Thirty years ago, when charity auctions were all the rage, Bill and I attended one that benefited the local arts community, PONCHO. \u00a0Having never been invited to one of those, we were slightly dazzled. \u00a0The auction was held at the Marriott in downtown Seattle. \u00a0At five in the afternoon, we stepped off the escalator into the midst of the silent auction displays. \u00a0The first item we spotted with a $500 minimum bid was a thirty-day European use of a BMW 700 series offered by the local dealer. \u00a0I immediately signed up. \u00a0The BMW was the first item I bid on in the silent auction as well as the only one.<\/p>\n
When the live auction got underway, we didn\u2019t buy anything because \u2026 well \u2026 although we bid what we could afford, we were consistently outbid by other more well-heeled guests. \u00a0We went back upstairs to our room empty-handed and a bit disappointed. \u00a0The next morning, someone from the auction called to say that we hadn\u2019t picked up our BMW certificate. \u00a0Did we still want it? Well, yes indeed we did!<\/p>\n
The following year we planned our 30-day European Vacation only to have that foiled by the pub date of Without Due Process, <\/em>the first Beau book in hardback. \u00a0This was back in the day when book tours were a big deal. \u00a0When I expected be tooling around Europe in a BMW, my publisher wanted me to be out on the road selling books in the good old US of A. \u00a0When we called the dealer to cancel, he told us it was no big deal. \u00a0When we were ready to go, we should let him know. \u00a0A year or so after that, when Bouchercon, an annual mystery-writers convention, was scheduled for Nottingham, England, we signed up. \u00a0Then we made arrangements to pick up our thirty-day BMW.<\/p>\n At the time were pretty new to the travel game, and we went on our way with far too much luggage in tow. \u00a0When we collected the BMW in Frankfurt, Germany, our original 700 series model had shrunk to a 300-something, and it was all we could do to squeeze everything we\u2019d dragged along with us into the back seat and trunk. \u00a0Learning to pack Rick Steves Lite came several years later.<\/p>\n We had loads of fun driving around on the continent, but once we crossed the English Channel into the UK, negotiating our right-hand drive BMW in a left-hand world became a lot more problematic. \u00a0All our motoring instincts sent us scurrying to the wrong lane every single time. \u00a0I suspect there are people in Canterbury who, to this day, remain traumatized by our long-ago efforts to exit a parking lot near the cathedral!<\/p>\n We arrived at the convention hotel a day early and ended up having dinner with Lawrence Block with whom I shared both a publisher and an editor. He told us that once the convention was over, he was embarking on a self-drive UK-based book tour. Over the meal, we told him about our charity auction BMW. \u00a0When I asked what kind of car he\u2019d be taking on his book tour, he told me wryly that it was \u201cone letter short of a BMW.\u201d \u00a0He did NOT include the make and\/or model, but I digress.<\/p>\n Once I signed up to attend that Bouchercon, I was invited to participate in an anthology of short stories written by authors attending the convention.\u00a0 I penned “Second Fiddle\u201d specifically for inclusion in that anthology. \u00a0Copies were given away free to convention participants, but the anthology didn\u2019t have any distribution beyond that. \u00a0A year or so later, a publisher included \u201cSecond Fiddle” in a regularly published short story anthology called First Cases.<\/em>\u00a0 Since the story features Beau\u2019s then partner, Sue Danielson, it clearly wasn\u2019t a first case for him but why quibble?<\/p>\n How does that old Ron Popiel saying go\u2014”Set it and forget it?\u201d \u00a0That\u2019s what I did with “Second Fiddle\u201d\u2014I forgot about it completely until several months ago. \u00a0That\u2019s when Brent Kelley, a relatively new reader from Louisiana, wrote to me. \u00a0He was in the process of tracking down all my works. \u00a0He had found a listing for \u201cSecond Fiddle\u201d but couldn\u2019t locate the story itself. \u00a0I checked the files in my computer\u2014and came up empty.<\/p>\n For years I have relied on Bill, a retired electronics engineer, for all things tech-related. \u00a0For the better part of twenty years, I happily wrote my manuscripts on a Microsoft-based program called Word Perfect. \u00a0Then a new version of Microsoft came out\u2014Vista, I believe. \u00a0Users said the update \u00a0was causing all kinds of headaches for users. \u00a0Bill had moved over to Apple by then, and that\u2019s when he laid down the law: \u00a0If I updated to Vista, he was done being my IT guy! \u00a0The next thing I knew, I was an Apple girl all the way. \u00a0Sadly somehow my file copy of \u201cSecond Fiddle\u201d didn\u2019t survive the big switcheroo.<\/p>\n I wrote to Brent telling him that, unfortunately, I no longer had a copy of \u201cSecond Fiddle\u201d in my files. \u00a0Brent\u2019s wife, Rebecca, happens to be a librarian. \u00a0He put her on the case, and she was able to down two copies of First Cases<\/em>, one for them and one for me. \u00a0When I mentioned this in a blog, another fan, Patricia, not only located a copy for herself, she scanned it and sent me a digital file.<\/p>\n This all came about while I was working on finishing Collateral Damage <\/em>and preparing for the short but brief\u00a0book tour for Nothing to Lose. \u00a0<\/em>It\u2019s safe to say that I had my hands full at the time. \u00a0Things are much better now, and I\u2019ve decided to include a pdf of that story in today\u2019s blog. \u00a0No, I haven\u2019t reread it. \u00a0There are probably things in the story that won\u2019t mesh with parts of Beau\u2019s and Sue Danielson\u2019s mutual histories in subsequent books. \u00a0My first instinct would be to go in and fix those\u2014which I\u2019m not going to do! \u00a0I\u2019m leaving it as is.<\/p>\n And so, thanks to some of my very devoted fans, happy reading folks. \u00a0Here\u2019s here a piece of historical fiction written by me almost thirty years ago.<\/p>\n Enjoy.<\/p>\n