The Actress: A Christian Murder Mystery

by Michael Hicks Thompson, Linda Yezak (Editor), Disciple Design (Designed by)

Overview

"What sets The Actress apart from most murder mysteries is a wry sense of ironic humor that permeates events seen through the eyes of the narrator--Martha McRae, boarding house owner and publisher of a small-town newspaper." Diane Donovan.

The Actress--America's most famous actress, Tallulah Ivey, is in Solo, Mississippi to film a controversial movie about capital punishment. Andrew Dawkins, a prominent Solo citizen, is shot and killed outside her bedroom window. A typewritten note was found clenched in his hand. The note would hold the key to Ivey's guilt or innocence. Martha investigates the who, what, and why in this twisty, suspenseful murder mystery full unforgettable characters and a bit of Christian theology.

From the Editor-In-Chief of Southern Writers Magazine after she read The Actress manuscript:

"This book captures Thompson's mastery of mystery. His ability to bring his characters to life is truly an art-you forget they aren't real. You find yourself involved in their lives as if you were there. The manner of twist he weaves through the story gives depth to the plot and has you guessing throughout the story, "Who did it?" You don't want the story to end because you don't want to say goodbye to the characters." Susan Reichert

Protagonist's Quest: Martha is searching for truth. She wants to help friend Shirley Dawkins understand why her husband was shot outside Tully Ivey's window. The sheriff impedes Martha's progress--until he realizes how smart she is.

What's at stake? Mississippi's reputation. Why? Because the movie being filmed will make Mississippians look like heathens for executing the most evil man who ever set foot in Solo. Capital punishment is the issue.

More from Diane Donovan, Donovan Literary Services:

Christian readers who love a good mystery are in for a treat with Michael Hicks Thompson's new novel in the Solo series--The Actress.

It weaves a diverse cast of characters from all walks of life into a lively story replete with intrigue, humor, and religious inspection.

It's not an easy job to keep all these facets in balance while juggling a series of puzzling events, but The Actress performs admirably, enriched by the fact that it is inspired by a true story.

The author keeps the story line clean, reflective, and delightfully revealing--all this tempered with passages about Mississippi culture that include social insights, as well.

The subtlety of these approaches belies any belief that the story will become preachy, staid, or predictable. These characters are rooted in their small-town traditions and beliefs; but his doesn't mean they are inflexible, prejudiced, or single-minded. In fact, these beliefs ground them and enable them to examine their world and its events with a solid foundation of faith mixed with social consciousness.

Are the events coincidences? Or, does God have a purpose in mind, even in murder? Watch for the clues that ultimately lead to real answers.

The result is a delightfully lively, clear, clean production filled with a fun group of disparate characters whose choices and decisions affect and reflect a small town's God-fearing approaches to life, justice, and death.

All mystery readers will be delighted with its wry observational style and the humor which is embedded into a search for the truth.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780984528240
Publisher:	Shepherd King Publishing LLC
Publication date:	01/23/2017
Series:	Solo , #2
Pages:	288
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.20(h) x 0.90(d)

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

The Intruder

Midnight, August 10, 1962, Solo, Mississippi.

A filthy windowpane separated the most famous actress in America from the human silhouette outside her bedroom.

The crunching of leaves, the sound of footsteps had gotten her attention. She removed her pistol from the bedside drawer and inched her way toward the window. She gathered a breath, then eased a finger to the trigger, pointing the barrel at the dark figure.

The intruder's hand touched the window. She fired. The bullet passed through the glass, into the darkness.

Movie star Tully Ivey had shot local farmer and respected citizen Andrew Dawkins.

*
The Bethel County Sherriff's Department arrived an hour later. Four Hollywood RTO executives hovered around Dawkins's body. Sheriff Butch Turnbull made a mental note of Tully Ivey crying on a man's shoulder.

Turnbull knelt beside the body and unbuttoned Dawkins's bloody shirt. The bullet wound was dead center chest. Turnbull checked for a pulse. None. He noticed a note clenched in Dawkins's right hand and a pistol in the grass.

He slipped them both — the gun and the note — into a plastic bag.

The note would hold the key to Tully Ivey's future.

How do I know these things? Because it's my business to know. I'm the only reporter for The Bethel County Gazette. The knowing is easy. It's the unknown that takes time to uncover.

In a small town like Solo, we know everything about everybody. It's strangers who keep us up at night. And crickets.

I drove to the sheriff's office in Greenlee. Shirley Dawkins had called me, sobbing and hysterical. She needed to know why her husband had been shot and killed. I felt sick for her.

I walked into the sheriff's department at three in the morning. Tully Ivey was sitting across a desk from the sheriff — a hefty man, built like a bull, with a crew cut and bushy eyebrows.

The famous actress was explaining what happened. "He was trying to open the window," she said. "What would you expect me to do?"

She didn't seem the least bit arrogant or irritated. She was calm and collected. I flashed back to her roles on the big screen — elegant, sophisticated, the star of every movie she made.

"It was dark," Butch said. "And the window was dirty. How did you know it was a man?"

Before she could answer, I walked closer. He was surprised to see me. "Martha, what are you doing here? You need to leave."

"I'm here for Shirley. She needs to know what happened."

Reluctant at first, he nodded in agreement and turned back to Ivey. "So, how did you know it was a man?"

"I didn't know," she said. "Like I told you, eventually I went outside to see if someone was still there. I was frightened to death when I discovered his body."

She looked at me. "Wouldn't you be? Who are you?" I didn't respond. Maybe I was star-struck.

The sheriff kept probing. "Did you hear him say anything from outside your window? Did he call your name?"

"No, I only heard those crickets. They're so eerie."

"You said earlier you hardly knew Mr. Dawkins. Why were you crying over his body?"

"I was upset. Oh, I knew him a little," she said, squeezing two provocative fingers together like Lauren Bacall. "He had a small role in the movie. I never thought of him as a bad person."

Butch scratched his cheek. "How do you explain the note? Sure seems like you knew him more than you're lettin' on."

"What note?"

"The note in his hand."

"Oh, I did notice something in his hand. Was it a note? What did it say?"

Butch took the note from a manila folder. "Here — here's a copy."

Tully,

I don't deserve you. I will always love you. I just want you to know the proof of your innogenge in the Rod Russell shooting is in safe deposit box 4918 at City National Bank. One day I will explain why I didn't tell you earlier.

The key is on the ledge.

Andrew

She pressed a hand against her chest. "Oh, my. How did he know I'm innocent of that awful Rod Russell murder?" She expelled a lung of air and placed the note back on Turnbull's desk.

I stepped closer to read it, but he took it away. I could smell her perfume. Tabu.

She reached in her purse and retrieved a thin, silveren-graved box of cigarettes. She selected one and inserted it into a shiny black holder. Deputy Cox, who'd been leaning against the doorjamb, pulled a Zippo from his pocket, strutted over, and lit it. She smiled at him, tossed her head back, and blew out a smoke ring as big as my dinner plates. Cox grinned and dropped the lighter in his trousers, while Butch continued.

"This note says he loves you. Is that why Andrew Dawkins was at your window?"

"I haven't the faintest idea, Sheriff." She batted her Hollywood eyelashes. "Like I told you, I hardly knew him."

"Had he ever been to your window at the Grater house before?"

"Heavens no."

Butch held his palms out to her. "By the way, should I call you Mrs. Ivey?"

"Please, call me Miss Ivey. All my close friends do."

Dropping his head, Butch placed a fist to his mouth and cleared his throat. "I'm not sure you should refer to me as a close friend. Please understand I'm investigating your involvement in a man's death."

"Well okaaay. Ask me anything," she said, casting a polished smile too bright to ignore.

"I should have asked if you'd like to have an attorney present."

Motioning to the man next to her, she said, "Randall Carr here is not only my agent, he's my attorney. He usually lights my cigarettes, too." She sneered at him. "Don't you, Randall?"

Randy Carr was yawning; his chin nestled in his palms. He reached in his pocket, pulled out a butane lighter and flicked it in front of her burning cigarette. She brushed him off and smiled at Deputy Cox, then returned her focus to Butch. "Besides, Sheriff, I don't need a lawyer. He was breaking into my bedroom."

Butch squeezed his eyebrows together. "Did he break the window? Try to open it?"

"I saw a hand. He was trying to break in." She tamped down an unfinished cigarette into the sheriff's tin ashtray.

"Tell me how the pistol ended up beside his body."

"I took it with me. I thought someone might still be outside." A stricken look crossed her face. "Then I saw him on the ground. It was awful. There was blood. He wasn't moving."

Butch kept probing. And Tully Ivey kept repeating the same sequence of events — from when she first saw someone outside, to pulling the trigger.

An hour more of routine questions and the sheriff was done. "I'm going to release you under your own recognizance. But you must not leave Solo without my permission. Do you understand?"

"Of course, Sheriff, whatever you say."

Stamping out her third cigarette, she stood, as tall and regal as her reputation. She oozed grace and charm with the confidence of royalty who'd never expected to spend a single night in some Mississippi jail cell.

Butch seemed enamored with her. Me? I was disappointed in the sheriff's interrogation.

"Cox, I want you to drive Miz Ivey and Mr. Carr out to the Grater house," the sheriff said.

"Be my pleasure," Cox said, spreading his cowboy legs, both thumbs wrapped around his belt buckle.

After Tully Ivey and Randy Carr left with Deputy Cox, I approached the sheriff, "How come you let her off so easy?"

His response was lame. "If somebody was trying to get into your bedroom in the middle of the night what would you do?"

"I'd call you."

He scowled. "Martha, I'd advise you not to get involved in this."

"It's too late. I'm doing this for Shirley."

He walked away in a huff.

And it was too late to visit Shirley, so I phoned her from the sheriff's department.

"Shirley, I am so sorry about Andrew. I believe it was just a terrible accident."

I explained some of the circumstances, but didn't mention the note. No sense rattling her nerves more than necessary.

"But, Martha, what was Andrew doing at her window? Why was he there?"

"I don't know. But I'm going to look into it." She deserved to know why her husband died.

"You will? Thank you. Thank you so much." Her voice broke on a sob.

Driving home, I vowed to root out any evil behind his death — if there was any. Maybe the shooting was self-defense. In the Mississippi Delta, we're not sure who committed anything. Including murders. Maybe Tully Ivey had every right to shoot somebody breaking into her bedroom.

We all knew Andrew Dawkins as a good-looking, well-respected cotton farmer in Bethel County. Two years ago, we even thought he might marry Mary Grater after her divorce from Capp. But one day — whoosh! — he was gone. Turned up a month later with Shirley Williamson from Memphis on his arm. He stayed out on his farm and did his churching — and everything else — in Greenlee, probably because he was too embarrassed to face our little Bible study group at church on Sundays.

Shirley Dawkins was his opposite. If Calvary's doors were open, she was there. Mary and Shirley even became good friends in our Bible study group. I always thought it was very Christian-like, Mary holding no grudges against Shirley and all.

Still, the note in Andrew's hand led to a series of bizarre discoveries nobody expected.

CHAPTER 2

The Movie

Hollywood moviemakers come to the Mississippi Delta in search of dirt-rich, titillating stories. Stories from Tennessee Williams, William Faulkner, and now me, Martha McRae.

I'm just a small-town widow surviving on a ragtag weekly newspaper, a boardinghouse, and a book I'd written about the good people of Solo — and the evil that had taken root in our little speck of Delta earth.

I soon learned "Hollywood" had come to exploit the evil in my book, not the good.

When RTO Studios first contacted me, I was floored. They wanted to make a movie out of The Rector.

"How much do you pay for something like that?"

"Mrs. McRae, I'm authorized to offer you $25,000."

More than I make in two years.

The deal went through and I deposited the check in Greenlee's Bank Plus branch.

Within a few weeks, a location scout rented one of my rooms. He spent two weeks taking photographs around Bethel County.

Two months later, the film crew arrived.

Most of the regular crew — soundman, cameraman, grips, makeup people — stayed at the new Holiday Inn in Greenlee. But the movie's producer rented the Grater house for the executive crew and lead actors, Tully Ivey and Mario Mastrioni.

I was surprised to hear Capp Grater had rented his home. Oneeda claimed he "needed the money." Whatever for, I'll never know, as he'd likely fade away in prison. Two years ago, Capp had to abandon Solo's largest and grandest home in exchange for a ten-foot cell in Parchman Penitentiary.

I helped put him away.

The Grater home had been decked out with exotic species of hardwoods — Brazilian Cherry, tiger maple, even some African species I could never pronounce — all courtesy of Capp's lumber business.

Capp had built a Southern-style, five-bedroom mansion with a commercial kitchen, a burl walnut paneled library, and a garden room — my favorite. It was filled with indigenous plants that grow more lush than stories told at Delta cocktail parties.

Five of the RTO executives slept upstairs — Al Goldsmith, the producer; Banner O'Brien, the director; Mario Mastrioni, the lead male actor; and Randy Carr. Tully Ivey had the downstairs master bedroom.

The young scriptwriter, Andy Chinn, rented one of my upstairs rooms. "For peace and quiet," he'd said, "where I can think and write. No distractions."

At night, Chinn always went out drinking with the crew. On one such occasion, Oneeda Mae Harpole, my best friend and Solo's busiest gossip, snuck into Chinn's room and found the movie script. After reading part of it, she met me downstairs with the news.

"Martha, it's about capital punishment. About Mississippi — how immoral we are for executing Sonny Sartain."

"Sonny Sartain? A movie about him?"

I'd been a witness at his execution. If he wasn't Lucifer's brother, he was next of kin.

"The Killing. That's the name of the movie," Oneeda added.

"And all this time I thought it was gonna be a decent movie about Father Davidson," I said, disappointed.

"The producer, Al Goldsmith — remember what he told us in church? He said it was gonna be about Davidson." With a sad face, Oneeda added, "They've stopped filming for now, though."

"I know. The tabloids ran a story about it."

"What'd it say?"

"I have it here somewhere. Let me find it." I grabbed it from my nightstand and returned.

"Here it is," I said." I'll read it. Goldsmith says, 'We decided to stop production until our star feels up to being back on camera, after such an ordeal.' Is that not the sorriest excuse you've ever heard?" I slapped the magazine against my palm and smiled. "But he can't be a happy man right now. I read somewhere that every day lost in the movie business is money down the drain."

CHAPTER 3

Miss Ivey

Tallulah Ivey is her real name. But her stage name is Tully Ivey. Anybody who's been in a movie theater knows her — or at least knows her screen image. Those closest to her, the ones who attend to her every whim, call her "Miss Ivey." She's single (divorced three times) and rarely without Randy Carr by her side.

Carr, a full-blooded American capitalist, accumulated as much capital as possible from Tully Ivey's stardom — not a trial lawyer, just her agent-lawyer, running interference on legal matters for ten-percent of her earnings. He reminded me of a bird with specs. Tall and skinny, balding, with circular wire-rim glasses clinging to a beak-nose.

*
My first clue in Andrew Dawkins's death came on August four, a week before the shooting. Oneeda had visited to drop off some gossip. It was a Sunday afternoon.

Smacking on her Juicy Fruit, she said, "Guess who Susie Parker saw last night? Andrew Dawkins, with that movie actress, Tully Ivey. I think they've got something goin' on."

"Goin' on? Whadda you mean?"

"You know," she wiggled her brows, "between the sheets."

"Really? How do you know?"

"Remember, it rained yesterday. They shut down filming. Everybody took the day off. Tully Ivey and Andrew ate supper at Charlie's Place. Susie was their waitress. She waited on Tully Ivey! Can you believe it? And Andrew ... he's playing a small role in the movie. That's how he got to know her."

"So? Maybe they were discussing the script."

"Nope. Susie says she overheard 'em talking about meeting up. She didn't hear everything, but she heard Tully Ivey say, 'meet at the Alamo tonight.'"

"The Alamo Motel?"

Oneeda's face wrinkled into a frown. "I know. It's turned into a one-hour sinning service."

*
Three days after the shooting, we buried Andrew Dawkins. I sat between Mary and Oneeda on the second row, unable to keep my eyes off grieving widow Shirley Dawkins. She sat on Calvary's front pew — dabbing her eyes with a linen handkerchief.

Father Paul Compañero, one of my boarders, performed the service. With solemn eyes he acknowledged the congregation.

"The passing of a loved one leaves a hole in our heart. We miss them. But death is inevitable, is it not? Yet, our souls live on for eternity. Where our souls go from here is more important than the life we lived on earth. But Andrew Dawkins lived a good life. He was a man of faith. And right now he's in a far better place."

Blah, blah, blah ...

Ahh, funerals. The preacher always says the same thing — He lived a good life. HeS in heaven now.

If only that last part were always true.

Like any minister with concern for the grieving, Father Compañero leaned over the pulpit and addressed the widow.

"Shirley, while Andrew's obedience to God may have lapsed, and though his faith may have weakened, Jesus remained faithful to him."

Shirley bawled, while we dabbed our eyes.

Father Compañero limped down two sanctuary steps toward Shirley. (Father Paul wore a right leg brace, having contracted polio as a five-year-old growing up poor in Mexico.)

She looked up at him as he leaned down and held her hands. We could hear him. "Shirley, trust in the Lord. I want to meet with you next week. I have a book on grief. It will help you."

She could only nod.

Later, at the gravesite, I spotted Tully Ivey. She must've been hiding in the back of the nave during the church service. Out in the open, she was the obvious starlet — tight black sequined dress and dark sunglasses surrounding her eyes like a woman born out of mystery. Her dark red hair added to her intrigue. And why not? She was the queen of glamour. I'll admit, the stories Oneeda had told me were titillating.

(Continues…)

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Excerpted from "The Actress"
by .
Copyright © 2017 Michael Hicks Thompson.
Excerpted by permission of Shepherd King Publishing, LLC.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Editorial Reviews

"What sets The Actress apart from most murder mysteries is a wry sense of ironic humor that permeates events seen through the eyes of the narrator—Martha McRae, boarding house owner and publisher of a small-town newspaper." Diane Donovan, Donovan Literary Services.

From the Publisher