Crime Fiction Friday: “You Just Might Get It” by Scott Montgomery

You may recognize the name of this week’s Crime Fiction Friday author. Scott Montgomery, as BookPeople’s Crime Fiction Coordinator and founder of MysteryPeople, BookPeople’s Mystery Bookstore-Within-A-Bookstore, has been Austin’s authority on all-things-mystery for years. Scott also writes, and below, you’ll find a good example of his humorous and gleefully bloodthirsty style.

Come by BookPeople on Tuesday, August 11, at 7 PM, for a celebration of the crime writing anthology Murder On Wheels, with authors Scott Montgomery, Reavis Wortham, and Kathy Waller in attendance. You can find copies of Murder on Wheels on our shelves. Part of the sales proceeds for Murder on Wheels will go to Meals on Wheels.

“You Just Might Get It” by Scott Montgomery

The girl came first.

It had been two hours since Vedder clocked in and counted the drawer. He cracked open his textbooks for American Lit, but there were always some customer interrupting him the first few hours to truly focus.  Half of them wanted to tell him about their day, life stories, or, god forbid, how to improve business. All you could do was dip your toe in shallow thoughts and daydreams between transactions and stocking Skittles until around 3AM when foot traffic faded at the Grab N’ Go. There were two things Vedder always thought would break the monotony behind the counter, a hot girl or a robbery.

When the red head walked in, she woke everything up in him. Her shoulder length tresses didn’t fit the face. Somehow, the small mouth with the full lips did, at least when he pictured her giving him a blowjob. Her skin wasn’t that death pale a lot of reds had. No freckles either, which was kind of a disappointment. She wore pink, trendy glasses that didn’t go with the rest of her outfit. A cutoff denim skirt fit her ass tight enough to give him a clear picture of some x-rated scenarios. Two tattooed butterflies flew out of the waistband. A good mix of cute with just the right amount of trashy. Who wants the girl next door, if all she knows is the missionary position?

Her purse was larger than the usual pocket book on a g-string that the club tramps carried. The training video told him to watch for patrons with large bags. What would he do if he caught her lifting? What would she do for him not to call the cops? More scenarios. He had to quit reading the Penthouse Forum off the adult rack.

She bent down for some energy bars. Vedder thanked God he was behind the counter from the waist down. Her eyes caught him. “Do you have Vanilla Coke?”

Austin Mystery Writers Present: MURDER ON WHEELS edited by Ramona DeFelice Long

– Post by Molly

Come by the store on Tuesday, August 11, at 7 PM up on BookPeople’s second floor, for a great home-grown event. Presented by Austin Mystery Writers, and edited by Ramona DeFelice Long, Murder on Wheels: 11 Tales of Crime on the Move has deliciously dangerous tales contributed by many of our favorite authors. Kathy Waller, Reavis Wortham, and MysteryPeople’s own crime fiction coordinator, Scott Montgomery, will all be present at BookPeople’s Murder on Wheels event to speak and sign this collection. A share of profits goes to Meals on Wheels.

Murder on Wheels contains many different settings, subgenres and approaches to its theme. Kaye George, in her forward, details the collection’s origin: “The genesis was a ride my husband took…on the Megabus…I started thinking that the bus would make a good setting for a murder…There was one problem – where to hide the body. So I asked the group, Austin Mystery Writers, for suggestions.” From this initial discussion, sprang enough ideas for a collection, and thus Murder on Wheels came to be on our shelves.

“A Nice Set of Wheels,” by Kathy Waller, delivers a Great Depression-era story of longing and wanderlust in a small Southern town. “Family Business,” by Reavis Wortham, relates the twists and turns of an unlucky family of bootleggers through the generations. V. P. Chandler’s “Rota Fortunae” gets mystical with a tattoo of a ship’s wheel and a story of transatlantic unrest,  while Gale Albright’s “Mome Rath, My Sweet” sends a private eye down the rabbit hole in a hard-boiled retelling of Alice in Wonderland.

Kaye George and Earl Staggs shift the focus to public transportation with their respective stories, “The Wheels on the Bus Go Round and Round” and “Dead Man on a School Bus.” Laura Oles looks at how a “family business” deals with outsiders in “Buon Viaggio.”  Gale Albright’s “Apokalypse Now” tackles the dangers of bicycle obsession, especially in a marriage. Scott Montgomery’s tale of generosity gone sour, “Red’s White F-150 Blues,” is a properly Texan tale of trucks, Conan the Barbarian obsession, and increasingly bad decisions. Each story fits with the theme of wheels in a different, unique, and often funny way.

You can find copies of Murder on Wheels on our shelves and via bookpeople.com. Come by the store Tuesday, August 11, for a speaking and signing event with several of the collection’s authors, including our very own Scott Montgomery!