C.: Let's see...The clock struck fourteen o'clock. Nope. Too close to someone else's work. George Orwell would roll over in his grave. Hmm. .Call me Ishmael, for I am troubled about trying to come up with an opening live for my book! No. I have gone eighty four days without eating a fish. No again. Ask not for whom the bell tolls. d.c. would be REALLY upset. Earnest Hemingway is his favorite author! Speaking of d.c, maybe I should just start reading his book again. Where was I? Oh, yes, I was reading "Precision; A Crime of Passion." I am still on the introduction, though! That is where I come in. Browsing my social media before I walk to the gym, I see the ad that Magruder took out. The gym is two miles from my house, but only one block away from the bank I use (which is, conveniently next door to the headquarters for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice). I decide to help poor Mr. Magruder. I decide to do this, not because I need the reward money, but because I would like to know what really happened that night. Maybe a first- grade detective from Houston is better equipped to solve this case than the local- yocals that took one look at the evidence and termed it a crime of passion that resulted in a murder-suicide. “Mr. Magruder?” I shake the hand of a man in his mid-fifties with a full head of graying hair and a middle-aged paunch. (Magruder turns to look up at a strapping young man in his early twenties. He stands six and a half feet tall with three days of stubble on his face.) I am dressed in my walking clothes since I prefer to walk to the gym and bank to get more exercise. I have on a t-shirt and long shorts with size sixteen quadruple E cross-trainers on my feet. “I think I can help with this case.” “Wow! That was fast! I put that ad on Facebook this morning. You don’t think that this is an open and shut case of mur- der-suicide either? What can you tell me?” “No,” I confirm the detective’s suspicions. “What do you do for a living?” Magruder anxiously interrupts. “For the sake of saving time, I’ll just say that I’m self -employed.” I leave this part of the conversation for later. “You can dress how you wish, then?” Magruder, dressed in a cheap suit, seems jealous. “Yes,’’ I confirm, “on this, the middle day of the year (and my birthday at that). On a Wednesday, or any other day of the week or the year.” “Okay, then, young Mr. Self-Employed, out with it. But I swear, if this is a ‘tall Texas tale,’ and you’re just after the reward money, I’m keeping the money.” Magruder seems slightly annoyed. “Well,” I begin. “First, I do not need the reward money. If you insist on giving me the fifty dollars, I will give it to my favorite charity, Big Brothers/ Big Sisters of Greater Houston, along with a sizable check of my own. I may not look like it, but I HAVE money.” “To tell you the whole story, so that you can figure out who really murdered these two, I must go back more than twen- ty-five years.” “Before you were even born?” Magruder interrupts me again. “I have my sources, Mr. Magruder. The only payment I ask for helping you today, is a few hours of your time. You see, I have known most of the story for the last five years, and I still cannot figure it out. But you are a detective. If I tell you the whole story, with you being a first- grade detective, maybe YOU can figure it out.” “Okay,” Magruder sighs. “I got nothing but time anyway.” As I said, the story actually begins more than twenty-five years ago...” C.: Oh, look at the time. I am scheduled to work tomorrow. I must get some rest now; I will need to finish reading d.c.'s book later!
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