Christmas Coda 45

Christmas Coda 45

MURDER BETWEEN THE PAGES: Felix and Leonard

 

The clocks were chiming when I landed on Felix’s doorstep.

I could hear them through the tall, white front door of the Colonial farmhouse. All fifty three of them. Ding-donging away. Chiming out the hour in ten long notes.

Maybe that’s what was taking him so long to come to the door. Maybe he couldn’t hear me over the clocks. Or maybe it was the rain rattling on the windows and roof--and the ragged leaves of the little palm tree plant I cradled in my arms--that deafened him to my knock.

I knocked again and rang the doorbell for good measure. Where would he be on Christmas morning? Hopefully nobody had wrung his scrawny neck while I’d been away.

I was just starting to get nervous when the door suddenly flew open.

“Well?” Felix demanded. His thin face changed. Black eyes narrowing, lip curling. “Oh, it’s you.”

“Hell, yes, it’s me. Who were you expecting?”

“Not you.”

“I told you I’d be back.”

“Ha!”

“Aren’t you going to invite me in?”

His throat jumped as he swallowed. He said haughtily, unpleasantly, “Don’t you have somewhere more important to be?”

“No.”

His lashes swept down, then flicked up. He gave me a funny, crooked smile. “No?”

“You know I don’t.”

“I thought they loved you in Hollywood.”

“They do. But it’s not home, is it?”

“It could be. If you wanted it to be.”

“I guess so.”

He frowned. “You’re shivering, Leonard.”

“I’m freezing to death.”

“You’re not used to our weather anymore.”

“I could be. If you wanted me to be.”  

Felix studied my face. “Hm. Well, maybe you had better come in then.”

I came inside, handing over the little palm tree and the bags of oranges and almonds. “Anyway, Merry Christmas.” I took a deep appreciative sniff. “Something smells great.”

“It happens that I’m making ham and eggs for breakfast.”

“My favorite,” I said.

“Is it?” He started to turn toward the kitchen, and I caught his arm, pulling him toward me.

A tinge of color pinked his cheeks. “Leonard, you’ll crush my palm tree.”

I laughed and kissed him. He closed his eyes and kissed me back, and the oranges and

almonds rained down around our feet.

 

 

I don’t think he believed I'd be back.

Nah. He had to know. Maybe he thought when I did come back, it would be pack my suitcase and grab my hat.

I don’t deny it crossed my mind as that train had clickity-clacked its way over deserts and cornfields, through small towns and mountain ranges, over the rivers and through the woods…

I liked California. I liked the palm trees and the orange trees and the Technicolor blue of those always-sunny skies. I liked the hustle and bustle of movie studios and doing business beside a swimming pool. I liked the money to be made in California.

I liked the fact that nothing shocked people in Hollywood. And that everybody but Hedda Hopper and Louella Parsons minded their own business.

But what Hollywood and California didn’t have was Felix Day.

The one thing I couldn’t live without.

  

NEW RELEASE - Murder Between the Pages

New release this morning! Murder Between the Pages is a 1940s madcap mystery novella set in Concord, Massachusetts, the Birthplace of Literacy.

HA!

There are launch parties going on this weekend over at Facebook and Goodreads! Let's do launch! ;-)


Anyway, this is, as previously mentioned, historical (so if you don't like old black and white movies, you probably won't--WHAT'S WRONG WITH YOU?) and it's also, just for the next 90 days, an Amazon exclusive. I thought I would experiment with Kindle Unlimited, since we keep hearing all these stories about how no one can survive without it. I apologize in advance to those of you who don't purchase through Amazon.

BLURB:
Felix Day, author of the Constantine Sphinx mysteries, and Leonard Fuller, author of the Inspector Fez mysteries, are bitter rivals and the best of enemies. Both happen to be present when a notorious author of roman à clef is shot by an invisible assailant during a signing at historic Marlborough Bookstore.

Even if they weren’t both suspects, it’s the perfect opportunity to match wits and sleuthing skills.

If only the murderer was equally amused.

EXCERPT

Harp tapped the point of his pencil on his notes. At last he raised his head and fixed me with a bleak and wintry stare. “Was Shelton blackmailing you?”

“Me? No. Of course not.”

I realized too late the correct answer was what would he have to blackmail me about? But Harp already knew the answer to that.

“Tell me the truth. If he was, I’ll do what I can for you. You’ll go to prison, maybe the chair, but I’ll see that the truth doesn’t come out.”

I stared at him—gawked is probably the more accurate word—and then I began to laugh. At Harp’s change of expression I laughed harder. In fact, I had to put my hands over my face to try and smother the guffaws that threatened to tear out.

“Say,” Harp said, frowning. “Are you screwy, or are you just having some kind of fit?”

I shook my head, still gulping

.

“All right. All right.” Harp pulled open a couple of drawers and found a silver flask. He unscrewed the lid, sniffed the contents, and rose. He handed the flask across the desk to me.

I wiped my eyes, half rose to take the flask, and swigged down a couple of mouthfuls of rye. The liquor burned its way down my throat and splashed into my empty stomach. I felt slightly sick but more composed as I handed the flask back to Harp. He sniffed it a second time and then also took a quick swallow. He screwed the lid tight and placed the flask back in the drawer.

“Was that a confession?” he asked.

Unfortunately that started me all over again.

“For Christ’s sake!” Harp muttered.

I managed to get control of myself. “Sorry,” I said. I wiped my eyes again, sat up straight. “Why don’t you tell me what evidence you’ve got against me?”

Harp began to tell me.

You can buy this little amusement over at Amazon. I hope you enjoy it! 

Ducks in a Row

I had to recheck that title a couple of times lest there be an unfortunate (but not entirely inaccurate) typo. Somehow I managed to rub some kind of lotion or oil in my eyes this morning and my vision is infuriatingly blurry. I've tried rinsing my eyes, eye drops, etc. but...the blurriness persists. I said DUCKS, right?


I was going to discuss...well, it doesn't matter. I'm going to settle for a quickish update on what you can expect to see from me over the next few months.


I'm currently working on Fair Chance, the final book in the All's Fair trilogy (and on Wednesday I'll be blogging a bit more on the pressures of wrapping up a mini-series over at Not Your Usual Suspects)  but that's not due out until next March or so.


What is coming out this year?


First up is Murder Between the Pages. It's...nutty. It's a post World War 2 bit of kooky amateur sleuthing by two rival mystery writers.

Felix Day, author of the Constantine Sphinx mysteries, and Leonard Fuller, author of the Inspector Fez mysteries, are bitter rivals and the best of enemies. Both happen to be present when a notorious author of roman à clef is shot by an invisible assailant during a signing at historic Marlborough Bookstore.

Even if they weren’t both suspects, it’s the perfect opportunity to match wits and sleuthing skills.

If only the murderer was equally amused.


Here's a snippet from Chapter Two...

The bell jingled as Harp yanked open the door and breezed out, and to my astonishment, Day let him leave without so much as a peep.

“What the hell?” I said as I reached him. “You let him go?”

Day seemed almost distracted as he replied, “He’s with the police.”

“Are you kidding me? That’s the oldest trick in the book!” I grabbed the door handle--and Day grabbed my arm with bony but surprisingly strong fingers.

He was scowling--which is his usual expression with me--and I scowled back.

“Oh, no, you don’t,” he said.

“If you don’t want a punch in the nose, let go my arm,” I warned him.

“Just try it.” Day's black eyes were narrow and hostile. Again, perfectly normal for him. “Where were you when that shot went off?”

“Me?” I gaped at him. “That shot came from the back of the room. As you very well know.”

“I don’t know any such thing.”

“Where were you? That’s the question.”

His eyes blazed. “Had I been planning to shoot anyone today, it wouldn’t have been Josiah Shelton.”

“Oh, very nice!” I retorted. “Well, maybe you missed and shot Shelton by mistake.”

“I don’t miss.”

“That’s not what the critics say.”

Day’s face turned a nice healthy red.

This is my Kindle Unlimited experiment, which I consider to be something of a disaster already. By now I would typically have about 2000 preorders. Instead we're looking at a very scary and unsustainable 700ish. But I'm locked in and anyway this all started because I'm so tired of so many writers insisting the only way they can make money is through KU, so the experiment shall continue. And I'll be honest about the results, biased though I am. I mean, what's the point of an experiment if you're not going to really look at what's in the test tube?

So there's that. And then there's The Curse of the Blue Scarab, which is even kookier. But I'vealready chatted about that one (which, if you missed, you can read about  here). I haven't listed it for preorders yet on Amazon, but probably in the next day or so.

And then we've got the much anticipated (or maybe just long delayed)  Adrien English holiday novella. So This is Christmas. If you're on my mailing list, you got a teeny sneak peek at that. It's also available for preorder, though again not yet at Amazon. 

No cover yet because it's one of the projects in the on-going cover contest -- deadline fast approaching!!!

And then lastly we have the final release of 2016: Christmas Waltz, the second collection of holiday codas. Like the first collection the existing codas have been edited and expanded. And of course there will be several new codas as well as some other bits and bobs.

Not my most productive writing year, I agree. But definitely some interesting stuff (or at least, I hope you'll think so too).

Next year... well, the plan next year is to finish off a lot of these long promised titles, particularly the sequels and series. So it should be fairly busy.

But why worry today about what we can worry about even more tomorrow?

We're in the process of doing a major updating of my website, so if you're wondering about the fate of a particular title, you can always check in there. It's quite a study in optimism and my faith in the power of positive thinking. ;-)