The Rusted Beetle

by James Nolan

About the Author: James Nolan’s mystery stories have been short-listed for a Shamus Award, and have appeared in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, Mystery Weekly Magazine, and New Orleans Noir, as well as in his award-winning collections You Don’t Know Me and Perpetual Care. His comic noir novel Higher Ground won a Faulkner/Wisdom Gold Medal, and his twelfth book, Flight Risk: Memoirs of a New Orleans Bad Boy, was given the 2018 Next-Generation Indie Book Award for Best Memoir. He lives in his native New Orleans.

Excerpt

Today the only sign of life in this twelfth-century village is the man with the black backpack who creaks open the door to the empty church just after I step inside. Little do I suspect at the moment, but he’s the last person on earth I’d ever expect to run across in a remote place like this. You see, nobody knows I’m staying on this hilltop in Provence, which is why I’m here. The credit card trail I left after landing in Marseilles would be the only way anyone could verify I’m in France, although there’s nowhere to use a credit card in tiny St. Julien.

I’m off the map.

I didn’t count on the Mistral, the icy wind that started to bluster and roar the day after I moved in. This is the wind that drove Van Gogh mad, although I haven’t gotten to the point of cutting off my own ear, not yet. The way I imagined life in St. Julien, I would take walks along stony goat paths lined with spring wild flowers until Vivian fends off my henchmen and that nasty business in San Francisco blows over. Until the world forgets that I exist. That was why I traveled with my passport everywhere I went in the United States: So when my real estate pyramid crashed and investors came looking for me, I could hop on a plane to Paris. But once it happened, Paris seemed too obvious, so I entered France through Marseilles and then kept driving until I landed here.

Former altar boy that I am, I believe in miracles.

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