Someone Went And Killed Tickly Thomason

by Robert Mangeot

About the Author: Robert Mangeot is the author of more than forty published short stories. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, Black Cat Mystery Magazine, The Forge Literary Magazine, Lowestoft Chronicle, Mystery Magazine, the MWA anthology Ice Cold, and the Anthony-winning Murder Under the Oaks. In 2023, his short fiction received the Claymore Award, and he was given SEMWA's Magnolia Award for service to the writing community.

Excerpt

This was it, the reason S.R. Jefferson went into law enforcement, why he kept his mustache trimmed, why he invested in Men’s Wearhouse suits. Tickly Thomason, legendary piano man and retired Opry member, the very Tickly of Tickly’s Prime Rib Tack House and the Tootle Bootle Boot Emporium, had been found dead inside his party barge, Tickly wearing a bathrobe of his own Internet line. The family and county examiner leaped to natural causes, a heart attack, everyone failing to grasp the probable irony of a murderous mind. Moments like this launched a Central Precinct detective groomed and ready into the limelight.

S.R. called his partner Reyna while roaring the Silverado toward I-40. This was Sunday morning, slate-skyed, and Reyna said, “Seriously, were you up listening to the scanner again?”

“A Nashville Saturday three-quarter moon? Damn straight, compadre. Saddle up. This bad boy has got the scent.”

“Look, it’s Mia’s mommy day. She doesn’t care where I take the kids so long as I’m gone six hours.”

S.R. stepped through the situation as best one could going seventy on a two-lane. “This stinks like turned guac. We break this, we headline the Action News.”

“Homicide doesn’t have Thomason as a case. It’s not any case, unless he tried going firebug again.”

There’d been questions about how the Tack House burned, yes. There was that Tickly known to arson investigators, and there was Tickly from A.M. radio and police ball performances and those gloriously flexible boots even now on S.R.’s feet.

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