Alone in his cell, Tenpenny wracked his brain to the point of nausea trying to figure out what had happened. Who would target him? Why would anyone want to target him? Or maybe he hadn’t been targeted at all. Maybe it was random—somebody saw an opportunity and took it. This made no sense either. What did the Brit stand to get out of all this? And who the hell was he?
One night he sprung out of bed, suddenly remembering the bottle of rum the kid had given him. Tenpenny had taken it out of a brown paper bag, and Beresford had returned the bag to his backpack. That’s how he’d done it! He must have used the bag to wrap the manuscript, which is how Tenpenny’s fingerprints had ended up on it. But again, why? What was Beresford’s endgame? In what way could he have possibly prospered from Roger’s nightmare? Unfortunately, Tenpenny had never had the patience or mind-set to complete even a crossword puzzle, and if this were one, he would have needed giant thematic clues such as WELLSY and KARMA and FAMILY and REVENGE to come even close. Eventually he just accepted it, and learned to live with the eerie feeling that he’d been framed by some invisible force, a ghost as such, which was as close to the truth as he’d ever come.
ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS
LaShonda Katrice Barnett is the author of the novel Jam on the Vine and a story collection, and is the editor of two volumes on music and the creative process: I Got Thunder and Off the Record. Her short fiction has appeared in the Chicago Tribune, Guernica Magazine, New Orleans Review, Juked, and elsewhere. She lives in New York City. For more information visit www.LaShondaBarnett.com.
Thomas Cobb is the author of Crazy Heart, which was made into an Academy Award–winning film, along with Shavetail and With Blood in Their Eyes, both of which won Spur Awards, and the forthcoming novel Darkness the Color of Snow. He lives in the woods beyond Providence.
Bruce DeSilva’s hard-boiled crime novels featuring investigative reporter Liam Mulligan are set in Providence. He has won the Edgar and Macavity awards and has been a finalist for the Anthony, Barry, and Shamus awards. Previously he worked as a journalist for forty years, editing investigative stories that won virtually every major journalism prize including the Pulitzer. He has reviewed books for numerous publications including the New York Times and Publishers Weekly.
Peter Farrelly grew up in Cumberland, Rhode Island, and is a graduate of Providence College and Columbia University. He has written and directed several movies and is the author of the novels Outside Providence and The Comedy Writer, as well as the children’s book Abigail the Happy Whale. He and his brother Bobby were inducted into the Rhode Island Heritage Hall of Fame in 2002.
Amity Gaige is the author of three novels, O My Darling, The Folded World, and Schroder. A New York Times Notable Book, Schroder has been translated into eighteen languages, and in 2014 it was short-listed for the Folio Prize. Her short stories, reviews, and essays have appeared in numerous publications. A graduate of Brown University, she lived in Providence and Cranston for a combined ten years. She currently lives in Hartford, Connecticut, and is a visiting writer at Amherst College.
Ann Hood is the author of the best-selling novels The Obituary Writer, The Knitting Circle, An Italian Wife, and Somewhere Off the Coast of Maine. Her memoir Comfort: A Journey Through Grief was a New York Times Editors’ Choice and chosen as one of the top ten nonfiction books of 2008 by Entertainment Weekly.
Hester Kaplan’s books include the story collections Unravished and The Edge of Marriage, winner of the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction, and the novels The Tell and Kinship Theory. Her work has appeared in literary journals and anthologies, including The Best American Short Stories series. Recent awards include a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and the McGinnis-Ritchie Award. She lives in Providence, the noirest city of them all.
Marie Myung-Ok Lee is a graduate of Brown University, where she taught for fifteen years. She is the author of the novel Somebody’s Daughter (Beacon Press). Her next book is forthcoming from Simon & Schuster. Her essays have appeared in the New York Times, Slate, the Guardian, the Nation, the Atlantic, and Salon. She teaches creative writing at Columbia University and is a founder and former board president of the Asian American Writers’ Workshop.
Robert Leuci worked for twenty years as an NYPD detective assigned to narcotics and organized crime. Since retirement, he has published six novels and one memoir, and has written various TV scripts, book reviews in the Providence Journal, and magazine pieces. Leuci is currently an adjunct professor in the English department of the University of Rhode Island, and in 1998 won a Rhode Island State Council on the Arts award.