Not Your Grandmother’s Murders Part 1

Gregory Adams Fiction

6 min read

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Just now

It was a fine restaurant, and Patrick could see that Karen was impressed. “Of course I’d do this just because,” he said as the waiter brought them their drinks. “Bring you here to a fine restaurant for no other reason than you’re my girl, and you deserve it.”

Karen blushed at this, and her eyes flicked to the red shopping bag he’d been carrying. The bag was tied with a ribbon and although she hadn’t said so, Patrick knew she believed it contained gifts for her.

“What do you know about this restaurant?” he asked. “What do you know about this restaurant, and you and I?”

A cold, pale look passed over her. “Patrick, if you’re going to propose to me…” she began.

“No, no it’s not that,” he said quickly. He let one hand slide across the tablecloth to cover her fingers with his own. “Think back, a long time ago, when we had first started seeing each other, we were walking home from another place just down the street, that pizza restaurant…”

“The one with the giant margaritas?” she asked.

“That’s the one,” he said. “As we passed this restaurant, I pointed to it and said that when I sold my first piece of writing, I would use the money I made to buy you dinner here.” She took her hand from his and shifted in her chair, not quite putting it all together. Patrick lifted the shopping bag and handed it to her. Karen’s face still held some uncertainty as she reached into the bag and came out with a small digest-sized magazine. She looked over the lurid cover and read the title: Killer’s Alleyway. Opening the magazine where it was marked, she at once recognized Patrick’s pseudonym.

“Oh wow,” she said, her voice limp. She scanned the first few lines of the story and then turned the magazine in her hands, examining the front and back covers before opening it to the title page. “I’ve never heard of this magazine.” She put the magazine back inside the bag and set the bag on the floor.

“It’s a detective magazine. Most of the stories are about murders and killings, that sort of thing.”

“I thought that you were trying for literary magazines,” she said. “Big ones like The New Yorker.”

“You don’t just start in the biggest markets, Karen,” Patrick said, his own voice quickening. “You need to start in the small markets and work your way up.”

Their waiter arrived and they sat in silence as he laid out Karen’s ricotta cavatelli and Patrick’s veal chop. “I thought that was the whole point for you,” Karen said once the waiter was gone. “I thought you were going to just explode onto the scene.” She waved her fingers in suggestion of an explosion.

Patrick smirked. “Look, baby, we can’t always do things that way. It took me a while to learn, I admit, but I’m wiser now, I know better. I saw that my stories weren’t getting accepted-they probably weren’t even getting read. I didn’t have an agent or a publishing history. Genre magazines are willing to give new writers a break, so I wrote a few things with these markets in mind.”

Karen had relaxed a bit. “So did you get paid enough for the story to pay for this dinner?” she asked.

“Well, no, not entirely.” She kept her eyes on her plate and kept eating. Actually, his check for the story wouldn’t even pay for his martini, but Karen didn’t need to know that. “Dinner’s still on me, of course,” he said. “Do you want to know what the story is about?”

“Sure,” Karen replied, still concentrating on her dinner.

Patrick’s expression became earnest. “It’s about a man who is plotting to kill his wife. She’s trying to kill him also, but their young daughter poisons them both first.” He took a bite of his own food.

Karen made a face. “How’d you come up with that?”

“I didn’t.” He leaned back and took a sip from his cocktail.

Karen looked confused. Patrick set his drink down and got right to the point. “It’s simple. I knew that I had to come up with stories that would play in the genre markets but I didn’t have any good ideas, not having read much of that sort of thing. I knew that I could write well enough, but I needed a solid plot, a strong central premise. I tried and tried but I couldn’t come up with anything that seemed, well, clever enough.” There was a hitch in his voice as he admitted this. “With these types of story it’s all twist and if you don’t have a surprise ending then you don’t have a good story. Then it came to me, the idea”-Karen could hear the bold font in his voice-”I knew that mystery magazines have been around for a long time. So, I began collecting all of the oldest mystery collections I could find. I originally started reading them to get the flavor of genre writing, but then it occurred to me that I could borrow a twist from one of them, and make my own.”

“Wait, stop.” Karen set down her silverware and raised her palms. “You stole someone’s story?”

Patrick looked hurt. “Of course not. This isn’t plagiarism; it’s more inspiration. The idea came from one of those old-fashioned murder mysteries, you know the ones-a mayor or heiress or some such is killed and some old biddy or retired lawyer solves the thing, the kind that grandmothers read. There’s no market for that sort of thing anymore, no one wants to read placid mysteries with tidy endings and rational outcomes. But the truth is, there’s a story in there; there’s a murder in there, one with a twist, something unexpected, just waiting to evolve into something stronger. So, I come along, and I change a million details and almost all the facts.”

Karen just stared at him. Patrick took his eyes from hers, but just for a moment. He swallowed and pressed on. “Look, it’s true that in both stories, a husband, wife and child are plotting to murder each other, but that’s the only similarity. In the original, some pipe-smoking professor solves the mystery and muses philosophically as the child-who is seventeen, by the way, hardly even a child at all-is led off by the police, all neat and clean. In my story, the girl is eleven, and she isn’t caught. The story ends with her standing alone in a house empty except for the corpses of her parents.” His elbows were on the table with his hands held high, fingers spread wide, as if casting a spell. “My version is much richer in the stuff of humanity than the first. In the original, the murders were all about money. In mine, they’re a rancorous outcry against nameless insults borne too long in silence.” He took another sip of his martini and settled back in his chair. “I see it as a partnership. It’s like the original idea is the rigging that I hang the sails of my story upon, and together, we move forward. It should be flattering to the original author. You could see it as their spirit living on beyond their lives.”

Karen listened patiently until she was certain he was finished. “You know what this sounds like, Patrick?” she asked, rising from her chair. “This sounds like that time you made out with your old girlfriend but it wasn’t cheating on me somehow.” She threw her napkin on her plate and walked out, knocking over the gift bag as she left. Patrick rose to follow her, but the other diners were looking at him now, and their fixed attention stopped him in his tracks. If he chased her, it would be a scene, and he wasn’t going to give her the satisfaction.

Patrick stooped and picked up the gift bag from the floor, and placed it on the cushion of her empty chair. He had lost his appetite but he finished eating anyway. Then he asked to have Karen’s mostly uneaten meal packaged to go.

Part Two Posts Monday, February 16th! Patrick gets some good news

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