Misty Water-Colored Memories

By Patricia Smiley

Where do memories go when we, to quote Hamlet, “shuffle off this mortal coil”? I’ve been fascinated by this question for as long as I can remember. One way to preserve the past is to write a memoir while you’re still alive, but most of us lack the time or inclination to do so. Coming from a family of storytellers, my ancestral recollections have been passed down verbally from one generation to the next. Expanding on that tradition, I thought it would be fun to honor some of my stories by incorporating them into a mystery novel.
 
A Dark September Night is the first book in a new series set for release on August 12, 2025. It features Emmaline McCoy, named after my great-grandmother. Emma is the marketing director for a cruise company based in Los Angeles. I also worked for a major cruise company in the past. The story begins when a hit-and-run driver kills Emma’s beloved aunt Lydie, who is named after my grandmother Lydia. Emma travels to Justice Bay, a remote coastal town in Northern California, to settle her aunt’s estate. Don’t look for Justice Bay on a map; you won’t find it. The essence of the town is rooted in my memories of one of my favorite places—Camden, Maine.
 
In preparation for putting her aunt’s house on the market, Emma opens a pop-up store in town to sell the curios, antiques, and souvenirs her aunt collected during her travels around the world. She names the shop after Lydie’s Siberian Forest cat, who bears an uncanny resemblance to my cats, Princess Scootie and Riley. The cat’s official name is Cassandra, but everyone calls her Boo because she’s mysterious, some say scary.
 
As part of Cassandra’s Collectibles’ marketing strategy, Emma writes story cards that explain how and where each item was acquired. She has heard many of these tales from her aunt, but if not, she invents them. One example is the backstory of a weathered wooden decoy she found in her aunt’s house:
 
A merchant found the duck battered and bruised in the Marrakesh souk beside a pile of Berber carpets. There were rumors, but no one could confirm how he got from a Minnesota slough to a vendor’s stall in a Moroccan back alley. If you look deep into his glassy yellow eyes, perhaps he’ll reveal his secrets. But proceed with caution. Outside the well-lit tourist areas of this medieval red city where spies and wanderers dwell, they only whisper his name—Decoy.
 
All items for sale in Cassandra’s Collectibles are located in my home in Los Angeles. Most were either part of my “inheritance” or collected during my travels around the world, including the brown gourd mate cup with the metal straw from a trip to Argentina and the yellow and orange Tahitian pareo I wore to dance the Tamouré on the French Polynesian island of Moorea. The decoy has been passed down through my husband’s family in Minnesota for at least three generations.
 
As I mentioned earlier, while all the items for sale in Emma’s shop exist, not all the stories on her cards are true. I’ll let the reader decide which ones are accurate and which are figments of my imagination. After all, what’s the fun in revealing everything?

Patricia Smiley is the author of eight mystery novels. Her short fiction appeared in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine and Two of the Deadliest, an anthology edited by Elizabeth George. Patty taught writing at various writers’ conferences in the U.S. and Canada. She is the former vice president of the Southern California chapter of Mystery Writers of America and served as president of Sisters in Crime Los Angeles. 
Smiley earned a BA from the University of Washington in Seattle and an MBA from Pepperdine University in Malibu, California. She lives in Los Angeles with her two loyal and opinionated Siberian Forest cats, and a backyard after-hours feeding station for possums, raccoons, marauding felines, and other critters in search of a snack and a cool sip of water. Despite the distractions, work continues on her next Justice Bay novel.

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