The Case of the Red-Handed Rhesus (A Rue and Lakeland Mystery)

T
HE
C
ASE OF THE
R
ED
-H
ANDED
R
HESUS

A RUE AND LAKELAND MYSTERY

J
ESSIE
B
ISHOP
P
OWELL

FIVE STAR
A part of Gale, Cengage Learning

Printed in the United States of America
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 20 19 18 17 16

To all the families, teachers, and staff at Churchill Academy
in Montgomery, Alabama.
Every day, you prove that autism has many faces.
You will never be puzzle pieces.

This is a work of fiction, set in a fictitious town, with fictitious characters. All of them live only in my mind, but they wouldn’t be there at all if I didn’t have help from some monumentally awesome people. Writing is a collaborative effort, even when only one person creates a world. Support systems, first readers, editors, and subject experts are all essential components of any work such as this.

First, I must once again thank my husband Scott for not only taking over most of the childcare and housework so I could complete this book, but for also being my first editor. He is also an amazing writer. Second, I must thank my children for failing to mutiny when I was a less-than-present mother and for acting impressed when told that Mom is an author. Caroline, Sam, even if you’re faking it, I appreciate the support. Everyone in our extended family has cheered me on. They shore me up when the inevitable self-doubts creep in.

And
oh
the self-doubt. I am grateful beyond words to Deni Dietz, senior editor at Five Star, who has supported my writing from the first time we met. When she accepted the first book in this series,
The Marriage at the Rue Morgue
, for publication, she gave me validation I’d wanted since I was ten years old. Everyone at Five Star, in fact, was amazing in putting
Rue Morgue
together. The book would not have happened without Tiffany Schofield, Nivette Jackaway, and Diane Piron-Gelman, to name only three. As I send this second title out, I know I am extending my hopes to a highly qualified team.

I have been able to maintain my connection to Detective John K. Schadle, who is now the Chief Deputy of the Adams County, Ohio, Sheriff’s Office, and through him to a network of experts. Rural law enforcement is different from work in the city, though I’m sure there are many commonalities. I may have grown up rural, but I’ve lived in cities for sixteen years now. I need his perspective to help me grasp some things that never made sense and learn others I didn’t know.

Lisa Harvey, a fellow writer and social worker, taught me a bit about the foster care system, though I have taken a few creative liberties. Lisa was also the primary voice behind the Trifecta writing challenge. Although the website she created is no longer active, the friendships and communities it has fostered are long-lasting.

Natasha’s poem “Soulful Eyes” is really by my friend K. Donovan, to whom I owe a debt of gratitude. I am not a good poet. I don’t have the mastery of metaphor that poetry requires, and the piece she created for my character is so perfect.

For my knowledge of primatology, I must thank at least two people. Melanie Bond of the Center for Great Apes in Florida has given me ideas and guidance from the start. Although I pretend my fictitious sanctuary can house orangutans, the Center for Great Apes is really the only great ape sanctuary for orangutans in the United States. Zoos we have several, sanctuaries but one. Her knowledge of these fascinating creatures is combined with a keen editing eye, and I am grateful to have her friendship.

She also connected me with Bob Ingersoll, who (among many other roles) once held the title of president at Mindy’s Memory, a primate sanctuary in Oklahoma. He is known for his work with the chimpanzee Nim Chimpsky and his adamant stance against primates as research tools. My imaginary sanctuary is dedicated to studying those animals currently in captivity in order to better understand them and meet their needs. I do not want my novels to promote unethical treatment of primates in any way. Bob helped me understand rhesus macaques and their care. More than that, he gave me a sense of what it feels like to be on the front lines of animal activism, and I am enormously grateful for his time and insights.

After Scott, my first readers for this book were DL Bass Kemp, Melanie Bond, Linda Myers, Kirsten Piccini, and Detective Schadle. I don’t expect them to find all my errors, and I have boundless gratitude for their corrections and honesty. First readers don’t merely exist to shore up a sagging ego. They are also meant to save me from myself as much as can be done, and they do.

The two children introduced in the book, William and Sara, have Asperger’s syndrome, and I also need to thank my personal autism community for ideas and support. Both of my children have Asperger’s syndrome, and my psychiatrist assures me I have a “touch of it” as well. This knowledge came as such a relief to me, since I grew up bullied, unable to understand other kids or make sense of their behaviors. I didn’t fit in with any group until I was in college. I did
not
recreate my kids or myself in the children in this book. They are drastically different. Instead, I considered my characters first and foremost as characters. Autism was only one aspect of the personalities they developed.

My friend Dawn Beronilla was hugely informative on the topic of receptive language delays. I understand what they are in principle, and I’ve seen them in action. But receptive language problems are essential to William’s role in the book. I needed to know its practicalities, and Dawn gave me some wonderful hardwiring in this area. It is thanks to her that I know what a “cheese-light” is.

My knowledge of autism and Asperger’s in particular is formed by personal experience. Asperger’s syndrome often gets stereotyped, both in literature and in real life, even though it has technically been lumped under the general heading of “autism spectrum disorder” in the United States. Plenty of nations still acknowledge it as a distinct diagnosis.

I tried to avoid the stereotypes about autism and Asperger’s. Not everyone with Asperger’s is literal-minded; some speak in fluid metaphors. Although I was a terribly literal-minded child, I got the hang of figurative language early on. Savant syndrome is not the same as Asperger’s syndrome. I am not brilliant in anything, and neither are my kids, though we’re all pretty good at most things. Asperger’s does not mean a lack of empathy. As it happens, that’s something I’ve always suffered from an overabundance of. Asperger’s doesn’t mean speaking in an uninflected robot voice. My kids and I have always had a full vocal range. Indeed, when my daughter
was
working through some speech issues, she was always easy to understand because her tone of voice was usually clear. Asperger’s doesn’t always mean an avoidance of eye contact, or a lack of enjoyment of social activities, or a too-quiet conversational style. You get the picture. These are traits that appear
sometimes
in
some
people, and when they are present, they vary in degree.

I have seen extremely well-written books featuring autistic characters who run the personality and intelligence gamut just like everyone else. I have also seen some horrible literary presentations of autism that rely on stereotype and assumption. I hope my characters fall into the former category, rather than the latter.

Finally, while many details of the book are fictitious, some children on the spectrum do wander, sometimes with tragic results. Autism affects communication. A nonverbal individual can easily wander away from a group, distracted. Children do this anyway, but when the ability to call for help is in any way hampered, the wanderer’s danger is greater.

William is a wanderer. He wears a tracking device made available by a group called Project Lifesaver International. The device and company are real, and I am grateful to CEO Gene Saunders for permitting me to use the real thing rather than having to make something up. The commendable work of the group allows rescue parties to rapidly hone in on a person’s location, saving precious minutes. Moreover, there are grants to fund it, and costs to individual families are typically low to nonexistent.

Finally, thanks to you, reader, for picking up my book and giving me a whirl. I’d love to know your thoughts, and you can always find me at
http://jesterqueen.com
.

Natasha’s cell vibrated on the counter, but I ignored it. She often forgot to turn it off when she surrendered it to my care at ten p.m. It was well past midnight now, and I was busy unpacking. The move into Ironweed had been sudden, though anything but impulsive, and my husband and I were busy with the kitchen boxes tonight.