Slice by Tom Barlow

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Golf sometimes spoils more than just a good walk.

He was seated on the floor, snoring softly, outside my office door when I arrived that morning. He had no appointment.

The man appeared to have at least a decade on me, mid-50’s, built like a stump with a saturnine face and hair that had no intention of obeying a comb. The tuxedo he wore had a mustard stain on the lapel, his bow tie listed to the left, and his pants were wrinkled.

Having been up until 3 a.m. myself bleeding money at a poker table in the local casino, I wasn’t in the mood for uninvited company. However, I needed work; some of the poker stakes had been earmarked for rent.

I woke him with a toe to his rump. He opened his eyes, looked around blankly for a moment before figuring out where he was, and sheepishly rose to his feet. “You Morris? The private investigator?”

“Yeah,” I said. “What can I do for you?”

“A minute of your time.”

“I’ve heard that before, and it’s never a minute,” I said, unlocking the door. He followed me into the office, took a seat across the desk from me, and introduced himself as Jock DePaul.

“It’s my wife,” he said, not bothering to ease his way into the subject of his visit. “I haven’t seen her in two days, since I dropped her off at the club to meet some girlfriends for a round of golf.”

“Any reason she’d run away?” I said. “Your marriage hit a rough spot?”

“By no means. We just celebrated our 20th anniversary a month ago.”

“You report it to the cops?” I didn’t like working cases where the cops had a head start.

“They say they’re looking for her, but the only thing I’ve seen them do is search our house and walk our woods with a corpse dog.”

That they would react so quickly struck me as odd. Normally with a missing wife cops pussyfoot around for a few days to see if she turns up with a new lover.

“But you haven’t been quarreling?”

He leaned forward, resting his chin on a fist. “No. We haven’t spoken three cross words to one another in all the years we’ve been married.”

“She carry much cash on her? Have access to some?” I was covering the big three reasons that marriages end; love, money, and pride.

“She usually keeps a few hundred dollars on her for shopping and emergencies. We share a bank account, and I checked online yesterday afternoon to see if she’s made any withdrawals; she hasn’t.”

“She have her own car?”

“Oh,” he said, “I should have told you. She’s blind.”

He caught me off-guard with that one. Now I understood the cops’ quick reaction.

“She have a dog?” I said, struggling for something to say.

“Like a guide dog? No, she’s deathly afraid of dogs. She gets by with the white cane.”

“She’s totally blind? Not just legally blind?”

“Right,” he said. “Since birth.”

I wrote BLIND in big letters on my pad, not that I was likely to forget it. “Where do you live?”

“Urbana.”

I sat back. “You drove all the way here from Urbana? That’s what? Two hours?”

“It’s only ninety minutes. And my career is here in Columbus.”

Something else was nagging me. “She’s blind,” I said. “I thought you said she went to play golf.”

“Right. Oh, I see; how does she play? Many blind people play golf. They have a coach that accompanies them, lining them up with the ball, tracking where it goes, helping them with club selection and distances, that sort of thing.”

“And she has a coach?”

“Yes, a young man that just graduated from OSU in Physical Education. Zane Taylor. They play three times a week.”

“What’s with the getup?” I asked, pointing to his tux.

“I’m a partner in a law firm. We had a client appreciation night last night. A missing wife is not a good enough excuse to skip it. It’s a cutthroat business.”

My guess? She’d contact DePaul for a divorce within 48 hours. I figured I could put a little time into the search without having to worry about ultimately solving the case.

“I charge $1,000 a day,” I said, my special price for clients who wear tuxes and belong to country clubs. “I cover my own expenses. For that, you get a daily report. If I think I’m spinning my wheels, I’ll let you know and you can decide whether to proceed.”

To an attorney it was chump change, and he agreed without hesitation.

•

Since I had no other work on the hook, I followed him home.

He lived in a three-story monstrosity a couple of miles east of Urbana, on the crest of a glacial moraine overlooking an ocean of corn fields. Harvesters were busy bringing in the crop before the first freeze.

At my request, DePaul gave me a tour of the place, so I could familiarize myself with the layout. It wasn’t immediately evident that a blind person lived there, except for a lack of clutter and low tables, and Braille tape on the controls of the appliances.

We looked in her closet; there were no obvious gaps in her wardrobe. Her medicines and makeup were in the master bathroom cabinet. All her suitcases were accounted for. I didn’t like that.

He handed me a photo of his wife, a casual poolside shot from a barbecue the previous month. Her name was Deidra. She was a redhead, complete with pale complexion and freckles. Sunglasses hid her eyes, but her pert nose, cleft chin and high cheekbones were pleasantly arranged.

From DePaul’s house I phoned Deidra’s BFF and golfing buddy Tracey Wells, hoping I could visit with her first. By a stroke of luck, the three women who had played golf with her the day she disappeared were at the club together enjoying pre-round cocktails. Tracey invited me to join them.

•

The club was more upscale than I’d expected from such a small town, an old brick mansion with a wide veranda surrounded by 18 well-manicured golf holes. I found the threesome on the veranda drinking peach daiquiris from a pitcher on ice in the center of the table.

Tracey introduced herself first. She was a short, wiry woman with blond hair cut short in the back, gradually growing longer until it framed her face. Sunken cheeks and narrow-set eyes stood between her and beauty.

She pointed to the plump woman with a sallow complexion and tightly curled burgundy hair, introducing her as another friend, Ami Francis. Ami nodded, but didn’t grace me with a smile.

The third at the table, Eloise McKinley, had long, lustrous black hair, an olive complexion that could have passed for Hispanic, and delicate features. She gave me a nice smile, exposing perfect teeth.

I took a seat at the table, enjoying for a moment the view of the course. They looked at me expectantly.

“You said over the phone that Jock had hired you to find Deidra,” Tracey said. “What makes you think you’ll do a better job than the cops?”

I shrugged. “Maybe I’m just arrogant. Or deluded. They’ve interviewed you, no doubt.”

They all nodded.

“Would you mind going through it again with me? The three of you were probably the last ones to see her. What do you remember about that afternoon?”

“She had two birdies on the back nine and won the only skins of the day,” Eloise said, pouring herself another daiquiri.

“A blind woman outplayed you?” I watched to see if any of them harbored a grudge.

“It’s not so surprising,” Eloise said without apparent rancor, “considering how Zane seems to find her ball dead center of the fairway no matter how far left or right it headed off the tee.”

“So they cheated?” I said.

“Cheating’s a harsh word,” Tracey said. “The woman’s blind, after all, so we cut her a little slack.”

“Some of us mind more than others,” Ami said, still not smiling. “It doesn’t mean we did anything to her.”

“I didn’t mean to suggest you did,” I said. “How was she planning to get home?”

Ami raised her hand. “It was my turn to give her a ride, but she told me Zane was going to come back to the club for her after we were done with our drinks. The last time I saw her she was sitting in the lobby waiting for him.”

“What about you two?” I said, turning to Tracey and Eloise.

“The same,” Tracey said, and Eloise nodded.

“Anything up between Zane and Deidra?” I said.

I caught a look of bemusement cross Eloise’s face. “Have you met Zane?” she said. “Yum.”

“So he’s a good looking guy. Are you just guessing, or do you know for sure that they’re getting it on?”

“He’s not that good looking,” Ami said, “and we’re just speculating.”

“Don’t believe everything Ami says,” Eloise said, grinning lopsidedly. “She’s got a crush on Deidra.”

Ami said, “So I’m gay. Is that any reason to treat me like a suspect?”

“We don’t know if anything has happened to her yet,” I said. “Hopefully, she’s off on some adventure.”

“You don’t know her, mister,” Eloise said. “She’s not one to embrace change.”

“She get along with her husband?”

“I thought you were working for him,” Tracey said. “That sounds like you consider him a suspect.”

“I’m just asking.”

“There’s a weird dynamic between them,” Tracey said. “She’s so dependent that it’s hard to tell how much love is there. I never heard her bitch about him, but she wasn’t eager to get home in time to welcome him home every evening. She’d stay here and drink us under the table if we let her.”

“Was she drunk on Tuesday?”

“We have a standing 2 p.m. tee time three days a week,” Eloise said, “so it’s a bit embarrassing to admit that yes, we get a little tanked just about every time; sometimes before, sometimes after. It’s how we tolerate our bad golf.”

“So if you were to look for her, where would you start?”

“Zane,” Ami said. The others nodded. “I think he’s still living with his mother.”

•

There were half a dozen Taylors in the phone book, and I had to call them all before I found the parents of Zane. When he came to the phone, he agreed to meet me at his home.

These Taylors lived in the valley formed by the Mad River, outside the village of West Liberty. The house was a modern ranch with a two car garage. There were three additional cars on the grass to the left of the garage.

Zane answered the door. The women weren’t kidding when they described him as a hunk; he had a build just short of steroidal. His features were faintly Asian, with a small nose and deep brown, almond-shaped eyes. His short black hair was moussed into spikes.

He showed me into the living room, a shrine built for the worship of the 90” television perched in the farthest corner.

He licked his lips a couple of times as he took a seat on the couch. I sat next to him.

“So what’s the latest with Mrs. DePaul?” he said.

“That’s what I’m trying to find out.”

“The cops have already asked me about her.”

“And they’ll be back,” I said. “You gave her a ride home last Tuesday from the club?”

“Tuesday?” he said. “No, I came home right after we finished the round, around 5 p.m. I think she stayed to hang out with the women in her foursome. They usually have a few drinks afterwards.”

“You ever give her a ride home?”

“I have, when she needed to get home to fix dinner and the others wanted to stay. But not Tuesday. I couldn’t then anyway; some of us were having a pickup basketball game that evening over at the Y.”

“And some of those players would testify to your participation?”

“Absolutely. You can ask my brother Paul if you want; he’s downstairs. He and I are always on the same team; Mr. Inside and Mr. Outside. I’m Mr. Inside.” He tried out a smile on me.

I didn’t react. “You have any idea where she might have gone Tuesday evening?”

“I imagine one of the ladies gave her a ride home. She sure couldn’t drive herself.”

“Speaking of driving,” I said, “rumor has it that you improve her lies, even when they’re betting a skins game.”

He hesitated for a moment. “Maybe I use a foot wedge sometimes, but it isn’t like she is going to break any course records anyhow. It was just a stroke of luck on Tuesday that some of her approach shots ended up near the pin.”

“Which cost the others some money,” I pointed out.

“Not my problem,” he said. “I don’t believe in betting on golf; it’s a hard enough game as it is. Why complicate it?”

“You ever sleep with Mrs. DePaul?” I asked, hoping to catch him off-guard.

“Jesus,” he said, shaking his head. “Of course not. That would be unprofessional.”

“If you had to guess, who would you figure had a reason to kill her?”

He rubbed his neck. “I don’t know. I guess Ami, maybe; Diedra has complained about her to me more than once. Or maybe the creep that runs the club, he keeps copping feels when he thinks she doesn’t know it’s him. He practically bathes in Axe, so she can recognize him at 100 yards.”

“And?”

He shrugged. “She’s a beautiful woman, man; check every pervert in the county.”

I gave him my card, told him to call me if he thought of anything more substantial, and headed back to the club.

•

Fortunately, the club member services director, Andy DeWitt, was still on duty. I explained what I was up to. Before he’d answer any questions, he called DePaul, who gave him the OK.

Andy looked like the type of guy that would excel at glad-handing the moneyed; tall and thin, dark hair combed straight back, chin like a fist and blue eyes. Zane was right; he smelled like he’d dumped a bottle of cologne down his pants.

He escorted me into his office, off the lobby. He fiddled with his name tag as he explained to me that in a club this size he did everything from parking cars to cleaning the restrooms.

“Do you remember Mrs. DePaul waiting in the lobby for a ride on Tuesday evening?” I said.

“Sure,” Andy said. “I asked her if she wanted me to call the cab guy in Urbana; she uses him sometimes when she can’t cadge a ride. She said someone was coming for her.”

“Who?”

“She didn’t say. Sometimes it’s her husband, sometimes one of her lady friends, sometimes the Taylor kid.”

“But you didn’t see who this time?”

“No, I was cleaning a tray of chicken cordon bleu off the kitchen floor that evening.”

“Anybody that can confirm that?”

He gave me pursed lips, probably the worst reaction he was allowed to have at the club. “The cook. I made her stay with me until the kitchen was spic and span. We were scrubbing the tiles until midnight.”

“Mind if I walk the course?” I said.

“Any friend of the DePaul’s is welcome,” he said in a way to imply he was only cooperating because it was his job. “Just don’t interrupt play.”

•

I wasn’t sure what I expected to accomplish on my walk, but it was a good way to meditate on what I’d learned. The course was beautifully manicured, with Bermuda grass fairways and white sand traps. I wished I’d brought my clubs; I doubted anyone would have caught me once I was clear of the first tee.

Like most country clubs, the course was lightly used; in fact, there was no one playing in the late afternoon heat. The ladies must have blown off playing their round after all.

I looked up at the veranda as I circled the ninth green, but they were no longer there either.

I checked the traps as I walked the course, in the off-chance that someone might have buried her body there. An absurd idea, I knew; most traps only held a scant foot of sand.

There was a pond on the 16^th hole, forcing the fairway to dogleg around it. It was half-choked with cattails. I circled it. On the far side, abutting deep rough, I caught a glimpse of something white six feet from the shore.

I was wearing a pair of wool slacks that had set me back $100, and I wasn’t about to sacrifice them. I climbed the small hill separating the pond from the 17th fairway. There were still no other golfers in sight, and the clubhouse was hidden by a stand of oaks. I returned to the pond, and, cursing a blue streak, stripped off my shoes, socks and slacks.

There was swamp gas trapped in the ooze on the bottom of the pond, which burst forth as I stepped in and gave me the sensation of walking in a sewer. The water came up to my calves, then my knees as I took a couple of steps toward the flash of white.

I pulled the cattails apart to find Diedra, her head floating a couple of inches above the surface. The white I’d seen was her forehead. The strap of her golf bag was wrapped around her waist, holding the bottom half of her body down in the water. Gaily-colored carp were nibbling on her arms.

I retreated to shore, managing to hold down my lunch.

•

You might think that the cops would be happy to have a body with which to start their investigation, but you’d be wrong. These were small-town peace officers whose only recent experience with murder was a trailer shooting where the perp was too drunk to flee in his pickup.

One of them suggested I could take off, since my job was done; I’d found the missing woman. I hung around, though, so that I could give a full report to my client.

It took them over an hour for the photo guy to get there and shoot pictures of Diedra in place before they brought her to shore. The sun had set, and they ended up working by flashlight.

She was fully clothed, with a whopper of a dent in the back of her head, about the size of a five wood. The coroner’s assistant and one of the cops carefully lifted her body and placed it on the stretcher. I was the only one in a position to notice when her head fell to one side, and, along with a rush of water, a golf ball came rolling out of her mouth.

While the others followed the body to the ambulance, I knelt to check the ball. A Titleist Pro V1 with a wide slice on it, like the grin on an idiot’s face.

I pointed out the ball to the coroner, explaining where it had come from. He picked it up and bagged it. He was more talkative than a big city coroner, probably due to the infrequency of his duties. “The blow to the head looks fatal to me. The golf ball… that was overkill.”

•

After the body left the scene I called DePaul, figuring he should hear about it from me, since he was footing the bill. I was proud of myself for not once bemoaning the fact that I’d found his wife in one day while he was paying me $1,000 per.

“We located your wife,” I said when he answered. “I’m sorry to say, not alive.” I’ve found that it does no good to play coy with bad news.

“Oh, shit,” he said. “Where?”

I explained the situation, including the expectation that the cops would be contacting him any minute. He didn’t reply for a long minute, and I thought I could hear a sniffle.

“I should have asked you earlier,” I finally said. “Do you have an alibi for Tuesday evening?”

“I was here in the office, until about 10 p.m.” he said.

“Anybody to testify to that?”

“Phone records,” he said. “For billing purposes, we log all calls. You think I’m a suspect?”

“Afraid so,” I said. My foot itched, and I wondered if I’d picked up a fungus from the pond. “Who else has had corpse dogs on their property?”

“Then you better find out who really did it,” he said. Now he sounded angry.

“You want me to keep investigating?”

“You’ve done OK so far. So yeah, keep digging.”

•

I took a break for dinner at the Airport Café and grabbed a room at the fleabag hotel south of town. At 9 p.m. I headed back out to DePaul’s house, taking a chance that he would be home and not down at the police station. He was, but not in very good shape.

The cops had been there and questioned him for a good hour, during which he’d refreshed his glass of scotch one too many times. He didn’t seem to quite understand when I asked to see his golf bag, but he nodded and pointed to the garage.

He had a nice set of sticks, by Ping. His balls were Nike, not Titleist. I asked him what Diedra played, and he said she also shot Nikes.

He agreed to allow me to borrow his clubs, and at my request wrote a note to DeWitt naming me as his guest for a round of golf. He was too drunk to ask me why.

 •

I showed up at the course half an hour before the 2 p.m. standing tee time of Deidra’s foursome the next afternoon. I showed DeWitt the letter from my client; he was still peeved about my questioning the day before, and he said, “Replace your divots, and don’t litter,” as though he was certain I’d never played a civilized round of golf in my life.

The three all pulled into the parking lot at the same time, about 1:50 p.m. Tracey was the first to pass me on the putting green, and gave me a puzzled look.

I put a good stroke on a ten-footer, watched it drop and said, “Mind if I tag along this afternoon?”

She pursed her lips. “It’s usually a girl thing. But I suppose we could make an exception.”

I’m not so vain as to think myself a babe magnet, but I’m not dog meat, either. I gave her my best smile. “I promise I’ll be agreeable.”

“Well, why not?” she said.

I followed her over to the first tee, where we were joined by Ami and Eloise. Both of them unenthusiastically agreed to allow me to play with them.

It took me three holes before I knew who’d killed Deidra.

•

Ami had obviously taken lessons. She had it all; the full turn, the stationary head, the wrist break, and she hit the snot of out the ball. She admitted to a 10 handicap.

Although the youngest-looking of the women, Eloise played an old person’s game; short backswing and follow through, slow club head speed. The payoff was accuracy. Her ball didn’t go far, but she managed to keep it in the short grass each time, taking the straight line from tee to green.

Tracey was a hacker, with a hitch in her backswing that would break the elbow of an older golfer. She swung with all her might. When she connected, the ball flew, but more often than not, she hit worm burners that never ascended more than a few feet off the turf.

Over the course of the first couple of holes, I was able to check what balls each of them used. Eloise played a Ram, while Ami and Tracey played Titleist. It’s only the most popular ball in the world, so I didn’t take that as solid evidence.

On the third hole, a 405-yard par four with a sharp dogleg to the left, all four of us ended up lying two a wedge shot from the green. I watched the form of my fellow players. Ami plopped a sweet lob wedge into the center of the green. Eloise hit hers thin and it scampered onto the apron of the green.

Tracey hit down on her ball like she was trying to behead a snake. The ball popped up and fell to the ground only 20 yards further down the fairway.

•

I finished the round because, hey, I was hitting the ball well and had a chance to break 90, which I would have done if I hadn’t duck-hooked my tee shot on 11. Besides, I needed to know why, now that I knew who, if I was to clear my client.

The ladies, now comfortable with me, invited me to join them for drinks after the round was over.

They were disappointed when I ordered ginger ale. I explained that I had to do some driving yet that evening. I intended to end the day at home.

I waited for them to broach the topic we’d assiduously avoided during the round. Finally, after downing half her gin and tonic in one long slurp, Tracey said, “So now that you found Deidra, why are you still here?”

I explained about my assignment. “What I can’t figure out is who might have hated her enough to kill her. It smells like an act of passion, not a murder for profit.”

“Well,” Eloise said, “She wasn’t exactly hard to dislike.” The other two gave her a disgusted look, but she wasn’t paying attention to them.

“How so?” I asked.

Eloise leaned forward and dropped her voice. “She had a pretty sharp tongue for someone so dependent on other people. We used to joke that we spent time with her so that she wouldn’t have the opportunity to talk about us behind our backs.” She took another sip of her drink. “And she could be a braggart to those who didn’t have a big house or a power husband.”

Ami nodded when I looked her way.

“If she was having an affair, would she be the kind of person that kept quiet about it or bragged about it?”

“She’d hint,” Tracey said, her eyes like beads. “She’d play coy but you’d know that if she was banging somebody other than her husband, it was some absolute stud.”

“And was she hinting lately?” I said.

“No,” Tracey said at the same time that Ami said, “Maybe.”

I asked Ami to elaborate.

“She’s been wearing more makeup and perfume lately, and she’s bought a couple of cute new golf outfits.”

“So she was meeting Mr. Whomever here at the club?”

“Yeah, I assumed that if there was a man in the picture, she saw him here,” Ami said.

Beyond that, none of them were willing to speculate. But I had already drawn my conclusion.

•

Zane and his brother were shooting hoops in the driveway when I arrived at his house. When he saw who it was, he asked his brother to give him a minute and joined me at my car. I took a seat on the hood.

“You find out anything yet?” he asked, wiping his palms against his thighs.

“Yeah,” I said. “How long have you been sleeping with Tracey Wells?”

He didn’t change expression, but the blush on his face told the tale. I pointed it out to him. It was enough to deflate any lie he was considering.

“How did you know?” he said.

“She’s the worst golfer among the three,” I said.

“I don’t get that,” he said. “But I’m not feeling guilty, if that’s what you think; I’m just a little embarrassed. She’s not exactly a beauty, right? And Jesus, she’s twice my age. But I’m between girlfriends and stuck out here in the country, so that changes a man’s standards. Don’t tell me you never picked low-hanging fruit when you were young.”

“How about Deidra? That fruit was hanging so low it was touching the ground. I mean, a blind woman?”

He rolled up on his toes and I prepared to block his swing, but it was just a nervous tic. “Jesus; how’d you find out about that? She was begging me, man. For a couple of months. Her husband was ignoring her and, well, you can imagine how lonely you can get locked up at home with no way out. It wasn’t anything serious.”

“Did her husband know?”

“Of course not,” he said, heatedly. “It was only a couple of times, and we were careful.”

“How about Tuesday?”

“She was going to call me if her husband spent the night in Columbus; he did that from time to time, when his business ran late. She did eventually call, but I was already at the game and we were going out for beers later, so I didn’t answer.”

“Did Tracey know about Deidra?”

“I hope not, but when those four get tanked, they lose inhibitions, so I guess anything’s possible.”

I had what I needed, and turned to leave when he grabbed my sleeve. “Could you do me a favor?” he said.

“Probably not,” I said.

“Keep my sleeping with Mrs. Wells out of the newspaper? My brother will never let me live it down.”

“That’s the price,” I said, “you pay for picking the wrong fruit.”

•

I was waiting for DePaul when he arrived home that evening. He pulled into the garage, and I followed him in, placing his clubs in the corner where they belonged.

“What’s up?” he said, waving me to follow him into the house.

He headed to the bar and poured himself a scotch while I waited for his attention. He finally turned to me with a raised eyebrow.

“I know what happened,” I said. “You’re paying me, so I thought I’d tell you before I go to the cops.”

“Shoot.”

“Tracey Wells has been having an affair with Zane Taylor all summer,” I said. “Now this might be hard to hear. Your wife seduced him a couple of weeks ago. Tracey found out.”

“How’d you figure that out?” he said, his face ashen.

I told him about the ball in his wife’s mouth. “Wells is the only one with such a poor swing that she’d slice a ball like that. And Zack is the only man she met at the club that she got to know well enough to develop a crush on.”

“Jesus,” he said. “That’s horrible. I never thought Deidra would run around on me. That was one of the attractions of her blindness, to tell the truth; I figured she’d always be loyal.”

“Anyway,” I said, “Zane was supposed to come back to the course and give her a ride home, if you were going to spend the night in Columbus. However, when she called Zane he didn’t answer.

“Deidra was still sitting there when they all left. She must have called Tracey for a ride when Zane didn’t answer, and she circled back to the club. Deidra followed her out to her car. It was dark by then.

“I figure Tracey grabbed one of her clubs and hit Deidra on the head. Once she was out cold, she put the ball in her mouth and held it and her nose closed.

“Once Deidra was dead, she dragged the body out to the trap on the 16^th and dropped her in the pond.”

DePaul shook his head. “That’s horrible.” He drained his glass. “What’s with the golf ball?”

“That was her mistake,” I said. “I’m guessing Diedra said something about sleeping with Zane, and that set Tracey off. She probably saw something symbolic in using the ball, since Deidra cheated her at golf and now was cheating with her boyfriend. Maybe the slice on it reminded her of Deidra’s open mouth, mocking her. Or maybe it was just handy in her pocket.”

“Jesus,” he said, wiping a rogue tear from his cheek. “I guess we’ll have to tell the police. God, I hate this.”

Just about every case I work ends up with those three words.

Even in a sport as genteel as golf.

Tom Barlow is an Ohio, USA writer. He is the author of the short story collection Welcome to the Goat Rodeo and the science fiction novel I’ll Meet You Yesterday. His work has been featured in anthologies including Best American Mystery Stories 2013 and Best New Writing 2011, as well as many magazines including including Hobart, The William and Mary  Review, The Apalachee Review, Temenos, SQ Magazine, Needle, Thrice Fiction and Redivider.