Death and Bottle Caps

Dear story snacker,

Happy New Year!

For 2025, I’ve resolved to send you a newsletter including the first part of my murder mystery short story, Death and Bottlecaps. So I’m already set for the year.

‘But!’ I hear you cry at your computer screen, tearing your hair, ‘How good can this mystery be?! It’s the first murder mystery you’ve ever written!”

NOT SO, my hyperbolic and hypothetical accuser, it’s my SECOND!

My first murder mystery was THE CASE OF THE KILLER KAPPA, one I wrote recently for my online writing business PROTAGONIST.

Having now written one 30-page murder mystery, I am an expert in the craft. I won’t even mention the detective mystery I wrote as an 8-year-old, not because it starred an otter and a squirrel as the detectives, or because it was a blatant rip-off of a Daredevil comic I’d just read, but because I never finished it.

Speaking of unfinished, here is Part 1 of my second murder mystery. Enjoy.

STORY SNACK

DEATH AND BOTTLE CAPS

Part 1

The killer was waiting politely outside Romulus’ office door.

Private detective Erik Romulus walked up the steep hill through the light drizzle that natives of Washington state like him had long since ceased to notice. Tall, thin as certain commonly used garden implements, and wearing a dark suit that would have made the Grim Reaper tip his hat as he passed to a fellow wraith, Romulus had a long, angular face, deeply lined and surrounded by a lustrous mane of silver hair denoting his hexagenerian status.

Romulus resembled an old werewolf too world-weary to fully transform. A large, sharp nose protruded from between a pair of gray eyes so piercing they could light a campfire at fifty yards. With these, the old detective examined the bottle cap he rolled between his long fingers as he trod slowly up the hill.

It was old, but in good condition, like himself. No dents, discoloring or even scars to be seen, unlike himself. Coca-Cola was stamped on its top, and Romulus’ practiced eye knew it had capped a classic Coke just before the United States joined the second world war. An eighty-year-old bottlecap in such good condition would be a welcome addition to anyone’s collection, and this one might save the detective’s life.

Romulus glanced down at his rain-speckled watch, its face on the underside of his wrist, an old habit he had no interest in breaking. 7:59 in the morning. Twelve hours until the meeting he had been dodging for weeks.

If he missed this one tonight, they would kill him.