Murder, They Wrote

By Jay Royston

Murder, They Wrote is two short stories with a twist

Tuesdays at Three is the story of a rapidly diminishing writers group. Are they losing members due to creative frustration or is it something more nefarious?

The Investigation of the Missing Mystery is the story of Bud Larkin and his granddaughter who discover a link between the local paper and the latest obituaries. Is it a mystery or is it simply old age?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jay Royston
• Release date: Oct 20, 2015
• ISBN: 9781311003690

Jay Royston

40+ years old. 3 kids 2 dogs 1 wife 1 mortgage 1 blog 30 jobs 3 books 1 unreleased movie 5 yr volunteer firefighter 1 cancer scare 750K+ 'views' on various Internet articles

Book preview

Murder, They Wrote

©2018 Fbin Publications/Smashwords

License Notes; All rights reserved. Any names or similarities between anyone living or dead are entirely coincidental. Any reproduction of this book for the purposes of making a profit without acknowledging the author is widely frowned upon. Books make great presents, friends and help you appear smarter in public. Special thanks to friends who helped provide feedback as I was writing this. Also to Neal Gaiman who heavily influenced the ending of the story. This book may be available in print at most online retailers if you ask politely.

Chapter 1

Freon watched the fifth member of the group join the others at their usual six person table near the corner. Their environmentally friendly coffee mugs were full to the brim as she charged fifty cents for refills and this group knew how to make a coffee purchase last.

She had a familiar unspoken agreement with the six member group as befitted most independently owned booksellers/coffee shops; she would let them sit at their table for as many hours as they would like for the price of one coffee. They in turn would lend a sense of artistic angst so needed to help maintain a certain level of urban-chic bourgeoisie atmosphere to the place. Such an arrangement helped keep the coffee shop/book store on the right side of the edge between trendiness and bankruptcy, bordering the line between skid row and the unemployment line.

Freon detested that was exactly where her coffee shop/bookstore was located but it was what it was. Most of the junkies wore fedoras. Most of the junkies wore clothing the hipsters donated to the neighbouring thrift store which made for great difficulty in identifying which customers to give the bathroom key to.

The rent was undeniably cheap but only because she signed and locked in at the start of the yuppie re-invigoration of the neighbourhood and the owner of the building lived in Taiwan. Barring the occasional syringe found by the back door, it was a decent spot with lots of potential, so she kept telling herself.

The customers were sporadic. Customers like this group, the ones who provided more ambiance than profit was her bread and butter, or more specifically, her cream and sugar. This group had come in every Tuesday at three for the last eight weeks. They were there to write and complain, although most of the meetings were spent doing the latter.

She was not the only one to notice the sixth member of the group didn’t arrive, again.

They were all settled around the table in their usual spots. Their coffee cups placed as to whether they were right or left-handed, pens and papers in front of them more for decoration than for any strategic purpose. Cell phones were off, not that any of them were expecting to be interrupted.

At the head of the table was Margo, the one who always wore a scarf that clashed rather than blended with the rest of her outfit. There was Mason, the youngest of the bunch with the short black hair, thick eyebrows and who never made eye contact with anyone. Beside him was Chantilly, also young, as close to beautiful as you would get in this bunch of introverts.

Freon felt if it wasn’t for some strange emotional baggage Chantilly was carrying she could be the only one who could maintain a semblance of a normal life.

The two men who sandwiched an empty chair were named Marius and Neal, the former being short and stout, the latter being the opposite of the former.

The man who usually occupied the empty chair was named Pascal, a passionate man from either Mexico or Portugal. Freon didn’t recall. He was once again absent, to the group’s consternation.

From the bits of conversation she overheard they were either writers, wanted to be writers or hated all writers in general. But as long as they had a mug in front of them and occasionally bought some of the day-old muffins, what little money they gave her was good enough for her bookkeeper.

Freon tightened her pony-tail, adjusted her