Eight Mystery Writers You Should Be Reaing Nowwww

by Michael Guillebeau

  KC: You left out the Tiki Bars and yes, I am. I’m putting together an anthology of essays I’m calling, The View From Under My Desk. I grew up in the Duck and Cover years and most of the stories are from that era or how growing up in that era formed us Baby Boomers. It is, of course, a comic look at those decades between then and now. I’m giving them a test drive by performing them at storytelling venues to see what lines get the biggest laughs and which ones fall flat. The storytelling audiences of Nashville have become my content editors. I hope to have it completed by early 2017. If I wait too long, I’ll have to start including stories about STDs in retirement villages and no one wants to read about that, or maybe they do. No, I’ll for sure be done by 2017, probably.

  MICHAEL GUILLEBEAU

  Michael Guillebeau’s first book, Josh Whoever (Five Star Mysteries, 2013) was a finalist for the 2014 Silver Falchion Award for Best First Novel: Literary Suspense, and received a starred review in Library Journal, and was named a Debut Mystery of the Month by Library Journal. His second book, A Study In Detail (Five Star Mysteries, 2015) received the following praise from the Midwest Book Review: “Recommended for romance and mystery readers seeking something different… fresh, original and witty.” Guillebeau has published over twenty short stories, including three in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine.

  Michael Guillebeau lives in Madison, Alabama and Panama City Beach, Florida. You can find him at www.michaelguillebeau.com.

  Short Story

  The Man In The Moon

  (Mike’s Notes: This story was first published in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine in May, 2011, and it is probably still my favorite story that I’ve written because it is, at heart, a love story between a father and a very special daughter and about how that love can transcend even some of the biggest issues in life. I’ve got a daughter who’s that special. I hope you enjoy this story half as much as Mary and I do.)

  Mom and the man were sitting on my bed when I woke up in the middle of the night. He was older than I expected, his hair short and grey now, not jet black and long like I remembered. But the eyes were the same: pale clear blue but sad. Mom says I have his eyes but I don’t know. I read a description in a story once that I think fits my eyes. Dead fish eyes. When I look into my own eyes I see nothing, no emotion.

  “Carrie, do you remember your Dad?” said Mom, her arm around his shoulder.

  “Hi, Daddy,” I said. I should have said more, but I didn’t know what.

  “Hi, Carrie,” he said. I couldn’t remember him ever calling me Carrie; it was always “Princess,” or “Pumpkin.” But, as I said, it had been a long time.

  He laid his hand on my shoulder and I tried not to flinch, but I think I did, a little. I had passed the point a long time ago where I could feel a man’s hand on me without suspicion, and I’d spent those years in between fighting back at every little challenge since I’d last seen him. I guess I was older than he realized, still curled up under the blanket with my body hidden and just my head sticking out for him to see. I relaxed and felt something warm and basic and barely remembered flow through the connection between his hand and my shoulder.

  “Carrie, I’ve come to tell you a story. Remember when you were little, how you wouldn’t go to sleep until I told you a story? Couldn’t just read you a book, had to be a story I made up.”

  I was surprised that I did remember. I had forgotten what it was like then, lying in bed in frilly pink sheets, miniature ponies on the wall, safe because this smiling giant was there to protect me. And more, the first taste of little girl-woman power, knowing the giant would do whatever I asked, stop the world and tell me a story, slay a dragon or two, if only I asked and added the magic word, “Daddy.”

  “I’ve got one now I’ve been working on a long time, just for you. I know you’re already sleeping, but can I tell it to you now?”

  I started to tell him to go to hell, then I wanted to jump out of the covers, hop up and have the big man catch me like a feather and carry me off to sleep. I wanted to say, “Please, please, please” in a little girl voice again. Instead, I just said, “Yes, Daddy,” and that was enough for him.

  “This is a story about the man in the moon. Once upon a time, a long, long time ago, when the moon was just a plain white ball, there was a boy named Lobo. He was a very ordinary boy, happy doing ordinary things. He ran errands for the shopkeepers in the village. He listened to stories from the wise old men, and he loved the stories. He never felt he was in the stories, though, because he never wanted to be anywhere but where he was.

  “So his days were filled up, and his days went by as days should: not just using days as building blocks to some great future, but loving each day for itself. He was lucky, but didn’t know it.

  “Then one day his world changed, and changed in the best way that a world can change: he fell in love. And it happened in a single moment. He was carrying a box of vegetables from a farmer to a shop in the village and he looked up and saw a great procession of noblemen and knights. Because he was polite, he stopped and sat the box down to wait while the procession passed.

  “He had seen many processions before and honestly, had never been impressed. Other people would bow down before the noblemen and explain to him that the nobles were better than them.

  “But it never looked that way to him. He knew that, in his own village, the mayor sometimes acted like he was better than the shopkeepers, and shopkeepers acted like they were better than the beggars. But he knew that sometimes the beggars had the best stories, and the mayor often had nothing but empty words.

  “So he figured it must be the same in the castle, that people were all alike, that noblemen were just people with money, knights just men in shiny suits. So he stopped and waited for the procession to go by, just as he would have waited for the man carrying manure from the fields to go by.”

  “Where?” I couldn’t keep quiet; the story was missing a critical element of a Daddy story. “The village has to have a name, Daddy.”

  He smiled and looked at me like he had always looked at me, like I had just said the wisest and most wonderful thing in the world and he couldn’t wait to see what I would say next. He blinked his eyes and looked away.

  “Herewin,” he said, slowly. “There were two towns with the same name, one on the left, one on the right. This one was on the right. So they called it Right Herewin. How’s that?”

  “That’s good. Puts us in the story.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Want to be in the story.”

  “OK. So Lobo was waiting for the procession to go by, like every other procession, but this one had something different. In the middle of the procession, when he wasn’t expecting anything, his life changed forever. He saw the princess. And she was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen, with beautiful long blonde hair and the bluest eyes, eyes so blue he felt like someone had captured the sky on the warmest summer day and put the whole sky in her eyes.

  “He thought she was a miracle, wondered for a crazy minute if she was just a world unto herself, if the people in that world had her eyes for a sky every day, and he wanted to be in that world, even though he knew that was silly.

  “And there was more: he could tell by looking at her that she was kind, and not just the sort of kindness that sits back and wishes the world were better, the sort of kindness that demands the best and makes it happen.

  “And he didn’t know if he was falling in love with her beauty, or falling in love with her kindness. But he knew he was in love, and always would be.”

  “No,” I said, and I sat up now. “You can’t just do that. You can’t just make her kind because you want her to be kind. You got to show me something, make it real.”

  Daddy smiled. “When you were little, I thought you always demanded details to drag out bedtime. It took me a long time to realize you wanted things right, and got mad when they weren’t.”

  “I don’t just want a story. I want a Daddy story.” I didn’t know where that line came from, bu
t it came out of my mouth.

  “Yeah. That’s what you used to tell me. I used to practice stories hoping I could get through without hearing that line. The few times I did, I thought I’d feel proud, but I just felt wasted because it made the story go by too fast. So here we are, back where we were.”

  And we looked at each other for a minute and I saw what he had become and still was, and he saw what I had become and always would be. He sighed, looked away and continued.

  “All right, so there was this cat. Cat’s name was Alley, cause she lived in the alley by the shops and lived on scraps. She was sort of Lobo’s cat, sort of her own cat, but she was old, too old to move fast. She was also stubborn. She decided then that she wanted to cross the street, and no procession was going to get in her way.

  “So here she came, moving about as fast as a snail, head up, not giving the procession even one look. She almost got stepped on by the knight’s horse, the knight not even trying to avoid her. Nobleman was worse. He tried to make his horse step on her, hurt the cat just because the cat was too little to hurt him back.

  “Alley avoided the nobleman’s horse somehow, but here came the princess’s carriage, gigantic, the size of a house. Alley’s dead for sure. But the princess stands up, and out of this delicate little princess comes the biggest voice Lobo had ever heard. ‘Stop!’ she yells. ‘Stop now.’

  “And the voice shakes the shops and stops the procession instantly, the horses frozen in mid-stride and the noblemen all going nowhere now, all from the giant voice from the little girl.

  “And Alley, taking her time, sashays across the street without so much as a thank you to the princess who saved her life. When Alley was safely across the street, the princess, in a little girl voice again now, said, ‘You may proceed,’ and they did, the noblemen and the knights pretending that they had never been bossed around by a little girl for the sake of a worthless old cat.”

  Daddy looked at me. “Better?”

  “Daddy story, now,” I said. I got back under the covers, snuggled up to Daddy’s leg, and waited.

  “OK, so now Lobo’s in love. Now he wants something he can’t have. Every day, he sees those eyes. Every day, he looks up at the sky and it’s not blue enough. But he’s just a poor boy, what can he do, he can’t even get in the castle. Then one day a courier rides into town. You know what a courier is, right, kind of like CNN before there was TV?”

  “Of course I know what a courier is. They often travelled together with minstrels and jesters. Provided news and entertainment. Not just like CNN. More like television before there was television. Or vaudeville. Or modern theater. Or…”

  “Yeah, yeah, I get it,” said Daddy, again with that admiring look. Two of those looks in one night; best night I can remember.

  “Anyway, if I can be allowed to continue, the courier blares his trumpet, don’t really know why but that’s what couriers do. Nails up this notice. There is going to be a competition for the hand of the princess. Whoever brings the princess the most magical thing, on noon in two days time, wins the hand of the princess. That’s what the notice says: most magical thing, not best or most expensive, but most magic. Also, you have to go through a certain door, door will only open for one minute at noon and then, boom, slam shut. There’s probably a lot of legalese at the bottom of the notice, but we’re going to skip that in the interest of moving the story along.

  “So now Lobo doesn’t know what to do, he’s in a tizzy. On the one hand, he’s terrified. If someone else finds the magic thing, the princess is lost forever. He just doesn’t think he can live with that. On the other hand, he’s got a chance, a real chance for the first time. If he can come up with a magic thing, he can win the princess and live happily ever after.

  “So he doesn’t know what to do. Thinks about it all day, just pacing around, probably drinking coffee all the time, would be smoking a cigarette, but he’s a good boy and doesn’t smoke cigarettes. Got nothing.

  “All his friends are poor, too. The shopkeepers, the beggars, the farmers, they’d help him if they could, but what’s he going to do, take a chunk of cheese or maybe a pair of work boots up to the castle, say, ‘Here, Princess, it’s magic cheese. Got lactobacillus, good for the digestion.’ Don’t think so.

  “So everyone in the village is trying to help, but, still he’s got nothing. He’s up all night, thinking, getting nowhere. But the next day another boy comes to him with an idea. This boy’s name is Larcenious. Not really a friend, but an acquaintance. An acquaintance is like a friend that you don’t really trust. Larcenious says, ‘I know how to break into the workshop of the wizard. All sorts of magic there. Wizard would probably never miss it if we went in there and took something.”

  “Larcenious?” I mumbled. My body was half-asleep, more relaxed than it had been in a long time. But my brain was hanging on every word, and this one was wrong. “Kind of heavy handed, don’t you think, guy named after the Latin and Old French root, ‘larcin,’ meaning to steal. Can’t he be ‘Fred’ or maybe ‘Lefty’ if you’re going for a Damon Runyon tone?”

  “No,” Daddy said and I opened my eyes and saw that Daddy was tight-lipped, tense at this part of the story. “I’m telling the story. I’ve heard of Latin, too.

  “So Lobo is torn. Doesn’t trust Larcenious, don’t care if you don’t like the name, that’s his name and that’s that. Doesn’t trust him, but maybe this is a way out of the tizzy. Lobo’s never taken anything that wasn’t his in his life, not even an apple when he was carrying boxes of apples from the orchard early in the morning and hadn’t eaten. But he wanted the princess. See, that was his flaw. Not the princess, wasn’t her fault for being wonderful. Not because he loved the princess, that’s a good thing, too. But the wanting to have something, to possess it rather than just to love it and see where the love will take you on it’s own, that’s what was wrong.

  “Maybe it was the coffee, too. Maybe if he hadn’t been up all night, brain wired on caffeine, maybe he’d have said no. But he didn’t. He said yes. A million times later, in his mind, he’d think about it and say, ‘No, I only want what’s mine,’ but this time, the time that counted, he thought long and hard and wrong and said, ‘Yes.’

  “So that night, the night before the door to the castle would open, he went with Larcenious to the wizard’s lair, which is where wizards live and work.”

  He looked over at Mom. Mom was getting impatient. “So, anyway, they break in and steal this magic crown. I’m going to skip a part here, magic things in the wizard’s workshop, scary things that Lobo had to fight. Important part, but that’s really a boy’s story anyway, with dragon’s blood and stuff a little girl doesn’t need to hear about anyway.” He looked over at Mom and she nodded, still holding him around his shoulder.

  “But the crown was wonderful, the most magic thing in the wizard’s lair, which was filled with magic things. The purest kind of gold you can get on earth is 24 karat gold. This was 24,000 karat gold, so pure it glowed. And it sang. Sang a beautiful song that only the person wearing the crown could hear. Lobo tried it on, thought, that’s it, a song as beautiful as the princess, every time she puts it on she’ll see how beautiful she is, and how much I love her. Good thoughts, if the crown was really his to give.

  “So now he’s at the castle, with the crown, ten minutes before noon. He’s cleaned himself up—the tailor gave him a new set of clothes, sharp clothes, free, on account of all the good things he’d done for the tailor over the years.

  “Lobo looks around, there’s all these rich guys with great things, expensive presents, golden harps, perfume from Asia, stuff like that. They all look down on him, a poor boy standing there with a plain sack. But he smiles, knowing what he’s got in the sack.

  “So now it’s noon, the great stone door screeches open, lot of noise because the door hadn’t opened in a thousand years but it’s open now and they’re all fighting to get in, rich guys trying to shove him out of the way like he’s nothing. Normally he’d let them go ahead,
but this time he’s fighting back. He’s at the door, about to go in, on the verge of happily-ever-after, when he sees it.

  “There’s a cat sitting at the door. Same cat as before, Alley, always getting herself in trouble, but she’s a cat, she doesn’t care a bit. The door is closing, just a little, and Alley’s stuck. He stops, plenty of time to help Alley and still get in. But she’s stuck, really stuck this time. The cat that always gets in trouble may have done it this time. Only one thing to do. He puts the sack with the crown down, blocking the door, and it’s slowing the door, but just a little.

  “So he’s pulling and pulling and Alley’s looking up with that bored-cat look, not helping a bit. Finally, last second, he pulls Alley free, but the door crushes the crown and the door snaps shut. He’s stuck on the outside, everything he wants on the inside, the thing he gave up his honesty for gone, just him and the mangy old cat on the outside. At that moment, he could probably have ripped the cat apart, had cat soup for dinner. Cat gets up, walks away like nothing happened.

  “Lobo’s sitting there on the cold stone, might as well be in a prison cell even if he’s on the outside, and he starts to cry. First time he can remember, he starts to cry. He can’t even tell you why, can’t even tell you who he is anymore, just a crying man.

  “Suddenly, there’s this hand on his shoulder. I’ll tell you something that’s true, not part of this story, not part of any story. There’s a certain spot, right on the shoulder, where people can connect and pass pure sunlight from one to another. Put your hand right there, like this, and light pours from you into them. It’s true, even if scientists don’t know it yet.

  “So he feels that hand, feels that light, looks up into the bluest eyes he’s ever seen and the princess, his princess now, is telling him, ‘Kindness is the most magic thing,” and they start to live happily ever after, right then, right at that moment. At least, that’s the way it looked at that moment.”