The Case of the Stolen Case by Carl Brookins
IT’s been so warm this fall some of our routines have been
seriously disrupted. For example, this morning, very early, I crawled through
the raised garden at the end of our garage to reach the eaves over the door to
the basement. I had noted the previous day the gutter was filled with oak and
maple leaves. So I cleaned out the gutter. That usually happens in late October
or early November!
Whilst cleaning I recalled that my wife had suggested it was
time—past time – to mix up my annual batch of
spaghetti sauce. Especially since we had recently used up the last jar of last
year’s batch, and would I please make it a little sweeter and not so spicy hot
this year. That’s a nod to our aging tastes.
And then, she continued, since you like meat chili so much,
try cooking up a batch. That suggestion comes from a recent book event. Grand
Master Ellen Hart and I made a presentation to a large and enthusiastic bunch
of readers a few weeks ago. We were helping a small Wisconsin town with its annual
fund-raiser for the library. They served chili. Wonderful, tasty chili. I raved
and my wife urged me to cook some. Workin’ on it.
While cleaning the leaves from the gutter, I began to
consider what supplies I might need from the grocery store. I decided to cook
upon finishing the gutter, but I needed a hooked tool, like the head of an old
cane, I thought. That reminded me of the elaborate and valuable cane I
encountered a few weeks ago in Wisconsin. It was in the hands of a stooped,
gnarled older gentleman. Knowing a bit about canes, I recognized that this
Wisconsin cane was seriously valuable and I also realized that the cane and its
owner could appear in a future story.
Later in the kitchen while browning the hamburger and
opening cans of tomato sauce, preparing to cook the sauce for a day, the voice
of the old cane came to me and I learned how its silver-clad tip had once been
sullied by a previous owner. He’d dented the skull of a rival farmer, a farmer
who died that day on the boardwalk. I diced onion, sprinkled spices and opened
cans of sauce, tasting the cold juice to be sure it was still good. But I also
heard the voice of the cane as it explained to me what it felt, the jolt and
the tremor when the silver nob cracked the skull and killed that other man. The
cane never forgot, it said.
I salted, tasted, minced and fried, and then, as the voice
of the cane inside my head faded, set the big pot to the warming part of the
stove to cook all day. I needed supplies for the chili I would create and needed
to find out how the cane had survived all those years with the blood of the
victim still secreted in the crevices of the wooden stick.
This all has nothing directly to do with my latest release
The Case of the Stolen Case, in which Sean is drawn more deeply than he wants
into an old unsolved murder, but it does have to do very much with the way some
of us conjure up our stories. Happy reading.
Bio and links for Carl Brookins:
Before he became a mystery writer and
reviewer, Carl Brookins was a counselor and faculty member at Metropolitan
State University in Saint Paul, Minnesota. Brookins and his wife are avid
recreational sailors. He is a member of Mystery Writers of America, Sisters in
Crime, and Private Eye Writers of America. He can frequently be found touring
bookstores and libraries with his companions-in-crime, The Minnesota Crime
Wave.
He writes the sailing adventure series featuring Michael Tanner and Mary Whitney. The third novel is Old Silver. His new private investigator series features Sean NMI Sean, a short P.I. The first is titled The Case of the Greedy Lawyers. Brookins received a liberal arts degree from the University of Minnesota and studied for a MA in Communications at Michigan State University.
He writes the sailing adventure series featuring Michael Tanner and Mary Whitney. The third novel is Old Silver. His new private investigator series features Sean NMI Sean, a short P.I. The first is titled The Case of the Greedy Lawyers. Brookins received a liberal arts degree from the University of Minnesota and studied for a MA in Communications at Michigan State University.
@carlbrookins
Buy
links:
The Case of the Yellow
Diamond http://www.amazon.com/Case-Yellow-Diamond-Sean-Mystery/dp/0878398163/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1448218939&sr=8-1&keywords=the+case+of+the+yellow+diamond
Comments
Happy spaghetti and chili cooking and eating... and mystery crafting. Now, I wonder what inspired the flaming suitcase? hahahaha
Jackie