Trace Evidence

There’s a fascinating mechanism hardwired into our human behavior that engages interest, boosts retention, and provides a satisfying sense of closure in many a life situation. I’ll call this phenomenon The Rule of Three and apply it, for our purposes, to writing and telling a story.

I use the term “rule” loosely since there are few, if any, rock-hard rules to writing and the three that once existed are lost to history, as pointed out by Somerset Maugham. There is, however, a trove of time-honored traditions so ingrained in our culture and consciousness that calling upon them invokes power while ignoring them may constitute a missed opportunity.

Or worse.

So let us embark on an exploration of The Rule of Three, that we may discover, examine, and enjoy this intriguing device. (see what I did there?)

Consider: do things really happen in threes? Or does it just seem that way because the convention is so firmly embedded in our cultural expectations? It’s everywhere.

Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Blood, sweat, and tears.

Sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll.

Comedy writers understand the inherent power of Three and know how to wield it with impeccable timing. Here’s Dave Barry serving it up:

“I should be a happy man. I have all the elements of a good life: a loving family, a nice home, a dog that doesn’t pee indoors without a good reason.”

Here’s another example with a mystery/crime twist from Laura Kightlinger:

“I can’t think of anything worse after a night of drinking than waking up next to someone and not being able to remember their name, or how you met, or why they’re dead.”

And one more, from The Dick Van Dyke show—a waitress serving a bald man:

“Can I get you anything? Cup of coffee? Doughnut? Toupee?”

I challenge you to find a political speech of more than three minutes that isn’t rife with examples. Take this, from Benjamin Disraeli:

“There are three kinds of lies—lies, damned lies, and statistics.”

Or this sage advice for speakers, from Franklin Roosevelt:

“Be sincere. Be brief. Be seated.”

And harking back to my high school humanities class, a literary instance from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar:

“Friends, Romans, Countrymen. Lend me your ears.”

And since we’re on the subject of literature and entertainment, how about Goldilocks and The Three Bears, The Three Musketeers, or The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.

I remember watching a Sesame Street sketch as a child, with a catchy tune by The Talking Heads that still plays in my mind. It’s about a cartoon creature named Seymour caught up in a story that has a beginning, middle, and an end.

In writing, we often use the three-act structure. We employ three try-fail cycles in a buildup to the climactic scene.

We can use The Rule of Three to establish a pattern and then break it to instill a sense of unease or outright surprise in the stories we tell.

We can use it to direct reader attention, emphasizing what we want them to remember by keeping it within the three-part structure. Or—a nifty tool for those of us who write mysteries—we can use it to hide in plain sight what we want our readers to forget.

Thus, we can play fair, providing that vital clue, but burying it in the fourth position out of a list of five. People tend to remember the first, second, and last items in a list, so a catalog of just three items sticks in the memory, while a longer list leaves a lot of scope for hiding information.

And think of the potential for deepening character dynamics. With just two characters, A interacts with B and B interacts with A. But when you add a third character, possibilities for conflict sprout like dandelions after a spring rain.

Writers through the ages have used the power of Three to create memorable and compelling stories. There’s the triangle of Elizabeth Bennett, Mr. Darcy, and George Wickham in Pride and Prejudice. Rick, Ilsa, and Laszlo in Casablanca.

And what if the writers of the movie Ghost had left out Oda Mae? Instead, they created a gap between Sam and Molly that only Oda Mae could fill, adding the dimension and conflict that makes the film so enjoyable to watch.

And much of what we experience as a result of The Rule of Three—both on the part of the reader and the writer—occurs on a subconscious level, making it all the more powerful.

I bring all of this up because The Rule of Three is what prompted me to write my story, “Delivering the Egg MacGuffin,” which I’m delighted to see appearing in the July/August 2024 issue of AHMM.

I took a writing workshop based on exploring The Rule of Three in storytelling. The assignment at the end of the class was to write a story using what we learned. I leave it to you to read my Egg MacGuffin story and discover what I did with The Rule of Three, but I want to tell you about one very obvious way I used the device because it involves a subject I find fascinating—perspective.

A story should be told from the perspective, or Point of View, of the character best positioned to communicate that story to readers. But this doesn’t look the same for every story.

One story may feature a single POV character relating the entirety of the tale, while another story may be told by multiple characters through their own points of view. Add to this another dimension—when I am reading or writing a story, I am keenly aware that other characters, besides the one “speaking,” have their own lives, their own stories, viewed through their own prisms.

And sometimes, those stories must be told.

In “Delivering the Egg MacGuffin,” I give readers the story of a single event from three different viewpoints, each one peeling back a few layers to reveal more about what actually happened.

I’m intrigued by the concept of differing perspectives, as in the movie Rashomon, where Kurosawa uses the technique to reveal the complexities of human nature. Four people give their account of the same incident—a murder—and each is accurate in its way and yet quite different.

I used the same sort of idea when I wrote my first two novels. In Nocturne in Ashes, my main character, Riley Forte, is trapped in an isolated community with a killer after the catastrophic eruption of Mt. Rainier. She teams up with a cop, but their distress call is cut short when cell towers and radio communications fail. Three days pass before help arrives.

In my original plans for the book, the sheriff’s deputies who respond to their call had their own point of view chapters, but there was so much to tell in this five-hundred-page thriller that I had to cut their subplot from the final version.

However, Chief Deputy Randall Steadman and his partner, Frost, screamed to have their story told. That’s when I created their paraquel—not a prequel or sequel, but a story happening alongside another story, touching briefly at a few points and centered on the same major event, but distinct and thrilling in its own right.

That’s how Steadman’s Blind was born.

It may be true that there’s nothing new under the sun and every story has already been told. Perhaps all we can offer, as writers and storytellers, is our own voice, imagination, and perspectives as we craft our stories the best way we know how, using techniques like The Rule of Three to engage, entertain, and thrill our readers.

That’s the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

I’m one of those readers who scans the first paragraph of a book and puts it down if it doesn’t rope me in.  If I’m feeling ornery, I’ll give the author only one line to snag me.  So, as a writer, I make a point of trying to opening stories with a pop to avoid losing those readers who are as unreasonably quick to judge as I. 

I’m not a fan of setting the scene before diving into a story. Why should my readers be interested in what a character feels or how a setting looks unless they’re already invested in that character or wonder about that setting.  As Elmore Leonard—who knew a thing or two about writing—famously advised, “Never open a book with weather.” 

Perhaps cozy, romance or “literary” readers have more patience than noir or hard-boiled fans, but my readers want to be hurled, limbs flailing, into the story. 

That doesn’t mean that you have to start with something like, “His face hit the pavement hard,” as one of my story begins. You can be gentle if you start with a twist.  The unexpected can stand in for the shocker.

Here’s the opening to my story, Honeymoon Sweet:

“For a sweet house, right on Santa Monica Beach, it was unbelievably easy to break into. Mickey found a window he could open with a putty knife, so the double-locked doors were a joke. And Lana disabled the alarm within the forty-five-second grace period before it would have triggered. They were in and no one knew. What a great way to kick off the honeymoon.”

Did it grab your attention?  A twisted open implies, right up front, that more surprises are in store.  I like that in a story. Sue Grafton used the device to launch an empire.  Here’s how she opened A is for Alibi: “My name is Kinsey Milhone.  I’m a private investigator, licensed by the state of California.  I’m thirty-two years old, twice divorced, no kids.  The day before yesterday I killed someone and the fact weighs heavily on my mind.”

She lulls you with a straightforward description of a divorcee detective, then smacks you awake with the unexpected.

 Another opening tactic is the suggestive hook.  In the first paragraph of my first novel Go Down Hard I use an image:

“I look through the spyhole.  Gloria has a bottle of gin in her hand and a pair of cuffs hanging from her belt loop.  A deadly combination.”

It’s a soft open for a noir thriller, but doesn’t Gloria pique your interest?   

Michael Connelly opened The Poet with a suggestive concept: “Death is my beat.  I make my living from it.” 

How can you put that book down before you’ve satisfied your curiosity about the narrator?  Make readers wonder and you’ve got them hooked.

These are just two of a multitude of possible opening tactics, but I hope you got the idea.  Bottom line: hit ’em fast and hard and where they least expect it.

The very first short story I sold to Dell Magazines, was “Pigskill”, published in 1993 by Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine. I owed the germ of the plot to a couple of paragraphs in The Telegraph. My husband, an international soccer specialist, had a subscription, because back in the pre-internet days, the London paper provided updates on European “football” and, more importantly to me, excellent crime coverage.

One piece that caught my eye was the tale of an Avon Lady, in those days a door to door traveling saleswoman, who had been murdered on her rounds and disposed of via the denizens of a local pig farm. This item lodged in my mind. Eventually, after a fair bit of time and an uncomfortable call to a swine specialist at the Connecticut Agricultural division, it became a story about an impulsive vacation romance that ended badly all round.

My most recent story for Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, “Up and Gone,” had a similar genesis, this time from a much more recent story in The New York Times about a wife and mother who had vanished in the 1970’s, seemingly without a trace. Her husband told the children she had simply left, and although he was himself a policeman, he never reported her missing.

A skeptical reader may think fortunate that he died before modern DNA matched a long unidentified corpse with family DNA. But the children insisted that their father was a good man, a careful father, all in all a good citizen. Unlike the genesis of “Pigskill,” this sad story struck me as one about consequences and aftermath and uncertainty, and the crucial part of the story was the impact of their ambiguous inheritance on the children. This was a novel in embryo, not a short story, and I am retired from novel writing.

However, one little detail stayed with me: the fact the husband did not report his wife missing and, beyond telling the children she was gone, never explained, never speculated—a striking passivity, especially in a cop. I wondered about that attitude, and eventually Grant and Evelyn arrived, an unhappily married suburban couple, both dissatisfied, both open to a change in circumstances, and neither one a particularly moral character.

This, in fact, is how most of my stories and novels have been conceived: something, often in the press or otherwise in print or on TV, presents an idea. After a while, sometimes a few weeks, sometimes several years, the idea appears in a different context and develops into a story.

For, although my excellent early editor Ellen Joseph quite liked stories “ripped from the headlines,” a direct borrowing of the narrative line has never worked for me. If I know the whole plot from start to finish, I cannot make myself write it out. For me, the pleasure of composing both novels and stories is the elemental pleasure of learning what happens next.

So it was with “Up and Gone,” where a disappearance opens the possibility of happiness, and where societal disapproval turns out to have a dangerous upside.

I read all kinds of fiction—fantasy, crime, suspense, thriller, science fiction—but they all have to have one thing, or I won’t finish the book: strong characters.

The story can have a fascinating plot, with amazing twists and turns, but if it doesn’t have characters I care about, I’m gone. Think Atticus Finch, Armand Gamache, Severus Snape, Scarlett O’Hara. However you feel about them, they are unforgettable.

But how do these great characters spring forth from the minds of writers? From their fertile imagination, of course, but also from real life.

These writers, like me, steal from people.

Little things, like an interesting turn of phrase, or a clumsy gait, or the way eyes shift away in disapproval.

A bit like Frankenstein building his monster, we add a little of this, take away a little of that.

But sometimes, sometimes we meet someone whose very presence twangs a response in us.

This is what happened with Estelle Martin, the main character in “Chuck Berry is Missing.” Estelle (better known as Stella) emerged from my subconscious fully formed and inspired by a woman I once worked for. Let’s call her Harriet.

Harriet was my boss in a big organization that will remain nameless. I should mention here that this nameless organization was blessed with a number of strong, smart, and quirky women leaders, but Harriet strode into our lives like a ship plowing through stormy waters: sure, steady and powerful. She towered physically over most of us even though she always wore flats. She couldn’t care less about being fashionable. She was fierce, capable and not afraid of hard work. She was invariably kind and patient, but did not suffer fools gladly or people who wasted her time.

And one day, she popped into my head when I started writing a story about a retired RCMP officer and the adventures that fell into her lap. So Harriet became the kernel for Stella Martin, former chief superintendent of Royal Canadian Mounted Police “M” Division in Whitehorse, Yukon.

While Stella retained some of Harriet’s best attributes, I gave her a waspish tongue and made her older, more impatient, and a little antisocial. I also made her disconcertingly honest and ferociously loyal, with an abiding thirst for justice.

She’s not easy to befriend, but certainly worth getting to know. At least, I think so.

The first Stella story, “The Mittens,” appeared in the Jan/Feb 2023 issue of AHMM. “Chuck Berry is Missing” is in the July/Aug 2024 issue.

Sometimes I have no idea where I get the idea for a short story but I can tell you exactly what inspired “Professor Pie is Going to Die” in the May/June issue of AHMM.  It was “Mr. Jolly Gets His Jollies,” by Tim Baker, which appeared in the January/February issue three years earlier.

Do I hear you mumbling the word “plagiarism?”  Shame on you for such skepticism.  While Baker’s story was terrific I didn’t touch his plot at all.

No, what connected for me was the name of one of the characters, J.P. Corguts, and the illustration by Kelly Denato, which included a clown.  Together they made me think of J.P. Patches.

If you grew up in the Seattle area during a certain era it is likely that The J.P. Patches Show was your favorite TV program.  From 1958 to 1981 Chris Wedes, in clown makeup, played “the Mayor of the Town Dump.” Along with Bob Newman who played his girlfriend Gertrude they entertained a generation of kids and after the show went off the air they continued to perform at charity events and children’s hospitals.  They were so beloved that there is even a statue of them in Fremont, Seattle’s most eccentric neighborhood.

I grew up in New Jersey so I had never heard of Patches until I moved to Washington and he was off the air by then, but I was raised on similar shows from New York (Sandy Becker, Sonny Fox, Soupy Sales, etc.)          

But once Tim Baker’s story made me remember Patches it got me thinking: I couldn’t recall any mystery stories about local children’s show hosts.  I decided to write about an actor who played one such beloved character. 

You can find on the Internet a list of thousands of local TV kids shows from around the nation and the hosts of many of them had titles of respect: Officer Joe, Miss Becky, and so on.  I got halfway through the list before I got tired of writing them down: Admiral, Commodore, Skipper, Captain,  Sergeant, Sheriff, Deputy, Marshal, Ranger, Mother, and Grandpa, plus enough Uncles and Aunts to crowd a family reunion.

So my character became Professor Pie. Many years after the show leaves the air the actor who played him returns to the city of his fame for a nostalgia fair, only to discover that someone very much doesn’t want him there.

I hope Patches and Gertrude never faced such danger.

Computer Science pioneer and U.S. Navy Rear Admiral Grace Hopper said, “A ship in port is safe, but that’s not what ships are built for.”

There are a lot of ships leaving port these days. People are quitting, leaving the safety of their jobs, in record numbers. There’s even a name for the phenomenon. In the midst of the pandemic, back in 2021, Texas A&M University professor Anthony Klotz first coined the phrase the Great Resignation.

The field of education is no exception to this new mass exodus. Teachers seem to be retiring, moving to new territory, and changing professions in record numbers. It’s not hard to find a disgruntled teacher. The demands of the job are all-consuming. A college professor of mine once told our class of budding teachers that if we were doing the job the way it needed to be done, we would barely be able to squeeze in three meals a day. He might have been exaggerating some, but not by much.

Most likely there are a lot more disgruntled employees of all types out there who would opt to jump on the quitting bandwagon and get the hell out of Dodge if they weren’t so practical and such sticklers for minor details in life, like paying their bills and feeding their families. And so they remain. Fear of an unknown future keeps them in their safe port.

Readers in general, and mystery readers in particular, often ask writers about where their ideas for stories come from. My answer to that is often “What if?’

I wrote the story Murder, With Resignation in the summer of 2020, well before the term Great Resignation went viral. But the idea for the story goes back even farther, to one of the times when I confess to playing the role of disgruntled teacher myself.

About twenty-some years ago, towards the end of one particularly frustrating school year in public education, I made it be known to a number of my colleagues that I wouldn’t be returning the next year. At the time, I hadn’t yet found another job. Some of them likely thought I was just venting. That I’d be right back there with the rest of them in late August, wolfing down doughnuts and fruit at the breakfast buffet on the teachers’ opening day.

In midsummer I found another job. I dutifully resigned my position with the county school system, turning in my letter of resignation, and signing the required paperwork in person.

My wife was still a teacher with that same school system. With my new job I had the day off when she was set to go back to work for the opening day countywide meeting. I joked that it would be funny if I tagged along and enjoyed the pre-meeting refreshments. We had a good laugh about it. Wondering how long it would take for someone in authority to confront me for being there without reason. Believe me, I’d be the last person to actually do such a thing.

But my little joke got me thinking about an idea for a story. What if a teacher who’d shot off his mouth about quitting was out of touch with everyone over the summer. And all indications were that he’d moved on. And what if someone with ulterior motives sent a letter of resignation for him, setting up an instant conflict on the day of his return.

I made notes on the inspiration and filed them away with all the other ideas for stories I’d been stockpiling over the years, waiting to find the time to get around to the business of writing them. Over the years, I did get around to finishing some stories. But a lot of  my ideas had to wait until I retired. Now, after finishing up a forty-year career of teaching high school mathematics, I’ve been fortunate to be able to pursue my interest in writing.

The idea for the characters of Pete Barrow and Sheriff Oscar Murphy goes back even farther than the origin of the story idea for Murder, With Resignation. I’d started writing fiction in my senior year of college, back in Pennsylvania, at Lock Haven State, under the tutelage of Professor Joe Nicholson. In the early 1980s I signed up for a class on writing short stories at Virginia Commonwealth University, in Richmond.  I enjoyed the class at VCU and wanted more. So I followed up by enrolling in another class at VCU on writing a novel. The class was taught by a great guy named Robert Hilldrup.

Beginning writers are often advised to “write what you know.” So for my mystery novel, I created the character of Pete Barrow, a high school math teacher who moonlights as a private investigator. The character of African American Sheriff Oscar Murphy followed.

Bob Hilldrup gave me a lot of  praise and encouragement. The novel was off to good start, but life got in the way. We moved to another state for new teaching positions and had our first child. Teaching and family took up most of my time. I kept working on the book when I could, mostly in the summers. It took me more than ten years to finish it. But when it was done, I wasn’t satisfied with it. I put it in the proverbial box under the bed and let it rest. When I wrote again, I worked on my short fiction.

But I never gave up on those characters. And when it came time to resurrect them for the short story, Murder, With Resignation, I wanted to rethink the characters as present day, older, wiser, and experienced people, not the young people I’d created in the time of my own youth.

Murder, With Resignation is the first in a series stories I’ve written with these characters. I envision a novel or two in Pete Barrow’s future. Thanks to editor Linda Landrigan and all the folks at Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, Pete Barrow finally makes his debut in the annals of P.I. fiction.

My advice to younger writers would tend to be of the ‘do as I say, not as I’ve done’ variety. Something teachers are not supposed to say! Don’t count on waiting until retirement to settle into a regular writing routine. Find your quiet place, and set up a regular routine to devote a set amount of time to your writing. It could be an hour a day, or an hour a week. Whatever you can spare. Write a paragraph or a page. Whatever you can accomplish. Real life is busy, and deserves our attention. But the personal need to spin a tale, tell a story, inform or caution, educate or entertain, can be an overwhelming force. If that’s something you need to do, stick with it!

Back in 2018 Paul McCartney released an album named Egypt Station that included a song called “Do It Now.”  The song contains good advice in the lyrics:

         “So do it now, do it now

          While your vision is clear

          Do it now

          While the feeling is here

         If you leave it too late

          It could all disappear

          So do it now

          While your vision is clear“

Excellent advice for all, but especially for writers.

I am delighted to have a story in the March/April issue of AHMM.  In “Shanks’s Role Model” my mystery writer protagonist goes to a college reunion and is reminded of some strange events from his undergrad days.

It’s all fiction, of course, but I thought you might enjoy hearing about the true events which inspired my tale.

I went to a tiny college in Pennsylvania, a state where the settlers of each new town seemed to build a church, a college, and a grocery store in that order. One Saturday night when I was a freshman there was a small fire in the dorm next to mine. Everyone got out safely and no serious damage was done, but it was obviously a case of arson. Cops investigated but nothing came of it.

A few weeks later I was on the top floor of Founders Hall, waiting for an appointment with my advisor, when things got exciting. Founders Hall, the first edifice built on campus, was four stories, largely made of wood. Nearly hundred-year-old, very dry wood, if you want to get technical. Tinder might be the word I’m reaching for.

The fourth floor had been student bedrooms a century ago and now they were tiny, cramped, faculty offices. I was sitting on the floor in the hall near my advisor’s office when I heard fire sirens outside. The little windows at the end of the hall didn’t provide much of a view so I couldn’t tell where the fire engines were going.

Then someone came running up the stairs, a guy who lived in my dorm. “Hey, Dan,” I said. “Where’s the fire?”

Dan looked at me, wild-eyed, and said something I will never forget: “Hwaaugghhhh!” Then he grabbed the fire extinguisher and ran down the stairs with it.

Hmm, I thought, shrewdly. This might be a problem.

I knocked on my advisor’s door. 

He replied, irritably: “I’m with a student!”

“Dr. Bruce,” I said. “I think the building’s on fire.”

“Oh. You better knock on all the doors.”

So I did. Quickly. First I crossed the hall to Professor Berry and gave her the word. As I proceeded down the hall professors and students formed a tide behind me, heading toward the wooden stairs.

When I got back to Bruce’s end I saw Professor Berry standing in his doorway, frowning. “What are you doing?” she asked.

Bruce was standing in front of his bookshelves, a hand on his chin, looking thoughtful. “I’m trying to decide which books to take.”

“The building’s on fire.  Grab anything.”

He did. Then we ran for it.

Fortunately the blaze turned out to be a small fire in a basement storeroom, and we all survived to tell the tale. They arrested the arsonist who was a student and (is anyone surprised?) a volunteer fireman.

But I will always remember Dr. Bruce at that moment of truth, trying to decide which books to take.

I imagine my character Shanks would have just as much trouble.  I hope you enjoy his story.

When I married Temple Walker in November 2015, I did not realize I was marrying into a crime family. I’m not certain she realized it, either.

Not long after our marriage, Temple and her father—James Lincoln Walker, aka Jim—took an interest in family history and soon discovered multiple miscreants in various branches of their family tree. One stood out: Merle Dees, an indicted participant in the 10-day Louisiana Milk Strike of 1947, was Jim’s uncle by marriage (his mother’s sister’s husband).

The strike, referred to by the Times Picayune (April 4, 1947) as a “10-day reign of terror” during which “trains were held up, trucks and cars riddled with buckshot and rifle slugs and at least one person wounded,” prevented most milk deliveries to New Orleans.

The strike, called by the Dairymen’s Union (AFL) of Amite (La.) and Tangipahoa (La.) and later joined by AFL-affiliated teamsters’ locals, was, according to the Times Picayune, in response to a “drop of milk price from $5.75 to $5.20 a hundredweight for fluid containing 4 per cent butterfat.”

Milk from the Florida parishes milkshed—the eight Louisiana parishes on the east side of the Mississippi River—was the first to stop flowing into New Orleans, but the strikers soon stopped outside shipments as well.

And more than milk was at stake. The Chicago Daily Tribune (March 27, 1947) noted that 5,000 to 6,000 New Orleans members of the teamsters’ union refused to make any deliveries to retailers who continued to sell milk sold by New Orleans distributors, whose price cut set off the strike. “Observers said this will mean virtual cessation of all food deliveries in the city, since nearly all truck drivers except those who deliver milk are members of the AFL union. The alternative, for retailers, apparently will be to sell no fresh milk.”

By the time the strike ended, approximately 80,000 gallons of milk had been destroyed, and twenty-five strikers were indicted by a United States grand jury in connection with alleged violations of federal law, including retarding the mail and breaking seals on railroad cars.

Temple’s Great-Uncle Merle Dees was indicted in a true bill in the District Court of the United States for the Eastern District of Louisiana, New Orleans Division (Docket No. 22,594) for “Conspiracy to Violate the Anti-Racketeering Act,” that is, he “knowingly, wrongfully, willfully, unlawfully and feloniously conspire[d] […] to obstruct, delay and affect interstate commerce and the movement of articles and commodities in interstate commerce by robbery and extortion.”

From Fact to Fiction

My father-in-law was a Louisiana-born retired mechanical engineer who spent a great deal of his free time reading mystery novels and watching televised mysteries. He and Temple—also a mystery lover—often discussed the books they read and the television programs they watched, sharing their favorites. That his daughter married a mystery writer must have amused him to no end.

At first, Merle Dees’s involvement with the Milk Strike was just a story passed down through the family, but Jim became intrigued by his uncle’s involvement. Here was a real-life mystery to be explored, and explore it he did.

As Jim sought more information about the strike, he began corresponding with Bill Dorman in the Genealogy Department of the Tangipahoa Parish Library, who provided PDFs of scanned newspaper articles and other information, which he then shared with Temple and me.

Before long, I realized the real-life adventures of my wife’s great-uncle could be the basis of a short story and, after rearranging some real-life events, working in a few other family stories, and then fictionalizing everything, I had “Spilt Milk,” published in the November/December issue of Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine.

My father-in-law passed away on Friday, January 13, 2023, so he didn’t live to see the story in print. He did, however, read the finished story in manuscript form before I submitted it.

I think he liked it.

A mile from where I grew up stands the Crescent Hill Free Public Library. It was built along Frankfort Avenue in 1905, one of over a thousand U.S. libraries built on money from none other than Andrew Carnegie. I didn’t know that at the time, nor did I understand the architecture was a shining example of Beaux-Arts style. To me, that building was a castle full of books.

Crescent Hill sprung up in the 1850s as Frankfort Avenue, then the Louisville and Lexington Turnpike, cut eastward. Because Louisville has always embraced a certain style, the houses and churches that came in were ornate. Streetcar lines followed. This new suburb prospered.

Until it didn’t.

By the time I came along, Louisville’s gateway era was over. Crescent Hill had evolved into middle-class bohemian meets rough around the edges. To get to the Library, the left onto Frankfort was a seedy corner joint with blacked-out windows. The theater a few doors down showed X-rated flicks.

But oh, that weird charm, that ten minutes from anywhere location. By my college days, great bars and restaurants were returning along Frankfort.

Years later and two hundred miles away, I decided to try my hand at short fiction. One of my drivers was to write stories with huge doses of character. In 2012, I must’ve written a publishable one, because a Canadian lit journal made it my first acceptance.

In that story, an engineer named Vi Celucci battles corporate shelving algorithms to maintain her grocery shopping regimen. This fictional store sits a short hop from Crescent Hill, as inspired by the Clifton institution revered as Dirty Kroger. My dad shopped there religiously, and so did I when I got an apartment not far off.

Vi is tough, smart, and cursed with a glorious flaw. She can only see this imperfect world through her industrial engineer lens. Everything can be optimized—should be optimized—and, once done, managed. Back then I’d been working with my share of industrial engineers, and wonderful as they are, they’re of a breed.

Pro tip: Go find one and make them your friend. You’ll get more things done.

With Vi, I took that engineer mindset, tossed in my own stickler impulses, and cranked the mix, a la Spinal Tap, to eleven. Someone that obsessed with rules and efficiency can’t let anything go. Anything, and it costs them. The torrent of minor failings, the constant wheedling of supposed underperformers, the inevitable let-downs, the surrender to intellectual compromise. All of it would be exhausting.

I’d thought Vi could make a fun amateur sleuth. I let her loose after a counterfeiting scam around Crescent Hill that taxes her last nerves. That must’ve worked, too. AHMM ran “Two Bad Hamiltons and a Hirsute Jackson” in 2015.

Then I didn’t write Vi again. No story idea screamed for her. A Vi story can’t have a crime so serious it spoils the tone. And like her neighborhood, a Vi crime has to be weird, something tiny but torturing to her perfectionist soul.

Eventually, inspiration struck. You might’ve heard that horse racing is big in Louisville. So big, in fact, that a whole charity effort sponsors fanciful horse statues around town. Each statue—and there have been hundreds—has a unique theme that ranges from whimsical to flat-out gorgeous, and each stands as commissioned sidewalk art until they’ve run their race, so to speak. Such a unique feature along Frankfort Avenue would be a landmark Vi latches onto full bore.

So I put a Plexiglas Horse a block from the Crescent Hill Free Public Library. Then, I had someone steal it. Vi’s ensuing Kentucky-fried odyssey forces her to sift through the noise and discover what really matters. Eight years later, Vi is back in AHMM.

I still get up to Louisville often. While polishing “Know Thyself,” I walked Frankfort Avenue up and back. The high times are doing fine, with legit hip and enough pubs for a proper crawl. That castle of a library is much smaller than I remember, inside and out. I donated an armload of books, some with my stories in them.

Life is complicated. We feel better when our feet are on familiar turf, somewhere we have a semblance of control. Offbeat as Vi is, we all have some of her in us deep down. We all reach out for familiar turf. We need to understand where we’ve been, where we’re headed, where we’ll always belong.