Tag: #batgarrett

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TimeKeeperS

When Bat Garrett wakes up one morning with the wrong wife, he knows something is wrong.

Jody’s dead. His grandson Edward is dead. A young woman named Marianne went to the future by herself.

Everything is wrong and Bat is the only person who remembers how things used to be, when they were right. But it’s not just a memory. Bat can see that other life. Bat is caught in a dual reality and most everyone–in both realities–thinks he’s going crazy. But Bat is convinced that only one of the realities is the way things are supposed to be, so he sets out to find out what split reality and do whatever he has to do to make it right. Even if it means teaming up with Garison Fitch.

No, not the Garison who lives in Colorado. The one who lived and died in the 1700s. Bat has to get to that Garison to straighten everything out.

Available now on Kindle (click here to order) and in paperback!

And don’t forget to read the next step in the saga: “TimeKeeperS: Rectification“ and the conclusion “TimeKeeperS: Restoration“.

…

Reading Sample

Garison had taken the man’s hand when it was offered, but now he let it go as if it were on fire. Regaining most of his composure, he peered at the man with rapt interest and asked, “Bat Garrett?”

The man looked nervously at the three women, the one fair and blonde, the one dark and the one with red hair, but all with striking good looks, then said, “We met, um, back when you were coaching baseball at Sul Ross University.”

Garison could not hide his surprise as he repeated vaguely, “Sul Ross?”

“It’s in Alpine,” the newcomer said, by way of explanation. “Texas,” he added.

Garison suddenly slumped back into the large, padded chair behind his desk, muttering, “Alpine.” Then, again, more softly, “Alpine,Texas.”

Helen, rushing to her father’s side in near panic, couldn’t help but ask, ”How could he know, Pop?”

Heather’s lawyerly mind kicked into gear and she confronted the newcomer with, “If I find that you have broken—“

“Broken into the Anglican Church and read the manuscript? Oh, wait, you haven’t left it at the Anglican Church, yet, have you? It’s still in the house somewhere, isn’t it?” As Garison Fitch and his daughters looked at him suspiciously, the man who had introduced himself as Bat Garrett reached into his pocket and produced a coin, flipping it to Garison. As Garison caught it deftly, the man instructed, “Take a look at who’s on that coin. And the year.”

As Helen continued to gaze piercingly at Garison, Heather looked at the coin in her father’s hand and muttered, “That looks like—“

“George,” Garison completed. Then, “1975? That’s the year I was born.”

Helen injected, “He could have read the manuscript and manufactured that.”

“That’s what Heather said you’d say,” the man replied with a smile. Looking at the Heather in the room, he explained, “The other Heather. The one you were named for. So she wanted me to show you this.” He pulled a small picture frame from the leather satchel he carried and passed it across the desk to Garison.

Garison took it suspiciously, almost insolently, but then he saw the picture in the frame and his voice caught with a gasp. He finally managed to say, “Heather.”

The Heather in the room reached out to still her father’s shaking hands and looked at the picture in the frame. She turned her eyes to the newcomer in the room and asked, “That’s Heather? His other—the woman I’m named for?”

Bat hesitated, but not as one who is trying to think of a lie. He finally managed to say, “Yes.”

Helen gently drew the frame from her father’s hands and looked at the picture. In her best lawyerly voice—owing to living in a family of lawyers—which she sometimes affected to keep the emotion out, she asked, “This is what you call a—a photograph, isn’t it?” At her father’s nod, she took a closer look at the picture and said, “She—she looks kind of like Jody, doesn’t she?”

“No she doesn’t,” the newcomer said, then blushed and, shaking his head said, “Oh, you mean the Jody in this room. Yeah, they do kinda favor, don’t they?”

Garison nodded as a low laugh emanated from his chest. “She has from the day she was born. I mean, Jody looked like Heather from the very first.” He looked at his daughter Heather, and told her with a smile, “When your mother suggested we name you Heather, I thought it would be a grand, divine joke if you looked like the Heather of the future. You never did, though. You’ve always been your mother in dark colors. But when Jody was born—I mean, from the day she was born … “

He swiveled his chair and looked out the window for a moment, then shook his head and jumped to his feet. He came around the desk, almost bowling Jody over, and extended his hands, asking warmly, “Bat Garrett? Is it really you?”

The newcomer pulled Garison into hug—which surprised everyone in the room—and said, “I wasn’t sure I could find you. But, all in all, it wasn’t really that hard.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Well, I mean, I guess it was—once you get past the whole time travel thing. Once past that, though, I just had to follow the directions on the old map and they pointed me right here.”

“So where have you been? Anthony said you came by earlier. You could have waited.”

“I know, but, I really wanted to see the eighteenth century.”

“You took an awful risk.”

Bat laughed and assured him, “It’s OK. I didn’t stomp on more than a half-dozen butterflies.”

“Butterflies?” Heather asked. “At this time of year?”

“It’s a reference to—oh, never mind,” said her father. He turned back to Bat and asked, “I’m not sure whether to ask why you’re here or how you’re here.”

“How’s easier to answer,” Bat told him with a smile. “You want to take a walk and I can tell you what I know?—which may not be as much as you would like to know, but I’ll do my best.”

“I’d like that,” Garison replied. Then, “Would you like something to eat?”

Bat hesitated, then told him, “I packed a lunch and ate it just before heading into townbut that sure does smell good. I think I could eat a bite, if you’ve got it to spare.”

“Certainly,” Helen said, fixing Bat some food on the plate she had been using for herself. “Sorry that I only brought four plates.”

“How could you know I would be here?” Bat asked with a chuckle as he took the food. Then, “Thanks.”

Garison leaned close and asked with a smile, “You didn’t happen to bring anyTabascosauce with you, did you?”

“Of course. I always travel with condiments,” Bat told him. Then, at Garison’s hopeful look, added, “I’m kidding.”

“Well, then why come back at all?” Garison chided.

“You know, I always liked you better than the other Garison,” Bat said, gesturing with a steak wrap he had built. “The one in the future’s too serious.”

“Does he look like—like my father?” Heather asked, anxiously, for the first time in her life believing that her father’s story might be true.

“Exactly like.”

“I want so badly to start asking everyone questions,” Bat told him as they walked the dirt streets ofAlexandria. “’Did you fight in the war?’ ‘How’s the Constitution coming?’” He saw a man walk by, followed by another man with dark skin, and added in a low voice, “’How can you possibly think enslaving another human being is an acceptable practice?’”

Garison nodded and said, “I have lived for more than forty years with those thoughts. How to bring indoor plumbing to everyone. To build an internal combustion engine. To end slavery. I’ve talked to George about that quite a good bit. And others. I’ve found a willing ear inAdams. George tells me he will free his slaves upon his death. It’s a start, but,” he was silent as a person whom he knew passed nearby, then added, “It is not enough. I am known as an abolitionist, and I’ve been working on the issue but—but you didn’t come here to talk about that. Why did you come here?”

“Let’s talk about how and that’ll get us to why.”

“Fine. But not here. Not in the open. Let’s go to my house.”

“I guess we could have talked in your office. You being a lawyer, people are probably used to you visiting with weirdoes.”

“Oh, they think I am the weirdest of all,” Garison chuckled. “But mainly, I want you to meet Sarah.”

“I’ve always wanted to. You know: my son married your Sarah. I mean, the Sarah in the future.”

“Is that so? How did I—how did the other me take that?”

“Not good at first.” He slapped Garison on the back and added, “By the time they celebrated their twentieth anniversary, he was pretty much used to it, though.

“Oh, um, will I get to meet Bat? The one you named after me? Thanks, by the way.”

“He is off surveying, in theOhiocountry. He gets back this way when he can, but he’s always had a touch of the wanderlust.” Garison laughed ruefully, “More than a touch. He and Darius—who is his nephew and I’m guessing you may have heard about—have always liked the far lands. Maybe it’s because of all those stories I used to tell them about where I grew up.”

“Kinda wanted to meet him. Henry’s a congressman, isn’t he? And Justin’s in shipping, right?”

“You have done your homework,” Garison complimented. “Justin would prefer to be a woodworker, but his talent along those lines is limited. As we might have said in the twenty-first century, the shipping is done merely to support his woodworking habit.”

“We thought it best that I study up for this. And Jody, she works for you, doesn’t she?”

“She could be one of the finest lawyers in the country. Heather already is. But Heather stays here because her husband works with Justin and she is, at heart, a homebody.”

“And Jody?”

Garison shrugged, then answered, “For all her independence, Jody thinks it is also her job to look after me in all matters.”

“That’s great.”

“And do you have any other children? Besides the one who married Sarah? Did she turn out as pretty as her mother?”

“Prettier, if you can imagine it.”

“I don’t believe I can.”

“We—Jody and I—had two more children, actually. Eryn, she married a minister named Douglas Joens and lives inFlagstaff, near us. Homeschools. I think she looks just like Jody—my Jody—but no one else ever sees it.”

“It’s a father thing,” Garison nodded.

“And then there’s the baby of the family, Lori. She’s married to a fellow named John. He manages a church camp about halfway betweenLa PlataCanyonand Cortez and she just became a junior partner in your—I mean, the other Garison’s—law firm.”

“You don’t say,” Garison beamed with admiration.

“And Sarah—the future Sarah. Did she have kids?” he asked with interest.

“Yes. Gave us three beautiful grandsons. Only sad thing about that is that we all wondered if a daughter of hers would have continued the family looks. But it would have been hard to top Sarah, so maybe she was a good stopping place.”

Garison smiled happily and recalled, “I can still see her playing in the yard when she was a toddler. Did you ever read about the time she saw the little tree?”

They came to a large, frame house on a quiet street. There was a small oak tree growing in the yard. The lawn was manicured, though being autumn the grass was mostly golden with few shoots of green still holding tenaciously to the cooling ground.

“It’s a nice place,” Bat commented, charmed by the antique rusticness of what was, in reality, one of the finest houses in town.

Before Garison could reply, a petite blonde woman stepped out on the porch. With a warm smile, she greeted, “Welcome Bat Garrett.”

Bat stopped in his tracks, then continued up onto the porch and offered his hands, saying, “And you’re Sarah Fitch. How do you know who I am?”

Sarah smiled and, after looking from side to side, told him in a whisper, “Helen called me as soon as you left the office.”

“’Called’?”

Sarah took him by the arm and, leading Bat inside told him, “Garison hasn’t left the eighteenth century completely unsullied.” She whispered, “I believe you call it a radio.”

Turning toward Garison, Bat asked with a forced chuckle, “I really hope you’ve invented toilet paper ‘cause I’m still shuddering from one near experience with what you call a privy earlier this morning.”

“It was one of my very first things,” Garison replied as he followed them into the house.

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Ghosts of Families Past

a Bat & Jody novel

Bat Garrett happens to be on hand when the Native Sun Trading Post blows up. Two bodies are found in the rubble, presumed to be the owners of the trading post. But Jody has seen them before. Jody knows that, if there’s anyone in the world with motive to want the two shop-owners dead … it’s her.

Years before, Jody was kidnapped and brainwashed to think she was the child of Robert and Helen Alexander. When Bat discovered her and rescued her, the Alexanders disappeared. Most assumed them dead, but Jody was never sure. Now, to find out that they had been living near her has Jody rattled. She, with Bat’s help, has to find out just why the Alexanders have stayed so close to the one person who had the most reason to hate them.

Available now on Kindle and in paperback!

…

Sample Chapter

I have missing time of my own, but doesn’t everyone? The afternoon that was so boring it might as well have never happened. The time you had the flu that lasted a week and all you can remember of it is one gross blur spent in the bathroom. Some people have holes in their memory thanks to alcohol or drugs. That wasn’t my problem.

I had a whole year missing from my life—a little more in fact. And I mean gone! One moment I was one place and the next I was somewhere else and I haven’t the foggiest what went on in between. If not for people around me telling me that a year disappeared in that short time, I never would have known—or cared.

Bat can’t imagine that I don’t care now, but I swear I don’t. I remember one time when I had to have surgery and they put me under for it. I remember the anesthesiologist saying, “Countdown from one hundred” and I got to ninety-seven. Next thing I knew, I was waking up in another room with my leg all bandaged up. The big difference was that no one around me ever asked, “But don’t you worry about the missing hour?!?!” the way they ask, “Don’t you worry about the missing year?!?!”

Maybe, somewhere, deep down inside, what I feel almost rises to the level of curiosity. But seriously, as soon as I “woke up” I saw a doctor and they confirmed for me that I had not been violated, all my (healed) broken bones had been broken before my missing year and I carried no scars. Even visits to psychiatrists—complete with hypnosis—told me that I had no memories or anything of that missing year. At some point, I don’t remember the exact day, it just seemed like it was better for my future sanity to just go on with my life.

So I got married to the man I loved, we settled into married life, and then we decided to uproot to a whole new state and start a family. To be honest, the prospect of being a mother was far more alarming and intriguing to me than some blank spot in my memory. Doing my best to raise the child in a Christian home, to “give it a hope and a future” seemed way more important than obsessing about the unknowable.

As for the known present, I was in the process of cleaning up the apartment because our church was having a “Missions Weekend” and I had volunteered Bat and I to take in a couple for the weekend who were newly arrived to work at the nearby Hopi and Navajo tribal lands. We didn’t have a large place, but it was a two-bedroom apartment and we hadn’t had anyone use the guest bedroom since we had moved in. Part of the reason I had volunteered for this particular couple was that the husband was a graduate of the same college all of Bat’s siblings had gone to. Bat didn’t recognize the man’s name, but we figured he would probably remember Bat’s sisters or brother or maybe have some other names in common. Not to mention that the church Bat and I had attended while living in Dallas had been on the college campus—maybe even while this couple had been there as students. I thought it might be somewhat cramped quarters to have four adults in that apartment for a weekend, but the up side to the small quarters was that it didn’t take me long to clean.

There were times when I was envious of my sister Carley and her enormous house, but all I had to do was start cleaning and I was quickly reminded that I didn’t want a house I couldn’t clean from top to bottom in less than half an hour. If Bat or I ever made big money at anything, I frequently told people, we were going to give most of it away and spend the rest on vacations. We would not, I would say with emphasis, spend it on a spacious abode!

I was just finishing up the restroom when the phone rang. Waddling as quickly down the hall as my expanding girth would allow and grumbling that I hadn’t brought the phone to the restroom with me, I got there just as the third ring was finishing and answered breathlessly, “Hello?”

“This is Sonya Brockton,” came a voice with a lovely British accent. “Is this Jody Garrett?”

“Yes,” I replied, somewhat uncertainly as I hadn’t been expecting an accent even though the name should have registered on me.

“I understand my husband and I are staying with you this weekend,” she told me politely, still with that incredible voice.

“You are?” I asked, then kicked myself as I remembered and said, “Oh! Sonya Brockton? Yes. Yes you are staying with me. With my husband and I.”

“We are about fifteen minutes out of Flagstaff and I was wondering if you could give me directions to your place?” the voice asked.

“Um, yes. Yes, of course,” I replied, finally getting my brain around an idea that shouldn’t have been that hard to grasp. I gave her directions, then told her I would see her in a few minutes. After hanging up, I called Bat on his cell phone and told him our guests would be arriving soon. He told me he was back at the station and putting up mail for the next day, but that it would probably still be an hour before he got home.

I quickly told him I understood, and I did. The issue—or near-issue in question—was one of his coworkers who seemed to find a reason four days out of five to “slip off early”. There was always a sick kid at home, a Little League game that needed to be coached, or something. According to Bat, the scuttlebutt around the station was that a] the guy was close to getting canned and b] everyone else was making sure to work a few minutes extra every day so as not to appear to be one with the slacker.

A few minutes later, I heard a car pulling up outside and a knock at the door. Taking one more look around the apartment—and realizing my homework was still on the coffee table (how had I missed that?!?!)—I opened the door to a smiling young couple. Somehow, I had had it in my mind that they were a middle-aged couple, but these two looked to be three or four years younger than Bat and I.

The man extended his hand and said, “My name’s Andy Brockton. You must be Jody Garrett.” I shook his hand and assured him I was. He was a couple or three inches shorter than Bat’s six-one, with dark curly hair and a fairly dark complexion. Somewhat stocky of build, but not overweight, he looked like a football player. I prided myself inwardly on the sports reference, thinking Bat would be proud of me.

“I hope we’re not too early,” he apologized. “It didn’t take as long as we were expecting to get here.

“It’s just fine,” I told him. “Won’t you come in?”

Taking his wife’s hand, he introduced, “This is my wife, Sonya. You spoke on the phone.”

I hugged her and she returned the hug as Andy said, “You two look like you ought to be sisters.”

He was being generous and I think he only said that because of our hair color. But where mine was more of an auburn, Sonya’s was a deeper red. A beautiful red. And she had this fine, creamy complexion and tall, lithe build (she was almost as tall as he was even in flat shoes) that it was hard not to be envious of. As for clothes, they were both dressed in blue jeans and T’s, with tennis shoes on their feet, but Sonya looked like one of those women who would be right at home in a ball gown and a tiara. She wore no makeup that I could discern … and needed none!

“Thank you for having us,” Sonya said politely as we let go of the hug.

“You’re welcome. And, I know you probably hear this all the time, but I just love your accent!”

“Thank you. I don’t really think about it,” she said with an airy chuckle. “It’s just the way I talk.” She looked at me and asked, somewhat timidly, “Would it be impolite of me to ask how far along you are?”

“About to start my eight month,” I replied, turning sideways and smoothing my shirt so she could get the full view of my expanding belly. (Which, on some days, felt as if it were expanding right before my eyes!) “Do you have children?”

“Not yet,” she replied, with a wink toward her husband.

“I can’t help but ask what that look meant,” I commented.

Sonya blushed and Andy replied, “We’re trying,” and then blushed himself. I couldn’t help but smile, for we (Bat especially!) had often been fumble-mouthed about the same admission. Personally, I thought it was silly that a married couple would be embarrassed to admit they were having sex … but I still blushed.

I invited the couple to sit down and they joined me in the living room which, for an apartment, was pretty good sized. “So,” I opened the ball, “Where are you two from?”

“I’m from Oklahoma,” he replied.

“London,” she told me.

Most of us find it rather silly to meet someone for the first time and then have them tell us, “You remind me of … “ yet we still say things like that to other people. For myself, I tried to apologize first as I said, “Sonya, you just remind me of … someone. I know that’s silly. I’m sure we’ve never met before. You just remind me of someone, but I can’t think of who.”

Sonya shrugged and, I thought, made a conscious effort not to look over at her husband right then. I was thinking, at the time, that she probably had been told before that she looked like someone famous and it was either a running joke or a running point of exasperation among the two of them. For myself, I had been known to grow tired of short jokes (though I had a few witty rejoinders filed away and ready for use).

“How did you meet?” I asked, then quipped, “Because if I’m not mistaken, the halfway point between London and Oklahoma would be somewhere in the Atlantic.”

They chuckled and it was Sonya who answered, “I was visiting my cousin, who just happened to set me up with her best friend.”

“Oh really? She didn’t want you for herself?” I chided Andy.

He smiled, might have blushed a little, then replied, “Lynette and I had tried dating a couple times but … “ he shook his head and laughed, “We were such good friends, it was kind of like trying to go out with a sister.”

We visited on, then, and I learned that Sonya came from a family with eight children, Andy had only the one brother, and I told her about my sister and Bat’s family of five children. I was eager to hear about their ministry but also knew Bat would want to hear those details as well and didn’t want to jump the gun on him.

We were just about to the subject of favorite family pets when the front door opened, revealing my wonderful hubby in his Post Office uniform. “Who’s car—oh! You’re here,” he said with a smile. There was a brief round of handshakes, then he said, “I hate to be picky, but you’re going to need to move your car. The slots are assigned and, well, you’re in the slot for the guy next door.”

When he had pointed out to Andy where he could park, Bat asked, “Would you mind if I darted away and took a quick shower? I have spent this wonderful Arizona day in a vehicle with no air conditioning and I’m afraid I’m probably a little ripe.” We all agreed that that was acceptable, especially me, who had actually hugged and kissed him.

Bat slipped away and soon I could hear the water running. In relatively short order, he was in the midst of us, washed and dried and wearing an Astros T-shirt and a pair of shorts and holding a cold drink. He smiled widely and, making that motion as if snapping his fingers but producing no noise, suddenly asked, “I have to ask, Sonya, but how does one go from winning an Oscar to working as a missionary on an Indian reservation?”

“What?” I asked before I could fully engage my brain. Then, still disbelieving, I asked, “You—is that where I’ve seen you? On the movie screen?”

Sonya blushed even more than earlier, then replied, “Yes, ma’am.”

“Wait!” I demanded. “First off, no one over ten years old is allowed to call me ma’am. It’s Jody. But second, is he right?”

It was Bat who answered, though in a somewhat questioning way, “You’re Sonya Kiel, right? ‘Across the Andes, “Napoleon’, ‘American West.’”

“Actually, I’m Sonya Brockton,” she corrected. “But, yes, my maiden name was Kiel and I did act in those movies.” She said it like someone who was embarrassed by the fact, maybe even ashamed.

“Pardon me, but that still sounds like a really interesting story!” Bat told her in his most encouraging voice.

She grimaced slightly, which led Andy to tell us, “It really is, but, well, I don’t necessarily mean to speak for my wife, but she–”

“No, let me, Andy. He’s always trying to protect me. I just … I don’t want what I used to be to overshadow what I am now. It’s just so easy—not only for me but for the people listening—to start telling tales of making movies and red carpets that, um, a couple things start to happen. I kind of get a big head and we get completely sidetracked.”

“She’s being modest,” Andy injected. “Sonya is one of the most humble people I have ever met, but once she tells one story about the movies, soon people want more and pretty soon—“

“It takes the focus off my—our ministry.” She smiled apologetically and added, “In a setting like this, I’ll tell you anything you want to know. My life is an open book. But at the Mission’s Fair tomorrow and Sunday, I really want to put all the focus on what we’re trying to do on the Big Rez.”

She laughed then, a warm, friendly laugh that was somehow also in her accent, and told us, “I went through a period—more than a year, actually—where I wouldn’t go to the movies. And then I wouldn’t watch the telly, even the news. I told myself it was because I was like an alcoholic and didn’t want to get sucked back into the acting thing but, well … maybe that’s how it was when it started. But then, I moved from avoidance to being rather a pain about it to everyone around me—especially Andy.”

“What changed?” Bat asked with interest.

“Nothing big. Andy liked watching his sports, for one thing, and I saw no reason he should be deprived of that. But part of it was when we started doing ministry. We would be over at someone’s house and they would have the telly on. I realized I was starting to be ridiculous about it.” She demonstrated as she said, “Turning my chair so my back was to the set even if it were off. Talking louder in restaurants to drown out the telly in the room. I had to come to terms with the idea—fact, really—that acting is not, in and of itself, evil, nor are the mediums. But I am extremely … protective of what I will allow in my mind. I realized I can debate ideas, and sometimes enjoy picking apart those that are contrary to my faith, but I have a very low tolerance for foul language or gore.”

Bat smiled and said, “You realize turning off the TV is considered a cardinal sin in some households anymore, right?”

“I notice yours isn’t on,” came Sonya’s rejoinder.

“About that,” Bat said uncomfortably. “Would it be rude of me to slip into the bedroom just to watch the opening of the local news?. There was a fire—I actually reported it—a couple days ago and, well, I’m curious if they’re saying anything about it.”

“Please,” Sonya said, gesturing at the TV, “It wouldn’t be my place to tell you not to.”

“But I don’t even want to interrupt the conversation,” Bat told her deferentially.

“Mister Garrett—“

“Bat. Like those things in caves.”

“Bat,” she corrected with a smile, “You’ve got me curious now. Whether they show the story on the news or not, I’d like to know how you came to report a fire. You didn’t start it, did you?” she asked with mock suspicion.

“Go camping with me sometime and you’ll see that I have never been accused of being a fire starter,” he told her. Then, taking up the remote, made certain, “You’re sure?”

She gestured toward the TV, so Bat turned it on. Fortuitously, the newsreader was just saying, “Out of Flagstaff this evening we have the following report on the fire that claimed two lives earlier this week. Let’s go to Courtney Lyons, live in our newsroom.”

A young woman who looked to me like she couldn’t be more than a year out of high school looked nervously into the camera and said in a flat voice, “Thanks Ralph. The Flagstaff Police have released these pictures—taken from the security camera at a Flagstaff convenience store—of the two people they believe were killed in the inferno.” (She pronounced that final word as if sounding it out off a teleprompter.)

“Are you OK?” Bat asked me.

“What? Why do you ask?” I wondered, my mind having gone blank for a moment.

“You gasped when you saw the picture of the Jamesons,” he told me.

“I did?” A moment later, I patted my tummy and said, “Junior kicked just then. I think he’s going to have your feet.”

Bat nodded with a smile, then turned his attention back to the TV screen.

You know how in old cartoons they would show someone having an idea by having a light bulb appear over the character’s head? I finally knew what that felt like.

Except that a one-hundred thousand watt halogen spotlight had exploded in my brain.

I think I was coherent for the rest of the conversation and evening with the Brocktons—can remember some of the details even as they told more of how they met and just what their ministry consisted of—but I can’t be sure. Back in college, I was a cheerleader and—other than some problems with my elbows, which were congenital—I came through it all pretty well. While other cheerleaders occasionally broke a bone, the worst I ever got was a few sprains.

Except for one time, when the people who were supposed to catch me were a little out of line and I somehow managed to knock the back of my head against another girl’s collarbone. She had an enormous bruise for about a week and I had a lump, but we both shook it off and eschewed any medical attention.

The way I felt the rest of the day, I’m pretty sure I had a concussion, though I never mentioned it to anyone. (Hey! My pride is just as stupid as anyone else’s!) While no one had hit me during that evening with the Brocktons, looking back, it was a lot like I had a concussion. I’ll blame my not telling anyone on the fact that, when you’re suffering the effects, you don’t always know you’re suffering the effects.

I made up excuses, blaming it on both the baby and some sort of shake-up at the idea of two people dying in a fire, and the Brocktons might have believed me, but I doubt that Bat did. He knew I was hiding something, but he also knew me and loved me enough not to press it, assuming I would tell him what was going on when the time came. All he knew was that my mind was somewhere far away.

That’s how it felt from the inside, anyway. As I did things like make sandwiches—side by side with Sonya, who had offered to help—and answered questions and asked some of my own, I was just an automaton. My mind was several hundred miles away. I knew where it was, but tried my best to ignore it, to shove it aside, to do anything I could to keep from thinking the thoughts my mind wanted to focus on.

Sonya was a pretty woman and incredibly well-balanced. After leaving an unbelievably promising acting career, she had gone to Bible college in Dallas (at the same college Bat’s brother and sisters had attended), majored in Missions, married Andy, and even when their original plan for missions had fallen through, had stayed with it until they believed God had directed them to Arizona.

Under it all, though, I got the impression that Sonya was really a very shy person who would like nothing more than a life that never focused on her. For one thing, in all of this, the “star” of the story was her husband. She gave him the credit for leading her to Christ and leading their marriage and ministry and—again, this is my impression—she didn’t resent that at all. She seemed grateful to … not be in his shadow, but to have found a partner.

I had always thought Bat and I had the best marriage I knew of, but an evening spent with Sonya and Andy Brockton made me think we might only be in second place. Or, maybe I just told myself that to keep from thinking about the light that had exploded in my head and was still trying to overwhelm me.

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Toltec Mountain

a Bat & Jody Garrett mystery

Dallas private eye Bat Garrett is called in to investigate a snowboarder who crashed in the “Mind Games”, a made-for-TV spectacular being held at Toltec Mountain Ski Area in New Mexico. What looks like just a routine accident–like the many other accidents that have happened on the slopes–becomes more suspicious when the snowboarder is found dead in her hotel room. Soon, there’s another death, and then another. Is someone stalking the “Mind Games”? Can Bat–and his wife, Jody, who is working the case undercover–unravel the mystery before the bodies pile up higher than the snow?

Order it today on Kindle and paperback!

….

Sample Chapter

It was about lunchtime when I found myself sitting on a bench at “ski-Techers”, getting fitted for boots and skis and poles. Ski boots had come a long way since the first time I had put any on, but they still weren’t what I would call “comfortable”. They were, at best, “comfortable for ski boots”. I think it was Dave Barry who first referred to them as “bowling balls melted down to fit your feet” and they still felt like that in a lot of ways. They had more padding in them than they had back when I first tried the sport, so that was an improvement.

As the tech put my boots to the skis, I commented, “I saw that wreck from Monday with that Nitro lady. Looked pretty rough.”

“Uh hmm,” he replied, checking the bindings against some sort of chart.

But then, one of the other techs, who didn’t have anyone to help at the moment, injected, “Pretty wicked, wasn’t it? Almost looked like she slammed that board down on the rail a-purpose, huh?”

“Really?” I asked. “What do you mean?”

“Oh, it just seemed to me that no one would land on a rail like that unless they were trying to. Maybe she’s got some new trick that that was supposed to be the lead-in for, though.”

My tech had finally done whatever it was he was doing and entered into the conversation by saying, “I can’t imagine what that would lead into.” Then he laughed and offered, “Unless maybe the board’s made out of some sort of space-age rubber where you hit it on the rail and ‘sproing!!’ you go bouncing thirty feet into the air!”

Who still uses the term “space-age” I wondered? That was like something out of the sixties. But then, so were the ski techs. Not that they were old enough to have been born in the seventies, even, but I had noticed before that a lot of the ski techs (at every mountain I had been to) wished for a decade they hadn’t experienced except on film.

“But normally,” I mused, “Wouldn’t a landing like that just be kind of jarring? I mean, those snowboards are built to take some punishment, aren’t they?”

“Sure,” said the tech that wasn’t working on my gear, “But she hit it hard. They were showing a close-up of the crash on the sports channel last night and she hit it harder than those two chuckleheads that were trying to break a snowboard on the post office steps yesterday.”

I kept my mouth shut.

When I stepped up to the first lift line at about one o’clock, I was a little nervous, as usual. The first ski run of the year never bothered me, but the first attempt to get on and off the lift did. I hadn’t fallen off a lift in years, but the memory of my first couple times skiing—when getting off the lift was clearly my weak spot—still lingered.

Most of it was alleviated when the guy standing there telling people, “Stop here and look for the chair” said, “You’re that private detective, aren’t you?”

“How’d you know?” I asked.

“My brother works at the hotel,” he replied. Before I could pursue that line of thought further, the chair was whisking myself and a middle-aged stranger up the mountain.

“You’re a private detective, huh?” he asked in the gravelly voice of someone who smokes too much.

“Yes,” I replied, trying not to sound too cautious.

“Must be interesting,” he replied.

“It can—“ was all I got to reply …

Before he started in with, “I run an auto parts store, myself. I tell you, somebody ought to do a TV show about my work.” The rest of the ride was filled up with the glorious and lewd antics of the auto parts world. I had to admit: I was surprised there wasn’t a show about it already.

Those first few minutes were a microcosm of how my afternoon went. On an afternoon where the mountains were covered with television cameras and actual (or cable, anyway) celebrities were to be found everywhere you threw a snowball, everywhere I went people wanted to talk about being a private detective.

At first, it was kind of fun being a celebrity, but it quickly grew old. For one thing, I had always enjoyed a sense of anonymity in relation to my job. Not that this particular case required it, it still seemed strange to be known—“made” in the vernacular.

Which led to some wild speculation about why I was there. There was a rumor that someone was stealing the high-end equipment used by the athletes. Another one said there was somebody stalking one of the skiers. Still another said there was some suspicion of financial impropriety in regards to the Games themselves. A couple other rumors alleged that the indoor games were fixed in some non-specific way.

Of all the people I heard from, no one hit on the real reason I was there, which I found strange as I would have guessed that someone would have heard the story of the video I had watched with Penny and Pete. In a way, though, that made me feel a little better about my diagnosis because I was thinking that, if someone really had sabotaged Nitro’s board, that rumor would have gone around.

When the runs closed at 4 o’clock, I checked in my equipment, switched back to street shoes, and made my way to supper where I was invited to dine with a couple of the athletes from the Men’s Downhill Extreme, which I was to learn was the ski version of the terrain park Nitro had crashed on. In fact, it was held on the same park, just targeted toward some different obstacles.

The topic of conversation at supper was that day’s outdoor activities and some trash talking about the evening’s indoor games. If Nitro’s crash of Monday entered anyone’s thoughts on that Thursday evening, they said nothing about it. The big topic was a killer run put in by Steve “Onionhead” Wachowski. He wasn’t in our group, but the word at our table was that he would have to really blow his Scrabble™ game to not finish the day as the favorite for the D-E. Apparently, some new trick with a name that meant nothing to me had been the kicker. Something like the “Double-Back-Front-Triple-Lutz-Alpaca” … or something to that effect. They tried to describe it to me, but the terms they used were not, as far as I could tell, in any known language, so I just nodded like I understood them and we moved on.

From there, I made my way to a couple other popular hangouts, was greeted cordially on the street by people I had never met before, and managed to learn absolutely nothing about the case. Monday’s crash was ancient history. If there was any news in Toltec that evening, is was either that there was a P.I. in town or Onionhead’s mind-blowing run. No other topics were being discussed anywhere—at least in my presence.

Finally, I found my way into The Dive Bar and the presence of a beautiful, auburn-haired young lady who I happened to know was a year older than me but looked like she fit in with the coeds around her. Sipping her smoothie, she did a good job of pretending to play up to me and, maybe, even making any casual observers think she was slightly tipsy. Unless someone had spiked the smoothie against her will, I knew she was no more tipsy than I was.

When it seemed like enough time had passed that I could credibly pick her up, I invited her to leave with me and she did. Back in my “real life single scene” I had always been too chicken to meet girls in such a setting, let alone try to get one to leave with me (I could rarely work up the nerve to ask out even the girls I met at church!), so it was kind of a thrill to walk out of a crowded bar with the prettiest woman there on my arm.

Still, I was really curious about that hair!

And the tat.

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Last at Bat

a Bat Garrett story

A ghost. Bat has to be seeing a ghost. While recuperating in Houston he stumbles across a shopgirl who looks and sounds just like someone he lost a year before. As his friends think he’s going crazy, and even he’s starting to wonder if he watched “Vertigo” one too many times, he tries to piece together the background of the shopgirl. The investigation takes Bat from Houston and Dallas, to Arkansas and Durango (where he meets a young Garison Fitch) and closer to the conclusion that he may not have been the only one set-up by the Home Agency.

Order Today!

Kindle or Paperback

To read more about Bat Garrett, be sure and check out “The Nice Guy“, “The Return of the Nice Guy” and “Up to Bat“. All available on Kindle & in paperback! And, if you want to read this story from Jody’s perspective (as well as find out what happened next), be sure and read “Cheerleader, Gymnast, Flautist, Spy“!

…
Read a Sample

“What is it we’re going to go look at?” Dave asked as we walked through the mall. I was surprised how few people were there shopping, but I guessed it was because it was a week day.
“Sunglasses. I’m telling you, Dave, these are the ugliest you’ve ever seen. They would have been great for that day in college when we had the ‘Ugliest Outfit’ contest.”
“I didn’t know the Galleria had a gag shop.”
“It’s not intended to be, but these will make you gag.”
As we were nearing the store, I saw a girl walk into the shop ahead of us who just about took my breath away. I stopped dead in my tracks and could feel my heart pounding in my chest like faulty pistons in a Ford Granada. If I had been prone to such things, I think I would have had a heart attack. The quick and unexpected (even to me) stop on the crutches almost made me fall on my face, so I had to take a moment to regain my balance.
“What—what is it?” Dave asked. The look on my face must have scared him. I imagine I went almost completely white—maybe even green.
“That girl that just walked in.”
“So? She was cute; but we’ve seen several of those today. She wasn’t as pretty as Heather, I didn’t think.”
“No. This girl looked like … like someone I used to know.”
“Let’s go see her,” he said. “Maybe it’s her.”
“Couldn’t be.”
“Why not? Houston’s a big city.” He smiled, “Shoot, I bet there’s more than two hundred people in this town. I hit that many cars in the parking lot.”
“But this couldn’t be her, Dave.”
“It’s a small world, Bat.”
“But it’s not the Twilight Zone.”
“What are you talking about?”
“The girl she reminded me of is dead.”

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Up to Bat

Book 3 of The Story of Bat Garrett

Dallas private eye Bat Garrett is hired by wealthy Texas oilman Frank Gaston, who thinks someone is trying to kill him.

Bat is skeptical but when Gaston is found dead, slumped over at his desk, the fear seems to have been well-placed.

Darla Gaston, the beautiful young oilman’s daughter, is encouraged by her lawyers to fire Bat and let the police investigate. Darla, however, wants Bat to find out why her father has been calling a number in Colorado for several years. Bat discovers that Gaston has left a trail of lies and deceit, bigamy, and maybe even a decades-old smuggling operation involving children and a massive real estate deal in Oak Cliff.

It’s the biggest case Bat’s ever had, but it may cost him more than he’s ever had to give.

Available on Kindle and paperback.
Make sure you read the whole Bat Garrett (& Jody) saga, beginning with “The Nice Guy“, followed by “The Return of the Nice Guy“, then this book, then concluded (this arc, anyway) in “Last at Bat”
…

Reading Sample

My name is Bat Masterson Garrett. I’m a private detective. I always dreamed of leading a glamorous life like the P.I.s on TV, but it doesn’t seem to work out that way in real life. Real life private detectives track down husbands who don’t pay their alimony, or find out if someone is having the affair their spouse suspects them of having. Once in a while, there is a fight; but there aren’t many shootouts or car chases. I sometimes wonder why I wanted that stuff in the first place.

Detectives on TV always get the girl, too. That never happens. Like I said, the people I deal with are usually already married (albeit trying to remedy the situation). Besides, people in real life don’t even look like the people on TV. Well, some people (my former fiancé Jody Anderson) used to accuse me of looking like Kevin Costner.

Well, what she said was that I probably weighed the same as Kevin Costner. My hair’s almost the same color as his, but I have blue eyes and am only about an even six foot—while I’ve always figured him to be taller. Some girls think I’m attractive, some don’t, so I’ll let you draw your own conclusions.

One day, I was sitting in my apartment in North Dallas looking at my baseball card collection when the phone rang. My phone never rings, so it liked to scared me to death. I hastily picked up the cards I had dropped and went over to the phone, sorting them on the way. I figured the odds were that the cards were more valuable than the phone call and deserved my attention. Having once owned a baseball card shop of my own (for about six months), I knew something of their value.

I answered and a man asked, “Is this B.M. Garrett Investigations?”

“Sure is, what can I do for you?” I was real surprised that anyone wanted me to investigate something. I’m also listed in the yellow pages under “Painters: House”, and that seems to generate the majority of my calls for gainful employment. A couple times people have tried to hire me as a body guard, but I don’t much care for the “rough work” after my limited experience with it. I’m not exactly a “big dude”, anyway, and most of my schooling in self defense would fall under the heading of “run”.

“This is Franklin Gaston,” he told me, “Of Gaston Oil.” He put in a pause like I ought to have heard of him but I hadn’t so I just mumbled noncommittally. I don’t keep up with the oil market except to the extent that I go to the cheapest gas station.

He continued, “I think I am in need of the services of a private investigator, Mister Garrett. You are Mister Garrett, aren’t you?”

“Yes, but call me Bat.”

“Pat?”

“No, Bat. Like those things that sleep upside down in caves.”

“Well, yes,” he said as he tried to regain his train of thought. My name always does that to people. Thanks, Dad.

“What did you need, Mister Gaston?”

“Well,” he said cautiously. “I really think it would be much better for us to meet in private—and in person. I’m confident no one is listening in, but I would just feel more confident if I could talk to you in person.”

“I understand,” I told him. It already sounded like he was going to ask me to trail his wife and find out if she was cheating on him. If that were true, I thought, he was probably afraid she would walk into the room he was in and overhear the conversation. Maybe she was already in there. You never know about these people. One guy hired me to watch his wife then told her I would be there. I didn’t get much on her for some reason.

“Where would you like to meet, Mister Gaston?” I asked. “I’m pretty flexible.”

He seemed to be thinking a minute, then replied, “It needs to be some place out of the way. Do you have any suggestions?”

“I know just the place. It’s on Northwest Highway—”

“That’s not out of the way,” he told me.

“In a way, it is. Think about it, if you were having a secret meeting, would you normally go to one of the busiest streets in town? See, the idea is to do what’s not expected. Like in football, sometimes you run the play that seems like the worst choice because the other team is confident you won’t run that one.”

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the Return of the Nice Guy

Book 2 of The Story of Bat Garrett

Two years after the murder of a prominent north Texas banker has been solved and the killer put in jail, Dallas private eye Bat Garrett is hired by an attractive widow to find out why her husband was killed.
The police (and everyone else) say it was just a robbery gone bad, but the widow thinks differently.
With Jody Anderson still on crutches from her horrific ordeal in “The Nice Guy” but by his side as always, Bat undertakes a case that leads him through an amateur archaeological society in Dallas and into a centuries old mystery in the ancient ruins of Mesa Verde in southwest Colorado.
Did the unassuming banker uncover something someone else would rather have stayed hidden?

Order Today on Kindle and paperback!


Make sure you read the prequel to this book, “The Nice Guy” and book 3 in the series, “Up to Bat“!

…

Reading Sample

Without a doubt, that was the best summer, fall and winter I had ever had.

As we have come to expect from the geniuses in government accounting, the Home Agency let me keep the money they had paid me for the job I had done for them back in the spring. It was way more than the job was worth—well, I should probably …

Anyway, I took the money and invested it in a friend who was opening up a baseball card and comic book store in Farmer’s Branch. As investments go, that wasn’t a whole lot better than just piling it up in the back yard and setting fire to it, but it gave me a chance to help out a guy who had been a good friend for a long time—and especially when I had needed one.

My private investigating business was starting to take off, too. I wasn’t getting any glamorous cases, but word had somehow gotten around that I was a pretty good hand at surveillance and so I was getting fairly steady work—some of it even from other investigation firms. I’ve always been a pretty plain guy, so I was a natural at hanging around in the background and watching other people without being observed myself.

Of course, the thing that made that summer, fall and winter better than all previous summers, falls and winters was that I had a girlfriend. A real, honest-to-goodness, she-likes-me-as-much-as-I-like-her girlfriend. I had never really had one of those before. Well, there had been Thalia, but that had been … oh, never mind.
Her name was Jody Anderson and she was the love of my life. The one you know that—even if things were to go sour—she’d always be the one you’d think of as “the one great love.” The kind you’d write songs about if—unlike me—you had rhythm or any sense at all of musical style.

She had shoulder-length hair that was somewhere between auburn and brown, tending to the red in the sunshine. She was petite of build but a perfectly shaped figure for all that. And she had this great little mole just above the left corner of her mouth.

She might not have thought of that summer as a great time, because she spent most of it in the hospital, or in rehab. She had shattered her right leg—above and below the knee—and there was talk on more than one occasion that it might have to be amputated. I think she kept it strictly out of will-power.

She had broken the leg while on the job with me for the Home Agency. She had also been shot, but that—by comparison—was easily dealt with. I mean, by itself, it would have kept her in the hospital for a couple weeks at a minimum. But then she would have been out and rehab would have probably consisted mainly of walking and getting her lungs back in shape. The leg, though, was a process of multiple surgeries and rehab that lasted well past Christmas.

So I say that the government overpaid me, but I doubt that Jody would say the same thing about the remuneration she received. They took care of her medical bills, of course, but no amount of money would be worth that kind of pain and suffering.

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Cheerleader, Gymnast, Flautist, Spy

Laying in bed with a broken leg, Jody Anderson recalls the events that have brought her to that moment. Adolescent gymnast … college cheerleader … flute player in the band …

Just how did all this land her in a hospital, her medical bills paid by the Treasury Department?

How did she get from a farm in rural, northern Arkansas to the world of being a domestic spy, bullets flying, bones breaking, and romance?

Now available on Kindle and paperback! Now available on AUDIO!!

To read this story from Bat’s perspective, be sure and purchase “The Nice Guy“, “The Return of the Nice Guy“, “Up to Bat” and “Last at Bat“!

…

What the readers are saying …

“I read it and I loved it! Jody feels like someone I really met. Looking forward to more adventures with her and Bat.” ~KD, LA

“I like that you have given Jody her own novel. A very interesting character and I enjoy the relationship with Bat.” ~MM, TX

…

Sample Chapters

Prologue

I think my life turned a corner when I was sitting in bed one evening, looking at my leg. I wasn’t looking at the leg in the cast, but at the other one, the one that was—for that moment in time—my “good” leg.

I know some women who are really proud of their legs and other women who are constantly embarrassed by their legs. I don’t believe I have ever been one or the other. I never thought I had the prettiest legs around (or the most athletic, or most shapely), but I never thought they were the worst, either. Physically, I have good qualities and things I’m not thrilled with, but my legs? If asked—and I don’t think anyone ever has—I would probably have just said, “They’re OK.”

I was never quick enough with a glib comment, but if I were, maybe I would have paraphrased Honest Abe and said something like, “They’re long enough to touch the ground.” Or maybe I would have declared, “They get me where I’m going.”

Sitting there in my bed, pillows propping me up from behind and more pillows under what up until so recently had been my “good leg” in that it hadn’t been broken in a long time, my mind began to change. Not just about whether my legs were nice, hot, fat, skinny or ugly, but whether much of what I had held and believed was true.

It started with myself, though. And while I would like to think that I wasn’t so shallow as to be driven entirely by self image, I know my self image was a part of what was wrong with how I thought.

At that moment in time, I had one leg that was in great shape, but broken. The other leg was unbroken, but still a little atrophied from when it had been broken. As I sat there looking at my legs, I realized that the one that appeared to be worse off at the moment might be better off and the one that looked OK actually needed the most work.

As the days went by and I was able to rehabilitate—to force myself to rehabilitate—my focus went entirely to my legs. I was determined that both legs look good—not in a vain, supermodel way I told myself, but in a healthy, in-shape way—and in the process I lost focus on pretty much all else in my life. Still, the idea had crept into my psyche that evening that what appeared right wasn’t necessarily so and, as much effort as I put in to telling myself that truth only applied to my legs, the seed was planted that maybe it described the sum total of me.

To avoid that thought, I threw myself into my work and every workout, every exercise, even what I ate. I read articles on line and in print about the best nutrition for healing a bone break and for building back the muscles after a period of inactivity. I learned exercises I could do at my desk while at work, and more I could do in the evenings while watching TV or whatever. I devoured all the information I could find about the human body and how it heals after trauma …

And ignored pretty much everything I ran across about how the human mind heals after tragedy. I wasn’t interested in the mind. The mind, I told myself, was taking care of itself. It was taking care of itself by looking after the body, by exercising itself with reading and study (about the body, granted), and by putting the trauma of the past behind me.

I told myself I was dealing with the mental and emotional aspect of the tragedy by moving on. “Moving on” meant to me that I never thought of it and quickly changed the subject if anyone else brought it up. It was behind me and wasn’t worth worrying about. The now was what counted, and the future!

The amazing thing about seeds is also the problem with them. As a little girl I used to be fascinated with the way a tree could tear up a sidewalk. Here was this wooden thing that you could damage with an axe (or a bike, if you ran into it, while showing off in front of your sister … or boys), that you could cut up with a saw or burn with fire. And over here you had concrete which didn’t show the least little mark when you crashed your bike into it, that you couldn’t cut with a saw or set fire to. Yet, over time, that tree which had sprung from a tiny little seed—like an acorn—could destroy the sidewalk.

Once the seed got planted in my mind that everything was not as it seemed, it never stopped growing, expanding, working on me. And like the tree whose battle with the sidewalk may take a long time before it can be seen, it was a while until the seed in me grew big enough to no longer be ignored.

In the midst of looking at my legs as if I could will them into better shape or perform some sort of psychic surgery on them, the phone rang. I had a unit right beside my bed, but I didn’t answer it, preferring to let my family be my buffer zone.

A couple moments later, my father stuck his head in the door and said, “It’s him.” His hand was over the mouthpiece, of course.

When I didn’t respond immediately, just gave him a firm countenance that probably looked like I was constipated, he asked, “Shall I tell him you’re busy or to stop calling here or what? How ‘bout I tell him to go jump in the lake?”

I didn’t think of any smart remarks at that moment, saying at the time, “Just tell him I don’t want to talk to him.”

“Think you’ll ever want to talk to him?”

I avoided the subject by looking away and saying, “I’m kind of tired.” I hated lying to my father—or anyone, for that matter—but the seed hadn’t taken root, yet.

As he walked away, I heard my father saying, “She doesn’t feel like talking on the phone just now.” I marveled that my father was more truthful with someone he didn’t like than I was with someone I loved.

Chapter One – Gym

I spent the better part of four years as an only child. I don’t remember those years well, but I do have a few memories of having my parents and my grandparents to myself. I also remember that I spent a lot of time asking my parents for a baby sibling—preferably a sister.

“Be careful what you ask for,” they say.

Caroline Renee Anderson was born a couple months before my fourth birthday and, at the time, I thought I had gotten an early birthday present. She was a real, live, baby doll. The legend in the family is that I couldn’t say her name and called her “Carley”, which is what she was to go by all her life.

I have never been convinced whether I was a “Type A Personality” or a “Type B”, but whatever I am, so is Carley. In fact, whatever I did, Carley did it, too. When we finally got to be adults I came to appreciate what that said about Carley’s feelings for me—or maybe it was just because we spent adulthood in separate states. Until maturity (such as it is), though, Carley and I were constantly at each other’s throats.

No, that’s not true.

We were at each other’s hair. It’s amazing either of us had any hair left by the time we grew up.

The only time we weren’t at each other’s throat/hair, was when we were defending each other. I was horrible to Carley: incredibly bossy, insulting, condescending … but let anyone else give her the least bit of grief and they had me to deal with! She gave back everything I gave—even to coming to my defense against any and all outside agents. There were times when our parents wanted to keep us in separate towns just to have peace in the house, but we would both whine and even cry if we had to sleep apart.

I’m pretty sure we’re the reason our father is bald and Mom is gray.

I could give you a lot of facts about my childhood that would be true but would tell you very little about me or my growing up. I had some great grandparents on my mother’s side but never knew my father’s parents very well—owing to something in his life they were mildly disapproving of. I could tell tales of growing up in northern Arkansas in a rural setting, of chasing fireflies with my sister, of trying to tell people we had seen a bear, of just being a little girl. I went to school, I went to church, I went to camp. It would all be pretty typical, very true, and very unremarkable.

It wouldn’t, however, be about me. In my mind and (probably) in the minds of those who knew me, my life began in the autumn of my eighth year when my mom enrolled me in a six weeks course of gymnastics to see if I liked it. Liked it? I loved it. Gymnastics became my reason for existence.

I was attending a private Christian school back then. Even though neither I nor my family really had much interest in the religious aspect of the school, it had been chosen because it provided the best education in the area and better discipline than the public school. And I didn’t mind the Bible classes, just treated them as an extra Social Studies class.

The gymnastics class was held in the gym of my school, which was more of a bonus than I—as a child—realized, for it meant that my parents didn’t have to ferry me around to too many different places … except matches and competitions and stuff like that.

When I started gymnastics, so did Carley. I didn’t mind too much because we were in different groups and, once home, it gave me someone to talk shop and even practice a bit with who knew what I was doing.

I tried to talk shop to Mom, but she had never been around gymnastics until she enrolled us in that class and was behind the learning curve on the terminology. Looking back, I know now that my mother knew a lot more than I gave her credit for, but at that age I had the usual disdain for age and wisdom. At least, I hope it’s usual and I wasn’t just a stand-alone jerk.

The rule for the gymnastics team was that a C+ average be maintained at all times, but my parents demanded an A average of me if I wanted to continue. So my life revolved around school and gymnastics—and I only paid attention to my school work because it was my ticket to the gym. The teachers thought I was a model student, but I really didn’t give a hang about any of those classes.

Well, maybe speech, once I got to take it. I liked that class—and maybe English—because I have always been fascinated by the power of words. It was just a hobby—with gymnastics as a vocation—but it held my interest more than most other courses. I was good in math and history, but the bug never bit me for either. Music was always somewhat fun, but I never thought I had any special gift for it.

In junior high I was encouraged to go out for cheerleading, but I responded in much the same way as a fine painter might when asked to letter the neighbor’s garden markers. I saw cheerleading as beneath someone of my skills and was—looking back—pretty haughty in my dismissal.

I, I was sure, was on my way to bigger things. There was no doubt in my mind I was going to be an Olympic gymnast. In my more magnanimous moods, I pictured myself and Carley as making theU.S.team together and being on the covers of magazines and cereal boxes. With our auburn hair (inherited from mom before we made hers go the aforementioned grey), I pictured us wearing blue and white outfits and a headline above us that broadcast, “Red, white and blue!” I pictured gold to be included in that color scheme, too.

Superficially, I had some of the makings of a top gymnast. For one, I was never going to be tall, having topped out at5 foot3 by seventh grade and never getting any taller. I had strong legs and great balance. And I had drive.

Off the mats, I was quite the girly-girl, not the least bit of tomboyishness to be seen. I liked having my hair curled and I wore dresses and I never got in fights with anyone (except Carley). I didn’t rough house on the playground. I talked boys with the other girls, but didn’t slug them like the other girls (I’m talking about elementary, here).

Put me on the mats, though, and I was all focus. I did the exercises without complaining, listened to my coaches, and was determined to win every time I went out there. They said I was a fierce competitor, but I think that sounds wrong. I never had it in to hurt anyone else or really to even beat the other girls. I just assumed that if I did what I was capable of, I would win. In my mind, I was never beaten. I lost now and then, but it was always because of my own slip-up, not because someone else did better than I did.

Humility was not one of my strong suits. I probably didn’t even have a humility card in my deck. As least not when it came to gymnastics. I think deep down I knew I had weaknesses in the rest of life, but I didnt really care about those things. If they didn’t contribute to my Olympic dreams, I didn’t think they were worth much of my time.

Every day after school, I was in the gym until they kicked me out. Weekends we were at meets and in the summer I went off to gymnastics camp. I usually went to church camp with kids from school, too, but I spent most of the time with other girls who were interested in gymnastics doing tumbling runs and finding surfaces that could double as balance beams.

What I didn’t realize through all this—and didn’t really catch on to until I was well into adulthood—was that I had pretty much preempted my parents’ life, especially my mother’s. We didn’t take vacations like a normal family, because if I didn’t have a meet, then I had practice. When I didn’t have a meet or practice, which was rare, we were saving up for the next meet or some new piece of equipment I was going to need. For many of those years I harbored a latent grudge against my father because it didn’t seem like he was around, but the reason for that was that he was working extra hours to pay for all this.

Times two.

Carley was just as involved as I was and, considering she started sooner, was probably better than I was (not that I would have admitted it at the time).

If asked, we probably would have told a surveyor we were Christians, but the reality is that we were Gymnasts, for it was our real religion. The fact that we schooled and trained at a Christian private school meant no more to me than if the most convenient place to train had been a Zoroastrian monastery. I was there for the gym and put up with the rest.

Like all gymnasts, I had the occasional injury. Most of them were just minor strains, pulls and sprains, but in sixth grade I did break a bone in my hand that hampered me for several months. The crazy thing was, I could never remember when exactly I broke it. At the end of a practice one day I just mentioned to my mother that my hand hurt, so we put some ice on it, then when it didn’t feel better after a couple days Mom practically had to force me to go to the doctor. He couldn’t put me in a cast, but he wrapped it up that day and gave me strict orders to stay off of it for four weeks. I could still do a lot of things, but being prevented from anything was pure misery for me. Looking back, it probably wasn’t as miserable for me as I made it for my family.

Once healed, I was back at it full tilt. I was winning meets all over northernArkansasand, by my sophomore year of high school, I was already being watched by coaches from several major colleges. While I was still attending the same private school, I was competing in meets both for the school and as an “at large” athlete—a term I found very funny for a girl of 5-3—at competitions that featured mostly public school students.

Sophomore year I won best all-round in the Arkansas Association of Private Schools (AAPS) and placed second in the largest non-school meet in the state. I had worked hard and I was convinced everything was paying off. I had excellent grades—which I didn’t care about except that they kept me tumbling—though I was learning that good grades really impressed the college coaches. I wasn’t above dropping my grade point average into conversation if I thought it would help my gymnastics career.

My right elbow had bothered me some that year, but not a whole lot. Just enough that I was always aware of it, but not so much that I told anyone. Bright, huh? After the all-state meet, I mentioned it to my mom, who quickly got me a doctor’s appointment. In theory, I had some time off before I would be gearing up for my junior year and, if I had to take some time off to let something heal, that was the time.

I figured it was just a mild sprain, maybe stress from all my working out, and thought some time off (which, in my mind, was a couple weeks—max) would help. So I consented to going to the doctor just to humor my mom. The doctor checked me over and seemed to be of an opinion similar to mine, but he sent me in for an x-ray on my arm anyway. It turned out there were some tiny little cartilage chips in my elbow region that were the culprits. He scheduled me for surgery, dad’s insurance paid for it, and I thought my life was over because my elbow was immobilized for four weeks, and then restricted to limited use for four more weeks after that. That meant I was going to just barely make it in time for the beginning of the next season, but I determined that I would work my legs and my left arm during the first four weeks, then follow the instructions to the letter for the right arm. I told myself this would, in the long run, make me a better gymnast.

Carley, meanwhile, was excelling at gymnastics and—at eleven years old—was at or beyond where I had been at eleven. We pushed each other until … well, you might say we pushed each other raw. When we weren’t hugging each other and congratulating each other on a successful routine, we were shouting at each other and, sometimes, even coming to blows. How our parents stayed together with all the stress Carley and I put on them I don’t know to this day.

I spent one of my four weeks of convalescence at church camp, and another at band camp. One of my coaches, back in seventh grade, had said that I needed to find an outlet that had nothing to do with gymnastics. I thought it was a crazy suggestion, but I took everything she said as gospel. I think she tried to steer me into painting, but I had absolutely no artistic talent. At church camp that summer, though, I got to be friends with a girl who played the flute and she taught me a few notes. I decided I liked it and, when I got home, asked the school if I could borrow a flute from the band supplies and then signed up for lessons.

I was only ever a mediocre flute player, but I discovered I liked it. I hadn’t taken it up specifically to drive my parents or sister nuts, but I think I did. I discovered that my favorite way to study for a test was to sit on my bed, with all my notes arrayed before me, and play my flute. Then, when I would go in to the test, I would hum the tunes I’d been playing in my head and the answers would come right to me. In high school, I tried out for the band and eventually made first chair flute. I still say I was mediocre, but I was accurate. What I mean is: there are flute players (as with any instrument) who can really bring a flare to their instrument. I couldn’t necessarily do that, but I could read the music and play it—exactly as written, granted, but I could play it. No improvisational skills whatsoever. This made me a wash at jazz band, but a success for the concert band.

Classes, gymnastics, then an evening playing my flute while I studied. I had so few social skills I was the kid the nerds made fun of.

About the only other thing I ever did was shoot guns. Not that I would have ranked it up there with gymnastics as far as an interest, but my father had started taking me to the gun range when I was twelve. With all the time I invested in gymnastics—which involved myself, my mother, and Carley—I think my father was feeling a little left out. So he determined that he was going to “do something” with each of his girls. Carley he took fishing and me he took shooting.

I did enjoy the time with my father—and in retrospect wished I had paid more attention to him and let him know I appreciated it—but my mind was mostly on gymnastics or school. Still, at least twice a month my father would take me over to the gun club where he had been a member most of his life and he would teach me how to shoot. I was never more than passable with a rifle—for what reason I have no idea—but I could, as my father said, “shoot the lights out of anything” with a pistol.

I came to prefer a “nice little” semi-automatic Ruger he had purchased over all other guns, but was also proficient with an old west style Colt .45 that had belonged to his grandfather. For a brief period I tried to use his .357 Magnum but it was just too much gun for my strength—even as I got older. Balanced on the shooting range table I could fire it accurately, but I could never do well just holding it free and, so, would go back to the Ruger. Some of the other members of the gun club used to try to encourage me to enter some shooting competitions but—as much as I liked to compete in other things—I liked keeping shooting as just a fun activity with my father. My father never pushed me and I got the impression it was because he felt the same way.

Junior year, I did really well in the fall meets and led my school to a state championship in women’s gymnastics. By the spring semester, though, my right arm started hurting again and my left was beginning to mirror it. I tried to tough it out, but I finished up third in the all-round for the AAPS. After I got past the tears—not from the pain, but from losing—I told my mom maybe I needed to go to the doctor sooner so that I would have more time to recover for my senior year. I was sure scholarships were in my future and was still holding out hope for the Olympic team.

I went to the doctor thinking he’d just “scope” my elbows and tell me to lay off things for another eight weeks. I figured I would keep working my legs and maybe even do a second week of band camp—focusing on the marching aspect. I even toyed with the idea of taking the youth minister at our church (we spent so much time there during the week we’d started showing up on Sundays, too) up on the offer to work at church camp but couldn’t figure what I would do with both arms in braces.

For years, I could remember nothing of the week after the visit to the doctor. I was not just in a funk, my world and vision had gone black. I look back and I’m really glad I didn’t wreck my car or take up alcohol or something.

We had gone to the same doctor as the year before, but after looking at the x-rays he had sent us to a specialist in Little Rock. There, after another round of x-rays and anMRI, the doctor came to where my mother and I were sitting in a little room and she pulled up a chair in front of me.

She held out some papers with pictures on them and, circling some little bitty dots that appeared near my elbow, said, “Jody, I’m afraid you have what’s technically called ‘Panners Disease’, though it’s commonly known as ‘Little Leaguer’s elbow’ or ‘tennis elbow.’”

I breathed a sigh of relief and concluded, “So I just rest it and it’ll heal up, right?”

The doctor looked at my mother, then at me, and pointing to the little dots she had circled said, “These are pieces of cartilage, Jody—“

“That’s what I had last year,” I injected, figuring I was about to embark on another 8 week layover in my life plans.

The doctor, a too-early-matronly, middle-aged woman with long hair tied back in a pony tail, shook her head and said, “It’s not that simple. We can clean this up—and I would recommend that you let us do just that—but your right elbow may never be at one hundred percent again. You are one in a million, Jody,” she told me with a forced smile.

“Meaning?”

“Your left elbow is on the same path, which is something almost never seen: for one person to get this in more than one joint. Now, it’s not a guarantee that your left elbow has Panners Disease, but it looks to me like it is heading that way. If we do no surgery, besides the pain, your elbows might start locking up on you.”

The mental imagery of that happening made me cringe—and I noticed my mother having the same reaction. “And what would have to be done to unlock them?”

The doctor hesitated, as if formulating her words, then said somewhat cautiously, “It might never happen. But if it did, the most likely scenario is that you would be doing something in gymnastics where there’s a lot of stress—a routine, for instance—and you would straighten your arm and not be able to bend it.”

“Stuck straight out?” I asked, really recoiling at that imagery.

“I don’t mean straight out. It’s like,” she demonstrated with her own arm, “I hold my arm out and it locks in this position. Then, I can bend it a little, maybe a couple degrees, but that’s it. At that point—see, one of the big problems is that if that happens, a person usually panics. Really, all you’re going to need to do for—say, ninety percent of the time—is just try your best to relax as you bring your elbow back to a completely straight position. Most of the time, you’ll be able to bend it normally again after that.”

“And the other ten percent?” my mother asked, worry thick in her voice.

She smiled comfortingly and said, “More like nine and a half percent. In those cases, the locked up person—you, in this case—would hold the arm out straight and, with the other arm, try to rotate the stuck arm very gently back and forth. A few moments of that and you’ll bend like normal again.”

“And that half a percent?” I asked timidly, worried what horrible thing might be left for the “lucky few”.

The doctor smiled and said, “Honestly? It’s probably less than that. But in those cases, you might need to seek a doctor’s help. That’s rare, though. I once had a patient have this happen to his son and I was able to walk him through unlocking it over the phone.”

“Seriously?” my mother asked, mortified at that idea. (And I wasn’t thrilled.)

“That was his reaction,” the doctor replied with a friendly laugh. “But it was actually very simple and it almost never comes up.”

“So what do we do?” my mother asked, seeing that I was dumbfounded.

The doctor took a deep breath, then said, “I recommend the surgery. And then, I recommend that you give up gymnastics, Miss Anderson.”

The rest of the visit and several days after that are a complete blank for me. Two weeks later, when school was out, I had the surgery on my right arm. I went to church camp and cried and prayed and nothing changed, so after band camp I had the surgery on my left arm and then I went home and threw all my gymnastics stuff in the trash—even the trophies and ribbons. My mother had seen all this and—I was to find out later—had fished it all out of the trash, boxed it up, and presented it to me later (a couple years later) when she heard me lamenting having thrown it away.

I lay in my bed that evening, having already made it clear to my parents that I wanted to be alone. Carley was either slow on the uptake or refused the notices because she came into my room and, without saying a word, lay down on my right side, put her head on my shoulder and cried with me. When we stopped crying we just lay there like that, not a single word spoken until our mom found us laying side by side in the morning—still in the clothes of the day before. I hugged Carley with my good arm, told her she was the best sister ever, and vowed to never fight with her again.

I kept the pledge for almost two whole days.

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The Nice Guy (a Bat Garrett novel)

Bat Garrett was just a novice private investigator with big dreams when he was approached by two men from the Home Agency-a secretive government body-to go on a mission. On the mission, his dreams seem to come true as he is surrounded by beautiful women, intrigue and danger. The dream turns into a nightmare when the first woman tries to kill him, the second one turns out to just be a plant and the third woman-the one he has to marry-can’t stand the sight of him. As Bat tries to uncover the secret behind an apparent drug ring and the possibility that he’s just someone’s patsy, he also has to come face to face with the one trial he’s spent his life trying to avoid: growing up.

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Order today on Kindle or in paperback!

To read more about Bat (and Jody), be sure and pick up the next book in the series “The Return of the Nice Guy“!

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Reading Sample

I was in what was then the only non-smoking pool hall in Dallas-if not in the world-and about to sink the seven ball when someone tapped me on the shoulder. Tapping someone on the shoulder in a pool hall-when they’re setting up for a shot, no less-is not usually a wise move. Even in the higher class establishments, there’s still just a bit of the pool hall mentality lingering in the air. This particular tap hadn’t been one of those light, “excuse me” taps, but a hard, insistent tap.

Thinking it might only be a case of someone accidentally bumping into me, though, I turned around affably and asked, “Excuse me?”

Staring me in the face was a vaguely familiar, unshaven mug of a man. He looked mad enough to chew barbed wire and spit nails. His teeth made me think he might have even tried it once upon a time.

He stood about an inch below my six foot, but he would have made two of me in girth. He wore the outfit of a mechanic and something about those coveralls from “Jimbo’s Transmissions” reinforced the idea that I knew the guy from somewhere. On the other hand, I was relatively sure I had never met him before. I’m pretty sure I would have remembered the smell.

“Your name Garrett?” he asked in a gruff, demanding voice.

“Yeah,” I replied cautiously. I had never had any work done at Jimbo’s Transmissions, so I couldn’t imagine what this guy would want me for.

“You the private detective?”

“Yeah,” again, cautiously.

I noticed the pool cue he was holding in his left hand just as he swung it at me. I ducked just in time and the cue splintered as it smashed into a post just to my right. I took the momentary disorientation he was experiencing as a result of missing me to put the post between us. He recovered quickly and tried to take another swing at me, but it was again blocked by the post. I knew that tactic could only last so long, though, so I looked for my next point of defense.

“You mind telling me what this is all about?” I asked hurriedly, retreating to the far side of the pool table. I held my own cue up as if it were a sword and tried to parry his blows. Fortunately, he wasn’t any better at fencing than me and the blows didn’t land on anything except the table. I was hoping someone from management was watching because I didn’t want to have to pay for the gashes in the felt.

“You know what it’s about!” he shouted, a rage pouring out of him like I hadn’t seen since I rode my bicycle through Mrs. McClarty’s petunia garden in third grade.

“I promise you I don’t! But if you’ll tell me what it is that has you so worked up, I swear I’ll do whatever I can to rectify the situation.”

“I’ll rectify you! You lousy, worm-eaten shutter-bug!”

“Shutterbug?” I mumbled, more to myself than to him. As an errant swing of his pool cue smashed the three-bulb light over the pool table, a light went on in my own head and I suddenly said, “You’re Mister Watkins, aren’t you?”

“Got that right, punk. And you better stay away from me and my wife, you hear?”

“Stay away? Your lawyer hired me!”

“What?” he asked, still swinging but obviously befuddled.

“Isn’t your lawyer Randolph Shertz? Of Shertz and Osborne?”

“Yeah … ” The swings of the pool cue definitely had less power behind them. The last one had only broken one bulb.

“Randolph Shertz hired me to trail your wife and find out who she was seeing. I followed her and took some pictures. This afternoon I’m supposed to deliver them to Shertz and be paid.”

Watkins reached into the pocket of his once-blue coveralls and pulled out a dirty brown envelope. He tossed it across the table to me, then asked, “These the pictures you took?”

Before I even had the envelope open, I replied, “Nobody’s seen the pictures I took, ‘cept me. I just developed them this morning. Well, me and the folks at the one-hour photo place. And my next door neighbor. He saw ‘em because a couple of the pictures were of his cat.”

I pulled some photos out of the envelope and took a look at them. They were pictures of Mister Watkins kissing-making out, really-with a young blonde woman who definitely wasn’t Mrs. Watkins. I had never met the wife of this wonderful couple, but I had followed her enough for four nights to know what she looked like. The woman in these pictures definitely wasn’t the woman I had been following. This woman had a figure while Mrs. Watkins was, basically, round. I looked up from the photos to Mister Watkins and asked, “Who is this?”

“A friend,” he replied, as if suddenly realizing that his whole appearance in the pool hall that afternoon was, at best, ill-conceived.

“Must be a good friend,” I commented.

“You didn’t take those?” he asked, a little bit of hope that I did take them showing through in his voice. He was suddenly realizing that, if I didn’t take them, then someone else entirely knew about his tryst and he had just told me about it for no reason.

“No, not my work. How did you get the idea that I had?”

Watkins was shifting his feet and absently fumbling with the broken end of his pool cue when he finally replied, “I was looking for the checkbook when I stumbled across some of my wife’s files and found that she had been seeing my lawyer. I wondered why. Then, I ran across your name on one of the sheets and it said you were a private eye. When I got them pictures, I figured Shertz must have hired you on her behalf to trail me and find out if I was cheating on my wife.”

“Well, I didn’t take these pictures.” I went over to my jacket, which was hanging on a near-by hat tree, and pulled an envelope out of the righthand pocket. I tossed it to Watkins and said, “These are the pictures I took. See? I have a much better sense of composition and style.”

He pulled out the photos and a strange smile appeared on his face as he flipped through them. I knew what was in those pictures and was wondering what a husband would find amusing about them.

“I’ll be dogged,” he remarked. “So she was cheating on me while I was cheating on her. Who’d’a thought?”

I was puzzled and asked, “You didn’t know your wife was cheating on you?”

“Not a clue,” Watkins replied. He smiled a gapped grin and asked, holding up one of the pictures of his wife, “If you were married to that, would you ever suspect her of cheating?”

“I think I’d rather not answer that.”

Watkins shrugged and muttered something like, “No matter.” He seemed to be taking it awfully calm, but that may have been because he had just been caught with his own coveralls down.

I was talking mostly to myself when I asked, “Then why did Shertz hire me to take photographs of your wife? I don’t get it.”

“Huh?” he looked up from the pictures as if he hadn’t been listening.

“Your wife goes to Shertz to start divorce proceedings. Shertz, it would seem, hires a private detective to catch you in the act of infidelity; a job that is done quite well. So, why would he also hire me to trail his client and catch her cheating?”

“I don’t know. Why?”

“That’s what I’d like to know. It seems like his best bet would have been to make his client come out looking virtuous while you look like a jackrabbit. But, as long as I get paid …” I pointed to the contents of his hands and said, “Can I have my photos back?”

“Uh, sure.” He handed them across the table and picked up the photos that had heated him up and sent him after me in the first place. Then, much to my surprise, he extended his hand across the table and said, “Sorry about trying to brain you with the pool cue.”

“It’s all right,” I told him, shaking his burly hand. “I’d have probably been more upset if you had been successful.”

“I was just all worked up when I thought you were going to blackmail me. I’ve been through that before.”

As much as I would have liked to know what he meant by that, I was already thinking along other lines. My brow furrowed with confusion, I asked, “But you aren’t that upset now that you know she was cheating on you?”

“Well, you know what they say: turnabout is fair play.”

“In bowling, maybe. But this is a marriage you’re talking about.”

“Eh,” he dismissed with a wave of his hand, “It wasn’t much of a marriage.”

The attitude was completely incomprehensible to me, but suddenly, I had a pretty clear idea about why his marriage wasn’t working.

“I guess I better go back to work.” He said it like it was just the most natural thing to do; like this sort of thing happened on all his lunch breaks. “Reckon I ought to give Shertz a call on my coffee break and find out when the divorce proceedings will start.” He laughed good-naturedly and added, “Them lawyers. They sure play both ends against the middle, don’t they?”

He left without further ado. Me, I just stood there with my pictures of Mrs. Watkins and the butcher. I got to thinking that-if I’d had any idea the marriage had such casual views of fidelity-I could have saved myself a lot of trouble. Rather than skulking around and taking pictures from house-tops and rose bushes, I probably could have just asked Mrs. Watkins and her paramour to pose for me. I cast one more glance at the ugly couple-now even more distasteful to me since I knew more of the story-then shoved the pictures into my pocket.