Kathy Lynn Emerson's Blog, page 56

Time To Move On

On December 2, I embarked on a trip that would affect me more than I ever realized. My sister-in-law asked me to go to Orlando, Florida and bring back her late son’s car. I agreed and decided to drive down and tow the car back on a car carrier. I also resolved to spend a day in Washington, DC and visit The Wall for the first time. I served in Vietnam in 1968-69 and, like anyone who was there, lost a number of friends. It was, I thought, time that I saw the memorial to them.

The Wall is located (as are the Korean War and World War II memorials, I visited all of them) within a few minutes walk from the Lincoln Memorial. The day was sunny and as crisp as an early fall day here in The County so I decided to wear my Marine Corps leather jacket with patches from all of the units in which I served (I must add that it was the first time I wore it in public). As we walked from the Lincoln Memorial toward The Wall we came upon the Vietnam Memorial (not the same as the wall–see picture) and took a photo of me standing in front of it.

Turning from the statue and walking to the entrance to The Wall was an experience that I will never forget. I steeled myself to show my usual tough Marine appearance and was doing all right until my partner, Jane, reached over with a tissue and wiped the tears from my face. I believe that at that moment all of the resentment I showed in regard to the treatment we received upon returning home disappeared. In fact when a woman passed by and said “Thank you for your service” I replied “You’re welcome. I’d do it again.” (You may remember my blog of last year in which I ranted about people saying, “Thank you for your service.” and how I  felt that they lacked sincerity.)

I turned toward the mall and felt a strange serenity come over me. The Wall is surrounded by several busy streets and I heard none of the cars, trucks, and buses; it was as if I’d entered a cone of silence. Later Jane would laugh at me and say, “Some big bad Marine you are–walking toward The Wall, crying, and pushing a stroller with a five pound Maltese in it.” I smiled Maggie, the Maltese, is my Attack Fu-Fu; she barks at anyone who comes near Jane or I–at The Wall she was as silent as if she understood how this visit was important to me. For forty-eight years I’d been carrying around a sense of guilt that I survived when so many of my friends and fellow servicemen did not.

At the wall we were immediately greeted by George, a Vietnam Veteran who volunteered at The Wall to assist visitors. He took one look at my face and asked, “When were you there?”

I replied, “January 1968 to February 1969.”

He said, “Those were two of the worst years.” Then added: “This is your first time, right?”

My throat constricted and I had a difficult time answering him. “C’mon,” he said, “I’ll show you around. We stopped beside a panel and he showed me the diamonds beside some of the names and said: “The diamonds and crosses indicate whether a person is confirmed dead (those who died in accidents are included) or missing/whereabouts unknown. The diamond indicates a person’s death was confirmed. The crosses indicate that a person remains missing and unaccounted for and are not a religious symbol. A cross symbol can be easily turned into a diamond if a person is declared dead (such as the return of their remains). A circle will be inscribed around the plus if the person comes back alive. As of this time, no circle appears on the wall. On the West wall the symbols precede the names, while on the East wall they follow the names.”

As we walked along The Wall, George asked, “Are you looking for any particular names?”

“Four.”

“Who’s first?”

“An old friend from my teen years, Richard Bubar. He was killed in what they called the Halloween Massacre the night of October 31- November 1, 1964.”

In no time George located the name. “Would you like a rub?”

“Is that allowed?” I asked.

George opened his coat and suspended from his belt was packet of special paper and a stick of graphite. We did four rubs that day:

Richard P. Bubar. Richie was a longtime friend of mine and the son of my parents best friends. He was killed during a mortar attack. Date of Death: November 1, 1964. (Of the first three Maine men to die in Vietnam, two were from Caribou, Richie was the second.)

Dana L. Mace. A friend from high school. Date of Death: July 7, 1969.

THE WALL by Lee Teter

Donald S. Skidgel. Born in Caribou. Date of Death: September 14, 1969. Winner of Medal of Honor (Posthumously) for his actions near Song Be, Republic of Vietnam.

Joseph A. Zutterman: Marion, Kansas. Joe took me under his wing when I arrived in Vietnam and when offered a promotion to sergeant if he extended did so. April 15, 1968 was the first day of Joe’s extension and he flew a mission as door gunner. Their helicopter was hit by an RPG (Rocket Propelled Grenade) and exploded. Although we all know that Joe is dead, he is still officially listed as MIA believed Dead because the bodies of the four crew members were not recoverable.

Joe’s death had a profound impact on me and I made up my mind that I was not going to get close to anyone again. Unfortunately, I did so for forty-eight years. My late wife once said to a friend: “Vaughn fought the war in Vietnam; I fight the war in him.

I spent two hours at The Wall and when I came away I felt as if a great burden had been lifted from me. It was as if the 58, 307 people whose names are there told me that it was all right that I survived and it was past the time for me to move on. The Wall is a memorial to all who made the ultimate sacrifice and a place of healing for the rest of us.

This Christmas season, please take a few moments to think about these men and women (yes a great number of women served there too and eight have their names etched on The Wall) and the sacrifice they made so that we, those of us who survived and those of us who came after, have the freedom and liberty to celebrate in the way we want. I for one would willingly do it again in a heart beat.

 

Gardens Aglow in Boothbay, Maine

One of the newest – and most popular – sites to visit in Maine is the Coastal Maine Botanical Garden (http://www.MaineGardens.org) in Boothbay. Opened in 2007, the garden’s 270 acres of tidal shoreland include a children’s garden (complete with references to famous children’s books set in Maine, a “garden of the senses,” fairy houses, gardens featuring  specific plan families, and, everywhere, sculptures, benches, accessible paths, and special exhibits. The gardens also feature a café, gift shop, education center, lecture series, craft programs … you name it. It’s become a destination for people from all over the world. Over 90,000 people from six continents visited in 2016.

In 2015 for the first time the gardens were lit for Christmas. Gardens Aglow proved an instant success — more than 36,000 guests came in November and December to see the spectacle.

This year it is even more spectacular. More than 350,000 LED lights — more than 31 miles — of lighted strands — wrapped around 325 trees and walls and dangling from branches. (One 75-foot white pine is wrapped with more than 3,000 lights.)

Environmental note: all the lights at Gardens Aglow, for the entire event, will only cost about $100 in electricity.

To add to the excitement, the towns of Boothbay and Boothbay Harbor are simultaneously celebrating the “Festival of Lights” — homes and stores are brightly lit, restaurants and inns and shops are open, and, as the Chamber of Commerce says, the area is “sparkling for the winter.”

The Gardens are open nightly (Thursday through Sunday nights) from 4-9 p.m. until December 31. Food trucks and a hot chocolate station and a s’mores fire pit are part of the excitement, and the café and gift shop are often. I could tell you Gardens Aglow was worth a visit … but the pictures I took are more convincing. And they can’t begin to show you the magic of lights, or of Christmas in the Gardens.

Post-holiday Traditions

Jessie: Surrounded by snowbanks

Every year about this time my mind begins to turn to the post holiday lull. It isn’t because I  don’t love merry making or family gatherings. I adore tinsel and beribboned packages and dining room tables heaving with festive treats. Gingerbread houses, popcorn balls and stuffed stockings all leave me feeling quite cheerful.

But after the shared seasonal traditional pastimes have come and gone once again I have a few traditions of a more personal nature I like to observe. Every year I buy a new planner and set off thinking about experiences I would like to have over the upcoming year and also habits I would like to build. I love spending some time contemplating the possibilities.

I also tuck into a knitting project or two. There is nothing like a snowy January afternoon for clicking away on a cabled sweater or a pair of wooly socks while binge watching Miss Fisher Mysteries or those featuring Miss Marple. This year I’ve got a red lace shawl I am determined to finish before Valentine’s Day.

Probably my favorite post-holiday tradition is my annual reading of all the Lucia books by E.F. Benson. Every year I pull out these old favorites and read them one by one, trying not to gobble them down too quickly. There is something so pleasant about spending time with  old friends one knows from the pages of a beloved book. Or better yet a book series. By the time I’ve finished all six volumes I feel ready to get back to the routine of ordinary life once more.

Readers, do you have any post-holiday traditions of your own? 

Trying to Go Green on This White, White Christmas

When I was imagining this month’s post last month (because I do think about these posts in advance — I just don’t actually write them then), I had beautiful visions of a post detailing all the eco-friendly ways I’ve embraced this holiday season. Fabric in lieu of wrapping paper; no plastic toys; everything bought locally from sustainable farms, or grown in my very own kitchen herb garden.

Ah, the dreams we dream.

I have friends who do that kind of stuff every year. Their presents always look beautiful, and the treats are (often) tasty, and the blog posts they write always provide all the details you need to have a completely sustainable, eco-friendly holiday. And every year, I swear to myself that next year I will do something that crafty, that inspired. This year, I was determined to make it happen.

But as it turns out, when I try to wrap a present in fabric (without using tape, mind you) it doesn’t come out looking like an elegant holiday treat so much as something I was too cheap to buy wrapping paper for and thus chose to stuff in a used pillowcase. And I definitely could have gotten my two-year-old cousin something other than the Little People race track I chose, but… I folded. I don’t even know why. Ben was right there saying, “How about this stuffed animal? Or this wooden train set?” But instead, my brain went into overload while being assaulted by the overly cheerful Christmas music and the aisles and aisles of colorful gadgetry at Reny’s, and I freaked out and got the Little People race track. Which I’m sure little Jackson will probably love — but, really, I could have done so much better.

As for buying locally… I did actually support a lot of local businesses this year. I’m living in Brunswick now, and the natural foods store — Morning Glory — has an awesome loose-leaf tea selection and lovely teapots, so that was the perfect gift for someone on my list, while their locally made candles and lotions were ideal for another friend. I got gift baskets from Goodwill rather than buying them new (thus also eliminating the need for a lot of wrapping); I brought all my own shopping bags rather than using the ones in the stores.

The cookies I baked for our family Christmas party are vegan (and they taste really good, so it’s not like I’m being unnecessarily cruel to my meat-eating comrades). I found a couple of cool T-shirts for my nieces from The Mountain — “The Greenest T-shirt Company in the U.S.A.” — with some of the proceeds going to Best Friends Animal Society. Ben is not a fan of these shirts, but I think the girls will like them.Another gift for the nieces that has become an annual tradition are symbolic adoptions of endangered animals from the World Wildlife Foundation. At this point, the girls have an entire zoo of stuffed animals they’ve gotten as gifts for these WWF donations. I love that it’s given them some awareness of the plight of wild things around the world, while simultaneously making them feel as though they’re actually doing something to make a difference. And, yeah, I know: It would be better if WWF spent all of the money on their mission rather than using part of it to send people stuff, but I can have that conversation with my nieces in a few years. Right now, they like the stuffed animals; I like knowing I’m at least trying to make an impact with my gifts.

BUT… I also bought a lot of stuff from Amazon. I drove my Honda Element (Ben calls it the Elephant) all over hell and gone tracking down the perfect gift, which means I did more than my part to contribute to gas emissions this season. I bought a few things that were packaged in plastic, which means I’m adding more waste to the planet. My kitchen herb garden is still more a garden in my mind than one that actually, you know, produces stuff, so that didn’t turn out to be a viable gift for friends or family.

The bottom line? Yes, there are a handful of people in this world who manage to be completely earth-friendly during the holiday season. Those people may nor may not actually be human, and will always make the rest of us look bad. But if we can all go just a little out of our way in an effort to be kind to the planet while we’re out shopping for baubles and hoo-hahs for those special someones in our lives, I think that ultimately counts for something.

What about you? Are there local stores you can recommend to the rest of we weary shoppers this season, or gifts you’ve given that help out a charity you care about? I’d love to hear your ideas!

Jen Blood is author of the USA Today-bestselling Erin Solomon Mysteries, and the newly released K-9 Search and Rescue mystery The Darkest Thread. You can learn more about Jen and her work at www.adianpress.com. 

Weekend Update: December 17-18, 2016

Next week at Maine Crime Writers, there will be posts by Jen Blood (Monday) Jessie Crockett (Tuesday), Lea Wait (Wednesday), Vaughn Hardacker (Thursday) and Dorothy Cannell (Friday).

 

An invitation to readers of this blog: Do you have news relating to Maine, Crime, or Writing? We’d love to hear from you. Just comment below to share.

And a reminder: If your library, school, or organization is looking for a speaker, we are often available to talk about the writing process, research, where we get our ideas, and other mysteries of the business. Contact Kate Flora

Remembering Christmas on the Farm

Kate’s first Christmas

Kate Flora here, listening to the wind howling outside, and remembering Christmas on the farm in Union. Although she didn’t tell us this until years later, our mother didn’t really like Christmas. Perhaps it was because so much of the work of the holiday fell on her. Not just the expected tasks, like shopping and wrapping and cooking and entertaining and sending out the dozens and dozens of holiday cards. Because we didn’t have a lot of money, a huge amount of work and ingenuity went into producing holiday gifts for relatives and friends. While everybody helped, she was the one who made sure everything got done, everything got packed, and everything got shipped in time to arrive before Christmas.

Note that Kate is holding a handgun in this otherwise cute photo

On Sennebec Hill, the month of December was given over to the production of presents. Mom would get out her cookie sheets and recipes, and make batch after batch of holiday cookies. Butter cookies in plain, green, and chocolate that the cookie presses would shape into wreaths and trees and candy canes. These would then get decorated with red cinnamons, tiny silvery sugar balls, multi-colored sprinkles, or green and red sugar sprinkles. There were tiny meringues with finely chopped nuts, anise cookies, and many other varieties that only got baked at Christmas.

Our dad loved to decorate. Here he’s done fancy fake snow on every window pane. He also loved to wrap presents, and they were beautiful when he was done.

These would get packed into tins and mailed to relatives and to friends back in New York and New Jersey. The tradition was that the tin of cookies would arrive in time for Christmas, and then the friend or relative would travel to Maine in the summer to visit, and return the tin so it could be filled for another year.

At some point during the month, John, Sara, and I would be allowed to bring a friend

Kate and her dad bringing back a Christmas tree

home from school to bake cookies. Mom would have different “stations” set up for us, with the dough all made, and we could bake trays of cookies decorated just the way we wanted, and each friend would get to go home with a tin of special cookies.

While Mom was mixing and baking, little sister Sara and I would be gathering balsam, snipping it into tiny pieces, and then sewing up small, colorful fabric pillows on the reliable old Singer machine. These pillows would be stuffed with the sweetly scented fir and shipped along with the cookies.

While we were doing that, Dad would have gone out into the woods and gathered the various plants for the terrariums that he would assemble in small glass bowls. I remember pillows of green moss and Staghorn moss and partridge berries. These tiny, magical gardens would join the cookies and pillows in the packages that were carried to the post office.

One holiday tradition I do carry on most years is making the Finnish coffee bread our up the road neighbor, Lili Johnson, would bring us every year. Part of the tradition, when we would make her recipe, was shelling the cardamom pods and putting them into the special grinder. Along with the bread, she would bring each of us a pair of handknitted mittens, always wrapped in white tissue paper.

I rarely make holiday cookies anymore, but writing this makes me want to dig through the cupboard, find that old cookie press, and make a tray of sugar cookies, just for the fun of remembering.

Mom, dad, John, Kate and Sara with our Christmas tree.

When you’re a kid, you don’t need much snow to go sledding. You don’t even need a sled.

Skating on the pond across the street

Ayla Reynolds and so many more — their stories continue

Five years ago this coming Saturday, a phone call from a Waterville man to that city’s police department kicked off what came to be the state’s biggest criminal investigation. Yet, five years later, little more is known about what happened to 20-month-old Ayla Reynolds than was known on that cold December morning.

Ayla was reported missing by her father, Justin DiPietro, at 8:49 a.m. Saturday, December 17, 2011. I was night editor for the Kennebec Journal and Morning Sentinel, working that Saturday. I field a call early afternoon from the reporter who was working that weekend saying there was a missing toddler. I figured they’d find her wherever she’d wandered off to and that would be that.

But they didn’t.

Over the years, there’s been a lot of speculation that DiPietro is responsible for what police quickly termed a criminal case. Police said in early 2012 that they no longer believed the child was alive. But DiPietro and the two others who were in the house the night she disappeared — his then-girlfriend Courtney Roberts and his sister, Elisha DiPietro — have said little except to maintain their innocence and speculate that Ayla was abducted.

Ayla’s mother, Trista Reynolds, and her family have been pushing for years for legal action in the case, but law enforcement officials have continually said there isn’t enough evidence to prosecute. The family said in May that they were looking into filing a civil suit against DiPietro, but Reynolds said  on WCSH TV Wednesday night that her attorney told her there wasn’t even enough evidence for that.

One of the family photos of Ayla Reynolds released by Maine State Police after her disappearance in December 2011.

There are six children who have disappeared in Maine since the early 1970s and never been found — Ayla Reynolds is the most recent and barring someone stumbling on her remains, it’s unlikely we’ll ever know what happened to her.

Ben McCanna, who was a reporter for the Morning Sentinel in Waterville when Ayla disappeared and covered much of the story in late 2011 and early 2012 was a guest of my sister Rebecca and I on our podcast Crime & Stuff this week. Ben said the case haunted him for a long time, and he’d tried to put it behind him. But he graciously relived much of that time — including his exclusive access to DiPietro and Reynolds — for our show marking the fifth anniversary.

Ben has probably talked more in depth to Reynolds and DiPietro than any other reporter — much of it off the record. He points out that one of the biggest pieces of “evidence” cited over the years in the case, Ayla’s blood in the basement, where she normally slept with her father, Roberts and Roberts’ baby, never came directly from Maine State Police investigators, but from Ayla’s family. Police have said little to nothing about what evidence, if any, they have in the case. No one has been charged and aside from the “blood evidence,” there is little else that points to what happened and who did it. Ben, too, believes the case will only be solved by accident or someone talking.

While many people think they “know” what happened, it’s speculation. Law enforcement officials need solid evidence to prosecute a case.

We like crimes tied up in a nice neat bow, both in our fiction and in real life. Frequently in real life, though, that doesn’t happen. The hundreds of thousands of dollars and hours put into investigating Ayla Reynolds’ disappearance and searching for her remains, or any clues that would point to them, have come up empty. So, public outrage continues.

CBC illustration/cbc.ca.missingandmurdered/podcast

And yeah, people should be outraged. But as I was thinking about Ayla this week, I was also listening to another podcast, Missing and Murdered. The Canadian production is chilling. While it focuses on the unexplained disappearance and murder of Alberta Williams, 24, who was killed in 1989 after a night out with family and friends, it also touches on Canada’s hundreds and possibly thousands of indigenous women and girls who have vanished or been killed in the past few decades. A photo gallery of some of them on the website cbc.ca/missingandmurdered is chilling.

While the podcast explores Willliams’ murder, it also looks at the factors at play behind the fact that while Canada’s indigenous women make up 3 percent of the country’s population, they account for 10 percent of the murdered or disappeared population. It does a great job of delving into Canada’s history with its indigenous people, and how the effects of that led to a culture and prejudices that have made it a ripe atmosphere for crimes against women, and for many of those crimes to be given short shrift.

Ayla Reynolds, too, wasn’t born into a great situation. When she disappeared she was living with her father and grandmother — who barely knew her before he took her in — because her mother was in rehab. He’d had some scrapes with the law, and the group in that tiny Waterville house that night comprised three adults under the age of 24 and their three babies.

The outrage over what happened to Ayla Reynolds continues five years later, but we should be just as outraged for every child and adult who has come to harm at the hands of someone else and whose fate is unknown. Vigils and letters to the editor are great for keeping the missing and murdered in the public eye, but many of these deaths aren’t in a vacuum and, as a society, we should try to channel all that emotion into taking better care of each other before the bad stuff happens.

EVENT: Thursday, December 29, Maureen Milliken, Jen Blood, Bruce Coffin and Vaugh Hardaker will be part of the Carrabassett Valley Library‘s Maine Crime Writers Death & Desserts presentation, 4:30-6:30 p.m. They’ll also be signing and selling books.

Maureen Milliken is the author of the Bernie O’Dea mystery series. Follow her on Twitter at@mmilliken47 and like her Facebook page at Maureen Milliken mysteries. Sign up for email updates at maureenmilliken.com. She hosts the podcast Crime&Stuff with her sister Rebecca Milliken.

The Endless TBR Pile

Kaitlyn Dunnett/Kathy Lynn Emerson here, admitting that I’m a book junkie. I have hundreds of keeper novels on my shelves. I have even more titles on my iPad, some in the Kindle and Nook apps and others as iBooks. A whole heck of a lot of those are unread, especially the free ebooks I’ve picked up in Kindle format when offers came to my attention. Does that stop me from buying more books? Of course not.

New books are released every Tuesday. Some non-New York presses, like Severn House and Poisoned Pen Press, release new titles on other days of the week. A quick check of my expenses for this year suggests that I download at least eight books a month. They aren’t all new ones. When I discover a new-to-me author I really like I am likely to go in and download his or her backlist titles. I also tend, since I can read more easily on my iPad (where I can enlarge the font), to download books I want to reread even if I already own them in paperback (with teeny-tiny print).

In short, I have more books than I have time to read. As one of my favorite sweatshirt slogans puts it:  So Many Books/So Little Time.

This month, after finishing the new Janet Evanovich, Turbo Twenty-Three, and seeking something entertaining and totally removed from the real world, I decided to raid my keeper shelves and reread Charlaine Harris’s first Sookie Stackhouse paranormal mystery, Dead Until Dark. This may have been a mistake. I’d forgotten how much I like these characters. There are thirteen novels in all. As I write this, I’m up to number seven.

You’d think, since my reading is set for the next little while, that I’d stop acquiring more books. Nope. It doesn’t work that way. What if I decided I needed a change of pace? What if nothing on the shelves of on the iPad suited my mood of the moment? Nothing to read? Horrors! I might have to . . . well, I don’t know what I’d do. I ALWAYS have to have a book (or two or three) in progress.

So what, you ask, is on top (as in most recently acquired) of my to-be-read pile? From the romantic suspense genre, there’s Jayne Ann Krentz’s When All The Girls Have Gone. In cozy mystery, it’s the first in a new series from Molly MacRae, Plaid and Plagiarism. Then there’s the historical mystery Renting Silence by Mary Miley, set in the Roaring Twenties. I loved the earlier entries in this series, especially The Impersonator. Also in the historical vein, Catriona McPherson’s Dandy Gilver and the Reek of Red Herrings came out yesterday

That should have been plenty to tide me over until next batch of new releases but here’s the other thing that keeps my TBR pile from shrinking: I have too darned many friends who write really good books. There are newish titles out from several fellow Maine Crime Writers (most of which I have, in fact, already read) and just as I was about to start work on this blog, along came a newsletter from James L. Nelson, expert on pirates, seafaring, Vikings, and other interesting historical stuff, announcing he has a new novel, this one quite a departure for him—a contemporary thriller—so of course I had to download a copy of Full Fathom Five.

Just for the record, I’ve already read over 225 novels in 2016. I read fast. I read in any spare moment. And I’ll still never catch up on all the books I want to read.

 

 

Kathy Lynn Emerson/Kaitlyn Dunnett is the author of over fifty books written under several names. She won the Agatha Award for best mystery nonfiction of 2008 for How to Write Killer Historical Mysteries and was an Agatha Award finalist in 2015 in the best mystery short story category for “The Blessing Witch.” Currently she writes the contemporary Liss MacCrimmon Mysteries (Kilt at the Highland Games) as Kaitlyn and the historical Mistress Jaffrey Mysteries (Murder in a Cornish Alehouse ~ UK in December 2016; US in April 2017) as Kathy. The latter series is a spin-off from her earlier “Face Down” series and is set in Elizabethan England. Her websites are www.KaitlynDunnett.com and www.KathyLynnEmerson.com

 

The Real Eggnog Murder

by Barb. Tree up. Baking done. Cards in process. Now to wrap the presents.

Mary Frances Creighton

When Kensington Publishing Corp. asked me to write a novella for their anthology Eggnog Murder, I could have saved a lot of time had I but Googled. Elsewhere, I’ve told the true tale of how my story in the collection, “Nogged Off,” came about. But this is not that. It turns out, there really was an “eggnog murder,” and the details are anything but cozy.

In the town of Baldwin, Long Island, John Creighton and Everett Applegate, both WWI veterans and active in the American Legion, became friends. It was the height of the Depression and soon Creighton moved with his wife Mary Frances, and their children Ruth 14 and John Jr., into the home where Applegate lived with his wife Ada and daughter Agnes, 12.

Ada Applegate was extremely overweight and led an unhealthy lifestyle, reportedly rarely getting out of bed, so no one was surprised when she died on September 27, 1935 of an apparent heart attack. However, as her remains were being lowered into the ground, police dramatically halted the funeral and took the body for testing. The finding was arsenic poisoning, almost three times the amount required to be deadly.

Police suspicions were aroused when an envelope full of yellowed newspaper clippings was mailed to the station, allegedly by a bread man Mary Frances Creighton had frequently stiffed. The articles showed that Mary Frances and her husband had been arrested and tried, though not convicted, in 1923 in New Jersey for the arsenic poisoning of Mary Frances’ brother Raymond. She had inherited his life insurance and a trust fund. Her in-laws, John Creighton’s parents, had also died separately in suspicious circumstances. They both had arsenic in their bodies on autopsy, but prosecutors determined that it was too little for a jury to likely convict, so charges had not been brought.

Mary Frances Creighton and Everett Applegate were arrested for the murder of Ada Applegate. Mary Frances told various stories–that Everett had put the Rough on Rat poison in Ada’s daily eggnog, or that she, Mary Frances, had done it at Everett’s direction. She claimed her motive was that she had discovered Everett was having sex with her daughter, Ruth, and was terrified Ruth would become pregnant. With Ada out of the way, Everett could make an honest woman of 16-year-old Ruth.

Everett admitted to the child rape charges, but claimed he had nothing to do with the murder. Further, he said, he hadn’t had sex with Ruth except when his wife Ada was present. (Seriously, this was his defense.) There were further allegations that Mary Frances had also been sleeping with Everett, that Agnes Applegate, age 14, had been sleeping with her father and Ruth, and on and on. Eventually, both Mary Frances Creighton and Everett Applegate were convicted of the murder of Ada and sentenced to death.

At first, Mary Frances was cheerfully confident even in Sing-Sing. She had previously gotten away with three murders, after all, and couldn’t seem to comprehend that she wouldn’t get away with this one. But when the Court of Appeals affirmed her conviction and sentence, she took a turn, lying on her cot all day, eating nothing but ice cream and claiming to be paralyzed from the waist down. The prison doctors found no organic cause for her illness, and suggested her symptoms were “hysterical.”

Mary Frances wore pink pajamas and a black kimono to the electric chair. Two matrons brought her in a wheel chair. As she was lifted, apparently unconscious, into the chair, two guards stood in front of the window to shield witnesses from the sight. She had converted to Catholicism the day before her execution and her rosary beads were the last thing to fall from her hand before she was electrocuted.

Everett Applegate maintained his innocence to the end. The last thing delivered to Mary Frances in her cell was a letter from Everett’s lawyer, pleading with her to declare his client’s innocence before she was put to death. She did not, and Everett followed her to the electric chair.

The novellas you’ll find in Eggnog Murder are considerably lighter, funnier, dare I say frothier, than this sad tale. But as you can see, truth, once again, proves at least as strange as fiction.

Sources:

 http://murderpedia.org/female.C/c/creighton-mary-frances.htm

http://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1936/07/17/93524387.html?pageNumber=1

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Dreaming About What’s Next

It was at least this big

By Brenda Buchanan

I can make stuff up all day long sitting in front of this keyboard, but at night, my dreams are as literal as literal gets.

One recent night—hours after finishing a major (but by no means final) revision to the first book in a new series—I dreamed I was on a huge ship.

I was standing on deck with a successful writer acquaintance whose work I admire. Not coincidentally (as I say, a solid line connects my dreams to my real life) before I went to bed that night I’d checked this writer’s website to remind myself which of her books I have yet to read so I could add one to my holiday wish list.

Back to the dream. After telling me she had to go launch her next book, this accomplished writer climbed onto an enormous water slide appended to the side of the ship.

It looked something like this

I could see from where I stood that the slide ended at the ocean, making it an ultra-fast way to disembark.

(In the way of all dreams, I hadn’t noticed the water slide until that moment.)

With a little wave over her shoulder my writer hero flew down the slide with a whoosh and splashed into the blue, blue sea.

Then she began to swim—a powerful Australian crawl stroke—toward the horizon.

Just like this

I watched her swim with energy and confidence toward whatever lay ahead and wondered if I could summon the nerve to zip down the slide—it was at least five stories high—much less undertake an open-water swim to an unknown place.

That’s when someone tapped me on the shoulder, making me aware for the first time I was at the head of a queue.

“You’re up,” she said.

Like I say. I am one literal gal.

While I am nowhere near launching a new book, I had similar dreams when my Joe Gale mystery series was in utero, night after night of working through my worries while I slept.

I dreamed the characters in my book came to life and were nothing like how I imagined them. Joe was lazy and bored in his job at the newspaper. Christie had three little kids instead of one teenage son and ignored Joe when he came into her diner.

I dreamed I was standing in front of an expectant audience preparing to read a passage from one of my books when I developed the worst case of dry mouth of any writer in the history of time. When I finally generated enough saliva to croak out a greeting I looked down at my pages and they were blank.

I dreamed there was a real-life Joe Gale who sued me for using his name. No one could explain to me why that was an actionable offense. The trial began before I could prepare my case. It was televised(!) and I lost.

You get the idea. It’s nerve-wracking to put oneself out there. But I’ve been around the block three times now and know these crazy dreams are simply part of the process.

While I can’t say much about my new project—because jinxes are even more real than dreams—I’m as excited as heck about it. For those who have grown fond of Joe Gale, rest assured I am not done with him (or perhaps I should say he is not done with me.) But there’s a new protagonist in the wings and I think you’re going to like her.

As this is my last MCW blog post of 2016, I wish to thank my wonderful MCW colleagues and all of you who read this blog for your ongoing support for my work. I wish you the happiest of holidays.

 

Brenda Buchanan is the author of the Joe Gale Mystery Series, featuring a contemporary Maine newspaper reporter with old-school style who covers the crime and courts beat. All three Joe Gale books—QUICK PIVOT, COVER STORY and TRUTH BEAT—are available through Carina Press, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, ibooks, Kobo and everywhere else ebooks are sold.  Remember, ebooks make marvelous holiday gifts. They’re inexpensive and don’t require wrapping. All you need is the recipient’s email address.