A DEAD RED HEART
by R.P. Dahlke
Mystery, Amateur Sleuth

Chapter One:

I like having a man at my feet. Tough guys who grovel are my favorite, though I’m not averse to a little toe kissing when appropriate. I leave the toe kissing for those uneven date nights when my sweety, Sheriff Caleb Stone, is not on duty and I’m not neck deep in summertime work as a crop-duster.

None of which had anything to do with the man presently draped across my feet. Dead drunk, I figured, looking down at the patriotic red, white and blue ribbons binding his ponytail. I was too late for that heart-to-heart I’d come for; he was already out cold.

The trouble started when military sniper, and now homeless poet, Billy Wayne Dobson took it in his head to woo me with his own special brand of poetry. When I was too late to snatch the latest batch out from under the windshield of my vintage red Cadillac, Caleb decided it was time to warn Billy that to continue would be ill-advised and considered harassment—his words, not mine. Caleb’s belief that a fellow Marine should always be able pull himself out of the fire didn’t take into consideration that Billy’s alcohol-doctored post-traumatic-stress disorder was not conducive to any such persuasion.

*              *             *

His obsessive interest in me stopped for about a week. Then, in the SaveMart parking lot, I had to shove my way through a crowd surrounding my car.  I stood with the rest of the slack jawed-gawkers and stared at the fluttering white paper snowflakes acting as a second skin to my candy-apple red vintage Cadillac.

Like spectators at a tennis match, we all tried to follow the tightly printed words circling the paper snowflakes. It was poetry and it was written by none other than my very own stalker, Billy Wayne Dobson.

With one hand I swiped up a handful and with the other waved off the spectators. “Practical joke, folks, nothing special.” I didn’t have the heart to report this latest infraction to Caleb. Billy Wayne, I knew, was shy, easily startled and would panic if Caleb should feel compelled to make good on his threat of a restraining order. Instead, I decided I would confront him myself. Make him understand that his attraction to me, though flattering, was never going to go anywhere.