Bertram's Blog

My Punctuated Life of Equilibrium

June 15, 2013 — Pat Bertram

I never understood evolution, especially Darwin’s version of how it happens. I mean, a bat is always a bat. Bats beget bats and have been begetting bats for millions of years. So how does a bat become something else? And how did something else become a bat? Stephen Jay Gould’s idea of punctuated equilibrium is the only evolution theory that ever made sense to me since it mirrored what I knew — that bats always beget bats until . . . they don’t.

Punctuated equilibrium says (at least the way I understand it) that everything exists in a state of equilibrium, with very few evolutionary changes except on a local level. (By “local level” I mean within a species. A species of creatures that becomes separated by a river, for example, will undergo minor changes as time goes on, with those individuals most able to adapt to the new environment surviving to procreate. But still, the adapted creature is recognizably the same species as its forebears.) These vast times of stasis are occasionally punctuated with relatively short (on a cosmic scale) periods of genetic changes, and then things settle down into another long, long, long, period of equilibrium.

This is what my life feels like — long, long, long periods where everything is static, and then brief but frenetic periods of change before stasis sets in once more.

During all the years when my life mate/soul mate was dying, our lives seemed stagnant. We did things of course, but there were no major changes, nothing to yank us out of our torpidity. Day after day, year after year, he got sicker and weaker and I became more emotionally anesthetized since I could not bear what was happening to him and I couldn’t do anything to help him get better.

As the years passed, I felt as if it would always be that way — he dying, me struggling to live. And then one day, things changed. He bent down to pick something up, and a horrendous pain shot through him. He bore the pain as long as he could — three unbelievably agonizing weeks — because he knew that any drug strong enough to kill the pain would also destroy him. And it did. When he finally got on morphine, it made him disoriented. Sometimes he didn’t remember me, and sometimes he didn’t remember himself.

I hunkered down for a long siege since the doctor said he had three to six months to live.

And just like that, three weeks later, after one last breath, the long years of stasis were over. I went through a few months of rapid changes, getting rid of his stuff, putting mine in storage, moving in with my father to take care of him.

These past years of grief have masked the truth. That my life is still basically the same. Stagnant. Living with a man (my father this time) who is declining. Struggling to find a way to survive live despite the situation. I’ve agreed to stay to the end, which could be years, and I’m okay with that. (Designated Daughter, don’t you know.)

The end of this stage of equilibrium will be punctuated with another brief but frenetic period of change as I adjust to the new situation of having no one but me to be responsible for. And then . . .

I’m hoping to figure a way out of this punctuated equilibrium of mine, maybe find a way to incorporate small but steady changes to punctuate my future and keep things from becoming one long run-on sentence, to keep me ever-evolving until the inevitable period is put on the end of my life.

Of course, this is easy to say. It’s harder to do. No matter what we plan, life scatters punctuation marks where it will.

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Pat Bertram is the author of the suspense novels Light Bringer, More Deaths Than One, A Spark of Heavenly Fire, and Daughter Am I. Bertram is also the author of Grief: The Great Yearning, “an exquisite book, wrenching to read, and at the same time full of profound truths.” Follow Pat on Google+. Like Pat on Facebook.

Posted in being me, culture, life, relationships. Tags: dealing with someone who is dying, designated caregiver, designated daughter, evolution, life changes., punctuated equilibrium. 4 Comments »

How To Describe a Person Who is Drowning

June 14, 2013 — Pat Bertram

In almost all movies I have ever seen or books I have ever read where a person is supposedly drowning, there is lots of thrashing around, calling and waving for help, and other panicky behavior, but the truth is completely different from what we’d expect.

In the Fall 2006 issue of On Scene: The Journal of U.S. Coast Guard Search and Rescue, Aviation Survival Technician First Class Mario Vittone and Francesco A. Pia, Ph.D explain how to recognize the instinctive drowning response:

1. Except in rare circumstances, drowning people are physiologically unable to call out for help. The respiratory system was designed for breathing. Speech is the secondary, or overlaid, function. Breathing must be fulfilled, before speech occurs. 2. Drowning people’s mouths alternately sink below and reappear above the surface of the water. The mouths of drowning people are not above the surface of the water long enough for them to exhale, inhale, and call out for help. When the drowning people’s mouths are above the surface, they exhale and inhale quickly as their mouths start to sink below the surface of the water.

3. Drowning people cannot wave for help. Nature instinctively forces them to extend their arms laterally and press down on the water’s surface. Pressing down on the surface of the water, permits drowning people to leverage their bodies so they can lift their mouths out of the water to breathe.

4. Throughout the Instinctive Drowning Response, drowning people cannot voluntarily control their arm movements. Physiologically, drowning people who are struggling on the surface of the water cannot stop drowning and perform voluntary movements such as waving for help, moving toward a rescuer, or reaching out for a piece of rescue equipment.

5. From beginning to end of the Instinctive Drowning Response people’s bodies remain upright in the water, with no evidence of a supporting kick. Unless rescued by a trained lifeguard, these drowning people can only struggle on the surface of the water from 20 to 60 seconds before submersion occurs.

Yikes. Makes me glad I’m not a lifeguard or someone who writes books with drowning victims since it would be hard to recognize such stillness as someone in distress. (Makes me even gladder I have a healthy fear of deep water.) Still, if I ever had to write about someone who is drowning, I know how to do write the scene. Hmmm. Maybe a short story someday. After all, I’ve already done the research! Or rather, Francesco Pia did.

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Posted in How to, life, writing. Tags: drowning, Francesco A. Pia, instinctive drowning response, U.S. Coast Guard Search and Rescue. 9 Comments »

Does your understanding of the story you are writing change during the course of the book?

June 13, 2013 — Pat Bertram

Before I wrote A Spark of Heavenly Fire, I did extensive research into pandemics and into the government’s response to such emergencies (I based my fictional response on actual executive orders that Clinton signed), so there wasn’t much change in my understanding of these matters during the course of the book, but there was a big difference in my thoughts about what “they” want us to know and what they don’t. When I learned about Pingfan, the Japanese biological warfare installation where they did horrendous experiments on POW’s and nearby villagers, I thought I’d stumbled onto something really explosive. Yet, as happened to a character in A Spark of Heavenly Fire, the very next novel I picked up used Pingfan as a setting. It got me to thinking about the nature of cover-ups, and many of the discussions in the last half of the book were actual discussions I had with a friend while I was writing the book.

Here are some responses from other authors about how their understanding of the story changes during the course of the book. The comments are taken from interviews posted at Pat Bertram Introduces . . .

From an interview with Sherrie Hansen, Author of “Love Notes”

I start the story, my characters finish it. Themes come to me as the book goes on, and often, when it’s totally finished. Sometimes I have to rewrite the beginning of the book, because by the time I’m done, I know the characters so well that I think they would never say or do the things they did at the beginning of the book.

From an interview with Cynthia Vespia, Author of “Sins And Virtues”

Sometimes. That makes it fun though. You expect it to go one way and instead it veers off course and takes you to an entirely new level. For me, when that happens, it feels like I’m reading it myself.

From an interview with Alan Place, Author of “Pat Canella: The Dockland Murders”

My understanding is constantly changing as the character evolve their own lives, I never try to force them to do things that I feel don’t fit.

What about you? Does your understanding of the story you are writing change during the course of the book?

(If you’d like me to interview you, please check out my author questionnaire http://patbertram.wordpress.com/author-questionnaire/ and follow the instruction.)

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Posted in books, fiction, writing. Tags: Alan Place, author interviews, Cynthia Vespia, does your understanding of a story change, how do stories change as you write them, Sherrie Hansen, storytelling. 4 Comments »

Describe your writing in three words

June 12, 2013 — Pat Bertram

Three words to describe my fiction writing:

colorful, character-driven, conspiratorial

Here are some responses from other authors about three words they would use to describe their writing. The comments are taken from interviews posted at Pat Bertram Introduces . . .

From an interview with Donna Galanti, Author of “A Human Element”

Haunting. Dark. Hopeful.

From an interview with Siobhán Nolan, Author of “Old Man Harry”

Silly, relatable, fanciful.

From an interview with Andrew Scorah, Author of “Homecoming Blues”

Dark, gritty, cool

What about you? How would you describe your writing in three words?

(If you’d like me to interview you, please check out my author questionnaire http://patbertram.wordpress.com/author-questionnaire/ and follow the instruction.)

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Posted in books, fiction, writing. Tags: author interviews, being a writer, book promotion, describe your writing, three words to describe your writing. 3 Comments »

Waiting Quietly For an April Time

June 11, 2013 — Pat Bertram

It’s been three years and two months and two weeks since the death of my life mate / soul mate. It’s been a rough time for me, working through the pain of his death and our separation, adjusting to life without him, learning to think of him with gladness instead of sadness, searching for new ways of being and new reasons for living, realizing that he is he and I am I and we have separate paths in life.

Every once in a while now, beneath the bleak frozen ground of grief, I can feel the first green stirrings of hope, maybe even a promise of new life.

These feelings are right on time. Everyone I have talked to who has dealt with such a grievous loss has said it takes four years to find a renewal of life. (Apparently four years is the half-life of grief.)

As one woman who has been there told me, “Our partners are gone. We can either live in this world without them, experiencing a full, active life . . . or we can half live a life while we are still connected to our dead great loves through the ether, which we can’t navigate or understand this side of death.

It isn’t a choice; you can’t “just get there.” But you will get there. And everything will suddenly feel new again. You will see possibilities as something toward which you want to leap, and you will suddenly feel untethered and able to make that leap.”

In ten months, by next April, I will have passed my fourth anniversary. April. A time of renewal. Maybe a time of my renewal.

In her book The Stillwater Meadow, Gladys Tabor wrote: “People have seasons . . . There is something steadfast about people who withstand the chilling winds of trouble, the storms that assail the heart, and have the endurance and character to wait quietly for an April time.”

And so, I will continue dealing with the upsurges and downswings of grief, with the tears and loneliness, with the uncertainty and confusion, and wait quietly for my April time.

***

Posted in blogging, grief, life, writing. Tags: an April time, Gladys Tabor, grief at three years, renewal after grief, The Stillwater Meadow. 3 Comments »

Dealing with the Ashes

June 10, 2013 — Pat Bertram

Yesterday I talked about the many tasks of grief, and mentioned that although I got rid of most of my life mate/soul mate’s “effects,” there are many things I cannot get rid of. It’s still unthinkable for me to throw away his wallet, eyeglasses, car keys. And I can’t bring myself to get rid of his baseball bat and glove or the games we used to play.

Most of all, I can’t get rid of him. Well, not him. His ashes. His “cremains” as the funeral industry so cutely calls them.

Although I was never sure what I’d do with his ashes, I’d never planned on keeping them until a minister friend suggested that I save some. He said that people who get rid of all of the ashes tend to regret it. Since I couldn’t bear to think of separating “him,” keeping some of his ashes and throwing the rest to the winds, I’ve kept them all.

I have an “urn,” which is not an urn but a square brass box with a permanent closure. I didn’t want to do anything “permanent,” so I kept his ashes in the temporary box, and since that plastic box seemed unfeeling and . . . well, dead . . . I wrapped the box in his robe when I brought the ashes home, and it’s still wrapped in his robe.

If I ever take a trip, I might leave a few bits of him wherever I stop. Or not. I’m not sure I can ever throw him away, and it wasn’t until this very moment that I understand why.

He was an historian, and he told me that the Inuit and other nomadic people would “throw themselves away” when they got too sick or too old and weak to continue traveling with the tribes. They would just stay behind when the tribe moved on.

When he got sick, he often told me that if he went into a coma or got too ill to take care of himself, I was to throw him away, forget about him, and get on with my life. “Throw him away,” was a euphemism for leaving him in some sort of nursing home.

And there did come such a time.

Five days before he died, the hospice nurse suggested that he go to the hospice care center for a few days to give me a chance to sleep. (His terminal restlessness kept us both up all night, and neither of us was getting any sleep. Although it was supposed to be a five-day respite, we knew he was never coming back.) He was sitting on the couch, so small, momentarily comfortable, momentarily alert. He gave me a pitiful smile and said, with a crack in his voice, “I don’t want to go. We have a good life here. We’re doing okay, aren’t we? I’m not ready for you to throw me away.” About broke my heart.

I didn’t want to throw him away, of course, but I couldn’t keep him at home. He hated the nasal cannula, and that last morning, I found him frantically rummaging in a kitchen drawer for a knife to cut it off. What if . . . ? No, I’m not even going to think about that.

And so his ashes are still with me, still wrapped in his robe because I simply cannot bear to throw him away again.

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Posted in culture, grief, life. Tags: ashes, cremains, five days before death, funeral ashes, Inuit, scattering the ashes, throw people away. 9 Comments »

Grief Work

June 9, 2013 — Pat Bertram

Grief work after the death of a spouse or anyone who makes your life worth living encompasses many tasks, from the simple task of getting out of bed in the morning to the complicated tasks of arranging for funeral services and dealing with financial matters.

As time goes on, the tasks of grief seem to increase, especially the emotional, mental, and spiritual tasks. We need to work through the pain, adjust to the absence of our loved one, find ways and reasons to continue living despite the absence, realize we each have our own path in life, remember them with joy not just sadness. (These might not be tasks so much as the natural progression of grief, but they all fall under the category of “grief work.”)

There are the horrendous tasks of dealing with the loved one’s effects, clearing out the things they no longer have any use for. Sometimes this particular bit of grief work can take years. Although I disposed of most of my life mate/soul mate’s things, I still have items I cannot get rid of, either because he asked me to keep them or because getting rid of them is still unthinkable after Untitled more than three years. For example, I can’t get rid of his keys, eyeglasses, and wallet. Something in me balks at that, as if he still has use of such things. Especially ridiculous are his car keys. I donated his car to hospice, but kept a set of keys. I just can’t get rid of them.

And then there are the self-imposed tasks, the ways each of us find to honor the end of our shared life. For me, this self-imposed task is watching movies. Think it’s easy? No way!

Long ago, when we realized that we were renting the same movies over and over again because we couldn’t find anything better, he started taping movies for us. Started out with movies for us to watch together, and then expanded into movies he liked but I didn’t. As he got sicker and more housebound, he occupied his time by taping TV movies and television shows by hand so he could cut out the commercials.

There were more than a thousand tapes, some of them with a full six hours of movies or shows. Many of these tapes I had never watched, but during the past two-and-a-half years, I have been watching these tapes, sorting out the ones I have no interest in, keeping the ones that I like or that remind me of special occasions. I started with the tapes he made at the end, the ones I had never seen, and they were painful to watch — so many of them dealt with people who were dying or people who had to find a new way of living after the death of a spouse. It’s almost as if he were leaving me a message telling me to get on with my life.

Even more painful is when I reached the tapes that we always watched together. As I watch each of them, I am aware that the last time I saw the movie, he was by my side. I remember the things we said, the looks we gave each other, the connection we felt. These once-loved movies now seem dull and bland as if a vital spark is missing. And it is missing. He is missing.

I’ve almost worked my way through all the tapes, and I have a hunch that this particular self-imposed task is prolonging my grief since they connect me to the past and at the same time make me aware that the past is gone forever.

Despite all this grief work, there are two things I will never be able to deal with. I will always hate that he is dead. And I will always miss him.

***

Posted in culture, grief, life, relationships. Tags: dealing with loss, death of a spouse, grief tasks, grief work, honoring the dead, tasks of grief. 7 Comments »

Writing (And Reading) On the Edge

June 8, 2013 — Pat Bertram

A friend recently taught a class about writing on the edge — writing at the edge of possibility and freedom; exploring the shapeless, the uncertain, the indefinite and the incoherent; accepting the endless, the multiple, the fragmented, the collaged, the ambiguous, the disjunctive, the long forgotten realms of the mysterious and the wild.

Her point was that we are addicted to easy reading as something to lull our senses and to provide respite from our daily lives, and that challenging ourselves to move beyond that changes our perspective and makes us better able to deal with the increasingly complex world.

I would have liked to take the class since it seemed a good way to discover unreached recesses of my mind, but the 1000-mile commute would have been a killer. Besides, although I would like to explore the long forgotten realms of the mysterious and wild, I’m not a fan of complicated writing. I like books that are easy to read but that have depth or something new for me — a new idea, a new place, a new insight into life or humanity or something. If it’s just a rehash of the same old stories and ideas, I get depressed.

Once a long time ago, I gave my mother a stack of books I had finished reading, and the language in one of them dismayed her. I didn’t know what she was talking about, couldn’t remember any such passages, and said so. She gave me an appalled look and responded, “I’d hate to think that any daughter of mine was so naïve as to not know what the words meant or so jaded that they didn’t bother her.” I just shrugged and said, “I don’t read words.”

That really shocked her, and I could never make her understand the truth of it. I don’t read words when I read a novel. I read by some sort of osmosis. Reading words is dreary task, especially if the passages are complicated and not easy to understand.

The truth is, as my friend suggested, I do read to lull my sentences. (I mean senses, but I left the typo because . . . what a cool faux pas!) For me, the whole point of books being easy to read rather than convoluted and incomprehensible is not so much to find a respite from daily life but a way of running toward the truth, toward real life, and the lull provides a space so the hard work can go on beneath the surface. (The story and words keeps my conscious mind busy and frees me for the important task of inner exploration and assimilation.)

During one horribly depressing time in my life back in my late twenties, I couldn’t stand to read anything that didn’t have a happy ending, so I descended further and further into easy reading — ending up with Harlequin romances. And then I really got depressed! It took me about three months to make the correlation with the books I was reading and my suicidal thoughts, and when I did make the connection, I gave up reading for several months until I found a bit of equilibrium. Now, all books give me that same “harlequin” feeling, which is why I can’t read any more. There is nothing in books but the easy reading. There is nothing to fill the space created by the lull.

Maybe someday when grief is no longer defining my life, I’ll be able to read again, but for now, I’m finding that the lull created by not reading is as important as the lull once created by reading.

Meantime, I’ll see if I can find my own edge and then figure out how to write beyond it to see what lurks in the wilds of my mind beyond the lull of daily life.

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Posted in books, culture, life, writing. Tags: books and depression, reading by osmosis, reading to lull our minds, reading words, writing on the edge. 7 Comments »

What to Do When You’ve Finished Writing Your Book

June 7, 2013 — Pat Bertram

Someone asked me what to do once they have completed their book and gone over it and fixed everything that needed to be fixed.

The first thing you do is celebrate. You’ve accomplished something wonderful!

After that, what I suggest (and what I do) is let the book lie fallow for six weeks or so, then go over it one more time, looking at every single sentence, every bit of dialogue, checking to make sure each is important to the story and are the very best sentences possible. This is especially important with dialogue. In real life, we often can’t think of the perfect thing to say until the opportunity is long past, but o champagne ur characters don’t have to be so tongue-tied. We have hours — days — to come up with the perfect response for them to make.

Since you’ve spent so much time on the book, you know what you are trying to prove. For example, in a mystery, you are often trying to prove that someone is a killer, has a good motive, but deserves to get caught by your hero; in a romance, that the two main characters belong together. Go through the book and remove all stray commentary and side stories that do not show who your characters are and do not help prove whatever it is you are trying to prove.

If you are a first-time novelist, get rid of your first chapter. When people start out writing a book, they tell much about the characters at the beginning under the assumption that readers need all that information to understand the story. They don’t. I bet you will find that everything in the first chapter shows up later in the story when it’s important for the reader to have that particular bit. If not, you can always add a sentence or two at the proper moment. By deleting that first, probably redundant chapter, it puts readers right smack dab in the middle of the action and makes them a part of the story.

Next, even if you aren’t a first-time novelist, go through the book and get rid of your weakest scene. This will make your story tighter and more powerful.

Then read the story aloud, paying attention flow, bad grammar, typos, anything that makes you (or the person you are reading to if you managed to corner someone) pause or that pulls you out of the story. Make those changes.

Now you are ready to decide what you want to do. Self-publish? Find an agent? Submit to small independent presses? If you want to self-publish, sorry, I can’t help. I don’t have any interest in such matters, and so never bothered to figure out how to do it.

If you want to try for an agent or a publisher, learn how to write query letters. That’s your basic tool for getting them interested in your work. Then search for agents and publishers and pay attention to their requirements. Don’t send more (or less) than they ask. Preditors and Editors is a good place to start, as is Association of Authors’ Representatives.

When your book is published, however it happens, I bet you think you can finally relax now that the hard part is behind you. Wrong! Now the even harder part of promotion begins.

Best of luck, whatever you decide to do.

Rubicon Ranch: Secrets — The Story Continues!

June 6, 2013 — Pat Bertram

Rubicon Ranch is a collaborative and innovative crime series set in the fictional desert community of Rubicon Ranch and is being written online by the authors of Second Wind Publishing.

In the current story, the body of a local realtor is found beneath the wheels of an inflatable figure of a Santa on a motorcycle. The realtor took great delight in ferreting out secrets, and everyone in this upscale housing development is hiding something. Could she have discovered a secret someone would kill to protect? There will be suspects galore, including a psychic, a con man, a woman trying to set up an online call-girl service, and the philandering sheriff himself. Not only is the victim someone he had an affair with, but he will also have to contend with an ex-wife who has moved back in with him and a jilted lover, both with their own reasons for wanting the realtor dead.

We hope you will enjoy seeing the story develop as we write it. Let the mystery begin! Whodunit? No one knows, not even the writers, and we won’t know until the very end! If you don’t want to miss further chapters, please go to the blog and click on “sign me up” on the right sidebar to get notifications of new chapters.

(If the Christmas theme seems unseasonal, well . . . considering how long it takes to write a book at the rate of a chapter a week, in a few months, the season will catch up to us!)

Chapter 9: Melanie Gray
by Pat Bertram

Monday, December 23, 9:15am

Melanie stood in the center of her living room and tried to empty her mind of all thoughts. She lunged forward with her right leg, bent her right knee, arched her back, reached high with her hands, and breathed slowly and deeply. Usually this yoga warrior pose made her feel strong and invincible, as if the power of the universe were coursing down her arms and throughout her body, but today she felt only disbelief.

Could I have killed Nancy Garcetti?

Yesterday morning, she’d gone outside to do a few stretches in the bitter pre-dawn air to wake her sluggish mind and prepare for her last marathon day of writing. Shivering from the cold and still groggy from a mere three hours of sleep, she made the unforgivable mistake of not paying attention to her surroundings.

A hand touched her shoulder, and a woman’s voice whispered in her ear. “I know you killed your husband.” Without thinking, Melanie spun around, leading with her elbow, and caught the woman beneath her chin. The woman’s head snapped back. She staggered. Fell.

Melanie stood over her, breathing hard and trembling from the adrenaline rush. When she got control of herself, she held out a hand to help the woman up. The woman ignored the offer of assistance, staggered to her feet, and hissed, “You’ll be sorry.” By then Melanie’s eyes had adjusted to the gloom, and she recognized the real estate agent.

Melanie took another breath and tried to focus on her warrior pose, but she couldn’t get Nancy out of her mind.

The last time she had seen Nancy alive, the woman had been tottering up the street. Could she have managed to get as far as the house with the Santa, then crawled against the blow-up figure for protection against the quickening winds, and died there?

Melanie hadn’t struck the woman with the full force of her strength, so that jab couldn’t have killed her. But perhaps Nancy hit her head on one of the rocks lining the driveway and bled into her brain. She wished Alexander were there so she could ask him about the possible effects from such an injury, but he if were still alive, she wouldn’t have had the brief and possibly deadly altercation with Nancy.

Oddly, last night when she found the body, she hadn’t made the connection to her tussle with Nancy, but had assumed the real estate agent’s death had been outright murder. It wasn’t until she woke at three o’clock after a short fitful sleep that the horrible thought took hold. Could I have killed Nancy Garcetti?

Melanie lowered her arms to her side, straightened her knee, and pulled her left leg even with her right. She stood still, feeling lost. Alexander was dead. She’d finished her book about Morris Sinclair’s ignoble life and gruesome death. She’d even finished the book about the Mojave Desert Alexander and she had been working on when he was killed. Now the only thing left for her to do was to find out who had assassinated him. And she didn’t know where to start.

The sound of a distant voice caught her attention. The voice sounded tinny, as if from a cheap radio. As it grew louder, she could make out the words. “We are coming up on the house of Morris Sinclair, but first you will see where Melanie Gray lives.” By then the voice was blaring, sounding as if it were right outside her door. Melanie ran upstairs to look out her office window. A bus idled in the middle of the street, a banner draped across its side—DESERT DEATH TOUR. Bland faces peered through the windows.

The tour guide continued, “Melanie Gray has a talent for finding dead bodies, and maybe even for making them dead. As you know, Melanie was married to Alexander Gray, the award-winning photographer. It is alleged that this Black Widow murdered her husband for his wealth. They say she is so deadly, she could have killed him with a single blow.”

Melanie gasped. Black Widow? Is that what they were calling her? Did people really believe she killed Alexander for his wealth? What wealth? He had no money. In fact, after he was gone, their publisher had insisted she finish the desert book by herself since Alexander had spent their advance. And he hadn’t died by her hand. Someone skilled in the ways of death had cut all four metal brake lines in his car so that when Alexander slammed on the brakes, he instantly lost hydraulic pressure in both the front and rear brakes at the same time. The sheriff had told her that with today’s vehicles, cutting the brakes that way is almost impossible for a professional to do, and completely impossible for an amateur. She certainly couldn’t have done it.

But she could have killed Nancy.

Her gaze followed the road to the house where she’d found Nancy’s body, and she saw a wisp of smoke. She wondered if the people who lived there had made a fire to cozy up to. If she had a fireplace, that’s what she would do today. This was a perfect weather for sitting in front of a fire, watching flames dancing, thinking of nothing.

Then she realized the smoke was coming not from the chimney, but from the house itself. And flames glowed in the windows.

She ran down the stairs, fumbled for her cell phone, and tried to call 911, but she had no signal. She dashed outside. The tour bus was idling in front of the Sinclair house and the guide was giving a surprisingly ungarbled version of Morris’s death. Of course, the truth—that the horror writer had been killed and dismembered in a way that mimicked his stories—was hard to top.

“Call 911,” she screamed, trying to make herself heard over the guide’s recitation.”

A little boy pressed his face against the window, mouth open, tongue out, and stared at her.

“Where’s your mother?” Melanie shouted.

The youthful gargoyle crossed his eyes and disappeared beneath the window.

The bus let out a belch, then moved on down the road. It stopped in front of the burning house, and the occupants craned their necks toward the spectacle.

A few minutes later, a woman wearing a pink lace-trimmed top tucked into fitted jeans jogged up to Melanie, and said breathlessly, “I called 911. What’s going on?”

It took Melanie a moment to recognize her neighbor. Moody Sinclair had cut her long dark hair and dyed the shorn locks a strawberry blonde. Chandelier earrings dangled from her ears and eyeglasses perched on her nose. She looked pretty and normal and very young.

“Fire.” Melanie said absently, listening to the siren in the distance.

“Stucco houses with tile roofs don’t burn.” Moody walked silently besides Melanie for a moment. “Arson maybe?”

The siren grew louder as the fire truck turned onto Delano Road. The driver honked the horn as it sped up the street. All the dogs in the neighborhood added their howls to the cacophony. Melanie scrambled to the side of the road, losing track of Moody, who had dashed to the other side of the street.

Now that the firefighters had arrived, there was no reason for Melanie to continue toward the scene, but she found herself drawn to the action.

As Moody had said, the structure of the house wasn’t burning, but flames bursting through the windows made it seem as if the place were wrapped in fire. Even standing apart from the crowd, Melanie could feel the heat.

The blow up figure of Santa on the motorcycle slowly melted, then dissolved into a puddle of red, white, and black. Whatever remained of the crime scene after the sheriff’s department had finished with it was now gone. Could the house have been torched for that very reason—to destroy evidence? But in that case, why not just burn the Santa and his environs?

Melanie backed away from the inferno. This really didn’t have anything to do with her. If she had killed Nancy, the real crime scene lay several houses down Delano Road.

She headed back to her rental house, wishing she could leave this benighted area.

Then suddenly she stopped short. She could leave. She had money enough to go anywhere. The real problem was figuring out where to go. If her reputation as a Black Widow followed her, then what difference did it make where she lived? At least in Rubicon Ranch, she was just one of many stops on a desert death tour. Besides, Alexander had been killed not far from here, so this is where she needed to begin her investigation into his murder.

She trudged up her driveway, and stopped to see where Nancy had fallen. She saw no
blood on the rocks, but that didn’t prove her innocence. It only meant no one could find any evidence against her.

Unless someone had seen her hit Nancy?

She looked around. Everyone in the neighborhood—residents and squatters alike—seemed to have congregated up by the fire. Only one woman trudged past her house, looking as if she could handle anything or anyone. Hefty, with biceps like hams poking out of a sleeveless top. Bleached blonde hair that looked heavily permed. Cigarette dangling from a bright red mouth.

Melanie smiled to herself. Compared to all the necorphiliacs and vampire-wannabes on the loose in the neighborhood, this woman seemed almost elegant.

But then, perhaps she really was a fine lady on the downward swing of life. Who knew what lay behind anyone’s façade? Everyone had secrets. Everyone had things they wanted to hide from view.

Even me.

But still, if Nancy had died because of her, who had stolen the real estate agent’s purse, and who had set the fire?

***