Transition Chapters–Whew!

I have plot points. I know what’s supposed to happen next in my chapters. But I woke up this morning, knowing that Jazzi and Ansel were going to the derby racetrack to meet her sister and her husband and hopefully find a new clue. And BAM! All of a sudden EVERYONE showed up at the race track that night, and all kinds of things happened to advance the plot.

In this book–The Body in the Wheelbarrow–a race car driver is hit in the back of the head and killed. But the murder is probably NOT premeditated. It’s an act of passion, of anger. And Sparks makes everyone hate him. The killer is just a poor shmuck that Sparks pushed to the limits, and when he turned to leave, the guy whacked him with something hard and accidentally killed him.

I can’t hate the killer. BUT, the killer doesn’t want to get caught, and he doesn’t mind pinning it on someone else. And THAT’S when I don’t like him.

This is one of those mysteries when so many people hate the victim, you play the game of eenie, meenie, miney, mo to decide who did it. And even if you guess who it was, you feel sorry for them. Sparks would drive anyone to murder. But that doesn’t make it okay to try to pin it on Doc.

Doc worked for Sparks, and Sparks–as always–tried to gyp him. Sparks is a sneak who manipulates things to his own advantage. Everyone knows it. No one liked him. But Doc was his latest victim, so Caden (the detective) assumes he’s guilty.

The scene I wrote today brings a lot of the suspects together at the same place with Gaff and Caden, along with Jazzi and Ansel. Caden resents Jazzi interfering in the investigation, but for the first time ever, he understands why Gaff likes working with her. It was a tricky scene, and when I finished writing it, I liked it. Who knows how I’ll feel tomorrow when I go to polish it? I might shake my head and wonder what I was thinking. But let’s hope not. Let’s hope this scene worked.