Excerpt: Lucid

Case One: Murder in Marlon County

In the orange tints of early Autumn, when the leaves had only begun to morph, and when the air was as crisp and succulent as a fresh forbidden fruit, the sun rose upon the city of Marlon. Among its freshly painted streets and perfectly tiled floors there lay a small and forgettable alleyway, narrow as it was formidable, consisting of nothing but a ratty cardboard box and an old dumpster. It was against this dumpster that the body of a young woman lay, staring up at the clear blue ceiling of the sky. She was beautiful, silent, peaceful, and very, very dead.
The sun also rose on a small town five miles or so from Marlon, a town so forgettable in comparison to the whole that it lacked its own name, and was merely called “Marlon County” as an afterthought. It was here that a small but notable sit-down cake shop sat sandwiched between a laundromat and a shoe store, displaying its paint-chipped booths and its proudly painted sign above the door that read The Cakery.
And it was also here, living in an apartment above the small but notable Cakery, that the body of Jeremy Fletcher lay…silent, alive, and very, very asleep.
But as the sunlight crept across his bed, his eyes opened, and he immediately sat up. One would imagine that inside his ingenious mind he had thought of something immensely profound, but all he thought was
Cereal. I need cereal.
Shaking himself out of his sleep-induced stupor, he eventually found himself in the sunlit cake shop below, eating the aforementioned bowl of cereal with gusto. He looked as if he was barely put together; he wore a button-up shirt that had been crumpled far too many times, his brown-blond hair stuck up at odd intervals, and his tattered Chuck Taylors were thoroughly scuffed. The only outstanding feature on this fellow was a shiny gold watch on his left wrist, which clanked occasionally on the table as he scarfed down his Cheerios with extra sugar. It was truly this feature that stood out above all others: for one could easily see how the ruffled hair, the wrinkled shirt, and his general manner fit in well with the home-grown feel of the charming booth he sat in.
And behind the counter stood Allie McMillen, her short reddish hair down at her shoulders, polishing the curved wooden surface and glancing at her tenant and employee in confusion.
“Hey Jeremy,” she said to him.
He glanced up. “Hey Allie,” he said. “Are we opening pretty soon?”
“Oh, we’re already open. Just, you know…Thursdays, not a great day for cake, I guess.”
“Every day’s a great day for cake,” he said frankly, and returned to his cereal.
Allie smiled. “I guess so. Besides, Ned will probably drop by again today.”
“Who’s Ned?”
“You know…Ned. The repeat customer with the square glasses who’s dropped by every day this week.”
“Oh, you mean the double-fudge guy?”
“Yeah, him,” replied Allie. “I swear, he can’t make it through a single day without a slice of double-fudge.”
“I wouldn’t blame him,” chuckled Jeremy. “I mean, it’s delicious, it’s good for us, because of course, it’s business. Then again, it’s not exactly great for his cholesterol either.”
“Are you worried about cholesterol?” asked Allie casually.
Jeremy squinted in utter confusion. “What? What are you talking about?”
“Cholesterol. Does it worry you? Is that why you’re eating all the cereal?”
Jeremy could tell this is the question she had been wanting to ask all morning; she wanted to solve the mystery of his cereal-eating habits.
Jeremy raised his eyebrows. “Does it look like I care about nutrition?”
Allie shook her head, and her voice began to raise with intensity and worry. “No, it’s just…you’ve been eating cereal for two weeks straight…every day. And it’s not even in the morning anymore. It’s all day. Cereal from sunup to sundown. Cereal in the morning and cereal at night. I mean, any sensible person would be worried about you. Who goes from not eating any cereal at all to eating cereal 24-7? Why all the cereal, Jeremy? It’s freaking me out! Cereal, cereal, cereal!”
“If you say ‘cereal’ one more time, I’m going to murder you with this spoon,” replied Jeremy, holding up his silverware threateningly. He grinned. “It’s a project I’m working on.”
“What, to see if you can put yourself into a cereal coma?”
Jeremy raised the spoon. “You said it again.”
Allie smirked. “I take it back.”
Jeremy shrugged. “No, I’m not trying to get into a cereal coma, though that would be interesting.”
“Does it have to do with getting back on the force?”
“How would cereal get me back on the force?”
“I don’t know, but you’re obviously very motivated!” Allie replied, flustered.
Jeremy shook his head. “I don’t think I’m getting back on the force, Allie. I screwed up.”
“You’re the best detective in the whole county!”
“No, you are, since you discovered my nefarious cereal-coma plan.”
Allie put her hands on her hips in what Jeremy considered an annoyingly maternal way. “Very funny. But really, the police chief was an idiot in that whole fiasco. Firing you just to save face.”
Jeremy shrugged casually. “I was the idiot in that fiasco, Allie. If I’d never screwed up in the first place, there wouldn’t have ever been a need for face-saving.”
Allie shrugged. “Fine. I’m just saying, even if you messed up, firing you was completely unjustified.”
“Okay.”
“A little extreme if you ask me.”
“Agreed.”
“He just went way too far.”
“I get it, Allie.”
“And are you EVER going to tell me what’s up with all the cereal?”
“Probably. Just not right now.” Jeremy glanced at his watch. “Well, we’ve successfully talked through fifteen minutes of my first shift. “What delicious pastry should I make today?”
“We have an advance order of carrot cake. Layered, in the large tin.”
“Good fun,” replied Jeremy, hopping up from the booth and his mostly finished cereal. He dumped the dregs in the trash can and settled himself in front of the island counter in the middle of the kitchen. “By the way, where’s Sandra? She said she’d be here this morning.”
Allie shook her head and sighed. “I don’t know. I swear, that girl’s just started, but I can already tell she’s a total flake. Never should have hired her in the first place.” She handed him a large bowl and said, “Now, what do I pay you for?”
“Carrot cake. I’m on it,” said Jeremy, and he took the bowl from her.
At that very moment, several blocks away, in a small office on the third floor of a nondescript brick building, cigar smoke crept under a door marked with the words Drake E. Ransom, Private Investigator.
Drake E. Ransom sat in the office within at his desk, smoking a cigar with his feet up. He was a mildly dark, very bald man with dark eyes and an appropriately mysterious demeanor. Drake liked to believe that the ambiguous letter in the middle of his name gave his title a certain mystique, but whether or not it actually did was certainly in the eye of the beholder.
Lying at his feet was his bloodhound, Magnum, who, while he appeared quite the practical dog for a private investigator, was born without a sense of smell and was therefore Ransom’s pet only for companionship. Which suited Drake E. Ransom quite comfortably, as he preferred to work alone, that is, without any human assistants. He took pride in the fact that there was only one mind in the detection process, and, most importantly, only one name on his oaken and glass-studded door: his own.
Moments like these, when his cigar tip lit the dim expanse of his domain and the door across from his desk creaked open to reveal the fragile frame of his next client, gave him a feeling that can only be described as delight.
“Mr. Ransom?”
A voice spoke from the cloud of smoke behind the desk: a deep, calm voice wrapped in an enigma. “You’re Miss Carlow, I assume?”
“The very same.” Her figure was masked by the cigar smoke filling the room, and she spoke in a voice marked with uncertainty. “We spoke on the phone?”
“Of course.” Ransom took his feet off the desk and sat forward in his chair with earnest masked by a calm facade. “Please sit down.”
Miss Carlow sat in the straight-backed wooden chair in front of the desk. She looked very uncomfortable, glancing from side to side before speaking, as if afraid someone might overhear her. “My sister’s gone missing.” She produced a medium-sized black bag and removed a manilla folder stuffed with a meager supply of documents. “This is everything I know about her.”
Ransom sat back in his chair as he casually perused the folder. “I see. And how long has she been missing?”
“Three days,” said Miss Carlow. “She does this sometimes…she’ll get up and just leave town, she’ll drive down to Hollywood, or fly to Paris unannounced…usually with a boyfriend, but not always.”
“Slow down,” said Ransom. “What makes you think she’s in trouble this time?”
Miss Carlow bit her lip. “I don’t know…’sisterly senses’ I guess. To be honest, we weren’t all that close. But she’d always leave a message on my answering machine, or at least a note. But she hasn’t this time. She’s not at her house, she’s not picking up her phone. And in the few weeks before she went missing, she started acting strangely.”
“How so?” asked Ransom, placing his thumb and forefinger on his chin in a manner that would have made Hollywood proud.
“She just seemed more nervous than usual…”
Ransom sat even more forward in his chair, now visibly interested. “I see. Was she jumpy? Paranoid? Afraid that she might be in danger around every corner?”
Miss Carlow looked unsure. “Not exactly. More…secretive.” She also leaned forward in her chair, so that her face was very close to Ransom’s. “I need you to find her, Mr. Ransom. You’re my only hope.”
Ransom ignored the opportunity to make a Star Wars reference and sat back calmly in his chair. “I will, Miss Carlow, I will. However, I’m going to require compensation.”
Miss Carlow reached into her small black bag and pulled out a roll of cash. “Five thousand dollars up front. I’ve got five thousand more if you find out what happened to my sister.” She threw the cash down on the table. “I need you to find her, dead or alive.”
Ransom pulled the roll of cash toward him with the gleam of greed in his smile and the lit tip of his cigar reflecting in his eyes. “I believe we can do business.” Then Miss Carlow gave a curt little nod, and vanished beyond the office door.
Ransom continued to flip through the manilla envelope. Her name, it said, was Sandra Carlow, and the picture supplied was of a very beautiful, young blonde, smiling alongside a slightly younger version of whom Ransom assumed was his client, Miss Carlow. They stood on a sunny beach, and Sandra looked happy without a care in the world; clearly this was before she had become nervous and secretive. What had caused such an abrupt change? What had caused the carefree, spontaneous risk-taker who took trips to Paris on a moment’s notice? What had caused her to transform into the woman who had disappeared? Had she been kidnapped? Killed? Or was she merely sitting on a beach in Florida, carefree as usual? Had she gone on vacation and forgotten to inform her uptight, anxious sister? Or had she gone somewhere much more sinister?
Ransom knew the police would not investigate Sandra’s disappearance until she had been gone for several weeks, or if they found a body, given her track record. And that gave him free reign to investigate without competition…or so he thought.
The first place to go, he concluded, was the one place Miss Carlow had not thought to check for her sister…her workplace. And so he flipped carefully through the folder until he found a sheet of paper that looked as though it had been torn from a planner. There, among the notes for dentist’s appointments and pedicures, there was a note that said “Interview” along with a scrawled, circled address. And that was where Drake E. Ransom’s investigation would begin.
The place was The Cakery, and the time that Drake E. Ransom arrived just so happened to roughly correspond with the moment that Jeremy Fletcher’s large carrot cake had finished baking.
Allie met him at the counter. “Welcome to the Cakery! How may we improve your life with pastries?”
“I’m sorry, but no pastries today. My name is Mr. Ransom. I’m going to need to speak to the manager.”
“I am the manager. Please speak to me.”
“I need to ask you about a young woman by the name of Sandra Carlow.”
“Sandra?” called Jeremy from the kitchen. He set down his freshly baked carrot cake and went over to the counter. “What about Sandra?”
“She didn’t come into work today,” said Allie to Ransom. “But she should be back tomorrow morning, that is if she’s not a complete flake—”
“Sandra Carlow has gone missing. I’m the private investigator that’s been hired to find her. If I were planning to find her here, my job would be far, far too easy. Do you have any idea where she might be?”
Allie clasped her hand over her mouth. Jeremy looked at Ransom with a silent surprise, then glanced at his watch twice. Ransom sat down on a gently cushioned stool in the center of the wide, curved counter.
“Oh my god!” cried Allie. “I feel like such a jerk! I just thought she was flaky…I didn’t realize…”
“Oh, don’t worry, she is flaky,” said Ransom with a irreverent smirk. “And not the good flaky, like with pie, but the bad flaky, the kind that makes the police not try to find you after you’ve gone missing. But that’s not what’s important. I need to know—”
“You’re Drake Ransom?” Jeremy butted in.
Ransom looked at Jeremy as if he had not realized he was there. “Yes. What’s your point?”
“The point is that you’re supposed to be one of the best private eyes in the state—”
“I prefer ‘private investigator’, as no man’s title should be reduced to a sensory organ.”
“They used to talk about you on the force all the time.”
“I’m sorry, are you a cop?” asked Ransom with concealed alarm.
“No, no—well, I used to be—it’s all very complicated,” said Jeremy. “It’s just, well, I didn’t realize you were still in business here, I haven’t heard about you in a long time.”
Ransom ignored the comment and turned back to Allie. “When was the last time the two of you saw Sandra?”
The two bakers looked at each other. They turned back to Ransom. “Tuesday,” they said in unison. Then Allie said, “She took yesterday off.”
Ransom placed his stubby fingers together. “I see. That’d be the day she went missing. In the morning, then?”
“Yeah,” said Jeremy. “Yeah, Tuesday morning. She said she…had a thing in the evening. She said she was headed to the city.”
Ransom nodded. “Interesting. And did she seem—”
“Nervous, or upset?” finished Jeremy. “No, she didn’t.”
“No, no, she seemed very calm,” said Allie. “But, she’s only been working here for a few weeks…we didn’t really know her all that well. She could’ve been depressed and we wouldn’t have known.”
“Seems like no one really knew her all that well,” said Ransom, thinking aloud. “Well, thank you, you two.” He started to stand up, then thought twice about it, and sat back down. “On second thought, I think I’ll have a slice of red velvet and a coffee.”
Allie nodded and fished out a slice from the kitchen. Ransom took the plate and a small mug of espresso and sat down in one of the charming booths by one of the shop’s many windows. Gradually, more customers began to filter in, and Allie forgot about the dark and mysterious investigator lurking in the booth by the sunlit window. But Jeremy Fletcher did not. The appearance of a dark, suited private investigator and the disappearance of a young woman not truly known by anyone had awoken something deep within his soul. It was the desire to discover, to detect, to determine the answer to an unsolved enigma. It was the small part of him that truly believed he could get back on the force if he tried, that internal puzzle piece that could only be satisfied by solving problems. It was the section of his soul that was still Detective Fletcher. And it yearned to unravel this particular mystery.