This is going to be different from my other Blogs in that it is serialized. Some of you have asked, “What are your murder mysteries like?” I’m going to be traveling to Iceland for the next few weeks, so I decided to give you a taste of my mystery writing, while I am traveling. I wrote a short story while I was in France and will share it with you in the next four blogs.
It has the same couple, Ron and Sally Steel, that appear in all three of the Steel Mysteries Trilogy, two of which are on Amazon e-books now, (The Man Who Died Twice, and The Invisible Assassins), and the third one to be there by the end of June, (The Cow Blood Case). If you enjoy this story you will enjoy the others. If not, don’t waste your time on the others.
The Steel Mysteries
The Weapon
Ron and Sally Steel boarded the plane at 6 a.m. at SeaTac Airport in Seattle, Washington, on their first trip to France. Their retirement from the police department had been good to them. The detective agency they started was doing well and they decided to take a trip to France when they had a lull in business, instead of another cruise on their boat, like normal. “We need a change,” Ron told Sally. “Let’s get away from our job, our Puget Sound environment, and do something out of our comfort zone.”
They had met a police inspector from Aix, a city in France, at a global meeting of law enforcement personnel a couple months earlier, and they bonded even though they were only together for a short time. Paul came to stay a few days with them, when the conference was over. He told them that if they came to France he would show them around; they decided to do it.
They planned to stay three weeks in a hotel and Paul said they would not need a car. He told them they could walk everywhere they needed to go. Their big concern was if there was a gym nearby. They both were fanatics about working out. Paul assured them the gym was within walking distance. They were going to stay at the Saint Christophe Hotel, downtown.
They arrived in Aix by bus from the Marseilles Airport and were only a couple blocks from their hotel. They walked over with their luggage. Checking in, they were handed a message, it was from Paul. “When you get settled, give me a call, I’ll meet you for coffee.”
Going to their room they were happy to find it satisfactory and comfortable. As they were unpacking their suitcases they were excited to get involved in the culture. “I’ve heard about how the French go to coffee at an outdoor café; I’m anxious to get started learning to be French. Hurry up Ron, we only have three weeks.”
Ron was laughing at her excitement. “I haven’t seen you this excited for a long time. Maybe we should travel more often. Right now, you need to calm down a bit, we can’t call Paul until we change the sim-cards in our phones to the French ones.”
“I didn’t forget, the man at the Verizon store went over that with us. I’m sure the people at the lobby desk can tell us where to do that. Come on, don’t be a slowpoke, I want my coffee.”
They got directions at the lobby desk, walked a couple of blocks, and bought their new sim-cards; then Ron made his first phone call in France. “Hello Paul, I guess I should say bonjour Paul.” Paul asked where they were and then gave Ron directions to a nearby side-walk café, where he said he would meet them in 20 minutes.
They found the café and sat down in the sunshine and ordered two coffees. Ron looked around and said, “What a beautiful day. The sun is shining, the trees all around us are glowing with the backlight from the sun, people are walking in all directions around us, and it’s sure different from Seattle.”
“I love it.” Sally said, just as their coffee arrived. “Oh, my gosh, it’s a little cup of espresso. I’m glad we’re from Seattle where espresso is common and we know what it is. I was expecting a big mug of coffee.”
“We have a lot to learn,” said Ron as Paul pulled up a chair and joined them. They asked him a lot of questions and he gave them a general verbal tour of Aix, and a specific tour of the center of town where they were staying. He pointed out where the gym was located, and they said they would join the next day for the three weeks they were going to be there. They were in the habit of working out every morning, early, before they started their work day.
The next morning when they went to the gym Sally asked the manager if they had a yoga class. “Yes, we do, it meets every morning at 6:30. There is a small fee that you can pay each day you come to work out.”
“Great, I’ll be here every morning.” She could keep her normal routine of yoga stretching every morning and then resistance training, switching between upper body and lower body on alternate days. She was one happy tourist.
Ron was just as happy. He had the same schedule of upper and lower body exercise, but instead of the yoga he spent 30 minutes working hard on the cardio machines. The gym became their anchor, so to speak, in Aix. It was where they were, every day, meeting people that were also there, and making local friends.
Paul spent as much time with them as he could but he was preoccupied trying to apprehend a serial rapist that murdered his victims. He talked a lot about the case when he was with Ron and Sally because he wanted to see if they could pick up on something that he might have missed. He knew that was the business they were in as ex-cops, and now private investigators. The police had good DNA evidence, but nothing matched in the data bank. The attacks seemed to be entirely at random. There was no connection between the victims.
By the end of their first week at the gym Ron had made a couple of casual friends, but Sally, being a truly social person, had made at least five new good friends. She had been invited to go for tea twice, and went both times. One of her new friends fell and had a broken arm, so her friends from the yoga class were planning a party for her. Sally was right in the middle of it. Her new friends had accepted her as one of them and she was loving it, and them.
Ron was spending more time with Paul. Paul invited him to spend a day at the police station the next day; he was looking forward to it. He was interested in the different procedures between his police department in Seattle, were he and Sally had retired from, and the French department.
Eric Smout sat at his desk eating lunch as he did every day. Most of the company employees sat in the conference room at lunch time, chatting together. They always asked Eric to join them but he never did, so finally, they stopped asking. Eric was a good accountant but had less than adequate social skills. He didn’t talk to anyone unless he had to, and then he rarely looked them in the eye, only at the floor or the item they were discussing.
Eric oversaw the grant money the company functioned under. It was in the millions. He was perfect for the job. He had a degree in mathematics and one in accounting. He was also bored with his job, and decided that with his skills he could work out a scheme to beat the local casino in blackjack. Unfortunately for Eric, it didn’t work, and he lost a lot money. Embezzling money from his company was easy for him; he paid off his gambling debts.
Once he discovered how easy it was to take money from the company, he made a habit of it, and helped himself to thousands of dollars over time. He started sending money to an offshore bank in the Cayman Islands as his secret retirement account.
He was known for staring at the women he worked with when they didn’t know it, but others noticed it. They just considered him strange and let it go at that, but he made some of them ill-at-ease when he was around.
She was tall, close to six feet with high heels. Her long blond hair, was combed to spread evenly over her shoulders. Every part of her wardrobe was matched and coordinated to accentuate her figure. She walked with authority as she walked home after working all day at a desk. Her morning exercise and her two-mile night walk home kept her trim. She was on her way home now, thinking if she needed anything at the store, when she felt the hands that grabbed her from behind and slammed her to the ground. She put her right arm out to break the fall but felt it break instead. Her attacker drug her into a deserted alley behind some dumpsters, and leaned down to grab her.
She was so taken by surprise and in such pain in her right arm, that for a moment she didn’t react, except to her pain, but in the few seconds she was being dragged into the alley she became totally aware of what was happening.
As her assailant leaned down to grab her, she poked the index finger of her left hand into his eye. He jumped back with his hand to his face; she used her good left arm to get herself up onto her feet. The man was mad now and came at her snarling like a mad bear. She took a few steps backward and collided with the dumpster. Using it for support, her eyes narrowed to a squint as she leaned slightly forward in a crouch, the pain in her useless right arm forgotten, as she attacked the monster in front of her.
CHECK BACK IN 5 OR 6 DAYS AND SOLVE THE PUZZLE…….IF YOU CAN.
re the Campiston family. The lunch was a thank you to them. The food was good, and the gardens were exquisite. I had a chance to try Goose liver. No comment.
We had a driver and just the three of us for the entire day. We took a tram ride through a salt mine, saw the white horses the region is famous for, photographed some flamingoes, visited the Roman Theater built before Jesus was born, and the stadium built just after. We covered over a hundred miles, it was a great day, and finished it off with beer and wine at an Irish Pub, in Aix.
Tonight, we have dinner at a friend’s house. Tomorrow we start home with a one-and-a-half-hour flight to Madrid, then a 13-hour flight to LAX.
John's Book of Life 