Two readers who leave comments will be chosen to receive a copy of one of Marja McGraw's books.
                 
Sandi Webster is from Old Murders Never Die by Marja McGraw. Chris Cross is from Bogey
Nights, also by Marja McGraw.     

 


Today Sandi Webster and Chris Cross are visiting all the way from Los Angeles. Sandi is a female private eye who has more fun investigating crimes and murders than any gumshoe should be allowed. Chris Cross bears a striking resemblance to Humphrey Bogart, and he’s the one everyone actually calls a Gumshoe.

Sandi, and Chris, how did you decide to become private investigators?

Sandi:
I got into this line of work for all the wrong reasons. I grew up watching vintage mystery movies with my mother, and when I watched those old P.I.’s search for clues and get their man, I just knew that was the life for me. They made it look so romantic and fun. It turned out I was right, although it is a lot of hard work.
 
Chris is an amateur detective. I don’t think he and his wife, Pamela, should be solving crimes because they’re not professionals, but I have to admit they do manage to get the job done.  Chris and I met when he started following me, trying to learn the business. By the way, I introduced him to Pamela.
 
Chris:
Sandi tried to give me the bum’s rush, but I’ll give her points for knowing Pamela.  I’m
not really a P.I. My wife and I own a forties-themed hash house. There was a time when I wanted to be a gumshoe, and that’s when I met the Dish here. She did some fancy footwork to show me I wasn’t cut out to be a private Dick, but we managed to solve a case together anyway. Now people come to me, asking me to solve crimes. 

      
What is the hardest thing about being a private eye?

Sandi:
Patience is a virtue. Uh, I guess I’m not very virtuous. I find myself sighing a lot because things simply don’t go the way I want them to, and this is a frequent occurrence.  I don’t have a lot of patience.
 
Chris:
Patience? She’s not just whistlin’ Dixie. She had no patience with me.  This dame tried everything to get rid of me, but I was tenacious.
 
Sandi:
Did you see that? He rolled his upper lip under and pulled on his ear lobe. Sometimes I think he really believes he’s Bogey reincarnated.
 
Chris:
Okay, I was wet behind the ears, but I ain’t got bats in my belfry. I can follow clues with the best of ‘em. And I have put a couple of goons in the slammer, without Sandi’s help.

      
Tell us about this case. 

Sandi:
My partner, Pete, and I decided to take a well-deserved vacation. It didn’t come as a surprise to me when we got lost in the mountains of Arizona. Hm. Pete never listens to me. Anyway, what did surprise me was that we found a ghost town which was just as the people who’d lived there left it. We became stranded when this cowboy, on horseback no less, tinkered with our Jeep. We found an old house to stay in and ran across the records of the old-time sheriff from 1880. He wrote about a series of murders. When you’re stranded in a ghost town, there’s not a whole lot to do after you’ve gone through the old buildings that are still standing. We began reading the records to see if we could solve the crime from what information the sheriff had left. 

In the meantime, that crazy cowboy kept getting in our way and under my skin. What a pain in the… Oh, and I can’t forget Bubba, my half wolf/half Golden retriever. He was with us. Now Bubba is about the size of a small bear, and he’s as graceful as that ol’ bull in the China shop. In other words, between being lost, having a big dog, a boyfriend, a mysterious cowboy and being stranded in a town haunted by old murders, I had the best time of my life. Seriously. I really did.

Chris:
I heard about that caper. I wish the Dollface and I had been with you.

Our case started when the original restaurant burned down. Pamela and I bought a 1920s-style house to convert into the new eatery. Before we even got the renovations started, Sherlock and Watson discovered a stiff buried in the basement. Oh, those are our two yellow Labrador retrievers. 

Unlike the cupcake sitting next to me, I’ll keep my story short. According to the coppers the cadaver has been underground since the forties. Anyway, we found out the vintage home had once been a boarding house, and we followed clues to find the killer. And let me tell you, we were mighty surprised. I have a seven-year-old stepson named Mikey. I call him Ace. He helped out, too, although they told him to deep six the dead body talk at
school. Zero tolerance stuff. I should mention that we took on the case at the insistence of Midge and Pidge, relatives of the stiff. They wouldn’t take no for an answer.


Sandi, does he always talk like this?
(Shaking her head)  Yes
      
What made the case hard to solve?

Sandi:
The fact that the murders took place around 1880, which meant all witnesses and   victims were long gone. And so were most of the clues, although we did uncover a few surprising things.
 
Chris:
The bride and I had it a little easier than Sandi. A number of people who were around the boarding house in the forties were still breathing. But it was hard to eyeball everything when the caper took place so long ago.

      
Did anyone help you with your investigation?

Sandi:
Just my partner, Pete. Well, I have to be fair. Bubba helped in his own doggie way.
 
Chris:
Ours was a family affair. Pamela, Ace and the dogs all did their bit to help solve the crime. Well, we also have a copper friend named Janet Murphy. She might have done her part.

      
Has this case affected your personal life in any way?

Sandi:
In the long run it did, and it will continue to cause some major changes in my life. 
 
Chris:
Change my personal life? You betcha. Now every Tom, Dick and Harry in Los Angeles wants help solving crimes. Sometimes we have to play it kinda close to the vest so we don’t step on the coppers toes, but thanks to Pamela we have a connection at the P.D. now. And Ace sees a mystery in every corner. That kid is crazy like a fox--way too savvy for his age. He wants a mystery to solve, and he won’t let it go. 
 
Sandi:
Paula, thank you so much for allowing me to visit and share a little about my latest case. Who knows? Maybe this interview will drum up some new business for me and Pete. 
 
Chris:
Yeah, thanks, Angel.  This has been a hoot, but I guess I’d better take a powder now. (He holds out his hand.) Slip me some skin, and have a good life.

Thank you, Sandi and Chris, for being with us. We wish you the best in solving future cases.
 
Note: Sandi and Chris first met in The Bogey Man by Marja McGraw. Two lucky readers will be chosen at random to receive one of Marja McGraw's books. Just leave a comment between now and October 21. 


Marja McGraw has written eight books including the Sandi Webster Mysteries and the Bogey Man Mysteries. She was the editor for the Sisters in Crime Internet Newsletter for a year and a half. She’s appeared on television and been a guest on various radio and Internet radio shows.  She currently resides in Arizona with her husband, where life is good. Her latest book, Old Murders Never Die, was released July, 2011. Information on her or any of her books can be found on her website: www.marjamcgraw.com or blog   http://blog.marjamcgraw.com/. Catch the trailer for Old Murders Never Die at:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xTBOpzq-wDM.


 
 
 
 

 


from Beta by Stephen L. Brayton


                 
 


Her name is Mallory Petersen. She is a six foot blonde private investigator with a Fourth Degree Black Belt in Taekwondo. She  owns her own business and martial arts school.

Welcome, Mallory!

How and why did you get involved in this case?
Cheryl McGee stopped into my office Monday morning and wanted to hire me to find her eight year old daughter, Cindy, who went missing the previous Saturday. Cindy was the latest in a string of children believed to have been kidnapped in the region in the last eighteen months.

Why was this case so special?
Talking with an officer friend and the lead investigator, I discovered a possible connection to child pornography. I followed some leads given to me by an informant buddy and wound up encountering a bunch of seriously perverted people. 
 
Did anything make this case difficult to solve?
The links in the case were tenuous and I had to follow a trail of clues leading me out of Des Moines, Iowa, down to the little south central town of Oskaloosa, then all the way up to the Quad Cities. Plus, I kept getting more frustrated with each dead end.
 
Did anyone help you with your investigation?
Of course, my secretary and friend, Darren provided some information. Also helping me out was my little informant Willy Washington who I met years ago trying to steal my car. Then I meet dreamboat investigator Lawrence Cameron out of the Quad Cities. He and I spent an entire day together searching different places for Cindy.
 
Has this case affected your personal life in any way?
Well, meeting Lawrence certainly. I think I found a new wonderful boyfriend. But the missing child and the exposure to child pornography really affected me because I instruct children in martial arts training, and to see this one child and to learn of so many more subjected to this horrible crime pushed me to the limit mentally and morally.

Thank you for being with us today, Mallory. We wish you well in trainiing in your private investigations and in teaching children martial arts.

 
Stephen L. Brayton  lives in Oskaloosa, Iowa and is a Fifth Degree Black Belt in Taekwondo.  Beta is scheduled  to be released October 1. His other works include “Night Shadows” and four short stories. Information on his works can be found on his website at www.stephenbrayton.com . He can also be emailed at slb@mahaska.org.  


 
 
 

 from Devil’s Kitchen by Clark Lohr.


 
We have with us today Manuel Aguilar. Born in Tucson, Arizona, he is a product of a tripartite society: Anglo, Latino, and Native American. His cultural and racial heritage goes back many years before English-speaking Europeans came to dominate the Southwestern US.  Aguilar is bilingual. He served for sixteen years with the Pima County Sheriff’s Department and was fired over complications arising from a murder case. He currently works as a private investigator for Jeffrey Goldman, a criminal defense attorney.

You were fired over a murder case? How did that happen?     
I was fired over what, at first, looked to me like a simple murder case—a decapitated head found in a county landfill. Once we’d got the dead guy ID’d, I started looking at people around the case. Those people started dying. One of them was shot to death. That’s unusual. I didn’t want to let the case go. I kept pushing the case and was involved in several shooting incidents as a result. The sheriff’s department fired me. Then my girlfriend, Reina, got me to go to work for Jeff Goldman.
     
What made this case hard to solve?
The case was hard to solve because there were powerful people involved who didn’t want the case solved. These people had corrupt law enforcement on their side and a bunch of sicarios, Mexican nationals, killers, who work under the radar in the US.

You mentioned your girlfriend Reina. Did she help you solve the case?     
I couldn’t have done it without Reina.

Did anyone else help you?
Johnny Oaks, who’s also a PI—and Goldman. I got help from the few friends I had left in the sheriff’s department, too. There was a kid involved, a runaway teenager.  She had good information and we used it.  I also had a Yaqui  grandmother who helped.

Did this case affect your personal life in any way?     
My personal life? Yeah, it made it better, emotionally.  I got hurt physically, but I came through knowing a lot more about what’s out there, the stuff you can’t see—call it the spirit world if you want to.  Reina’s in my life. She’s as important to me as my job. We came through it even closer than we were before.

Thank you for being with us today. We wish you and Reina the best and appreciate what you do.



Clark Lohr comes from a Montana farm and ranch background. He is a Vietnam vet and a member of Veterans for Peace. He’s lived mostly in Tucson, Arizona since the late Sixties. Devil’s Kitchen was published by Oak Tree Press and released in June 2011. The book is available from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Powell’s Books. Visit clarklohr.com for more information.