“Once Upon A Crime” at Bouchercon 2024: Nashville
By Crime HQ
September 12, 2024Check out this post on our Instagram and Facebook pages and comment your suggested title—we might just go with your suggestion!
Everything was going along swimmingly at the Romance Writers conference . . . until the body floated up from under the lazy river ride.
Many of the folks in attendance thought the body was a mannequin, but realized the cold hard truth when someone realized it was the body of the conference chair, Hector. Resembling a mannequin as he did, it was an easy mistake to make. As a matter of fact, it took the police a good hour to identify the body as being human. But Hector wasn’t drowned. He . . . really had gone to the Johnny Cash bar to see about a boy named Sue.
I wondered if anyone else had seen him fighting with the guest of honor in the men’s room . . . but it was getting ugly.
My only hope was that no one would notice the smudge of lipstick on his collar looked suspiciously like mine . . .
Meanwhile, Hector’s daughter, who he didn’t know existed, after his high school girlfriend moved away and gave birth in secret, wandered the trails of the Nashville resort – the one with no signs and a location app that didn’t work – felt someone following her . . . Who could it be? Well, she was at a romance writers’ conference. So it was probably a guy not wearing a shirt. Chaos was rampant until a man without a shirt walked through the door with a gun in his hand . . .
A walking euphemism, no one took him seriously enough.
Which is why Hector was angry. They’d promised him alcohol at this event, but there wasn’t any to be found. It wasn’t very mindful, very cutesy, or very demure.
What no one knew, was that Hector’s mother was named Jolene. Yes, that Jolene. Dolly Parton’s Jolene. Everyone knew that a woman named Jolene was the type to wear a tanktop to a formal wedding and change her own oil, so it wasn’t a surprise that Jolene was the fiancé of the shirtless man who was chasing the illegitimate daughter of Hector.
The arrival of the top investigator of the Nashville PD brought a level of sanity to the otherwise chaotic scene. Her name was Loretta Twitty, She had made her badge solving the infamous case of the white lightning brigade. And she brought an intimate knowledge of romance novels, moonshine, and hunting dogs.
Twitty turned to her assistant, Herlock Sholmes, and said: “Hector wasn’t drowned, how did he die?”
Sholmes said, “Hung?”
Twitty said, “Not in my opinion.”
Sholmes blushed.
“He’s been strangled,” Twitty said. “But with WHAT?”
I was hearing what sounded like a lot of policey chit-chat in the hallway, but none of it mattered. I had to get rid of my lipstick so they couldn’t match it to that on Hector’s collar.
I felt a tap on my shoulder, and whirled to face a man with no shirt.
Hi, he said. My name is Sue. Is anyone looking for me?
“I can only tell you if you help me hide this lipstick!”
Well, it WAS a romance conference so I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised when he gave me a lecherous grin, and pulled his waistband forward . . .
Down by the lazy river, Twitty watched as Sholmes yanked at something under the water.
“I think I found your murder weapon,” Sholmes said.
Twitty said, “Is that . . . a shirt?”
“Yes it is,” Sholmes said. “Can you read the tag?”
“Uh . . . International Male, I think. And it has a name written on inside . . . It says . . .”
Twitty’s assistant turned to her. “So, have you figured out what this incomprehensible story is all about?”
Twitty nodded. “It seems obvious the shirtless man had hectored Hector after Hector had spotted him with Jolene, and pecked her. They began a chase through the vector and sectors of this insanely large conference center,” she explained.
“Hector shredded the man’s shirt, beginning a fatal fight, which disrupted a ditty in this country city.”
“Wait. That’s your theory?”
Twitty shrugged. “Yeah. Shitty.”
Special thanks to the contributing authors who brought this short story into being:
- Steve Urszenyi
- Jeff Ayers
- Bruce Borgos
- Vivien Chien
- Cate Conte
- Julie Carrick Dalton
- Alex Finlay
- Matt Goldman
- David Housewright
- Andrew Ludington
- Catherine Mack
- Susan Elia MacNeal
- John McMahon
- Delia Pitts
- Mark Pryor
- Lori Rader-Day
- Hank Phillippi Ryan
- Sharon Short
- Archer Sullivan
- Sarah Stewart Taylor
- James Byrne
