(On a computer screen, narrow your browser for a better reading experience.)
This novel is a fantasy of the future, a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. Great effort has been made, especially regarding those individuals who have recognizable positions with government, or publicly known organizations, mentioned herein, to insure they are not mistaken for past or present individuals in those positions. What the future holds, what possible outside influences may be brought to bear on future participants in those organizations, no one can say.
Copyright © 2022 Miles A. Maxwell FAB LLC
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. Electronic sharing of any part of this book without permission of the publisher, other than for review purposes, is a violation of the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976.
For reprint permission contact: permissions@broadington.com
B B Broadington LLC
Cheyenne
Cover Photo Of House by JeffreyCzum via Pexels
Jeffrey Czum
Visit Broadington.com
ISBN 978-1-943054-17-6
Murder
SATURDAY MORNING, NOVEMBER 1ST
Two long black squared-off wagons, hearses, in the driveway next door told thirteen-year-old Phil Loonan the Beshners must be dead. The three police cars parked out front (Ellsville, Nebraska had only four) suggested something ominous.
They didn’t both die in their sleep on the same night! Phil thought.
As it turned out, Phil’s guess was right. And wrong.
The Beshners had been asleep when they died, but there were few clues to identify the murdering scum who broke in and killed them. The police put together a possible scenario.
Whoever did it had come in quietly through the rear of the house that Halloween, a bit before midnight. Stabbed Mr. Beshner in the neck while he slept in his recliner and a late night horror flick played on the TV. Then the killer had gone back to the bedroom and stabbed Mrs. Beshner in the heart. The only clues were the fang marks on Mr. Beshner’s neck and, as police reluctantly revealed, fang punctures near the top of Mrs. Beshner’s left breast. The police figured it was some sort of satanic ritual. At the autopsies the Beshners were each two pints low.
The killer drank their blood? Phil thought. No. Killers. Plural. No single person could drink four whole pints of blood!
It was a mystery, all right. No DNA was found. The killers had wiped up after they drank — or fed. The police put out a reward of $10,000 for any information leading to the arrest and conviction of the perpetrators.
The story appeared on network television: Crime Stoppers. Thousands of tips were phoned and emailed in. None of them led to the killers.
Phil felt pretty bad about losing the Beshners. Phil’s Grandma Carol, the last of his grandparents, had died three years earlier. Ernie and Doris Beshner had been of an age to act as substitutes.
Mr. Beshner had taken Phil fishing on the Calamus River once or twice each summer since Grandma Carol died. The last time they’d come back with half the trunk of Mr. Beshner’s old Chrysler full of rainbow trout, striped bass, walleye, and a few catfish.
Mr. Beshner was a genius at finding fish. He’d shown Phil how to spot the best deep river holes. Explained what a dead tree in the water might mean to the fish.
The other half of the Chrysler’s trunk, Mr. Beshner had filled at a roadside market with corn. After an endless three days when Phil and his little sister Lucy did most of the scaling and shucking and wrapping and freezing, the Loonans and Beshners ate fish eight different ways to Sunday, with buttery corn on the cob, two or three days a week for the rest of the summer.
All that fish and corn put no crimp on desert, though. Mrs. Beshner made just about the best strawberry-rhubarb pie anyone ever tasted. Not too sweet. Just the right amount of tart — tangy! Mrs. Beshner even taught Lucy how to make her secret ultra-flaky pie crust, a highly sought-after recipe around town, using sunflower oil and rum, though Lucy refused to say how.
Phil missed the Beshners. They were nice. Mr. Beshner told the wildest stories about fighting in some jungle war in Asia, half of which Phil didn’t believe but liked listening to.
Scary stuff!
Phil’s family ate dinner over at the Beshners’ place often. Or the Beshners came over to the Loonans’. To be honest, Phil’s mom wasn’t nearly as good a cook on her own. Occasionally their Saturday card games would go on late into the night. Well, not that late, really, but later than Phil usually got to stay up.
Now the Beshners were gone and all those good times were gone with them.
