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    Trouble in a Politically-Correct Town
    Trouble in a Politically-Correct Town
    Trouble in a Politically-Correct Town
    Ebook67 pages59 minutes

    Trouble in a Politically-Correct Town

    By Albert Bates and Sue Star

    ()

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    About this ebook

    Three stories about quirky Boulder, Colorado. The quirks include prairie dogs, the homeless and the occassional case of stalking.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherD. M. Kreg Publishing
    Release dateFeb 21, 2017
    ISBN9781386908685
    Trouble in a Politically-Correct Town

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      Book preview

      Trouble in a Politically-Correct Town - Albert Bates

      R-E-S-P-E-C-T

      Ever since the murders of those other karate teachers five months ago, Maribeth felt vulnerable.  Like she was going to die, too.  And not even her first degree black belt could protect her.  Theirs hadn’t protected them (although Rick’s was second degree, and she didn’t know about the others), so why should hers protect her any better? 

      The doubts first entered her head sometime last spring, even though the murderer had already been caught and was locked up by then.  That little fact didn’t make Maribeth feel any better.  Maybe it was on account of all the notoriety surrounding the funerals.  Or maybe because it was the kind of spring when the weather jumped from winter slush to summer heat in the space of a week. 

      Whatever, she hated doubts.  She was a doubt-free woman, thanks to Master Kim, who’d trained her in the martial arts and then offered her a job as one of his assistants shortly after she’d earned her black belt. 

      That hadn’t saved her.  During that short-lived week of spring, she started hearing footsteps behind her in the parking lot every night after work.  It was a vast, empty, poorly-lit field of asphalt, since Master Kim’s studio was located in the warehouse district on the east side of town, on the other side of the train tracks.  No one else worked at night in those warehouses while classes were going on in the karate studio.  Each time she spilled out of the steamy air of the workout floor into the cool, crisp and clear air of night, she detected footsteps behind her.  But when she turned around, no one was there.  Better that, she thought, than the alternative. 

      A gun in her face? 

      Not likely here in Boulder, a mid-sized town sprawling against the Front Range of Colorado, where gun problems were reserved more for marauding bears on the lam rather than criminals.  Oh, there was the occasional case of notoriety here and there, like little six-year-old beauty queens from dysfunctional families.  The occasional drug-deal-gone-wrong.  A student or two going wild. 

      And the karate murders. 

      So when the phone calls started up from one certain Heavy Breather—coming to her land line in the rental house she shared with three other roommates in Martin Acres, the post-World War II suburban boomtown of affordable housing for returning vets—she thought at first that H.B. had made a mistake and probably really wanted one of her roommates.  Lydia, no doubt.  That girl was always in trouble for one thing or another. 

      The phone would ring and ring, and even if no one picked up, he breathed heavily into the answering machine.  She could hear the heavy breathing all the way from the other end of the matchbox-sized house.  A rattle of phlegm punctuated every third breath.  Lydia denied knowing anyone who sounded like that. 

      But then Mr. Heavy Breather switched to calling Maribeth on her cell phone (she didn’t know for sure that he was a he, but he couldn’t be a woman, because really!), and she knew for sure that someone was stalking her. 

      It lasted all summer. 

      Her sort-of friend Nell, who liked to mother everyone, encouraged her to call the police, and in fact Nell (kind of a busy-body, truth be known) had an in with one of the cops, in that Nell was always running into this one certain cop.  He was a police misfit, in Maribeth’s humble opinion, in that he was into everything except policing, or so it seemed to the uninitiated like her.  He was both a bicyclist (not too big a surprise for this biking capital of the world) and an artist, as in real paint.  The kind with turpentine, and all.  Except, Boulderites, of course, used something friendlier to the environment. 

      Gosh, she wondered if he ever did nudes?

      She bet he did. 

      Anyway... 

      Mr. Heavy Breather was bugging the heck out of her (rattle, wheeze, whoosh, rattle), and so she took Nell’s advice and arranged to meet her friend the cop.  Detective Sean Hennesey turned out to be a cute little nerd, a man she could take down to his knees in a heartbeat if he ever tried to rough up this babe.  She thought he was a little too unrealistic (no one else ever called her ma’am outside the karate studio), but maybe it was a cop thing. 

      You respect me, and I’ll respect you. 

      Anyway, he started asking her questions, like cops are supposed to do, about just about everything else besides her case of the heavy breather, and eventually he got around to asking about Rick.  Who was dead.  Maybe that’s what excited Detective Hennesey.  Or maybe it was just because yes, indeed, she had known Rick.  Who didn’t?  It was a pretty small community of real martial artists here in this town, what with all the academic snobs, who knew exactly how smart they were.  They were so smart that they took up kicking and punching for the zen

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