A Dreadful Lemon Pie

Nine Stories, Nine People's Lives In Conflict. See how it ends.

A Dreadful Lemon Pie

A Hollywood reporter investigating the brutal murders of LA fashion models gets in over her head after consulting a psychic crime fighter.

Tragic. Murder. Seven women so far. All young and gorgeous. That's what the papers said at the newsstand as two fashion models stood shoulder to shoulder reading the front-page headline. The anorexic blonde whose crystalline blue eyes sold millions of dollars worth of cosmetics shuddered. "This story in the Tribune gives me the creeps."

Her companion in the five-thousand-dollar salmon-colored dress added, "It's not enough we have to fight off amorous photographers. Now we have a psycho too."

Harold's Hobby

His neighbors thought of him as a quiet, dull fellow. But then, none of them knew about Harold's Saturday night hobby.

Harold cruised Chicago's near Northside, scanning the sidewalk for possibilities. Zoo Town, as Harold preferred to call the neighborhood, had only a couple of years before been a skid row slum. But these days it was on the rise. The Windy City's trendy, chic-chic neighborhood had transformed itself. It was populated with dozens of chrome-plated and neon bedazzling sports bars and restaurants and Gay haunts as well as some seedy remnants of the old town: Things like sour-smelling winos passed out on the sidewalk in a puddle of their own vomit, cluttering the sidewalk in front of greasy pizza palaces.

Kill Joy

A cheating wife lures a complete stranger onto her sailboat over drinks. Things do not end well.

The night shift bartender dutifully wiped whiskey glass after whiskey glass squeaky clean with a pristine white cloth. A quiet Monday evening, so far, his only customer was a young blonde, a regular, sipping gin on ice. Tall, good-looking. Married. The bartender wondered if her middle-aged husband knew how many times she had left the yacht club bar with other guys.

Blind Charley's Corner

Rock and Roll, a deadly plane crash, rumors of murder, cannibalism, and a dead chicken.

Snow blanketed the New England white birch and pine trees. So there is no doubt Dangerous Dave knew better than to do what he was about to. The wicked Nor'easter had already dumped a foot of wet snow on the slopes near Burlington, Vermont. New England ski lodge owners were rubbing their hands together in glee in anticipation of all the pending business. But while the blanket of heavy snow was welcome news for Stowe's downhill skiers, the winter storm was not good news for the veteran pilot, Dangerous Dave.

At the airport, visibility was severely limited. On the other hand, the instrument-rated pilot had logged many thousands of hours in the seat of his single-engine Beaver, a lot of that time as a bush pilot out of Fairbanks, Alaska, flying in inclement Arctic weather.

To The Moon, Alice

In life, and especially on a commuter flight, you never know whom you're going to end up sitting next to.

Late getting into the Panama City, Florida, airport for my flight to Atlanta, I had been sharing a cab from the beach with a Navy hard hat diver on his way to Pearl Harbor to survey the USS Iowa battleship at her moorings. Its bottom is thin from many decade's worth of corrosion. His job would be to survey exactly how bad the damage was.

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