Tag: police

Fiction: Lemonade Stand

Posted on by bryon

Darrell flopped into his recliner. “Hoo, boy! What a day. Am I glad to be home.”

“Rough day?” Bonnie asked. She came from behind the overstocked in-home bar and handed him a double martini. The bar took up the space where the previous homeowner had had both an organ and a grand piano.

“It’s always the same old stuff. No one has any vision, no new ideas. They stick with the tried and true and safe, and then they wonder why sales are slumping. I don’t wanna talk about it. I’m just happy to be in the bosom of my sweet, normal family. So what happened around here today?” He took a sip of his drink.

Bonnie was quiet for a moment. “The children set up a lemonade stand.”

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Fiction: The Bird Feeder

Posted on by bryon

Ewen Macklin made a hole in the side of the bag of wild bird seed and put a plastic cup to it to catch what spilled. He filled six such cups and tipped the bag back so no more of the seed would flow. He put the cups into a little basket and headed toward the back door of his home.

Only a couple of years earlier he would have taken the new bag of bird seed outdoors and held it aloft as necessary to fill the feeders. But that time had passed and the cups and basket were a necessary compromise.

“Joy, joy, joy,” he told himself. Macklin was certain this was the last real joy in his life now that age and death had taken the others from him. Feeding the birds — and, by extension, the squirrels — that came to his yard was an unalloyed, unadulterated delight.

It wasn’t until he started back inside after his happy errand that he saw his neighbor, Jon Burtle, staring at him hatefully. His young son, Jon Jr., who was about nine years old, had an identical expression on his face. Macklin ignored them and went in. He had never engaged the family next door in conversation and they had returned the silence. The Burtles’ vile bumper stickers and the political campaign signs they permitted in their yard indicated there would be no meeting of the minds among neighbors, and that was the end of it.

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Fiction: Folding Money

Posted on by bryon

The police sergeant closed the door to the interrogation room and waved the other man to a seat.

“Now, Mr. Legier, as I said on the phone, I believe we have found your missing wallet which was stolen from you five weeks ago,” Sergeant Kaplan said. If you could just describe it for me, please.”

“Certainly. It’s a simple brown bi-fold wallet. Rather well used; it’s not new. It had my name in it.”

“Anything … unusual about it that might help further identify it, Mr. Legier?”

“Well, not really,” he said, and paused. “I mean, it had my driver’s license and grocery store club card and library card and such things.”

“So there’s nothing, shall we say, peculiar … at all … about this wallet? Mr. Legier?” Sergeant Kaplan lowered his head and looked over his glasses at Mr. Legier. His eyebrows were up in his hairline and there was great meaning in his stare, which Mr. Legier understood.

“Well, it …” He stopped. “It makes money,” he admitted quietly.

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Fiction: The To-Do List

Posted on by bryon

A stray piece of paper is more likely to be picked up if it’s light pink with cute artwork of a kitten and some handwriting on it.

That was the stray piece of paper Denise saw on the grocery store floor, near the customer service desk and picked up. Next to the kitten, at the top of the page, was printed: “Things CONNIE Needs To Do Today.” It was from the sort of notepad advertised in junk mail, and Connie had ordered some. There was, indeed a list of things to do:

1. Call Mom
2. Deposit check
3. Pay rent
4. Take movies back
5. Get haircut – Fran
6. Wash car
7. Go to work
8. Get CheezPuffers, Bloody Mary mix, rat poison
9. Meet Terry at hotel
10. Put rat poison in Terry’s drink
11. Go home, wash clothes & clean out fridge!
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