3rd Quarter Contest

 DO NOT PUT YOUR VOTES ON THE LOOP.  SEND A SEPARATE EMAIL TO SLEUTHSINK95@GMAILCOM

JUDGING GUIDELINES:  Read EACH Story and give EACH story a rating of 1 - 5, with 5 being the highest score.  Send your votes to sleuthsink95@gmail.com by Thursday, November 6th.  Winners will be announced at the November Meeting.

Each story should be based on the following picture.  

1.  Royalty Statement

Joanna Peach was getting frustrated with her sister. “Diane, pull your weight. I feel like I’m dragging him all by myself.”

“Hey, it was your idea to bring him into the woods to bury him. Don’t gripe or I’ll turn your ass in.”

Ohhh, she didn’t just say that. “If you do, you’ll be turning yourself in as an accomplice. I wouldn’t be the only one to go to jail.”

“I’d get a lighter sentence for cooperating.”

“You wish.” Trying to catch her breath, Joanna stopped and let her side of the body bag drop on the ground. “I think this is far enough.”

“Good.” Diana let the shovels and her part of the body bag go. “Let’s get this over with.”

“Yes, I’m ready to put his royalty steeling carcass six feet under.” It was hard to believe she had killed her publisher and had actually talked her sister into helping her get rid of the body. The ass was a thief! She’d written seven full length mystery novels and wondered why she didn’t have much money coming in, in royalties. Her ratings were good, so she knew she was selling books.

“Six foot! Bullshit. I’m not digging a hole that deep.”

She rolled her eyes. “It was a figure of speech, Diane. Damn.” She picked up her shovel and started to dig. The dirt was hard, and it was cold out. Mid-winter, when the ground was frozen, wasn’t the best time to try to bury a dead guy. She was tempted just to take the body out of the bag and let it rot on the ground. It would give the animals something to feast on. No, that was out of the question.

“Jojo?”

They’d only been digging five minutes and already her older sister was out of breath. So was she, for that matter, but they couldn’t stop. “Yeah, Di.”

“How much money do you think this bastard stole from you? I mean, is it really enough for you to have done this?”

Laughter crept up her throat and out her mouth. “Now’s a good time to be asking that question. The deed is done. And besides, you mean was it enough.”

“Was? What are you talking about?”

She’d been suspicious for quite some time and thankfully one of her good friends worked for the small, traditional publishing company. Her friend happened to be a writer too. She’d also had doubts he was being honest with royalty payments. The two of them decided to delve a little deeper.

Once they got to the real royalty statements, and compared them to what was paid out, shit hit the fan, but only she had gone back after hours and taken her revenge.

“One night when I knew he was going to be there late, I stopped by the office. I convinced him I wouldn’t shoot him if he gave me the money I had coming. In cash! That SOB just happened to have it in the safe at the office Then he handed me $223,000 dollars.” Sweat was rolling off her brow now. The cold air didn’t do anything to stop it, but she kept digging.

“No shit? $223,000?”

She stopped, leaned on the shovel handle then smiled. “Welllll, it may not have been quite that much, but that’s what was in the safe.” When her sister stopped digging she met her gaze. “See, once he opened the safe, I held the gun on him and went to the doorway. I’d hidden the body bag just outside. I got it, made him get in it and put two pillows under his head. Once I zipped it up. I pulled the trigger. The pillows absorbed the blood, I took the money and here we are. By the way, I’m giving you $50,000.”

“I’ll take it and you’re a genius.”

“Why, thank you, ma’am.” She gaged the length and depth of the hole. “I think this is big enough. Let’s throw him in, then put some dirt on top. We’ll put the shovels on top of that and fill the rest of the hole in by hand.”

“Sounds like a winner.”

When they were done, Joanna handed her sister the $50,000 she told her she’d give her. “Quite the payment for a half days work, huh, sis?” She joined in with Diane’s laughter.

“You got that right. Anyone else in mind you want to whack?”

“From now on, only in my novels. However, now I have to find a new publisher.”

2.  The Crawford Sisters 

After a week of searching for the Crawford sisters, the local Search and Rescue found Beth’s  camera below a tree stump. It’s metal shinning like a beacon, a warning or maybe a shout saying, find Me.’

It took only a few minutes to insert the card into a laptop, where they found only 3 pictures. As the last picture filled the screen everyone gasped.

“What the hell is that?” Ben, Incident Commander of Search and Rescue, murmured as he enlarged the picture. “Damn, those girls didn’t have a chance!”

***

A week earlier, Beth and Sarah, the Crawford sisters as they were known around town, had used their GPS to take them to a piece of land they were wanting to buy. Absolutely perfect acreage where no one could build next to them, since it butted up to the Mark Twain National Forest. 

Beth, following the coordinates from the land owner, drove down a deeply rutted trail. “This must be for four wheelers.” She grumbled as the automated voice of the vehicle guided them forward.

“I hope the directions are correct. I wouldn’t want to get lost here.” She laughed, as they hit another small bump.  

“Sarah, are you able to pull up the coordinates on your iPhone?”

“Already ahead of you sis, but we had better stop here. The trail is getting too narrow.” Sarah grinned as the voice on her phone said, ‘Your destination is in 300 ft.’

“Okay then, here we go.” Beth said as she stopped the car.

Walking through sticker bushes which clung to their clothes, they came to a clearing. “We need some pictures.” Beth said to herself, looking around, taking her small camera from her pocket.

“ Hey, here’s a tree stump just the right height.” Sarah said.  “Set the timer to take 3 pictures in a row.”

Beth finished the set-up and stepped by Sarah, “Say…Not tonight honey.” They both laughed, thinking of their husbands.

A crackling sound came from behind them after the first camera click. They both turned quickly to see a huge spinning, glowing ball of electricity growing before them, inhaling stones, broken branches and everything loose into its spinning mass. They felt the pull on their clothes. Screaming they grabbed each other.

 “Run!” Sarah screamed. But as they turned, the grip of the spinning ball of light held them tight. With a huge effort, Sarah flung herself to the side, wrapped her arm around a sapling and held out her arm screaming, “Beth, grab my hand!”

As suddenly as it started, it stopped. The sound changed into a soft hum and the pulling ceased. The light became bigger and started shimmering like sun on water. Beth scrambled to Sarah’s side. Both too scared to move. They watched the light shimmering with large eyes and fast breaths, not knowing whether to run or hide.

Before they could make a decision, they saw a hand, leg and then the face and body of an enormous creature step through.

The sisters, not prone to fainting, came close to it as the creature turned its wolf head toward them. All they could see were large glowing, red eyes probing into theirs. It’s hands, yes hands with long sharp nails pointed at them. They felt a buzzing in their minds and then, everything went black.

Beth and Sarah woke with no idea how long they had been out. Frantically looking around, the ball of light and the creature were gone. Everything had changed. Wrong color all about and it was too quiet.

Grabbing Sarah’s hand, Beth whispered “let’s get out of here.” With legs like jelly, they helped each other to the place where their car should have been.

“Gone, it’s gone, not even a tire track.”

“Oh, my word, Beth. Where is it? How are we going to get home? What’s going on?” Sarah’s words ended in a sob as she sank to the ground.

“Try your phone.” Sarah said quickly, pulling hers from her pocket.

“Mine’s dead.” Beth whispered.

“Mine too.” Sarah sobbed. “What do we do?”

“Follow the trail.” Beth said quietly.

***

The last picture appeared. It showed a ten-foot, huge black humanoid with the head of a dog with the sisters, one under each arm, walk into the light, into a different reality.

“What do we tell the public?” Ben quietly asked the County Sheriff.

The Sheriff answered looking at the spot where the women disappeared. “We don’t tell them anything. We keep it to ourselves.” 

3.  Neighborhood POA

 

“For God’s sake, Darcy. It’s colder than a witch’s tit out here.”

“Yeah, and the ground is harder than your head. What’s your point?”

“Forget the grave. Let’s dump him.”

“Think, Karen. We can’t take a chance on hunters stumbling over the body. No body, no crime.”

“Why do I keep helping you? I could be home getting wasted by a warm fire instead of freezing my butt off in some god-forsaken forest.”

“Trust me, your butt won’t miss a couple of pounds. Besides, you owe me.”

“If you’re talking about the time you helped clean the blood off my kitchen floor, that was a desperate cry for help due to an accidental situation.”

“Accident? I think not. You’d chopped a guy’s head off, Karen.”

“What can I say? My hands were slick with blood, and the ax slipped.”

“Bull. You were high. You never should’ve signed that POA agreement without talking to me, Karen. After all, we’ve had each other’s backs for over thirty years.”

“How was I to know it had a vigilante clause?”

“Well, for one thing, it was in the fine print. For another, you were high on gummies

when you signed the agreement and missed it. Are you ever sober?”

“Don’t judge me, Darcy. I live in a beautiful house with a pool, hot tub, and a sun porch for peanuts.”

“That’s only because the Association has to offer some sort of an incentive to entice tenants to sign that creepy addendum, ‘Every quarter, resident must find, execute, and dispose the body of a hardened criminal.’”

“They’re bad guys, Darcy. Pedophiles, rapists, human traffickers. The law won’t arrest them. It’s up to the community to keep the peace.”

“Moot point.”

The moldy scent of wood swirled in the wind. Karen sneezed. False teeth flew from her mouth and fell into a pile of leaves. “Damn!” She dropped to the ground and searched.

“Just great. This is all I need, frozen feet and bare gums.”

Darcy doubled over in laughter. “Oh, my God, Karen. Your face looks like a shriveled-up crab-apple without your dentures.”

“Have I told you lately how much I hate you?”

“No, you don’t.” Still laughing, Darcy sat down beside Karen and rifled through the leaves. “Here. Be sure to wipe them off before sticking them back in.”

“I may be high, Darcy, but I assure you I know the difference between Poligrip and deer shit.”

Darcy flopped back into the leaf pile and chuckled. “You are, without a doubt, the best friend I’ve ever had. Regardless of whatever mess we get into, we have a blast getting out of it. Hey! Wait a minute. I just got the answer on what to do with the body.” She sat up and pointed to an oak tree a few feet away. “See that tree with the knothole in the center?”

“Oh, good, God, Darcy. I may be stoned, but I still know a six-foot, 200-pound man cannot be jammed into a knothole.”

“Not the hole, goofball. Look up. See the deer stand? This hunting season is almost over. It’d be another year before a hunter will use it. By that time, a bear would’ve gnawed the body to pieces.”

“How can you be sure a bear will find him?”

Darcy stood up, brushed the leaves and twigs off her jeans, and walked over to the tree. She chewed her bottom lip, deep in thought.

“Twinkies!”

“You lost me.”

“You bought Twinkies for munchies. We can tear them into pieces, scatter them around the tree roots, and stick them in the bark. We can even put a few in the guy’s shirt pocket. Bears eat sweet stuff up. She giggled. “Literally,”

Karen staggered over to the tree. Her eyebrow arched. “It could work except for one thing.”

“Which is?”

“How are we going to get him up into the stand? He weighs a ton.”

“Got it covered. I have a tow rope in the truck. We’ll tie one end under his arms and across his chest. We’ll tie the other end to the trailer hitch, hoist him into the stand, cut the rope, then run like hell. Mother Nature and bears will do the rest.” She chuckled. “Who would ever suspect Yogi Bear as an accomplice?”

Karen giggled.  ‘Ya think the Ranger will mind, Yogi?’”

“Desperate times call for desperate measures, Boo-Boo.”

“Aw, Yogi, you’re ‘smarter than the average bear.’”

“Eat another gummy, Boo-Boo, and get in the truck.”

The End 

4.  The Lockwood Family Reunion: Relatives & Rivals

 

Deep in the woods behind the private luxurious Lockwood Family Resort, rust-colored maple leaves carpeted the forest floor, while a handful still spiraled from the branches, tracing slow golden arcs through the air. It was a crisp fall afternoon, the kind that would’ve been perfect for apple picking—if the Lockwood family wasn’t made entirely of international criminals.

In a clearing not far behind the main cabin, the Lockwood sisters stood arguing in the golden sunlight, boots crunching through the leaves with every step.

“I’m just saying,” Clara said, brushing a leaf off her ivory cashmere coat, “blowing up a yacht isn’t a real heist. It’s flashy. It’s primitive. It’s what you do when you want to end up on the news and a no-fly list.”

Margo rolled her eyes and leaned back against a maple tree, her boots half-buried in leaves. “You think because you wear heels and used a VPN, you're too elegant for blood? I took out a sitting U.S. senator with a paring knife and a rigged bottle of wine. No witnesses. No cleanup.”

“He slipped on wet teak, hit his head, and fell overboard,” Clara said. “Gravity did most of the work.”

“I arranged the yacht rental, convinced him to go with me, and don’t forget the weather.” Margo said. “You think I don’t know how to time a storm?”

Clara snorted. “Please. If you could control the weather, your hair wouldn't look like that.”

Margo stepped forward. “Say that again, I dare you.”

Clara smirked. “Want to hear what I did in Zurich?”

“Oh God, here we go.”

“I charmed the head security officer in a private Zurich bank into giving me the vault codes. No gun, no mask, just a forged identity and a few well-placed lies about his wife's boyfriend. Twenty-seven million in bearer bonds, walked right out the front door.”

Margo cocked an eyebrow. “Cute. I once made an ambassador disappear during a press conference. Ever make a man vanish with thirty cameras rolling?”

“Cameras are child's play,” Clara said, sliding past her. “A distracted IT guy, a looped feed or replayed frame, a compromised router — poof.”

“You’re allergic to risk,” Margo said. “I breathe it.”

“And I master it,” Clara replied coldly.

The sisters glared at each other, a yellow leaf twirling down between them.

Then a twig snapped. Both women spun, Margo’s hand going to the knife at her belt, Clara reaching inside her coat.

“Easy,” said a cool dry voice.

Their older brother Vincent stepped into the clearing, his polished shoes crunching over fallen leaves, and tailored coat catching the amber light. He looked like he was on his way to steal a government. With his usual quiet confidence, he adjusted his flashy leather gloves, “I leave you alone for ten minutes and it turns into CSI: Sibling Rivalry.”

“Vincent,” Clara said, lowering her hand. “Weren’t you just inside on the phone charming a judge and manipulating the stock market?”

“Fresh air clears my head,” he said with a smirk. “But I’m really here to remind you both whose shadow you’re standing in.”

The sisters scowled back.

He strolled a few steps closer, kicking up a small flurry of leaves. “Clara, Zurich was solid. Until the bank flagged your biometric profile and linked it to three flagged identities. You're trending in darknet forums.”

Clara frowned. “That’s impossible.”

“Check again,” Vincent said. “Margo… darling… that senator? He was CIA. His death triggered three international investigations. One of which is now brushing up against our Buenos Aires pipeline.”

Margo blinked. “I thought he was trafficking girls.”

“He was. But also carrying secrets. The kind that don’t die quietly.”

Leaving the revelations hanging in the air he didn’t even blink as a leaf floated passed his face.

“Meanwhile,” Vincent continued, “I shut down Western Europe’s power grid for five hours. Lifted a Monet from a high-security vault in Paris, rerouted $400 million in British royal funds, deleted three family members and your mistakes from Interpol’s most secure database.” He glanced at his watch. “And all before lunch.”

Clara stared slack-jawed.

Margo muttered, “Asshole.”

Vincent laughed “Oh, and Mom wants a family photo in ten,” he turned back toward the cabin. “Try to look like you actually belong on the front page.” He disappeared into the trees.

Clara took a long breath. “I really hate him,” she hissed.

“Same,” Margo said. “But next year?” She looked off in the direction Vincent had gone, “We take him down.”

“Agreed!”

5.  The Woods Keep Secrets      

Bundled in a thick coat, Harper faced her sister, Nora. Her breath misted in the frigid air when she spoke. “Are you sure this is the right spot?” Her voice trembled, though she couldn’t tell if it was from the cold or something deeper.

Nora nodded toward a large split oak ahead. “Right there. Near that one.”

She followed Nora’s gaze. The oak’s trunk gaped near its roots, a dark hollowed-out space like a mouth frozen mid-scream.

It was three days since the storm - when the river swelled, and everything went wrong. Nora had called that night, panicked and half-drunk, saying she’d taken care of it. Harper thought she meant the debt collector who’d been hounding her. She didn’t realize until the next morning her sister meant something far worse.

“You buried him here?”

“I didn’t bury him.” Nora’s jaw tightened. “The mud did. I just… left him.”

Harper’s stomach twisted. “God, Nora.”

“He attacked me. What was I supposed to do?”

She’d seen the bruises before. The split lip, the way Nora flinched when her phone buzzed. She had begged her to go to the police, but Nora always said the same thing: Men like him don’t go to jail. They get even.

A crow called somewhere in the distance, the sound sharp and lonely. Harper crouched at the base of the tree, brushing away damp leaves. The ground was disturbed, slightly sunken.

“He’s here?”

“Where else would he be, Harp?”

“You didn’t check?”

“You think I come out here every day to admire my work?”

Nora’s tone snapped like brittle twigs, but Harper understood why she was on edge. “We need to tell someone, Nora. This isn’t right.”

“And what would you say? Officer, my sister killed a man who tried to assault her, then panicked and dumped him in the woods? They’ll arrest me before they listen.”

Her sister’s low and bitter laugh chilled her to the bone, but she had to try to convince her. “They might listen if they see the bruises.”

“They won’t listen. They’ll arrest me!”

Silence pressed close around them. Harper had never seen her sister look so defeated.

Then a breeze moved through the trees. Leaves stirred underfoot. That’s when she heard it—faint, muffled, like movement beneath the earth. She froze.

“Did you hear that?”

“Probably a squirrel?” Nora muttered. 

She knew darn good and well it wasn’t a squirrel. Why would she even say that? “No,” Harper answered. “It came from down there.”

The soil shifted again, almost imperceptibly, but enough to send a jolt of terror through Harper’s chest. She stared along with her sister, at the hollowed-out spot beneath the oak tree.

“That’s not possible,” Nora murmured.

Harper stumbled backward. “Oh God. Nora! What did you do?”

“I told you…he wasn’t moving! He wasn’t breathing…”

A sound rose from the dirt. A moan, weak and broken.

“He’s alive,” Harper gasped.

“No. No, he can’t be.”

The sound came again. A man’s voice. “Help…”

Harper spun toward her sister. “We have to dig him out!”

Nora shook her head. “If he’s alive, we’re both finished. He’ll tell them everything.”

“He’ll die, Nora!”

“Better him than us.”

The words hit Harper like ice water. She dropped to her knees, clawing at the dirt with her bare hands. Mud packed under her nails. Her breath came fast and ragged.

Behind her, Nora was quiet. Too quiet. Harper didn’t realize what was happening until she felt the sting on her neck. A sharp, metallic prick. She gasped, spinning just in time to see the syringe fall from Nora’s gloved fingers.

“I’m sorry,” Nora huffed. “I can’t let you tell.”

Her vision narrowed. The trees blurred into smears of brown and gray. Harper tried to speak, but her tongue wouldn’t move.

Nora crouched beside her, brushing hair from her face. “You were always the good one, Harp. Always trying to fix things. But some things don’t need fixing…”

Her voice faded as darkness swelled at the edges of Harper’s vision.

“…they need burying.”

The forest tilted sideways. Harper’s last thought was of the crow’s distant cry as Nora dragged her limp body toward the hollow. The faint groan beneath the earth had gone silent.

Cold seeped through her coat, spreading like a slow surrender. She tried to lift her hand, to speak Nora’s name, but her lips wouldn’t move. The world dimmed at the edge. A rush of wings cut through the silence. Please…don’t leave me here.

Then…darkness overtook her.

6.  My Sister's Secret

My baby sister, Terri, is moving from our family farm after 45 years. She was born here and lived with Momma until her passing, then alone for the last ten years. I'm moving back to the farm and building my new home. We didn't always agree completely and grew apart for far too many years. I moved away and traveled those years until I took early retirement two years ago. She invited me today to walk the paths we played on as children and share our memories. As we walked down Memory Lane, she grew more somber, and deep sadness entered her voice; her eyes welled with tears, and she began visibly shaking. Our Memory Lane Walk soon took a very dark turn. She turned to face me as we neared the old oak tree we swung from as little girls and with a low voice said, "Sis, I have a secret to share with you and I'm begging you to keep it always- it's Momma's secret as much as mine. Momma and I kept it until her death, and I've kept it since she passed."

Terrie took a deep breath and began her story. It all happened a year before Momma died. Terrie was coming in from feeding the chickens one fall evening. The house was dark -Momma was in her bedroom as usual. She didn't get around much since her stroke, so it was not unusual for the lights to be off. She opened the door to the kitchen and suddenly felt a sharp pain in the middle of her back. She turned to see a hulking dark figure holding the bat we kept by the kitchen door since childhood. She struggled to get to her feet and again collapsed to the floor when struck with the bat- the next thing she recalled was this hulking beast on top of her, violently assaulting her body and her mind. She broke down numerous times in telling the story yet continued to share her pain. I didn't understand why she was telling me this here and now until she told me how Momma came from her bedroom with her heavy cane and beat the man until he lost consciousness. It would have been better for the heinous man if he had died then. Terrie told me the "justice" Momma had for him until he expired. Momma took out all her pent-up rage on this man who invaded their home and brutalized her child. She did not go into detail but said he suffered exquisite pain- even more than he had inflicted on Terrie. He eventually died a week later, and Terrie and Momma buried him in the spot where we are standing. Terrie's point in telling me this story was to prevent me from disturbing his final resting place and to keep their secret while the farm was under my stewardship. I vowed to keep her secret and do my part to preserve his final resting place so no one would discover my sister's secret.