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From New
York Times bestselling suspense author Jan Burke comes the fourth of six
e-short story collections.
Convicted is a mini-anthology containing a brand-new short story, “The Anchorwoman” featuring a young Irene Kelly, plus three stories from the highly acclaimed Eighteen print anthology: “Revised Endings, “Devotion,” and “The Muse.” Jeffery Deaver, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Kill Room, praised Eighteen as “Astonishing…wry…these stories are sure to delight.” And New York Times bestselling author Jonathan Kellerman says, “A delightful collection of page-turners. At turns chilling, funny, poignant—and always insightful. With these stories, Jan Burke’s at the top of her game.”
Convicted is a mini-anthology containing a brand-new short story, “The Anchorwoman” featuring a young Irene Kelly, plus three stories from the highly acclaimed Eighteen print anthology: “Revised Endings, “Devotion,” and “The Muse.” Jeffery Deaver, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Kill Room, praised Eighteen as “Astonishing…wry…these stories are sure to delight.” And New York Times bestselling author Jonathan Kellerman says, “A delightful collection of page-turners. At turns chilling, funny, poignant—and always insightful. With these stories, Jan Burke’s at the top of her game.”
EXCERPT:
“So
at ten o’clock on Wednesday, five clowns—probably males—jumped out of a moving
van parked in the alley behind your house and started singing ‘Oklahoma!’—do I
have it right so far?”
“Yes.”
“Did
they seem to be looking up at you, singing it to you?”
She
hesitated, then said, “I’m not sure. They glanced in my direction every now and
then, but they didn’t stand still and serenade me. They moved around, danced,
and did high kicks and cartwheels.”
“Then
what happened?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing?”
“They
climbed back into the van and drove off.”
“Were
they all in the cab, or were some riding in the back?”
“Two
in the back.”
Illegal
and dangerous.
“Did
you see anything in the van itself? Furniture?”
“I
didn’t get a good look at the back. The angle was wrong.”
I
looked at my notes. What hadn’t I asked?
“What
about the van itself—Bekins? Allied? North American?—what moving company?”
She
was shaking her head before I finished. “Not a moving company. It was a rented
van. Las Piernas Rentals.”
“Well—that’s
a lucky break.”
“Why?”
“Local
rental company with three locations, all within town. If it had been one of the
nationals, the truck could have come from anywhere. License-plate number?”
“No,
again, I couldn’t see it from that angle.”
“How
big was the van?”
“Big.
I don’t know.”
I
tried to come up with vehicles to compare it with, which didn’t work with her,
but when I got her to say how much of the Mickelsons’ house the van had
blocked, I had a reasonable idea. Another idea struck me.
“Did
you see a number on it? Most rental companies paint numbers on their trucks, to
keep track of which ones they’re renting, I suppose.”
“I
looked for one, but it had a big piece of paper taped over it—like butcher
paper, maybe?”
I
hesitated, telling myself that I needed to separate latenineteenth- century
fiction from the present problem. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get it out of my
mind.
“Cokie,
are there any banks or businesses on the other side of the alley?”
“There’s
a row of homes, that’s all.”
“Anybody
doing any kind of business out of a house that you know of?”
“No.”
“I
mean any
kind
of business. Any pot growers? Drug dealers?”
“No!
We did have a problem when Auggie and Andrea Sands lived at the end of the
cul-de-sac, but their mom kicked them out. That was about three years ago.”
“She
kicked them out for selling drugs?” Lydia asked.
We
had known the Sands twins in high school. Always in trouble.
“Kicked
Auggie out for selling drugs, and Andrea for banging her boyfriend in the
living room. Their mom came home early with a friend from work. Guess that was
the last straw.”
“How
did their mom find out that Auggie was dealing?”
“One
of the neighbors told her.”
“You?”
“No.
I didn’t want to mess with those people.”
“Do
Andrea and Auggie know you weren’t the one?”
She
frowned. “They should. They have no reason to think I would tell on them.”
I
exchanged a glance with Lydia and moved on.
“Anyone
in the neighborhood angry with you?”
“You
think singing clowns is a sign of aggression?”
“A
possibility, anyway.”
She
smiled. “I’m so glad you see it that way. My parents think it was something
fun, as if I have a secret admirer. But it doesn’t feel that way to me. It
seemed to me that someone wanted . . . well, to ridicule me.”
I
bent my head over my notes and hoped my hair hid my blush. I certainly felt
ashamed of my meaner thoughts about her.
“It
seems crazy to think that,” she went on, “but . . . it didn’t make me happy, it
made me feel as if I had been targeted, and someone went to a lot of trouble to
do it. I’m a little scared by that. But I can’t think of anyone who would feel
that mad at me. I get along with my neighbors. I’m one of the last young people
still living on our street, and I try to help my older neighbors. I visit them.
I run errands for them.”
A
passage in “The Red-Headed League” came to mind:
“As a rule,” said Holmes, “the more bizarre a thing is the
less mysterious
it proves to be. It is your commonplace, featureless crimes
which are
really puzzling, just as a commonplace face is the most
difficult to
identify.”
Easy
for him to say. But was there some commonplace crime hiding beneath all that
clown makeup?
“Cokie,
what would you normally be doing on a Wednesday morning at about that time?”
“Normally,
I’d be playing canasta with the widows.”
“I
hate to admit it, but I don’t understand.”
“You
know, the card game.”
“Yes,
I even know how to play it. Who are the widows?”
“Oh.
Three of my neighbors. One day Mrs. Redmond—she’s across the street and one
house down—mentioned to me how much she loved the canasta parties that used to
be held on the
street.
I talked to a couple of people about it, and long story short, we started
playing canasta at her house on Wednesday mornings.”
“Who
are the other players?”
“Just
two, Mrs. Harding and Mrs. Lumfort.”
“Who
knows that you do this?”
“Everyone
on our street.”
“So
because of the clowns, you arrived late?”
“No,
we didn’t have a game that day. Mrs. Harding was . . . out of town. Mrs.
Lumfort had a doctor’s appointment. Mrs. Redmond’s beautician had asked her to
move her hair appointment to that morning, so because it was just going to be
the two of us, she asked me if I’d mind just canceling. I told her it wasn’t a
problem.”
“You
hesitated about Mrs. Harding. What was going on with her?”
“Nothing.
She went to a lawyer’s appointment with one of her granddaughters. Kayla just
moved in with her.”
That
name was vaguely familiar. Why did I know it?
“Kayla
Harding?” Lydia asked. “My brother Gio used to date her.”
Gio
was five years older than Lydia, and the list of girls he dated in high school
was only slightly shorter than the list of female students in his graduating
class. The fact that he hadn’t been burned in effigy years ago spoke to his
abundant charm. Lydia claimed he genuinely cared about all of them, which
seemed unlikely.
“Kayla
ended up in prison, didn’t she?” Lydia went on. “Stole a car.”
“Yes,”
Cokie said, “but she’s been out for a couple of weeks now.”
“Friend
of yours?” I asked.
“No.
I know her sister better than I know her.”
“Mindy,”
Lydia said. “She’s our age.”
“Yes.
I’m not close friends with Mindy, either. I just see her when she visits her
grandmother.”
“Kind
of a Goody-Two-Shoes, isn’t she?” I said.
“That
can happen when you’re trying to show the world you aren’t like your
troublemaking sister, right?” Lydia said.
Cokie
and I shrugged.
“Think
of your sister, Barbara,” Lydia said to me.
“I’d
rather not,” I said.
“Mindy
is Kayla’s half sister,” the ever-informative Cokie said. “Their father is on
his third marriage. Widowed once, divorced once, and the third seems to be the
charm. So Mindy
just
claims that she’s ‘only’ a half sister when she gets annoyed at Kayla.”
“Told
you she was a bitch,” I said.
“Not
exactly,” Lydia said.
“Yeah,
well . . .” I glanced at my watch. “We’ve got a couple of hours to try to find
the Las Piernas Rentals location that rented out the van.”
I
used the Yellow Pages in the phone book to get the three addresses and phone
numbers of the rental places, then opened the Thomas Guide, a
book of detailed maps of Los Angeles County that only a fool would try to live
without. A lost fool.
Cokie
readily agreed to come along with me, but Lydia, thinking of the discomfort
associated with being the third person in a Karmann Ghia, opted out.
Link continuing the excerpt to XOXOAfterDark:
This book may have been received free of charge from a publisher or a publicist. That will NEVER have a bearing on my recommendations.
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