Eight Mystery Writers You Should Be Reaing Nowwww

by Michael Guillebeau

  He was getting hard to understand. He was crying now, snuffling to keep his nose from running. Mom put her head on his shoulder and said, “That’s enough for now. I need some of your time, too.”

  “What about the man in the moon?” I said.

  “In the morning,” Mom said, and they got up and left and it was just my room again. I lay there thinking.

  I don’t remember sleeping, but they were there when I woke up, sitting together on the side of the bed, so early it was still dark. Daddy had on the blue suit, the one I used to call his handsome suit. I could smell the clean promise of a fresh-ironed shirt.

  “Morning, Carrie,” he said.

  “Morning, Daddy,” I snuggled close to him and put my arm on his leg.

  “Sorry to get you up so early, but we’ve got stuff to get done.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Lobo and the Princess are happily-ever-aftering, but you left it with an ominous tone.”

  I could see him smile, even in the dark room. “Ominous tone? Yeah, I guess I did.

  “Well, anyway, Lobo and the princess are sitting there in the castle, you’re right, they’re in an ominous tone, but they’re happy. They are in love, and it turns out that Lobo is a pretty good prince, actually making things better for the ordinary people in the kingdom instead of just the rich guys like most rulers do.

  “Every day, he looks into those amazing blue eyes, blue eyes just like yours, and he looks at the sky for comparison. Every day, he sees those eyes have twice as much warmth as a summer day. He’s a lucky man, better than a lucky man because he knows he helped his own luck, just a little.

  “Good times. Old friends come from the village to see him. He introduces them to the princess, and she’s wonderful, treats them like they were nobles, no, better because she knows they love Lobo and she loves anyone who loves Lobo, because she loves Lobo. And Lobo loves her.

  “And that’s all that ever matters. That’s what you’ve got to take from the story: the love is all that ever matters. Things happen, can’t control that, but the love is all that matters.

  “Well, almost. Life goes on, outside of the heart, and sometimes it’s not good. One day a different villager comes to visit: Larcenious.

  Larcenious says, ‘Hey, Lobo.’

  Lobo says, ‘It’s Prince Lobo to you, now.’

  Larcenious says, ‘Yeah, well, I knew you when. Reminds me, the wizard’s been bugging me, wants to know whatever happened to his magic crown. I gotta tell him, unless you can do me this one little favor.’

  “So Lobo does this one little favor. Then another. Then another. Pretty soon, Larcenious is living in the castle, Princess doesn’t like it much because she can see he doesn’t love Lobo, just likes the food in the castle. The favors turn into what they call illegal acts. Before you know it, Lobo’s got two lives: the good life, in the day, with the princess, and a bad life at night, after the castle’s asleep, when he and Larcenious sneak out and do bad things. Really bad things. Worse than you can imagine. You’re just a little girl, I’m going to leave those parts out, but you know they’re there.

  “And it’s ruining his good life, too. The princess knows something’s wrong, so they fight a lot. He knows she’s right, so he fights back harder, the way people do when they know they’re wrong but can’t face it. But he does face it, eventually. He sees that Larcenious is going to cost him everything that is good. So he tells Larcenious, take a hike, I’m done with you, do your worst.

  “Well, that’s just what Larcenious does, his worst. One day when things are back to normal, Lobo and the princess happy again, having fun ruling the kingdom wisely, the wizard shows up. And he doesn’t just show up, he crashes through the big window in the castle, riding a fire-breathing dragon and everything.

  “He looks at Lobo and says, ‘You stole the most precious thing in the world from me. Now, I’m going to destroy the entire kingdom, and everything in it.’

  “And Lobo stands up and says, ‘I’m finished with lying. I stole your crown. I’m sorry, great wizard, and I know that doesn’t change what I’ve done. But I know this, too: as valuable as that crown was, it was not the most precious thing in the world. Love is. The love I have for the princess, the way her love warms me like her magic blue eyes, even on days when I can’t see her eyes. The love all the citizens in this land feel. It’s greater than any crown, and it will endure, no matter what comes.

  “‘But I took your crown, and now the crown is destroyed and I can never give it back to you, and I know I can never make things right. But please, great wizard, it was my crime, and I, and I alone, should pay.’

  “The wizard’s heart is touched, but only a little.

  “‘I will spare the kingdom,’ he says, ‘but you have taken from me that which I held dearest. It is only just that I take from you that which you hold dearest.

  “‘I am banishing you from the presence of the princess forever. You will live your life a thousand miles away, and know that you will never touch her again.

  “‘But now, since you have been honest, I will grant you one small favor: you may choose where you will live, so long as it is at least a thousand miles away from the princess.’

  “Lobo thought hard of all the wonderful places that people loved to go, but, without the princess, even the most glamorous place seemed miserable. An idea came to him.

  “‘Wise wizard, your punishment is just. I choose to live in the moon, always facing the princess. Every night, I will look down into her eyes and be warmed. Every night, she can look up into the sky and know that she is loved beyond measure. And everyone who looks at the moon can know that love is the only thing that is truly yours, the one thing that can never be taken from you.’”

  Daddy paused, put his hand on mine, and said, “And that, Princess, is why there is a man in the moon.”

  Mom whispered something to him and he nodded. He looked away, out the window, nodded, said, “I’ve got to go now, Carrie. I know it’s been a long time, but could you give me a hug before I go?”

  I jumped up and tried to squeeze him so hard he couldn’t leave.

  “I love you, Princess,” he said.

  “I love you, Daddy,” I said.

  He told me to stay there when he left, but I got up and followed just behind him out onto the porch where the policemen were waiting. They put his hands behind his back and handcuffed him, reading some words that neither they nor he cared about.

  I saw the side of his face, big Daddy smile, happy somehow, as he said to one of the men, “What’re they going to do, execute me twice?” They turned him around all the way and he saw me standing there and I saw all of his faces from over the years: first, he was a stern parent, starting to fuss at me for disobeying him, then his face was angry at nothing and everything for a second, then he was just a man in love with a princess, trying hard not to cry as his fairy tale came true.

  As he turned away, I saw the moon over his face, a half moon with half the face clear, the other half taken away by the night. It was the last time I saw my father, and the first time I saw the man in the moon.

  EXCERPT

  Josh Whoever

  Library Journal Mystery Debut of Month Feb 2013

  “…

  VERDICT Guillebeau brings the emotional turmoil of his damaged protagonist to its peak while giving him good reasons to persevere. While the Russian mob, right-wing modern Confederates, and a paramilitary group might seem like overkill, the plot never wavers off-track, and the collection of oddball minor characters and surprise twists deepen an already strong story. An engrossing debut.”

  (Mike’s Notes: Josh was my first book, and I’m still amazed at how it snuck up on me. First there was song, Steely Dan’s Here at the Western World, about a guy spending all his time hanging in a run-down bar. At that time in my life, it looked like a pretty good way to live, so I couldn’t stop thinking about how you’d actually do it. Thought about it until it became a short story. Months afterwards, I wondered what Josh would d
o next. And next. Every day, the story kept writing itself until I had a book, and then Five Star Mysteries was kind enough to publish it. Thanks for taking the time to meet my friend Josh.)

  Chapter 1

  I only took this job to get fired, but now I stood here raising my hands in the air like any good citizen being robbed.

  Two robbers had popped into the bank from nowhere. From inside my little bank teller window, I had no real view of them walking in the door but now they strutted around in white paper lab suits, looking like big bunny rabbits waving guns at random around the bank lobby.

  The tall one did all the talking. “Open your cash drawers, put your hands in the air and shut up.”

  His eyes darted from teller to teller looking for a challenge. The young girl in front of him just stood there frozen. He waved his gun at the ceiling and let off a burst and the girl screamed and opened her drawer.

  “This. Is. A. Robbery.” He shouted each word loud and important, like he was hyping a band at a rock concert.

  Like we needed a program to tell us what’s going on here. Like I needed a program to tell me that my own future was over if they got away with this robbery.

  The short one reached up with the barrel of his AK-47 and pushed away the video camera over the door so that it saw only the ceiling. They started at the far end and worked their way down the long row of tellers towards me.

  I stood motionless and watched, curious about how they did this. I knew plenty about small-time scams, but I’d never seen a big-time bank robbery like this before.

  The tall guy did all the talking but looked at the silent one for something. There: that was it. Silent shook his head, and Tall skipped a teller. Silent knew something; he skipped the tellers with dye packs.

  I admired them for pulling this off, admired the details: the paper lab suits were a good touch. No one would remember anything about the robbers except the white suits with hoods. Probably buy them cheap at some med supply place; add a white ski mask and you can wear anything you like underneath.

  Except for the shoes. Tall had flashy basketball kicks that demanded respect on the street, what you’d expect from a robber. But Silent had a pair of black Ferragamos, rich businessman shoes that cost three hundred dollars new, except his weren’t new. The kind of guy who would buy these shoes wouldn’t keep his shoes this long; he either had money or worked for guys with money and had to keep up. Either way, it stood out and it offended me. I was a pro in my own way. I respected pros. You’ve got to get the details right.

  The two guys moved the same way: pro, but with a flaw. They looked casual, even random, but I could tell it was rehearsed. No one but me would remember that later, and that was good.

  But the body language had a flaw. Tall moved like a bank robber in a movie, all swagger and attitude, waving the gun around and yelling at anything. Silent faded into the background and that was good, too, but the pose was wrong. He hunched over and shuffled like a kicked dog. This wasn’t a man used to demanding other people’s money. Silent begged people for money every day and hated doing it but had to pay the rent.

  There, in a flash I had it. Silent’s walk and Silent’s shoes belonged to Robert, the assistant manager of the bank. I watched him get pushed around every day by the manager. Now Robert was getting his payback.

  See, that was the tell, the one detail that betrayed all your hard work because it was too much a part of who you were for you to even know it was there. I knew how to stay in character and keep the game going until I got to the payoff. Even now, when I wanted to grab the guys and tell them to start over, to come through the doors this way or that, even now I just stood there impassively with my hands in the air.

  I wanted to tell them: be a pro. Be a pro, or be burned.

  I reached over quick and took the dye pack from Kelly’s open drawer, one of the old style packs with a timer. Kelly smiled weakly back at me, chewed her gum faster and looked away. I pressed the timer button and put it in my own drawer.

  Tall came to me and waved his gun. I smiled and scooped up the cash and dye pack and shoveled them on top of the money in the bag. I felt like saying, “sorry,” to the big bunny rabbit, but the best I could do was apologize in my head.

  Sorry, I thought, but I can’t let San Francisco’s finest look at the personnel records and ask me questions, the kind of questions these giant companies should ask before they hire someone but never do. Big dogs can’t be bothered checking on the little guys who really make up their companies.

  And that’s why I hated these companies, hated so much of the world: be a pro, treat people and your job with respect, or get out.

  Me? I got out.

  Chapter 2

  I stood in the bank and wondered what my next scam would be, hoping it would be easy again like the last one. Remembered sitting in the conference room of the big environmental company: just me, the company lawyer and the boss, all in jeans and shirts from all-natural materials to show how much they respected the earth. But they didn’t respect the earth, didn’t respect anything else either, including me, so there we were.

  “So, do you prefer to be called Mr. Smooth Water, or Joshua?” said the lawyer, smiling, trying to be my friend so it would cost the company less.

  “It’s pronounced ‘Ya-wa’.” I folded my arms across my chest, trying hard to swell up with pride. “Joshua is just the white spelling. And Smooth Water is my formal Chippewa name from my mother’s tribe. It should not be used by whites.”

  There. Let the lawyer know there’s no friend of his here, and this would cost the company more. I could see him wondering, maybe this guy’s native American, maybe not. I’ve got the kind of light-dark look that could be Hispanic, Middle Eastern, white, black, whatever I need. In any case, the lawyer couldn’t challenge me on it. I also knew that this company had too much to hide for them to risk a big fight out in public.

  “Thank you, Joshua,” the lawyer said, pronouncing it “Ya-wa” like I asked, and smiling while he did it. I gave him no smile back, just sat there with my arms crossed like the picture of Sitting Bull, offended but impassive. “It’s my understanding that Mr. Johnson here, acting in his position as your supervisor, has terminated you from your position here at California Green Industries. He believes he had cause, you believe he did not. Is that a fair statement of the situation?”

  I glared at the lawyer and played out the part of a proud, offended man forced to describe a painful insult.

  “I came to this company because it said it would help protect the land of my fathers, clean up the streams and take the white man’s poisons out of the air. In the week I have been here, I have been insulted and shamed, despite doing my best.”

  “The jerk hasn’t done a lick of work since the day he came in,” said Johnson. He was having trouble sitting still. “He just sits on that cheap blanket drinking company coffee, explaining that each day is a sacred day of some kind or the other that won’t let him do this job or that.”

  The lawyer held up his hand to Johnson, but they had given me an opening.

  “Coffee is a sacred drink to my people. It is the water of life for me, the source of all movement. We have proudly shared it with the white man.”

  “I thought you people preferred something stronger,” said Johnson, and the lawyer shook his head furiously but too late. The price had gone up.

  “And now this racism,” I said, “the true source of our problem here.”

  Johnson stood up. “The problem is you won’t work. The problem is I’ve got a boatload of jobs that need to get done, and you’re just dragging us down . . .” The lawyer held up his hand and interrupted.

  “None of which you’ve documented, Mr. Johnson.” He turned to me, his buddy, and smiled again. Amazing the problems that can be solved if we all just smile. Smile, and offer money. “Joshua, I think we all have the same interests here. We all want to see that the values shared by this company and your forefathers are not damaged by a pointless, bitter, public struggl
e. Clearly, we no longer have a position available for you at this company, but we want to treat you fairly. Would $2000 help you find a position more suited to your talents?”

  We settled on $5000. Johnson was taken out of the room still screaming. Sometimes I got more, sometimes less, for a week or so’s half-assed work at a company that would rather pay me off than fight publicly.

  The scam worked best at companies that had something to hide, like this one that was taking money to clean up the environment but doing little more than generating publicity for itself. Mostly, I find companies already ripping off the public before I rip them off. Of course, sometimes just the fact that a company has money goes a long way to prove to me that the company is corrupt and needs to return some money to the community. And me.

  So I strutted out the door with a check in hand, threw the sacred blanket in the trash by the big Fred Meyer store, dealt with the check, ran a few errands, and headed back to the Western World bar.

  Mayor was behind the bar by himself. Three in the afternoon was too early to have a hired bartender, not to mention that Mayor was way too cheap to pay somebody to just sit behind his own bar and watch sports reruns, which is all Mayor ever does anyway. He looked up at me like I was just another channel on the old RCA.

  “Thought I might not see you this time,” he said. “Make a score, keep going someplace better. Become a citizen.”

  I looked at him and tried to smile. I hated seeing the disappointment rise in Mayor’s eyes, knowing that I put it there. Mayor and the skinny girl who danced here were my only real links to the world. And, truth be told, this was the only world I could stand anymore.

  “Hey, you know you’d miss me.” But Mayor just stared, not willing to keep it light and make it easier on me.

  “I’ve got twenty-five hundred.” I pulled out a stack of bills without explaining the errands that had eaten up the other half. “How long will that carry me?”