Note: This story is published in Tales of Music, Murder, and Mayhem: Bouchercon Anthology 2024
As a cop, you never stop having to prove yourself. It starts in the academy, gets worse when you get to the street, and again every single time you move to a new squad or assignment. When you’re young, you have to prove to the old hands that you can hack it, but when your old, you constantly have to prove to the young bloods that you still got it.
I went to my first Bounchercon in 2024. When I found out they had an anthology, I thought I would try my hand. Friday Hampton had just recently made detective and needed a case to solve, but I wasn’t sure how it was going to connect to the anthology’s theme of music. Then I remembered a very special Christmas where I was invited to a pipe and drum corps Christmas party. It was held in a tiny church about the size of a classroom. The band was full of firefighters and cops and some truly interesting characters. When all fifty pipers joined in on the second verse of Amazing Grace, it felt like I’d been hit by an ocean of sound.
It occurred to me that a bagpiper’s Christmas party is just the sort of thing Retired Detective Ambrose Broyhill would attend, and my, wouldn’t that make an interesting setting for Friday to prove herself on her very first murder case?
My recommendation is to save this one for a chilly night somewhere in late December, pour yourself two fingers of whiskey, and give it a read while you listen to some pipe music.
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