Shred of Evidence

The call troubled Pete Thorsen. It wasn’t like Sam Lawrence to call him in the evening, much less when he was out to dinner with a client.

When Pete got back to Sears & Whitney, he found Sam hunched over a small conference table in one corner of his office, staring intently at a document. A jumble of paper covered the table with a couple of glasses, one tipped on its side, mixed in. Crumpled scraps of paper littered the floor nearby. That wasn’t like Sam either. Pete’s old friend and mentor was the most meticulous man he knew. Even in his prime, Sam’s office had always looked like the set for a magazine shoot rather than the workplace of one of the busiest and most successful lawyers in Chicago.

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Neighbors and business associates said the kindest thing Rupert Ames ever did was die. That he was shot dead in his bed cut no slack with them. His heirs would agree; he was as rotten to them in death as he had been in life, as they were to find out shortly when his will was read.

Who murdered Rupert Ames? And why bother, he was eighty-eight years old? He was ailing. Bed-ridden, in fact. The killer had slipped into his bedroom through a second floor balcony door, whacked him, and exited by the same route.

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“Miss Weiss,” the judge said, “are you ready to proceed?”

Laura Weiss—youngest member and granddaughter of the founder of Weiss, Cashman, and Snow—stood and smoothed her gray business suit. “Yes, Your Honor. I call Mack Jacobs to the stand.”

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Today is my sister’s birthday and, as previously mentioned, she has a law degree (hopefully she’ll soon receive good news about the bar exam). To to mark the occasion, over the course of the day Shred will publish a trio of lawyer stories from Gerald So, Art Montague, and Bob Wangard. Enjoy!

I practiced law in Chicago for many years before giving it up recently to write fiction full-time. My short crime fiction has appeared or is scheduled to appear in publications that include Crime and Suspense, Spinetingler Magazine, FUTURES Mystery Anthology Magazine and Coffee Cramp eZine. I have other short stories in the mill and am working on my first mystery novel.

“The Living Will of Rupert Ames” marks writer Art Montague’s happy return to short crime/mystery fiction after a fairly successful run at True Crime publications for Altitude Publishing Canada Ltd. Now the trick is to balance both fiction and non-fiction and make a living in the bargain. “The Living Will…” made its print debut at Detective Mystery Stories in Issue #27 (July 2002).

Website: www.allaboutcrime.org.

I’ve now reviewed and responded to all submissions and queries received before August.

If you should have received such an e-mail but have not, please assume it has been eaten by the cyberspace gremlins and resend the story or a query. Please use one of the subject lines tags specified in the guidelines, to avoid having the e-mail eaten by my spam filter gremlins.

When Mavis Kent married Aaron Latimer, she thought she was marrying up. It made sense in a distorted way. Aaron was drop-dead gorgeous, with dark wavy hair, long lean-muscled limbs, and sun-kissed skin. All the other girls wanted him, but Mavis—plain, bookish schoolmarm that she was—nabbed him.

People whispered, “It will never last”, if Mavis heard she ignored them. To her, marriage was forever.

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Nicole M. McClain started getting immersed in the creative arts at an early age. After various stints with painting drawing, singing, dancing, playing a musical instrument and acting, it was only a matter of time before she attempted the written word. So far, this art form seems to be sticking. Nicole currently lives in Northern California, but has also called Maryland, Pennsylvania and Ohio home. She loves cooking, reading, attending arts events, enjoying nature and writing short fiction reviews for Tangent Online. This is her first fiction publication (with two more pending).

They’d been in the kiddie park for half an hour when Johnny decided to set the playhouse on fire. Matt didn’t want him to. He thought of the tiny kids, like his brother Sam, who would show up here tomorrow. They’d expect to play house inside, using their sippy cups and Goldfish for pretend tea parties. Instead they’d find a shell of charred wood, the smoke spiraling up to the sky like exorcised demons. Some would cry. Sam would be the first. “Sensitive,” Mom called him. Matt hated it when Sam cried. The tears welling in his brother’s eyes always made him feel powerless. Matt lived for the adoration in Sam’s eyes when Matt got it right.

But you didn’t tell stuff like that to Johnny. One, he’d kick the shit out of you. And two, he’d burn the house in front of the kids. Just to prove he didn’t care what they felt.

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