Ideas for a Murder Mystery

by Armando Simón (June 2025)

 

Orville Ozimek drove up to the small restaurant and saw that the parking lot was almost full, which meant that there were a lot of customers inside and that, in turn, meant there would be a lot of background noise inside. No matter. It was the best Vietnamese food in town by unanimous agreement in his group.

He parked his car and entered the establishment. Walking straight to the back of the place and into a large room that was partitioned off, he saw some of his fellow writers already there, talking amongst themselves. As usual, they had put together several of the square tables in order to form a rectangle, and they were seated along the elongated table. Orville greeted everyone, and no sooner did he sit down than a Mexican waitress came over and took his order. The others were either eating or had already done so.

At the far end of the table Dana, a young man in his twenties was talking to a couple of women. “I started reading another novel by Margaret Atwood but, again, couldn’t finish it. Sooner or later, she’ll be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, she’s boring enough.” The two ladies disagreed with his judgement of Attwood being boring. Orville disagreed with Dana but said nothing.

Across from Orville sat Russell, a big man, actually a huge man, with a beard and wearing a cowboy hat. He was talking to Lydia, a woman in her twenties, a fake redhead.

“I had the same problem when my kids were little, when they were babies, right up through second grade. They’d get an ear infection, and they’d cry from the pain. Took them to the doctor, gave them medication, with mixed results. Then, one time I was talking with a friend of mine from Greece—he had one of those Greek last names that’s so long it takes you ten minutes to pronounce, if you can pronounce it, that is. All I remember is that it was full of “p”s. Anyway, he told me about a cure for ear infections. You take a half teaspoon of olive oil at room temperature. You make sure your kid’s head is flat—he’s gotta be lying down—and you put a few drops of the olive oil into his ear, and you gently rub the ear. Lydia … the pain was gone in seconds, I’m telling you, seconds. Worked better and faster than any medication.”

“And did it always work?” she asked him.

“Always!”

The waitress brought Orville’s food, and he began eating. He tuned everyone out and concentrated on his food and on the story that he was going to present to the group. Halfway through his meal he heard a voice behind him.

“Hello. Is this the writers’ group?”

“Yes, come on in!” Russell welcomed. “Pull yourself a chair. What’s your name?”

“Yukio Kutsuna,” he said as he sat down.

“I’m Russell. This is Lydia to my right.”

“Hello.”

“Hello.”

“Opposite me, acting like he hasn’t had a meal in a week is Orville.”

Orville looked up from his food to greet the newcomer. Kutsuna was in his early twenties, trying to grow a mustache. “Hello, Yukio, what kind of stuff do you write?” asked Orville in Japanese. He had lived in Japan for many years, spoke the language fluently and he noted that Kutsuna had the thickest Osaka accent he had ever come across.

“And, over yonder, at the far end,” Russell continued, pointing, “is Polly, Dana and Lulu.”

“Hello,” Kutsuna said to them. “I’m working on a novel,” he responded to Orville.

“Me, I only write short stories.”

“Me, I usually write humor,” said Russell. “My girlfriend is my muse. She says I amuse her. But I also write plays.”

“You write foreplays?” asked Dana. “How is that even possible.”

“Stage plays, Dana. Don’t get cute. That’s my job.”  He faced Kutsuna again. “But today I brought a poem. Now, let me tell you how we run the group,” Russell went on. “Whoever wants their material critiqued should bring copies for everyone to follow while the person reads it. Did you bring anything to read?”

“Yes, but no copies. I didn’t know. I’m sorry.”

“No worries. Next time. The order of reading is by order of who arrives first, second, and so on.”

“Critiques and suggestions have to be done politely and without any harsh or rude remarks,” said Lydia.

“Now, Dana over there,” Russell smiled pointing to the young man at the end of the table between the two ladies, “you gotta watch out for him. He bites. I’ve been thinking of buying a muzzle to put on him.”

“Hang on there, I wanna speak up on my behalf,” Dana smiled back. “I know that a person can feel proud of what they’ve written. Especially with beginners. It’s the same feeling that one gets when you have a baby. Same feeling. You think it’s the greatest, it’s beautiful. But sometimes … Jesus! That’s one ugly baby!”

“Yes, Dana, but you can be diplomatic about it,” Lydia argued. “There are many ways of saying the same thing. You can spread butter on a slice of toast with a butter knife rather than with a hatchet.”

“It’s more fun with a hatchet,” Dana responded, shrugging and with a wicked smile. “Besides, people will remember the hatchet, but not the butter knife.”

Lydia sighed, shook her head. Russell just smiled.

“So, what’s your novel about?” Orville asked him, this time in English.

“It’s a mystery. I haven’t worked out all of the details-”

“That’s what we’re here for,” Russell interjected.

“—but it’s about an immigrant who gets accidentally involved in a crime and things get complicated because of misunderstandings because of cultural differences.”

“Sounds interesting,” Orville said out of politeness, which was echoed by others, as he finished his food.

“What’s good to eat here?” Kutsuna asked, opening the menu.

“Everything,” several answered.

Orville looked over at the other end of the table and now listened to Polly, Dana and Lulu discussing the topic of agents, with Polly saying that they were necessary in order for book publishers to look at one’s work, Dana saying they were just mediocrities and gatekeepers since not a single great work of literature had been published in decades. Lulu was recounting the advice she had gotten from an agent once before.

“Oh, good! They have squid!” said Kutsuna and gave his order to the waitress who departed with the menu.

“I love to eat squid! My favorite part are the testicles.”

Everyone else stopped talking and stared at him.

“Yukio, I think you mean ‘tentacles,’” Orville suggested.

“Yes, that’s what I said.”

No one pointed out the error in pronunciation.

“Oh, Jared emailed me earlier. He can’t make it today,” Russell announced. Most of the group was not sorry at Jared’s absence. His style of writing was unpleasant, his plots boring and vague, and his characters insipid.

He looked at his watch. “It’s time. Let’s begin. Orville, you’re close, can you slide over that rickety door, so we don’t have to listen to the loud ladies out there?”

Orville got up and slid the wooden door, leaving a crack open for the waitress to open.

“The order is me, Dana, Lulu, Polly, Lydia and Orville.” He took out seven sheets of paper from a folder and passed six around.

Looking at him, you’d never take him to be a poet. He doesn’t fit the usual image, Orville thought once again.

Russell read his poem. At the end, he explained to Kutsuna, “After each reading, we take turns, clockwise, to give feedback. So, you go first.”

“I can’t say anything. I’m sorry. I don’t understand poetry.”

“Join the club,” said Dana.

Orville asked for clarification of one stanza, then it went around the table to the beginning.

“Dana! You’re up!”

Dana read a chapter from his sci-fi novel and then the critique circle began again. Everyone found it mildly interesting, liking the characterization of the protagonists.

“The problem with sci-fi is that most of the plots have been used, so the main interest is in the types of characters that one comes up with,” said Russell to Dana.

Lulu was next. A woman in her early 80s, she always preferred writing essays, vignettes of her early life as the child of a diplomat sent overseas, transferring from one post to the next. Her essays were always interesting. They were set in foreign countries with customs, history and traditions that were eye opening, with a glimpse of what the life of a diplomat’s family was like. This time she was relating living in Taiwan after Mao’s takeover of China. The “houseboy” —really a spy for the government as is always the case in diplomatic posts—had gone with Lulu and her mother to buy food at the market. The “houseboy” had adamantly prevented them from buying yams— “peasant food” —for dinner which would have brought disrepute to the family.

It was Polly’s turn. Her written material consisted of a woman cooking. It was very detailed and very tedious and very pointless. No other characters, so there was no dialogue, and no real ending. The stream of consciousness narration—and the pointlessness of it—was typical of Polly’s writings. Dana had once before referred to it as “words in a blender.”

When it came time to critique it, everyone else thought it was a waste of time and paper, but they presented their criticism on certain words or passages in a very delicate manner, although Orville said the whole thing felt “disembodied.”

Dana was more blunt. “Well, you all know how I feel about the stream of consciousness gimmick. You can’t lose the plot if you don’t have one there in the first place. That’s all I’m going to say.”

Now, as Lydia read her short story about a love affair, Orville thought about the progress she had made since first joining the group. She had originally been motivated to write because of her work, using a couple of unpleasant incidents where the boss had been obnoxious. For a long time, however, those incidents were the only things she wrote about, supposedly as fiction, but not even bothering to change the names, something she had been resistant to doing. So, she kept polishing and re-polishing her narrative. But, gradually, her tunnel vision had dissolved, and her horizons expanded to other topics, and the curious thing was that it had occurred once she had changed the names.

“And now, last but not least, we have the double-O with what I’m sure is going to be another one of his short stories,” said Russell.

“Before I start, let me say that it’s something different from what I usually write about” Orville began. “This time it’s a mystery and it’s not finished, so I’d like you to point out any mistakes, anything overlooked by the murderer. That way, the climax of the story, when he gets discovered—if he gets discovered—will be more of a surprise to the reader.”

He then began to read what he had written so far: a man discovers his beautiful wife is having an affair. His discovery is due to finding evidence in her cellphone, sexual pictures to be exact. He had been unable to sleep after waking up earlier than usual, so he had reached over to look over both their cellphones until he would fall asleep again. Angry at first, he decides to kill her and her lover, but he controls himself with great effort. He would kill them separately, at the right time. He leaves for work very early so he will not have to face her and betray his emotions. When he returns, he will have more self-control.

The husband waits until the weekend to kill her first. He confronts her, she denies it, then admits to it once he beats her. In fact, once he beats her, he loses his composure and instead of killing her quickly in a coldblooded manner, he thoroughly brutalizes her, finally strangling her.

He strips the body of all clothes, rings, anything identifiable, and puts the body in a plastic bag. At 3am, he drives off to an isolated spot in the country and dumps the body and takes the bag back with him. The murderer then goes to one of those self-service places where you can wash and vacuum one’s car for five bucks, or so. He wants to make sure that the type of dirt where he dumped the body is not sticking to the car. Then, to be thorough, he goes to another one, the type where one drives through the wash and the car gets cleaned to make sure the dirt on the tires gets washed off, but first he disposes of the bag in a dumpster.

Then, he drives home and, at this point, he has some remorse but in going through the text messages and photographs in her cellphone from the adulterer, the remorse is gone, and he starts planning his next murder.

“And that’s how far I’ve gotten. Any suggestions? Comments?”

“I can think of several things that would trip him up,” said Dana. “He’s not using gloves at any time. His DNA and fingerprints will be all over her, and even if she is his wife, maybe that’s one way to connect him to the crime, unless he’s got an ironclad alibi for his wife’s absence. Don’t forget, the spouse is always the primary suspect.”

“That’s right,” said Lydia. “Her relatives are also going to ask where she is. His relatives too. And their mutual friends.”

“She might get identified through her dental records,” Russell pointed out, “unless they got smashed when he smashed her face. Which brings me to the point that in the frenzy when he loses control, what usually happens is that blood gets splattered. If he ever comes under suspicion, he would have to explain the blood on the walls or carpet, and there’s no way he’ll get all of it out. No way!”

Orville was busy writing down notes.

“Well, nowadays, cameras are everywhere. He’s going to be seen at all these places,” said Lulu. “Besides, someone might see him carrying the body to the car.”

“Oh, didn’t I say that?” Orville looked up. “Yeah, I forgot! I was going to have the character put the body in the trunk of the car, but the car was going to be in the garage. They live in a house.”

“And GPS!” Kutsuna remembered. “His cellphone will have a record of where and when he travelled. And her cellphone too if he takes it along in the car.”

There was a lull in the conversation. No one could think of anything else that would trip up the murderer, unless with some chance encounter with a cop, but that ending would not be satisfying to a reader.

“Thanks, guys,” Orville finally said when no one had any other potential mistakes. “If I take all of these matters into account it’s going to be hard for me to find a reason for him to get caught, and I haven’t gotten that far yet.”

For a few minutes more, the group engaged in chitchat. Russell as usual, had a joke for the end: “Hey, I saw the Democrats beginning to canvas for votes for the forthcoming election. They were at the cemetery!”

The writers disbanded and some went to their car while a couple stayed behind to chat some more. Orville left and got in his car, his mind going over some of the points his fellow writers had made for the story. They had been very helpful in bringing up important details that had not occurred to him, though in hindsight they should have, had it not been for his mental state. One thing he had made up his mind, though. Well, for starters, when he got home later that night, he would not bash his cheating wife’s head as he had been looking forward to. Instead, he would strangle her with a rope he kept in the garage.

 

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Armando Simón is the author of The Only Red Star I Liked was a Starfish and Very Peculiar Stories.

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