LITMIR.BIZ

      Prologue

      Saturday

      “It’s time for drastic measures,” Ol’ Bill muttered to himself as he drove down Main Street. He glanced toward the sun that was just peeping over one of the distant red hills that gave the village its name.

      The trouble with a town the size of Red Rock, Texas, was everybody thought he was something on a stick. All those Texas-size egos buttin’ heads used to make for lots of interestin’ doings.

      Used to. Lately the town had gotten downright boring.

      Six in the morning was too early for most of the town’s strong-minded citizens to be up meddling. Ol’ Bill Sinclair was the exception to that rule. Seventy-two and feeling it a little more than usual, he drove with care. Despite his caution, Ol’ Bill’s “Spring Fling juices” were flowing like a riptide rushing up to a placid summer beach to wreak havoc on kids building sand castles. He felt bright and chipper and damnably mischievous on this particular May morning.

      This was ’sposed to be Spring Fling season, but there wasn’t a speck of trouble brewin’. If a concerned citizen didn’t think up some devilment fast, there was the very real danger the town that prided itself on its Wild West heritage would bore itself to death.

      Bill was a cowboy at heart. Not that he was spry enough to ride out and seek adventure. These days he got most of his kicks by organizing the town archives at the library and by working at the Red Rock Gazette. Sometimes after one of his features on politics or religion appeared, folks stormed the Gazette and told him he should do the town a favor and retire. Helen Geary had even gifted him with a colorful ceramic tile that read, “Silence is the best substitute for brains.”

      Fans like Helen were a rare and treasured thing to any writer. It was thrilling to know that people were out there, reading him, appreciating him. He was so proud of his tile, he’d hung it above his toilet, so he could pay it a visit on a regular basis.

      The big sky was turning all colors of pink when Bill stomped on the brakes and his battered blue pickup skidded to a halt at the last blinking red traffic light on Main Street. Just in the nick of time to miss an eighteen-wheeler whizzing past on the San Antone Highway.

      Whew! His old heart raced a little faster.

      Good thing he’d rolled to a stop when he had, or he’d have been roadkill for sure. For a second or two he wondered what tasty potluck dish Helen Geary would have brought to his wake to celebrate his permanent retirement.

      Slowly, carefully, he made it through the light onto the highway. A few blocks farther down, he turned into the parking lot of his favorite breakfast nook, the Dairy Café.

      He bumped across the familiar potholes of the empty parking lot with gleeful pride. Yes sirree, bobcat, just like always good Ol’ Bill was the first customer at Red Rock’s favorite dairy café. Just like always he was wearing the favorite overalls his wife kept trying to throw away. Just like always he had a briefcase full of letters to the editor to mull over while he sat in a plastic booth and swigged black coffee out of one of those tiny white foam cups he detested. Ah, what he wouldn’t give for an old-fashioned, thick ceramic cup and saucer.

      If he hit pay dirt, one or two of the letters would be provocative as all get out. If he hit a dry hole, he’d have to pen his own…maybe throw in a little political advice to excite his fans. One way or the other, he intended to stir up a hornet’s nest to get folks in the proper mood for Red Rock’s annual Spring Fling.

      The Spring Fling, which was always held on the town square on May 15, was usually a time of mischief and mayhem. If he didn’t act fast, this year’s Spring Fling would take place without even a hint of disaster or scandal.

      Dwelling on that dismal thought again, Bill ordered his coffee and sat down. One sip of the strong black liquid set him to reminiscing. Why, only last year sweet Megan Holston had made two dates for the dance. Who would have thought she had it in her? For weeks leading up to the Fling neither date had known about the other. Then at the Spring Fling, when the two beaus discovered each other and people had started laughing, there had been one helluva shoot-out.

      Beau #1 had shot off the tip of his big toe, and Beau #2 had been knocked out cold from the kickback of his gun. Meanwhile, as that pair of love-struck fools had wrestled each other through the night, sweet Megan had eloped with her one true love, Johnny Ambush, and lived happily and boringly ever after.

      The year before, somebody had spiked the punch at the Fling with something so powerful the entire town had ended up skinny-dipping in Lake Mondo—even the big-haired and blue-haired old biddies, much to the joy of a tabloid reporter who’d shown up. The reporter had taken pictures of the old biddies’ boobs hanging to their navels and had made Red Rock the laughingstock of Texas.

      Not that that was the first time lewd photographs had caused a stir during Spring Fling season.

      Years ago, whew, now this had been a spell, brash young Matt Harper had set the town on its edge with a few amateur masterpieces. People had begun to think Matt, who’d been a mere senior in high school at the time, had finally settled down. Then he’d gone and pulled that low-down stunt.

      Ol’ Bill rubbed his forehead, trying to remember. First, Matt had asked shy Jane Snow, who’d had a crush on him for years, to the Fling. Of course, she’d said yes, and the romantics in town had been pleased as punch for Jane. Then Jane had broken their date and nobody had known why until the night before the Fling when young Matt plastered the football locker room with poster-size pictures of her in a revealing wet T-shirt.

      The poor, beautiful child had always been embarrassed by her voluptuous figure and had always done everything she could to hide it! She’d fled Red Rock the next day. The Snows enrolled her in a prim, all-girls’ school in San Antonio, and she’d stayed out of town for years. Matt had been expelled and had had to repeat that semester.

      Yes sirree, the first weeks of May leading up to the Spring Fling should bring out the crazy in all true Red Rockians.

      Something was definitely wrong this year.

      Hell, maybe somebody had put something in the water.

      Maybe it was too many tame city people moving to town.

      Funny thing, after years of both of ’em being gone, Matt Harper and Jane Snow had both moved back to town. Rumor had it, they’d even kissed under the mistletoe last Christmas. What was going on?

      The hard plastic seat cut into Bill’s skinny rump and spine as he forced himself to begin reading the letters. Much as he wanted to pan gold, the first twelve letters he read were dryer and duller than dirt. He was about to give up, when the thirteenth letter fell on the floor just as an eighteen-wheeler pulling a load of cattle rumbled by so fast the entire building shuddered.

      Bill felt a premonition in his bones. He even shivered as he picked up that thirteenth letter from the floor. Was the paper rumpled from tears that had fallen when the writer had drafted it? Yes, the ink was definitely blurry.

      Hell, maybe he was desperate, but the first corny sentence stirred the mischief in his old soul. As he read on, the words that followed fanned the flames of his troublemaking instincts.

      My

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