A Top Secret Sneak Preview of Chapter 1 of My Mystery Novel

Mrs. Hocking was just about to fall asleep when she suddenly came to the realization she wasn’t sleepy. It was, after all, only 2 p.m. and she was in a mattress shop instead of her own bed. Also, the mattress shop was her work.

As she got up and started to take off her pajamas, a customer walked in.

“Oh! Sorry. I thought you were open,” a very quiet man said.

“WHAT?” replied Mrs. Hocking.

“OH! SORRY. I THOUGHT YOU WERE OPEN,” he repeated, this time in a scream.

“Sir, we’re inside. Please keep your voice down.”

He shyly replied, “Oh, I’m sorry.”

She shrugged, “It’s okay; it happens.”

Mrs. Hocking began to make a show of writing things down in a clipboard, which the man could tell she was faking, because there was no paper in the clipboard and her writing utensil wasn’t a pen, but rather, a pen backwards.

As she continued this dance, pacing around the store, “writing” things down, the man introduced himself.

“I am Timothy,” he said, while following her. “And I’ve come to ask you about—”

“Come on! Spit it out!” Mrs. Hocking interrupted.

“That’s what I was trying to—”

“I haven’t got all day!”

“—the body. I’ve come to ask you about the body.”

Mrs. Hocking took a deep sigh and sat down, beckoning towards Timothy to do the same.

She began, “It’s perfectly normal for a man to lose hair—”

Timothy leapt up, “Not about MY body, about the body of Freddy Hughes.” He held up a picture, “And why it was found outside your store.”

“Oh, dear!” Mrs. Hocking exclaimed. “When did you see this?”

“A little bit ago, as I first walked in.”

“Well, I don’t have anything to do with it, if that’s what you’re implying!”

Timothy slowly stood up and looked Mrs. Hocking up and down.

He asked, “Promise?”

She said, “Promise.”

Satisfied with her answer, he sat back down next to her. He proceeded to pull out many photos of the body from earlier. She wondered how he was able to take so many pictures in the short time they’ve known each other, but he was like this: mysterious, artistic, sensitive. She knew he was unknowable, and that’s what had always made him so alluring.

She suddenly had an idea, and as such, she excitedly said, “I just suddenly had an idea!”

Timothy replied, “I wish you had just said the idea instead of announcing you had one.”

She paced around, stroking her chin as though she was coming up with the idea now, instead of a little bit ago: “What if you and I solved this mystery together?”

He asked, “Well, don’t you have to work?”

Mrs. Hocking laughed and said, “Do what you love and you’ll never work a day in your life.”

This didn’t make any sense to Timothy, but he didn’t really care enough to ask follow-up questions, so he motioned for Mrs. Hocking to follow him to his car, which was parked out back, and got into the passenger seat, tossing the keys to Mrs. Hocking, as he only had his permit, not his license. How HE got there in the first place? Well, that was a second mystery to add to the first, but only to Mrs. Hocking, not him, as he was already aware that he had arrived…

…via crimes.