Old Time Stories: A Calendar Mystery Collection: The Calendar Mysteries, #4

By Juliet Kincaid

Old Time Stories, a Calendar Mystery Collection

Mystery . . . Romance . . . A Most Improper Honeymoon . . . Join business girl Minty Wilcox and detective Daniel Price in old Kansas City as they sleuth, get to know each other, and fall in love in six stories that occur before, between or after January Jinx, Fatal February, and Mischief in March, the first three novels in Juliet Kincaid's Calendar Mystery series. In addition to four short stories currently available, this collection includes "Detectives' Honeymoon" and "The Shackleton Ghost," an original short story that appears nowhere else.

The collection Old Time Stories also includes eleven nonfiction pieces about the real people and places that inspired Juliet Kincaid to tell the story of Minty Wilcox and Daniel Price from newly met to newlywed and beyond in Kansas City, a place that could downright deadly a hundred years or so ago.

Five-Star Review of "The Barn Door," the first short story in Old Time Stories

"This short prequel story to the first book, January Jinx, is fun and introduces us to the two main characters, Daniel and Minty, before they actually meet. I especially like the descriptions of Kansas City in the 1900's as well as the vivid descriptions of the characters. Read 'The Barn Door' and you will not be disappointed."

Five-Star Review of "Lost Dog," another prequel story to the Calendar Mystery novels

What a delight to find myself in 'old' Kansas City again with such wonderfully drawn characters. I feel I know them and would love to follow them along the street while looking for the lost dog's owner and I could just push that old neighbor back into the bushes after rescuing the poor dog from her vicious beating. Oh, this author brings them so alive and that is what keeps me reading her stories."

• Language: English
• Publisher: Juliet Kincaid
• Release date: Jul 19, 2022
• ISBN: 9780996160421

Juliet Kincaid

I’ve been hooked on fiction since grade school. And I’ve always preferred stories that supply adventure and escape. Humor and wit help, too. I try to write the same sort of stories and novels as the ones I like to read. In addition to the Calendar Mystery series, my published work includes the Cinderella, P. I. Fairy Tale Mysteries for grown-ups that feature Cinderella as a detective twenty years, three kids, and a few extra pounds after the ball. (Happy endings guaranteed.) My stories and novels are available as eBooks and trade paperbacks. I have also written and published Novel Basics, a concise yet complete guide to writing a novel. My daughter, Jessica Kincaid, the bead artist, and I live in a house filled with books, mostly detective fiction, just a few miles from where Minty Wilcox and Daniel Price have their adventures in the Calendar Historical Mystery stories and novels. You can contact me at juliet@julietkincaid. com, Juliet_Kincaid on Goodreads, JulietKincaid on Twitter, and JulietKincaidauthor2016 and juliet.kincaid on Facebook. To find out what work I currently have available, sign up for notifications at https://books2read.com/author/juliet-kincaid/subscribe/1/305166/

Book preview

OLD TIME STORIES

A Calendar Mystery Collection

Book 4 of the Calendar Mystery Series

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Mystery and romance in old Kansas City,

a place that could get downright deadly

a hundred years or so ago

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JULIET KINCAID

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AZURESKY PRESS, LLC

AZP

Old Time Stories © 2018 by Juliet Willman Kincaid. All rights reserved. No part of this story may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever, including Internet usage, without written permission from Juliet Kincaid except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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AzureSky Press, LLC

Overland Park, KS 66204

Copyright © 2018

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Cover by Juliet Kincaid

The young woman on the cover is Melicent Perkins, the author’s great aunt on her mother’s side.

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EBook ISBN: 9780996160421

Paperback ISBN: 9781725898707

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Old Time Stories is in part a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents in the short stories are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual events, locales, and persons, living or dead, and their animals

is entirely coincidental.

Dedication

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To my cousin Sarah Faye

OLD TIME STORIES

A Calendar Mystery Collection

By Juliet Kincaid

TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

THE BARN DOOR

MY FATHER’S GARDENS

TWO COUNTRY HOUSES

LOST DOG

A FAMILY STORY

FIRST LOVE

MONDAY IS WASH DAY. TUESDAY IS . . .

THE REGISTERED NURSE

TWO BIRTHDAYS

THE BUSINESS GIRL

THE STORY THIEF

THE 9TH STREET GANG

THE GAME’S AFOOT IN OLD KC

DETECTIVES’ HONEYMOON

SUITABLE JOBS FOR WOMEN IN 1900

THE FATHER OF MY CHILD

THE SHACKLETON GHOST

ALSO BY JULIET KINCAID

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

INTRODUCTION

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Not long after I completed the third book of my cozy historical Calendar Mystery series that now includes January Jinx, Fatal February and Mischief in March, I began writing short stories that feature Minty Wilcox, my series protagonist, and the dashing detective Daniel Price before, between, and after the three novels. Altogether the series as planned will tell the story of this couple from newly met to newly wed and beyond in Kansas City, a place that could get downright deadly a hundred years or so ago.

The six stories in this collection have given me opportunities to discover new things about my characters. They also show Minty and Daniel getting to know each other and solving mysteries without my having to commit murder—as an author of course. Given that, the stories tend to be lighter and more humorous than the novels in the series.

Even before I started writing these stories, I posted occasional blogs on my website about the real people on whom I’ve based my characters and the places where they might have lived. Old Time Stories includes eleven of these nonfiction pieces as well.

The Barn Door

This short story takes place during the Fourth of July weekend in 1898, six months before Daniel and Minty meet in January Jinx. (Actually, they do meet on Independence Day in 1898, but they don’t realize it.)

Like most of my fiction, The Barn Door is a collision of several sources. These include 1) a newspaper clipping from around 1900 about an older man seeking divorce from his much younger wife because her freeloading relatives had invaded his house. 2) The title come from a story my husband once told me about an elderly gent he encountered in the arcade of the local bank. 3) The old man’s garden and his goal of putting the first fresh tomato on the table by July the 4th comes from my father Homer D. Willman, Sr. whom I describe in My Father’s Gardens. 4) The lay-out of Hector Jones’ house in the story pretty much comes from my father’s family home I presented in Two Country Houses, a piece based on my memories of a Fourth of July visit in the mid-1950’s. It was one of the few times in my life when I spent a night in a house full of people.

And in case you’re wondering: Minty’s full given name of Arminta Meneatha comes from one of my great aunts on my father’s side, the sister of my grandmother who appears in Two Country Houses. My great aunt’s nickname wasn’t Minty, though. I made that up. Everyone in the family called our real relative Aunt Maude.

Lost Dog

This short story, a second prequel to the series, takes place on July 5, 1898, the day after The Barn Door. It features the Calendar Mystery series protagonist Minty Wilcox, who aspires to become what was called a business girl back then. Minty’s mother, youngest brother and her younger sister are based on some of the individuals from my own family tree described in A Family Story.

Just to show you how often I stick to my past and the names on my family tree, I’ll tell you that while Minty’s mother’s name is Laura Girard Wilcox, the name of my own grandmother mentioned in A Family Story was Laura Wilcox Perkins.

Minty Wilcox’s younger sister, Priscilla nicknamed Peach by her father, is rather like myself when I was a little girl, a terrible flirt. I adored my father and my brother from the get-go, and in addition to them, I had one other man in my life, so to speak, as I describe in First Love.

Minty’s mother’s household routine in this story comes pretty much from my mother’s that I describe in Monday Is Wash Day. Tuesday is . . . The essay The Registered Nurse is about my mom as well. She inspired one of the characters in January Jinx, Book 1 of the series.

Two Birthdays

The third story in this collection takes place on June 22, 1899, about six months after Minty first meets Daniel Price in January Jinx and becomes a typist/stenographer at Price Investigations. My great-aunt Melicent Perkins, on whom I based the character of Minty Wilcox, was born on June 22, 1880, the same birthday though later by a year.

The Business Girl is about my aunt Melicent, the young woman shown on the cover of Old Time Stories, and the inspiration for my protagonist.

The Story Thief, a remembrance of my father Homer D. Willman, Sr., includes an explanation of where some of the names of characters in Fatal February come from.

The 9th Street Gang

The 9th Street Gang takes place shortly after the end of Fatal February on February 23, 1900. And it demonstrates my liking for introducing actual people who lived in Kansas City in those days into my fiction. Jesse James, Jr., who appears in this story, had put together a compilation from newspaper accounts of his conflict with assorted lawmen in the book he called The Trial of Jesse James, Jr.

Other famous people appear in my Calendar Mystery series as well. I have dragooned Cooke Smith, a Kansas City police officer and the world’s tallest at the time, into duty in January Jinx and Fatal February. Kansas City’s most infamous madam Annie Chambers appears in Fatal February. Also in Fatal February, Minty and Daniel attend a concert given by the world-famous pianist Ignacy Paderewski. Other real people in my fiction include Fire Chief George Hale, famous for making the Kansas City Fire Department the best in the world, who appears Mischief in March; and Ford Harvey in Detectives’ Honeymoon.

Some of the action of The 9th Street Gang takes place inside the New England Life Insurance Building, the subject of my essay The Game’s Afoot in Old KC.

Detectives’ Honeymoon

This short story begins exactly where Mischief in March ends. Indeed, there’s some overlap between the novel and the story without spoiling the major mystery plot lines of the book. For the names of some of the characters in this story including a would-be Sherlock Holmes and a Harvey Girl, I solicited the help of my Facebook friends. When one of these asked just what a Harvey Girl was, I wrote Suitable Jobs for Women in 1900.

Much of Mischief in March and part of the short story Detectives’ Honeymoon show Minty Wilcox getting to know Daniel Price, in some ways a mystery man to her. Thinking about that, I realized that Old Time Stories would be incomplete without my talking about the basis for the character of Daniel Price, in the essay, The Father of my Child.

The Shackleton Ghost

This story, previously unpublished and taking place on April 1, 1900, concludes Old Time Stories.

THE BARN DOOR

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Friday, July 1, 1898, late afternoon

Kansas City, Missouri

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And there she is, thought Hector Jones as he waited at the corner of Ninth and Baltimore for a cable car headed downhill to the Junction to go by him. Across the street and down a ways stood the New York Life Building, made of dark red brick and at twelve stories, the city’s tallest. The bronze statue of an eagle, her wings flared protectively above her young in their nest high above the building’s entrance, held Jones’ attention even after the open streetcar, filled with passengers, had passed.

That eagle reminds me of that young gal I’m married to, he thought. And just why did she keep me away from that fine baby boy she delivered two weeks ago for so long? Did she think I’d hurt the child? But maybe I’m a suspicious old fool for even thinking these thoughts rattling around in my head.

Mr. Jones, a banker, had just come out of the Milwaukee Delicatessen where he’d fortified himself with a shot of Jim Beam Bourbon Whiskey. Also, he distracted himself with the newspaper filled with accounts of American troops in Cuba including General Lawton’s Rough Riders, a rowdy dowdy bunch of boys by all accounts.

Maybe I should go along home instead of going over there to the New York Life Building, Jones thought.

Just then a pair of females, arm in arm, started across Baltimore toward him. One held up an umbrella to shield both of them from the sun. From the looks of their skirts that showed their ankles, along with their white shirtwaists and their fancy hats, mostly likely they weren’t business girls. If they were, they’d still be typing at a life insurance company or selling yard goods at a dry goods store. It was also nearly four o’clock, the wrong time of day for business girls to be out and about.

As they tripped up to him, their gait light because they were young, Hector realized, he tipped his boater in a proper gentlemanly way. They giggled as they passed him by.

What is this world coming to? Hector wondered, when young gals like those show such little respect for old coots like me?

Not that he was all that old. Oh sure, most of his hair was gone and what was left was white. But at pretty near sixty, he still was spry. True, he carried a cane—not that he needed it to walk. Instead, he used it to knock away the occasional dog that darted out at him as he walked about town.

A small man who carried himself with shoulders back and head up, he looked mighty spruce in his white linen suit with its cutaway jacket if he did say so himself. His wife Emily had said as much when she straightened his red, white, and blue bow tie for him before he left for work that morning. She’d given him the tie as a surprise for Independence Day on Monday.

Would Emily and her sister, who moved into his house with nary a by-your-leave, titter and giggle at me like those young gals if I gave them half a chance? Jones wondered.

His resolve hardened by the rude young girls who’d passed him, Hector Jones briskly crossed the street and went in through the glass and brass doors of the New York Life Building. He took off his boater as he passed through the vestibule, small but opulent with pale pink and white marble columns that soared to the ceiling high above. After he climbed the stairs, he went through the wood and glass doors inside.

Of course, since it was after three, the banks on either side of the first floor—competitors to his bank a block south on Baltimore—had closed.

As he approached the elevators on his right, the bright brass door of the closer one opened and three fellows in black business suits came out. One of them smirked as he passed Hector.

Well, Hector thought. I guess rudeness to your elders isn’t limited to the gentler sex these days. Then, careful to step over the gap between the car and the floor, he entered the car past the elevator operator, a red-haired lad in a tan uniform.

Sometimes lately, Hector had noticed that he lost his balance when an elevator stopped abruptly, so he positioned himself with his shoulders against the back of the car and his cane planted firmly on the floor to brace himself.

The red-haired attendant leaned out of the car, looked one way and the other, and said, Going up! Going up!

The boy had started to close the door when someone shouted, Wait for me from outside and a clean-shaven man of medium height stepped onto the car. He didn’t remove his dark blue cap. Thanks for waiting, Robbie, the man said.

Sure thing, Mr. Price, the elevator operator said. Going to the Ninth Floor, as usual? he asked before he shut the elevator door.

Price? Hector thought.

Yes, indeed, the man said, now standing near the front of the car with his back to Hector.

Hector lowered his gaze and studied Price from the heels of his brown boots, the left one scuffed, to his dark gray Kentucky jean pants, baggy in the seat. A pair of sturdy farmer’s suspenders crossed a patch of his white shirt a little darker with sweat than the rest of it.

The attendant turned and looked at Hector. Which floor you going to, sir?

As it happens, I’m going to the Ninth Floor as well, to Price Investigations, Jones said.

The man in front of Jones turned and took off his cap. I’m Daniel Price, he said. And who are you, sir?

Hector shifted his hat and cane to his left hand and held out his right. I’m Hector Jones, Mr. Price.

Good to meet you, Mr. Jones, Price said. He glanced down and quickly up again. A glint of humor in his dark brown eyes, he held out his hand.

After they shook, the young man surprised Hector by keeping hold of his hand and pulling him close. Begging your pardon, sir, Price whispered in Hector’s ear. But your fly is open.

What? Hector said before he glanced down to see that indeed his fly was open and a sizeable part of his shirttail stuck out. Probably he’d been so distracted thinking about his Emily and her newborn child that he’d forgotten to button up after he answered a call of nature at the deli.

That explains some things, Jones said. Recalling the giggling females that passed him on the street and the smirking man he saw when he entered the building, Hector stepped away from Price and handed the young man his hat and cane. Not that it matters much. Where I come from, back in Virginia . . . Well, it’s West Virginia now. Anyway, back there when I was growing up before the War Between the States, we had a saying.

What saying is that, sir?

Why, sir, when the horse is dead, you leave the barn door open.

Price hesitated for a moment before he said, Oh I get it. He grinned.

As a matter of fact, Hector said as he pushed his shirttail back inside his trousers. That’s why I need a detective.

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A few minutes later with his arms folded across his chest, Daniel Price leaned against the wall by the door to the agency manager’s office. From where he stood, all Daniel could see of Kansas City through the window was the dark smudge in the blue sky from the power plant for the cable car line farther west on Ninth Street.

So, Mr. Jones, George Mathison said ensconced behind his big desk with his back to the window. My nephew Dan here says you need a detective. A stocky man of sturdy build with a misshapen nose, Mathison had the sort of looks that people would never consider handsome, so they called him personable instead. He often wore, as now, a light blue shirt that called attention to his cornflower blue eyes.

Indeed, I do, sir, Hector Jones said. He sat in the client’s chair in front of the office manager’s desk. He’d placed his straw boater on the floor next to the chair and held his cane in front of him. "But first would you explain how it happens that young Price here isn’t in