I know you think you understand what I said but what you dont understand is that what I said is not what I meant
Hurry up, get in, let’s go. Two stops to make today.
Ladies first: Elizabeth Kaiser joins me in the post Food, Family, Fear. They’re connected, oh yes indeedy.
Then, my friend and editor and occasional drinking buddy Tom ‘BentGuy’ Bentley interviews me about my books, process, and tastes. And we talk waffles. And whiskey.
I’ve been a faithful user of AutoCrit ever since I first heard of it. In my opinion, the best automated editing and feedback tool an author can have.
Jocelyn from AutoCrit interviewed me about my long relationship with them and my writing process. Even if you’re not an author, there’s plenty there about Phil Brennan’s latest shenanigans.
He pulled out the soiled handkerchief again and smeared germs across his forehead. Then he sat.
“I should say, that is, I meant to say, I removed something and I would like you to put it back.”
He hadn’t added up from minute one. It was only getting worse.
“And the reason you can’t return it yourself is what? They don’t know you took it and you’d like to keep it that way?”
He blushed. Actual pink-in-the-face blushing.
“While it’s more, well, complicated, yes, complicated than that, you could put it that way.”
His predilection for circuitous expression was annoying. And apparently catching.
“Why?”
It pushed him back against the chair.
“What do you mean, why?”
“I get the broad strokes. Give me the details. You said there were details. Share them.”
The sweating and blushing continued. The predilection didn’t.
“No.”
You’d think I’d know what to expect considering who I was meeting in the cheap dive downtown.
One at a time, sure.
I’d never sat down with the three of them, not all at once.
It’s enough to drive you to drink.
Or for those with other proclivities, to write.
Or maybe both.
“How did you get in here?”
Coming from the giant moth in my dream, it sounded strange.
Once I got my eyes open and saw it was coming from a thirty-something woman standing a safe distance away from me, looking very proprietary and possessive, it made more sense.
“The gate.” Yeah, my mouth can even do that with total strangers. I wasn’t awake yet.
“Very funny. Who are you and what are you doing in my yard, on my beach, in my chair?”
“It’s not courage when you’re not afraid. Courage is when you’re afraid, and you do it anyway.”
Millie turned enough to touch Darcy’s face with the back of her hand. “I know, dear. I don’t think you’re in any real danger or I wouldn’t ask you to do this.”
Darcy nodded. “I’ll be okay. I just had to wind up for it.” She smiled a big fake smile at me in the mirror, mussed up the back of my hair, and got out.
Millie and I went off to do battle with the rest of the family.
The hammering felt like a hangover. Since I hadn’t had a drink in years, it wasn’t a hangover.
It wouldn’t stop, though. There was yelling. And a scraping noise.
When my eyes had the strength to open, some of the noises started to make sense.
“Hang on.” I didn’t know if they could hear me over their own yelling. I got my thick fluffy robe, which is far more luxurious than most single guys would have but since I sleep in the same clothes I shower in I keep something posh handy in case of emergency.
The hammering and shoving at the door sounded like an emergency.
I froze.
She scrunched her lips and her eyebrows. I liked the lips better, but the scrunched eyebrows worked, too.
“Well, now. I’m not here about what Gil wanted. You’ve clearly already taken care of that, according to the papers. I’m here on my own. He seemed confident you could help him, so I thought, if Gil trusts you, maybe you can help me with a little something.”
It was thin as the decaf in an office coffee pot, but I figured I might as well let her run with it.
“Well, that’s different. Tell me all about it.”
She sure was good at that smile. I kept almost believing it.
“Since Gil is dead he can’t finish the job.”
That settled that.
“I need you to kill someone for me.”
And that, my dears, unsettled that.
An excerpt from A Long, Hard Look. Watch for the second Phil Brennan mystery, A Still, Small Voice, this summer.
My front door does not have an annoying habit of failing to stay latched.
It latches just fine. I make sure of it.
So it concerned me not a little that it was ajar when I rounded the top of the stairs.
I froze, then stepped back a bit. I stopped on the top stair and leaned my forehead against the wall, which put my good ear almost in the hallway where it could listen better.
Nothing.
These old wooden floors creak if you look at them. Nobody was moving in my place.
Which meant one of two things: nobody was in my place, or they just weren’t moving.