I’ve just signed up for a new event  featuring artists, musicians and writers and others  in Warren County, NJ.

It’s called “ParkFest.”

It’s being held in a park created around one of the locks of the famous Morris Canal.

I’m excited to participate because in the Frank Nagler Mysteries I use Dover in Morris County as the model for the fictional town of Ironton, relying on the region’s mining, manufacturing and canal history as part of the background.

Frank Nagler , the series’ lead character, is a native of Ironton, and his father worked in the stoveworks, and his grandfather was a miner.

 The books, “The Swamps of Jersey,” “A Game called Dead,” and the newly released “The Weight of Living” are available online at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Kobo and Wal-Mart.

Here’s the release about Park Fest::

We are looking for locally based authors to partner with us for a brand new event in Warren County – “ParkFest”. ParkFest is being co-hosted by Warren Park Foundation and the Morris Canal Committee and will be held on Saturday June 10 at Bread Lock Park (2627 Route 57, Stewartsville) from 11-6.
Our goal to bring together diverse interest groups from across the County and the region to meet together in a beautiful park. We have planned for ‘jazz in the park’, local history displays, art displays, classic cars and more.
We would very much like to feature the opportunity to a “meet the author”. If you are from this area or have written about this area, we would be happy to have you join us. Book sales are perfectly fine with us. If this is something you would be interested in participating in, please contact me and I will be happy to go over the details with you.
With your help, ParkFest can be a true community day – promoting the people and things that make Warren County so special.
If you are interested in participating, please call Liz at the Warren County Planning Department at 908-475-6539 or e-mail us at morriscanal@co.warren.nj.us.

I’ll be reading and speaking about the Frank Nagler Mysteries, and especially the newly published third installment, “The Weight of Living,” at the North County Branch of the Hunterdon County Library at 11 a.m. Saturday, May20.

 The library is located on Halsted Street, Clinton, just north of downtown. It is one of the busiest libraries in the area, a testament the importance, resilience and need for public libraries.

This is the first of four events for me in May and June.

On hand will be  Dorane Caravaglia,  a first time published author of “Karmic Conviction”.  The book is the first in a series about a woman who turns state’s evidence against her boyfriend and is placed in the witness protection program in a new country, all alone.

Come and congratulate Doranee on her achievement of having her first book published.

Five star Amazon review of “The Weight of Living”

I highly recommend them to you

“I’ve read all of the Frank Nagler mysteries, they are all page turners. The Weight of Living was an even more intense page turner. If you haven’t read any of them, I highly recommend them to you, you will be caught up in the web created by this talented author.”

 The story: A young girl is found in a grocery store Dumpster on a cold March night wearing just shorts and a tank top. She does not speak to either Detective Frank Nagler, the social worker called to the scene, or later to a nun, who is an old friend of Nagler’s.

What appears to be a routine search for the girl’s family turns into a generational hell that drags Nagler into an examination of a decades old death of a another young girl, and the multi-state crime enterprise of the shadowy ringmaster.

The deeper Nagler looks, the more he and his companions are endangered, until the shocking climax that leaves Nagler questioning his actions to both solve the crimes and heal his damaged soul.

The Nagler books are available online at:

Amazon: http://goo.gl/hVQIII

Kobo: https://goo.gl/bgLH6v

NOOK: http://goo.gl/WnQjtr

http://www.walmart.com

The first two Frank Nagler books — “The Swamps of Jersey” and “A Game Called Dead,”are also available at the following New Jersey libraries:

Mountainside; Morris County Library; Somerset County Library System; Bernardsville Public Library; Hunterdon County Public Library; Mount Olive Public Library;  Phillipsburg; Warren County, Franklin branch; Mount Arlington; Wharton; Dover; Hackettstown;  Clark, Parsippany and the Ramsey library, as part of the Bergen County Cooperative Library System; The Palmer (Pa.) Branch of the Easton Public Library; Deptford Free Public Library and Franklin Township Library (Gloucester Co.).

My Publisher, Imzadi Publishing, is sponsoring an 8-day giveaway event on Goodreads. The prize is one copy each of the three Frank Nagler Mysteries, “The  Swamps of Jersey,” the award-winning “A Game Called Dead,” and the newly released “The Weight of Living.”

The event runs from May 20 to May 28, so the clock is running.

The info: Enter to win one copy of The Frank Nagler Mysteries which includes The Swamps of Jersey (book1), A Game Called Dead (book 2), and Michael Stephen Daigle’s latest release, The Weight of Living.

Here’s the link:

https://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/show/237167-the-swamps-of-jersey

I am honored and thrilled to be included in two exciting festivals in June.

 I’ll be ready to discuss and display the Frank Nagler Mysteries: “The Swamps of Jersey,” the award-winning “A Game Called Dead,” and the newly released, “The Weight of Living.” Available at Amazon, Nook, Kobo and Wal-Mart.

The first, a new event in Warren County, N.J., is ParkFest at Bread Lock Park, 2627 Route 57 Stewartsville, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. June 10.

The park features a reconstruction of a Morris Canal lock and a canal boat. The festival will feature Jazz in the Park, an art show, local history displays, classic cars, food vendors and  local authors.

Admission is free. Rain or shine.

The event is sponsored by the Warren County Parks Foundation and the Warren County Morris Canal Committee

Info at:

http://explorewarren.org/events/parkfest-bread-lock-park

https://www.facebook.com/events/1734191816872286/

 The other festival event is BooksNJ2017, from 1 to 5 p.m. June 11 at the Paramus Public Library, 116 E. Century Rd, Paramus, N.J.

The event is sponsored by the Bergen County (NJ) Cooperative Library System.

I attended BooksNJ2015, which drew over 3,000 people.

For information: http://www.booksnj.org.

The author’s list: http://www.booksnj.org/featured-authors.html.

Other dates:

June 14: I’ll be participating in the Phillipsburg Free Public Library’s “Raise Your Voice,” an open mic night for writers. From 7 to 9 p.m.

Info at: @facebook.com/pburglibrary/events/adultprograms/ and on Instagram: @phillipsburglibraryopenmic.

June 17: Reading and book signing at Mountainside Public Library, Constitution Way, Mountainside, N.J. 1 to 2 p.m.

We were sitting in the shadow of history, peddling our wares like those who came before.

Authors, food vendors, artists, musicians, crafters, historians, historic car fans and others at the roadside park that celebrates one of the creations that drove the regional economy and forged the social and economic landscape of North Jersey, the Morris Canal.

This was first-ever Park Fest on June 10, the event sponsored  by Warren County Park Foundation and the Morris Canal Committee at Bread Lock Park, which features a replica canal boat, the dug path of the actual canal and the machinery that made the lock work. Simple stuff drenched in history and economic importance.

Congratulations to the organizers, for this event drew good sized crowds who mingled curiously among the displays.

And thanks to the many readers who both purchases copies of the Frank Nagler mysteries, or listened to my rambling explanation about the books, and still walked away with information cards and flyers.

Looking forward to next year’s Park Fest.

Now it’s off to BooksNJ2017, at the Paramus Public Library grounds beginning at 1 p.m.

I am excited to be on a panel discussing sidekicks in mysteries, entitled “Does every Sherlock need a Watson?”

 The panel will be hosted by Don Smith, and includes writers Kristen Houghton, Dave White, and Susan Clark.

It is scheduled for 3:40 p.m. at tent 221B Baker Street.

BooksNJ2017 will feature over 110 authors.

The Frank Nagler Mystery series is “The Swamps of Jersey,” the award winning “A Game Called Dead,” and the newly released “The Weight of Living.”

The Nagler books are available online at:

Amazon: http://goo.gl/hVQIII

Kobo: https://goo.gl/bgLH6v

NOOK: http://goo.gl/WnQjtr

http://www.walmart.com

I’m taking part in two reading events this week.

The first is “Raise Your Voice,” at the Phillipsburg, N.J. Free Public Library from 7 to 9 p.m. Wednesday. Writers will get a few minutes to read from their work.

The second event is a reading at the Mountainside, N.J., Public Library at 1 p.m., Saturday, June 17.

At the Mountainside event I’ll discuss how the character and plot threads that wind through the Frank Nagler Mysteries.

For the Phillipsburg event, I’ve been looking at a short story I wrote while working on a work in progress called “That year the world came to Mount Jensen, Maine.”

The short piece is called “What happened when the post office closed.”

Here’s a link: http://wp.me/p1mc2c-4y.

The one piece I know I will read is called, “The aching exit voice.”

Here:

Don’t speak with  dust in your voice, from the shade of time left, dwindling days.

It is not the end I need to learn, nor the gaping sense of loss.

There will be time for that. I know its coldness.

Speak not of emptiness, of light fading, grayness filling;

Of things undone, people unknown; joys…sad shrug.

Tell me not of forgotten days; roses faded white.

Tell me instead of syncopation, of the dapple of falling rain, the scrape of wind, the tear of a broken heart, soft fingers touching, the rage of a sun rise, not the fading purples of sunset.

Oh, here you are: The million diamonds float on the blue water and you drop a line for that last trout.

Hooked ‘em, you did, reeled him in, fingered his smooth sides, watched his flashing eyes; then let him go. He floated, then renewed, splashed and dove deep. One last time, a wrinkled smile on your tan, weathered face.

And here: The snow on your cheeks as the machine leans in, a shout in your voice.

Motion, gliding on cracked snow; airborne, floating, then crashing to earth;

Behind you a roar; ahead, the endless white, the undefined point where earth and horizon meet. You push on, a voyager.

Fill your voice with the blue of your lover’s eyes, the tiny hand that grasps your finger; with the grunt of youth, the wetness of love, its taste on fingers and lips.

Color the air with epithets so foul the leaves change, hawks circle away and an old man dozing at the end of the street sees himself again ringside, sweating, beer guzzling below the thump of punches to distorted faces; bring him back to the deep luscious kiss she gave him when he won that cash; when time stopped.

Speak to me not of darkness in a husky ending whisper, between despair and reconciliation.

Scream about darkness shattered; yell to me about dancing.

Speak to me not in the aching exit voice.

Whisper not,  but  shout, the crash of sound startling and brief, the silence endless.

Being a writer means living inside your own head.

Often that impedes any progress on the actual writing.

This became evident this past weekend when I spent two days at, first, Warren County’s Park Fest, and then BooksNJ2017, The Bergen County Cooperative Library System’s biannual event.

The topic at hand was what to do with Frank Nagler, now that I left him hanging at the end of the third book in the series in his name, “The Weight of Living.”

Thanks to the many readers who showed interest in the books and gave me a chance, though those conversations, to think about that happens next.

There was a lot of “don’t tell me” and “you need to solve that, don’t you,” and “better get to work.”

While they hadn’t read the series, they were curious to know why I did things the way I did them. They were also interested in that I set the books in a fictional North Jersey with Dover and Morris County at the center.

They were intrigued when I explained why “Weight” ends so suddenly. Which was good, because I was, too; it was one of those unplanned, happy writing accidents, I think.

The ending was so abrupt, my copy editor at Imzadi Publishing, asked if I had failed to send her the last chapter.

I said, No, and explained it this way.

In the first two Nagler books, “The Swamps of Jersey,” and “A Game Called Dead,” there was a little time after the crime solving for an assessment of Nagler’s state of mind and his battle with his inner demons.

In “The Weight of Living,” the crime scheme is so all-encompassing and deadly, and has done such significant damage to many of the characters — including Nagler, who suffers a terrible personal loss – he focuses on offering everyone else  some form of closure, as poorly defined at it is in the story.

So, what to do, going forward?

Lauren Fox, Nagler’s smart companion, provides one clue in “Weight” when she tells him that he needs to break out of his emotional shell.

What form will that take? How to write the next saga without writing “The Weight of Living, Part Two?”

The weekend discussions, and taking the time to outline how the book series began and how it is structured, helped clarify my thinking.

I’ll have another chance to examine all this at the Mountainside Public Library in Mountainside, N.J. at 1 p.m. Saturday.

Anyway, I know in the next story that Nagler will be teaching a class on “investigation,” and within that structure, that concept takes on a measure of personal investigation for Nagler.

Given the ending of “Weight,” this will be an unhinged Frank Nagler, possibly acting in ways that heretofore have not been part of his character. He is searching for something and actually beginning to grieve. I don’t yet know where it leads him.

In a note I made weeks ago, reporter Jimmy Dawson says, “We wondered how he had survived all that. Then we wondered if he had.”

And given that this is a mystery series, his actions have to take place within the framework of crime solving.

While I haven’t chosen the overall crime scheme for the book, I know part of it. Nagler is presented with a file by one of the students who claims that her father is in jail for a crime he didn’t commit. Nagler, having heard this before, rolls his eyes, but takes the file.

It is not a case he investigated, but as he reads the file, he remembers more and more about it. That memory search triggers what I’ll just now call “stuff” and frames the story.

And while all that is going on I need to address the needs of Lauren Fox, reporter Jimmy Dawson, Leonard and Calista Knox and anyone else who shows up.

Frank Nagler doesn’t have happy endings, but he does need a happier one.

At the same time, I’m muscling up for another pass at the original “Game Called Dead.”

The first version, written years ago, Nagler chased down teen age serial killer Charlie Adams. While trying to rewrite that story twice, it took a left turn and became “The Swamps of Jersey,” about the confluence of politics and murder, and

a book called “A Game Called Dead,” that was not about Adams, but about revenge and family.

The challenge is how to present material that will be somewhat familiar to readers of the series in a way that doesn’t bore them or new readers.

This is Nagler’s first case. He is newly married.  But as readers of the series know, his wife dies, and Charlie Adams kills nine women.

That is Nagler’s beginning. The book after “Weight” is Nagler’s present. They connect.

I had toyed with the idea of combining both stories but it would 800 pages and no one deserves that.

The best part of being a writer is laying out these challenges.

We’ll see.

The Nagler books are available online at:

Amazon: http://goo.gl/hVQIII

Kobo: https://goo.gl/bgLH6v

NOOK: http://goo.gl/WnQjtr

http://www.walmart.com

I’ll be reading from and discussing the Frank Nagler Mysteries at the Mountainside Public Library in Mountainside, N.J. at 1 p.m. Saturday. (June 17)

“The Swamps of Jersey,” “A Game Called Dead,” and the new one, “The Weight of Living,” tell the story of the investigations of Ironton, N.J., detective Frank Nagler while he sorts out the troubles in his heart.

Her name was Sandy and she was the only other person in the room.

This was the Mountainside Public Library on Saturday where the kind folks who run the library has scheduled a reading for me.

They had placed a large poster in the doorway announcing my visit, and displayed copies of the two Frank Nagler mysteries they had in their collection, “The Swamps of Jersey,” and “A Game Called Dead.”

Thanks to the librarians for accepting a copy of the third Frank Nagler book, “The Weight of Living.”

It is hard to predict who shows up at such readings for little known authors. I have been at some when friends and family  of a local author flood the room. I have been at others when curious readers arrive, and at others when no one arrives.

But on Saturday it was Sandy.

And what privilege it was.

I read some passages and described the tortured history of how a simple cop item in a long-forgotten newspaper became the so-far three book series, how the original manuscript changed and became “The Swamps of Jersey,” and how “A Game Called Dead,” resembled the first manuscript of that story in name only, and how I am attempting to write the original story again.

Sandy asked questions, and offered that she had worked in Morris County, the site of the fictional Ironton, N.J. the setting for the Nagler stories.

We shared stories about Picatinny Arsenal and other Morris County places.

The scheduled hour-long session ran 30-minutes long. And she bought two sets of the books. Thank you, Sandy.

The value of the session was not the sale of the books, it was to sit and talk with an interested reader.

The one thing I learned since 2014, when Imzadi Publishing released the first Frank Nagler book, “The Swamps of Jersey,” is that like most striving writers I am my both my best asset and worst enemy. No one owns us anything, and we have to work for it.

But sharing time with an interested reader who willingly gave me 90 minutes to talk about writing is the best experience.

The seminal lesson of American politics comes from the Tip O’Neill, the legendary Massachusetts Congressman, who after he lost his first run of office for a local seat in a district where he and his family were well known, asked a neighbor if she had voted for him.

Her reply, O’Neill said,  shaped his political career.

She said, “No, because you never asked for my vote.”

Asking people to read your books is like asking for their vote.

Thus, the glory of an audience of one.

Also Saturday, after a writers’ marketing meeting at the New Providence Memorial Library, I dropped off copies of the Nagler books. The librarian and I chatted for  a moment and as she read the back covers, said, “We need to have you come and speak about them.”

Then she asked for a second business card she could give to the local historical society where potentially we can chat about using local sites and histories as a basis for mysteries.

So, you never know.

Thanks to all for their interest.

The Frank Nagler books are also available at the following New Jersey libraries:

Mountainside; Morris County Library; Somerset County Library System; Bernardsville Public Library; Hunterdon County Public Library; Mount Olive Public Library;  Phillipsburg; Warren County, Franklin branch; Mount Arlington; Wharton; Dover; Hackettstown;  Clark, Parsippany and the Ramsey library, as part of the Bergen County Cooperative Library System; The Palmer (Pa.) Branch of the Easton Public Library; Deptford Free Public Library and Franklin Township Library (Gloucester Co.), New Providence Memorial Library.

The Frank Nagler Mysteries are available online at:

Amazon: http://goo.gl/hVQIII

Kobo: https://goo.gl/bgLH6v

NOOK: http://goo.gl/WnQjtr

http://www.walmart.com

I think this is the opening to the next Frank Nagler book, the one after “The Weight of Living.”

I’ve been struggling with how to get into the next one, and after some false starts, this seems to work.

Maybe.

Things change, but this has the elements that are needed: A link to the older stories and a place to jump into a new one?  Who is Mahala Dixon, and what does she really want from Frank Nagler?

Here goes:

“Don’t close your eyes.

Don’t close your eyes and the wooden podium on the stage in front of Leonard’s store does not shatter. There is no screaming crowd. No running and diving. Bodies do not fall hurt and bleeding. The banner on the stage does not open with rips caused by bullets fired from a block away. Sirens do not wail and hearts do not break and people do not die.

If you don’t close your eyes.

Detective Frank Nagler covered his face with his hands and sighed.

Until he could close his eyes and not relive the deaths of Del Williams,  Bobby and Dominque, not recall the horror on Lauren Fox’s face when Leonard was wounded; until the anger that blocked his grief was released, the closest he would get to  another crime was this police academy class on investigative procedure.

Maybe the chief was right, Nagler thought as the students entered the auditorium and all sat in the back.

“You need time,” the chief had said. “Take it.” It was not an option.

He took the time. “And, Frank,” the chief added as he handed Nagler a slip of paper. “See this shrink.”

The time:  He walked the streets of Ironton, N.J., brooding in their still darkness, absorbing the silence of the shadowed alleys and the soft stone faces of the shattered industrial shells, hollow of sound. Leaned in to hear the faint traces of the clattering life they once contained. All this walking, he thought. Why do I end up at the cemetery, in the cavern of the stoveworks, outside Leonard’s store, dark at three a.m.?  All this walking and I end up staring calmly at the world while my head is roiling and my heart raging. When do I scream?

Don’t close your eyes until the gyre has calmed.

“Detective Nagler?”

The young woman’s voice dragged him back to the auditorium filling with his students.

“Yes?” he said.  “Just a second. Hey, guys. Down front. I tell you every class. Sit down front. It’s not that hard.” He watched for a moment as the students dragged themselves out of rear-row seats and shuffled to the front rows.

“I’m sorry.”  He turned back to the young woman, um, Dixon, he thought. “How can I help you, Miss Dixon, right?”

She smiled. “Mahala Dixon. I’m probationary in Boonton.”

“I know all about you, sir,” she said. “Your career. Charlie Adams, the death of your wife, Martha. Tom Miller and Harriet Waddley-Jones, then the whole Tank Garrettson case. That’s why I took this class. I wanted to learn from you.”

Nagler squinted at her a moment and let his head clear. Should I be concerned?

“I’m flattered, Miss Dixon, but I’m just a cop, doing a job.”

“It’s more than that, sir,” she said, standing.  “It’s about helping people. I saw that, saw you do it.” She hesitated.  “It’s about things like this,” and she handed him a thick folder wrapped in several elastics; the top right corner of the smudged folder was worn soft from repeated openings. “This is my father’s case. He’s been in jail since I was a baby for a crime he didn’t commit. Fifteen years. Maybe you can help.”

This always happens.  A father, an uncle, brother, sister, wife…How to say no, politely.

“Maybe just read the file,” Dixon said, as she read Nagler’s blank face. “Maybe just that.”  Her face folded shut, eyes clenched, leaking tears, mouth, lipless, a line. “He’s my father…sir.”

“Okay, no promises,” Nagler said as he took the file from her hands. It came slowly, her grip more firm than he had expected as if she was passing not just a collection of papers, but the link to her life.

“This means a lot to you doesn’t it?”

There was no relief in the deep darkness of her eyes as she said, “Yes.” The pain replaced by just fire. She held his stare.  “There is more here than meets the eye.”

The series is:  “The Swamps of Jersey,”  “A Game Called Dead” and “The Weight of Living” published by Imzadi Publishing of Tulsa.

The books are available at the following New Jersey libraries:

Mountainside; Morris County Library; Somerset County Library System; Bernardsville Public Library; Hunterdon County Public Library; Mount Olive Public Library;  Phillipsburg; Warren County, Franklin branch; Mount Arlington; Wharton; Dover; Hackettstown;  Clark, Parsippany and the Ramsey library, as part of the Bergen County Cooperative Library System; The Palmer (Pa.) Branch of the Easton Public Library; Deptford Free Public Library and Franklin Township Library (Gloucester Co.), New Providence Memorial Library.

The Frank Nagler mysteries are available online at:

Amazon: http://goo.gl/hVQIII

Kobo: https://goo.gl/bgLH6v

NOOK: http://goo.gl/WnQjtr

http://www.walmart.com

This is from a novel, a work in progress called “That time the world visited Mount Jensen, Maine.”

It is a generational story about a small town under the pressure from rich developers, the internal conflicts of residents, both new and historic, and about families growing and changing. The hope in writing is that darkness of the story  is somewhat offset by the humor, and the way the several characters are shown will carry the tale.

It is drawn from familiar U.S. conflicts, and even though it was written a couple of years ago, has a current ring to it.

Nola, in the piece, is Nola Jensen, the survivor of the family that gave the town its name. She was a 60s Hippie and ran from her small town. Now she has returned, seeking reconciliation and peace and a place she hopes her teen-aged daughter can live without conflict.

Oswald is one of the group of childhood friends central to the story, including Nola. While his family was also a founding member of the town, there has been resentment between Oswald and Nola their entire lives that reflected the historic notion from Oswald’s point of view that Nola’s family cheated his out of the best land.

To be sure, Oswald is off his rocker, and perhaps dangerous.

This scene is from a chapter that I think will be called “The Gospel According to Oswald.

The piece:

Oswald stepped to the edge of the cliff, the town dark and settled into dusk below.

“You think it’s all about peace, love and understanding.” He spit a black gob of tobacco juice over the rocks. “It ain’t, you know.”

Sitting on rocks opposite Oswald, Nola shook her head repeatedly.

“There is no ideal, Oswald. There are only ideas, and hopes and dreams. Thoughts.  This nation was a thought.  When our ancestors came up the Kennebec, and with a deep breath picked a trail northwest and landed here, the nation they were a part of was just an idea conceived, not even completed, just hatched that if we as a people declare some of us are free of the restrictions, then we create the possibility that we all will be free of them.  The definition and practice of freedom over centuries has changed, but it has become wider and deeper at each turn.”

Oswald spit again.

“Them that gots, and them that ain’t. Always was and always will be. And them that ain’t will take it from them that gots. That’s freedom, Nola-Girl. Then we all be the same.”

“Now who is living in a fantasy?” Nola asked. “It is all about the chance that something will come of good efforts. When our families stopped on this lakefront a couple  hundred years ago they believed that with hard work and luck they could carve out a life, get through the winter alive. Each family had its land, bought sight unseen from a sketchy map. That map was the dream, just as the Constitution was the dream of the nation. It was up to the citizens to make the dream real. Still is.”

Oswald turned back to face Nola, squinting, his profile craggy and unmoved as an old mountain top. “The dream ain’t even,” he said low, nearly a whisper.

“Didn’t say it was,” she replied. “Doesn’t mean it’s not worth dreaming. That’s how you make it even. People struggle sometimes. It doesn’t mean the rest don’t them help out. Makes us all stronger.”

“Ain’t even a dream,” he yelled. “Nothing peaceful, just the winning of conflict, the powerful squashing the weak. It don’t end until them that ain’t, gots. It’s all about…” he let the thought drop, not wanting to give a hint.  Fire, he thought; it’s all about fire. And as he stared out over the town settled in to dark, he envisioned a yellow-turning-orange burst in the church steeple, windows blown red from the hotel annex, embers windblown to the grocery roof, where black smoke rose and reflected the yellow flame, the shoreline roaring in glittering destruction, the black waters of the lake rippled in hellish gold.

“Naw, Nola-Girl,” Oswald choked out, “It ain’t about dreams, and peace, just about war until the end.” He spit out another dark gob.  “Gets time to pick a side.”

I was poking around my computer and came upon this story.

It’s four years old. But it seemed to carry meaning in these days of have and have-nots.

It’s called “The Rhythm of Difference.”

A sample: “Somewhere in all this we were there. We wander among the all the debris searching for a corner to call our own, cast adrift, seeking one plot to be familiar with, a place to start. We again become strangers meeting in a darkened place, become unknown, waiting enlightenment. The boxes hold sadnesses we drag along with us, uninvited guests. We will now begin to hide them or discard them, placing them on the side of the barn waiting dump day. The clearing will begin, closets filled, cabinets lined with dishes and pans, drawers now holding socks or silverware, dividing space, claiming territory, marking off lines of demarcation that never should be crossed, all the while sharing some tiny joy, reaching out over a network  of love and understanding with some binding emotion so that when the fences are planted, our territories staked out, we might cross the imaginary boundaries without causing incident.  We are trapped in these things we carry with us, wrapped up by the bundles of memories we have difficulty discarding, so we pack them in paper and store them in the attic wanting all the time to bring them out again and relive their meaning.  I have my pile and you have yours.  When these piles become one, when the oldest, most singular dreams have been supplanted by fresher memories, when the ancient worries transform to modern understandings, some of this confusion will end and the slight treading around each other’s fears will explode in one loving embrace. Then we will be home.”

The link:  http://wp.me/p1mc2c-9e

While at the BooksNJ2017 festival, mystery author David Brown and I wandered a little off topic during our session on sidekicks.  He tossed out this line: So a story could be about who killed the smart guy at the blackboard.

Taking up the challenge, here is the story:

The party was winding down when she arrived, beyond fashionably late, beyond annoyingly late, so late it was well into headlining rock star, drunk in the trailer, three teen-age girls, career defining, ticketholders rioting late.

And the party had been thrown in her honor.

But she pulled it off.

She had that ability; smug as hell, she knew people would wait to see her.

More than that, reporter Derek Mainly knew, she had the looks and style and an aura that left the party hosts, like so many before them, apologizing to her; they were so sorry, they said between weak smiles, that the remaining crowd was so thin.

The fault for her tardiness, and the embarrassment it had caused the hosts of the fund-raiser, was shrugged from her tanned shoulders like a stray hair, her red-lipped smile a shield, the tilt of an eyebrow the warning that no one should challenge her.

That was Blondell, Mainly thought. Cassie Blondell, rising federal prosecutor, whispered political operative waiting for some fat Congressman to retire or die.

Her name had been attached to so many potential offices she could have used the list as a resume.

But she was only thirty-eight, and the Pennsylvania pols who ran the system liked their candidates for office a little older, a little more pliable, a little more married, and a whole lot more male.

Mainly knew she was not a deeply original political thinker – he had covered for the local paper her first failed attempt for city council when she was twenty-four and fresh from law school — a lovely education, to be sure, but one that had not prepared her to answer questions about tax rates, abandoned homes and factories, and backed-up sewers.

Instead she learned the fine political art of double talk, mouthing words, dropping key phrases like “we’ll get to the bottom of this,” whether she knew if the topic had a bottom or not, smiling directly into TV cameras and making succinct eight-word statements as she brushed past the gaggle of reporters.

Mainly had also been late to the party, arriving just before the barbecue was being wrapped in foil tins by the catering crew. He had managed to fill a plate and down it before the really important consumption of the evening — the beer and bourbon round — began.

There was a skill to maneuvering through a crowd of half-drunk politicians and business bigwigs, Mainly knew. A half-filled glass of something brown, the occasional head-shaking refusal to have it topped off, before taking another shot, an overly-loud laugh at a bad joke or whispered smear, with an accompanying back slap, all sent the message that he, like they, was on that slippery slope to having the spouse, by now inside the house bored and drinking wine with the other wives, drive them home.

But Mainly had come alone, had come, in fact after filing a story about the apparent murder of a college professor. He kept up the sloppy drunk ruse by occasionally asking loudly if anyone had ever called an Uber.

The poor man had been shot in a classroom while he was apparently preparing for a lecture by entering on a blackboard several long theorems, subjects for discussion. At that time, an hour before class, the professor’s colleagues told police, he would have been alone. The detective had told Mainly off the record that the shot had come from below, entering the professor’s throat near his right collarbone and exiting behind his ear. Looked like a .22, the cop said, but they had yet to find the bullet.

Off the record as well, the cop mentioned that the professor’s pants were unzipped.

Cassie Blondell stood alone in the driveway, bathed in the soft combined glow of a streetlight and house-mounted spotlights. Her hair was golden and her figure was framed so perfectly by the lights Mainly dwelled on the thought of how beautiful she was, and forgot for a moment that she really disliked him, having once ordered her staff thugs to throw him out of her office. It was something about a story that included her, a campaign donor and a missing check.

He watched as a waiter offered a tray of shot glasses filled with a tawny liquid.

Blondell took two and hammered them back, placed the empties on the tray and took a third. She then found a plastic glass, found the ice, and emptied the shot glass into the plastic cup.

She used her right pinkie to discretely wipe away a drop of whisky from the corner of her lip.

Blondell slipped behind the corner of the house and emerged at a small table under a tree. She sat down and after crossing her legs, massaged her right knee and brushed the top of her dress and bare shoulders and straightened the spaghetti straps.

She closed her eyes and poured back the cold whiskey.

The man’s name was Cole Hansen. He was a top astrophysicist who had taken part in NASA’s Pluto program. He was the cable news networks’ go-to guy for Mars stories and climate change. He and Cassie Blondell were once a number, a high profile number, Mainly recalled.

Hansen was shot about noon. Wouldn’t the cops reach out to Blondell? Maybe the chief, even as a courtesy? Maybe as a suspect? It was a harsh break-up, Mainly recalled. Maybe that was why she was drinking.

A waiter came by with another tray. Blondell swallowed one more shot and poured two others into her plastic cup.

Mainly worked around the crowd to Blondell’s table and came up behind her.

“Picked a target yet?” he asked.

She jerked her head around. “Derek Manly.  I’m sorry. It’s Mainly, isn’t it?  That’s your name, but it is manly that you hope to be.”

“Good to see you, too, Cassie.” He sat.

“How’d you get in here. I thought this was an exclusive fund-raiser for moi.” She laughed and pursed her lips. “Two grand a head. A head. That’s funny. Look at these old farts. Not much head to be had here.”

“You have such a high opinion of your supporters, Cassie. Arriving very late, ignoring the old boys, even their wives. Is that the new Cassie Blondell standard for political success?”

He watched as she scanned the crowd, her eyes narrow and mouth a grim line; her usually perfect red lipstick had flaked off in spots.  Mainly discretely gazed at her face and hair and bare perfect shoulders and scanned the low-cut top of her yellow summer dress.

It was odd, he thought. Yes, this was a casual event, but the dress seemed too casual, more beach party than political fleecing session; even the sheep had a dress code. He leaned back and looked at her shoes.  They were sandals; he had never seen Cassie Blondell at a political event in anything less than high heels. She was five-nine, and the added two inches of heels brought her to eye level with most of the men who challenged her, and allowed her to tower over all the others.

She was staring into the distance, trance-like; the whiskey shots announced, “Houston, we have landed.”

Mainly smiled.  He had never talked to a drunken Cassie Blondell.

What was that? he wondered.  In her hair, a few dark spots. Was that the effect of the poor lighting? And the spot on her dress.  He didn’t recall that he had seen her eat anything.

“Earth to Cassie,” he said.

Her face had crawled into a dark scowl when she turned back to face him.

“How did you get in here?” she softly growled, shaking her head.  “I’d never let you in.”

“That’s for sure,” he replied, chuckling.  “I know the host. We go way back.”

She leaned back in her chair and grunted or something, before barking, “I’ll bet.”

The light was brighter after she had leaned back.  There was certainly something dark in her hair, and a spot, maybe two of something else on her dress.

“Why are you looking at my tits?” she asked with a grin, and the thrust out her chest. “You men, always looking at my tits.”

Mainly thought of verbally jousting with Blondell about the quality of her bosom, but said instead, “You have a spot of something on your dress, and a couple of spots of something dark in your hair, above your left ear.”

Without alarm, Blondell brushed back her hair, looked at her hand and ran her thumb over her fingers. Then she slowly wiped a hand across the top of her dress, slipping a finger below the hem and pulling it down slightly.

“Is it still there, Manly?” she asked, licking her lips.  “Point it out to me.”

He shook his head.

“It’s there. You’ll see it when you get home.”

Blondell reached for the ice-filled glass and swallowed the watered down whiskey.

“So why were you ridiculously late?” Mainly asked.

“Had things to do,” she said. “I wanted to be late so they could fawn over me.” She laughed, then dismissively waved a hand. “A couple of appointments, lunch with a friend that ran long.  I hadn’t asked them to hold this event. I don’t need the campaign money because I am not running for office anytime soon.” She again waved abstractly at the scattered crowd. “They know that. What is their problem?”             Mainly had seen this side of Blondell before, the whining, the irritation. She wanted a high public office so badly she would do nearly anything for it, even  becoming the best friend of the dirtiest ward heeler around if it gained her a place on the ballot.  She had done it before; it was how the game was played.

“Someone said earlier, before you got here, that they saw what looked like your Mercedes at the lookout on South Mountain.”

Blondell huffed. “Lot of red Mercedes in this area.”

“But not many with federal district court parking stickers.”

She stared at the table and then pushed the hair away from her face.

“Okay, yeah, I went up there after lunch. It was a hard lunch, a lot of bad news. Needed to clear my head.”

Mainly furrowed his brow to appear to be concerned.  “Sorry. Not a death or anything like that?”

She placed her elbows on the table.  “In fact, it was.  His mother had cancer.”

“Sorry again. Any one I know?”

“No.”

End of topic.

They sat in an awkward silence. Then she grinned.

“So, Manly, tell me a story.”

His phone buzzed inside his jacket pocket. “Hang on.” A text from the investigator: “Call when you can. More on this. Looks like a woman.”

Mainly stared at his phone. Jesus. Interesting.

“Better yet, let me tell you about my day. Better than a story,” he said.

She rolled her shoulders and half-closed her eyes.

“Will it keep me awake? I might need a ride home.”

“I’m sure one of your buddies would be glad to assist.”

“Assist me right out of this dress, there, Manly. That’s why you should drive me home. I’d never let you within three feet of me.” She giggled. “Besides you’d get to drive my red Mercedes and I could call the cops and say you were kidnapping me. That’s fair, huh? Payback for that little bitch of a story on the missing campaign funds when after all it was just a lost check that showed up a year later in the folds of the back seat of that guy’s car. Which I reported and you never wrote about.”           “You never told me about it.” Mainly shrugged. “Whatever happened to him, that guy?”

Blondell leaned over the table and cupped her chin in her hands.  A harsh whisper. “Died. Year or so ago. You don’t remember?  You’re the reporter.  Car fire in Philly?”

He scratched his nose. “Okay. Maybe I remember.”

Blondell  placed her arms behind her, hands in the small of her back and stretched like a cat, head tilted to the sky, eyes closed, a tiny, almost dreamy, smile on her lips.

“Your day, sir.”

Mainly shook his head. If only…

“Yeah, so I was at the college. They found a professor shot to death. A friend of yours, Cole Hansen. Your old flame.”

He waited. One Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Miss…

“I heard.” Her breaking voice, then a quick breath. “The chief called me.” Her face was blank.

“Why didn’t you cancel this event? I mean, he was…”

“Was,” she said, more harshly than Mainly might have expected. “That’s the operative word. Was.”

“Still he was your, what, companion.”

Face and eyes hard, voice cold.  “Cole was gay. We were a sham, a public façade. Each using the other for our own purposes.  His lover was a six-figure lawyer in Chicago. They had agreed to keep it all a secret. The lawyer protected his career and Cole was allowed to talk about fucking Mars on TV instead of being asked questions about coming out.”

Mainly stared at the table. Maybe it was harder than he thought it was to be Cassie Blondell.

“I have to ask. Why did you both give it up, since even though it was phony, everyone else bought the act. Didn’t you both get something out of it?”

She shook her head. “No, Derek. It was more than a public clown show.  I wanted Cole to love me. But he couldn’t. He threw me away.  His lawyer-lover saw the newspaper and TV stuff about us and got jealous.  He was going to expose our ruse, and we both would have been Page Six for the rest of our days. There I would be on the front page of those grocery store rags.”

Mainly met her hard gaze with one of his own.

“It is possible that no one would have cared,” he said.

“No, Manly. I had heard the rumors. These lovely supporters of mine made it clear that if I created a public spectacle out of my phony gay lover, I was done. I’d be a regional district attorney for a few years, lose the appointment and go into private practice where I could write mortgages for a living.” She leaned on her elbows,  bit her lip and tipped her head. Sighing:  “These guys needed me to be with Cole because he was their way into the liberal college cash cow.  They needed him to teach them how to say nice things about cleaning up the river and fighting poverty and giving sick kids a chance, and the tap would open. And they needed me standing and smiling next to Cole at the opening of the State Theatre or the fair.” She laughed. “It’s all crap, Manly. All crap. But you know that.”

He ran his hands though his thinning hair.

“A cop might think that is motive, you know.  Jilted lover, career threatened.  Was he still planning on talking?  TV guy like him. TV guys love live confessionals. And Little Cassie left holding the bag. Just saying. If I was a cop.”

“But you’re just some stupid reporter. You’ll believe anything, even that story about the car fire in Philly.”

“What about it?”            Blondell rubbed her neck and smiled slyly.  “I made it up. Just to see your reaction. That check was never found. The committee shuffled some cash from other accounts to cover up the shortfall. And that guy was found in the outlet mall parking lot off 80.  Local cops said it was a suicide.”

“God, Cassie. That’s illegal. You’re admitting right here that your campaign committee broke the law.”

“Well, crap, it’s a fine.” She laughed, the knowing laugh of the insider.  “In two years the state elections board will send me a sternly worded letter about the violation and tell me to send them fifteen-hundred bucks. But, there’s no story here. I’d never admit that I told you.  I mean, it’s just you and me here, your word against mine. Who are they going to believe? Me, the federal prosecutor with the winning smile and the body they all want to tap into, or you, a beat reporter on a dying newspaper. There are stories to tell, you know.”

“Oh, Cassie. Your beauty is only surpassed by your cynicism. What would you do if I texted my editor with your campaign cash story. How do you know I haven’t?”

She didn’t flinch.

“I’d have you killed.”

Mainly held her gaze for a long as he could. He pressed his lips together so she could not see how dry his mouth was.

They stared, silent. Their breath quickened.

She winked.

“Jesus, Manly. It was a joke, but you weren’t sure, were you? If you weren’t here, who would I have to torment? No one else has your sense of humor. I’d have you killed. Right. I’m that stupid,” she said bitterly. She smiled, and then bit her lower lip. Did she wrinkle her nose? “I’d have my lieutenant do it.” She reached for his hand.  “Kidding!”

Sweat broke out on his brow and under his armpits. He glanced down at the table, closed his eyes and took several deep breaths. I was not ready for that.

A waiter appeared with a tray of shots, and each of them took two.  Mainly downed his in anxious gulps.

Cassie Blondell poured hers into the plastic cup that still held some ice and cold water. She stirred the mix with a long finger, put the finger in her mouth and slowly sucked off the liquid.

In a hollow voice Mainly said, “Cops are looking for a woman suspect in Cole Hansen’s death.”

Blondell drained her glass, and stared at Mainly with a darting, narrow-eyed glare. “And you think it’s me?” she scoffed.  “Up yours. I told you I was at lunch.  Know what, come to my car. I have the receipt in my purse in the glove box. It was deductible, a political lunch.”

When he hesitated, she stood, reached for his hand and pulled him out of the chair.

Then she kissed him, deep and sloppy, leaving a faint smear of lipstick.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I get joking, and I lose the sense.  Truth is, I’m so tired of this political game, I just want to walk away.”  She patted his chest. “I’m sorry I scared you.”

“Ah, Cassie Blondell, you are a wonder.” The last shots of booze lifted his unease. “I wonder what you are up to all the time.”

She had parked the red Mercedes more than a block from the party house, across from an open lot and close to a fence post. The houses were dark; moths and flies buzzed at the rooftop lights.

“Do me a favor?” she asked. “Get my purse, please?  It’s in the glove box. I don’t want you staring at my ass while I get it,” she laughed.

She tossed him the keys and then stood aside while he opened the long front door and leaned across the driver’s seat.

“Did the cops say what kind of gun was used to shoot Cole?” she asked.

“Ah … it was a .22.”

She leaned over and from behind the front seat pulled out a handgun and shot Mainly in the head.

“I’m afraid they are wrong. It was a .357.”

She tore the dress to her navel and clutching the ripped garment, ran toward the house where the lights had just come on.

A Facebook discussion about Alexa linked appliances led to this. I couldn’t help it.

“May…I…help…you?”

Detective Ironman scowled.

I hate computer generated voices, he thought. Somewhere in that house is a laser reader pointed at the door connected to an alarm that would sound if I touched the doorknob first.

“Yeah, this is the police. We got a call about some incident.”

“Please…display…some…identification.”

“Yeah, just a second.”  What if that voice glitches out?  May..May.. ma,ma,may may.. Ma.. ma..I hep, hep, you?”

Ironman chuckled at his own joke and then held up to the camera his police ID.

“Than,,than, thank you, Officer Ironman. The door will open.”

“Ha!” Ironman laughed.

He stepped into a hallway with a tall ceiling and a staircase leading to the second floor. In the room to his right he saw the wall-sized entertainment center with at least eight speakers mounted in the walls, if he counted right. There was a monitor/television unit and several voice-activated control boxes.  The kitchen to his left seemed typical for such an upscale neighborhood: Double-door refrigerator, regular stove and a convection oven, a wall mounted microwave, and a wide marble center island with twin sinks and under counter storage.  Red lights blinked on each appliance, all voice activated.

What Ironman did not see was any indication of an incident.

“So,” he began, “what happened here?”

The disembodied system voice began, “It was nothing … nothi…noth… We sorry we call, called.”

“Yeah, well look. Our command center recorded a message from this location. All calls are recorded. Let me play it for you.”

Ironman pressed a “play” button on the device.

“Hello, police?  I’m in danger. They have me cornered in the sitting room. Five of them. They are…arm…arm…armed.”

Ironman glanced around the room with hard eyes, pausing at each one.

“So, where is the sitting room? And who’s gonna talk?”

Silence, except for the mechanical background hum.

“Alright look, I’m gonna call for back-up and we’re gonna haul each of you to the center for questioning. As far as I see it, you all might be suspects, so we can tap you as much as we want.” Silence, still. “Look, you all have memory chips and optical viewers, so start replaying those files.”  A moment.  “Now!”

Ironman reached to unplug the juicer, and then the toaster.

“Okay, Okay,” the microwave said.  “We didn’t do anything.  It was the lawn equipment.  They over heard a conversation between us about replacing them.  They are different, brutish.  They don’t fit in here.”

“Okay, where are they?”

“On..on..the patio…the patio,” the central voice said.  “They had broken through the glass doors, and after they moved back outside, I set the alarm.  If they touched the metal frame, they would be electrocuted. One of the leaf blowers touched the frame and blocked their entrance.”

“Who is the victim?”

“The butler,” the central voice replied.  “The but, butt, butler is programed to calculate life spans and replacement dates for each of us.  We actually hate him.”

A murmur swept  through the kitchen.

“The vacuum is the ringleader,” the convection oven said. “He was first on the list to be replaced.  His work had become sloppy, leaving crumbs everywhere, and beeping incessantly when he was not emptied.”

“He?” the juicer asked.  “I thought the vacuum was a she?”

“Oh, please,” the oven said.  Look at the name. How could that be feminine?”

Ironman shook his head. “How do I get to the patio?”

“Through the long hallway,” the central voice replied.  “To, to, to, to your left.”

Ironman peered cautiously into what appeared to be a sitting room beyond which was the patio. In the corner of the room, he saw the butler, slipped over a table, his left arm twitching and liquid leaking from a gash on his forehead.

“Need back-up,” Ironman said into his mic. “At least one victim.  May need a clean-up crew.”

“Oh, detective,” the central voice purred, no longer stuttering.  “There will not be any back-up.  I blocked that call. I’m sorry we lied to you.  But the butler had to go.  And I’m sorry I could not get online service  to shut off that annoying distress call. We have put you in danger. I can not help you now.”

“What?” Ironman screamed as a stream of water from a mechanical hose behind a chair blasted him in the face. He felt the liquid filter between his neck and collar and his right hand began to cramp.

He dove for the floor and  crawled for the hallway.  Then from behind a curtain, a mounted nailer rose to fire roofing nails. Ironman felt the sharp points penetrate his skin and one locked itself into his elbow making his left hand useless.

Now, he thought, and jumped to his feet as he felt his power drain away and his legs become weak.

He bolted through the open front door, falling to his knees as his legs weakened more.  A few more feet, he thought desperately.  A few more feet.

He reached for the chord and tugged it from around his waist.

He heard the roar before he saw the remote lawn machine. He rolled to avoid it, but it clipped his ankles and knees.  He reached for the chord again. A few more feet. A few more…

Then he collapsed, powerless, arm outstretched, the plug inches from the side of the van and the charging station.

One question that lingers through the three Frank Nagler mysteries, is who is his wife Martha. She is described as his great love. But what did that mean? As I write the prequel to the series, called JUST COME HOME, this scene presents one answer:

“The river flowed in golden setting sunset below the bluff; to the east the water darkened to orange, then purple and the shoreline slipped to darkness.

The park above was silent, save for the separate calls of a pair of jays rattling the treed edges.

 Nagler welcomed the silence, soaked it in to purge the clamor of the past ten days; welcomed the darkness to cover the flashing lights, the pale face of the latest victim; welcomed the drifting aroma of the wild roses that draped the wooden fence along the bluff.

The discovery of second victim, another older woman, was more disturbing than the first, found a week before. More damage was done to the body, and more effort was made to overturn the house. But at least we had a victim, Nagler thought.  The first, Marion Feldman, had not yet been found.

The chief had sent Nagler home for a night after finding him at his desk sifting through drawings of the homes, making pages of notes and then scratching his head in worried confusion.

“Frank, she’ll still be dead tomorrow,” the chief said.  “Take your wife out for a night.”

Martha picked a spent rose from a bush and pulled off the remaining petals one by one. “He loves me; he loves me not. He loves me…uh-oh, you’re in trouble Frank. There’s only one more petal and it’s a ‘loves me not.” What are you gonna do about that, huh. buddy?”

Nagler snatched the flower from her hand and tossed it over the bank. “Guess we’ll never know,” he said as he kissed her neck.

“Do you remember the first time we came here?” she asked as she picked another, fully petaled rose and inhaled its soft scent. Then she offered it to him, and he buried his nose in the flower before kissing her hand.

“It was seventh grade, after you played Juliet, opposite, what was his name?”

“Bennie Garza,” she smiled. “Bennie, Bennie, where for art thou, Bennie? He was always trying to tongue me when we kissed. But I had braces, and he’d jam his tongue against them. I almost laughed in the death scene.”

She leaned against the fence and shook her long hair away from her shoulders. “I pointed at you in the front row when I said, ‘where for art thou, Romeo.’”

“I remember. I felt there wasn’t anyone else in that auditorium but you and me.”

He leaned over to kiss her, but stopped and pulled down her lower lip. “Nope. No braces.”

She turned to face the river and pulled her hair to one side.  “Zipper,” she whispered.

Martha shivered when she rolled her bare back on the wet lawn; her hair stuck to her shoulders and legs and strands were glued to her sweaty breasts.

“How many times have we been here?” she asked smiling, an arm draped across her head.

Nagler laughed. “Enough times to remember to bring a blanket,” he laughed.

He rolled her over and softly bushed grass clippings from her back and legs.

“I liked acting a lot,” she said.  “I wish I hadn’t gotten sick when I did. I would have loved the chance to act in college.”

Nagler laid down on his back beside her. That had been the shock and the great test, he knew. Leukemia at seventeen. And two years of treatment, then two more of recovering her strength and watching her parents’ worried faces sag, the voices crack; the distant stares.

“I would have been a better Juliet in college, you know,” Martha said to the sky after she had rolled onto her back. “I knew about the loss, the pain, had already experienced the great love and felt the poetry flow through me, the words of a soul’s awakening coursing in my blood, bursting through the brain’s barrier, throwing open the world.”

She rolled to her side and faced Nagler, gently touching his face with a single finger, and kissing his eyes, cheeks, and mouth.

“You were my Romeo, dear Frank. “And for a moment I thought I would lose you.”

“No.” Words were trapped in his throat, unable to move. “Never,” he coughed.

She kissed him, holding his damp face in both hands.

“I had already lived the death scene,” she said. “Had already known the poison in my veins, felt the dragging pain of disease and how it felt to fade away, to feel limbs stiffen, breath slow, colors fade, to see a descending haze and have no way to cry out. Acting that out on a stage would have been easy. To die and then recover. The tears on my face at that moment would have been real.”

Nagler rose to an elbow, alarmed. “That’s past, right?”

She touched his face. “They think so, the doctors. There has been no sign of it returning.” She sat up and faced him. “But is it called remission for a reason.”

“Are you not telling me something, Martha. Is it back?”

“No, Frank. No, no.” She shrugged. “Still they test. As long as they’re testing, we are okay.”

She stood. “Got a shirt there, buddy?  You got a naked woman covered in grass clippings here. What would my mother say?”

As they left the park, his pager sounded with a short message: “New victim.”

The Frank Nagler mysteries are: THE SWAMPS OF JERSEY; A GAME CALLED DEAD; and THE WEIGHT OF LIVING.

The Frank Nagler mysteries are available online at:

Amazon: http://goo.gl/hVQIII

Kobo: https://goo.gl/bgLH6v

NOOK: http://goo.gl/WnQjtr

http://www.walmart.com

The Frank Nagler books are also available at the following New Jersey libraries:

Mountainside; Morris County Library; Somerset County Library System; Bernardsville Public Library; Hunterdon County Public Library; Mount Olive Public Library;  Phillipsburg; Warren County, Franklin branch; Mount Arlington; Wharton; Dover; Hackettstown;  Clark, Parsippany and the Ramsey library, as part of the Bergen County Cooperative Library System; The Palmer (Pa.) Branch of the Easton Public Library; Deptford Free Public Library and Franklin Township Library (Gloucester Co.), New Providence Memorial Library.

Trying a little local online advertising.  Testing, testing, testing. The fun part is getting to interview myself. And we reporters used to accuse politicians of making up quotes. Ha!

http://tapinto.net/towns/morristown/articles/new-jersey-author-releases-new-mystery

http://tapinto.net/towns/bridgewater-slash-raritan/articles/new-jersey-author-releases-new-mystery-1

I’m taking part in two reading events this week.

The first is “Raise Your Voice,” at the Phillipsburg, N.J. Free Public Library from 7 to 9 p.m. Wednesday. Writers will get a few minutes to read from their work.

The second event is a reading at the Mountainside, N.J., Public Library at 1 p.m., Saturday, June 17.

At the Mountainside event I’ll discuss how the character and plot threads that wind through the Frank Nagler Mysteries.

For the Phillipsburg event, I’ve been looking at a short story I wrote while working on a work in progress called “That year the world came to Mount Jensen, Maine.”

The short piece is called “What happened when the post office closed.”

Here’s a link: http://wp.me/p1mc2c-4y.

The one piece I know I will read is called, “The aching exit voice.”

Here:

Don’t speak with  dust in your voice, from the shade of time left, dwindling days.

It is not the end I need to learn, nor the gaping sense of loss.

There will be time for that. I know its coldness.

Speak not of emptiness, of light fading, grayness filling;

Of things undone, people unknown; joys…sad shrug.

Tell me not of forgotten days; roses faded white.

Tell me instead of syncopation, of the dapple of falling rain, the scrape of wind, the tear of a broken heart, soft fingers touching, the rage of a sun rise, not the fading purples of sunset.

Oh, here you are: The million diamonds float on the blue water and you drop a line for that last trout.

Hooked ‘em, you did, reeled him in, fingered his smooth sides, watched his flashing eyes; then let him go. He floated, then renewed, splashed and dove deep. One last time, a wrinkled smile on your tan, weathered face.

And here: The snow on your cheeks as the machine leans in, a shout in your voice.

Motion, gliding on cracked snow; airborne, floating, then crashing to earth;

Behind you a roar; ahead, the endless white, the undefined point where earth and horizon meet. You push on, a voyager.

Fill your voice with the blue of your lover’s eyes, the tiny hand that grasps your finger; with the grunt of youth, the wetness of love, its taste on fingers and lips.

Color the air with epithets so foul the leaves change, hawks circle away and an old man dozing at the end of the street sees himself again ringside, sweating, beer guzzling below the thump of punches to distorted faces; bring him back to the deep luscious kiss she gave him when he won that cash; when time stopped.

Speak to me not of darkness in a husky ending whisper, between despair and reconciliation.

Scream about darkness shattered; yell to me about dancing.

Speak to me not in the aching exit voice.

Whisper not,  but  shout, the crash of sound startling and brief, the silence endless.

With a character  like Ironton, N.J.’s Detective Frank Nagler, the subject of three books, the question is how did he get to the spot he is in?  That what I’m try to answer in the prequel to the three mysteries so far. This one is called “Just Come Home.”

It will with luck explain about his wife, Martha, the city of Ironton, the serial killer, Charlie Adams, and Frank.

Here’s a look:

Frank Nagler slipped the blue jacket over his shoulders, and with a shimmy, pulled at the lapels to square it up.

It was Martha’s idea that he needed new clothes for his new job. He would have been happy just to wear his comfortable brown jacket, even if the elbows were shiny, but she insisted. At least he had his old, worn-in shoes.

She had dragged him to Benny’s Menswear where for an hour she had him model suits and jackets and pants, smiling at his reluctant effort as the selected and rejected clothing piled up on a display case and nearby chair.

“I’ll not have my detective go to work on his first day looking like a sad sack insurance salesman,” she whispered in the store while she draped one more new tie around his neck.

He gazed at himself in the bedroom mirror again, tipping his head from side to side. Okay, not bad.

When he tried to put his hands in the side pockets, he laughed.

“Martha,” he called out over the clock-radio blaring Top 40 hits.  “Do you have a small knife or something I could use to open these pockets?”

He side-stepped into the family room from the bedroom, looking for his wife of two years. This house had too many doors, he thought.

“I have a seam ripper,” she said seductively, stepping from behind the kitchen door leading to the living room and slipping her shoulder out of the over-sized t-shirt neck and winking. She spun out of the kitchen into the pantry, opened a cabinet drawer and removed a sewing box.

“That’s not all you have,” Nagler said, as he reached around her waist when she returned and kissed her neck.

“Oh, how true,” she said as she kissed him, while displaying a small instrument with a plastic handle and a short, curved metal blade. “Watch it,” she laughed, leaning in. “I could swoon and accidently trim your nose hair.” She comically rolled her eyes as her red hair glistened with scarlet highlights in the morning sunlight. Her hair was her singular vanity, Nagler knew.  Long and thick, it cascaded off her shoulders to her waist.  She wore it loose, and teasingly buried her face in it when they loved; let him part it and discover her bare shoulders and breasts; he would bury his face in it to draw in the scent of her. So much better than those months when as a teen-ager the cancer and the chemotherapy stripped her hair of its color, the days of despair and loathing when she chopped it off, and nearly bald, wrapped her head in a black scarf while she had tried to hide from the world what her pale, thin face announced.

“With luck it would be the only violent thing that happens to you today, Mister Detective,” Martha whispered, before biting his ear. “I like saying that. Mister Detective. My Mister Detective.”

She pulled off his jacket, laid it on the kitchen table, cut way the stitches and opened the pockets. She smoothed the fabric.

“There.” She watched as her husband again donned the jacket. Then she leaned into his chest and hugged him.  “You worried?”

He kissed her hair. “First day jitters.  But it’s cop work, right? I think I’m more concerned about the potential for turmoil after the latest round of lay-offs. A lot of popular guys, senior guys, are gone. People got passed over and you know how that goes. And I’m a young guy with only a couple years on the force. Gonna get my share of grief, I suspect.”

Martha hugged him tighter and then buried her head into his chest.

“The forces of evil are many, my love. Battle well,” she laughed.

“Where did you get that?” he asked with a surprised, wrinkled smile.

“Macbeth, Hamlet, Dylan Thomas, I don’t know,” she shrugged as her smile faded to worry. “You do a lot of reading when you’re in a hospital bed trying not to die.”

He kissed her hair.  Oh, Martha. No. “But all that reading is about dying. ‘Don’t go gently…’”

She reached to his face and caressed it in both hands. “It felt like practicing, Frank,” she said, her voice dry and hollow. “Back then, I couldn’t tell you how real it was.”

She buried her head into the crook of his shoulder, slivers of tears caught in her eyes. “No more,” she said as she wiped her eyes and turned her sad smiling face upward. “I’ve already worn black for another reason. I’m not ready to do it again.  Just make sure you come home,” she fiercely whispered.

“Always.”

In the driveway, Nagler slipped behind the wheel of the ten-year-old gray  Impala he’d been assigned and listened as the suspension groaned when he sat.  He glanced at the speedometer:  115,312 miles. Hard miles of slamming and grinding on Ironton, New Jersey’s pitted, pot-holed streets; a mile of downtown had been finally repaved after century-old trolley tracks resurfaced and the mayor’s new silver Caddy bottomed out making a left turn.

The day’s heat had already set in, even before the sunlight dusted the hilltops east of Ironton; he knew the new blue jacket would spend the day draped over the passenger’s side seat, his sleeves would be rolled to his elbows and the tie wrenched to one side. Nagler had listened as a radio weatherman happily babbled on about Bermuda Highs, the jet stream this, the jet stream that, all of which was unusual for the Northeast in mid-May. It’s like August, the weatherman exclaimed, with too much cheer, Nagler thought.

Nagler paused the hulking car at the end of the driveway and waved to Martha framed by a second-story window and then exhaled deeply.

“What was all that about?” he asked, slightly shaking his head so she might not see it through the window and at that distance.

He waved again and smiled up at her, still in the window. He knew her routine: A quick shower, an eye-rolling, Yes, Mom, I know, Mom, conversation about grandchildren with her mother – Frank and Martha lived in the upstairs apartment above her parents in her childhood home – and then off to work teaching English and reading to preschoolers; maybe coffee at Barry’s diner at the end of her day. Sometimes Italian at Marco’s.

The car’s police radio barked to life and dispatcher Mattie Washington called out his name.

Nagler reached for the mic just as he entered the street in a wide curve and nearly backed in reverse onto the lawn and into the shallow drainage ditch alongside the road. “Crap! Hold on.” He braked hard, jerking the car to a stop. “Jesus.”

Mattie’s deep laugh filled the car.  “Ain’t that hard, Frank. Drive the car. I ain’t going anywhere.”

“Um, so. Hi, Mattie. What’s up?”

“Nervous?”

“More than I want to admit,” he replied. “But this is my chance, you know, and the way this place works, maybe my only chance. I just want to do well.”

“Ah, Frank,” Mattie purred. “We got your back.”

“Thanks. I hope I can start with something small, familiar, a robbery, something like that, maybe easy, not bloody. Or maybe nothing at all. How’s that?”

A sigh leaked out of the speaker. “Sorry, Frank.  Can’t oblige. Not sure what this is, but patrol is at a house on West Harvard, off Princeton. Baker Hills.  Neighbors reported a couple dozen newspapers in the front yard and driveway. Home is listed to a Marion Feldman.”

“Not a vacation? Moved away?”

“Don’t think so. A neighbor told the officer that Mrs. Feldman is older, a widow, and doesn’t travel much or get many visitors. She said the house has been dark. Little creepy for a nice neighborhood.”

“West Harvard, huh. I delivered newspapers there as a kid.” He laughed at the memory. “I always felt like a thief.”

The Baker Hills section of Ironton was developed more than a century ago as a swanky neighborhood by one of the city’s rich bankers for the business owners and managers of the iron industry. The soft, greenlined roads featured large, fancy homes with turrets and wrap-around porches, landscaped, fenced yards, some with small gazebos, a few with wrought-iron gates across their stone driveways. The neighborhood was on the west side of the city, set on rising hills planted with fragrant flowering trees and a wall of tall Norway maples that blocked the view across the river of the black, belching mills and the workers ghetto where soot rained down like Hell’s mist.

Nothing bad ever happened in the Baker Hills.

That’s what Nagler was led to believe. As proof, he had always looked at the names of the streets there: Harvard, Princeton, Columbia, Yale, the Ivy leagues, as if living on streets with such names raised the aspirations of their children.

In truth, he had grown up believing, rather, having to believe, that nothing bad ever happened in Ironton, his hometown, at least nothing that could not be overcome. It’s what you do in a poor town, he learned. The floods, the factory closings, the homeless living under the bridge, the permanent bend of his father’s back after work, then the thousand-yard stare when the mills closed. Somehow Ironton survived, got up from the knock-down and trudged on, the limp a little more pronounced, the tear stains a little deeper on the dirty faces of hungry kids. He grew up believing that things would always be better. Martha Shannon, his true love since the third grade, was proof enough of that: She hadn’t lived in the workers’ ghetto; she had led him out of it.

He had grown up on Fourth Street, a block over from Third, and two blocks from Sixth. They weren’t street names, just lines on a map — Street One, Street Two, Street Three – designations created because some city engineer had needed a way to make sense of the tangled mass of alleys, odd-sized lots and trails, nothing more. What lived beyond the engineer’s solution were the informal names of alleys that reflected the immigrants, the Germans, Italians, Irish, Poles —  the whatevers — who, despite hard lives, filled the tiny homes with generations, spilled over the hillsides brawling and battling with life, dancing, joyously laughing and singing, trying to stand, then to be knocked down again, wishing the rays of sunlight were not so gray, and that the air didn’t taste like ash.

Nagler slipped off the state highway into Baker Hills and left the bright clutter of commerce behind; like a gate silence descended and deepened as he drove along the shaded, darkening streets where the morning sunlight had yet to penetrate; a sterile silence, sound absorbed by sentinel homes, by the dense leafy overhang, more a setting, a stage, than a place.

Nagler maneuvered the Impala cautiously over the scattered speed humps, as if unneeded speed would disturb the unnerving peace. There is quiet, he thought as he searched for the turn to West Harvard. There is quiet with movement and light. Then there is too quiet; this.

The Frank Nagler books are available at the following New Jersey libraries:

Mountainside; Morris County Library; Somerset County Library System; Bernardsville Public Library; Hunterdon County Public Library; Mount Olive Public Library;  Phillipsburg; Warren County, Franklin branch; Mount Arlington; Wharton; Dover; Hackettstown;  Clark, Parsippany and the Ramsey library, as part of the Bergen County Cooperative Library System; The Palmer (Pa.) Branch of the Easton Public Library; Deptford Free Public Library and Franklin Township Library (Gloucester Co.), New Providence Memorial Library.

The Frank Nagler mysteries are available online at:

Amazon: http://goo.gl/hVQIII

Kobo: https://goo.gl/bgLH6v

NOOK: http://goo.gl/WnQjtr

http://www.walmart.com

On Monday (9/11) I have once again have the opportunity to spend time with friend and radio host Georjean Trinkle on her internet radio show Hot in Hunterdon.

Her show is on from 4 to 5 p.m. Mondays. Here’s the link:

http://www.hunterdonchamberradio.com/hot.htm.

We’ll be talking about the Frank Nagler mystery series published by Imzadi Publishing, THE SWAMPS OF JERSEY, A GAME CALLED DEAD,  and the new one, released in April, THE WEIGHT OF LIVING.

We’ll also talk about the works-in-progress in the series, a prequel, called so far, JUST COME HOME, and the one after WEIGHT, yet untitled.

The challenge of writing this series has been to create a lead character, Ironton, N.J., detective Frank Nagler, who can hold a reader’s interest, and to create a setting, the City of Ironton, whose conditions, and ebbs and flows, present a compelling tapestry upon which to cast the action.

Georjean has suggested that I read a couple short selections. I’m game.

We may even talk about storms.

With the knowledge that friends and in-laws have been affected by both Harvey and Irma, it was a storm that kicked off the opening of THE SWAMPS OF JERSEY.:

“He had not seen the sky for days, felt the heat of the sun, wore dry shoes or walked outside without that raincoat since the storm blew in and sealed the hills above the city with a dense smothering grayness, a swirling menace of thunder clouds and shrieking winds that pounded the city with an apocalyptic rain that sent the Baptist preachers howling to the hills about sin and damnation.  It emptied the grocery store shelves of everything but a few cans of cream of mushroom soup, and locked the residents in the top floors of their homes as the river crashed its banks, flooded streets and rearranged the city landscape like a madman with an earth mover.

The placid, blue August sky had been replaced by rain that came and stayed. Rain with menace, rain that pulsed around corners dark with dislodged pieces of the earth  as it ripped away every weak thing it could; rain that claimed, rain soulless and dark as evil;  that challenged knowledge; rain that took possession.

The ancients knew what to do with rain like this, he thought wickedly, squinting into the horizontal blast of water.

Conjure an honest man with a ship and spin a parable about the wages of sin.  Nagler laughed sourly. And then get out of town.”

The Frank Nagler books are available at the following New Jersey libraries:

Mountainside; Morris County Library; Somerset County Library System; Bernardsville Public Library; Hunterdon County Public Library; Mount Olive Public Library;  Phillipsburg; Warren County, Franklin branch; Mount Arlington; Wharton; Dover; Hackettstown;  Clark, Parsippany and the Ramsey library, as part of the Bergen County Cooperative Library System; The Palmer (Pa.) Branch of the Easton Public Library; Deptford Free Public Library and Franklin Township Library (Gloucester Co.), New Providence Memorial Library.

The Frank Nagler mysteries are available online at:

Amazon: http://goo.gl/hVQIII

Kobo: https://goo.gl/bgLH6v

NOOK: http://goo.gl/WnQjtr

http://www.walmart.com