Crimeucopia - We'll Be Right Back - After This

By Authors Various

This is the first of several 'Free 4 All' collections that were supposed to be themeless. However, with the number of submissions that came in, it seems that this could be called an Angels & Devils collection, mixing PI & Police alongside tales from the bad guys. Mind you, that's not to say that all the PIs & Police are Good Guys - t

• Language: English
• Publisher: Murderous Ink Press
• Release date: Jan 17, 2023
• ISBN: 9781909498433

Book preview

Don’t Touch That Dial!

(An Editorial of Sorts)

So has it really been a nine-month hibernation? It’s been a bit of a rollercoaster, but it looks like things are getting back to the usual CRIMEUCOPIA chaos once more – thus proving that publishing short crime fiction is either an addiction or a genetic compulsion.

Does that mean we will actually be keeping to our original plan of 4 anthologies a year? I doubt it, but that’s just another part of the chaos after all.

This is the first of several ‘Free 4 All’ collections that were supposed to be themeless. However, with the number of submissions that came in, it seems that this could be called an Angels & Devils collection, mixing PI & Police alongside tales from the bad guys. Mind you, that’s not to say that all the PIs & Police are Good Guys – though hopefully this collection is not too NOIR for some.

Jim Guigli opens this collection with a Bart Lasiter outing in Blood on the Stairs, and Glen Bush gives it to us totally stone cold in Cold Eyes, Cold Blood.

Under the Table sees the humorous return of Edward Lodi, and Cate Moyle makes her Crimeucopian debut with A Jeweled Anniversary, before I present the initial ‘origin’ story in the Tomaso Memindip series of short stories. This is Memindip’s second MIP appearance – his first was in the Murderous Ink Press Sampler, Criminal Intent, with the second in the series, Memindip and the Persian Poet.

From there, another new Crimeucopian, Bob Ritchie, gives us an English lesson with his Learning Vocabulary with the Jence Brothers, while Michele Bazan Reed takes us back in time and introduces us to The Devil’s Accountant.

Cruel as the Grave sees Eve Fisher raise a smile, and the word count, before we get into the slightly more darker humour of Michael Wiley’s All That Glitters.

Joan Hall Hovey returns with A Long Dark Road, before our third and final new Crimeucopian takes centre stage, and J. T. Seate explains about the perils of a Deadly Sideshow.

And to close out this anthology we have the equally darkly humorous Madeleine McDonald with her Watching Over You.

This time around has not only seen a move to a larger paperback format size, but also in regard to the length of the fiction, as well. Followers of the somewhat bent and twisted Crimeucopia path will know that although we don’t deal with flash fiction as a rule, it is a rule that we have sometimes broken. And let’s face it, if you cannot break your own rules now and again, whose rules can you break?

Oh, wait, isn’t that the basis of the crime fiction genre?

Oh dear….

As with all of these anthologies, we hope you’ll find something that you immediately like, as well as something that takes you out of your comfort zone – and puts you into a completely new one.

In other words, in the spirit of the Murderous Ink Press motto:

You never know what you like until you read it.

Blood on the Stairs

(A Bart Lasiter Mystery)

Jim Guigli

A shout down in the entrance lobby cut into Bart Lasiter’s quiet morning and ritual study of The Sacramento Bee. His live-in office was up on the third floor, but the thin walls of his Old Town historic building held back no sound above a whisper. He thought he’d heard a sharp single word, No! Then a muffled shriek of pain?

He set the newspaper down on his desk and listened. Was it nothing? Confrontation? Violence? Maybe, maybe not. Then he heard the lobby door slam, followed by the sound of someone outside running down the wooden sidewalk. After a few seconds, it was quiet again. Bart sighed and returned to his newspaper. Probably nothing.

Soon the quiet was again interrupted, now by a slow beat pulsing through his building. Someone was climbing the wooden stairs from the lobby. From his desk, Bart could usually identify each of his neighbors by the signature of their individual stair-climbing rhythm. But this new music, step by strange step, was foreign to him. This someone was not a neighbor. Bart thought this was a big person, or someone with heavy shoes, maybe both.

After pausing a few seconds on the second-floor landing, the visitor started up again. The steady slapping of foot to tread became louder as the pace became slower and unsteady.

Of course, it could be just an out-of-breath senior citizen here to see one of Bart’s neighbors in another third-floor office. A new customer for the tax accountant?

Sitting at his desk, master of his domain, Lasiter Investigations, Bart didn’t think so. He had a feeling. He observed his cat had a feeling, too.

Agamemnon, or Aggie, as the cat preferred, a fixed-male orange tabby, sat on his favorite corner of Bart’s desk, closest to their office door. With his right ear cocked toward the hallway outside the office, Aggie’s only movement was a tail twitch following each footfall. Guard cat.

Bart knew, and surely Aggie knew: The visitor had to be one of those people.

*****

Since that mystery writers’ conference, Crime Happens 2012, had started earlier in the week, those people had been knocking on Bart’s door. The first day it was just two during the morning, and then three after lunch. The next day there were dozens, starting at eight in the morning.

You’re a real detective? a man asked, not sure, looking around Bart’s tiny one-room office. "I didn’t see your name in PI Magazine. Noticing Bart’s single bed and mini-fridge behind a screen, he said, This is really your office?"

At first, Bart hoped they might be new clients.

An older woman said, No, Mr. Lasiter. I don’t want to hire you. I just want to learn what I can about private detectives. For my stories. What was your biggest case?

They all had questions.

Ever shot anyone? asked a young woman who avoided eye contact. "What wouldn’t you do for a client?"

URL? a man asked.

Earl? Bart said.

Uniform Resource Locater — your website address. You have a website, don’t you? Blog? Twitter?

Blog? Twitter?

Another woman said, Glock? Use a Glock? Nineteen-eleven? Nine-mil or forty-five? Thirty-eight Super? Shoulder holster? She must have been eighty.

Two women who said they were sisters asked, How much do you charge? Do you take PayPal? They told him they were in town, For the Conference. At the New Coloma Hotel. All week.

Aggie hated the interruptions in his daily routine. After the first day, he stayed away from the office, prowling Old Town while he waited for those people to disappear.

One night, a group of five showed up late, near ten. Bart was already in his Maltese Falcon polka-dot pajamas, safe in bed reading. His pajamas were loud, but not as loud as the five mystery fans climbing his stairs. Their laughing echoed throughout the nearly empty building as they approached his office.

Aggie folded back his ears and hissed. He answered their pounding on Bart’s office door with a low growl. Guard cat.

Bart jumped out of bed and rushed to open the door before they broke the glass. When he saw their faces, he detected they had just come from the conference hotel bar. When they saw his pajamas, they checked each other and grinned. A young woman stepped forward and spoke for the group. Sorry Mr., uh — she looked at a booklet in her hand, and then at his name on the glass in his door — Lasiter, but we just heard about the list. Could we each, please, have one of your business cards?

Okay, okay. Wait here.

On the way to his desk for the cards, Bart heard some snorts and guffaws outside his door. He stifled his temptation to tell these people to get lost, adhering to his golden rule: Never annoy someone who might pay your bills.

Here you go. Try to hold down the noise on your way out.

Thank you! They skipped down the stairs, laughing all the way.

Bart locked his door. Back in bed, he thought this was like last Halloween. Only in his mid-forties, he was beginning to feel old.

The next morning, a visitor explained. The list? Here, in the Conference Program, she said, waving a booklet, its pages folded back. They listed all the Sacramento private detectives and their addresses. You’re the closest. I walked from the hotel. There’s a free-book offer for registered Conference attendees who visit at least three of the private detectives on the list. Like a treasure hunt. You have a business card? I have to prove I was here.

Your friends have taken all my cards — I’m all out. Sorry.

Maybe you could write a note or something?

Wait. He reached across his desk for a mug full of yellow pencils. How about this? He gave her one of his Lasiter Investigations promotional pencils. Like his card, it carried his promise:

— I’m ready to help —

After spinning the pencil between her fingers to read all the printing on it, she smiled. Cool. Thanks.

She must have told the others. After her, they all wanted pencils.

*****

A grunt followed by a heavy thud snapped Bart back to the present. The music from the stairs had ended abruptly with a blow that shook the floor and rattled the glass in his door.

Yikes. He had a feeling. He had a bad feeling.

He opened his door and peeked into the narrow hallway leading from his office at one end to the stairwell at the other end. He saw the morning sun through the hallway windows fall on an arm reaching up from the stairs and across the brown linoleum floor. A woman’s hand and wrist, encircled with blue, yellow, and red plastic hoops, extended from a green satin jacket sleeve. The hand was open and cupped, like one from the spare-change people down on the street — tired, but hopeful, ready for donations. Please? Like she wanted a pencil. But there was no gesturing, no tambourine, no sound, no movement at all.

Bart approached the staircase. The hand belonged to, he guessed, a two-hundred-pound six-footer. She’d landed stretched out and twisted onto her left side, looking up and back toward him. Her round face, surrounded by short, purple-streaked brown hair, still had some color, but no smile. The look of sudden and final surprise in her wide-open eyes said he was too late to help her.

Bart bent down and felt for a pulse, but the blood in her veins was still.

He found a black cloth pouch attached to a cord around her neck. In the pouch’s center, a clear plastic window covered a 3 x 5 white card:

Writers-Love-Readers, Inc.

Crime Happens 2012

Sacramento

The bottom of the card said she was — had been — Karen Wilcox, from Fox River Grove, Illinois.

One of those people. Bart had no sympathy for her. No pencil for you, Karen Wilcox. She’d wasted her last breath trying to reach his office. Must have really wanted to win that free book.

Aggie arrived and looked. Pleased that the stair thumping had stopped, he showed the same lack of concern he’d have for a rat he’d just beheaded. After a few seconds, with a subtle flash of his yellow-green eyes, that bored look returned to his orange face, and he padded back to Bart’s office.

Aggie’s disdain reflected Bart’s attitude. Bart felt guilty. He didn’t know this woman, but fortyish was too young to die. For a pencil. Okay, that might be why she came, but why was she dead?

Bart switched from witness to detective. Overdose? She didn’t look like a user. Heart attack? Stroke? Could be. He saw her shoes, the percussion instruments of the stair-thumping music. Large and stylish, to Bart they were fashionable speed-laced evening-wear combat boots with gum-rubber cleats and a hint of Italian park ranger. But what did Bart know about shoes? Until a woman recently corrected him, he thought a Blahnik was a Croatian pastry.

Then, beyond the shoes, he saw it.

Blood on the stairs.

Fresh, stomach-turning-red blood traced a thin, wandering line of drips and splashes from around the corner on the second-floor landing, up the stairs until it disappeared beneath the woman. The woman’s right arm and her leather purse rested behind her back. Bart carefully lifted her arm and moved the purse, which popped open. He saw a matching leather wallet, fat with cash. Not a robbery. Beneath the purse he found the blood trail’s source, a stab wound in the back of her green jacket.

A murder victim, twenty feet from Bart’s office door. Did this ever happen to Jim Rockford, a body outside his trailer door? This was bad news.

But the really bad news was the stabbing instrument. It stood up straight like a miniature yellow foul-line pole set in the grass-green outfield of her back. Bart looked closer — and froze.

The foul-line pole was a smooth, round, school-bus-yellow pencil. He didn’t have to be a detective to know it was a number two. The eraser-end portion visible above the wet, red hole in her jacket read:

— I’m ready to help —

*****

The patrol officer diverted to Bart’s building by the Sac-PD Dispatch was in her late twenties and athletic. Stepping carefully around the blood trail, she climbed the stairs, looking up toward Bart and Karen Wilcox. She stopped at Karen’s feet. Nice shoes. She reached up with her left hand to check for a pulse, while her right hand rested on the grip of her holstered pistol. You called this in, Sir?

Yes. I’m Bart Lasiter. I found her here and called. My office is up here.

I’m Schaefer. Officer Schaefer. Anyone else up there? In your office?

Just my cat.

You didn’t see anyone attack this woman?

No. I heard her coming up the stairs and fall here.

All right, Mr. Laster. I want you to back up and lean against the windows behind you for a few minutes. Rest up. Do that for me.

"It’s Las-i-ter, with one S. He began to spell it. L-a-s-EYE-t —"

But she’d already turned from him to talk toward her shoulder and the microphone clipped to her dark blue uniform shirt. She talked and listened, but her eyes kept returning to Bart, like he was a coiled snake pretending to sleep. When she’d finished her call, her hand still rested on her pistol.

Okay, Mr. Laster. Help is on the way.

Bart did as he was told. He leaned back against the street-side windows of the narrow hallway. He turned away from the young officer and bloody Karen Wilcox to look through the windows down onto Second Street.

While Bart waited, his mind sorted through possible suspects. He had no clue. It could have been one of those people, or it could have been a stranger who chose Bart’s building at random and attacked the woman because she was there. That could happen in Old Town, just like almost anywhere in Sacramento.

But not with his pencil. Unless it was one he handed out months or years ago. But it looked fresh, not used. And why did Karen Wilcox, seriously wounded, climb the stairs? Was she in shock — total zombie mode?

The paramedics Bart had suggested in his call, just in case, pulled up, double-parked their ambulance, grabbed their equipment, and rushed into the building. They hustled up the stairs to Karen Wilcox. After a quick exam, they turned to Schaefer and shook their heads. She belongs to the coroner now — we’ve got another call. Back down the stairs they went, slamming the lobby door on their way out.

An unmarked sedan arrived and double-parked across the street. A familiar muscular man forced into a business suit got out and stood looking up at Bart’s building, staring at Bart in the window. Help had arrived.

Again, Bart had a bad feeling.

The lobby door slammed. Bart heard footfalls on the stairs again, but this time they sounded measured and strong. The man from the sedan appeared on the second-floor landing, looking down and following the blood trail. When he looked up, he saw the patrol officer, the body, and Bart. He shook his blond crewcut head.

Okay, Schaefer. I’ve got it now. You go down to the street and wait for forensics.

Yes, Sir. This is Mr. Laster. He called —

"It’s Las-I-ter. What did you screw up this time, Lasiter?"

Good to see you, too, McGill.

*****

McGill filled Bart’s client chair, his accusing chin tucked into his neck, making his thick neck look even thicker.

Is this your work, Lasiter? She didn’t want to pay for your services, so you chased her and caught her in the lobby and stabbed her with your pencil? ‘I’m ready to stab.’ Yes?

Of course not.

Why not?

"I wasn’t working for her, and I’ve never seen her before. And why stab her with my pencil? I could have shot her if I’d wanted. I’ve got a gun. Two, if you count my Wells Fargo," said Bart, now sitting behind his desk.

McGill unbuttoned his suit jacket and smiled.

"Maybe you’re just too emotional and not decisive. The poet detective. Wait. Wells Fargo and Black Bart Lasiter — I remember that. Let’s see those guns."

"Well, I could have shot her. If my guns weren’t in the pawnshop."

Where?

Capitol Pawn on K Street, Bart said in a strong, confident voice. But....

Bart didn’t like the way this was going.

Okay. I’ll get them tested. Even if you didn’t shoot her, I’d like to have the ballistics on record, in case you shoot anyone else.

But I haven’t shot anyone...lately.

"You wouldn’t ob-ject, would you?"

No...I guess.

Pencils — give me your pencils.

All of them?

Of course.

Bart opened his desk’s center drawer and offered McGill his last five promotional pencils.

This is it? Come on.

That’s all I’ve got left. In oh-seven I bought a case of them — five hundred. After five years I was down to a mug of them — maybe fifty — before the Crime-Happens people started taking them for their book contest, after they’d taken the last of my business cards. I was hiding those last five pencils.

McGill bagged the pencils and slipped them into a coat pocket. You’ll get your pencils back. Later. Maybe. I’ll be down at the writers’ convention. We want to go through her hotel room and interview anyone who knew her.

McGill stood and looked around Bart’s office. His lower lip curled. We’ll talk. Don’t go anywhere.

"Conference, not convention," said Bart.

Whatever.

*****

When the forensics people and coroner had finished, Bart locked his office and left the building. He had to maneuver around a reporter and cameraman who were in the staircase filming the blood trail.

Sir, did you see what happened here?

No. Didn’t see anything.

Wait. Do you have an office here? We want to ask you a few questions.

No, no. Don’t know anything. I was just getting my taxes done, Bart said, without turning back.

After a burrito down the street, and killing some time walking through Old Town, Bart checked to be sure all the TV people were gone. Coast clear, he returned to his office by the back stairs and fed Aggie. He went to bed early, hoping for sleep and peace. His sleep was sporadic, interrupted by slamming car doors down in the street. His address was temporarily interesting, if not infamous.

*****

Early next morning, Bart was at his desk, dressed and waiting for his coffee to perk, when his office door opened.

Mr. Lasiter? My name is Pat...Patricia Callahan.

Hello, Ms. Callahan. How can I help you? He pointed at the Italian aluminum coffee pot shaking on his hotplate.

Want some? Pop Tart?

Please, just Pat, and no, but thank you. I’ve already had some breakfast this morning, at the hotel.

Okay. Please sit down.

She sat in his client chair and spent a minute settling herself before she looked up and said, I want to hire you, Mr. Lasiter. I want you to find out who killed my friend, Karen Wilcox.

Hmm. I’m not sure I can help you. Why me? You know the police are on this, and they have great resources. More than I have.

See, I’m a mystery writer. Mystery writers — unless you’re writing police procedurals — well, we know the police can’t solve many cases. They’re just not very good. And this happened right here, in your building. You’re the closest. And not part of the police.

True. I mean, it did happen here. You say she was your friend?

Yes, from back in Illinois. We traveled together to attend Crime Happens. People back home will want to know what happened.

While she talked, Bart sized her up. Like her friend, Karen, she was fortyish — but short and slight. Her sandy hair was thin and cut close, her features unremarkable, and her clothes like those a thousand others wore. What he really noticed was Pat reaching into her purse.

What do you need to start?

Bart thought, finally, he might receive some compensation for all his Crime Happens troubles. At least he needed money to replace the business cards and pencils they took.

I like to start with a $500 retainer, against expenses — itemized, of course — and a hundred dollars a day.

Pat’s face turned red, like a heat lamp over a rotisserie chicken. Her lips didn’t move.

$200? he said.

She sucked in air like it was her last breath.

$50? he said.

PayPal?

No. Cash or check.

She dug deep into her cloth purse and counted out fifty dollars in tens. Counted it twice.

Bart pulled a blank contract from a desk drawer and held it out to her.

Oh. Can’t we just do this on a handshake?

Okay, if that’s what you want.

Bart put the blank form back into his desk and politely pressed Pat for details of Karen’s history and enemies, and Pat and Karen’s relationship. She was stingy with information.

You’re a smart detective. I trust you. You’ll know where to look.

*****

Bart cleaned his coffee pot and mug, something he stuck to as routine, but the damage from the Pop Tart explosion in his microwave would have to wait. It was around 10:30 and he was just putting the pot back on its shelf when McGill shoved through his office door and sat down without a hello. Bart figured McGill had just finished his morning coffee, too, plus doughnuts and meetings.

Did you learn anything from the Crime Happens people yesterday? Bart didn’t want to annoy McGill, but his curiosity wouldn’t wait.

McGill rolled his eyes and looked up at Bart’s ceiling. Your fan work?

Most of the time.

Too many people.

Too many people?

Hundreds of them milling around the hotel. All ages, sizes, and shapes. Writers. Would-be writers. And writer groupies — they call them readers. And they’re all obsessed with murder. Any murder. On a normal day, you’d suspect all of them. I had Billings and Jackson with me, but I could have used three more. Herding cats.

At least they’re interested.

"Not about this murder. Oh, a lot of them already heard about it, but only a few of them knew the victim and they weren’t helpful. Except they gave me