I have two theories:
Photo by Dave Conner
1. People love puzzles.
My mother loves doing crossword puzzles. She gets up at six in the morning so she can sit on the coach in her pastel-pink robe, drink coffee and solve the puzzle in the paper. My grandmother does the same (although her robe is closer to neon-pink). They also both love detective stories. My mother watches CSI, Law & Order, The Mentalist, Bones, Castle, Masterpiece Mystery, and a few others religiously. It's insane.
Is it a coincidence that she likes both crossword puzzles and detective stories? Maybe. But I've done an informal survey and everyone I know who likes doing crossword puzzles says mystery is their favorite genre.
Murder mysteries are the only genre of literature which consistently offers the chance to figure out the story for yourself. Puzzlers love to catch the killer before he or she's revealed. Detective stories are really, then, a game, a puzzle to solve, and if you have any interest in writing them, you need to remember to make it a challenging, exciting puzzle to solve.
2. People are puzzles.
In no other genre does a team of people expend such energy to understand the identity of one person. We usually focus on the murderer, but it is really the dead who are the stars for one last moment. To solve the murder, the team of detectives must know the victims' history and their motivations. They have to find out who would want to kill them and why. In looking for the killer, they often have to discover the soul of the one killed first. It isn't always the murderer who is on trial. It is the murderee.
People are puzzles. It's often difficult to understand why people do the things they do. Detective stories give us a glimpse into people we would never get in real life. We get to team up with fascinating people like the genius Sherlock Holmes, the likable Hardy Boys, the aristocratic Hercule Poirot, the hardnosed NYPD, and my most recent favorite, the carnie Patrick Jane. These heroes lead us into the psyches of the dead, and in so doing, help us to understand the living.
This is Valuable Information
Whether you write mysteries or not, you need to know why people enjoy them. Every story must have a mystery because in every story, at some level, is the question of motivation: why did this person behave in this way. Faulkner and Shakespeare and Milton and Agatha Christie all have the question of motivation at their heart.
Motivation. Why do people do what they do?
This question is the currency of fiction. You don't always have to give the answer, but you always have to raise the question.
PRACTICE
A man was discovered murdered in a field on the edge of town. Why was he killed?
Write for fifteen minutes. When you're finished, post your practice in the comments section. And if you post, comment on a few other posts, too.
Good luck!
Joe Bunting is an author and the leader of The Write Practice community. He is also the author of the new book Crowdsourcing Paris, a real life adventure story set in France. It was a #1 New Release on Amazon. Follow him on Instagram (@jhbunting).
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The regulars in the diner all had a theory, Jim Baines was dead, murdered, his body found on waste ground at the back of the council offices. Charlotte, the cook and Mrs. Baines was not in the kitchen, compassionate leave, but the routine of coming into Al’s was too much for her and she sat on a stool at the counter whilst another flat white went cold in front of her. She heard the chatter going on around her, the deferent whispers had long ago submitted to more vocal opinion. They weren’t bad folk she thought, she of all people knew Jim’s shortcomings, his propensity for chasing ‘skirt’, his short temper, long arms, his ability to hurt with no bruise to show, of she knew all about Jim.
Hal Greenwood, sitting as he always did in the booth nearest the bathroom was arguing with Shell the waitress. Shell was defending Jim, she always had a soft spot for him and had often taken care of him when Charlotte had been over at her sister’s in Oak Grove. Hal, whose current wife had been Jim’s first was trying to convince Shell that Jim was violent. It was not a row that would ever be resolved, each knowing a different version of Jim Baines.
In the next booth, Judge Grayson and Boyson Rider, the pharmacist were discussing who would have a motive for killing Jim. All the booths were taken when Miriam, Hal’s wife walked in and instead of joining her husband, sat next to Charlotte. “I went over to your place but when you weren’t there, I thought you might be here” she opened.
“Did you?” Charlotte whispered.
“No, I was going to ask you,” Miriam replied.
“My money is on Rosemary, she had most to gain,” Charlotte countered, “I must go and identify him, will you come with me?”
“Sure honey,” “Hal, I am going with Charlotte to the morgue to see Jim, will you pick up the twins?” Miriam hollered down the diner to her husband.
“Will do, take it easy, Mir,” Hal spoke through Shell.
Outside, there was a chill and Charlotte wrapped her cardigan around her. “Come on, Lottie, let’s go see Jim one last time.” Miriam said putting her arm around the quiet Charlotte.
In the car, Charlotte, barely moving her lips, looking out the window as the shop facades were racing past, “Thanks Miriam, for everything, bonfire out?”
“Yes, Hal took care of it, all evidence accounted for, now we all just need to hold our nerve, the detective arrives later today, shame about Rosemary, but she got away with two already, they should be able to link it all together.”
“You are all good friends, I should’ve listened years ago,” and Charlotte resumed the hunched, haunted look she had been practicing for months, ever since Hal and Miriam saw the beating.
I really liked this one. There weren’t much detective work but there is that surprise in the end where you find out the murder was the closest one to the murderee. By the end of your peice I had backed off the coputer screen with an astonished Oh on my face.
thanks Snowy, glad you liked it
Nice piece Suzie. Surprising ending. Who’s Rosemary who’s got away with 2 already?
I think she was going to be Jim’s latest conquest, didn’t get to flesh her out properly. The two women set her up in the diner.
Great ending Suzie.
thanks Marianne, finished too quick but if I had completed it would’ve gone over the 15 mins!!
I know I never even got to the end of mine. Sometimes I just don’t comment on really long ones anymore though because I don’t’ have time for my own writing if I do.
The beats of the dialogue work too!
I parked my patrol car out by the main road so I wouldn’t disturb any evidence that might have been left on the rutted road leading into the field. The farmer who owns the land, and the person who had called in that he found a body in his field, stood by the cow gate waiting for me.
“Mornin, Harold,” I said as I walked along the rutted road.
“Mornin, Sheriff.” Out here, all the farm people referred to the deputies as Sheriff. He grabbed the bill of his hat and pushed it higher on his head. “I’m glad you could get here so soon. I have business that I need to get to.”
“I’ll have you out of here soon as I can.” I noticed fresh tire tracks in the dirt road. Because they were deep I figured they were made by a heavy vehicle; maybe a truck, a big truck. “You drive your truck through here lately, Harold?” I asked.
“Nope,” he said as he looked down at the road. “Trucks broke, Sheriff.”
“Do you know who it is that’s laying out there in your field?”
“No, I didn’t see his face.”
We walked together to where the man was sprawled across the dirt furrows. He was too well dressed to have come out here on his own. His shoes still displayed a good shine, his dress pants still carried a razor sharp crease. No callouses marked his palms and his fingernails were clean and manicured. Why would a man dressed like this go traipsing around an old twenty acre corn field?
I turned the body over and Harold took a deep breath and spoke quietly. “I’m be darned.”
“What’s wrong, Harold?” I asked. “You know this guy?”
“You bet I do,” Harold said as he took a step back. “That there is Mr. Jenkins. He owns couple a factories other side of the state.”
“Why would anyone want to kill him?” I said as much to myself as to Harold.
“I don’t know,” Harold said, then added. “But you should be able to catch the culprit pretty easy.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because someone didn’t want this land to be sold so that new plant could be built.”
“But why would someone want to stop the plant from being built?”
“Well Sheriff,” Harold said as he pulled a red paisley handkerchief from his back pocket and wiped his brow. “Find out the why and you’ll have the who.”
I like that Harold sas he’s got “business to attend to” rather than saying he’s got other fields to plow or something. It makes it read like he’s up to something which, from the way I read it, he is.
Katie
You got it! I wondered if anyone would notice that. It’s his field and now it’s for sale again, so maybe he got a better offer?
This is very interesting. I would like to read more! Is this from an on going story? 🙂
You are really good at details. I can see the whole scene. I think Harold already looks guilty so that makes me think maybe he didn’t do it. It would depend on whether you were doing a full length book or a story but he could be a red herring. I hope you work on it some more. I like mysteries.
You are really good at details. I can see the whole scene. I think Harold already looks guilty so that makes me think maybe he didn’t do it. It would depend on whether you were doing a full length book or a story but he could be a red herring. I hope you work on it some more. I like mysteries.
A nice balance between the internal dialogue, the external dialogue and the action. You kept us in the setting of the scene too. Angelo, nicely done.
Howdy Angelo: I myself am a former police officer, lately of New Mexico. I tend to write stories of rural a County Sheriff Dept. and this looks like it could be the first paragraphs of something I would, and have written. It’s good to know that somebody else sees value in the countryfied genre of law enforcement. I wish that I had taken up the pen sooner after leaving the job until waiting till I turned 70. Most details from long ago are as fresh in whats left of my mind as if it were yesterday, so I have much to draw on for material.
Would like to see more of what you write, what I see I like.
Happy trails and happy writing. Redbear
Wow, cool connection.
Hi Redbear.
I spent only about 7 of my 25 years in law enforcement on a county department. It gave me a taste of rural police work and its unusual problems.
I have written very little about my experiences as a detective, and what I have written is mostly about the people I knew and worked with. Maybe as time goes by I’ll write more about the cases I worked and the things I saw. There is one case that I worked that I want to someday write about because it was so unusual.
Is there a way I can read your writing?
Like the name 🙂
The body lie face down on the dark grass as the moon threw random streaks of light. The steam from my coffee teased my nose as a shiver went down my spine. I fought back the reflex to hide from the stench of rotting flesh. After all these years, I still could not get used to the smell. I let my mind open up and questions poured out. What could have caused this? Could it have been a grizzly? Several wolves? Why was the body in the field in the first place? I walked over to Dan, the crime scene specialist on the scene as he leaned over the disfigured body. “Any ideas?” I asked.
Ran out of time….
Darn Jim, as much as I don’t like to read the long ones I wish you had done more on this. I do love a good mystery. I lie the moon throwing random light on the dark grass. I always wonder how people who look at bodies do get over the smell. They must have something to put i their noses to block it.
Thanks Marianne! It took me quite a while to get the tone/wording right. If you really think it looks interesting, I might have to keep working on it 🙂
Yeah keep working on it Jim. It’s put the reader in the zone and then left us hangin’! 🙂
Nice setting description – covered 4 out of the 5 senses (sight, taste [coffee], touch [teased my nose], smell). Would be interested to know the answers to the questions your main character poses.
Thanks Wanda, I didn’t even realize I did that! 🙂
It’s been exactly a week since I’ve retired. Since then I’ve been finding way to spend time with the family. My wife’s plan of fun was to get out of town. She said the murder case kept me feeling like a hero and so got me attached to this place.
We were still on the road heading out of town when we hit a wall of police cars blocking the exit. Sheriff O’Malley was walking to driver’s seat. I rolled the window down.
“Good day, Frank.”
“Charles.” I nodded to him with a kind smile. Charles O’Malley was three years behind me in high school but by the time we were in police academy together we had become best friends. “What seems to be the problem?”
“A man was reported dead this morning. It’s not a big deal to block the road, though. We can clear it in no time.”
Just before he turned to the cars in front of us to yell out that they should clear the road, I had a shiver run through me, something itching me, and I turned the engine off without even realizing it. “Charles,” Charles turned back to me quickly, “can I see?” All of a sudden I felt my wife’s hand grip my arm. When I turned to her she was staring, lips in a straight line and I could just see her teeth grinding together. I shrugged as innocently as I could. Outside, Charles started laughing.
The scene was less horrid that what I was used to. There a bunch of officers surrounding the body along with some researchers. They weren’t wearing that grim look of grief or fear or even sadness. Their faces were nothing but masks of anger and contempt.
“What do we have here?” I approached the body. The officers, hearing me, made way as I got closer.
“Male, 25.” Charles answered behind me, “Been drinking and assumedly on drugs. He’d tripped and hit his head on a rock. It’s a bad bruise. It probably killed him.”
“He looks a bit familiar,” I said as I crouched to take a better look at his face.
“Yeah. Eric Connor. Mayer Connor’s youngest son.”
Even in Charles’s voice I could hear the bitterness that was only the result of the same contempt and anger I’ve seen in the officers’ faces. Young Eric wasn’t the town’s pride as everyone hoped he’d be. He had drug and alcohol problems and was recently caught with prostitutes.
Just as the contempt had been nearly reaching my face as well, my eyes fell on his hands. On his knuckles purple smudges were already starting to appear. “Hey Charles, is that normal?” Charles was next to me within a second and I pointed to the young man’s knuckles. He stayed quiet, staring. I took a plastic glove and bared his wrists; more purple smudges, now started to look awfully like bruises.
If I had learned anything from my career as a field officer it would be to always trust my instincts, and at that moment my instincts told me to look at his face. This time, I bared his neck and what appeared in front of our eyes were bruises, hands pressing on his neck. I heard gasps from behind me.
“Good God, Frank. You never miss a thing do you?”
“No…” My eyes were still on that kid’s face. “Where’s the rock he supposedly fell on?” A few inches from his head was a rock with a stain of blood on it only… it was on his right. His head was facing left, where the blood had been gushing out in the opposite direction. I lifted the rock and took a real hard look at it. It took me thirty seconds too long to realize that the blood stain was as big as a baby’s palm. I gasped out a hysterical laugh that seemed to alarm most of the people around me.
“This was no accident.” Charles was now giving me a keen look, a frown forming. I handed him the rock. “He fell on it and rolled aside and bled to death, yeah? Then why is there so much blood on it?” Charles examined the rock almost as long as I did. I could see he knew what I meant by the sudden jerking of his face back to mine.
“My friends,” I get up, taking off the plastic glove, “you have a murder case to solve.”
Notes: I apologize in advance for any spelling and/or type mistakes. And it took me longer than 15 minutes but I wanted to keep writing. Oh, AND I turned to Patrick Jane for insperation.
I could see that you were on a role with this one. I was pleasantly surprised about your choice of anger and contempt for the officers at the scene, and of course it influenced their interpretation of the clues. Thank goodness Charles remained professional (much to his wife’s annoyance though). Good character sketches.
Hi Joe, yeah I love a good mystery too and The Mentalist is my fave show however can’t stand doing crossword puzzles (sorry to be the odd one out), but I just don’t have the patience for them. However my dad does fit the stereotype, he’s a puzzler from way back and a big fan of Miss Marple & Poirot!
I’ll skip this exercise, although if I could make time stop I’d do it when I return, because I’m fascinated by it. I have this one day at home before I take off for my respite break — 3+ days at the beach with my parents while the boys are at their dad’s….
I am taking a writing course online and have to read a lecture as well as do a couple of assignments today. So that’ll have to suffice for my writing exercises for one day!!
Hi Yvette! Have a fun time at the beach! I’m jealous.
You must not be a die hard mystery lover then, as your father clearly is. 🙂 Best of luck with your assignments, Yvette.
Clearly, I am lacking in the full credentials! Dear old dad, I can’t wait to see him….:-)
Yes I am feeling the pressure (of the course). Instead of packing as I was supposed to do yesterday I was sweating over a rewrite for assignment four….But at the same time I am loving it.
The place I’m headed to is something special I call my ‘creative wellspring’, the land is in a tiny spot in the Coromandel. I recharge my batteries and always come back inspired. My parents have retired there. I get to see them and walk the best beach in the world!!
Have a good vacation Yvette Carol. Are you taking a Gotham writers’s course by any chance? i took some of them and feel like I really benefitted from them.
No I haven’t heard of that Marianne. This course is with Lawson Writer’s Academy and the stellar ‘Naked Writer’ Miss Tiffany Lawson. Actually I won the spot, and on on a course I desperately wanted to do too! They have an excellent rep for teaching how to write emotion (which is one of the skills I most need). So far so GOOD. It’s outtasight amazing!!! Highly recommend….
And thanks, I drop the kids off in half an hour actually so I’d better get a move on. See you on the other side of relaxation 🙂
This story illustrates how a piece an become hold merely by using the prompts from the Write practice – Thank you Community and Joe.
I started this as an entry for Spring. The prompt for “subconscious” gave me the idea of a collection of short stories about the life of a skein of silk. This prompt gave me the proper ending for one of the short stories. Here goes. I’m going to try to submit it for Spring again.
Spring is a coil of blame in a mattress, waiting to strike through a tear in the covers; spring is a panther leaping from the corner of a room, its teeth flashing white … Spring is when the ground thaws and things start again – the tulips from their landscaped plots at Keukenhof, our nightmares on sheets beaten white and starched stiff in this room, your boyhood eyrie.
We first climbed the forty six rickety steps up here when you were twenty five and I was eighteen, you my big strong blonde Flying Dutchman of a husband, me your tiny nut brown half-bred Batavian wife. Both of us on our wedding visit to your parents.
There was a spring chill in the room. I went to close the window, and saw the narrow building across the canal.
“Is that Ann Frank’s house?” I asked, pointing to the narrow building across the canal.
“Yes,” you nodded huddling deeper into the feather comforter
I wondered why then. I did not know what hurt you carried. How you might share it with another – in pricks and prods, scratches and bites, kicks and and slaps – the pain you would inflict between that mattress and that comforter. I would learn later, over the years.
I look at it now, Ann Frank’s house where she hid for two years and then was dragged out to die, Ann Frank’s house where our nightmares began.
>>>>>
You are five and it’s a funny noisy time in your life. The air’s filled with clacking boots and the sound of pops and bangs in hidden corners. Sometimes you hear people scream. There’s a metallic smell you recognize as fear on your daddy and mama. Not a safe time to leave a child alone, your mama whispers. When she goes off to clean for the Germans, you must go with your daddy to the offices across the way, she tells you. Be a good boy, she reminds you. Don’t get in anyone’s way.
You’re not in anyone’s way, except for the geest who click and clunk and whisper from the walls, running water down the pipes where none should be. They don’t want you there, you tell your mama. And you don’t want to go back either.
Your mama sighs and takes you with her to the Germans. Be a good boy, she reminds you as she sits you in the back cloakroom. Don’t get in anyone’s way.
There’s no one to get in the way off except the sleepy-eyed lad guarding the door, who for want of better conversation lets you prattle on about the geest who want you away. Arranging and re-arranging the boots on the floor into armies and battalions, you don’t see the lad’s sleepy eyes light up a shining spring blue as you talk, as you wonder about how much milk and bread the geest eat, how the packets of butter disappear from the warehouse shelves overnight. You don’t know that he clatters upstairs to his superior after your mama’s done and the both of you walk away hand in hand into the bright spring night.
You’re at this window wondering why tulips shrivel in the summer sun when they come to exorcise the geest. You watch as they drag out the dark hooked nosed Jude geest, as your friend the young soldier gives you a jaunty salute before he drives them off, shackled, in his big green truck. You’re at this window again, wondering how tulips know to sprout once it’s spring. The Germans are gone. Daddy and mama have stopped being scared. You’ve swung the panes open to let out the winter mustiness, to let the spring breezes in. Spring … you sigh with pleasure, just before the morning’s broken by the sound of boots clacking. There’s a knock on the door. And then your father’s taken for questioning by the Political Investigation Branch. They let him come home, but now there’s a never-ending stream of strangers pointing at the house, taking photographs by your front door, muttering “betrayer” as they walk away. Your father shrinks into himself. Your mother draws the curtains in the back and shutters the front windows, all of them but the one in the attic. Children need light, she tells you. Still you stop looking out from it. You know what you’ll see when you do. The Jude geest staring from the windows of the house across the water, accusing you.
>>>>>
Spring is when the giant storks come back to nest on top of the dormer windows and chimney stacks of the city. Spring is when you come home to the old man and old lady hiding behind their shutters. Spring is when the green blade of guilt rises and cuts into my flesh. Spring my beloved, a time to begin again.
>>>>>
I have a cure for bad dreams that don’t go away, for sins too heavy for living. It’s a skein of red, brought across the seas from the deserts of Arabia by my grandmother’s grandfather. Silk stained with blood a thousand years old, my Bawean witch of a grandmother whispered. It was her only treasure, my wedding gift from her. Little did she know what he would use it for, against me. The lashings, the bindings, once a hanging ….
I take it out from his suitcase, 60 intertwined threads looped around twice, and let its length fall through my hands. A skein of silk, it drops through my fingers, smooth like water, no thicker than a tulip stem; a skein of silk, as strong as steel. I hide it in the jacket of my overcoat. This evening, he’s told me, we will go to Keukenhof to see the tulip fields.
>>>>>
It’s no big thing to loop the skein around his neck when he bends to examine a new dark purple beauty with curled petals. No big thing to pull the garrotte very very tight in the darkening spring sky, and then to walk away.
Full of sticky fingers today… I meant “how a piece can become whole.”
That’s very dark but good at the same time. I get a little confused about the geest at the beginning but it’s clearer later on. I think the writing is beautiful, and the psychology behind what’s happening is sound. Wow very dramatic. Well done.
I’m sorry for exceeding the 15 minute mark again. I just had to put into paper the things inside my head.
This is actually just my second attempt at this genre. Hope you have fun reading it.
***
We stood waiting, in the middle of an open field just by the outskirts of town, watching him as he made his way towards us. Even hidden by the shroud of the dark, I knew a smile was lurking on his lips. He’s the only man I knew who gets ecstatic whenever a murder was announced. He stepped onto the part of the field where the light of the moon reached.
“Good evening Simon,” he said to me in his usual cheerful tone with, just like what I assumed, a smile on his lips.
I gave a nod of my head.
“What’s this guy’s story?” He asked pointing at the dead body with the tip of his left shoe. He, unfortunately, was a man who was rough on the edges as they say.
I cleared my throat. “His name’s Bobby Walters. He owns one of the farms here. Gunshot wound to the head is what killed him.” I said pointing at the hole right above the right eye of the victim’s dead body. “This lad here was the one who called it in.” I said, laying a hand on the shoulder of a sixteen year old farm boy. “Tell him what you told me boy.”
“I—I was fixin’ the roof of our inn.”
“In the middle of the night?” Our visitor asked, his smile ever-present on his lips.
“Ye—yes sir,” the kid kept on stuttering, “Ma told me to do it right away. So—so I did and I climbed up the roof wi—with them tools. Was hammerin’ up there,” the kid pointed at their inn. It was at the edge of town, right where the open field started.
As the boy told our friend the story, I studied his face and his eyes and the way he looked at the body. His smile was there on his lips but his eyes were different. They were serious and I knew that a hundred things were running inside his head.
“I—I saw Old Bob Walter’s truck headed towards the field. When they reached this spot here I saw two men ste—step out. I think they was talkin’. Then Old Bob started shoutin’.”
“Who was he with?” Our friend got on his knees as his sharp eyes surveyed the body of Bobby Walters. He stood up and walked towards the head, knelt down again and studied the victim.
“I—I don’t know but I bet it was Mister Arthur Canon sir,” the kid answered.
“What makes you so sure?” I asked.
“Well sir, everyone in town lo—loves Old Bob, everyone save for Mister Canon. E—everyone in town knows that. Old Bob hates hi—him as well. I figure if the o—old man was havin’ a fight then it must be with Mi—mister Canon. After the shoutin’ I saw Old Walters walkin’ ba—back to the truck. Then he turned around one mo—more time. That’s when I heard the shot.”
“We found this in the hand of the deceased,” I said as I handed a crumpled letter to our friend.
He scanned the contents of the letter. “Written by Arthur Canon Senior, a letter offering money for the land of Mister Bobby Walters.” He said. He folded the letter into squares and tucked it in his coat pocket.
“That letter’s evidence and it belongs to the police,” I said but I knew he won’t give it back again.
“Right Inspector,” he said, “now I assume that Arthur Canon is the number one suspect?”
“Well, yes, we’re going to head to his place tonight actually, after you’re finished here.” I answered.
He smiled at me. “Right. I’m done and I thank you for narrating that story for me,” he said to the kid. “But I suggest to you Inspector to cross out Mister Canon’s name on the list.”
“And why do you think I’ll do that? He clearly has motive and we have a witness here.”
“Yes, he has motive, but tell me boy,” he said with his eyes not leaving mine. “Did you see Mister Canon’s face?”
“No si—sir. They were a bit far a—away.”
“There now. The kid didn’t see Mister Canon. And, Simon, come on, really? Isn’t it a bit too easy to just point all of these to this guy Canon?” He spread his arms wide to emphasize what he was saying.
I looked at him and his smile and that twinkle in his eyes whenever his head was in the middle of puzzling things out. “Who killed the guy then?” I asked.
“Well, if I knew the answer right away then this wouldn’t be fun now would it?” He said with a laugh.
This is good JB. I like the dialogue. It’s very natural easy to hear the people talking even the boy with the stutter. I like the idea of the inspector being excited over the mystery of the murder and I like how you keep his face in darkness. Are you going to do more with it?
Thanks Marianne!! Probably. Not right now though 🙂
Yeah I agree with Marianne, a stutter is usually hard to write, however it really gave a powerful sense of the character. Are you going to continue with this genre JB?
I didn’t get to the clues the body might give other than the pink scarf. I might work this into a story but the body won’t be her mother or maybe it will and how she got in the field will be the mystery.
LInda and Bill were walking on the outskirts of town when they saw the buzzards in Mr.Taylor’s cornfield. There were ten or twelve of the huge black birds and normally LInda and Bill would have turned their heads and walked on past, knowing that they were devouring a deer or a hunting dog, but Linda saw something fluttering above the birds.
“That looks like Mama’s scarf,” she said.
Bill looked and sure enough a hot pink flag waved above the black mound of buzzards.
Before Bill could stop her Linda darted into the field hollering “Mama”.
He followed, stumbling though the dry stobs of corn.
Linda reached the body first. The hungry birds moved away to a dead tree that stood between the field and the road. They perched there waiting until they had a chance to get another beakfull of the body.
Very gruesome. I liked how the hot pink scarf signaled to Bill and Linda that the victim must be Mama. There are more mysteries to uncover here.
Oof! That packed a punch, the word contrast between the hot pink flag and the dry corn and the dead tree — it gave me a visceral reaction. Well done Marianne 🙂
Oh, God that gave me the chills…
Really enjoyed this post. It made me hyper-aware that mysteries are about the victim. Here’s my more than 15 minute practice. Of course it’s not a finished product, but it was interesting to think about the victim. Thanks!
———————————————————————————————————
He wore dirty worn out kakis, a too small MSU sweatshirt, and mud covered sneakers. Detective Ferdinand of the Lansing Police Department looked down at the dead body and shook his head, the man was a mess but his fingernails were clean.
From the marks around the victim’s neck the detective knew that he had been strangled. The victim had $300 dollars in his pocket. According to his driver’s license his name was Burt Lakeside, and he lived on Harbour Cove.
When the police went to the address they learned that Mr. Lakeside sold the house over two years ago. The only family member they found was a 24 year old nephew named Luke.
“I guess it’s just me now,” was Luke’s response when he heard the news about his uncle. He told the investigators a sad story about losing his parents in a car accident three years ago, that Burt was his only uncle, and that last week his grandfather had also passed away.
“So your grandfather was Burt Lakeside, Sr., the owner of half this town, and on the board of trustees at MSU. Is that right?” Detective Ferdinand was silently kicking himself for not making the connection sooner.
“That’s right.” Luke replied, and then impatiently asked “Do you need anything else from me?”
“Not right now. Sorry for your losses.” As he walked out he added “You know your uncle was wearing a sweatshirt just like that one.”
Luke shrugged his shoulders as he shut the door.
Detective Ferdinand turned to his partner and said “Let’s find out Luke’s whereabouts on the night of his uncle’s murder.”
As the author of a detective novel series, I am intrigued by your crossword puzzle theory. I’ll have to poll my fans.
Yes! Please do, Jim!