Pocket Change

By Duncan Putney

New Hampshire Literary Awards :Outstanding Work of Fiction Nominees

"...This reader was struck by the high quality of the writing in the prologue, which was a surprise- generally, both prologues and books-within-books are quite hard to pull off. In Pocket Change, however, both the prologue and the actual narrative work quite well together...."

—3rd Annual Writer’s Digest Self-Published eBook Awards

When a local man intentionally drowns himself, a murder that has been submerged for twenty years surfaces, capturing screenwriter Ray Boon’s imagination. Ray is compelled by the little voice in his head to find the reason for the apparent suicide. His search begins with a day-old newspaper story about a skeleton found in a Gloucester, Massachusetts, quarry and ends with the identification of the victim of a twenty-year-old murder and, possibly, her killer.

• Language: English
• Publisher: SDP Publishing
• Release date: Apr 2, 2015
• ISBN: 9780990559696

Duncan Putney

Duncan Putney is an accomplished actor, as well as an award-winning screenwriter and producer. A graduate of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, where he studied both business and theater, Duncan works as a professional actor in film, television, stage, and television commercials and can be seen in such films as The Judge, Mystic River, R.I.P.D., The Town, and Brilliant Mistakes, as well as TV commercials for Papa Gino’s, Budweiser, and others.Always writing, Duncan began to follow that passion professionally and, beginning in 2003, his work began to get some notice. His writings have gained honors at the International Family Film Festival, the Going Green Film Festival, the Woods Hole Film Festival, the ScreenCraft competitions, the New England Emmy Awards, the Spotlight on Rhode Island Screenwriting Competition, the Dixie Kane Memorial Writing Competition (SOLA), and others.Duncan is also the creator of the Emmy Award winning 7DAYPSA competitions, where filmmakers compete by writing, shooting, and editing public service announcements (PSAs) for deserving, local non-profit organizations that provide a needed service to the community. The winning PSA for each non-profit is broadcast for a year by local media sponsors.In 2009, Duncan and longtime friend Andre Stark formed Original Concept & Development Associates to develop and produce their own projects. Currently, they have several television projects in the development and pre-production stages. Their short film/TV pilot, Half Pint, won a Van Gogh Award for best screenplay short film at the 2014 Amsterdam Film Festival.

Book preview

Pocket Change, Published March, 2015

By Duncan Putney

Copyright © 2015, Duncan B. Putney

Smashwords Edition

Editorial and Proofreading Services: Kellyann Zuzulo, Karen Grennan

Cover Design: Howard Johnson, Howard Communigrafix, Inc.

Interior Layout: Howard Johnson, Howard Communigrafix, Inc.

Ebook Conversion: Maureen Cutajar, GoPublished

Photo Credits: Front cover and chapter opener image: ©Martin Hanley. Used with permission.

Author photo: © Claire Folger

Published by SDP Publishing, an imprint of SDP Publishing Solutions, LLC.

The characters, events, institutions, and organizations in this book are strictly fictional. Any apparent resemblance to any person, alive or dead, or to actual events is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved. No part of the material protected by this copyright notice may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the copyright owner.

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ISBN-13 (ebook): 978-0-9905596-9-6

Dedication

Claudia Putney (1959-2015)

A big sister who was always encouraging.

Contents

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

About the Author

Prologue

Wolfeboro’s air was crisp and as still as the water, a meditative sort of morning that drew one’s eyes to the horizon while turning thoughts inward. Thirty-eight-year-old Jack Bannister sat on the cut-stone railing of the small bridge at the very center of town. The granite bridge allowed small boats to navigate the shallow, slow-moving, clear water of the Back Bay as it flowed under Main Street, past the town dock, through the bay, past Little Barndoor and Big Barndoor islands, and out into the wide, deep part of the lake called The Broads.

It was just after ten and all the local churchgoers were sitting in the pews of their selected denominations, causing a lull in the Sunday morning traffic in downtown Wolfeboro, New Hampshire. The streets stood quietly lined with white clapboard buildings bearing the characteristic dark-colored shutters. Jack looked up at a clear blue sky, then west toward the horizon, following the mountain slopes down to the lake. He marveled at the vibrant shades of red, orange, and yellow that clung to branches along the tree-lined shore. He was going to miss this little lake harbor town where, once upon a time, a colonial governor had a country house, and where a steamship used to meet a steam train on the eastern shore of Winnipesaukee. Now the small village was a growing tourist town with boutique stores, restaurants, and real estate agencies with pictures of multimillion-dollar lakefront homes displayed in their front windows.

Jack let the low sun of mid autumn warm his clean-shaven face. The clocks had all been turned back one hour that morning and it was a quiet moment in time to enjoy a cup of freshly brewed coffee. The summer people were gone, and this resort town was slowly being returned to its residents for the winter.

No one noticed that Jack carried a large mason jar filled with coins in each of the two pockets of his heavy wool jacket. And no one noticed when he set down his coffee cup and day-old newspaper and then just leaned backward to fall face-up into the cold clear water. He sank half a fathom to the sandy bottom, his camera still firmly held in his hands. To save himself, he had only to stand up in the waist-deep water. But he made the choice not to. He chose instead to take pictures of the world above until lack of oxygen ended his ability to push the shutter button. His vision diminished, he lost consciousness, his lungs filled with water,