THEY'VE GOT MY NUMBER

You’d think we were a nation of spies with all our passcodes and usernames and unlisted cell phone numbers. I’ll admit that (even with tons of caffeine) my memory is somewhat impaired by my advanced years or maybe it’s just laziness. In any case, I can’t believe how hard it is to get ahold of someone. For one thing, as mentioned, cell phones are unlisted. For another, there’s no longer a phonebook with anything except commercial numbers in it. And then there’s the annoying practice of using words to remind you of an enterprise. Word-numbers like 206-647-8262, which translates to 206-Nirvana or 1-800-Got Junk. I always avoid calling letters but several weeks ago, looking for advice about my mom, I needed to contact a nurse’s help station at St. Joseph’s Mercy Hospital in Ann Arbor and the number listed was a word. Something like 734-NURSESS. I dialed away, hoping I wouldn’t get an automated message and thinking about my questions and then, lo and behold, a person picked up the phone. A woman. “Hello,” she said, sounding as if she didn’t mean it. “Oh, hi,” I said, brightly. “I’m trying to find out whether my mom needs a biopsy in order to have radiation.” A brief pause. “Who is this?” I explained. Over explained. I was the daughter, calling from out of town, didn’t want to risk a lung collapse, blah, blah, blah. More silence and then “Who gave you this number?” By now I was wondering whether I’d accidentally called a Southeast Michigan branch of the CIA or some other secret agency. “Uh, I think it was Stacy Somebody. I think she’s a social worker.” “Huh,” the voice said, disapproval dripping from the single syllable. “That’s happened before. The number is only one digit off from ours.” “Oh, I’m so sorry,” I said, still thinking it was weird she hadn’t given me a department or a name. “Who did I call?” “The hospital morgue.” Let me go on to say her name was Mary and we chatted for a few minutes. I told her I was interested in morgues because of writing mystery stories and she told me she was interested in the Upper Peninsula. So we talked about snow and death for a few minutes and at the end of the conversation she invited me to drop in when I was in town. “Just to visit,” she added, hastily. “Not to stay.” In spite of the pleasant encounter, I still don’t like word phone numbers. But just for fun I tried to convert my number to a word and I came up with 703-SVU-OINK. If you call it, expect me to respond with a suspicious “Who is this?”

LIFE and DEATH

I am in Ann Arbor (the town that was named for me) which is not only my hometown but my spiritual home in my spiritual state (note the cozy mystery series - The Bait & Stitch Mysteries - set in the Upper Peninsula. The prequel to accidental detective Hatti Lehtinen's story is set for release on May 1, 2018. Anyway, business aside, I am here because my mother, who is only three years away from her personal centennial, suffered a collapsed lung during a biopsy. She spent a week in the local hospital where two of my children were born and where my father and grandfather died. It is a state-of-the-art facility and they took great care of her. Afterwards, the hospital doc sent her to a care and rehab facility where I (for some reason known only to myself) believed they would keep her for three weeks which would include the time devoted to a short spurt of radiation for lung cancer. Imagine my surprise when I arrived there yesterday to tell her I'd made her a hair appointment and she trumped that with an announcement of her own: "I have news, too. I get to go home on Monday!" "No!" I barked my response in front of one of her dear friends, my husband and my dog. I followed up this graceless moment with fifteen minutes of how it would not be possible for her to come home because my husband, brother, dog and I COULD NOT LIVE IN THE SAME HOUSE with her for three weeks whether she was sick or not. I probably shouldn't be telling this story. I know I sound heartless. But the fact is, my mom smokes. She's smoked for 70 years which is why she has lung cancer and is facing radiation. She has said she will stop smoking but my brother, who has a really good mom-b.s.-detector, doesn't believe her. He's probably right. At the age of 97 she feels she's entitled to live her life as she wishes. But, really, how can we squeeze all these folks into my childhood home? How can I become the non-smoking police? How can I insist that she use a cane/walker/raised toilet seat/grab bar when all she wants to do is play solitaire on the kitchen counter with her long, elegant black-and-gold cigarette holder between her teeth? I can't. What's more, my brother, who is the chef, chauffeur, manager of the house (we had to buy and install a new washing machine), and really the only reason I am still semi-sane, will leave. I will have to cook, chauffeur, assist, nurse, do laundry and monitor the smoking. But I haven't gotten to the funny part. In an effort to talk with a social worker at rehab center I got re-routed to the social work office at the hospital. Someone must have pushed a wrong digit on the number and I got a voice that said, suspiciously, "hello? Who is this?" I explained who I was (no one important) and she said, "huh. What do you want?" We went back and forth for awhile, neither of us really making sense to the other. Finally I laid all the cards on the table. "Look I'm trying to find a social worker or a nurse or a doctor or someone who will strong arm the rehab center to keep my mom there longer. I know it sounds heartless, but you don't know our family. We're like oil and water. We get along fine as long as there are 500 miles between us. We even celebrate Christmas on the phone. You just don't understand. I can't spend three weeks of watching Law and Order re-runs at the pitch of a Nazi siren. I can't spend every waking minute as the cigarette police!" "I could probably help you with that," the voice said. By then I had forgotten who was even talking to. "Do you know who you called," she asked. "The morgue." I told her I wanted to find a social worker who would insist that the rehab center (and Medicare) keep my mother longer. Again, the unidentified voice said, 'huh."

THE COZY MYSTERY or No dogs were harmed in the writing of this book

If the private-eye novels of Dashiell Hammett and others are hard-boiled, then keeping to the egg analogy, the cozy is soft-boiled. Or maybe even poached. It is murder with a light touch in the snug-as-a-bug-in-a-rug comfort of a small town. The community, where, like Cheers, everybody knows your name, is the kind of place everybody thinks they would like to live. Maybe it has a town green in the center or a yearly festival that everyone attends. It is Brigadoon with quirky and engaging characters, at least until a body appears under a rose-covered trellis or behind a tree at a Sunday school picnic. The sleuth, nearly always an amateur and a woman like my Hatti Lehtinen, a law school drop-out and recreational knitter who, separated from her husband, has returned to her hometown of Red Jacket on Michigan’s remote Keweenaw Peninsula to run a bait shop. As the organizer of the knitting circle, Hatti is in a perfect position to hear any and all gossip that pertains to the crime. It doesn’t hurt that she knows everyone in town and is related to most of them. Another aspect of the cozy mystery is the juxtaposition of the worst crime known to man in the midst of a group of people who meet on Wednesday nights for potluck and Thursdays for bingo. The perp is never a serial killer. Instead, he is that most intriguing of individuals: a card-carrying member of the community who has gotten himself into a predicament from which he can see no other way out. Cozy mysteries can and do include relationship subplots and introspection. They include twists and turns and red herrings and carefully placed clues designed to help the reader figure out the puzzle. What they do not include are descriptions of blood and guts or the death of a beloved character, especially not of a child. And that brings me to the Cardinal Rule of Cozy Mysteries, as I understand (and approve) it: Never, never, never harm an animal. That bichon that appears in the kitchen in chapter one, had better be healthy and present on the final page. The calico wandering around the garden early in the story had better be curled in front of the fireplace at the end. No creatures can be victims. Not even snakes. And, believe me when I tell you that’s a big concession from me. Mysteries in general and cozies in particular are, I think, appeal to us because, at least between the covers of the book, the wrongdoer is punished, good wins out over evil and dogs live forever. In other words, for once, life makes sense.