holding pattern

I’m working on creating a new blog, using Drupal, one which will combine this blog, the utownwriting blog, the movie reviews, and maybe even (eventually) the novels.

It’s not quite ready for prime time. So, for now, here’s a teaser of a new mystery story:

The Rock Band Mystery

I had met Ron after school, and she and I were going to meet Jan for dinner, to celebrate Ron’s birthday. Ron was somewhat ambivalent about this; she was always uncomfortable about anything which meant she was the center of attention. But she had agreed, once I had made it clear that it would just be the three of us, and there would be no singing of Happy Birthday or party hats or anything like that.

Which was fine with us, we didn’t make too big a deal about each other’s birthdays, but with Ron it was a real resistance and we had to respect that.

“So,” I said, “we spent most of the afternoon making a huge cake. We figured–”

She glanced at me to make sure I was kidding, then she just shook her head.

Then she turned, and she was about to speak when we heard a sound from the doorway next to us. We both stopped, and I put a hand on her shoulder. There was nobody near us on the sidewalk, and I was pretty sure we were the only people who had heard it. And I was pretty sure it had been a gunshot.

The building was a tenement, three stories tall, with a shuttered storefront at the street level. The steel curtain was pulled down, covered with graffiti, and it seemed that this was where the noise had come from, but it had been muffled and hard to locate.

Ron and I were motionless, as if waiting to see what would happen next, and then she said, “That was a gun. Wasn’t it?”

I was tempted to lie to her, to try to keep her away from whatever it was, but I said, “Yes, I think it was. Please step over there, and I’ll–”

I had motioned for her to step aside, to the other side of the stone steps that went up to the front door of the building, but she shook her head. “We should–”

We looked at each other, and there was no point in even having the argument we were about to have. She knew I would try to get her away from the danger, and I knew she would try to go in with me. So, we just looked at each other, each of us trying to figure out the argument that would convince the other one.