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    It's A Crime
    It's A Crime
    It's A Crime
    Ebook89 pages1 hour

    It's A Crime

    By Annie Reed

    ()

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    About this ebook

    Five stories of crime, criminals, and people who refuse to remain victims.

    In "Missy and the Man," a little girl gets more than she bargained for when she sneaks into her neighbor's garage to see his new kittens. The baseball-loving pickpocket in "Strike Two" has a sweet gig working The Strip in Las Vegas until he lifts a wallet from a woman who's nobody's victim. When a college student's purse is stolen in "Thief" no one except the student and her new boyfriend seem to care. Two kids with too much time on their hands set fire to an empty house in "Firebug," only the game doesn't go exactly as planned. And in "For A Few Lattes More," a Starbucks barista comes face to face with a movie-hero cowboy only to discover that in real life, heroes are never around when you need them most.

    "I've been a fan of Annie Reed's short stories for a long time." –Marcelle Dube, author of THE SHOELESS KID

    "The appearance of a new Annie Reed story is a treat. Try one and you'll be hooked." -- Dave Hendrickson, author of CRACKING THE ICE

    "A friend recommended the works of Annie Reed. I was not disappointed. In fact, if her other shorts are as good as this one, I plan to read many more." -- Carol Davis Luce, author of NIGHT GAME

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherThunder Valley Press
    Release dateJun 23, 2012
    ISBN9781476214856
    It's A Crime
    Author

    Annie Reed

    Award-winning author and editor Kristine Kathryn Rusch calls Annie Reed “one of the best writers I’ve come across in years.”Annie’s won recognition for her stellar writing across multiple genres. Her story “The Color of Guilt” originally published in Fiction River: Hidden in Crime, was selected as one of The Best Crime and Mystery Stories 2016. Her story “One Sun, No Waiting” was one of the first science fiction stories honored with a literary fellowship award by the Nevada Arts Foundation, and her novel PRETTY LITTLE HORSES was among the finalists in the Best First Private Eye Novel sponsored by St. Martin’s Press and the Private Eye Writers of America.A frequent contributor to the Fiction River anthologies and Pulphouse Fiction Magazine, Annie’s recent work includes the superhero origin novel FASTER, the near-future science fiction short novel IN DREAMS, and UNBROKEN FAMILIAR, a gritty urban fantasy mystery short novel. Annie’s also one of the founding members of the innovative Uncollected Anthology, a quarterly series of themed urban fantasy stories written by some of the best writers working today.Annie’s mystery novels include the Abby Maxon private investigator novels PRETTY LITTLE HORSES and PAPER BULLETS, the Jill Jordan mystery A DEATH IN CUMBERLAND, and the suspense novel SHADOW LIFE, written under the name Kris Sparks, as well as numerous other projects she can’t wait to get to. For more information about Annie, including news about upcoming bundles and publications, go to www.annie-reed.com.

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      Book preview

      It's A Crime - Annie Reed

      IT'S A CRIME

      A five-story collection

      Annie Reed

      IT'S A CRIME

      Copyright © 2013 Annie Reed

      Published by Thunder Valley Press at Smashwords

      Cover art Copyright © Depositphotos/Jorgophotograph

      Cover and layout Copyright © 2013 Thunder Valley Press

      Smashwords Edition, License Notes

      These stories are licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

      This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

      For more information on the author, go to www.annie-reed.com.

      TABLE OF CONTENTS

      Introduction

      Missy and the Man

      Strike Two

      Thief

      Firebug

      For a Few Lattes More

      Copyright Information

      About the Author

      (If you would like to jump directly to the story, just click on the title)

      ~ ~ ~

      Introduction

      I love a good crime story. It's probably why I have a soft spot in my heart for mob shows like The Sopranos. I remember passing around a dog-eared copy of The Godfather when I was in school. While the other girls in my class exchanged excited whispers about how sexy Sonny Corleone was, for me the wonder of the book was the world Mario Puzo created, full of guns and bad guys and crime.

      Not that my love of crime stories is limited to the bad guys. I grew up watching Owen Marshal, Counselor at Law, which had a direct impact on the career I chose for a good part of my life. I first discovered Robert B. Parker's Spenser through the wonderful Spenser for Hire television series starring Robert Urich and Avery Brooks, and I went from watching the TV show to snapping up every Spenser book I could find. I watched Magnum, P.I. and Law & Order and Hill Street Blues. I read Bill Pronzini and Marcia Muller as much as I read Stephen King and Dean Koontz. Even the Tom Clancy books I loved the most were crime stories at heart.

      These days I watch Criminal Minds and Castle and Person of Interest. I read books by Lee Child and Harlan Coben and Michael Connelly, to name just a very few. Although I write in a variety of genres, many of the stories I write, whether they're contemporary fiction, science fiction, or fantasy, revolve around a crime. One of my favorite science fiction series is The Retrieval Artist series written by Kristine Kathryn Rusch, which are detective novels set on the Moon.

      While I do write in a variety of genres, you won't find any science fiction or fantasy stories in this collection. What you will find are mainstream stories about crimes and criminals.

      The first story in this collection is Missy and the Man, a story that's pretty close to my heart. Curiosity isn't normally a crime, but for a young girl just out of kindergarten, curiosity about the kittens living in a neighbor's garage leads to a crime far more dangerous than mere trespassing.

      Unlike Missy, the pickpocket in Strike Two is a baseball-loving career criminal. Lightfinger Larry works his trade on The Strip in Las Vegas, and he's about to have a very bad night. Thief looks at the other side of crime when a college student's wallet is stolen on campus, and nobody except the student and her new boyfriend seem to care.

      Firebug, the next story in this collection, was my very first sale to Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine back in 2005. Firebug is a story about an empty house, a stolen lighter, and two kids with entirely too much time on their hands.

      The last story in this collection is For A Few Lattes More, which first appeared in the anthology The Trouble with Heroes, edited by Denise Little (Daw, 2009). In this story I combined my love of Starbucks lattes and the old spaghetti Westerns I used to watch with my dad with a more serious subject—the search for a missing college student.

      This is one of several collections of my short fiction put together by the fine folks at Thunder Valley Press, and we're not done yet. Each collection focuses on a topic or genre, like this one. Some stories may appear in more than one collection, such as Missy and the Man, which also appears in All Fall Down, my five-story collection featuring stories about childhood gone wrong, and Strike Two, which appears in my collection Eight From the Silver State, featuring stories all set in Nevada.

      I hope you enjoy reading these stories as much as I enjoyed writing them.

      —Annie Reed

      Reno, Nevada

      June 16, 2012

      ~ ~ ~

      Missy and the Man

      Missy just wanted to see the kittens, that was all. She'd seen cats before. All kinds of cats—orange cats with white paws, white cats with pink ears and noses, and black cats with yellow eyes that looked like they should be mean but they weren't—but she'd never seen little baby kittens. Missy knew how to pet cats good. Mommy said cats liked to be petted soft, like Missy did with her doll's hair. Missy and her mommy both liked cats, but her daddy didn't, so they didn't have any of their own.

      Their neighbor did, though. He didn't seem like he was a very nice man, but he had a pretty gray cat with a white face and long fur and a fat belly that Mommy said was full of kittens, so the man couldn't be all that mean. Missy didn't think a cat, especially a cat about to have kittens, would live with someone who was mean.

      The man wasn't really their neighbor neighbor, like Missy's friend Laura's daddy, who lived next door to where Missy and her parents lived. The man with the kittens was just the man who lived in the house next to the house where Missy's daddy had his shop.

      Missy's daddy fixed other people's furniture, and her mommy helped. They were always too busy to play with Missy, so when she was done watching Gilligan's Island or My Three Sons on the little television in the back room where Mommy worked, Missy went outside all by herself to play in the backyard behind Daddy's shop,

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