Title: Blind witness

By Author: Adele Polomski 

Appearing in issue #35, September 2, 2013

Tag line:  Too bad no one had been around to see Annett Jordan take her daily swim …

Police characters:  Det. Laura Price

The gist: Annette’s lifeless body was found in the pool by one of her step-sons, Ben.  Ben’s clothes were wet as he had jumped in the pool when he saw his step-mom floating face down, but she was already dead.  Annette was a good swimmer and swam daily.  Det. Price noted bruise marks on the body indicating to her that the victim had been held under until she drowned. The police officer at the scene informed Det. Price that there were four persons waiting to be questioned; one in the cruiser and three waiting out back. The lady in the cruiser was blind and had glasses and a white cane.  She was a neighbor of the victim’s.  She claimed she was walking by the victim’s house and was nearly run over by someone leaving the house in a hurry.  She said she sensed that the driver had stopped to look at her, and then sped off.  She returned later when she heard the sirens.  The blind lady’s sister, who looked like a younger version of her, arrived at that moment.  The three of them walked to the blind lady’s house and out of the heat because it was ‘murderously hot’ outside. 

Det. Price then went around back at the victim’s house to talk to the three men, the two step-sons and the victim’s lawyer.  Ben, one of the step-sons, told the police that Annette had been expecting them and had wanted to talk to them about something.  Ben, who had arrived first and had jumped into the pool, suggested it had been a heart attack.  Ben called 911 and then called his brother, who then came to the scene.  The brother called the lawyer, who then came to the scene. The four of them went inside the house as one of the men claimed they might ‘die of heatstroke’. During the conversation it was learned that the attorney had been handling the family’s company and the company was losing money due to poor management by Annette and her step-sons.  The victim was about to announce to her step-sons today that she was planning to sell the business, a business that they both worked at and enjoyed a healthy salary from.  The detective told the three men that she believed Annette had been murdered and that there was a witness. She then led them to the front patio where a woman in dark glasses sat.  The attorney shook his head and said, “I’m afraid the testimony of a blind woman won’t hold up in court.” She got up and said, “I’m not blind, I can see perfectly.”  The lawyer was arrested for the murder of Annette.  

Crime scene:  Annette’s home, her pool. 

Clues:  The witness was blind.  The lawyer handled the finances of the company. 

Suspects:  One of the three men. 

Red herrings:  Both step-sons didn’t want Annette to sell the business and had talked her out of it before.  Both men would lose their easy income. 

Solution:  The detective had had the blind woman’s sister sit on the front patio and put on her sister’s glasses.  When the lawyer commented about a blind woman’s testimony, Det. Price knew he had been the one who had almost hit the blind woman in the driveway before he sped off.  The lawyer had been stealing money from the company for years and feared an audit before the sale would reveal his crime. 

My two cents:  There was no time frame on this story.  We don’t know how long Annette had been floating dead in the pool.  When I first read it I wondered how the lawyer drowned the woman, sped off, yet was still there when the police arrived, all dry and waiting with the two sons.  I guess we have to assume there was time for him to run off to ‘somewhere’ and change his wet clothes, dry himself off, maybe even wipe out his wet car seat, and get back when the step-sons called him.  That would work if she was floating dead for hours.  It might have been a good detail to know. At the very least it would tie up that loose end in the reader’s mind. 

Also I’m not sure why the sister had to play the blind woman on the porch.  We don’t need the sister.  Why couldn’t the blind woman play the part of the blind woman?  And I’m not sure why she had to say she wasn’t really blind.  What was the point?  If they were trying to gauge his reaction to that revelation, then maybe it would work.  But it didn’t seem to have a real part in this story.  He gave himself away with his statement. 

The blind woman said she could sense the car driver stop and look at her.  Maybe blind people can do that.  I don’t know, but it seemed hokey. 

 The silly references to ‘dying from the heat’ were a little distracting but all in all it was a good story. 

Some good news for me today
     about my romantic/suspense novel PLAYING DEAD. 


Rebecca Forster is a USA Today best selling author with more than 25 books under her belt. She teaches at UCLA Writers Program and works with The Young Writers Conference, a program that helps motivate middle school children to explore the power of words. She is particularly drawn to kids and writing because both of her sons have always had a passion for it. Eric is a playwright and Alex is in film. She is married to a Superior Court judge.

She LOVED my book Playing Dead.  woo-hoo.

 http://nanahood.com/an-interview-with-rebecca-forster

Title: Dismissed for cause

By Author:   Emma Courtice

Appearing in issue #34, August 26, 2013

Tag line:  Mr. Ferguson had given his employees the boot.  Now, it was their turn…

Police characters:  Sgt. Norman Bain

The gist: Wallace Ferguson lay dead in his bed upstairs.  No murder weapon was found.  The story didn’t give a cause of death, but said a fireplace poker was missing from the set.  The handyman and the maid had both been given a month’s notice last night.  The handyman was questioned but he was pretty hung over and didn’t remember much. After getting the bad news he had begun to drink heavily.  He didn’t even remember finishing the bottle.  There was a trail of muddy footprints from the back door that were unmistakably made by the handyman’s work books.  The footprints were uneven as though the walker was unsteady, and they led first to the fireplace, then upstairs to the old man’s room.  Then more footprints were seen very clearly by the old man’s bed before they led back down and outside towards the handyman’s quarters over the garage.  The handyman had been found asleep in his own bed, clothes still on, but muddy boots on the floor.  Crime Scene found a bloody fireplace poker in the bushes by the garage.  No fingerprints were found on it.   Sgt. Bain pointed the finger at the maid. 

Crime scene:  Old man Ferguson’s bedroom.

Clues:  Muddy footprints everywhere and no fingerprints on the poker. 

Suspects:  Handyman and the maid.

Red herrings:   None. 

Solution:  Sgt. Bain didn’t figure the handyman was sober enough to have the presence of mind to wipe his prints off the poker before he threw it into the bushes. Also the footprints were excessive and very clear, as though someone had re-muddied the boots and made trails.  The maid killed Ferguson and tried to pin it on the handyman as he was getting drunk and wouldn’t remember.  She put on his boots and made the prints.  She had to wipe off her fingerprints from the murder weapon. 

My two cents:  She almost got away with it.  If she had only thought to go up to the sleeping handyman and press his fingers on the poker before she discarded it in the bushes by his quarters, she may never have gotten caught.   Of course she overdid the muddy prints in an attempt to frame the handyman, and that would not have gone unnoticed by the police, but had his fingerprints been on the murder weapon, that mud detail would just have been something the defense attorney would use to plant a question in the minds of the jurors. 

This story started out by telling the reader how cheap Ferguson was.  He didn’t have a dish washer.  The clothes were hanging on the line.  I’m thinking this was done to tell the reader why he was firing his help; otherwise that information isn’t germane to the story.  All in all, this tale worked.  There were no procedural errors.  There were no mistakes in the construction of the story.  It moved along well and the clues were not so obvious that the reader wouldn’t bother to read the solution. 

Just as an aside, there was not one exclamation point in this story.  Not even in the tag line.  Do you think WW is paying attention to this blog?  lol

Title: Sister dearest

By Author: Marianna Heulser

Appearing in issue #33, August 19, 2013

Tag line:  Lily and Violet were always so close.  But now Violet was alive…and Lily was not!

Police characters:  Detectives Kevin McCarthy and Lola Wells

The gist: Two well-off sisters live together in a mansion on Park Avenue.  The police were called to the home by the maid, who had worked for the two women for over 20 years.  She had been told to call the funeral home by sister Violet, as sister Lily was found dead in her bed from an apparent suicide, but the maid summoned the police.  Violet is a doctor.  She tended to Lily who was a diabetic, giving Lily daily doses of insulin.  The story goes that Lily was so depressed about her poor health that she took an overdose of pain medicine the dentist had prescribed for an abscess.  The maid claimed she never heard Lily complain and didn’t feel she was depressed. A check of the scene of the death revealed Lily still lying in her canopy bed, and a bedside table containing a Tiffany lamp, a crystal pitcher filled with water, an old fashioned alarm clock, a romance novel and an empty orange plastic pill bottle.  When police spoke to Violet, she demanded they address her as Doctor as she is not yet retired.  She claims she had been so concentrating on treating her sister’s diabetes that she missed the signs of depression. Violet found the body and told the maid to call the funeral home.  When questioned why she didn’t call the police, Doctor Violet retorted that it was perfectly clear what happened and that she could sign the death certificate.  The sisters’ nephew showed up claiming that the two ladies did not get along well.  Violet wanted to sell the house and all the belongings and travel, but Lily would not sell. Detective Wells studied her notepad and decided to take another look at the bedroom.  She said she realized they had overlooked something important.

Crime scene:   Lily’s bedroom.

Clues:  The clue in the story is the pitcher of water and the items (or lack of them) on the bedside table.   See more on that below. 

Suspects:  Violet. 

Red herrings:  None.

Solution:  Detective Wells recalled seeing a pitcher full of water but no water glass.  If Lily had swallowed the pills herself there would be a glass on the table and the pitcher would not be filled to the brim.  Instead of injecting her sister with insulin, Violet administered an overdose of the painkiller.  

My two cents:  Okay, let’s analyze this a bit. 

 Violet is a doctor.  She demands the police address her as doctor as she has not yet retired.  This is puzzling to me.  A doctor is addressed as such until the day he/she dies…and even then it might still be on the tombstone.  What is she talking about?  

And as a doctor, she knows very well that best practices frown on doctors signing death certificates of close relatives.  Just like they don’t perform surgery on relatives unless it was an emergency situation.  But she was ready to just sign on the dotted line and be done with it which would raise eyebrows and cause people to ask questions.   Not too smart for a killer who doesn’t want to go to prison.

Next thing, a doctor, of all people, knows that a death that is not a natural death MUST be reported.  She can’t be that stupid.  Even if the maid did call the funeral home, THEY would have reported the death.  You just can’t go shipping bodies off to be buried.

The story said the crystal pitcher was filled with water.  It didn’t say it was filled to the brim.  To make the solution read: and the pitcher would not be filled to the brim is just unfair. The reader counts on the author being straight with the facts.

 

If Lily wanted to take those pills herself, she could have very well gone to the bathroom, downed the pills in there, come out and made herself comfortable in her bed to await her final sleep.  In fact as there was no glass on the nightstand she would have had to go in the bathroom to take the pills.  So to say that because there is no glass on the table it must be murder is pretty thin. 

Dr. Violet gave herself away by foolishly trying to get rid of the body.  That’s the real clue.

Words of advice from Leslie Budewitz, a practicing lawyer and 2011 Agatha Award winner

Is it ever okay to make a (legal/criminal) mistake on purpose to fool the reader?  Not in my book.  Exaggerate a bit for drama, sure, but deliberately building a story on a faulty premise breaks faith with the reader.  As prosecutor turned novelist Marcia Clark said in a panel discussion on forensics in fiction, "The more we tell the truth, the more dramatic it is."  We don't need to lie about the facts to tell a good story -- we need to find the story to tell.  Writers who take time to check legal terms and principles will discover terrific opportunities to twist, deepen, complicate and simplify their stories.  Getting the details right can make all the difference.

Title: All that glitters

By Author:  Kendra Yoder

Appearing in issue #32, August 12, 2013

Tag line:  The detectives expected a quick arrest in the jewelry story burglary – thanks to a reliable witness!  (Do you think that’s a typo?  Should that be jewelry store?)

Police characters:  Deputy Steve Fisher and Officer Robin Meyer

The gist: The cops are called to the scene of a burglary of an upscale jewelry store.  The glass display cases had been smashed, there was glass all over the floor, and a sledgehammer was propped against the wall.  The security camera had been smashed to bits.  The manager said she came in to the store early to set up for a sale and found the mess.  She heard the screeching of tires out back in the alleyway and ran to look and saw Dirk’s car tearing away from the scene.  She had fired Dirk a few weeks earlier.  She said he knew when the store was open and also where the alarm was located and how to disarm it.   The cops went to Dirk’s house and found him standing by his car, trunk open, holding a suitcase.  Officer Meyer noticed he had a rental car.  Dirk appeared nervous.  He claimed he had just gotten back from visiting a friend and had been there for two days.  He said his friend would verify this information.  The cops asked him about his past record.  Dirk said it was a B&E to a house and he had been 18.  The deputy wanted to get a warrant to search the house, but Officer Meyer had a hunch he didn’t do it. 

Crime scene:  Up-scale jewelry store. 

Clues:  The rental car. 

Suspects:  Dirk and the store manager.

Red herrings:  None. 

Solution:  Officer Robin Meyer needed to confirm when Dirk rented the car.  She suspected that when the store manager had learned of Dirk’s criminal record she realized she could rob the store and pin the crime on him.  Officer Meyer suspected the manager because she had said she saw Dirk’s car leaving the scene but Dirk had a rental. 

My two cents:  There are a few minor details I want to talk about.  Some have to do with this story and some have to do with writing these stories.   First, the tag line appears to have a typo in it.  That’s not the author’s fault.  Maybe it just reads funny?  

Second thing, this author has a deputy and an officer working together.  Deputies work for the county.  Officers work for the city.  They don’t normally ride around together and take calls from dispatch.   So that was odd.  I have to conclude that the author doesn’t know the difference between the two. 

Next thing, there was some mention in the beginning of the story about Deputy Fisher going to Las Vegas.  The author used that angle to have a theme.  She ended with, “I have a feeling Vegas would have your money on this bet. “   I don’t have any problem with this tactic, but here’s where I said, huh?   Officer Robin asked the deputy if he was going to Vegas to gamble, and he said no, that he was going for the sun.  Then he blushed.  Doesn’t seem the type to be out rousting bad guys, does it?  I guess it takes all kinds but some make better story characters than others.  What a wimp. Tough guys don’t blush.  And most men would say they’re going to Vegas to have some fun; gamble, party with the guys, drink, and chase women.   Unless he was gay.  Then he could say he’s going for the shows and shopping.  Wouldn’t WW have a fit? Maybe the author had more interesting things for this guy to do in Vegas, but WW threw in the sun angle to be squeaky clean.  So that’s the lesson here.  No adult stuff allowed…except for murder and mayhem of course.   :)

Next, the jewelry store manager fired the guy because she found out he had a criminal record, but she didn’t change the alarm code?   Duh.

Upscale jewelry stores check out potential employee’s criminal records BEFORE they hire them and tell them the security alarm codes.  Duh again. 

You don’t really need a big ole sledge hammer to break a couple of glass cases.  That might have been overkill on the manager’s part.  

When the cops were talking to Dirk, they asked him to tell them about his past burglary conviction, but in actuality they would have looked that up on their MDT (mobile data terminal)  in their cruiser before they even got there and they would have already known all that.    This part was not necessary for the story and a waste of words.  Just knowing he had a past burglary record was sufficient.  The reader doesn’t need to hear the details.   Don’t use up your 700 words needlessly. 

I know this is just a little you-solve-it story and as story tellers we don’t always follow real procedures,  but  just FYI:  If  there was a possibility they were going to arrest this guy, the police wouldn’t be asking him any questions without Miranda warnings being read first.  Anything this guy says in response to police questions before Miranda would be suppressed, in other words not allowed in court.  He could confess to the crime and the jury would never hear it.  Cops don’t chit-chat with suspects for that very reason.  Citizens don’t have to speak with the police.  If you’re ever in that position, remain silent.  It is your right.