He pointed to the door through which he had come.
“And,” he said. “It’s no she. It’s a he, and even though I’ve worked with you vaudeville people before, I don’t think his name is Corrine. And what’s he doing out there without a coat on a night like this and a little U.S. flag on his chest and…”
Alf dashed to the stage door, opened it, and ran out. Buddy Donald, short and wiry with very little hair, who had once been a tenor and was now a comic, came hurrying down the stairs saying, “I’m on.”
He ignored everyone, adjusted his cuffs and walked onstage.
“It’s Kenny,” Alf said coming back through the stage door. “He’s out there. He’s dead.”
“I just told you he was dead,” Doctor Frazier said. “Close the door.”
Alf closed the door.
“What happened to him?” Liz cried.
It was Charlotte’s turn to comfort her sister.
“Looks to me like he slipped on a patch of ice by the steps,” said the doctor. “Looks to me like he must have been in a hurry, which is not a good thing to do on ice, especially when, as I could see, you’re wearing tap shoes. Left leg’s broke. Hit his head on the ice. There’s another body?”
“This way,” said Vogel motioning for the doctor to follow him up the stairs.
The doctor stopped at the top of the stairs and said, “Call the police. And try to stay alive till they get here.”
“Shame,” said the white-haired man, buttoning his coat. “I’ll come back and talk to you two young ladies tomorrow.”
“About what?” Charlotte asked.
“About being in a movie,” the man said. “My name is Lee DeForest. I have a studio here in Chicago. I’m starting to make movies with sound to show in theaters like this one, short movies with music. I’d like the two of you to do your act for my cameras and sound tomorrow.”
“You’re kidding?” said Charlotte.
“No,” said Alf. “I heard of him. He makes movies with sounds. We’re thinking of showing them here.”
“I show them all around the country,” he said. “You get paid well, I think, and people all over the country get to see you. I can assure you, you’ll be famous.”
The sisters looked at each other and simultaneously said, “Sure.”
“I really came to see Mr. Poole,” DeForest said with a sigh. “One of my people said he would be perfect for movies. Tap dancing. Music. Pity. Now if you tell me where you are staying, I’ll have a car pick you up at, say, eleven tomorrow?”
“We’ll miss the first show,” said Liz.
“Miss the first show,” said Alf with a wave of one hand and the other on his forehead. “We’re three acts short. We’ll show an extra movie.”
About the Authors
Winner of the Agatha, Anthony, Macavity, and Shamus awards for her short stories, and Edgar-nominated twice for her Cass Jameson series, Carolyn Wheat embarked on a new venture with How to Write Killer Fiction. This unique approach to writing the crime novel explores “the funhouse of mystery and the roller coaster of suspense” so that the writer can create the ideal reader experience in either genre. She is currently at work on a book about detective characters as archetypes. She offers writing workshops and teaches regularly at UCSD.
Edward D. Hoch is a past president of the Mystery Writers of America and winner of its Edgar Award for best short story. In 2001 he was honored with MWA’s Grand Master Award. He has been guest of honor at the annual Bouchercon mystery convention, two-time winner of its Anthony Award, and 2001 recipient of its Lifetime Achievement Award. He is also recipient of Life Achievement Awards from the Private Eye Writers of America and the Short Mystery Fiction Society. Author of over 875 published stories, as well as novels and collections, he has appeared in every issue of Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine since 1973. Hoch resides with his wife Patricia in Rochester, New York.
Annette Meyers was born in New York, grew up on a chicken farm in New Jersey, and came running back to Manhattan as soon as she could. She has a long history on Broadway (assistant to Harold Prince) and Wall Street (headhunter and arbitrator, NASD). Her first novel, The Big Killing, featured Wall Street headhunters Xenia Smith and former dancer, Leslie Wetzon, who stumble over bodies on Wall Street and Broadway. There are now seven Smith and Wetzon novels and an eighth, Hedging, will be published in 2005. In Free Love, set in Greenwich Village in 1920, Meyers introduced poet/sleuth Olivia Brown and her bohemian friends. Murder Me Now followed. With husband Martin Meyers, using the pseudonym Maan Meyers, she has written six books in The Dutchman series of historical mysteries set in New York in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries. Both Annette Meyers’s and Maan Meyers’s short stories have appeared in numerous anthologies.
John Lutz is the author of more than thirty-five novels and approximately 250 short stories and articles. His work has been translated into virtually every language and adapted for almost every medium. He is a past president of both the Mystery Writers of America and the Private Eye Writers of America. Among his awards are the MWA Edgar, the PWA Shamus, the Trophee 813 Award for best mystery short story collection translated into the French language, the PWA Life Achievement Award, and the Short Mystery Fiction Society’s Golden Derringer Lifetime Achievement Award. He is the author of two private eye series, the Nudger series, set in his home town of St. Louis, and the Carver series, set in Florida, as well as many non-series suspense novels. His SWF Seeks Same was made into the hit movie Single White Female, starring Bridget Fonda and Jennifer Jason Leigh, and his The Ex was made into the HBO original movie of the same title, for which he co-authored the screenplay. His latest book is a suspense novel, The Night Watcher.
“Janet Evanovich meets The Fugitive.” That’s what author Tim Dorsey calls Elaine Viets’s new Dead-End Job mystery series. Shop Till You Drop is the first in the Signet series. Elaine actually works those dead-end jobs in this South Florida series. She has been a dress-store clerk, a bookseller, and a telemarketer who called you at dinnertime. She was nominated for three Agatha Awards in 2003 for Best Traditional Mystery for Shop Till You Drop, and two short stories, “Red Meat” and “Sex and Bingo.”
Angela Zeman, a former director of MWA, is the author of The Witch and the Borscht Pearl (Pendulum Press). The cozy novel, praised in reviews from Publisher’s Weekly and other venues, features characters from the popular Mrs. Risk “witch” short story series. Mary Higgins Clark chose a Mrs. Risk story for her anthology, The Night Awakens. The second Mrs. Risk novel is expected to appear soon. Her suspense story in Nancy Pickard’s anthology, Mom, Apple Pie, and Murder, was reviewed by PW as “magical.” “Green Heat,” her story in the MWA anthology A Hot and Sultry Night for Crime, also garnered high praise from Publishers Weekly. She also writes nonfiction articles about the mystery field, both alone and with her husband, Barry T. Zeman, who is an acknowledged authority on the history of the mystery and antiquarian book collecting. They contributed an article to MWA’s 2003 handbook edited by Sue Grafton (Writer’s Digest Books): Writing Mysteries. http://www.AngelaZeman.com.
Another original story by David Bart appeared in the 2003 Mystery Writers of America anthology, A Hot and Sultry Night for Crime, edited by Jeffery Deaver. David’s work has also been published in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine and Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. One of his many stories published in AHMM was translated and reprinted in a Paris anthology. He is presently working on a suspense novel in addition to short stories and is an active member of the Mystery Writers of America, South West Writers, and PWA. David lives in New Mexico and can be reached at djbart@flash.net.