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Illustrations by Harry Blair

What started as a fun creative undertaking inspired by his own Henderson Road neighborhood dogs turned into a furry fury of ink across illustrator extraordinaire Harry Blair’s desk. He certainly gave these pups paws-onality plus! Coming soon to a Greensboro near you, Blair plans to draw precious pooches for their humans at a small charge, half of which will go to local rescue operations. De-tails to come.  OH

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The Gift of the Fan Belt

What goes around . . .

By Harry Roach

Note from the editor: This was second place in our 2023 O.Henry Essay Contest.

In the summer of 1969, I was driving a 1965 Chevrolet Corvair. Yes, a Corvair, not a Corvette. Manufactured from 1960–1969, the Corvair was America’s first and only automobile with an air-cooled, rear-mount engine. That engine was the heart of the vehicle, and near the center of this story.

After a long day trip to a state park in southeastern Missouri, my wife and I were in the Corvair, engine off, waiting in line for a ferry to carry us across the Mississippi River to southern Illinois. We chatted and laughed, recounting the highlights of the day.  From the ferry landing, fields of corn flowed north and south to the horizon, filling thousands of acres of bottom land between the river and the levee. I could say that the scene reminded me of that ominous Stephen King story, but he didn’t write it until 1977.   

With the late afternoon sun behind us, we could see the ferry crossing toward us from the east bank, slow as a tortoise on vacation. It was carrying its maximum, just nine cars. On our side, the Corvair was seventh in line and, because the ferry did not operate after dark, ours would be the final crossing of the day.

As the ferry maneuvered toward the slip, drivers ahead of us started their cars. I turned the key in the ignition, the engine immediately fired up. Bang! What was that? Red lights on the control panel lit up like a Christmas display. I got out and opened the hatch over the engine. The Corvair had thrown its fan belt. Late on a Sunday afternoon. Miles from nowhere. We were stuck.

The fan is essential to an air-cooled engine, and its belt also runs the generator and the power steering. I was thinking maybe we could coast down the incline and onto the ferry, then, after the crossing, get help pushing the car up the ramp onto the Illinois shore. Where we’d probably have to sleep in the car. Not a bright prospect.

“Can I help you, buddy?” It was the guy in the truck behind us. Who happened to be a Chevy mechanic. Who also owned a Corvair. And had a Corvair fan belt in the back of his truck. What were the odds? Our miracle mechanic installed the new belt so quickly that we were ready to roll just when it was our turn to board. My wife and I were two very thankful people.

Years later, I was on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, driving a different vehicle with an air-cooled rear-mount engine: a Volkswagen bus, the vehicle of choice for happy hippies, van campers and large families on a budget. By then, I had learned how to install a fan belt, change the plugs, adjust the timing, and other rudiments of amateur automobile maintenance. A quarter mile ahead, a red VW bug sat sadly on the shoulder of the road, its open engine hatch gaping at three perplexed women. Their bug had thrown its fan belt. I got out my tools and spare belt and in 15 minutes had those very thankful people back on the road. And I, too, was grateful for the opportunity to return the gift of a fan belt bestowed by that miraculous Samaritan so long ago.  OH

Harry Roach and his wife, Liz, live in downtown Greensboro, where they spend a lot of their time dancing.

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A Fairytale Ending

I Think That I Shall Never See Myself as Other Than a Tree

By  Christine Garton

Our fourth-grade Christmas pageant offered an opportunity I yearned for — the role of a fairy! While I dreamed of wands and sparkling wings, I knew I would face competition from my pixie-like classmate, Anne. For days I practiced flitting about while singing, “I’m a fairy, so light and airy.” Alas, Anne received the fairy assignment, and our teacher proclaimed that “a big ol’ healthy girl” like me would play . . .  a tree. “Well,” Mother said, “maybe you will be draped with tinsel and wear a star on your head.” No. I was to wear my blue velveteen Sunday school jumper, stand in one spot and utter one line.

I first met Anne when the black taxicab picked us and the other 4-year-olds up for delivery to Mrs. Teensy Davis’ in-home nursery school. Memories of that year consist mainly of finger painting and two horrid little boys who terrified me by saying they were going to climb under the hood of Daddy’s car and kill him. For some reason my father did not take this as a serious threat, but Anne consoled me and thus became my friend.

The following year, Anne cut through her backyard to meet me, and together we walked to kindergarten. Anne was a tiny girl with blonde, Alice-in-Wonderland hair she wore in braids. At her temples I saw delicate blue veins, like rivers on a map. Mother said Anne was born “premature,” which I interpreted as “dainty.” Built like a fireplug with a Dutch-boy bob, I longed for braids like Anne’s, so I nagged Mother into allowing my hair to grow. Although the resulting plaits were so thin that rubber bands slipped off the ends, Scotch Tape worked just fine.

I coveted the sleek, black penny loafers Anne wore in first grade. I hated my spud feet, clad in sturdy, lace-up, tan Hush Puppies, and hooked my ankles around the legs of my desk to keep them out of view. I campaigned to convince Mother to buy me loafers. “You’d tear them up in a week,” she said. In retaliation, I rode my bike for an hour, dragging the toes of my Hush Puppies along the pavement, but the shoes were indestructible.

The after-school YMCA program yielded no outlet for my inner Thumbelina. President Kennedy had determined that America’s youth were soft, so an intense fitness regimen was inflicted upon us: “Go, You Chicken Fat, Go!” We performed sit-ups and jumping jacks. Bird-like, Anne flew to and fro in the potato relay as I plodded behind on turkey drumstick legs. I could barely hoist myself halfway on the climbing rope, while Anne skittered up and down like a spider.

I mostly gave up any notion of being like Anne. I worked at kicking a ball hard and swinging a softball bat. I beat up the runty boy across the street who called me “Moose” and eventually outgrew my stocky phase.

Years later, reeling from an abrupt end to my marriage, I found myself rearing a son on my own. No time for fairies, daily life was consumed with his care and paying the bills. But I was determined to make sure my boy was rooted securely by his mother’s love.

In his early teens, my son applied for a job at the boys’ summer camp he had loved throughout childhood. One day, I received an unexpected phone call from the camp director wanting to discuss a junior counselor position. “You know, Grey had to describe his hero on the job application,” he said. “His hero is you.”

My perplexed silence prompted him to continue.

“He wrote about the big tree in your backyard where you hung his swing. He said like that tree, you are strong and give him support, but with the swing, you also let him fly.”

After thanking him and hanging up, I pondered this revelation: Was I wrong all along? Perhaps being a tree was not the indignity I’d thought.  OH

Christine Garton is a staff writer for UNCG’s Advancement Communications. She holds great pride in the fact that her son earned the rank of Eagle Scout, albeit with her foot planted firmly on his derriere . . .

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Hog Wild

…and happy as a pig in mud

By Cynthia Adams

Early life on a farm taught me this: Never get caught swimming with the hogs.

Especially wearing a brand-new swimsuit. 

Hearing titters in a children’s shop, my folks pivoted from a rack of Easter dresses to discover me in the display window wearing a blue-and-white “swimming soup” taken straight off the mannequin. My father conceded. “Look, if she wants it that badly, I say we buy it.”

At age 4, that would be the last time I found a new bikini joyful. 

Mind you, we had no swimming pool. My grandmother had a pond replete with water moccasins. Where snapping turtles tangled fishing lines. The best I could hope for was a sprinkler.

It was wonderful being a child on a small farm with goats, milk cow, horses and hogs. Our father raised Landrace hogs, which prolifically produced white piglets. Whenever a new litter was born, which was often, Daddy would take me to the barn to admire them, wriggling and pink beneath red heat lamps. I adored them long before discovering Charlotte’s Web.

With the first fine spring day, inspiration struck. Donning the new swimsuit and a tiny, cherished diamond birthstone ring, I headed straight for the hog pond. And sank right in.

The muck pleasantly sucked at my bare feet like a welcoming, living thing. My ponytail floated behind me as I joyously heaved handfuls of mud from the pliable pond, exultant. 

As for the hogs? I knew them since birth as gentle, intelligent creatures, much like E. B. White’s Wilbur. They watched on as if to say, “See? See why we like it so much?”

At some point, my older sister, six years my senior, appeared at the pond’s edge wearing her cowgirl boots. “ARE YOU CRAZY?” she screamed. Seldom a tattletale, mine was a crime demanding to be reported. She shot away, black pigtails flying behind her, hollering, “MAMA!”

Before I could extract myself from the muck and broker a deal, Mama came running faster than I had ever witnessed. She was at the pond before I could fully balance, hair streaming, streaks of red mud dribbling down my chin.

Staining my brand-new swimsuit.

Confronting the spectacle before her, Mama shuddered, then glowered.

“Cynthia Anne! Get. Out. Of. The. Hog. Pond. NOW.”

As any child knows, Mama Justice requires no reading of rights; no legal representation, no cooling off period before judgement is rendered. 

There are only two possibilities: Guilty as charged, or asleep.

I was marched to the spigot for a vigorous hosing down after stripping off my beloved swimsuit. (“Well, I hope you’re happy,” Mama seethed. “That’s ruined.”)

I remember being plunked into the white porcelain bath. She declared war on my skin and nails, doggedly persisting even after the muddied bath water ran clear. 

Suddenly, with a sad shiver, I sneaked my right hand behind me: The suit wasn’t all that was lost.

Of course, Mama saw. “Cynthia Anne. Where’s your ring?”

Gone. 

Her lips stretched into a disapproving line. “This is what happens when your Daddy spoils you.”

Afterward, an imposed bedroom confinement, meant for contemplating of crimes.

Later, the trooping before my father for a full confession. (A sympathetic smile flickered, but, once charged, even Daddy couldn’t overrule Mama Justice.)

There were my sister’s snickers to endure. 

During my exile, springtime rains began, forming beguiling puddles in the graveled driveway. As if custom-made just for me. 

I thought of my barnyard friends, free to abandon themselves to the embracing muck! How I longed to do the same.

Helpless against all that pleasure, a 4-year-old with the perfect outfit snuck out into the rain to claim the perfect puddle.  OH

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The Razor

A clean-cut remembrance of a gentle soul

By Tim Swink

It was on the front steps of the YMCA in a steel mill town, where I’d rented a room, that I first met him. I had followed a pretty girl who’d come south for a two-week stay at the coast back to Northeast Ohio. I was smitten. I ended up staying until the end of August, when I returned home to begin my fall semester at Guilford College.

Picking up work on a construction site as a carpenter’s helper or a laborer, the summer job for many college guys down South? No problem. But the problem here was being able to walk through the barbed-wire fences that surrounded worksites without a union membership card. After being unceremoniously asked to leave, I realized that this was a steel town where the world was hard, as were its men. Manpower Temporary Services became my employer, assigning me jobs nobody wanted to do.

After a day’s work for Manpower, I’d sit on the front steps of the YMCA, waiting for my girlfriend to pick me up so we could spend the evening together. It was on those granite steps that I first saw him. Back then, he was labeled “gimp-legged” since he walked with a very bad limp. I later learned that his leg had been crushed in an incident while working in one of those steel mills, leaving him disabled, with a meager monthly check and a room at the Y. Later on those evenings, when my girlfriend would drop me back off, a dread would fill me. As I entered the lobby and could hear shouting and curses echoing up and down the halls, I’d run up the stairs, two at a time, to my third floor room and immediately lock the door. When the noise would die down late in the night, making way for me to tiptoe down the hall to the communal bathroom, where I’d finally wash up.

The Y was a daunting place, where rough men with rough lives resided. But there was one exception: “the man on the steps.” He had a kind, gentle nature. A contradiction in the given environment. A wounded man, physically, against a backdrop of hard men and their hard living. Through evening conversations at the Y, I came to know him. I don’t recall what we talked about. And I don’t recall his name. I wish I did. He deserved that. But I felt a connection with him and I can still see him to this day, just as he looked when he’d gaze up into the soft twilight glow. He’d fixate on jets that periodically streamed across the sky. One day I heard him say to himself, “Man, I’d give anything to be on that jet, going wherever it’s going. It wouldn’t matter. Just outta here.”

During one of our evening talks, I rubbed my hand across my stubbled face and mentioned that I’d either lost or forgotten my razor. The next evening, there on the steps, he reached into his pocket and extracted a worn razor and held it out to me saying, “Here. Take this.” I resisted, but he insisted. “You need it more than I do, to stay handsome for that pretty lady.” Looking down at the razor, I noticed he’d colored the base of the handle red — to identify it, I assumed. You had to protect what was yours in the YMCA.

As I type this piece, a used razor with a red handle sits on my writing desk. A simple gesture that said so much. A remembrance of a kind, gentle man from so long ago, who wanted me to stay handsome for the pretty lady who later became my wife. The kind, gentle man who just wanted to fly away. To anywhere. I hope he did.  OH

Tim Swink resides in Greensboro and is the author of three novels: Curing Time, Madd Inlet and a sequel to Curing Time, Where the Flowers Bloomed, released in February 2024.

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Backseat Smooching

The joyride home from elementary school

By David Claude Bailey

This is a story about pre-adolescent smooching, but the pre-teen boy in me wants to start with the car, a huge 1947 Pontiac Streamliner with those sweeping, flared fenders favored in gangster movies. (My father had a 1954 V-8 Pontiac Star Chief, a sleek and powerful car with an illuminated face of an Indian as a hood ornament. But Dad’s car didn’t hold a candle to the Streamliner, with its sleek, Jaguar-inspired lines and capacious interior.) This automobile was obviously the choice for those who dreamed of a luxurious and fabled life on the big screen.

Our chauffeur, Marian Orren, always perfectly coiffed, would pick up her son, Frank, plus me and our classmate, Evelyn, from elementary school every afternoon.

The Art Deco radio with golden illuminated buttons and dials would be aglow in the middle of the dashboard. From its mouth-like speaker, which looked like a howling mask from a Greek tragedy, the latest Hit Parade tunes would pour, setting the scene. “Volare.” “All I Have To Do Is Dream.” And, oh my God, the “Witch Doctor.” The back seat was big enough to host a party, but Evelyn and I would settle into the plush, cushy, tufted seats, and slide into the corner. Before we’d reached the stop sign, we were locking lips.

Who knows why and how we got started with this passionate car-noodling. I, with one eye, was bullied all day long, and the idea of someone caring about me, much less showering me with kisses, was the high point of each day. I’ll never forget Evelyn, my first sweetheart.

We were in fourth or fifth grade and our dalliance was limited, neither of us even close to the fervor of adolescence. And maybe that was a good thing.

Frank would sit in the front seat, begging his mother to make us stop. She, in fact, encouraged us, and we’d carry on until the Streamliner pulled up to the curb of 602 Boyd Street, where I reluctantly hauled the coat I’d shed and my army pack out the side door.

Evelyn came to a recent high school reunion all the way from New York City and we had an absorbing and long chat, catching up on our various trajectories.

And then I said, “What was all that smooching about?”

If Evelyn had a good answer, I didn’t hear it. Maybe I’d had one too many gin and tonics.

But magic comes to mind.  OH

David Claude Bailey still enjoys kissing in cars and can sometimes be found fogging up the windows of his 1981 Jeep CJ-7 with his wife of 56 years, Anne.

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Queen of Bath

It’s a bit of a stretch, sure. But this dream tub sorta works

By Ashley Walshe

If you’re a bath person like me — that is to say, someone who soaks ritualistically — then perhaps you’ve spent time imagining what life could be like if your tub was just a little wider; a little deeper; a little more picturesque.

An elegant garden tub aglow with flickering candles. A cast iron clawfoot laced with salt and rose petals. An hourglass drop-in complete with whirlpool jets.

Such visions used to rule my mind.    

Now, having spent the last two years living in a 32-foot travel trailer with my husband and my canine shadow, my dream tub has but one requirement: I can bathe in it.

Which brings me to my current situation.

A standard bathtub holds about 70 gallons of water. Suffice it to say that our RV tub does not. Think farmhouse sink with bobsleigh undertones. Bigger than a breadbox, smaller than a storage tote.

I’ll be honest. It took a while to see potential here. The tub’s fun-size dimensions combined with our 6-gallon hot water heater don’t exactly add up to a space for quiet contemplation and long, soulful soaks. Quick showers are fine. But when baths are your primary indulgence, you consider all your options.

My first bath attempt was, frankly, valiant. I’m no bobsled pilot, but given my daily yoga practice, I was deftly able to navigate the tub’s shallow waters. A knees-to-chest pose, for instance, followed by seated pigeon, a gentle variation of boat pose and — after a bit of ocean breathing — a legs-up-the-wall inversion. 

Despite this series of postures, most of my body was not, in fact, wet. Still, half baths are better than no bath in my book. I lit a candle and resumed my lazy pigeon.

All of this was fine. Really. But when the ankle-deep water began cooling with unholy swiftness, my efforts seemed altogether fruitless.

“I wish we had more hot water,” I mumbled as the basin drained.

“We can try using the electric kettle next time,” my husband offered from the living space. “I’ll even be your bath butler.”

I felt my lips explore the foreign words.   

“Bath butler.” I liked the sound of it.

My bath butler has changed my life. Weekly, per my request or his proposal, I luxuriate in what I’ve taken to calling my Queen’s Bath — a modified version of a full bath, sure, but a yogi can dream.

Pre-kettle, I add a swirl of Epsom salt into the finger-pour of steaming water, get the candle going, flip off the lights and climb in.

If I fits, they say, I sits. 

By now, my bath butler has mastered water control. He knows that, after adding a kettle to my bath, it’s time to heat up the next one. Sensitive and compassionate, he keeps things strictly professional, a trait any honorable bath butler should possess.

“How’s the temperature?” he might ask. Or, “May I bring you a beverage?” Most often, he simply pours and gives a courtly head bow. Role playing at its finest.

Four kettles in, the water nearly hugs my waist. By kettle five, I’m beginning to feel like a Greek goddess. Kettle six? I could not ask for more.

You don’t opt for camper life without sacrificing some modern comforts. Still, we have everything we need: clean, running water; electricity; full bellies and warm hearts.

My butler is the bath bomb on top. 

If it’s true that gratitude is the quickest path to happiness, I think I’m already there. As for my husband?

“I’m happy to bring you water,” he assures me. Although he insists on maintaining his professional butler pose, I pry.

“What’s in it for you?” I ask.

He pours the kettle, shrugs, then clears his throat. “I guess I like the view.”  OH

Ashley Walshe is a former editor and regular contributor of
O.Henry magazine.

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I Watched Aliens from Another Planet Clean My Kitchen

A grandmother comes to her sensory senses

By Marianne Gingher

When Greensboro’s Friendly Center opened in 1957, I was 10 years old and my favorite store there was Woolworth’s. The heart of the store was the candy counter — a child’s dream — where you could buy orange jelly slices, little boxes of Goobers, Nik-L-Nips, candy corn, licorice whips, Sugar Daddies and chocolate-covered peanuts by the scoop. Brimming with the aromas of sizzling hotdogs twirling on skewers, popcorn, fountains of orange and lemon-flavored drinks bubbling down the sides of their glass containers, the store smelled nearly as delicious as the Greensboro Fairgrounds. There were other enticements: single-play records for 99 cents, gag gifts like Whoopie cushions and, in the back of the store fluttered blue and green parakeets in cages. Near the candy counter, I hovered over copies of The Weekly World News and National Enquirer with such memorable headlines as “Baby Born With Tattoo of Elvis” and “I Watched Aliens from Another Planet Clean My Kitchen.” After a trip to Woolworth’s, my imagination was stoked, my senses on overload.

Fast forward six decades. In the interval I became a writer, and I think now, in a weird way, Woolworth’s played a role in that. Remembering that famous five-and-dime’s delights got me thinking a lot about where kids today derive that sort of simple sensory pleasure and inspiration. My grandchildren, two wild boys ages 2 and 5, spent the summer with me while their family transitioned from Arizona back to North Carolina. My ransacked house bore no resemblance to its former self. I stepped on a piece of broccoli in my bathroom one night during their stay. I found the sprayer that attaches to the garden hose in the hall upstairs. They broke one of my kitchen chairs, flooded the upstairs bathroom and turned the AC thermostat to 50 degrees. It felt like I was living on a different planet. But I rose to physical challenges I never thought possible, danced to poopie songs, took them to every park and museum in Guilford County and witnessed delight on their little sunbeam faces as the carousel at Country Park revved up. I was exhausted but determined to hang on to the tilt-a-whirl of them until they headed off to the mothership.

Midway through their stay, when the 5 -year-old said he was bored, weary of the usual entertainments, I wished Woolworth’s still existed. But then a brainstorm hit.

“How would you like to help me wash the kitchen floor?” I asked. Nobody had ever given him such a fantastic opportunity.

His eyes widened. “Oh, yes!”

“Me, too!” hollered little brother.

Nothing glamorous or high-tech about that job, but both boys were thrilled with the adventure of it (and the spray bottle that came with the assignment). They’d discovered joy in a simple, sensory (and productive!) activity, far from the razzle-dazzle of commercial amusements. I stood on the threshold of the kitchen, watching them beaver away in their goofy way. It was happening before my very eyes: Two aliens from another planet were cleaning my kitchen!   OH

Marianne Gingher is an Earthbound writer living in Greensboro.

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Read and Dead

A librarian’s cozy mystery series

By Anne Blythe

Librarians are good at deciphering mysteries. Just ask any card-carrying library fan. They can be sherpas, of a sort, guiding readers from behind the confines of their reference desks to a world of information often only a bookshelf or computer click away.

Some are good at creating them, too, as Victoria Gilbert, a former librarian-turned-mystery writer, shows in A Cryptic Clue, the first book in her new Hunter and Clewe cozy mystery series.

Raised in the “shadows of the Blue Ridge mountains,” Gilbert has been a reference librarian, a research librarian and a library director so, in the vein of “write what you know,” it’s easy to see why the protagonist in her new series is Jane Hunter, a 60-year-old university librarian forced into early retirement and a new chapter in life.

Gilbert’s Jane has tinges of Agatha Christie’s Miss Jane Marple in her, although she is a divorcee, not a spinster, who still wants to work for a living to pad her paltry pension. That desire to find a new vocation leads Gilbert’s chief sleuth to her new boss, Cameron Clewe — Cam, to those who know the 33-year-old unconventional multi-millionaire well — who was looking for an archivist and hired Jane sight unseen. Cam not only inherited tremendous wealth at a young age, but also an estate so large that it houses a private library, guest quarters and grand rooms where the well-to-do and those aspiring to affluence gather for glamorous galas, glitzy fundraisers and seasonal soirees.

Although Jane describes her new boss as “leading man material,” he’s a nervous type whose lack of a filter makes him a blunt, often humorless, speaker.

“I didn’t realize you were so old,” Cam says upon meeting Jane in his library. “And rather heavier than I expected, given that photo on the university website.”

Jane, on the other hand, is a woman used to working with college students and the mother of a grown daughter, an actress with a middle name that might as well be “drama.” She checks herself instead of blurting out the first thing that pops into her mind.

“That photo is a bit dated,” Jane responds, keeping her eyes on the prize she did not want to lose. Her Social Security payments wouldn’t kick in for at least two more years. She needs the work. Furthermore, she’s interested in sifting through and cataloging “the books and papers connected to classic mystery and detective authors” that have been amassed in Aircroft, Cam’s mansion. “As for my current appearance — years working in academia has taken its toll, it seems. But I am certain you hired me for my expertise, not my looks.”

Such is the beginning of the relationship that brings two Sherlocks from very different circumstances together to solve a mystery that holds a reader’s interest through the very last page.

The whodunit kicks off on a Monday at Aircroft after a charity fete over the weekend. Jane walks into the library on her first day of work, travel mug filled with coffee in hand, to find the body of Ashley Allen crumpled on the floor, “unquestionably, irrevocably dead.”

After “fighting the urge to retch” and scanning the crime scene with a surprisingly calm detachment, Jane staggers into the hallway, slumps against the wall and slides to the floor. “There’s a dead body in the library,” Jane thought. “That room meant to be my workplace is now a murder scene.”

It’s not just any body, either. Ashley was Cam’s ex-girlfriend, someone Jane had seen her new boss arguing with days earlier while touring the garden grounds. More than 100 people had been at Aircroft for the party the night before. Ashley had been there too, and was still clad in her silver sequined dress.

“You do realize who will be their number one suspect, of course,” Cam says after seeing the crime scene.

Quickly Cam decides to be proactive and use his resources to investigate Ashley’s death on his own. He turns to Jane for help. “I refuse to lounge around while the authorities build a case against me,” Cam declares. But, as his assistant Lauren points out, Cam is agoraphobic, rarely venturing out past the gates surrounding his home. That’s where Jane comes in.

“I’ll need help collecting information from the wider community. Which is what I’d like you two to do,” Cam tells Jane and Lauren. “Bring me back any clues you uncover, and I can piece it together, and perhaps solve this case before the authorities start casting about for a scapegoat. Namely me.”

The hunt for clues is added to Jane’s assigned duties. As Cam sets out to collect information from the kitchen staff and guests who had been staying in his house, Jane pursues the story outside Aircroft, casting about town for hints why the beautiful and wealthy Ashley has been killed, presumably by a fatal head wound delivered with a blunt object.

There is no shortage of suspects, either. Ashley left a trail of aggrieved casualties from former romances, business ventures and injurious family dynamics. As Jane and Cam glean the many storylines from Gilbert’s cast of characters, suspects are added to and subtracted from the list. Jane’s landlord, Vince, a retired reporter from the local newspaper, and his girlfriend, Donna, a former secretary at the local high school, provide background depth to clues that Jane turns up from her sleuthing.

In addition to the love interests and resentful entrepreneurs wooed and abandoned by the victim, readers meet the quirky Aircroft house guests, the detached Allen family — all of whom were to be left out of the deep-pocketed grandmother’s will — their housekeeper and others.

Gilbert keeps her readers guessing while entertaining them with snippets about mystery writers and their well-known characters, such as Archie, the droll narrator and sidekick to Nero Wolfe, the armchair detective brought to life by Rex Stout.

As Jane and Cam cross suspect after suspect off their lists while unraveling the mystery of Ashley’s killer, they uncover new secrets and riddles that are tidily wrapped up at the end of the novel. As the two share a pizza with the riddle solved, it’s clear more sleuthing is ahead.

“We could investigate those cold cases you mentioned, and maybe take on a few cases for other people,” Cam tells Jane.

“Maybe focus on cases where justice didn’t seem likely to be served?” Jane adds.

“Exactly,” Cam responds.

Exactly, indeed. Gilbert’s fans will be looking forward to whatever comes their way.  OH

Anne Blythe has been a reporter in North Carolina for more than three decades. She has covered city halls, higher education, the courts, crime, hurricanes, ice storms, droughts, floods, college sports, health care and many wonderful characters who make this state such an interesting place.