Showing posts with label Virginia is for Mysteries Volume III. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Virginia is for Mysteries Volume III. Show all posts

Saturday, January 27, 2024

BREAKING THINGS by Judy Fowler

Why was I breaking things? 

As I struggled to hang heavy curtains I'd sewn and lined, their fabric caught on the neck of a vintage pink vase and toppled that lovely heirloom to the floor. I froze. Four large pieces and smaller shards of irreplaceable glass lay near my feet. I wanted the pieces to jump up and put themselves back together. The vase had previously belonged to a grandmother I'd only known for four years before she died. 

Saturday, August 26, 2023

HOW TO MURDER AN ICE CREAM CONE by Judy Fowler

 

The dog days of August are upon us. My urge to plot out crime stories has temporarily abated. In the lull, there’s always time to kill an ice cream cone.

My friend Nikki kills hers by biting the bottom out first. I use my mother's technique. Bite off the peak of the ice cream first. Catch the drippy parts near the top of the cone. Another bite off the top and you're ready to relax and lick away the ice cream that remains.

After that? Dispose of the evidence in whatever’s left of your napkin supply after deciding what to do with what's left in the bottom of the cone.

For celebratory memory-making, Proust’s famous cookie has nothing on recalling moments shared doing in a couple of ice cream cones.

Yesterday after a swim in the Chesapeake Bay, my thoughts (followed by my feet) wandered over to Dairy Queen. As I attacked the top of my cone, I had a memory of running along the hot sand at Jones Beach as a kid. In my sticky bathing suit, I hopped from foot to foot hoping I wouldn't drop the change I'd been given to buy a paper cylinder of Neapolitan ice cream—so I could return to our blanket with a sticky grin.

After my chiropractic appointment recently, I pulled into a shopping center to see if my Weight Watchers location was still there. It wasn't, but the Carvel store was. For $4.50, that first taste of a soft-serve vanilla cone transported me back to Glen Cove, Long Island in the 1960’s. In those years Mom celebrated our mutual survival of my dental appointments by nosing her car into the parking lot of a Carvel stand to share a cup or cone with me. She’d brand the little wooden spoon or the swirl at the top before we finished it off with a smile. 

On summer visits to upstate New York, Mom introduced us to homemade ice cream from deep containers at a store near where she grew up. I discovered vanilla fudge. Mom bit into maple walnut. Sisters, Dad, and brother chose butter pecan, real strawberry, and pistachio. That half hour spent ordering and devouring ice cream cones while standing around the over-stuffed car was a time-out from packing, driving, and arguing—and it switched each of us into "We're on vacation!” mode.

My grandfather loved ice cream in summer—especially someone else’s. I was six and had barely dipped my spoon into the junior-sized hot fudge sundae he’d bought me when he pointed to something I just had to see. By the time I got turned around in my chair again, most of my sundae was gone.

Such a crime is shocking. “Pop!” I cried. “You ate my ice cream!” The adults and children near us made faces at him but he never apologized. 

Dogs are usually prime suspects when ice cream is missing. To ensure a good time is had by all in Montreal, its summer ice cream stands offer each pet an ice cream-covered dog bone—on the house.

Memory-making moments with family grow fewer as I get older. But I had one last great one in August, 2019. Mom and I took one of her “let’s just drive and see where it leads” road trips between New Hampshire and Vermont. 

We spotted the ice cream stand near Quechee Gorge.

At age ninety-nine, Mom looked terribly small sitting in my passenger seat. I figured she'd want a small cup. I assumed she’d worry about dripping on her skirt and blazer. 

Never assume. She’d grown bolder with age. And she didn't give a hoot about her weight. She asked for a double scoop chocolate cone. That was Dad and my brother’s territory. 

A few minutes later, I warily passed her one of the two I’d ordered. We began to lick them to death. 

It was hot outside so we stayed in the air-conditioned car but left the doors open in case the dripping cones overwhelmed us. Mom's left a chocolate stain that's still on my passenger-side floormat. 

Her technique didn’t fail her. We ate, laughed, got serious about our task, and then she beat me to the bottom. Little evidence remained to be disposed of. We were giddy all the way back to her senior residence.

Better ways may exist to do in an ice cream cone. No one was more fun to share that experience with than my Mom, who once had the novel idea of capping off a cavity-laden dental visit with a trip to the soft serve stand.

 

 

 

 

 

Saturday, April 8, 2023

ENTERTAINING CRIME by Judy Fowler




  Why do we enjoy trials and stories about murder?

  Take South Carolina v. Murdaugh, as entertaining as a great           screenplay. 

 Murdaugh—a creep who never saw a vulnerable person he wouldn't     fleece—had us on the edge of our seats when he chose to take the           stand.  He cried in the jurors' direction and offered alternative facts to     them to escape accountability.  

 In a “fun and games” moment, his attorney pointed a rifle at the prosecutor. The possibility of reasonable doubt made my adrenaline kick in. The defense's hope of winning the day was alive right up to the last two minutes of the film—I mean trial. I bit my nails and hoped Alex hadn’t fooled any jurors. 

When they found him guilty, my dopamine kicked in. Shouldn't I have felt sad?

Why did I behave as if I'd been to a show? To understand my reaction, I went to acuriosityofcrime.com and re-read their June 2022 research on nineteenth-century inquest protocols in “Murder as Entertainment.” 

The English or Welsh coroner from the 1800's "who believed a death to be suspicious” sent warrants to collect twelve to twenty-four jurors for inquest duty. "It was to occur as soon as possible after notification of death." No need to ask the boss for time off next month. Duty began in two hours.  

And where did jurors do their service? "The morgue, or often where the body had been laid out on their bed." 

Talk about an adrenaline rush. You're home—adding a lump of coal to the fire. A knock at the door results in your immediate departure for a third-floor walk-up in a dodgy neighborhood. You trudge up several flights to a tawdry bedsit where a fresh corpse lies on the bed. 

The room is packed with other jurors. Agatha Christie's A Murder is Announced comes to mind. 

I'm embellishing, but it might have happened like that. 

Inquest duty stories from older relatives may have inspired Christie to write And Then There Were None. In it, a letter from a stranger induces ten people to drop everything and travel to an isolated location where they play judge, jury, and defendant.

Back to our 1800's juror. He was required to “peruse the corpse for signs of poisoning or violence.” If a juror tried to turn away after just a "quick gander," "the inquest was voided and any investigation had to stop."

Not all jurors could take the pressure. In one case, “A drunken juryman took offense and became noisier and more difficult to control as the inquest went on.” In another “the details of a poisoning were too much for the foreman of the jury and he fainted. Everyone waited until he had recovered enough to rejoin the proceedings.”     

The body remained on public display while "the jury gathered to hear testimony from everyone who had something relevant to say." The suspects could question the witnesses without being "obliged to say anything to criminate" themselves.  

Jurors asked questions, too. Imagine the tension in the room as suspects gave their alibis in the room with their possible victim, the victim's friend and all those over-stimulated jurors. Maybe their adrenaline rush remains in our collective memory when we watch Dateline.                                                       

After completing that sort of jury duty I'd rush home for a strong cup of tea. But lots of jurors must have headed for their local pub to wind up their friends and receive free pints of ale for telling and re-telling their story. 

If high-octane story-telling lit the fire that continues to burn in us for true crime and crime fiction today, and if a spark from that fire landed on me... then I'm not to blame for staying up late reading a whodunnit or for perking up when I hear the jury is back.     

But should I forgive myself for writing murder mysteries? A journalist once asked crime fiction authors Jonathan and Faye Kellerman if they felt guilty using murder as a vehicle to amuse people. Faye said no and that their "readers find murder stories entertaining because—in the end—those who hurt us are held accountable, cases are resolved, and the law wins.”

 

 

SANTA'S JOURNEY THROUGH TIME by Teresa Inge

Any kid can tell you where Santa Claus is from—the North Pole. But his historical journey is even longer and more fantastic than his annual,...