Henry Wood Perception (34 page)
There was much hand shaking and the Navy guy seemed generally pleased. Henry sat down and accepted an offered cup of coffee. Amy sat down, saying, “I knew he didn’t kill himself.”
“Yes, you did. I’m sorry I didn’t believe you at first.”
“You believed me enough to take the case.”
“You don’t know Celine. Turning away paying customers is frowned upon.”
She giggled, “So…”
The din of the official business was fading as was Henry. “So?”
“I was wondering if you knew if Lawrence has a girlfriend.”
Henry laughed lightly, “I’m going home. Call Celine tomorrow and make an appointment to come in and settle the accounts. Naturally, I'll make sure Lawrence is there to go over the services we provided.”
Amy’s face pinked up a bit, and she offered to take Henry home. He declined but let her call a cab.
CHAPTER NINETY
“April 21, 1955,” Francis wrote in his journal.
Henry asked, “What are you working on there?”
“I've been keeping notes of ideas for my novel,” Francis said, turning the notebook around so that Henry could see it.
“How is it going?”
“It’s moving along, but it has only been a couple of weeks. The Dodgers are looking pretty good.”
“Going into tonight’s game against the Phillies, they are 9-0. They beat them 3-2 last night. You want to go to the game tonight?”
“Sure, I haven’t been to a game all season. I love a ballpark hot dog.”
“You love all food.”
Francis chuckled. “Yes, but I have to write an occasional bad review just to keep people guessing. How was DC?”
“It was fine. I had to go down and spend two days giving my official statement about the cases. It seems they still can’t find the Russian named Pytor Chistyakov. He has vanished along with Martin Van Sythe. The good news is that Oleg and Jack are going to survive their injuries. The bad news is that neither one of them seems to know anything about the Cynthia Pollard murder.”
“But you're pretty sure they were involved?”
“I’m not anymore. The Feds were able to get a pretty good time line for where each of them were at the time of her death, and it doesn’t look like they could have done it. They rounded up all the other guys who were responsible for switching out the parts, and the only other thing we found out from them was that two of them were the guys who impersonated the FBI agents. It was all part of Oleg’s mission to mess with and distract the CIA guys.”
Francis took a bite of his pie. “Well, you solved both of your clients’ cases. That’s something.”
“Yes, I suppose she isn’t my problem, but it still bothers me. I should probably just drop it. Luna is sick of me talking about her.”
“How is Luna?”
“She has been pretty sore at me the last week or so. It’s a side ofE her I haven’t seen. It’s like she has an entire other side to her.” Henry paused for a moment then continued, “I guess we all have a side of ourselves that we don’t share. It is the stranger in us all. Or maybe, we just perceive what we want to because it's easier. I don’t know. I’m sure glad that Celine had her gun-wielding stranger buried deep inside her.”
Francis started writing, “The stranger in us all. That is good; you mind if I use it?”
Henry smiled and shrugged. His mind drifted back to the stranger he barely knew, Cynthia Pollard, and thought, That is a case for another day.
The End.
***
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Brian D. Meeks New Release Newsletter
Dear Reader,
Thanks so much for giving
Henry Wood: Perception
a read. I hope you enjoyed getting to know Henry and his friends.
This is the third book in the
Henry Wood Detective
series. Book one,
Henry Wood Detective Agency
and book two,
Henry Wood: Time & Again
, are both available from Amazon.
If you’d like to know when book four,
Henry Wood: Edge of Understanding
, is released, I’d invite you to sign up for my mailing list (Hint, it’s coming in early April 2014). Don’t worry, though, I won’t sell your names or send too many notices to your inbox. I reserve it for announcements regarding my new novel releases.
Http://extremelyaverage.com/newsletter/
There is one question which I’m asked all the time…why is there a closet to the future in your novels?
On Jan 2, 2010, I wrote my first blog post about my foibles in learning woodworking. It was well received and so I wrote another post the following day.
When Jan 30th rolled around I hadn’t missed a single day. On that day I hadn’t been able do any woodworking, but I didn’t want to break my streak, so I decided to write the first chapter of a noir mystery.
Naturally, I named my protagonist Henry Wood and of course he loved woodworking. I mean, I did write a woodworking blog, so those were nods to my readers. The only thing I had done relating to woodworking that day was to buy a Bosche router.
I had mentioned that I was considering the router purchase so I included the time travel closet as a way to get my router from 2010 back to 1955. When I wrote the first chapter (actually chapter two in
Henry Wood Detective Agency
) I didn’t imagine I’d ever write any more of the story.
My woodworking friends wanted to know what happened next, so every time I needed a post, I’d add a bit more to the story. I ended up accidentally writing four Henry Wood Novels and I’m currently working on the fifth.
So that’s the story of how a time travel closet ended up in my detective stories.
Sincerely,
Brian D. Meeks
About the Author
The author can be found at his blog, http://ExtremelyAverage.com or on Twitter @ExtremelyAvg. His bio on Twitter sums him up well. " I have delusions of novelist, am obsessed with my blog, college football, and occasionally random acts of napping. I also Mock! Will follow cats & guinea pigs.
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