dontravis.com
blog post #319
TO MY READERS: The “Contact” section has disappeared from my Web Site, so I
have no way of reading or responding to your comments. I’ve tried all the corrective
suggestions by “experts” to no avail. Please make any comments directly to my
personal email, dontravis21@gmail.com, until this situation is corrected. Thanks.
As I wrote last week’s post, flakes of snow feathered lightly to the ground outside my patio door. Some of the cursed stuff
is still there, especially in shady parts of the parking lot. Unusual for snow
to last this long in Albuquerque.
Another matter of potential interest. Once or twice a year,
the site gets 3,000 or so hits from Israel, usually all on one day. For last week’s
posting, I noticed a new phenomenon: 1,700 hits from Russia. They can’t all be spies,
can they? Even so, I encourage them to continue reading my blog.
Last week, we looked at my most recent novel (release date
January 22), Abaddon’s Locusts, the
fifth in the BJ Vinson mystery series. This week, I’d like to give you a peek
at my latest, and as yet, unreleased novel, The
Voxlightner Scandal. The story begins when BJ’s young companion Paul
Barton, a budding investigative journalist, decides to look into the murder of
an Albuquerque author. That leads to reopening one of the state’s largest
scandals. The excerpt that follows is set in BJ's and Paul’s home on Post Oak
Drive NW in Albuquerque in July 2011.
Alas, no artwork yet exists on Vox, rendering this week’s post pictureless.
*****
THE VOXLIGHTNER SCANDAL
Chapter 1
If this was the year of the
Arab Spring, this morning’s Albuquerque
Journal neglected to mention it. The international lead story—above the
fold—reported the bombing of the government quarter in Oslo and the subsequent
murder by gunfire of sixty-eight youth activists of the Labour Party by a
native Norwegian terrorist.
The below-the-fold story told
of the death of local author John Pierce Belhaven in a garage fire mere blocks
from my home. What snagged my attention was that the terrorist attack in Norway
took place today. The local tragedy occurred two nights ago. Our paper reported
foreign events faster than local ones.
Paul strode into the kitchen
where I sat at the table munching an English muffin slathered with cream cheese
and dusted with ground black pepper. He brought with him the aroma of his
shower. He was using a new aftershave lotion… Axe, possibly.
He halted at the sight of me.
“Whoa, Vince, I was gonna fix omelets.”
The rest of the world called
me BJ. This young man, my companion and the love of my life, preferred Vince, a
pet name derived from my family moniker of Vinson.
“My stomach wouldn’t wait. By
the way I know why we heard all those sirens Wednesday night. Garage fire just
down the street.”
“Where?”
I checked the news article.
“Forty-eight eighteen.”
“Belhaven’s place?”
“I’ll admit you’re more
neighborly than I am, but how do you know who lives four blocks down the
street?”
A minute later he plopped a
bowl of instant oatmeal on the table, apparently abandoning the idea of an
omelet. “I know him from SouthWest Writers.”
Paul joined the professional
writing association a year ago when he got his Master’s in journalism from the
University of New Mexico and decided a membership would provide him some
valuable contacts. He was probably right, although I never considered
journalism as writing until he
pointed out that’s exactly what it was.
“Can I see the article when
you’re finished?” he asked.
After I commandeered the
sports section and handed over the rest, his voice startled me out of a story
about the Lobo baseball team.
“This can’t be right.”
“Uh.” I
refused to be distracted.
“Vince.” He shoved the
newspaper in front of me. “I didn’t know Belhaven well, but I know one thing
for sure. He wouldn’t repair his lawn mower. He’d have the kid who mowed his
lawn do it or else buy a new mower.” He paused. “The rest sounds right.
Belhaven would probably spill gas all over himself and somehow manage to light
it up. But I’m telling you… he’d never even try it.”
“A klutz, huh?”
Paul nodded. “You could say
that.”
“I’ll tell you what I can’t believe. This happened two days
ago, and Mrs. Wardlow hasn’t broadcast the gory details all over the
neighborhood.”
Gertrude Wardlow, the
septuagenarian widow living across the street, was a retired DEA agent and the grande
dame of our local neighborhood watch. But I had no gripes coming. She’d saved
my bacon a couple of times when suspects tried to bring grievances to my home.
More importantly she’d warned me Paul was in trouble when a gang kidnapped him
a few years back.
“Can I assume you smell a story?”
I asked.
“I smell a rat. But you’re
right, I’m going to look into it. Who do you know in the fire department?”
I gave him the name of the AFD
Arson Squad commander I’d worked with a couple of times. “You can call Gene Enriquez
if you want to know if there’s a police case working.”
“You call Lieutenant Enriquez, okay? He’ll talk to you. You’re the
confidential investigator, not me.”
“Don’t sell yourself short.
Way I figure it, an investigating journalist is simply a confidential
investigator without a license.”
*****
And
so it opens, reeling backward in time to 2003 and 2004 when a gigantic scam
took $40,000,000 out of the local economy and resulted in multiple deaths. I
hope you found this teaser interesting.
I
encourage reader feedback on all my novels, and if you do read one, please post
a review of the book on Amazon. Each one helps… as do letters to the publisher.
Now
my mantra: Keep on reading. Keep on
writing. You have something to say… so say it.
My
personal links:
Facebook:
www.facebook.com/donald.travis.982
Twitter:
@dontravis3
Buy
links to Abaddon’s Locusts:
See
you next week.
Don
New Posts are
published at 6:00 a.m. each Thursday.
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