Donna Andrews - Chesapeake Crimes - This Job Is Murder!

Dr. Shepherd twisted his face toward the ceiling and counted off on his fingers. The jury did the same. “Yes, that’s right.”

The jury came back in just thirty minutes. Not guilty.

I smiled to myself and thought about what I would say to Annie-how happy I was for her, for us. I drove to her house and waited.

At midnight, her lawyer’s car pulled up, and the two of them got out. He had one arm wrapped around a half-empty magnum of champagne and the other around Annette. The two of them, laughing, staggered into her house.

I stared at her bedroom window long after the light had gone out.

Smita Harish Jain has been working in academia for almost twenty years, which has given her lots of fodder for her writing. This isn’t the first time she’s killed someone…on paper.

The truth is, I don’t care enough about anyone to think about killing them. I generally keep to myself. So I certainly never planned on writing a story about murder. But the idea popped into my head, and it wouldn’t leave me alone.

I don’t write fiction and, more importantly, I don’t know where to sell it, so I pushed the thought away. I had a living to make. Planted in a sandy railroad town on the outskirts of the square states, far from the center of the literary world, I make the most of my remoteness by writing magazine articles about a neglected region.

My last assignment had not been my favorite, mainly because of an unpleasant interview with an antiques appraiser. Though the receptionist worked with all the offices on his floor, she didn’t seem overworked. She peered at me above a tabloid. “Yeah?” Very professional.

“I’m here to see Will Renswick. I have an appointment.” I stared pointedly at her empty desk calendar.

She waved a hand behind her. “Last one on the right.”

Last one on the right was a miniscule room still reminiscing on its likely origin as a closet, with stacks of boxes covering two walls and a battered desk along a third. A small, dust-covered window offered hope of escape. The man inside looked as if he’d just crawled in through that window. Mud-splattered boots, worn jeans, and sunburned cheeks all testified to his preference for the outdoors.

“Mr. Renswick?” The room couldn’t hold us both, so I stood in the hall and held out my business card. “I’m Annabelle Gilbert. I called you last week?”

He took the card. “I remember.”

I pulled out my notebook. “I’m writing about Western antiques-spurs, buckles, boots. For example, the Spanish spurs, espuela grande -how have they been adapted?”

The man talked. And talked. Leaning against his desk, he launched into a lecture that gave me way more information than I needed. He extolled the craftsmanship of spurs and the skill of those who made them, including Oscar Crockett.

“Any relation to Davy?” I asked, mainly to stop the flow.

“Not that I know.” He looked down at me through half-closed eyes. “Why aren’t you home making dinner for your husband?”

I showed him my teeth. “Because I have to earn the dinner before I can cook it.” I tapped my notebook. “What about today? What kind of spurs do cowboys wear?”

“Little lady, pickup trucks don’t need spurs. There aren’t many real cowboys today.”

“There are still cows, right?” I spoke just loud enough for him to hear.

The bellow that emerged made me jump. “How dare you tell me about cowboys! Get home where you belong!” He punctuated his instruction with a door slam in my face. I avoided the receptionist’s stare as I left.

I’d been glad to finish that article and move on to one on railroads, even though I was stuck on how to approach it. I pushed myself away from the computer, dumped Cat off my lap, and brushed orange fur from my knees. After Cat followed me home last year and stayed, I refused to name him Marmalade or Fluffy or Pumpkin. I named him Cat because that’s what he is. I’m a nonfiction type of person.

Cat settled himself in his usual corner of the sofa as if the move had been his idea. Though my apartment is minimalist-bare floors, no pictures on the wall-after Cat arrived, I bought a lumpy, overstuffed sofa at a garage sale. He accepted the gift without a trace of gratitude. I liked that about him.

I captured my hair into a ponytail and shrugged on a thin sweater against the morning breeze before heading down to the coffee shop. After standing in line behind two women chatting about a reality show, I eventually got my latte. Gripping my cup’s cardboard sleeve, I skirted the edge of the café to sit at a table for two in the back corner. In my case, a table for one. Other customers crowded by the window, but I prefer walls. The boundaries are clearer.

I sipped my coffee and pushed my mind toward conductors and stationmasters. Then, like train cars coupling, the story idea, the Renswick interview, and the railroads connected. Murder on the Orient Express . Cowboy collides with caboose. Something like that.

Steamed milk dripped onto my knuckles as I trotted back to my apartment. My fingers couldn’t hit the keyboard fast enough. I churned through search engines to see how killing someone and tossing them off a train could look like an accident. I came across references to bodies found near train tracks over the past several years, along with cargo thefts where police suspected a group of transients. I put the two together and patterned my crime like a gang killing, so the murderer could blame it on the gang. The cargo thieves had never been caught, so I looked up local gangs and learned all about them: the Hobo Gang with their black bandannas, the Losers with their snake tattoos, and even a gang that only took in guys who had already been in prison. Ideas snapped into place, and I alternated between the Internet and the story, folding in the search results as my plot hit critical points.

By midnight, the tips of my fingers were sore, my brain felt pleasantly emptied, and a passable draft stared back at me. I saved it to my hard drive and launched myself onto my bed, so tired I fell asleep in midair.

After I finished my railroad article, I re-read my murder story. Half-decent. Fully decent for my first try at fiction. By the end of the week, I’d begun exploring fiction markets to find out who’d pay me for it.

Saturday afternoon, two plainclothes cops showed up at my door. One was tall and very nice looking; the other was short and somewhat wide. The tall one spoke. “Ms. Gilbert? Annabelle Gilbert?”

At my nod, they flashed badges and the tall one said, “I’m Detective Brogan and this is Detective Short.” I didn’t smother my laugh fast enough, and Short glared at me. Brogan asked, “Do you know a Willard Renswick?”

Oh, no. Whatever he’d done, I did not want to be involved.

“I don’t think so. Why?”

Brogan looked at me through tangled blond lashes, then at my apartment. I took the hint. “Would you like to come in?” I asked. They walked in before I finished the sentence. As they scanned the apartment, I was grateful for its neatness, but, watching Brogan stride across the room, I regretted not losing those ten extra pounds.

Brogan perched on the edge of the sofa while Short stood next to it, his head now slightly above Brogan’s. Cat, displaced from his spot, watched from the kitchen, tail twitching.

I sat in my desk chair and swiveled to face them, wishing I’d worn a skirt. “What can I do for you?” I asked. What had Renswick done?

“Are you sure you don’t know him?” Short said.

“No, I’m not sure. I meet a lot of people.”

Brogan raked a hand through short hair. “How so?” He softened the question with a smile from bright blue eyes.