One more NaNo under the bridge

This year's National Novel Writing Month effort seemed much harder than in past years. For most of the month, I was far more behind on word count that I've ever been before. It was only through a heroic effort in the last week that I got to the finish -- I hit the magic 50K mark on the 28th, took a rest on the 29th, and then cranked out another 2278 words on the 30th.

Here, on record for posterity, are the last 1000 or so words I officially registered this year.

Hannah arrived at the park about ten minutes early. The park had only a few cars in the parking lot, and only a few visitors strolling on the beach, basking on beach towels, surfing, or otherwise enjoying the out of doors, in spite of it being a beautiful (at least compared to the past few days) sunny day in late spring. She parked at the end of the parking lot closest to the fire pit, shut down the car engine, and waited. She hoped Walton would be in his personal car, and not one of the white SUVs the newspaper owned – even though they were unmarked, everyone on the police department knew what the Capitan’s reporters drove. Not that there would likely be any police officers around specifically looking for someone having a clandestine meeting with a reporter. But Hannah wanted to keep things as secret as possible.

A car pulled up next to Hannah’s, an older sports car, with slightly fading purple paint, and Hannah recognized the driver as the reporter she had followed out of the newsroom on the way to the incident at Callahan’s. He got out of his car, and she got out of hers. She noticed that the badging on his car had been slightly altered – it was no longer labeled “Probe” but rather “Prose.” Hannah pointed to the car. “‘Purple Prose,’” she commented. “Seems a more appropriate car for a sports reporter than a news jockey.”

“I used to be a sports reporter,” Walton said, “back in my home town where the newspaper came out twice a week. I got put on the city desk when I moved up to the big city with the daily newspaper. Not as much fun, but hey, it pays the bills.”

“So did your editor clear me as a confidential source?” Hannah asked.

“Yes, she did,” Walton said. “She also tentatively gave me permission to use that other person – the one you were talking to while you were on the phone with me – if he has a good reason to keep secret that he talked with me.”

“That won’t be necessary,” Hannah said. “I know everything he does, maybe even a bit more.”

“Let’s take a walk along the beach path,” Walton said. “We shouldn’t let this good weather go to waste.”

“Amen to that,” Hannah said. The two set out strolling along the concrete pathway, almost undisturbed. Again, Hannah was surprised at how few bicyclists and skateboarders had to be dodged. It was as if, even in daylight, this stretch of beach was haunted and nobody wanted to go there.

“So you have information about another crime that was committed last night?” Walton asked, pulling a small voice recorder out of an inner pocket of his windbreaker.

“Well, it’s not exactly a crime,” Hannah said, “at least not yet. It’s not even anything officially reportable yet. A man’s gone missing, and the man who has been his father figure thinks foul play is involved. Based on what I know, I have to agree with him. And the time frame puts the disappearance in the same window as the other incidents that are being pinned on Harry O’Malley.”

“Interesting,” Walton said. “Tell me more.” He leaned in closer with the voice recorder, shielding it from the view of anybody who might look closely at him and Hannah. Anybody who didn’t look closely would simply assume they were two people who were very fond of each other, taking a sunny Saturday walk together, Hannah reflected. At least Walton was fairly tall, so Hannah was only slightly taller than he was – there wouldn’t be people taking note of any great disparity to remember them by later.

Hannah went on to tell Walton about Igor Krumski and his disappearance from the lab the night before, and of Professor Egglehoffer’s insistence that foul play had been involved. She described how Igor had pulled the prank of getting her and Harry thoroughly lost in the hallways of the photography building on Thursday, and the incident she had witnessed between Igor and Katrina M’Bomo Friday afternoon. She also mentioned the pages torn out of her notebook and the key that had been moved on her key ring.

“You know, some of that evidence really does point to Harry O’Malley,” Walton said.

“But there’s other evidence that points away from him,” Hannah said. “His assistant, the guy who took him home from Callahan’s, left him passed out in the bed at home. When I got home, he was still in that bed, still passed out. It stretches credibility that he would come to, drive to the university, do something to Igor, drive to the bridal shop, set fire to the place, crash the truck into the fire hydrant, flee the scene – so nimbly that he could get away from the witness who tried to chase him – get home, and once again be passed out in the bed when I got there.”

“How do you know he wasn’t faking being passed out?” Walton asked.

“He was practically drowning in his own vomit,” Hannah said. “He partially regained consciousness while I was cleaning him up – he was literally stinking drunk – and began to sing Irish ballads off-key. That’s standard with Harry when he gets seriously drunk.” She decided Walton didn’t need to know about the other activity that accompanied the off-key singing.

They arrived at a park bench alongside the path, facing the ocean. Walton gestured to Hannah to sit down, and they sat side by side, watching the surf that was nearly devoid of surfers.

“So does he get drunk often?” Walton asked.

“Almost never,” Hannah said. “Yesterday … well, let’s say that he had a serious shock to trigger the binge – something that doesn’t really need to get published in the paper.”

“I heard what he was shouting at you at Callahan’s,” Walton said. “I take it at least some of that was true.”

“It was,” Hannah said. “But we really don’t need to go into details. Harry and I are trying to work it out.”

“Now that he needs you to help defend him on criminal charges,” Walton said. “Are you really that sure that he’s innocent, and that you’re willing to go back to him?”

“I know that he’s innocent,” Hannah said. “And I know that I love him. And I know that he loves me. And now, I think I’ve told you enough. What can you give me about the witness to the truck crash – the one who tried to chase the driver but couldn’t catch him or her?”

“I have a name,” Walton said. “I have an address and phone number. And I have an interview that I did with him earlier today.”

“Great!” Hannah said. “What did the witness say?”

“It’s all on here,” Walton said, tapping the voice recorder. “And I have a transcript in my car for you. But there’s one hitch.”

“What’s that?” Hannah asked.

Don't bait your English teacher; you may regret it

My National Novel Writing Month adventures continue. I've fallen behind in my word count, so I'm trying to catch up. In this excerpt, Hannah has given her class an exercise similar to the one that I give in this post, in creating descriptive writing that aims to show, rather than tell, a highly emotional moment in the students' past. In case you're wondering, yes, this sort of thing has actually happened to me, more than once. And no, I didn't respond quite as, um, graphically as Hannah does -- much as I would have liked to -- or I probably wouldn't still have my job. But I did respond in a toned-down version of Hannah's response. Since this is an all-ages blog, I'm also redacting what the student actually wrote.

When she got to the end of the descriptive writing exercise, she had one student volunteer to read his piece, a student who had been something of a class clown while completing almost no homework and turning in essays that were so under-developed that they were really just outlines. As he stood to read, he and the other members of his group started to snicker. He held up his paper, on which Hannah could see he had scrawled only a couple of lines, and began to read: “I went in the room with the girl and she took her clothes off and laid down on the bed. I took my clothes off and laid on top of her, and then I ----ed her and she said she liked it and I did it again and she said I was the best that she ever had and it was my first time.”

By the time he got to the end of his reading, his group-mates were having a hard time containing themselves, but the student himself was looking less and less sure of himself, his voice becoming weaker and his face turning red. Hannah guessed he was now beginning to regret that his buddies had talked him into this. Still, she knew the original plan the the four of them had hatched was probably intended to shock her or otherwise disrupt her composure. She decided to take the offering with a straight face. “Surely you can do better than that,” she said. “We want description, and you had only two adjectives and only two adverbs in that entire piece – and two of those were in what the girl said to you. Since it was your first time, surely your memory of it was more vivid than that.

“What did the girl look like? Short? Tall? Young? Old? What color was her hair, blonde, brunette, red? Was it natural, or did she have roots of another color? Was she fat or skinny? What did her body look like after she took off her clothes – and what sort of clothes were they in the first place? How did you meet her, at a party or on the street or in a brothel? What did you say to each other before you went to the room? What kind of room was it – a motel room, the girl’s bedroom in her parents’ house, some other sort of room? What condition was the room in – was it clean, dirty, with new furnishings or beat-up stuff? What did the air smell like, musty, smoky, flowery air freshener? Was the air in the room cold or hot or just right? Was the lighting dim or bright?

“When you got into the bed with her, what did she smell like – was it some sort of perfume or just sweat or something else? What did the bed sheets smell like – were they clean, or did they smell sour from being used a whole lot since they were last washed? Were they smooth or rough? Did the bed springs creak when you moved? Did the girl make any sounds? When she told you that she liked it and that you were the best that she had ever had, what were her exact words? How did she say them? Did she have any sort of accent?”

Hannah knew that this line of questioning was perhaps a bit cruel. But what she wanted to get across was that vivid descriptions were essential to effective writing, no matter what the subject matter. She knew the old saying about people with inadequate vocabularies being the ones who resorted to obscenities, and perhaps that was the case with this student. She was hoping that thinking a little more deeply would lead the student to write a little more deeply. This was a student who turned in essays that were three-quarters of a page long, triple spaced, and she was trying to get him to stretch a bit. If he wanted to write porn, more power to him, if doing so helped him to provide descriptive words and phrases.

The student was now seriously red-faced, as were his group-mates. The rest of the class had mixed reactions. Some had gone red, some had gone pale, and a few had started laughing, especially a couple of the young women in the class who had previously found this student’s behavior annoying or maybe even offensive. They clearly enjoyed seeing him get some comeuppance.

“Um, Ms. Montgomery,” the student said in a somewhat subdued voice, “I’ll have to get back to you on those answers.”

We have a winner!

or, at least, we have visitor #100K ...

The lucky person who happened to be the 100,000th person to cross the threshold of this blog was a seeker of knowledge. He or she is a Road Runner subscriber from Cincinnati, using Windows NT/Vista and the most recent version of the world's worst browser, late Monday evening, on a search for "find out what part of speech rescue is."

For quite some time, I've wanted to visit Cincinnati. A very good friend of mine from high school now lives there (actually, just across the river in Kentucky), and I've been told that Cincinnati chili (pictured above) is a dish not to be missed.

I even know where I want to go to eat in Cincinnati. The very first year I participated in National Novel Writing Month, my attempt at a novel (it reached more than 50,000 words, but it never reached a conclusion) was not one of the mystery novels I have been successful with since then. It was an ensemble-cast action-adventure thriller, and the adventure began in Cincinnati. Since I've never been there, I researched the place and found out a lot of wonderful things about it. The railroad station is an Art Deco masterpiece that has been preserved as a science and technology museum, while still serving as an active passenger depot. The downtown area has been revitalized and is a hopping place day or night. And there are places to eat.

I looked at restaurant reviews. I had two scenes involving my narrator eating out. In one scene, he had a casual lunch downtown, and I found just the right place for him to chow down on the most authentic Cincy chili available (served over noodles, with cheese and onions on top). It was a bonus that John Madden endorsed the place on Monday Night Football the following night. For the other scene, my character needed a really classy place to eat, and I found an Italian place with great atmosphere and, according to the reviews I read, a chef who believes, as I do, that there is no such thing as too much garlic.

So, while I did have a couple of good suggestions from readers for what the prize should be, I have decided that Pat and I will travel to the winner's location and treat him or her to his or her favorite meal. Cincinnati was already tentatively on the itinerary for next summer anyway, since I want to visit my old friend. Assuming the winner comes back to claim the prize, I hope he or she likes either Cincinnati chili or Italian food -- although I wouldn't mind trying anything else the winner likes.

To be fair to both of the entrants in the contest, I will extend the same prize: Pat and I, when next in your neighborhood (or neighbourhood), will treat you to a dinner of your favorite local food.

Oh, and as for the answer to the question for which the winner came seeking an answer: rescue can be a noun, a verb, or an adjective.

Noun: The firefighters attempted a daring rescue.

Verb: They had only a few minutes to rescue the cat from the tree.

Adjective: The cat's owners thanked the rescue personnel warmly afterward.

Used-book bookmark serendipity

Strange artifacts from other people’s lives

Pat and I seldom buy new books anymore. Partly it’s because we’re in a state of financial austerity, but even if we had plenty of money, we have found that used-book stores and thrift shops offer far better deals on reading material.

One side effect of buying used books is that sometimes there’s something extra in the book. Someone will read a book, or part of a book, and will use something as a bookmark that is subsequently forgotten, and so when the book goes to the charity donation bin or used-book store, the bookmark is left buried among the pages.

Sometimes the bookmark isn’t all that exciting. I will often find airline boarding passes as bookmarks in mass-market paperbacks, for example. The scenario behind that sort of bookmark is fairly obvious – so-and-so bought a copy of The Da Vinci Code to read on her flight from Albuquerque to Newark, she used the boarding pass as a bookmark, she read the book, and then when she was done (or gave up on it partway through), she decided she didn’t need to keep it.

Other bookmarks can be more interesting. A couple of years ago, one of my fellow participants in National Novel Writing Month was the proprietor of a used-book store. She had all sorts of tales to tell of what she had found within the pages of books that have come into her establishment. Her NaNo novel that year was based on one such intriguing item.

One interesting bookmark that I found was in a softcover copy of Annie Proulx’s The Shipping News, which I picked up at the Pagosa Springs Humane Society thrift shop. This was a newspaper clipping from a newspaper in the South Pacific island of Vanuatu, giving details about the death of a young man on one of the lesser islands in the island group. The headline was “Erromango Boy’s, a Mystery.” The article – actually more of a news brief – detailed how the body of an island native (who was called a “boy” even though he was 27 years old) had been found alongside a road, a victim of a hit-and-run car crash. The brief quoted the island constable as saying the victim was “more than dead.” In the margin of the clipping, someone had written “I thought dead was all you could be.”

Now, there are many questions that could arise about this, such as, how does a newspaper clipping from a Vanuatu newspaper end up in a book for sale in the Pagosa Springs Humane Society Thrift Shop? Who clipped the article? How did she come to be in Vanuatu? How can I meet this person, who is obviously interested in language and usage, and who also seems to have the ability to travel to obscure places around the globe?

My most recent intriguing bookmark also came in a book from the Pagosa Springs Humane Society. A very long time ago, I bought an omnibus edition of three of Cleveland Amory’s books: The Cat Who Came for Christmas, The Cat and the Curmudgeon, and The Best Cat Ever. For several years, that book has sat on my shelf, waiting for me to have time to read it. A week ago, finally, I did.

Tucked into the book, marking T.S. Eliot’s poem “The Naming of Cats,” was a bookmark consisting of a strip of postage stamps, laminated together. Ordinarily, that wouldn’t be all that big of a deal. But these stamps were from the old Soviet Union, commemorating the 1980 Olympics, which the United States had boycotted, and which many other nations either boycotted or allowed athletes to decide whether to boycott, to protest the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

The images on the stamps are classic Soviet art – chiseled, idealized athletes, two female, two male, participating in track-and-field events: sprint, pole vault, high jump, hurdles. Even if these stamps were created in the 1980s, there is a serious 1930s feel to the images.

Since these stamps were about an event that Americans were supposed to pretend didn’t even exist, it’s a mystery how they ended up in a book of cat tales in a thrift shop in southwestern Colorado.

Made it!

Of course, that's somewhat relative, since the novel isn't exactly finished ...

All right, I've passed the 50,000-word mark on this year's NaNo novel. Problem is, I'm probably only about half finished. I didn't manage to kill the mayor off until more than 38,000 words had passed, and action is still happening rapidly. On the personal front, Hannah has just discovered that she's pregnant; on the public front, the guy in charge of the spelling bee insists that the show must go on, in spite of the mayor being squashed by an anvil on the opening night of the spelling bee. As this scene opens, Harry and Flash have just learned of the pregnancy.

“Let’s go to lunch to celebrate,” Harry said. “This is just so … so … wonderful! Flash, you come too. You’ve been such a good friend, you deserve to be part of the celebration, too.” If only he knew, Hannah thought. Yes, the chance was extremely remote, but if the baby Harry wanted to celebrate was Flash’s and not his, Flash was definitely an interested party.

“I really can’t,” Flash said. “This is your moment for the two of you. I’d just be an extra presence in the room, a fifth wheel.”

They were interrupted by Hannah’s phone ringing. She answered, “Hello?”

The booming voice on the other end was unmistakable. “Hello, Hannah, this is Grym!” Apparently he had managed to recover from the shock of the night before. She was glad of that, but she was wondering why he was calling now.

“Yes, Grym, what’s up?” she asked.

“The remaining events for the spelling bee have been relocated!” he said. “The spelling events will now be held in the Siete Mares High School auditorium! Some of the evening events were already going to be elsewhere, but those that were to be at the college are being relocated to the Siete Mares High School gymnasium!”

“I thought after what happened last night, the spelling bee would be canceled,” Hannah said. “It was rather traumatic for all involved.”

“Oh, no!” Grym said. “As they say, ‘The show must go on’! We can’t let a little incident like that derail the whole spelling bee! These kids are counting on their chance to earn a place in the state bee!”

Hannah wouldn’t exactly have characterized an especially gruesome murder as “a little incident,” but with Grym’s focus being so narrow, apparently everything else was far less important than the spelling bee. “Don’t you think there ought to be at least a couple of days off?” she asked. “To carry on as usual after a man has died, that’s a bit unfeeling.”

“Nonsense!” Grym said. “If anything, it honors his memory to stick with a cause that was dear to him! You heard his speech, up until it got cut off! You know how he valued the spelling bee!”

“But what about the kids?” Hannah asked. “What happened must have been very traumatic for some of them. It would be good to give them some time to cope with the trauma.”

“Ridiculous!” Grym said. “These are spelling bee champions! They have drive! They are far more mature than other kids their age! And they don’t want the Mid Coast Regional Spelling Bee to be postponed, because then they wouldn’t be able to go to the state bee! The schedule’s really quite tight!”

“You can’t postpone things even just a couple of days, then?” Hannah asked. “You could postpone today’s and tomorrow’s events, and have two spelling sessions each Thursday and Friday – morning and evening.”

“That would not work!” Grym said. “We don’t want the contestants to get overly tired! They can deal with only one spelling session per day, or else they start making stupid mistakes because of mental fatigue! Besides, the rule book permits double sessions only under very extreme circumstances!”

Hannah rather suspected that any sane person would consider the gruesome and very bloody murder of the keynote speaker, in front of all of the contestants, judges, and audience, to be “very extreme circumstances.” But, apparently, Grym did not.

“Please be at the high school auditorium by one p.m.!” Grym said. “We start spelling at 1:30!”

“Okay,” Hannah said. “I’ll be there.”

“Excellent!” Grym said. “Don’t be late! ’Bye!” He hung up before Hannah could respond.

Hannah put her phone away. “I’m afraid lunch is off,” she said. “The spelling bee is still on, and it’s relocating to Siete Mares High School. Spelling starts at 1:30, and I need to be there at one.”

“Well, maybe we don’t have time for a fancy lunch,” Harry said. “But we can at least grab some burgers together.”

Hannah looked at her watch. “I guess I have time for a visit to Bleu Burger,” she said.

“I’ve noticed you’ve been craving blue cheese lately,” Harry said. “Is that the baby talking?”

“Don’t attribute everything to the pregnancy,” Hannah said. “I’ve always loved Bleu Burger.”

“Flash, you coming along?” Harry asked.

“Yeah, I guess I could do that,” Flash said, “now that it’s not a fancy dinner for you two.”

Lunch was a bit weird for Hannah. She knew Harry was totally excited and enthusiastic about the prospect of becoming a father, and that enthusiasm led him not to notice that she and Flash were somewhat tense. Flash, she imagined, had mixed feelings. Did he hope the baby was his, flesh of his flesh, or did he hope the baby was not his and therefore wouldn’t saddle him with responsibilities he didn’t want? She herself felt guilt, guilt about what had happened between her and Flash – even if, technically, she wasn’t at fault – guilt that she hadn’t had the courage to tell Harry about what happened, guilt that in some little secret part of her heart, she might be hoping the baby really was Flash’s. It was that last bit of guilt that was the most troubling. She loved Harry, she was going to marry Harry, and while she loved Flash too, it wasn’t the same sort of love, but more like love for a family member, such as a brother. Not that she had had much experience in that area, since she had been an only child, and her parents were killed when she was still fairly young.

Harry dropped Hannah off at the high school auditorium about ten minutes early, and she went in. It was clear that Siete Mares High School was suffering from the budget cuts that had hit schools all over the state. The auditorium was clean, but it had a threadbare feel to it, with carpeting that was worn out in heavy traffic areas and torn in some places, patched together with duct tape. A very large percentage of the seats in the auditorium had hinges or seats that groaned or squeaked or otherwise made noises as the audience members shifted their weight. The stage was very small, and the curtain, she saw, had the telltale lint paths left by textile-eating insects, similar to gopher burrows in a lawn. The flooring of the stage was faded and even splintery; it had clearly been a very long time since it had had any sort of maintenance. About half of the light bulbs seemed to be burned out, or not working for some other reason.

Hannah went up to the stage, where she found that a table had been set up for the judges, and chairs on risers had been set up for contestants, in the same formation as had been set up at the community college the night before. She was glad to see that she and Marvin had new unabridged dictionaries to read from, rather than the ones that had been spattered with pieces of the mayor last night. Of course, the police had probably taken those as evidence anyway – or Grym might have tried to re-use them. Hannah saw that there also were clean, new number tags for the contestants; that was good. It wouldn’t do for a spelling bee champion to be photographed for the newspaper or filmed for the television news wearing a hang tag coated in gore.

Hannah noticed that many of the contestants’ seats on the riser were empty. While it still wasn’t yet one o’clock, she knew that these kids were mostly the enthusiastic sort who showed up early. While a few more might show up in the next few minutes, it looked like there would be a lot of no-shows.

NaNo murder

After more than 38,000 words, at last we reach the first dead body ...

So, in the NaNo novel, I have finally killed off my first victim, His Honor the Mayor of Siete Mares, California, George del Selva. Some of you may have seen in my past excerpts that the mayor's name was something else, but I decided I needed to rename him to suit an underlying theme. I also renamed the prostitute who was caught in the car with him when he was charged with DWI -- she's Catherine Rosa Pantera.

“Now I’d like to say a few woods about the spewwing bee,” del Selva said, “both about spewwing bees in pawticuwaw and about the Mid Coast Wegional Spewwing Bee.” He pulled the sheaf of papers containing his speech out of the inner pocket of his suit coat. Hannah imagined she heard a groan from the audience as those at least in the front few rows could see just how thick that stack of paper was. She herself was not looking forward to having to listen to the mayor drone – or dwone – on and on, but, well, she didn’t have a choice. She and her fellow judges were a captive audience, as were the kids in the seats on the risers.

“Now, when I was gwowing up,” del Selva began, “my school had a spewwing bee. It was a vewy big deal yeaw aftew yeaw. I fiwst pawticipated in a bee when I was in fowth gwade …” Oh, no, Hannah thought, everybody was going to have to be subjected to a probably long-winded story of the mayor’s childhood. At least she could be thankful he started with the fourth grade and not with his birth – the audience would be spared a few very likely forgettable chapters in what promised to be a long, long book. Already, she thought she imagined somebody in the audience snoring. At least the temperature in the auditorium would discourage sleeping. While normally it would not be a big deal to be without heat at this time of year, the rainstorm had brought on a chill, to the point where having a little heat on in the building would have been good. Unfortunately, with the gas out, there was no heat.

The mayor continued to go on and on, describing in great detail each spelling bee that he had been in. The chapter on fourth grade was mercifully short; while del Selva had been his homeroom’s runner-up, he had been eliminated early in the school bee, on a magnificently phonetic spelling of “beautician.” At least that word didn’t have any r’s or l’s in it, Hannah reflected.

Del Selva was just getting into his account of his fifth grade year and its spelling bee when Hannah found herself resisting a call of nature – not an urge to fall asleep, as the temperature in the auditorium, even under the stage lights, was chilly and maybe even getting colder. The tea she had had with supper was taking its vengeance on her, and she needed to use the restroom. She was just beginning to push her chair back from the table when, quietly, Marvin pushed his back and tiptoed out through the backstage door leading to the hallway where the restrooms were. She figured it would be bad form to have more than one judge absent from the stage at a time, so she decided to wait for Marvin to return before taking her own pit stop.

When Marvin returned, del Selva was midway through his fifth grade spelling bee exploits. In that one, he had been his class champion rather than just the runner up, and he made it to the final spell-down. He lost that on “puerile,” but as the school runner up, he advanced to the district spelling bee. As Marvin took his seat, he leaned over and whispered into Hannah’s ear, “Somebody ought to find some way to cut this speech short.” He winked at her, and she winked back.

Del Selva was beginning his account of the district bee as Hannah stood up to sneak out to the restroom. Suddenly her need to use the restroom became the last thing on her mind, or at least a very minor thought. Somebody dropped an anvil on the mayor. Or, at least, an anvil was dropped on the mayor. It came from above, somewhere in the recesses occupied by all of the machinery used to raise and lower sets and other large pieces of material on the stage. The anvil fell straight down, clearly targeted on the “X” on the stage behind the microphone. With a sound that combined both a crunch and a splat, it landed squarely on the mayor’s head, flattening him not merely figuratively but literally. Blood, flesh, and Hannah had no idea what all else, exploded outward, splashing all of the people on the stage and the front few rows of the audience.

For a moment, there was stunned silence, as if people didn’t really grasp what was going on at first. Then some people started to scream, or to yell, or to stare in shocked silence, ashen faced, at the anvil atop what was left of the mayor. It was one of the largest anvils Hannah had ever seen, black cast metal, and someone had taken the time to paint the brand name of the anvil where it was cast into the side, in vivid white, “ACME.” Hannah collapsed back down into her chair. Why would someone use one of Wile E. Coyote’s favorite weapons to obliterate someone who spoke like Elmer Fudd? She turned toward Marvin. “Well, you did say you wanted to find a way to cut that speech short,” she deadpanned.

“I think I would have preferred something a bit … um … neater,” Marvin said, wiping gore off the front of his suit.

By this time, Harry had arrived on the stage, along with Benny Quintana, the security guard, and the mayor’s bodyguards. “What happened?” Harry asked.

“Your guess is as good as mine,” Hannah said. “Did anybody check to see whether Wile E. Coyote is hiding in the rafters?”

NaNo in the rain

Yes, I'm still alive, and here's a novel excerpt to prove it ...

Day One of the spelling bee: Contestants are supposed to arrive and check in. Of course, things aren't exactly going right. For one thing, a gas leak has forced evacuation of the building where the registration was to take place. For another, the normal warm, sunny weather that Siete Mares usually gets this time of year isn't happening; instead, there's a rainstorm of Biblical proportions.

Monday morning, it was still raining. Hannah thought maybe it wasn’t quite as heavy as it had been Sunday, but it was still heavy. This was not the sort of weather that Siete Mares usually got this time of year, and Hannah began to wonder whether there was some sort of curse hanging over the spelling bee. It wouldn’t be the first time something Hannah was involved in seemed to be cursed.

Hannah dug out her spare handbag and put her spare car keys in it; she wasn’t sure when she would have access to the auditorium to reclaim her main bag, with her keys, wallet, laptop, and other vital gear. She hoped it wouldn’t be long. Harry drove her to the campus, where she saw that overnight, a large circus-type tent had been put up in front of the performing arts center. So the building hadn’t been cleared for occupancy yet, she thought. She saw that backhoes and other construction equipment were scattered around campus in seemingly random locations, digging holes or otherwise pushing dirt around. This gas line inspection project was assuming epic proportions.

She ducked out of the car and through the rain into the front entrance of the tent. Inside, she saw that tables had been set up to register participants as they arrived. Rivulets of rainwater were running through the lawn at her feet, and she saw that the table legs were sinking into mud. Siete Mares didn’t get much rain, especially in the spring, but when rain did come, the sandy soil couldn’t handle all of the moisture and became saturated quickly. In the wealthy neighborhoods on bluffs overlooking the ocean, mudslides were a constant worry. Seaside Community College was on such a bluff itself, but the built-up part of the college was set back from the edge. Still, the tables and chairs inside the tent were taking on a surreal look, as they slowly sank into the ground, some leaning at increasingly crazy angles.

Grym was seated at the center of the table that faced the tent’s entrance. He had some stacks of papers in front of him, and next to him was a pile of cheap tote bags with the spelling bee logo printed on them, along with the words “Mid Coast Regional Spelling Bee” and the dates for this event. The end of the table to his left was sinking faster than the end to his right, and he was having trouble keeping the tote bags from sliding away. His chair was sinking faster than the table, so the table top, which would ordinarily have been at about the height of his mid-stomach, was instead at chest level. He was wet, as was everybody else in the tent, and he was not looking happy. The cliché that immediately came to Hannah’s mind was “drowned rat,” but really, Grym looked far more miserable than that.

“Ah, glad that at least one of my judges could show up!” he yelled. At this moment, the yelling didn’t seem inappropriate – the pounding rain on the roof of the tent was very loud.

Hannah looked around the tent. As Grym had indicated, neither Marvin nor LaKeesha had yet arrived. Instead, there were a half dozen apparently bored volunteers, waiting for contestants and their parents to show up and register, sitting at the other tables in the tent. Of said contestants and parents, there was no sign.

“Well, come on around!” Grym said, indicating the chair next to his, which, not having had anybody sit in it, had not started to sink into the mud. “Might as well show you the procedure!”

Hannah did as he asked and came to sit in the chair, which immediately started to sink. “When contestants come in, we need to check the list!” Grym said, indicating one of the papers in front of him. “We verify that all of their paperwork is correct! Then we give them this information packet!” He indicated the biggest stack of papers. “We also give them the goodie bag!” He pointed to the pile of tote bags, and then grabbed them as the left end of the table took a lurch downward and started the tote bags sliding.

“What’s in the goodie bags?” Hannah asked.

“Oh, all sorts of stuff!” Grym said. “Information about the event, stuff from the Chamber of Commerce like entertainment and lodging guides, coupons for restaurants and hotels and other services from sponsors, samples of soap and shampoo, a pocket dictionary – worthless if you ask me – from the bookstore, promotional materials from the college, a little bit of this, a little bit of that!”

“So how many contestants have registered so far?” Hannah asked.

“None!” Grym said. “But we must keep to the schedule! It says we start registration at nine a.m., so we started registration at nine a.m.!”

By noon, no contestants had appeared. Grym’s chair had sunk so far that its seat was only six inches above the muddy grass, while Hannah’s seat was a foot above. The table had not sunk so much, so it was about eye level for both of them.

Two men in dark raincoats, carrying black umbrellas, came through the front door of the tent. These men exuded an aura of “bodyguard”; Hannah was put in mind of Secret Service agents protecting the President of the United States. They even had little earphones with spiral wires leading somewhere inside their raincoats. They stepped to either side of the doorway and stood at attention, feet slightly apart. One of them whispered something into his miniature microphone. For a moment, Hannah thought perhaps the President himself was about to appear.

Next, three more men entered the tent – two more in dark raincoats, with umbrellas, one of which was held over the third man, who wore a tan coat. Hannah recognized His Honor, the Mayor of Siete Mares, George del Valle, with his thick, wavy, salt and pepper hair, bushy moustache to match, soulful brown eyes, complexion with just the right shade of brown to be not too brown and not too white, just enough wrinkles to look wise without looking old. Unlike everybody else in the tent, del Valle appeared to be completely dry.

Del Valle came up to the registration table, his hand extended. Grym made a clumsy attempt at standing, hampered by how low his chair’s seat had become. He started to fall backwards but grabbed at the edge of the table to steady himself. That turned out to be a mistake; the pressure on that side of the table pulled it downward, and it slowly tipped over, like a dinghy in a stiff breeze sailed by an inexperienced sailor who doesn’t know to release the mainsheet. As the table keeled over, the papers and goodie bags slid off, making spattering noises as they hit the soggy grass. Hannah tried to scoot her chair backwards to get out of the way of the table as it fell, but the back legs were firmly enough planted that all she succeeded in doing was tipping it over backwards; she felt the icy mud on the back of her head and shoulders, but fortunately the ground was soft enough that she wasn’t really hurt. She did succeed, however, in avoiding getting hit by the table, as her legs flew up in the air. Grym ended up in a similar posture. Hannah found herself laughing, not just at how ridiculous Grym looked, but also at the thought of how she must also look.

“What’s going on hewe?” del Valle asked, and his voice dispelled the carefully cultured appearance he had cultivated. His voice was nasal, a little higher in pitch than was truly dignified, and he had some sort of speech impediment. “I’m wooking for Gwymwyr Heebenwober.” Hannah was laughing even harder now; all she could think of was a cartoon character, vowing to kill the “wascally wabbit.”

Grym struggled to his feet, shaking off clods of soggy grass and blobs of mud. “I’m Gwym- – uh, Grymwyr – Heebenlober!” he said. “Who are you?!”

Del Valle was clearly not happy that his face was not universally recognized, even if a spelling bee coordinator from the state office would not normally be expected to know the faces of all of the small town mayors in the state. His face turned red, and he stood up as straight as he could. “I’m Geowge del Valle,” he said. “I’m the mayow of Siete Mawes.”

Grym reached over the wreckage of table, papers, and goodie bags to shake del Valle’s hand. “Your honor!” he said. “Glad to meet you! Very glad indeed!”

“Wikewise,” del Valle said. “Vewy gwad. But what awe you doing in this tent out in the wain, instead of in the auditowium?”

“There was a gas leak!” Grym said. “And the gas company thinks there may be more! All the buildings on campus are evacuated until it’s certain the gas has all been cleared out from all of the pipes!”

Del Valle was visibly blown back by the force of Grym’s voice. Hannah realized that she had become accustomed to his stentorian tones, but anyone meeting him for the first time would be floored. “Do you know when you wiww be abwe to wetuwn to the auditowium?” he asked.

Grym was saved from having to answer, and del Valle was saved from having to withstand another blast from Grym, by the arrival of Benny Quintana. She noticed dark blue dye running down the side of his face from his security guard’s cap – he must have just gotten a new one, she reflected. Well, with this rain, it wasn’t going to be in new condition for very long. “I just got the all clear from the gas company,” Benny said. “It’s safe to go in the buildings. I’m unlocking everything now.” He held up a large key ring with about fifty keys on it. “The performing arts center is open, and the alarms are off. You’re good to go.”

“Ah!” Grym said. “It’s about time! Let’s get out of this miserable rain!”

“Agweed,” del Valle said. “Wet’s get out of the misewabwe wain!”

NaNo sailing

This time around, a little different

Continuing the annual tradition, I'm posting excerpts from my NaNo novel as I go. Since the primary audience of this blog is interested in sailing, I generally focus on sailing-related excerpts. This year, it took a while before Hannah got out on a boat, and, well, as you will read, the adventure wasn't exactly perfect.

Her business with the paper was quickly over, and Hannah realized that it was still mid-morning. She and Flash could get out on the water earlier than she had anticipated. When she got out to her car, she pulled out her phone and pressed the speed-dial key that she had programmed for Flash.

He answered immediately. “Hi, Hannah, what’s up?” he asked.

“Well, I got done early at the paper today,” Hannah said. “I’m free now, if you’re ready to go sailing.”

“Super!” Flash said. “I’ll meet you at the boat in, say, ten minutes.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Hannah said, suppressing a fresh wave of jitters. The nervousness was really getting to her. She realized that it was a good thing she was running early; the sooner she got the business of facing her fears done with, the better.

She drove to the marina and parked in the lot nearest to Flash’s slip. As she walked down the pier, she could see that Flash was already at the boat, curly dark hair tousled in the wind, snapping black eyes reflecting the smile of shiny white teeth beneath the pencil thin Errol Flynn moustache. He already had the jib and mainsail rigged and ready to raise, and most of the docklines had been removed from the boat. Clearly, Flash had prepared ahead so he and Hannah could set sail immediately.

She took Flash’s hand to steady her as she stepped onto Avenger, and his expression changed immediately to a slight frown. “Hannah, you’re shaking,” he said.

“I guess I’m, um, nervous,” Hannah said. “I don’t want … history to repeat itself.”

“Don’t worry, it won’t,” Flash said. “We’ve promised each other, and we’re going to keep that promise.” He squeezed her hand.

She squeezed back. “We will,” she said. “I’m sure of it.” She wished she really were sure, though.

Flash untied all of the dock lines, holding on to the bow line to walk the boat out of the slip; he then cleated the line at the end of the pier so the boat could point into the wind, which, as predicted, was brisk without being too stiff. He got onto the boat and hauled on the halyard to raise the mainsail, leaving it slack and flapping in the wind. He then returned to the pier, untied the line, gave the bow of the boat a shove out into the channel, and then lightly hopped aboard, quickly settling himself at the helm. Hannah sat forward of him, next to the jib sheets.

As Flash pulled in the mainsheet to tighten the sail, Hannah was once again treated to the magic feeling of being on Avenger, under sail, energy flowing through her as the boat heeled slightly and surged forward. She began to feel herself relaxing, the negative energy of dread being replaced by the positive energy of the boat. She realized that she had been holding her breath in anticipation of the moment, and she let it out with a deep sigh.

“You’re feeling better now, hon?” Flash said. “I knew that getting out on the water would be good for you.”

“It is good,” Hannah said. “You want the jib up?”

“Go for it,” Flash said.

Hannah grabbed the jib halyard and pulled, smoothly, arm over arm, to raise the sail quickly, and then she grabbed the jib sheet and sheeted in, all in one smooth movement. She was rewarded with another surge of power as the wind filled the sail.

“That’s my baby,” Flash said, smiling.

Hannah smiled back. “It’s such a relief getting out here,” she said.

“You know, it’s good you got here early today,” Flash said. “The front’s moving in faster than predicted. If you couldn’t get here until noon, it might have been too late. This way, though, we can have a couple of hours out before things get rough.”

“Excellent,” Hannah said. She was focusing on the moment, letting the motion of the boat and the water dispel the last cobwebs of worry. She was here, now, sailing, in the mystical zone that Avenger always put her in.

They sailed out of the harbor and into the open ocean. Here, the upcoming front was making its presence known. The swells were steep, kicked up by winds farther out at sea that would be arriving at the coast later today. She imagined the avid surfers of Siete Mares were enjoying some really knarly waves. If the high they got from surfing was even half as great as the high she got from sailing, they were probably absolutely euphoric.

Flash and Hannah sailed back and forth, Flash steering the boat masterfully through the waves, its knife-like hull punching through the walls of water. Hannah was glad she had remembered to bring along her heavy-duty foul-weather gear; Avenger was a wet ride even in gentler conditions, and the jib trimmer got hit with every wave. Flash stayed much drier at the helm, as Hannah was blocking most of the spray.

The wind and waves were increasing, and Hannah was beginning to feel a twinge of … something … in the pit of her stomach. Seasickness? The return of the nervousness?

“Let’s go in,” Flash said. “I think it’s time to call it a day.”

“Yes,” Hannah said, noting that the little twinge in her stomach eased up. “We can get the boat put away before the really nasty stuff hits.”

Flash steered the boat downwind back to the harbor, surfing on the waves. At first, the feeling of flying was blissful, but then that little fluttering in Hannah’s stomach returned. No problem, she thought. Just a little reaction to the conditions, nothing to get worried about. She concentrated on trimming her sail, making sure to keep the telltales flying.

Then Hannah started feeling a little more queasy. No, she told herself, she couldn’t be seasick on Avenger. She and the boat were soul-mates. She swallowed, hard, three or four times, and that seemed to settle her stomach a little bit.

The wind got harder and the waves got bigger. Flash was steering the boat fiercely, keeping it as level as he could in the gusts. Now Hannah felt cold sweat coming out on the back of her neck, and her stomach was refusing to settle itself. She was losing the ability to concentrate on the sail, instead working on making sure her stomach held onto its contents, alternating swallowing with shallow breathing, gulp, pant, gulp, pant, gulp, pant.

Flash glanced over at her, and his expression became grim. “You’re not looking so good,” he said. “Maybe we should lower the jib and let you rest.”

Hannah agreed with that, although she couldn’t say anything while she was working on keeping her stomach under control, so she nodded emphatically. She ran the jib halyard through her hands to make sure it would run free without tangling, cleated the jib sheet down tight, and uncleated the jib halyard, then got up on the foredeck to pull the jib down, all the while gulping and panting to settle the stomach. The activity seemed to help curb the stomach’s urge to hurl up its contents, and when she came back to the cockpit, the boat seemed a bit steadier, so she was able to breathe evenly again.

She sat down next to Flash, and he placed his arm around her waist. “You were looking really bad there for a moment,” he said. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen anybody get quite that green before. You sure you’re all right?”

“I am now,” she said in a voice that sounded very thin and weak, enjoying the feeling of solidness and reassurance that Flash’s arm provided. “I don’t know what happened.”

“Maybe Harry’s right,” Flash said. “Maybe you’re not really ready for intensive sailing yet. Maybe you do still need more recovery time from your injury.”

Tears came to Hannah’s eyes. “I can’t give up Avenger,” she said. “Since I’ve started sailing on this boat, I’ve become so much better. I’ve gained strength, equilibrium, confidence. Giving up sailing her would be like dying.”

“I know,” Flash said. “I could never ask you to do that. But I think maybe, at least for now, we keep it to gentler conditions.”

Hannah wrapped her arms around Flash, while being careful not to interfere with the arm that was controlling the tiller. “Thank you,” she whispered in his ear.

“Hannah, I know how important sailing is to you,” Flash said. “I could never imagine making you quit.”

A big wave hit the back of the boat, and it careened forward. Hannah felt her stomach lurching up again. “Oooooh,” she moaned.

“Oh, God,” Flash said. “Try to hold on!”

Hannah resumed the alternating gulp, pant, gulp, pant routine. It wasn’t working so well. She felt sour liquid rising in the back of her throat.

After what seemed an eternity, Flash brought the boat into the mouth of the harbor. It seemed to Hannah that all three – she, Flash, and Avenger – breathed a massive sigh of relief upon getting past the breakwater and into calmer waters. The boat settled down, and so did Hannah’s stomach, and Flash calmed down as well. Hannah hadn’t realized it, but he had become very tense during the last part of the journey back to harbor; she could feel his back muscles relax through her arm that was still hanging on to him.

And we're off ...

49,770 words to go ...

Spring was in the air. Hannah Montgomery could feel it in the warm sun that shone down on her and illuminated her silky honey-blonde hair as it lifted on the gentle breeze. The spring term was coming to a close at Seaside Community College, so it was the final crunch time for her students as they prepared their papers for the end of term portfolios. The flip side of that arrangement was that Hannah herself had a bit of a breather before the very end of the term, a breather that she very much needed. As she locked her car and began the walk across the parking lot – fortunately short, as she still qualified for handicapped parking – her phone rang.

“Hello?”

“Hi, honey, it’s me.” Hannah recognized the voice of her fiancé, Harry O’Malley. “Just wanted to check – did you get the caterer you wanted?”

“Oh, dear, I forgot about that,” Hannah said. It used to be that she had no trouble remembering things, but there were still lingering after-effects from the brain injury she had received a couple of years ago, and her short-term memory was one of the things that hadn’t fully recovered. She sighed. She would have thought that something as important as planning her own wedding wouldn’t slip her mind so easily.

And the winner is ...

Murder at the Spelling Bee

Seaside Community College is hosting the regional spelling bee, and English instructor Hannah Montgomery has been asked to be one of the judges. From the beginning, everything just seems to go wrong – contestants fall ill, parents bicker, the newspaper misprints the publicity press releases, the major sponsor withdraws its support, and the weather takes an unusually stormy turn. Then, to top it all off, it is discovered that all of the gas lines underneath the college campus are leaking and need emergency repairs. What more can go wrong?

Well, if Hannah’s around, you know a dead body’s going to turn up somewhere.

November approaches

Prepare to do without me for a while

Those of you who know me know that I participate in National Novel Writing Month every year. This is an exercise in simply cranking out the words – 50,000 of them in 30 days.

I have been participating in NaNo since 2004. Since 2005, I have written a murder mystery every year, focusing on Hannah Montgomery, a community college English instructor who has a Jessica Fletcher-like habit of stumbling upon dead bodies everywhere she goes. The series’ inspiration was an unusually stubborn malfunctioning photocopier in the faculty workroom at the community college where I teach. It gave me the idea to write a mystery using a photocopier as a murder weapon, and presto, Murder at the Community College was born! In that mystery, a particularly unlikeable faculty member was offed by a booby trap set at the point in the copier’s paper path that always jammed.

Since then, Hannah has solved murders at the yacht club (vice commodore killed by an unusual subspecies of venomous snake), a family reunion (obnoxious great-aunt stabbed with a Sikh knife at Hannah’s fiancé’s family’s lake house), the little theater (the actor playing Sir Lionel in Camelot didn’t come back to life the way he was supposed to after the joust), and the sports desk of the local newspaper (an intrusive photographer clobbered to death with a hockey stick). Along the way, Hannah has fallen in love with a police detective, suffered a traumatic brain injury, been involved in a race riot, developed a fascination with racing sailboats, performed on a low-budget recording that went viral on the Internet, been raped, and met all sorts of interesting people.

So what’s next for Hannah? As she and fiancé Harry O’Malley plan their upcoming wedding, where will the next body turn up? I’m open to suggestions.

FOCS best of 2009

Nothing stands out, but there were a few posts that were okay

Captain JP has issued, not a challenge, but at least a suggestion to his fellow bloggers. While he's digesting the surfeit of holiday foods (especially the mince pies), he'd like to read the best of what we have written over the past year.

I will have to admit, 2009 didn't have the same sorts of high points that 2008 did. Instead, the year started on a low note, with somebody deciding to celebrate the New Year by vandalizing our truck, and it got lower from there. The first post of the year, I started with a tagline "I sure hope 2009 is better than 2008 was," but that didn't happen. Instead, it was worse.

There was my major computer crash in January that caused me to lose just about everything, since the backup files had somehow become corrupted and wouldn't load. There were Internet access problems caused by a squabble between my ISP and the bigger telecom company from which it bought services. There was the flu that I caught in March, which left me with a lingering cough that just wouldn't go away – I'm pretty sure I was one of the first people in the country to get H1N1, which hadn't even been identified yet but which is characterized by a horrible cough. Pat's dad in South Texas has been in deteriorating health, and so Pat has been dealing with a lot of headaches trying to take care of him from a distance. My work obligations kept us from being able to go on the solar eclipse cruise that most of the rest of the family took to celebrate my parents' 50^th wedding anniversary. We've had issues with vehicles needing repairs that we can't afford. And our home in Albuquerque got burglarized again, a near repeat of the 2007 incident, except that these burglars didn't take anything of great sentimental value – the previous burglars took care of that. Finally, there are some other issues that we don't want to go into detail on in the blog, but that have made life miserable.

Still, there were some blog posts that seem worth noting, so here I offer my top 10 blog posts for the year, in the order they appeared on the blog:

1. We started the year with two great days on the water.
   
2. I had fun with a little bit of fiction titled "This is Awkward," which became the inspiration for a writing project.
   
3. Tillerman issued a writing challenge to write a list, and I came up with ten lame or not-so-lame excuses not to get to the lake, triggered by a fit of pique at Zorro for letting me down the previous weekend.
   
4. I converted one of my better classroom lectures, on logical fallacies, into a blog post.
   
5. I issued a writing challenge to readers to come up with light bulb jokes about sailors, and the results were great.
   
6. In response to another Tillerman writing challenge, I wrote a review of the short film Pirates of the White Sand, a fun romp from the Duke City Shootout film festival.
   
7. I had another sailing experience with Zorro, involving moonlight under spinnaker and other such excitement.
   
8. Then, during National Novel Writing Month, I got to write a scene that recreated my first experience of an Etchells racing sailboat.
   
9. I noted a bit of irony over Thanksgiving weekend in Arizona.
   
10. I let my scholarly side out for a discussion of Plato's "Phaedrus."
    

So there you have it: the best of Five O'Clock Somewhere for 2009. Maybe next year there will be more fun things to choose from, and less gloom and doom.

Holiday coming

There’s a reason for the season …

Yes, I looked at the calendar. National Novel Writing Month is over, and that means it’s now … December! Yes! Holiday time!

No, not December 25; I’m talking about December 15, National Cat Herders Day. Yes, the official holiday of Five O’Clock Somewhere, when we all think about those we know who spend their lives herding cats. Sometimes this is a literal thing. Zorro has somewhere in the vicinity of 11 cats, and Teddy Bear has an unknown but also large number (his wife volunteers for a humane association). Just this afternoon, I discovered that one of my fellow faculty members at the community college is also a cat herder; he rescues feral cats.

Then there are also those who find themselves herding cats in a figurative way, trying to get all of the various parts of their lives together and get control of them. The middle of December is probably when a very large number of us are frantically trying to organize holiday events, shopping, work, family, and who knows what all else.

This year, rather than write a post saying pretty much the same thing I say every year, I’m opening this out as a writing project for everybody. Between now and December 15, write a blog post about “The True Meaning of Cat Herders Day” and post a link to it in the comments here, or write a comment on the topic. If you have pictures, even better.

The grand prize for the winner of this project will be an autographed 8 by 10 glossy of Dulce, the queen of Five O’Clock Somewhere. (Well, OK, how about a jpeg?)

NaNo: The marathon is over

As usual, I’m not finished yet

So November is over, and so is National Novel Writing Month. This year, my final total at the end of the month was 64,030 words.

This time around, Hannah Montgomery and her friends are trying to solve Murder on the Sports Desk. The victim is a photographer whom nobody much liked. There’s an irate hockey goalie who’s the prime suspect, but things look awfully fishy – even if he’s not the brightest bulb on the string, he wouldn’t make all of the dumb mistakes that make most of the evidence point straight at him.

Hannah and her fiancé, Harry O’Malley, have finally set a wedding date. But somebody’s blackmailing Hannah, apparently thinking that she’s stepping out with her best friend, Flash Duran. The photographer who got murdered is (or was) apparently one of the blackmailers. There’s the added complication that the victim of this murder was the brother of a previous murderer … or rather, a previous killer who was found not guilty by reason of insanity and is now in a mental institution.

So Harry’s working the late shift at the cop shop, and Hannah’s gone to Flash’s place to share a pizza with him. The pizza came with an unexpected extra tucked under the round piece of cardboard underneath the pie itself, a CD-ROM with a compromising video.

Flash’s face was pale. “How did they get that disc into my pizza?” he asked.

“How often do you order pizza from this place?” Hannah asked.

“About twice a week,” Flash said.

“Well, they clearly have a camera pointed at my boat,” Hannah said. “I’m betting they have one pointed at your house, too. They’re probably well aware that you have a habit of ordering pizzas from this particular pizza place. All they would have to do is find an employee to bribe into slipping that disc into your order.”

Flash pulled out his phone and pressed a speed dial number. “Hello … This is Flash Duran … Yes, it was good … I just realized I didn’t tip the delivery boy as much as I had planned … Yeah, next time he’s out, have him stop by here on the way back … Oh, yeah, he’s good; you ought to give him a raise … All right, thank you.” He hung up.

“Well, if the delivery guy was the person who got bribed, you’ve got a chance at getting something from him,” Hannah said. “But if it wasn’t him, you’ve just made a kid very happy for no good reason.”

“That’s the very best reason for making a kid happy,” Flash said. “Random acts of kindness were always fun when I was a kid.”

“Well, I guess while we’re waiting, we can watch the rest of the movie,” Hannah said. Flash complied and switched the discs in the player. Just as the movie was ending, and Bob Hope was watching Bing Crosby getting the girl, the doorbell rang. It was the pizza delivery guy.

“I’m so glad you showed up,” Flash said, handing the kid a $10 bill. “I had decided to give you an extra large tip this time because you’ve always been so good – on time, always polite, all the things a pizza delivery boy should be. But then I got distracted and forgot” – he glanced over at Hannah, who was stretched out languorously on the sofa – “and I left this on the table when I meant to give it to you. But anyhow, here it is. By the way, I noticed there was something extra in the pizza box.”

The pizza delivery kid’s face turned red. “Oh, yeah,” he said. “This has really been my big night. This guy came into the shop just after you ordered your pizza, said he was a friend of yours, said he’d pay me $20 to put this disc in the box with your pizza. I thought it was weird, but twenty bucks is twenty bucks … and now I got thirty!”

“Do you remember what this guy looked like?” Flash asked.

“Well, he was sort of … average,” the kid said. “Average height, average build, maybe a little more fit than average.”

“What about hair and eye color?” Flash asked.

“I don’t know about any of that,” the kid said. “He had on a baseball cap and a hoodie and dark glasses. He was white, though, very fair skin. Probably sunburns easily. That’s why he was covered up, I figured.”

Flash pulled another $10 bill out of his pocket. “Thanks, kid,” he said. “By the way, what’s your name?”

“Joey,” the kid said. “Joey Rodriguez.”

Flash handed Joey the money. “Thanks again for everything,” he said. “Just be sure never to mention these extra tips or the other guy, or anything else about this, to anybody. And I mean anybody.”

“Sure thing, Mr. Duran,” Joey said. He gave a half-wave, half-salute, and walked back to his car with a spring in his step.

“Well, that gets us something,” Hannah said. “But it doesn’t get us all that much. We already knew we were looking for a guy of average height and average build in the flower case; now we have the added information that he’s a fair-skinned white guy who maybe works out some.”

Flash gestured toward the disc that was now lying on the coffee table. “I wish we could get that thing tested for fingerprints,” he said. “But if we take it to the police, the police look at its contents, and the police include Harry.”

“There probably aren’t any fingerprints on the thing anyway,” Hannah said. “These guys aren’t careless.”

“I guess I could take the disc to my studio and use the computers to look for digital signatures,” Flash said. “But like you said, these guys aren’t careless. They probably wiped their tracks.”

They both slumped back on the sofa, tired and dejected. Suddenly, Hannah sat upright. “My column!” she exclaimed.

“Your what?” Flash asked.

“I need to submit next week’s column to the Capitan tomorrow,” Hannah said. “But I haven’t even thought of a topic yet. Quick, what’s your biggest grammar bugaboo?”

“My what?” Flash asked.

“The grammar issue that causes you the most frustration,” Hannah said. “The one that you’re dying to see a clear explanation of.”

“That’s gotta be which ‘there’ to use,” Flash said. “I mean, I never can figure out whether I’m supposed to use T-H-E-R-E or T-H-E-I-R or that other one with the apostrophe in it. I’d love to see a Grammar Goddess column on that.”

“Your wish is my command,” Hannah said, pulling her laptop out of her satchel and shoving the now empty pizza box to the floor to make room on the coffee table. Half an hour later, she had a column written. “Here you go,” she said to Flash, turning the laptop toward him. “See if this clarifies things.”

Flash scrolled through the article, reading it. When he finished, he turned the computer back to Hannah. “Wow,” he said. “You really can explain things. I especially liked the bit about apostrophes, how you use those when you have something that can be spelled out. I didn’t know that before.”

“I’ll take that as a ringing endorsement,” Hannah said. “I’ll be taking this to the Capitan tomorrow.”

“Before or after we go sailing?” Flash asked.

“Before,” Hannah said. “Once I get this out of the way, we can have the rest of the day unencumbered.”

“What about Harry?” Flash asked.

“I don’t know what his plans are,” Hannah said. “He officially has the day off tomorrow, aside from being on call. Even if he doesn’t feel Avenger the way you and I do, would it work for him to come sailing with us?”

“Sure,” Flash said. “Maybe eventually, he will get to understand that boat, or at least understand what she does for the two of us. And even if he doesn’t ever get to that point, maybe … well … if he does ever see that video, maybe he will understand what caused me to … what caused, well, what happened.”

As previously disclaimed, this is pure fiction.