As soon as the sun comes up in the morning, I am in the public eye, like a flasher running through Philadelphia with her trench coat blowing gloriously in the wind.  But I’m not a flasher—I’m a mystery writer.

     When I was thirteen years old, a foster child in Portland, Maine, I submitted my first short story to a literary magazine.  It was a big hit.     

     Everyone wanted to hear about Detective Glowask and his sidekick, Incidental.  Tanith Glowask was a lot like Humphrey Bogart in Dark Passage.  He had a lot to hide, enough to make him want to get a facelift and pretend to be somebody else. 

     His sidekick, the oddly named Incidental, was an ex-baseball player from New York, a five-foot, five-inch middle-aged woman whose trademark punch could knock the lights out of O.J. Simpson.  I admit that I had a lot of unrealistic dreams when I was a kid.  But they paid off when I gave Incidental a pair of brass knuckles and got her and Glowask into the local literary rag.

     I published ten novels by the time I was twenty-five.  Then, one day, I sat down at my laptop and realized that I didn’t know what to write anymore.   

     “I’ll have chips with my sandwich, please,” I told the waitress.  She was a lovely young woman with dark curly hair.

     “Okay! And you said coffee, right?”

     “Yes, please.”
     “All right.  That’ll be a few minutes.”

     “Thanks.”
     I was sitting in a booth near the back of the room.  There was a rather noisy group nearby and I began to wish that I’d gone to a different diner.  In a minute or so, the waitress was back with my coffee.

     “You look lost,” she said.                      
     “I am.  I’m a best-selling author and I can’t think of anything to write anymore.  I don’t even know if I can write.  I feel like it’s all gone.”  I looked up forlornly.  “Did you know that I’ve been publishing since I was ten? And now I can’t think of a damn thing.  Just like that.”  I snapped my fingers.

     Her eyes grew wide.

     “What’s your name? What have you written?” She grinned.  “That girl over there,”—she pointed at the excessively noisy table in the back—“the one with the really long brown hair, she’s putting me in one of her books! You should talk to her.  I think her name is Rose.”

     I nodded.

     “My name’s Ashlee Montegray,” I said, smiling.  The waitress’s expression fell.  Her brow furrowed.  She looked at me and shook her head.

     “I’ve never heard of you,” she said.  When she turned and walked away, I felt as though my life had ended.

     I guess I have to admit that when the man at one of the middle tables keeled over dead, I wasn’t all that surprised.  Everyone else screamed, but the first thing I thought of was whether or not the whole incident would make a good plot for a mystery novel.  It was a few minutes after that, when I tried to leave, that I learned how backed up 309 was.  A six-car pileup just down the road had made it impossible to simply drive away.  A telephone pole had been knocked down.  The power went out and everything reverted to emergency lighting.  On top of that, it was raining.

     I know what you’re thinking.  You don’t believe me, do you? The first thing that a writer thinks of when she’s penning a new story is how a certain scene would never happen in real life.  But when she thinks about it for a while, she realizes that the most outlandish scenes occur frequently in daily life.      

     Existence is just funny that way.

     So when it came right down to it, I was just tired of everything and my coffee was half gone.  Most of the people in the diner filed out as quickly as they could, content to stand in the parking lot rather than sit near the dead man.  At some point, I got up and headed toward the kitchen to see if I could help anyone.

     There were only two waiters left.  All the rest had ended their shifts early, before the car crash.  The waitress (the one who’d been at my table) spoke briefly with a waiter, a young man with a lanky build, and hurried out to tend to customers.

     No one seemed to see me standing in the corner of the kitchen.  They were all too busy talking amongst themselves.  I could hear the customers gabbing adamantly about what was going on.  There were sirens everywhere.  Quakertown was overflowing with energy—the kind that nobody wanted.

     It wasn’t until the waiter bumped into me that they actually noticed I was there.

     “Hey!” he exclaimed.  “What the hell are you doing back here?” His eyes narrowed and he looked really angry.  This guy wasn’t a very happy person—I could tell just by looking at him. 

     “I thought I’d see if anyone needed any help,” I said truthfully.

     “Well, butt out.”  He pushed through the door that led to the far side of the diner.  It swung shut behind him. 

     “Hey, don’t worry about him.”  I turned.  One of the chefs, a pretty girl with blond hair and a slim figure, had spoken.  She smiled at me.  “He’s just a jerk, really.”  She left the counter she’d been cleaning up and moved beside me.  “You could help with one thing, though,” she said.

     “What’s that?”

     “Sara mentioned that you’re a mystery writer.  How about finding out how that guy out there died?”

     “Isn’t it natural causes?” The girl shook her head.  “How can you be sure?” I asked.

     “I have a hunch.”  She leaned closer and whispered.  “Fred says it’s his uncle and that the guy used to beat him when he was a kid.  That’s why he’s been more upset than usual.  The bastard came here to ask forgiveness.  Fred spat in his food.  God only knows what else he did.  Not that I blame him.”

     “But that still doesn’t verify that it was murder.”

     “I know it was.  He said he was going to do it.  This is horrible.  I never liked Fred to begin with.  I know his uncle isn’t innocent, but killing is wrong.”

     “Shouldn’t you call the police?”

     “All the phones are dead,” the cook said, shrugging.  She extended a hand.  We shook.  “My name’s Lena Cavanaugh.”

     “Ashlee.  Ashlee Montegray.”

     I talked the owner into letting me help out.  We gathered the staff in the kitchen.  There was Fred, the waiter, Lena, the cook, Sara, the one who’d been waiting on me, and Thomas, another cook.  The owner—a short, dark-skinned man with thick-rimmed glasses—stood in the corner, his arms crossed over his chest.  I announced to everyone that I was going to do my best to find out what had happened.  Then I talked to each person individually.

     “I didn’t do it,” Fred growled.  “Besides, you don’t even know if it was murder! The fat old bastard probably choked on a carrot.”

     “He wasn’t seen choking.  Everyone agreed on that,” I said.  “On the other hand, you said that you were going to kill him.”

     “I said I wanted to kill him! There’s a big difference.”  He was trying to talk softly, but his face was growing red with anger.  They were in the corner of the kitchen, away from the others. 

     “He beat you as a kid.  You have a motive.  You’re the only one here who knew the guy personally, besides his family.”

     “That’s not his family,” Fred said, clenching his fists.  “That’s his ho of a girlfriend and her dumpy kids.  I’m not even surprised that they haven’t left the table.  They don’t seem at all bothered by the fact that Uncle Jim is dead.     

     Mostly everyone left except them.  It’s disgusting.  Damn hicks.”  I peered out the window in the nearest door.  I could see the family sitting there, staring at Uncle Jim.  “I bet his girlfriend killed him,” Fred decided. 

     “In a public place?”

     “Why the hell not? That way, you can blame it on the waiters.”  Fred turned and stalked furiously out of the kitchen. 

     I watched the family from across the room.

    “Mommy, why isn’t Uncle Jim eating his chips?”

     “He doesn’t want them,” the fat woman replied.  She was staring at the body.  She looked nervous.  She smacked her child’s hand when he reached for one of the potato chips.  “Don’t touch!” she said. 

     She only looked away for a second.  The kid grinned widely and grabbed for a chip.  He stuffed it in his mouth.  He started to laugh, but then his expression turned grim.  Shortly after, he convulsed and collapsed on the floor.