Excerpts

I awoke in an extremely comfortable bed. The day was an extremely bright and sunny day; unusual for January weather in North Dakota. My eyes snapped open when I felt something furry rub against my bare leg. It was a beautiful calico cat! I’d wanted one for years, but had never gotten one until now. I wondered how Mom had snuck one into the apartment, while analyzing my surroundings at the same time. That’s when I realized that this wasn’t our small,  cozy apartment; the bedroom was much bigger, brighter, and cleaner.

A man carrying a large tray stepped into the room. “Good morning, dear!” he said cheerfully, “May I offer you something to eat?”

 “What’s going on here?” I asked groggily, “This isn’t my house.”

“Of course it is!” he exclaimed, chuckling, “This mansion has been in your possession for the last five years!”

“The computer on board the Rocket-Box will stop when it is close enough to the sun for the bodies to burn,” Dr. Vincent, who, surprisingly, wasn’t a genius at all, but an undertaker who just happened to have a brilliant idea, explained, “When it senses no sign of skin, bone, or even hair cells, the Rocket-Box will then tilt so that the ashes of each individual pour into a smaller, special box inscribed with the deceased’s name and birth and death dates. This makes it easier for any undertaker to give the box to the right family, and the ashes of one corpse can never get mixed with the ashes of another, as there are a dozen separate cells in each Rocket-Box. After each hour-long trip back from the sun, the stainless-steel boxes will eject the smaller, personalized boxes, and will then be reused again and again, solving our coffin overcrowding problem.”

Tina Norrez sat alone at a table on the balcony, drinking a small can of beer and eating a large piece of multi-layer chocolate cake. She didn’t know why she accepted Deanna Milton’s Everyone’s Annual Ball invitations; they were so boring. It was all too classy; too cramped; too stylish; too snobby…too everything.

She glanced up as a very beautiful woman sat beside her. “Gosh, you look bored,” she said, “So am I. I don’t know why I come to these stupid things of Deanna’s. I guess it’s because we’re really good friends and have been for life, but things could get a little more exciting around here, don’t you think?”

“Yes!” Tina exclaimed, “Miss, that’s exactly what I was thinking!”

“My name’s Mickey Finn,” the woman replied, “The party’s still on for a couple hours. Maybe you and I could come up with some ideas, and then I could explain them to Deanna. I just hope she likes them, too.”

Suddenly, a young woman came running through the sliding glass door, followed closely by a rather ugly man. “Get away from me!” the young lady cried. Tears streamed down her cheeks as she saw the small fence that enclosed the balcony. She ran directly into it and took a nose-dive to the hard, crowded streets.

 The man glared at Mickey and Tina. “You didn’t see a thing, you hear me?” he hissed in a heavy Spanish accent, “If I find out that you’ve squealed to the cops, I’ll rip the hearts out of both your chests.”

Ingrid was gone when I returned home late that evening. She’d left a note saying that Constable Thomas had come over and interviewed her about the theft, and had also cleared her as a suspect. She also said that she’d gone back to a studio apartment she’d rented yesterday evening, right after her plane landed.

I smiled, happy that my sister’s name had been cleared.

A few hours later, I got a call from Hilda, who was also younger than me, but older than Ingrid. She’d worked at the CIA for as long as I can remember, and, if I’ve been hearing right all this time, is very good at her job.

“Ingrid E-mailed me earlier today about the case,” she explained, “She even told me how you’d suspected her at first.” She chuckled, “That’s kind of funny.”

The yard of the abandoned Temple Inn was filled with weeds and trash. The inside was much cleaner, but extremely intimidating and threatening. Maxine and Payton took in their surroundings as two burly guards, one wearing a hot pink bandanna and carrying a cell phone on his belt, led them down the long hallway toward two swinging double doors. They stopped in front of a stocky man in what seemed to be a makeshift security guard’s uniform. The man quickly looked at their IDs and let us into a huge room decorated like a medieval castle with a stage on one side and bleachers filled with thousands of cheering, jeering people on the other.