The Letter, A Class '94 Mystery

By Aria Creek

The Letter / A Class '94 Mystery. In the second installment of the Class '94 Mysteries, Sam's been hired to auction off an estate. Her biggest commission yet. When she shows up to meet her new client, she finds her client in a rage and his aunt's house ransacked. Her Client, former Police Chief Marvin Task, hi

• Language: English
• Publisher: IANOM Press
• Release date: Oct 3, 2022
• ISBN: 9781088055953

Book preview

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

This Printed book/e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only; and may not be resold or given away. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this Printed book/e-book, or portions thereof, in any form without written permission except for the use of brief quotations embodied in critical

articles and reviews.

THE LETTER

Copyright 2015 by Aria Creek. All Rights Reserved.

The Letter, a "Class ’94 mystery" is an Independently published Book. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions.

Cover Illustration by Aria Creek.

Cover Design by Aria Creek.

Published Independently by Aria Creek.

www.ariacreek.com

ISBN 9781088055953 (ebook)

ISBN 9781088031056 (trade paperback)

ISBN 9781088029480 (hardcover)

First Edition: September 2022

The Eight Members of Class ’94

Our Three Champion Cyclists, Casey,

Susan and Whitney

Casey Buckhauser

When you’re in trouble Casey steps in front of you and starts an

argument with your assailant.

Susan Lively-Hill

Susan comes running when you shout and first decides if it’s worth butting in.

Whitney House

Whitney is the kind of friend who comes dashing to the rescue and in a flash picks you up and keeps on going.

Our Tennis Champion, Sam

Samanthea Robinson

Sam’s the kind of sister who comes running when you scream and then

jumps into the fray with fists flying.

Our Downhill Medalist, Charelene

Charelene Johansen

Charelene’s the kind of teammate who does the Indie 500 when you call for help and then drives right over your assailant.

Our Three Softball Champions, Amel’iya, Grace and Claire Elizabeth

Amel’iya Jackson

Amel’iya is the kind of genie who instantly materializes out of thin air and delivers a walloping left-handed knock-out punch to your assailant after

which she takes you out for a drink.

Grace Philamore Montgomery

When you’re in trouble and call for help Grace is the kind of friend who comes running and holds the assailant while you punch his lights out.

Claire Elizabeth Stockton

Me? I always come running whenever my friends call for help. And then I

wait to see what they want me to do.

1

Seven Left Standing

Subjectively:

It was a miserable, molten lava, dark, disgusting day.

Objectively:

Gorgeous, crisp, bright, spectacular.

Subjectively:

As for me? I’m in a slime-sucking foul mood; could rip the horn off a rhinoceros with my bare hands.

Objectively:

Sad, depressed, despondent.

Then it just got worse.

Casey came blasting into my bedroom ...

(Yeah, Subjectively.)

Why is it so dark in here?

It’s DARK because it’s DARK! I barked.

Temper... Temper... Pray tell... from wench hast thou arrived from? she chanted as she walked across the room towards the large windows.

I hate Casey.

And then she did the unthinkable. She pulled back the heavy drapes.

She did this with a vicious flourish and snap to every single one of them.

Alien particles of razor-sharp light invaded my space.

Get your ass out of bed! I have coffee and breakfast waiting for you downstairs. Then she was gone.

Why was I in such a foul mood?

Maybe because I had a really heavy cast on my shattered leg?

Maybe it’s because Robinson, the FBI Big Bad Wolf-man is gone. (That’s a good thing, I think.)

(He’s one of the unsavory, weird, FBI types that dwell in the alphabet underworld of Washington, D.C. But he did stick around while I was in the hospital getting my broken bones repaired. (I’m thinking it might have been to make sure there were no more killers after me. Or, he was after the copy of Lovejoy’s flash drive ... that he probably knew I had.)

The flash drive had found its way into my possession (with a little help from my friends)... then scary strangers showed up. Then the BBW showed up and then I had a gun jammed into the side of my head. Casey shot him ... he fell on me ... and then a bunch of my bones broke. So here I am with a shattered leg — and the BBW FBI man? Well, he disappeared back into the Mad Hatter Tech Defense Systems life. (A life I ran away from years ago, escaping with only a few scorch marks to show for my bravery and stupidity.)

―

Or maybe ... the actual real reason I’m in a foul, putrefying, abysmal mood could be ... possibly ... even probably ... well, almost for sure ... because one of my best friends — a really great friend — betrayed all of us; all of Class ’94.

(I would have bounced back faster from almost being made dead — if the reason I was almost killed wasn’t that I was betrayed. Yeah, I’m stuck in this betrayal/dead loop thing.)

I was still in bed with the covers over my head when Casey came storming back into the bedroom. She ripped the covers off and told me that if I didn’t get up she was going to drag me downstairs, cast or no cast.

So, I got up.

That’s what you do when one of Class ’94 tells you to get up.

You get up.

She marched me downstairs with one of my arms draped over her shoulder, while I took one step and one limp at a time. She sat me at my little kitchen table and said, Eat.

Usually, I’d have gone outside even though winter seemed to be back for a day. I would’ve just wrapped myself up and sat out there in the blazing sunshine.

(Yes, the sun was Objectively blazing. Yes, it was a disgustingly glorious crisp cold day. Subjectively it was all doom and gloom out there.)

But I couldn’t do it. I just couldn’t go out there. I couldn’t see anything but blistering, pulsating misery.

And then my dark mood drifted into my dark thoughts and there was Amel’iya.

―

Just because one of your best friends turns out to be a low-down, dirty rotten slime-ball of a turncoat, or probably a scary psychotic killer ... doesn’t mean that life will end ... or that death will stop showing up ... or that everything in the universe will cease, even for a second. Nope — life doesn’t work that way.

Life has this nasty habit of continuing on its own paradoxical volition: never halting, never desisting! Not for a hiccup ... or a Sorry about that bump in the road, Ma’am, ... or an apology: such as I’ll try to be quieter next time. Or, I’ll try not to give you heart failure ... again. Nope, life just doesn’t work that way.

No apologies.

No requests for forgiveness.

Life most certainly doesn’t obsequiously try to make excuses for its bone-chilling, thuggish behavior to us mere mortals.

So here I am, Claire Elizabeth Stockton, practically immobile. (In a real old fashion plaster cast; all properly signed and designed by Whitney and my various godchildren.) All because of a dead guy.

Well, two dead guys.

The first dead guy started all the trouble. He was a stranger named Lovejoy.

The second dead guy was a maniac, who just about blew my brains out. He was shot by my best friend Casey Buckhauser.

Who was to blame?

Everything points to Amel’iya.

Amel’iya — the ugly deceiver and manipulator — was sent to acquire the threatening information that Lovejoy came to our town to try to sell.

Amel’iya’s employer, or employers, wanted this information so badly that they apparently saw no reason not to add murder and mayhem to her orders.

But Lovejoy hid what he came to sell, and he got bumped off for his naïve attempt at blackmail.

I found the information he had cleverly hidden inside a flash drive.

Then, Class ’94 spent all our waking hours trying desperately to get rid of it, while not getting ourselves killed or caught by the FBI.

Well ... we almost made it.

2

True Colors

When Amel’iya showed her true colors it looked like I was going to wind up dead by gun.

I had inadvertently landed ... with said gun being held to my head, and a mad killer’s finger on the trigger in a grungy, disgusting warehouse.

And land I did.

Squashed and broken, underneath the killer’s dead weight as he collapsed on top of me after Casey shot the creep. Yeah! She really shot the creep. (She’s seeing a therapist every week now.)

So besides being in the foulest mood I’ve ever been in, I am now immobilized in a cast; seated in a wheelchair; making it very difficult for me to maneuver.

But I’m alive as far as I can tell. (And I’ve arrived at the light at the end of the tunnel.)

Instead of being happy that I’m alive, I’m grumpy. I’m also doing a lot of cursing every time I bump into a wall or knock something over because I seem to be incapable of handling a simple, modified wheelchair.

The seat is a minuscule black leathery hammock slung between two large wheels. There is no motor, no hydraulics, and no on or off switch. It’s just a bare-bones plain wheelchair.

They tried me on a motorized one, but I crashed into walls and doorways and was even thrown out of it; tumbling head over heels giving myself one nasty bruise on the side of my face.

They took that wheelchair away.

I was given a manual one.

Now, I just do a slow bumping about the house.

3

My Friends Less One

Let me backtrack here a moment to fill you in on the life and times of Claire Elizabeth Stockton of Kerry, Ohio. First and foremost, there are eight of us ... aaahhhh, keep forgetting... now seven ... seven friends who are all ex-champion athletes.

Susan is our intrepid leader; Casey her second in command. The rest of the team complement is Grace, Sam, Whitney, Char’Elene, and me. We call ourselves Class ’94.

Amel’iya — the dirty low-down rotten turncoat whom I would like to throttle — had been our eighth member. (The shock of her betrayal hasn’t worn off yet, maybe it never will.)

I’m forcing the good times up to the bright, shiny surface and keeping them afloat with fairy dust. I hope this works so I don’t go around all day wanting to strangle her (which I would do) if I should ever happen to set eyes on her again. That is, if she’s still alive?

Class ’94 is now a group of sad seven (shit!) athletes who participated in Coach Elvira Fitzpatrick’s sports program from September 1991 to June of ’94 at J. Kerry High School in Kerry, Ohio.

Way back before we became Class ’94, when we were just athletic tadpoles entering high school, we had either played in the sandbox together (there really weren’t any sandboxes where we lived) or went through grade school together ... or we stood in food stamp lines together with our moms or we had the same diaper delivery service. (Not that any of us had diaper service.) But you get the picture ... we knew each other, or knew of each other, for a long time. (I’m using kid time here, which always seems like forever.)

When we all got to high school, we became wily, overachieving, integral parts of the various homegrown teams during those heady days when the Kerry residents adored and cheered us ’til they went hoarse, satiated with pride. And truth be told, I must confess that all of us gloried in the golden spotlight that our town shone on us, especially when we won!

Life proceeded in its usual chaotic episodes for all of us (championship games, wins, defeats, college, work, business, a few marriages, some kids) until Casey and I came across a dead guy in an alley.

I still can’t believe it.

I still can’t believe that a white guy named Damian Olaf Lovejoy came to our small town, with seriously scorching information on the sociopaths running the world’s stock markets and got himself murdered. In broad daylight! On Main Street! In the middle of the day! Stuff like this just doesn’t happen in Kerry, Ohio.

But it did. A blackmailer wound up murdered. I wound up with a maniac holding a gun to my head and then getting squashed and broken. (He really did fall on me after Casey shot him. Yes, really.) Then I wound up in a wheelchair, and lost Amel’iya. (One of our own (shit!) who disappeared into FBI land.)

So now we’re seven: shit!

4

I Got Patched Up

The person who patched me up with bolts, screws, and bandages was Char’Elene Johansen. She is a 5’4" former Olympic medal-winning downhill racer who has recently decided to get serious about how her name is pronounced. For fancy occasions, she uses Char E Lán. (Kind of Cajun French sounding.) The rest of her pod call her Char’Elene. (Of course, there’s a story behind it, but now’s not the time to go down that bad-childhood-memories rabbit hole.)

Char’Elene is the last of our group to have finished her education. It took all the money she earned from her winnings (to which we all pitched in) to become the exceptional and sought-after orthopedic surgeon that she is today. (And yes, there’s a story there too.)

I recommend her services highly ... being a recent recipient of her exceptional skills.

Not only has she assured me that I will walk again, but she has also guaranteed that I’ll be able to run the bases as fast as my older body can go.

I liked the fast part, not so much the older part.

When out of operating scrubs, Char’Elene wears tight clothes and jams her feet into Dolly Parton-esque three-inch high-heeled boots. She says the heeled boots are needed to support her ankles, but we all know the real reason. It’s because she looks super-hot in these ankle-breakers. (Her rather stuffy, sometimes persnickety husband, Professor Thurnebill, goes glazed-over-eyes when she wears those boots.)

When not in sick-folk-indeterminant hospital scrubs, Char’Elene transforms herself into a person and comes to town, heading first to Casey.

Both Casey and Char’Elene are extroverts. Everyone has learned, the hard way, NOT to get involved with one of their good ideas. Generally speaking, a pair of extroverts are most definitely not good for your blood pressure or your life expectancy.

But you need an extrovert to do a quick draw and nail the bad guy without a second’s delay.

And you need another extrovert to get you to the hospital ASAP.

Casey did the shooting and Char’Elene did the repair job.

5

Champion Cyclists

Casey Buckhauser and her two teammates, Susan Lively-Hill and Whitney House, constitute our former champion cyclists. Casey is somewhat tall. She stands 5’8" — and when out of her tailored work clothes, she tends to go casual and loose. She loves large messenger bags and campaigning door to door during every election cycle, and she’s on the school board. When the kids are grown she’s running for State Comptroller.

Casey wears her straight black hair in the shape of a 1920s cloche hat. That’s what Grace, our fashion maven, calls the shape of Casey’s hairstyle. I think she just puts a shallow bowl over her head and cuts around the bottom. Casey walks away from us if we start on her hairstyle.

Casey usually has a pair of reading glasses perched at the end of her nose. She’s always pushing them up and they’re always sliding down. It has something to do with the shape of her nose, she tells us.

Char’Elene tells her she can break it and reset it, so the glasses don’t slide. Casey walks away from her when Char’Elene starts on the nose thing.

Casey was the fastest of the team of three. Susan set the pace the best. And Whitney pushed them all into the 110% performance arena.

Susan is a singularity. She stands 5’6" tall and is a present-day extreme-supreme volunteer, organizer, dispenser of wisdom, and the overseer of the Cyclist Menagerie which she, Casey, and Whitney own.

Susan had a tough start in life. She’s not the only one, but some starts are worse than others. From her birth, the jaws of poverty had Susan in a chokehold. If not for her athletic talent, and a great teacher, she might have been swallowed whole and shackled to hopelessness for life.

The last of the three champion cyclists, Whitney House is strong-legged and a willowy 5’ 7". At the present moment, she is a rather prominent artist and, of course, the most imaginative one amongst us. There isn’t a color she doesn’t adore nor a friend she wouldn’t go to the mat for.

Whitney is by far the most well-adjusted one in Class ’94. It’s a running joke between us ... that Whitney is so well adjusted because she lives most of her days in the fantasy world of her art where she interprets real life into chewable pieces.

To Sam that’s an oxymoron.

Samanthea Robinson is our 5’ 10" powerhouse endomorph. Talk about Amazonian giants. She qualifies, hands down.

Life has been tough on Sam, but that doesn’t totally explain her misanthropic attitude. Life is tough on everyone, in one form or another. Maybe she was born with skepticism etched into her lifeline? A lifeline that had become incongruously intertwined with the downtrodden.

Spoiler alert ... soon that screwy lifeline of her is going to get her into real trouble.

Sam played championship tennis for our high school and afterward went pro for two years. Her prize money went into the greatest little clothing store east of the Mississippi. The store that Grace started for them right after high school graduation.

Sam and Grace, glued at the hip from probably the first moment they met, planned their escape from poverty and tough home lives with the intensity and assurance of a military campaign.

Sam played tennis and won. Grace prudently took the money and created the store.

Never in a million years would any of us have ever foreseen that this little store could or would set off a chain of events that might put Sam in mortal danger.

6

Grace Philamore Montgomery

Samanthea Robinson is a cool name, but the queen of all names is Grace Philamore Montgomery, her business partner. It’s glamourous enough to be blasted on a marquee in Times Square.

Grace Philamore Montgomery, Amel’iya Jackson (the dirty low-down rotten traitor), and I were the champion softball players in high school. Amel’iya (you know ... rotten traitor etc.) and I went on to become sprinters, winning our share of prizes.

Grace is a solid 5’ 11" long-legged gal – who can place her home-run hits.

Like Babe Ruth, she stands there ... at the plate ... and points. Everyone goes crazy when Grace does her finger-pointing thing.

Me? I just belt them out of the park.

Sam follows in her footstep when bowling. She’ll let you know which pins she’ll leave standing ... when hitting one strike after another starts to bore her.

Sam is forced to play on both sides when we go bowling.

Me? If I