A Murder of Crows...it starts like this

The morning Lodge Johnson died, I was an angry dog looking for a hand to bite. It was 103 effing degrees outside – at only 10:00 a.m. – I had ants all over my kitchen at home, despite having doled out $450 to a “major pest control company,” and the humidity rivaled that of the Florida swamplands. I had just spent fifteen minutes on the telephone with XPest, negotiating their un-user-friendly automated customer service. And then the air conditioner wasn’t working when I got to the office. To top that off, crazy Dora Hughes came in, and she wanted to hire me.

I had hung out my “Blackstone Investigations” shingle a year before, in Carlton, a charming little wine burg several miles outside of Forest Grove, a Portland sort-of suburb. The office and license I had acquired partly to please the feds – and my girlfriend Lauren. But, mostly, I wanted an excuse to write off my new car and expensive furniture. Unfortunately, there were people who took my advertisement seriously, just like Dora here. Who would have thought I’d find so much work as a private investigator out here in the countryside?

Reluctantly, I turned down the volume on my stereo. Chris Rea was just heading into my favorite part of “Highway to Hell”. The way the morning was going, it seemed fitting that I wouldn’t hear the best of Hell. Some days, you can’t catch a break.