Town Research Revisited: A Marshal in Tiny Beulah

In the last post, when I told you about researching small towns to figure out what kind of police force you might use in your small town cozy mystery novels, I mentioned the little town of Beulah Michigan, which is too small for its own police force, but gets to cheat because it's the county seat.

Well, guess, what? In my research, I stumbled across a little article in that area newspaper, the Benzie Banner.  Back in June of 1932, they DID have their own police force.  Sort of...

New Village Marshal on Duty in Beulah

Those who have a tendency to be naughty are warned to watch their step hereafter while within the confines of Beulah. The newly appointed and commissioned village marshal, Ed Reddick, began his duties yesterday, June 15, and will continue actively thereat for the next three months. That should be sufficient notice to any and all who have been getting a bit careless with local ordinances lately.

A committee is being organized to locate a liberal quantity rustproof and highly resplendent metal from which to manufacture a suitable badge for the new official, and another carefully selected group of citizens has agreed to scour the woods for a husky white ash or ironwood log from which to fashion an adequate club. Prices are also being sought on a conventional streamlined derby and a choice assortment of brass buttons. Meanwhile, the police force began his new duties by painting the park benches a handsome Irish green.

You'll notice that local papers in those days could be very tongue-in-cheek.  Although there was almost never a byline, every story had a clear "voice" and very often different voices for different beats.  Even the hard news stories often felt a little gossipy, as though hearing the news from your neighbor over the back fence.

As for Marshal Reddick, his three month term implies to me that he's there to help deal with the summer people.  While some aspect of the resort business had been important to that part of Michigan for some time, it was around the 1920s that it seemed to pick up for Beulah.

I was curious to see if Ed Reddick was hired from in the community or outside it, so I looked him up in the 1930 census.  Beulah, at that time, was too small to have it's own designation in the census, so those residents were listed in the larger township, Benzonia.

And yes, Ed Reddick did appear, two years before his appointment to the job, along with his wife Rose and son, Ed jr.  However, they were crossed out.  I suspect this was because they themselves were summer residents.  The census taker started to take their information, and then found out that they didn't actually live there.  (There were other Reddicks in the area, perhaps relatives to visit.)

This, of course, would be another fun detail to use in a cozy mystery: the town marshal being a tourist hired to deal with the other tourists, and expected to leave the townfolk alone.

Well, back to my research... see you in the funny papers!

Writing Cozy Mysteries: Researching Your Town

Over on Elizabeth Spann Craig's Writing the Cozy Mystery this week, she's writing about developing a mystery series, and things to think about when developing your sleuth.  Someone in the comments asked a question: can a small town have a police chief?

Short answer: yes, any size town can have a police chief.  IF they have a budget for a police force.

However, there are a whole lot of variations on how small towns are policed (including "not at all"). And it varies even more by region.  (An American "constable" in one state has a whole different meaning than in another, for instance.  And it's all very different than a British constable.)  And even though cozy mysteries are not "realistic" and your fictional small town may be a fantasy, it's still important that the town have an authentic flavor.

I mean, as readers, we want it to feel like a real, if very comfortable, place.

And since I am currently up to my ears in regional/historical research, I figure it's time to talk to you about doing some easy online research into towns and police forces.

Your tools will be Google Maps, Wikipedia, and then Google Search. And, of course, a healthy dose of amateur-sleuth curiosity.  There are a whole lot of more advanced tools that you may enjoy, but you won't need them unless you start sliding from "cozy" into one of the more traditional mystery areas (such as historical or regional mystery).

What Kind of Town?

This will go a lot quicker if you already have a town or region in mind.  And you may already have that: a town where you grew up, or visited or even live right now.  If so, great; you can skip to the step with Wikipedia.  However, if you haven't been to this town in a while (or just never get out), you may want to play around with this step, because it can be fun.  Also if you want to disguise your town -- fictionalize it -- you may want to research some similar towns to give you some variety of details to change.

The other thing to think about is what kind of stage this town will set for your story.  Do you want your sleuth to be able to walk around the town to talk to people? Do you want there to be a Main Street? And what about side streets?  Should there be more than one diner or restaurant in town?  How far from a mall or movie house?  Should there be a back street or dark alley where you can set some skullduggery? Maybe even a suspense scene, as your sleuth pursues or is pursued by a mysterious dark figure.

Or is it more the sort of place where there are four or five buildings at a cross roads, and your sleuth has to drive her truck from farm to farm to talk to witnesses and suspects?

When you have an idea of the kind of activity you'll have in your story, you'll know what your town "looks" like in terms of a streets and such.

So we know the region, and what the town will look like... but is it a town that will support a police force? Will the town have a mayor, or just a city council?  How big of a town do you need for what you want?

Google Maps, a Writer's Best Friend

We'll start our research by looking for real towns in the region we want, which look about right in terms of the street maps.

First of all, if you are not very familiar with it, you can start by clicking on this Google Maps Link, and more than likely it will take you to whatever town you happen to be in now. (If it can't tell what town you're in, it will probably show you a map of the U.S.)  If the region you are looking for is nearby, then click on the minus button in the lower right corner to zoom out. (The plus is for zooming in.)  And you scroll around the screen by clicking on the map and dragging it.

If your town is in a different region, you may want to type in a place name in the search box upper left, and let Google zoom you to that location.  (Or just do as I do and zoom way out, drag the map to center on where I want to go, and zoom back in again.)

So you get to your region -- stay a little zoomed out, so that you can scroll around and browse for towns.  When you see a likely town, zoom in on it.  Do you like the look of the street map? Can you work with that as a dramatic stage for your series?

Check it out with "Street View."  If you've never used Street View, it's lots of fun, though limited for small towns.  There is a little yellow man icon in the lower right corner, if you pick him up with your cursor, you can move him to a spot on the map -- but only if that spot has been photographed by the StreetView Mobile.  You can tell those roads because when you hover over them with the little yellow guy, a blue line appears on the street.  Drop the little guy on one of those streets, and suddenly you are in a 3-D view of the town.  To get back to the regular map, there's a "back to map" link in the lower left corner.

With small towns, you usually only get the main street or maybe two main cross-roads streets.  But that can be enough to give you a look at the character of the place.

So you can pick a town and just research that, but my suggestion is that you pick three towns -- the one that seems the ideal size, and then the biggest that will still serve your needs, and the smallest.

Just as an exercise, I'm going to suggest you look at a town called Westphalia, Michigan, which looks like a quintessential cozy small town.  There's a smaller town near by called Pewamo (to the north west) and the large town of St. Johns a longer ways to the East.

From this point we catch up with the people who already had a town in mind.

Wiki Your Town

Whether you found them on the map, or are going with a town you already know, look your towns up on Wikipedia.  You may find only dry facts, but these are important if you are to track down things like how the town is policed.  So let's look up Westphalia:

We learn that there were 923 people living in Westphalia in 2010, and that it is located within Westphalia Township, which is in Clinton County.  You can click on the links to learn more about the township and county, but for now, we just want to know their names, because this town might be policed by a force from the village, township, OR county.

We also learn from Wikipedia about the demographics -- what race (and how diverse the town is -- which Westphalia is not particularly, but there appears to be at least one representative in town from each of the racial/ethnic categories measured by the census). You learn the median income, and how many young and old people.  And there is a little about the history too.

But Wikipedia doesn't a have any information about the police or fire or how the town governs itself.  (Local governments -- mayors, school boards, etc -- often play a big part in cozy mysteries.)  It also doesn't tell you the kind of businesses and services there might be locally.  Is there a vet for your sleuth's cat?  Is there an urgent care in town?  How many restaurants are downtown?

Remember: Every region will be different in terms of what size town will provide different things. Tiny suburban towns will depend more on larger nearby cities. Tiny rural towns need to be more self-sufficient. Tiny resort or vacation areas tend to need more resources in comparison to population, because they have visitors to serve.  The south will be different than the north, etc.

So We Move On To Google

So we know from Wikipedia that Westphalia is about 900+ population, Pewamo is half the size at 400+, and St. Johns is a veritable metropolis, at nearly 8000 in population.  (It is still however, thought of as a "small town" by most Americans.)

Now we can Google the town name for more info about just about anything: restaurants, vetrinarians, do they have medical marijuana (which would make for a different kind of laid back cozy mystery -- but it might be a necessity of some elderly sleuth with glaucoma...)

But I'm going to concentrate on police and town governance first:

When I Google "Westphalia, Michigan Police" the first thing Google gives me is info on the Portland, St. Johns and Grand Ledge Police Departments (with the information that the Grand Ledge cops are closed on Sunday).  If you scroll down the page, I find the "Village of Westphalia, Michigan" website.

Town websites can be a treasure trove of info for the researcher.  Some are amazingly full of information. (And some, sadly, are not.)  I'll often find things that surprise me, even though I've been researching small towns for a while.  And the first time you research small towns, you are likely to find a lot of things that surprise you.

For instance Westphalia doesn't have a mayor, it has a president.  Also, there is no police department -- for that you have to call the Clinton County Sheriff's office, which is run out of St. Johns (but is separate from the St. Johns Police Department).  And when those Grand Ledge cops are closed - as mentioned at the top of the Google page -- the sheriff's department will likely be the ones answering the call.

This is important to know when you are dealing with mysteries in small towns.  Also, these are the sort of thing that can make for great plot turns. You call the cops, expecting to get the local cop who knows something about what's going on, and instead you get a deputy from three towns away.

Another factor is the fire and emergency response.  Westphalia uses the township fire department -- so that service is not just for the town/village, but is responsible for the whole township, including all the farms and smaller unincorporated villages in the 36-square mile area that makes up Westphalia Township. (but given that the department is plunk in the middle of the township, nothing is more than 3-4 miles away - not like depending on the county.)

Looking at Pewamo, and their village website, I see a little more cultural information on their website.  (This is common - often the tinier the town, the more the website is a work of love for some member of the community.)  However we see NO mention of the police or fire departments. Not even references to the township or county.

So, I Google Pewamo Police Department, and, wow, Google actually gave me a result!  With a "street view" picture of the location and everything!

Except that the picture just shows us a brake shop on the corner in the center of town.  That would be cool if that were really the police department (a GREAT cozy mystery kinda quirk) but in fact, Google is just showing us the center of town.  There is no police force to find, but Google is trying to be helpful here by showing me the town.

Even after several different tries, I can't find any reference to how Pewamo is policed.  If I were doing factual research, I would have to call the township office, but since we're just looking for a model for our cozy mystery series, I'm not going to bother.  I'll just go with the Westphalia model, or go searching for another tiny town with more information.

Towns Vary

If I had gone on to research more towns, I might have found Bath Michigan.  If you zoom in on Bath Township in Google Maps, it looks like it might be on a par with Pewamo. Similar number of streets, maybe a little more spread out.

But Bath has its own police department.  And if you look it up on Wikipedia, the population is listed as over 2000.  Hmmmm.

Well, the reason is simple: Bath is not a village or town.  It's a township.  Normally a township is not so much a governmental body as a simple geographic location.  If  you're from the midwest or west, it's how they measured the land before settlement: Each township is six miles square, with 36 one mile sections.  They gave them names, but they didn't turn them into governmental bodies.  It's just a way of saying where something is.

And sometimes people in a township will charter a local government, and sometimes they don't.  So the actual downtown of Bath is a teeny tiny town, with a police department and police chief -- but the township covers a lot of rural territory.  Bath also has one other factor: it's right on the edge of a larger metropolitan area, so the population density in the rural areas is higher than usual. It has a whole lot of 5-10 acre farms, and 1-2 acre lots.

Another variation on the tiny town: Beulah, Michigan is smaller than Pewamo. It only has 300+ people.  It also doesn't have it's own police cheif or school system.  It is one of the towns I based Potewa on for my Man Who series.  (And I actually use the region all the time in many things I write.)

However, Beulah happens to be the county seat for the smallest county in Michigan, which is very convenient, because it means that the county sheriff is centered right there in town.  It's exactly as though Beulah has it's own police force, court system, jail and everything. But it's still a tiny town. ... sort of.

It's also a resort town.  The whole area is filled with summer cabins and little hotels and such. And so even though the permanent population is small, over summer ths population swells by four or five times. That gives the town resources to pay for that police force and all the amenities.

Which means, for the writer and the resident, that it's a small town with a lot of the advantages of a big one.

When I first researched the Benzie County Sheriff's department, they only had one detective, and his job, aside from following up on ordinary criminal reports, was mainly visiting schools for the drug education program.  Now they actually have a detective bureau, which has a Sergeant who does most of the investigating, and supervises a number of patrol deputies who have detective training, and can be called on when needed.

While I have plans for my Potewa force to grow a little, at the moment, I am using the more cozy model, where the detective is a guy who retired from a larger down-state force, to take a job up north where he could go fishing even if the pay wasn't good.  As employers in the Traverse City area say: "A view of the bay is half the pay."

And that brings me to the final bit about developing your town and police force:

Culture

The nature, power, size, relationships of your police department is going to be affected by the nature of the community.

The example above, about the detective who just wants to go fishing: that community is ideal for a cozy mystery.  The whole culture is oriented toward leisure and positive things.  Even back in the day of the first puritan settlers -- they came to the wilderness to establish a college which would accept people of all races, creeds, colors and both sexes.  And I don't know if it was the beauty of the place, or the stars in their eyes, but these dour congregationalists evolved quickly and easily from people who wanted to make the world better, to people who wanted to make the world happy.

And that affects the police department, especially in fiction, where details have extra meaning.  It effects the character's backstory: how the members of said department came to town, and how they interact with the town. In case of my series, the sheriff's family goes back for generations, so he naturally takes a host-like attitude to those around him.  And this is true for many of his deputies.  Others, like the detective, are very relaxed, because this, to them, is a place of vacation.  He may be just putting in time at work, but always with a smile because he's going to be fishing as soon as he clocks out.

And I think that also effects what the mission of policing is: in a resort community, policing has a lot in common with playground supervision and bar tending.  A lot of crowd management, dealing with customers who are having a bit too much fun.  And this leaves an opening for your amateur sleuth, because in a resort town, the police are busy.

On the other hand, I once lived in a small rural town where the job of the police was to make sure nobody ever presses charges.  Seriously, the town had no budget to prosecute, so even though it had a lot of ordinances, the police could only enforce them if one of the council members was the complainant.  And that wasn't because they were sucking up to the boss, but rather because the council members were the only ones who could release the funds to prosecute.

This also not a bad model for the cozy mystery writer, because it means that the police must be diplomats, talking to everyone, calming everyone down... but also maybe a little reluctant to press anything too far for fear they'll get into a situation they wont be allowed to deal with.  And that leaves an opening for the amateur sleuth to be hard-nosed and press on in investigating the case.

However, you do it, research doesn't just give you facts or accuracy, it also gives you hooks into interesting situations and details, so you can create a fascinating place for your readers to cozy into.

I've rambled on long enough. (Sorry that it IS a ramble -- don't have time to rewrite and edit.)  Got to get back to my family history research. I'm finding an awful lot of inspiration right now (not that I need any more).

See you in the funny papers.

Story Game -- Generating a Mystery Story part 2

This is a relatively short post, finishing up my first draft of The Mystery Creation Game.  The first part of the game was posted two weeks ago.

That would actually work as a stand-alone game.  Depending on the kind of mystery you are looking to create, it creates a social situation, and you can generate motives for both your killer and your red herrings, and choose killer and victim randomly.  (The wheel of motives needs work, but the principle is there.)

For a really good, old fashioned "Clue" type mystery, you could create a Wheel of Murder Methods, and randomize elements of where and when, as well as alibis.  I may do a more elaborate version like that later.   I really enjoy playing this as a game.  However, right now, I'm creating what is useful to me in plotting a book.

To that end, I created one more element of the game.  The Big Wheel of Crimes and Theories.  This wheel has 165 items on it so far -- too long to put in this blog post.  For now, you can find it on this generic Blog Page. 

It could be used to replace the simple "motives" wheel -- but I like using both.  And that's because of how I use it (more below).

The Big Wheel of Crimes and Theories is really more suited for those of us who write mysteries with elements of suspense.  These are stories which have an extra level of skullduggery in them.

So even though the victim may have been killed out of the usual jealousy or greed, there is also the issue of the smuggling ring or blackmail, or the buried treasure.  And that's the kind of story I tend to write.

If you're going to use this wheel, there is a reason you still might want to use the motive wheel separately:  Every suspect has a motive -- so there can be lots of motives. However, you really shouldn't have more than one big secret plot. Unless they tie in together really well, you don't have a bank robbery AND a smuggling ring AND a plot to cheat the dowager out of her land.

Now, you might want to use one of those as a red herring in and of itself -- a theory your detectives come up with that proves false -- but then you really have to choose one that is compatible with the facts created by the real back story.

Which brings me to how I use this wheel differently.

Browsing Vs. Random Choice

This wheel could be used for random choices like the rest.  As a matter of fact, I did use it that way earlier.  But I apparently didn't even bother to write down what choices came up, because I have no record of them, and I don't remember what I rolled.

I just rolled them and continued brainstorming, and forgot them as soon as the story started latching onto a direction.  Then, after I had a feel for the story and the characters, I went back and browsed through the list, using it as a reference.  Sort of like using a list of baby names to help find the exact right name for a character.

That's the point of making the list so long and exhaustive: so that I can find an element that fits the story that is growing in my head.

That's a different purpose than random choice. Spinning a wheel creates a challenge, and forces you to look closer at a particular option you didn't choose -- it forces you outside of the box.  Or it forces you to stay inside the box and think up some way to make it interesting.  Either way it makes you work. 

Browsing a whole list, if it's long enough, prompts your mind to consider many options to find the right one.  It reminds you of things you might overlook or not have thought of.  (A random choice can do that too, but only with one option at a time.)

While I really like using random choices for stand alone stories, for series fiction, it can be very important to get the choices right. To keep the tone, think at the proper scale. (Some series need a "big" plot with spies and international intrigue, and some will need to stay very small and domestic, for instnace.)  For that kind of thing, it can be more useful to use the wheels as references and browse them for the right option.

(Plus, if you come up with three for four you like and can't make up your mind, well, you can flip a coin or spin a very small wheel to randomly choose one of those!)

So to sum up:

With the Mystery Game, I do continuing brainstorming.  As I mentioned in the first post: start with your existing series or idea.  Roll a set of characters and their relationships with each other, and brainstorm a basic situation on those characters and your existing ideas.  Then roll motives and get an idea of who might have killed who and why.  You can roll a big crime behind the crime at this time, or you can wait until you have more of an idea of what you want, and browse the big list to find the exact right crime secret to suit your story.


Next week I'm going to a little stand-alone game -- more of an exercise really.  It's unrelated to anything we've done so far.   I'm going to have you draw a map.  Not a dramatic map, nor one from a story, but a real if mundane map.  It's an exercise in memory that tends to spur ideas.

See you in the funny papers.

Story Game - Caring About The MacGuffin

For those of you new to the story game: this is a series of games based on using random choices to generate ideas.  The purpose is to spur creativity, speed up decisions, and maybe force you out of your comfort zones to try something different once in a while.

I created the original Situation Game to have  a lot of fun and stockpile dozens of romantic suspense ideas. 

This game -- the Mystery or Whodunnit Game -- came together under different circumstances.  And I realize that I need to step back and talk about that.

My problem: I did not like how the mystery plot side of the next Starling and Marquette story was going. (That is, the "Man Who" series.)  I realized that I was trying to build the plot out of the front story, rather than build it for itself.

The Front Story in a Mystery

Most mysteries have a front story and a crime story.  The front story is often called the subplot (or "B Story").  This is the story of what is going on with the series characters -- usually unconnected to the case of the week.  For instance, in the TV show Castle, we have the ongoing romance between the lead characters, and the "bromance" between the sidekicks.  And the ongoing melodrama of Castle's mother and daughter, who have their own lives that impact his.  There has been, at times, a large plot arc in which Beckett was investigating the secrets behind her mother's murder, which sometimes became the crime plot for an episode, but often was just the front story.

I call this the "front story" because it's the story that's going on in the foreground.  Right in front of you.  The investigation is a part of the front story, even though it overlaps with the crime story.  I include it as front story because it happens in front of the audience, and it's another part of the characters' lives.  The investigation is one of the things your characters do.

And in some series, the investigation is all there is to the front story -- we don't always have any info about the characters' personal lives.  We still may read or watch that series to spend time with the character.  It's still a front story.

With a cozy th this blending of front story and investigation is stronger; because we're talking about an amateur sleuth.  There's no leaving your personal life at home while you're at work solving the case with an amateur.  Solving the case IS personal.

My problem is that the front story interacts with, and is impacted by, the hidden mystery story.  And the more they interact, the more depth your story has -- because each adds something to the other.

And that's golden, because for me the front story is the most important part of the story.  It's why I read or watch, and it's why I write.  So the more layers added, the better.

But interweaving multiple story lines (including one which is hidden and must mystify the charactes and audience) is tough and takes a long time.   Especially when you do as I was doing, and try to build the hidden back story out of the front story.  That just wasn't working for me.  I found myself stretching and straining the mystery plot to suit what was going on in the front story.

I realized that I had two problems: the mystery plot is just a MacGuffin, but I am very persnickety about MacGuffins.

MacGuffins - The Audience DO Care

Hitchcock definted the MacGuffin as "The thing the spies are after but the audience don't care."

I would change that definition a little.  The audience does care about the MacGuffin, because it drives the story, and the characters care about it, so it had better not be something stupid.  However, the audience is flexible about what it is. It could be something else and still work. And that's the key:

The MacGuffin is something that both drives the story, AND is interchangeable with other MacGuffins.

Hitchcock's example is in his movie Notorious. The script was in development before the end of WWII, and the FBI was concerned that the spies in the story were smuggling uranium.  Everything related to The Bomb was top secret at that time, including the value of uranium.  Hitch told them that he would have no problem changing the script.  It could be industrial diamonds instead.  Notorious is a love story; that's the only part that mattered.

As it happened, the war ended and uranium was no longer a state secret, so they left it as the MacGuffin for Notorious, and Hitchcock got on with finding ways to film Hollywood's longest kiss without breaking the Production Code rules.

Hitch was like that: he would take on a project just so he could do something like see how long of a kiss he could get away with.  Or he wanted to have a chase scene in a theater.  Oooo. What if somebody was killed by a theatrical safety curtain falling on him -- Irony!  Or wouldn't it be cool to shoot a scene in which the badguy falls from the top of the Statue of Liberty!

I have to admit, that's how I approach a story, much of the time.    And that's the thing that led me to realize what I need to do next with the Story Game.

Magic MacGuffins

The point of the story games -- all versions of it -- is not to replace creativity, but rather to get to the most creative parts of your writing quicker.  It's about randomizing the parts that are exchangeable.  In other words, the MacGuffins.

So I think the first thing to do if you want to create your own personalized game, is to start figuring out what your MacGuffins are.  Now, your MacGuffins may not be an object, as it is in most spy stories.  It may be the whole crime plot.  Or it may even be some aspect of the front story.  It's anything that you may have trouble deciding what it is (because one choice is as good as another), but once you make that decision, you can move forward and play with it creatively.

For me, it's the backstory.  In a mystery, that's who killed whom and why.  And how they decided to hide it.  The backstory can be exchanged for a different backstory, at least early on, but it has such a strong impact on the front story, I find it's almost like geography.  It's something that my characters have to deal with, so it impacts the front story.  It gives me something to hang the front story on.  It gives me opportunities for what the actors call "business."

One example might be in the first Starling and Marquette story, The Man Who Did Too Much.  After an exciting action sequence in which Karla and her house are attacked by a couple of thugs, and George rescues here, these two lead characters -- who have not been working together -- return to her house to apply first aid, make a snack, and form a pact.  It's a long character scene, but it's all driven by what is going on in the investigation.

For me to write that scene, I don't necessarily have to know every detail of the crime, but I do have to know what clues they are looking at.  Or where they are coming from or who they have spoken with.  I need a spring board to work with.

Hence... the game.

Flexible Springboards

With the previous game, The Situation Game, I had a rule that you roll out all these random elements and try to come up with a story idea with them as rolled, but that you can, at any time, overrule any item. 

In this game, I'm finding that an even more flexible approach works.  Since the plot of a mystery is driven by theories, you really need several possible main plots, most of which will turn out to be false.

But I'll tell you about that next week when I get to the big crime behind the crime wheel, which I'm now going to call The Big Wheel of Crimes and Theories. 

See you in the funny papers.

Story Game - Generating a Mystery Story

The Mystery/Whodunnit Game is a variation of the Situation Game -- in that it focuses on creating a situation and cast of characters for a story. That is, what the situation is at the beginning of the story and the forces that will drive the story forward.

Two differences: Mysteries, unlike classic suspense, tend to be series fiction, and so this formula does not include the series elements -- in particular, no hero or heroine.  No protagonist.  That should already be set by the series itself.  The other is that I may experiment with my first plot wheel for this game.  (However, I'll get to that on a later day.)

The Assumption of Series

I've made three assumptions in creating this game.  I made these assumptions because... well, that's what's useful to me right now. 

1.) You've already developed your series.  You know who your protagonist(s) are and their relationships with other characters, and you know the location, etc.  You know the flavor and themes of the story.  You may or may not have written books in this series. (I may come up with a "Series Generation Game" later. For now you'll just have to make do.  Hey, write fanfic of your favorite mystery series.)

2.) The goal is to make this a long series.  This game is meant to come up with lots of classic mystery puzzles/plots.  (It still might help you if you are going to do only one or two stories -- but my point in creating it is to speed along the puzzle end of the story.)

3.) You already have an idea that you want to flesh out.


Start With an Idea

In my case, right now, I have an opening scene with no story. It has a couple of minor hooks to take the story further, but I have no idea what they mean.

However I often start with something else, just as nebulous: I might have a title I think is cool. (I do this often with Mick and Casey.)  Or I might have an idea for a tricky clue, or a cool chase scene.  Or a location, or a guest character.

These are all the sorts of things I normally keep on the shelf until I come up with an idea to suit them.  The point of the game is to skip the shelf. I'm too old to wait for ideas to ripen or to happen to find the right story. (My idea shelf is getting more and more crowded all the time.)

So the point of this game is to take an inspiration or idea, and get a mystery plot for it NOW, and get on with the writing.


Create a Character Relationship Circle

This is an upgraded version of the Random Relationships Mini-Game I put at the end of the first Story Game post.  

A quick summary of the  relationship game again:

*Decide how many characters you want.
*Roll a character, then roll a relationship. The relationship tells you what the character is to the next character.
*Keep rolling characters and relationships until you get to the end, and the last character's relationship will be with the first on the list.

I have created a somewhat more complicated (but also more flexible) version of the game:

I roll ten characters and relationships.  The first seven make up a circle, as I decribe above.  The other three are peripheral characters who I can attach to the circle any place I choose -- like charms on a charm bracelet.

Why did I choose this number of characters?

There's an old rule that you can't have more than five main suspects in a murder mystery.  IMHO, that really doesn't do it, because a really great mystery, a la Agatha Christie, will also have minor characters who have parts to play, and sometimes they will turn out to have done it. (And no, that's not always cheating -- I'll talk about that another time.)

But mostly, those minor characters are important as witnesses and motives. (I.e. a killer might have killed to keep a secret from a wife or boss who is a minor character).  Even if you never treat those other characters as suspects, each character has a life, and everyone in that life affects the story.

At the same time, I do like the main suspect list to be kept to a manageable size.  However, until I write the story, I don't know how these characters will develop.  Sometimes a minor character will grow on me, sometimes a person I thought was major will be dull.

So I create ten characters, and even though three are "peripheral," they are actually all equal at this point in terms of who will become the major characters and who are minor. The "peripheral" factor is just to make the mix of relationships a little more natural.

Here are the current lists/wheels for choosing Characters and Relationships.  (You can and should adapt these at will to suit your series and style.)

Characters: 

1. Female Child (1-12)
2. Male Child (1-12)
3. Female Teen (13-18)
4. Male Teen (13-18)
5. Female New Adult (19-24)
6. Male New Adult (19-24)
7. Female Adult (25-39)
8. Male Adult (25-39)
9. Female Middle Age (40-59)
10. Male Middle Age (40-59)
11. Female Senior (60-90)
12. Male Senior (60-90)

Relationships (to next character)

1. Parent/child
2. club/church/organization acquaintance
3. sibling
4. cousin or aunt/uncle or niece/nephew (depending on ages)
5. stranger
6. friend
7. enemy
8. coworker
9. boss
10. neighbor
11. admires or admired by
12. lover/spouse/best friend forever


First Brainstorming Session

After rolling the characters, I look first at the circle of the seven -- and see how they are clustered. This in an of itself will gives some idea of how these characters interlock -- and how they don't.  In a mystery, indirect connections can be the most interesting ones.

As it happens the first time I rolled this, I had two people were strangers to others, and several club/church acquaintances.  This broke the main ring into two clusters.  Hmmm, how are these two groups separate and what brings them together?

That's where my original idea came in handy, and that's also where the three peripheral characters came in handy.  But before I thought of either of those....


Place the Character Circle in the Series!

The location of your series and the kind of people that reside in it can help a lot in filling out the story.  You also have your regular characters and how they might connect in.

In the case of my "Man Who" series, the location is a Northern Lower Michigan beach town.  So with two different groups of people associated by a club or church.... it makes sense for one of those clubs to be the Country Club, and the others to be local members of a church.  The locals would likely work at the country club, and that would connect them.

This idea was strengthened by the fact that my originating idea involved an event which happens in a bar or tavern -- that could be the country club bar.  (And that really makes the idea take off for me!)

The next step is to figure out who might want to kill whom.


Motives and Suspects and Victims, oh my!

I created a list of motives.  I'm not fully happy with it yet, but it worked for me so far.  (Maybe I just got lucky.) Here it is:

1. Jealousy
2. Resentment
3. Money - victim is a threat to wealth the killer already has
4. Money - inheritance
5. Money - theft
6. Money - indirect, money will go to someone else
7. Frame up - Victim is just collateral damage in a plot to hurt someone via framing them for murder.
8. Sibling Rivalry
9. Victim stands in the way of romantic obsession
10. Victim is blackmailer
11. Victim knows something (not a blackmailer)
12. Revenge
13. Falling out among thieves or other plotters
14. Righteous crimes - killing a killer.

Now, I'm going to need motives for suspects as well as for the actual killer, so I chose three of these numbers at random.

Then since creating the relationship circle hadn't given me definite ideas on which character should be the killer or victim, I chose three of them at random and assigned the motives to them.

And then here is the trick: those characters can be killer, suspect, or victim.  The motive might apply to why that person is killed.

This is still the brainstorming stage.  Even the motives can be flexed and turned to suit the situation that arises.  So even though you rolled up "Sibling Rivalry" that rivalry can be connected to a rivalry over inheritance or a romantic obsession.  At this point I'm just looking for the emotions that tie the characters together.

So, at this point I just blather on paper or screen.  Do general brainstorming, maybe even try to find a theme. (Like maybe the siblings aren't the only rivals in the story. Maybe other characters have other kinds of rivalries. Maybe the victim fostered rivalries.)  I'm just looking for things that will get my imagination running.

Because I'm not done yet.

I mean, I could be.  This is enough to get a good story going.  But I'm not because I like a complicated story, and I like an element of intrigue/suspense in my mysteries, so I like there to be a bigger conspiracy or plot to go along with the murder.


Next Friday, I'll talk about my big spiffy new Wheel of the Crime Behind The Crime (which I think might replace the Crime Wheel in my romantic suspense game).  I'll also talk about my first foray into an actual plot wheel -- a Wheel of Reversals to help think ahead about those turns of event that happen at the end of each act of a story.

But that's it for now.  I'll do a Sunday Update with some new pictures and covers, and maybe a list of the movies I'm looking at for the Tuesday Plot Theory series.  And then on Tuesday, we'll continue with introducing characters in the first section of hte story.

See you in the funny papers.

A Fistful of Divas - Episode 8

First Episode | Previous Episode | Story Notes

Episode 8 - Who Will Sing... and Who Will Swing?

by Camille LaGuire

We found the piano man in the hall of his hotel, a suitcase in his hand, sneaking toward the stairs.  When he saw us, he ran back to his room and tried to slam the door shut, but I threw myself against the door and slammed it back open.

That bowled him over, and Casey jumped on top of him.

"Please! No! I won't say a word!" he cried, covering his face.  "Don't shoot!"

"We ain't here to kill you," I said, and I kicked the door shut.

He didn't look like he believed me.  He looked up at Casey like a mouse looks at a snake.  Which, to be fair, was appropriate, since she was looking at him like a snake looks at a mouse.

"So what word won't you say?" I asked, as I  picked up his suitcase and emptied it on the bed, and started poking through the contents.  He didn't answer, maybe because he had just promised not to talk.

I found what I was looking for, hidden in the middle of a bundle of handkerchiefs.  Two letters, a little rumpled.  One for Miss Clarice and one for Madame Olenka.  Addressed and in French.  I held them up.

He kinda shrunk into his jacket like a turtle.  Casey, who was still sitting on him, bounced on his chest hard, and he un-shrunk real fast.

"You can have those," he said.  "I...I was going to burn them."

I squatted down next to him.

"What do these letters say?"

"Madame Olenka is from some little town in Indiana, and Mademoiselle Clarice is from Hatchetville, Missouri."

For a minute I couldn't see why that mattered, but then I figured it out.

"They ain't French!" I said.

"Clarice isn't French.  Olenka isn't Russian.  The letters are from the guy who teaches people to speak French and act like royalty.  They're fakes."

"They ain't fake if they can sing," said Casey.

"I agree," said the piano man.  "In regular show business, nobody's who they say they are.  It's part of the act.  But opera, that's almost society.  The Great Henri is not interested in hicks who can sing."

"So which one's trying to kill you?"

"I don't know.  I really don't," said the piano man, nearly breaking into sobs.  "I only left them a couple notes in their music, telling them to leave money on the piano. I didn't even sign it. I didn't know they knew it was me."

"Where'd you get the letters?"

"I found them in Clarice's dressing room. The teacher gave them both to her. That letter to Olenka is a letter of introduction for Clarice, asking for a job for her.  I don't think she ever used it. She just kept it to blackmail Olenka."

The piano man didn't know anything more, so we told him to keep the door locked until we got it sorted out, and left.

"It was Clarice," said Casey, "she was the one lying."

"Yeah," I agreed.  Most likely it was Clarice.  But I was thinking on all that confusion in the opera house.  All those people running around, it was quite a trick to hide Rufus and stab him and not be seen.  I stopped.  "Or maybe both of them."

"How you figure that?"

"They had me chasing all over the opera house, all distracted. They couldn't have done a better job if they had been working together."

"They hate each other."

"They're fakes.  Maybe that's fake too."

Casey let out a string of oaths that would take the paint off the walls.  "If it's both of them, then nobody's going to sing!"

She stalked off down the stairs.  I followed real quick, wondering if it was time to apologise, but she ducked past me before I could. Just then Mr. Henri came back from talking to the sheriff.  He looked tired and distracted, but Casey jumped into his way.

"Can you sing?" she said.

He looked surprised and then gave us a little smile and a shrug, kinda smug like.

"Bien sûr," he said.  "I have some talent, madame.  But if you will excuse, I must rest.  The sheriff is a difficult man. I am all of a frazzle."

Casey glowered at him as he trotted up the stairs.  She grumbled something, but I wasn't really listening.  All of a sudden, I had an idea floating in my head, but I couldn't quite grab on to it.

Casey had my arm and was hauling me toward the hotel parlor, saying something about wanting to get Clarice anyway.  I pulled back and blinked at her, as my idea finally settled in and let me grasp it.

"What?" she said.

"Casey," I began, "if you were French...."

"Well I ain't French," she snapped.  "And I never will be!"

I looked at her and spent a moment juggling my new idea with her reaction.

"That wasn't what I meant," I said.

"Oh," she said, settling down.  Now I'd lost track of what I'd been about to say.

"Okay," I said.  "If you was...American."

"I am American."

"Okay, but if somebody who wasn't American came up to you and started speaking English, you'd know they weren't American, wouldn't you?"

"Probably."

I pointed up the stairs where Mr. Henri had disappeared.

"How come he didn't know Clarice wasn't French?"

Casey looked me straight in the eye for the first time in what seemed like ages.

"He ain't French."

"Yeah."

"But why didn't the piano guy say anything about him?"

"Maybe he didn't know.  He didn't sign the notes he left around for the ladies.  So maybe he didn't put their names at the top either.  Maybe Henri found one and thought it was for him."

Casey was already running up the stairs. I chased after.

* * *

Well, we caught Henri before he killed the piano man.  He had talked his way in and nearly stuck a letter opener in the guy. And after Case took that letter open and started trimming Henri's mustache with it -- which must have hurt on account of it not being sharp, so most of those hairs were being pulled out by the root -- we got a full and tearful confession.

It was evening by the time we had got him to jail and everything sorted out with the sheriff. Casey slipped off somewhere.  I knew that if she didn't want to be found, I wasn't going to find her, but I went looking anyway.  I figured it was time for me to apologize, even if she didn't want to hear it. I'd rather have her pissed off than ducking me.

The opera house looked empty, but I checked the balcony and then backstage, and the dressing rooms.  I was just about to leave when I heard her voice.

"Hey."

She was standing in the shadow of the curtains, her hands in her back pockets, looking at me from under her hat.  She kept glancing down, and her face was kind of pink.  I almost asked her if she had put some rouge on it, because her lips were a little more red than usual too, but I decided to keep my mouth shut.  She was working herself up to something.

So I stood there with my hands in my back pockets, looking just as uncertain, but probably not as pink.  Finally she sidled up closer, her arm just against mine.  She didn't look up, and she still had trouble coming up with what she wanted to say. So finally I talked.

"I may get distracted," I said.  "But nobody can distract me like you can.  You don't even have to try."

She took a deep breath, and nodded.  That was what she wanted to know.

"I love you," she said, flat, like how you'd tell somebody they had a spot on their shirt.  It wasn't something she said very often.  I would almost go as far as saying she never said it, but it wouldn't quite be true.  She just had a real hard time with it.  I smiled at her.

Then she punched me.  Hard.  In the pit of the stomach.  I staggered back and she waited until I had mostly caught my breath again.

"Would you like me better in a dress?" she asked.

"Nope."

"In a corset...?"

"Nope."

"Would you like me in a dress at all?"

She waited as I considered my options.

"Sure," I said.  It turned out to be the right answer.  And it was particularly good because it was true.  I like Casey any way she comes.  But I kinda like that she doesn't know that, even if it does get me into trouble sometimes.

I straightened up, took her by the shoulders and showed her just exactly what I had learned about kissing from that pretend French woman.  I think she liked it.  She didn't punch me again, anyway.

"You still want to hear them sing?" I said.

"Don't matter," she said.  "They won't."

"Sure they will."  I pulled out the two letters from my pocket.  "They don't want me sending these letters to that opera company in Chicago."

I didn't tell her that I had also told Clarice that she didn't have to sing, if she didn't want to, since Olenka had promised to give us the best singing anybody had ever heard.  It wasn't true, but it was enough to get Clarice to declare she was going to be the star of the concert. And when Olenka heard that, she wasn't going to let anybody out do her.

So, in the end, we got ourselves a fine concert, with two ladies singing their hearts out.  The most beautiful thing I ever heard, other than Casey saying "I love you."  Even so, I suppose it wasn't really opera.  Not a whole opera.  One day we're going to hear that.

---

And that concludes our little story. 
"Story Notes" about the writing of this to appear Thursday, April 4.

The next serial - The Case of the Misplaced Baroness - will start in  late April.

First Episode | Previous Episode | Story Notes

---

If you're enjoying this Mick and Casey Mystery, check out their other stories, such as the first novel in the series: Have Gun, Will Play.

Available in paper or as ebook at: Amazon.com, Barnes and Nobel, as well as these ebook dealers: Kobo, Deisel, Apple iBookstore, Sony eReader, or get it in all formats without DRM at Smashwords.

A Fistful of Divas - Episode 7

First Episode | Previous Episode | Next Episode

Episode 7 - But Which One?

by Camille LaGuire

So it had to have been someone inside the opera house.

Maybe.

I supposed there were a dozen ways I could be wrong.  Maybe, when the piano man had tried to leave, he'd flipped that backward lock around wrong and then I'd flipped it back wrong, and so the door hadn't locked.  Or maybe that "partner" the sheriff was looking for had been hiding in the closet too, before I locked the door, and he only went out later, after he stabbed Rufus.

But I was thinking maybe that didn't matter.  Maybe the question to ask wasn't who hired Rufus to shoot, but who Rufus was shooting at.

"Case!" I called again.  "Where was Rufus standing?" I pointed to a spot at the middle of the balcony.  "Right about there, wasn't he?"

Casey shook her head and pointed to the railing in front of her.

"Here," she said.  "Powder on the rail."

I nodded and looked back at the stage.  I tried to picture where folks were when we had first walked in.  They had all be standing still, and then they all moved just before the shot.

"He didn't like moving targets," I called back to Casey, as I jumped up on the stage.

"Or bein' seen," she added. She hunkered down, so that she was just peeking over the rail like Rufus might have.

I went and stood where Clarise had been.  Casey pointed her finger at me like it was a gun.  She looked awful serious about that aim, and I was reminded that I was in trouble with her.  I kinda hoped she was imagining that she was aiming at Clarise, rather than me.

"And just before the shot, she went over there," I said, and I moved across the stage like Clarise had.  I stopped where she had been standing when the shot rang out and hit the music she'd had in her hand.

Casey's finger didn't follow me so well.  She was resting her hand on the railing -- as Rufus might have done, he not being a steady shot. He was also a fellow who liked to take his time in aiming.  Casey shrugged and scowled -- that shot didn't feel right.

I went over and stood where Olenka had been and moved like she had.

"The ladies were too far away for the shot to end up where it was," said Casey.

"Maybe he tried to follow them and overshot."

"What about the mustache?" she said, meaning Henri.

Mr. Henri had been sitting in a chair on the floor, and had got up and moved forward.  He would have been at the same angle from Rufus the whole time.  I did as he had done.  Casey kinda frowned over that one.

"Maybe," she said.  "But you're taller than he is.  And he would have had to aim down a lot more to hit him when he was sitting."

All the same, Henri made the most sense.  The ladies were competing hard over him.  If one of them thought that he liked the other one better, she just might want to kill him....

But there had been one more person on that stage.  The one who had looked up and seen it coming.  The only one to move away from the shot, when he ducked.  I went over to the piano, and put my finger on the hole in the wood.  Casey squinted and aimed her finger at it. I sat down on the bench like I was playing the piano and I turned around, and saw Casey aiming right at me.

"Piano man," she said.

I agreed.  Most likely, the person Rufus was aiming at had been the piano man.

"Why?" she said.

"Not sure," I admitted.  "He don't seem to care much for any of them, and they don't pay him any mind at all.  But he was nervous all right, and so he probably knows why.  And maybe who.  Don't know why he didn't say anything, though."

Casey swung over the railing and landed in a crouch in the middle of the floor.

"He'll say something," she said ominously.  And I remembered how we were sure that Rufus would say something when she caught him... before he got stabbed.

"Case," I said.  "If somebody's out to kill him, this would be the best time to do it.  The sheriff's looking for somebody else.  And nobody's looking for one of them being the killer."

We ran out of that opera house in a flying tumble, hoping we weren't too late.

---

Stay Tuned For Episode 8 - "Who Will Sing... and Who Will Swing?"

Available after 8am EST, on Thursday, March 28

First Episode | Previous Episode | Next Episode

---

A Fistful of Divas - Episode 6

First Episode | Previous Episode | Next Episode

Episode 6 - No Reward For Rufus

by Camille LaGuire

The blood did not belong to any of the opera folk.  They all popped out to see what was going on as soon as Miss Clarice screamed.  The sheriff had Casey round them all up and keep them up front.

Meantime, the sheriff and a deputy tried to get the door open.  As nobody was complaining from the other side, I figured there wasn't that much of a hurry, but my opinion wasn't wanted.  They eventually sent for the opera house manager, who came huffing in a little bit later, apologizing because he hadn't been able to find his keys, and had to dig out another set.

"Mabye somebody stole them," I said.

The sheriff elbowed me, like I should stay out of it.  The manager looked alarmed and then looked down at the blood on the floor and looked more alarmed.  The sheriff took his keys and unlocked the door of the closet.

Inside the closet was old Ring-neck Rufus.  Dead as dirt.  Somebody had shoved a knife up under his breastbone and into his heart.  He must have gone fast, but he still bled out pretty good.

This time it was the manager who nearly fainted.  I hauled him around the curtain to the stage, where the opera folks were waiting with Casey.  I noticed that they were all sitting still for her.  Maybe it was the sight of blood, but I thought it was more the look of blood in her eye.

The sheriff joined us a moment later, wiping his hands and nodding his head.

"It's pretty clear what happened," he said.  "The bolt on that back door is set to twist in the wrong direction, and Mick here thought he was locking the door but he really left it unlocked."

"No, sir," I said. "I noticed it twisted wrong and I locked it."

"Don't want to hear it!" snapped the sheriff.  So I shut my mouth and he went on.  "Rufus wouldn't do something like that on his own.  Somebody must have hired him. And I expect when Rufus ran, he met up with his fellow and maybe told him how he'd screwed up.  That might have been enough motive right there, but this partner also would have been worried that Rufus would talk once he was caught."

"Yes!" said Mr. Henri.  "That is what Monsieur Mick said -- we would know everything when his magnificent wife caught the fellow."

He looked at me with a smile, and the sheriff shot me a glance that said he'd rather my name didn't come up again.

"Anyway," he continued.  "This partner had to get rid of Rufus, so he brought him back in here and knifed him and shoved him in the closet.  And slipped back out into the alley."

"Where you folks were searching," I said.  "How'd he get past you?"

"It was after we had moved on from the alley.  Had to be."

I supposed that was possible but it didn't set right.

"What I need from you folks," the sheriff went on, "is the straight story of who might want to kill you, or at least scare you."

For a moment they all murmured and glanced at each other, until finally Henri coughed and said something about a lovely lady in the previous town who had a jealous husband.

"I meant nothing," said Henri.  "Beautiful women are to be admired!"

"And what about her?" added Madame Olenka with a glance at Clarice. "She threw herself at that man with the angry wife, did she not?"

"What about you, you cow?" said Clarice with enough venom to make a rattlesnake feel inadequate.  Olenka shrugged and fanned herself.

"There are always jealousies," Olenka admitted.  "But I have no need to throw myself at anyone to cause them."

"I'm sure you ladies have your rivals," said the sheriff.  "But no lady could pull a crime like this."

I glanced at Casey, and I could see she was fingering her knife, but I couldn't tell if she was looking at him or me.  No, she was looking at Clarice.  But the sheriff told Mr. Henri he wanted to know more about the this fellow he'd made jealous, and he sent all the other opera folk back to their hotel.

Case and I were left alone.

Casey went off to the balcony to be by herself. She did that when she felt bad, which made me feel extra bad.  But I couldn't help but feel I did not deserve quite as much disgust as I was getting -- well, maybe I did from her, but not from the sheriff.

I had locked that door.  And it wasn't the kind of bolt you could unlock with a key.  Only someone on the inside could have unlocked it.  I remembered how the piano man had tried to leave, and I wondered for minute if he had got messed up by the backward lock and had managed to lock it rather than unlock, and I was distracted enough, maybe then I flipped it back, thinking I was locking it when I really unlocked it.

I didn't think I'd done that, but....  But maybe it didn't matter.

"Case!" I called.

"What?" she yelled back from up in the balcony.

"You didn't find any sign of Rufus in the alley?"

She came up to the railing and leaned over to look at me closer.

"No!" she called back.  "What're you thinking?"

"If he'd been back there, you'd have caught scent of him.  Sheriff might have lost him, but you wouldn't."

"Yeah?"

"So when Rufus ran, he must have run right around to the back door and come back in, before we even got to the alley to look for him."

"Why would even Rufus do a fool thing like that?"

"Like the sheriff said: He ran to his partner for help. And that partner was somebody in this building.  It was one of the opera folks themselves."

---

Stay Tuned For Episode 7 - "But Which One?"

Available after 8am EST, on Thur

First Episode | Previous Episode | Next Episode

---

If you're enjoying this Mick and Casey Mystery, check out their other stories, such as the first novel in the series: Have Gun, Will Play.

Available in paper or as ebook at: Amazon.com, Barnes and Nobel, as well as these ebook dealers: Kobo, Deisel, Apple iBookstore, Sony eReader, or get it in all formats without DRM at Smashwords.

A Fistful of Divas - Episode 5

First Episode | Previous Episode | Next Episode

Episode 5 - French Literature

by Camille LaGuire

Casey was keeping her look neutral, so I shifted my weight and waited for Olenka to say more.

"Clarice leaves threats for me sometimes," said the lady in a low, confidential voice.  "She has a letter of mine.  It is from a man other than Henri.  This man loves me, and Henri would not understand....  Do you read French?"

"No," I said.

"Well, the letter is addressed to me, so that should be clear it is mine.  I will pay you twenty dollars if you get it for me."

I thought about that.  I wasn't sure we were getting the straight story, but it sounded interesting.  I looked at Casey.  She gave me a little shrug without looking at me, so she was still mad, but she didn't object.  Maybe she wanted to get back at Clarice.

"We'll do it," I said.  "...but not for twenty dollars."

"Well, thirty?"

"No money.  You gotta sing."

Casey straightened up a little.  Yep, that's what she wanted.  I turned to Olenka and, and damned if that woman wasn't looking sour, like singing was the last thing in the world she wanted to do.

"Why not?" I said.  She shrugged and turned back to her mirror and started playing with her powderpuff and combs and things.  Because of the mirror, though, she really couldn't avoid looking at me.

"I...sprained my voice," she said.  "When that man shot his gun.  I screamed...."

"You did not.  The other gal did, but you didn't."

She looked at me in the mirror, reluctantly.  She sighed and turned around again.

"It is difficult to sing for people who do not appreciate...."

"We ain't good enough?" said Casey.  She uncrossed her arms, and stood like she was about to draw.  The lady narrowed her eyes, and made a little shrug.

"Perhaps," she said, "I will sing from sheer joy if I have the letter in my hand."

"You get the letter after you sing," I said.  "That's it.  It's the only deal."

The lady sighed and shrugged.  "If I must, I must."

It seemed to be a deal.


Casey was already out the door, and I found her in the hall, staring hard at the door of Miss Clarice's dressing room.  As I came up to her, she twisted around slow and looked at me with the scariest look on her face I ever saw.  I nearly took a step back.

"Okay, Sugar Lips," she said. "You lure her out of that room and distract her and I'll search it."

I did not like this plan.  But Casey didn't leave me any time to come up with a better one.  She reached out and knocked lightly on the door.

"Entrez!" came the voice of Miss Clarice.  Casey reached over and pulled the door open while staying behind it, out of sight. I didn't have any choice but to step into the room.

I thought quick and decided furtive was the way to go. I put a finger to my lips and hunched down.  Miss Clarice took a quick glance behind me, didn't see anybody, and gave me a mischievous smile.

"I need to talk to you," I whispered.  "But she might overhear."

I pointed toward Madame Olenka's dressing room, and Clarice smiled slyly.  I backed out of the room, looked both ways like I was watching out for trouble.  Trouble, as it happened, was well-concealed behind the door where she wouldn't be seen.

Miss Clarice followed me out, and I hustled her around the corner into the little hall that led to the back door.

It was a narrow space, and Clarice smiled, and reached up to caress my chest. In that moment I changed my mind on how I was going to handle it.  I shoved her away, down the hall where she was trapped.  Her face turned pink enough to match her rouge.

"You were not so unfriendly before," she said.

"Well, that's 'cause I'm slow," I said.  I backed her up another step, and said:  "So where's that letter?"

"I don't know.  What letter do you mean?"

"The one that belongs to Madame Olenka."

"Ha!  She is a liar.  She has my letter."

"Oh, it's your letter," I said.  "What's it about?"

"It is nothing, and indiscretion.  This man is in love with me, and he wrote a letter...."

"And Mr. Henri might not understand."

"Yes."

"It's in French, too, I bet."

"Yes, it is.  Can you read French?"

"No, but I'm sure it's addressed to you so if I saw it I would know it."

"Would you find it for me?  Could you?  I would be grateful.  I would make you very happy if you did...."

"That won't be hard to make me happy," I said.

She smiled and slipped forward, all friendly.  I poked her back, and leaned in.

"All you have to do is make my wife happy."

Her eyes got wide.  "How?" she said.

"You gotta sing in that concert tonight."

She had the same look on her face that Madame Olenka did.  Exactly the same.

"You sprain your voice?"

"Why, yes, I did."  She put her hand to her throat, and looked guilty.

"Tell me the honest truth.  Did you two ladies hire Rufus to take that shot just so you wouldn't have to sing tonight?"

"No," she said.  "But it would have been a good idea."

She sidled up to me like she was going to kiss me again.  I straightened up and tried to think of how keep stalling her, without shooting her or getting any more rouge on me.

But it turned out I didn't need a stall.  Just as she put her hands up to my shoulders, the door behind her opened up.

It was the sheriff.

"Why the hell is this door unlocked!" he said.

"But it was locked," I said.  It was only then that I realized I should have asked Casey how she had got into the building, seeing as the doors were both bolted from the inside.  I had thrown those bolts myself.

The sheriff slammed the door shut and locked it.  "You been standing here guarding the door the whole time?"

"No sir," I said, and I recounted just what I'd done to secure the building.  He gave me a look like I was the lowest fool he ever saw.

"It ain't locked," he said, pointing back to the door.  "And Rufus must have come back in this way.  It's the only place he coulda gone."

Clarice gave a squeal and grabbed onto me for safety, while the sheriff went stomping around the corner.

"You make sure those opera folk are all safe," he called back to me.  "I'm going search this place again and--"

He stopped, so sudden Clarice and I ran into the back of him.  He was looking down at the floor, and I looked down too.
There was a little pool of blood seeping out from under the door of one of the closets.

"That door was locked too," I said.  "I think."

The sheriff reached out and yanked on the handle, but it didn't budge.  Miss Clarice, in the meantime, let out a scream and fainted right into my arms.

---

Stay Tuned For Episode 6 - "No Reward For Rufus"

Available after 8am EST, on Thur

First Episode | Previous Episode | Next Episode

---

If you're enjoying this Mick and Casey Mystery, check out their other stories, such as the first novel in the series: Have Gun, Will Play.

Available in paper or as ebook at: Amazon.com, Barnes and Nobel, as well as these ebook dealers: Kobo, Deisel, Apple iBookstore, Sony eReader, or get it in all formats without DRM at Smashwords.

A Fistful of Divas - Episode 4

First Episode | Previous Episode | Next Episode

Episode 4 - My Name Is Dirt

by Camille LaGuire

Casey stood there for just a second, arms crossed, while I scratched my head and shuffled my feet.

"I...I'm sorry?" I said.

She made a little face and then just walked right past me, around the end of the curtain to get to the stage.

"Casey, are you mad at me?"

"No," she said, and she kept going without looking back.

The thing is, Casey doesn't lie.  Not unless she's making a joke, which she doesn't do much, and this time she sure wasn't.

It's easy to forget that underneath the big hat, and the pair of sixguns and the big boots and spurs and sometimes bandaleros and chaps and the tough talk and all, there's a girl.  I forget sometimes that she's even younger than I am, because she doesn't seem so, and she's a lot more shy than she lets on.  She's a little gal in a big man's world, and she somehow manages to be tough when she isn't big or strong.

And I'm supposed to be the one watching her back.  And not just from bullets.

I had let her down.  I felt like a rat.  I was mad at myself, and I was mad at Clarice -- especially when I thought that she must have seen Casey coming up, and she pushed it anyway.  She was stomping on Casey's territory on purpose.

I followed Casey toward the stage, but she had actually gone to the end of the curtain where an extra fold gave her bit more privacy.  When she saw me she turned away.

"So," I said.  "I guess you found Rufus, then."
"No," she said, and she snapped it so hard I knew I wasn't the only one who let her down.  "Sheriff's still looking.  He's got some deputies, so he didn't need--"

 She cut herself off, but I knew what the sheriff didn't need.  A girl.  This day just wasn't turning out for Casey.

"I suppose you don't want to hear the opera now anyway," I said, trying to sound philosophical.

She turned half toward me, looking hard at my boots.

"Yes, I do."

"Well, they ain't gonna sing."

"Shit!" said Casey, and she kicked at the curtain.  It just fluffed around and caught on her spur.  She hopped there, cursing even worse, trying to get it unhooked.  I started to help, but she shoved me away.

"Why not? Because they got shot at?"

"It ain't a bad reason," I said.  I explained how Clarice wouldn't sing because she thought Madame Olenka was trying to kill her, while Casey tried to get her spur loose.  She couldn't because she had managed to kick up so high she couldn't raise her foot any to get unhooked.  I finally scooped her up, and she kicked loose, and I put her back down again.

"Maybe the other one will sing," she said, still not looking at me.  She punched the curtain aside and headed backstage again..  "Or if she's really trying to kill the other one, maybe we can hog-tie her and then Little Red Lips will sing."

* * *

Madame Olenka turned and looked at us wide-eyed when Casey kicked open the door to the other little dressing room.  She kept her cool pretty good, but I couldn't tell if she was just cool by nature, or if it was because she knew full well Rufus hadn't been aiming at her.

Casey crossed her arms and leaned back in a corner, glaring defensively at Madame Olenska.  I was supposed to do the talking, so I turned to the lady and scratched my head.

She was a beautiful woman too.  Older and a good bit heftier, but all woman, if you know what I mean.  But she wasn't interested in me, which was a good thing.

"Ma'am," I said.  "Do you know what's going on here?"

"It is sabotage!" said the lady.  She gestured with her powderpuff, and the room not being very big, I wound up with a splat of powder on my chest.  "Do you know what that is?"

"Yeah," said Casey, as I dusted myself off and sneezed.  The lady didn't listen to Casey, but kept talking.

"In Europe, if you want to stop a factory, you drop a sabot--a wooden shoe--in the machine.  And it stops.  She is dropping a shoe on me."

"Miss Clarice?"

"Yes."

"She says you're trying to kill her."

"Ha!  She would like you to believe that.  She would love for Henri to believe that."  She turned to Casey.  "Men are such fools.  No one is trying to kill anyone.  She hired that man herself."

I glanced at Casey, who straightened up in interest.  Madame Olenka powdered her chin and kept talking.

"Of course, Henri attempts to cultivate her.  One day I will stop singing.  But she refuses to learn.  She wishes to be the prima donna, to shine above all.  And to have Henri, but Henri is not interested in someone so trivial.  So she attacks me, and pretends to suffer.  She hires this man to shoot at her."

"That's a dangerous thing to do, don't you think?"

"She has the insanity of youth.  She doesn't think, except to scheme for what she wants."

Olenka turned and looked very closely at me.  She looked down at my guns, and then at my chest.

"You are not a sheriff."

"No."

"Not a lawman."

"No."

She looked at Casey, and Casey just looked back at her, arms crossed, eyes narrow.

"You..," she said and paused a long time. "You do things for hire, yes?  For reward?"

"Yeah," I said carefully, glancing at Casey.

"I would like to hire you for something perhaps not legal, but only for the good."

---

Stay Tuned For Episode 5 - "French Literature"

Available after 8am EST, on Thur

First Episode | Previous Episode | Next Episode

---

If you're enjoying this Mick and Casey Mystery, check out their other stories, such as the first novel in the series: Have Gun, Will Play.

Available in paper or as ebook at: Amazon.com, Barnes and Nobel, as well as these ebook dealers: Kobo, Deisel, Apple iBookstore, Sony eReader, or get it in all formats without DRM at Smashwords.