The Phantom of Oz, Installment #32
Plus Mystery Research
Hello! As most of you know, I’m serializing The Phantom of Oz here in a bit of an experiment. Once a month, you’ll still receive the “regular” Slightly Silly News. If you missed earlier chapters of Phantom, you can find links to all of the earlier installments here.
Writing a mystery involves a lot of moving parts—clues, red herrings, suspense-building—and for most of us mystery authors, a lot of research. We need to know:
Methods of Murder - Would that type of poison really kill someone? How does it work? How long does it take?
Criminal Investigation - Who investigates a crime in a particular jurisdiction? How long does each element of the investigation take? What are the typical barriers and dead ends?
Relationships between Agencies, First responders, and Other Interested Parties - Who are the first responders on the scene? Who does the death investigation, a medical examiner or a coroner? (The latter is elected and often has no medical background). How might a PI be involved? Would there be attorneys involved?
Luckily for us mystery writers, there’s a great listserv, Crimescenewriter2@groups.io, “A forum for asking and answering crime scene investigation, applied forensics, and police procedure questions for fiction or non-fiction writers. Writers are invited to ask and crime scene investigators, forensic scientists, and medical practioners are invited to answer.” It’s great, geeky, and sometimes gory fun. Recent topics/questions include “Injection to induce heart attack?”, “inhalants that cause loss of conciousness,”and “Lily of the Valley water as poison?” (Re: the last topic, Lily of the Valley is poisonous but it would be tough to figure out the dosage and the water would probably taste horrible, so not a great choice of poison.)
Today’s installment of The Phantom of Oz may not involve most of those elements, but it does involve a police detective whose duties I researched via the listserv and a PI/former policeman, and takes place in a police station, which I have visited. I’d like to say I’ve never been fingerprinted, but I have*.
Smidge of Book News
I’ll be talking about my new mystery, Echoes of the Lost, at Cedar Hills United Church of Christ in Beaverton this Sunday, at approximately 11:15 a.m. The event is open to all, and all of my proceeds from book sales go to Family Promise of Greater Washington County, which provides stable, short-term housing, and resources to families experiencing (or at risk of ) homelessness.
If you’d like to read my new book, Echoes of the Lost, you can …
And now, on to Phantom!
* I was fingerprinted because I was volunteering to work with kids, but I did make you wonder for a minute, right?
Chapter 23 (Part Two)
Was She Really a Victim?
In the last installment, Ivy (who has a bad cold) tells her Uncle Bob she’s been hired to find her friend Candy and understudy Candy’s role in the touring show. She also learns that her brother Cody has an audition.
“Cody tell you anything about an audition?” I asked my uncle after I hung up.
“Not on our last call.” Uncle Bob called Cody a couple times a month, just to check in.
“Huh. Maybe he wants to surprise us. About the audition, I mean.”
“Say that again. That last bit.”
“Um...about the audition, I mean.”
“You do realize you said, ‘I bean,’ right? What are you going to do about that cold? I mean, this understudy gig involves acting, right?”
“And singing.” Crap. “I don’t know.”
“Still not taking cold medicine?” Uncle Bob knew I avoided it after some bad reactions in the past. I shook my head. He turned to his computer. “Let me see what I can find for you.”
I refilled my coffee cup, sat down at my computer, and tried to see if I could find out anything online about any other accidents connected with The Wizard: A Space OZpera. Nothing in the news. I tried a few online theater forums. I found out they were auditioning munchkins and replacing the Scarecrow, but that was it. I’d have to do any sleuthing the old-fashioned way, by questioning people.
On to my next task: finding Candy. But, yikes, was that the time? “Hey, Uncle Bob, what can you tell me about finding a missing person in just a few minutes?”
Uncle Bob leaned back in his chair. “Tell me again about Candy’s disappearance.”
“She was late for the reception on Sunday. Everyone else was already there when she came down the spiral staircase. Right before the one-eyed portrait spurted blood.”
Uncle Bob raised a shaggy eyebrow in a question, and I told him about the painting. “She must have left the lobby in all the confusion, but no one saw her. And no one saw her after that. I asked around, and looked for her all over the theater.”
“Why? Why were you immediately worried?”
“Well, we had a fight the night before and—”
“So maybe she just didn’t want to see you?”
“Sure. Maybe. But no one else saw her either.”
Uncle Bob’s eyebrow now had a decidedly skeptical bent. “Go on.”
“I went to her dressing room. No sign of her, but she left behind her purse and phone.”
The eyebrow looked interested.
“Then Arrestadt—the director, and Candy’s boyfriend, I guess...” I didn’t like admitting to myself that Candy hadn’t told me they were dating. “He called Monday morning and said that Candy had missed her nightly call. Her bed hadn’t been slept in.”
The eyebrow looked worried. “Anything wrong with the room? Stuff turned over or blood anywhere?”
“I saw it last night. There were just two things missing—a photo of Candy and Arrestadt in Paris and her stash of MoonPies. I’m sure Arrestadt would’ve told me if he saw anything this morning. One more thing: when he went to her dressing room this morning, Candy’s purse and cell phone were gone.”
Uncle Bob’s eyebrow returned to its normal “nothing to see here” place. “It sounds like she did a runner.”
“But why? Things are going perfectly for her: She’s got a great touring contract, a famous director boyfriend, and now this It Girl thing.”
“In my experience, people run away for one of two reasons: either they don’t like the life they lead, or they don’t like who they are. That said, that stuff is best left to psychologists. Our job is just to find them. So, first thing, make a list of all her known associates...”
“Known associates,” I repeated out loud. I loved PI language.
“Then contact those associates.”
“Perfect,” I said. “I’ll go do that right now.”
“Don’t you have rehearsal?”
“Where do you think all Candy’s known associates are going to be?”
I had just enough time to stop at the Phoenix Police station on the way to the theater. “Is Detective Pinkstaff here?” I asked the woman staffing the reception desk. She nodded. “Could you tell him that Olive Ziegwart would like a few minutes of his time?” She spoke into a phone, then pressed a button. A door buzzed open and I walked through. Sort of like the security at the theater, but with better uniforms.
Detective Pinkstaff, or Pink, was one of my uncle’s best friends. He’d become one of mine too, even though he was about twenty years older than me. He appeared to have a teeny unrequited crush on me, but he was also a good man who had helped me out several times before.
“Hey, Olive.” Pink stood as I walked into his office.” He wore his typical uniform: dark pants and a wrinkled short-sleeved shirt.
“Hey.” I pointed at his chest pocket. “Where’s your pen?”
“We got a new commander. Guy told me I looked unprofessional because sometime I got ink on my shirt. Unprofessional.” Pink snorted. “You should see this guy. Got a haircut musta cost a hundred bucks, pretty shiny shoes, and some cologne makes him smell like a girl. Probably spends more time looking in a mirror than he does at the firing range. That’s unprofessional. Anyway,” he motioned to a chair and sat back down behind his desk, “what can I do for you?”
I stayed standing. “Can’t stay.” I handed him the pill I’d found in Candy’s bag. “But I was hoping you could help me figure out what this is. I already tried all the pill ID sites.”
He looked at it, opened his top drawer, took out some reading glasses, shoved them on his face, and examined the pill more closely. “Don’t recognize it. Why do you need to know?”
I explained my fears for Candy. “Sounds like you think it might be some sort of diet pill,” he said. “You got your phone?”
I didn’t understand why he wanted to know, but nodded.
He laid the pill on his desktop blotter. “Take a couple pictures of it, in case you need to reference it later. I’ll take it down to the lab.”
I did, and then I ran around the desk to hug him. “Thank you.”
“I’m not saying they’ll do this favor for me, though there is a certain redhead who gives me donuts every time I come in—and don’t you dare make a crack about cops and donuts.”
I wouldn’t. I loved donuts. My stomach growled at the thought of a hot fresh apple fritter, or maybe a chocolate glazed donut, or a cake doughnut dunked in freshly brewed coffee, or...
“I’ll see if she recognizes it. Anything else I can do for you?”
“No thanks, that’s all, ah ah ah...Afllechhh! Um, actually,” I kept one hand over my nose while I pointed to a box on his desk with the other, “could I have some of those Kleenex?”
Watch next week for another Slightly Silly Newsletter!
And if you haven’t read the first four books in the Agatha-nominated Ivy Meadows series:
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