for my autograph … ever. But certainly not at a crime scene.”
He laughed as he leaned down and reached for his pen. “Does this mean I’ve managed to impress the unimpressable Nichelle Clarke? Well, hot damn.” He winked. “Now, about this business with baseballs and your head. Is one about all we should expect for the game? Because catching them’s not as much fun without a glove.”
“Lord, I hope one is all I get. I’ve been cracked in the head enough this year to last me a while.” I grimaced when I saw the bright red splash the ball left on his palm. “Sorry. And thanks. Though I think I’m well within my rights when I say ‘I told you so.’ ”
The last three innings flew by without incident. I tossed my empty bottle into a trash bin at the end of the row on the way to the press box, where Parker could plug in his laptop and file his story so it could go on the web before the eleven o’clock news. We’d brought my car. The thought that I’d have to wait for him after the game hadn’t really occurred to me, but I didn’t have any place to be, anyway.
Parker hitched his bag over one shoulder and chuckled at Glove Man, who was detailing a phenomenal imaginary foul ball recovery to whoever was on the other end of his cell phone.
“And then I saw Grant Parker in line for a hot dog, and he asked if that was me who made that catch.” Glove Man turned away from us as he spoke. “And I said, ‘Hell yes, it was me!’ And he offered to sign the ball for me, so I let him. Nice guy. Shame about his shoulder.”
Parker’s grin faded, something else entirely flickering on his face. He slid past me and headed up the concrete steps at a jog. I tossed a glare at Glove Man and followed—slower, thanks to my heels. Writing about people who did what he’d always dreamt of had to wear on Parker. Especially when inconsiderate asshats rubbed his nose in it.
Parker was silent on the elevator ride to the press box, and we got off so most of the other reporters could get on. Parker opened his laptop, and I wandered out onto the balcony and amused myself by watching the grounds crew’s methodical postgame routine.
Just as they were wrapping up, Parker joined me on the balcony.
“I love it here.” He spread his arms and leaned against the rail. “The cheers and the crowds and the bustle…but this is also my favorite place to be alone. Clears my head.”
“You want me to wait for you downstairs?”
“That’s not what I meant.” He shook his head. “You’re awfully literal sometimes.”
“I just—that guy, in the stands. It bothered you.”
“And perceptive, too.”
“What happened? I know you got hurt, but people get hurt all the time.”
He sighed. “That is a long story for another day,” he said. “Most of the time, I love my job. I still get to move in this world. And when it’s quiet out here, it’s easy to pretend for a minute.”
His eyes strayed to the field, and the pitcher’s mound in the center.
I stepped back and let him have his moment.
LynDee Walker
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Blog One
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Class aptent taciti sociosqu ad litora torquent per conubia nostra, per inceptos himenaeos. Curabitur sodales ligula in libero. Sed dignissim lacinia nunc. Curabitur tortor. Pellentesque nibh. Aenean quam. In scelerisque sem at dolor. Maecenas mattis. Sed convallis tristique sem. Proin ut ligula vel nunc egestas porttitor. Morbi lectus risus, iaculis vel, suscipit quis, luctus non, massa. Fusce ac turpis quis ligula lacinia aliquet. Mauris ipsum.
LynDee Walker
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July 6, 2018
July 2018
I hope you’re enjoying summer! It’s flying by here, between keeping up with my littles and working on Deadly Politics, the new Nichelle Clarke novel, but I sure am having fun being back in the Telegraph newsroom in the mornings and evenings, and having my children home during the day. Amid the writing, trips to […]
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June 21, 2018
Hello world!
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January 3, 2015
King’s River Life Magazine:
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NYT Bestselling Author Julia Spencer-Fleming:
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September 18, 2014
Teaser Thursday: Devil in the Deadline
Can’t wait for January 6 to catch up with Nichelle and the gang? Here’s a little preview of chapter one:
Near-bottom on my list of ways to spend a Saturday night: going to work dressed like an extra from Flashdance. Criminals have such little respect for reporters’ social lives.
I ducked under crime scene tape and glanced around a decaying concrete building, the holes left by missing sections of wall offering moonlit views of the colossal boulders of Belle Isle.
Boulders I was out of breath from scaling in heels and a miniskirt. And it looked like I wasn’t through climbing yet.
“Did I miss a memo about Halloween moving to June?” Aaron White, the Richmond police spokesman, called from ten feet above my head.
“Aw, c’mon, Aaron—all the cool kids are wearing Lycra and leg warmers.” I put one Manolo on the bottom rung of a circus-length extension ladder. “One step at a time, don’t look down,” I muttered. Ladders and stilettos aren’t really meant to mix.
“I’m firmly out of the loop on two counts, then—no one’s called me a kid in at least a decade.” Aaron chuckled.
“One count. You’re the coolest not-kid I know.” Stepping into the loft, I shot a bracing hand out for the graffitied wall when my foot slid under me. “Do I want to know what I’m walking in, here?”
“Not blood. I make no guarantees beyond that,” Aaron said, a snicker slipping through his teeth as RPD floodlights illuminated my racing-stripe plum blush and the cloud of White Rain and frizz surrounding my head. “What are you supposed to be? You look like a h—”
“Shut up,” I said, shooting him a warning glare that’d probably be more foreboding minus the four layers of neon eyeshadow. “No, don’t. But lay off the costume—haven’t you ever seen Flashdance? I bailed on my best friend’s eighties night in the middle of her margarita-fueled performance of ‘Material Girl’ to come out here and climb rocks in four-inch heels.”
“You match the scene, anyhow.” He walked down a narrow hallway lined with tiny stalls, waving for me to follow. “This looks like something out of an eighties movie. Just not one with dancers.”
The coppery tang of blood—a lot of it—smacked me in the face as I followed Aaron around a corner. My stomach tightened around bites of hors d’oeuvre, making me wish I was back at Jenna’s house. Two sips into my Midori sour, my scanner had started squawking. Combine the body-discovery chatter with Aaron’s text (come across the rocks—have exclusive for you), and the party didn’t stand a chance.
I paused when Aaron turned back, his wide shoulders blocking a brightly-lit corner of spray-paint-tagged loft. I’d worked with him long enough to know that look. Probably a good thing I didn’t have much in my stomach.
“Stay back here,” he cautioned. “Forensics is still working. I’ve got a uniform out by the bridge keeping the cameras at bay, but I wanted you to get a look at what we’re dealing with here.”
“At the risk of getting myself thrown out after I played Frogger across the rocks in this getup, why?”
His lips disappeared into a thin white line. “People who won’t talk to us will talk to you. We need your help, Nichelle.”
He stepped to one side and ice washed over me in the balmy summer air, a scream sticking in my throat.
“Evil. Evil is the only word I’ve got.” Aaron’s low voice barely crossed the blood pounding in my ears. “I’ve been a cop for twenty years, and I’ve never seen anything like this.”
Devil in the Deadline, A Headlines in High Heels Mystery #4, goes on sale everywhere January 6, 2015!
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May 25, 2014
Fresh Fiction:
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March 29, 2014
Maggie Barbieri on Small Town Spin:
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