His first adventure.

had found a way to add the 2 behind the O in my name, but such is life.

Speaking of life, mine in particular, I wasn’t always a running detective, but when middle age began to insist I pay attention to my own mortality, my career change was inevitable.

My office is really the streets or the road, which I sometimes have to cross, whether for pleasure or business. Each time I take my life into my own hands, ironically, I am propelled by my legs and feet. I’ve had some close calls with drivers, inconsiderate or outright hostile, but so far so good, or I wouldn’t be around to tell you of my adventures.

Wherever I run, someone dies. In that way, I am like Jessica Fletcher of Murder, She Wrote, albeit swifter afoot—and male. I don’t really have a sidekick or sounding board the way most PIs do—you’ll remember one of hers was the doctor of that quaint town seemingly brimming over with murder—so I reflect a lot. Inside my head, with my modern running gear, and sometimes in the mirror after a run to see just how red my face is and how long the strand of snot runs from my exercise-decongested nose.

It was a beautiful Sunday morning that found me out on my run, exactly two hours after I had digested a carbohydrate-and-lean-protein-rich breakfast and taken care of, shall we say, preparatory business. I was wearing my Garmin, ever hopeful for a sponsorship in the future, should this running detective business really take off. I was also wearing my Road Runner short shorts, thick Thorlo socks, Asics Gel Nimbus 12, and add to this unencumbered running homo sapiens some GU gels, a Nathan sports bottle, some adhesive strips of a brand yet to be settled on, as well as generic petroleum jelly, and let’s not forget the Road ID. The latter is an ingenious product for which people pay money to be hospital ready with a touch of style. Wish I had thought of it.

| | ello, my name is V.O. Max, and I am arunning detective. I wish my parents

I should interject here that my mention of any products, whether in a positive or negative light, does not necessarily reflect the views, endorsement, or nonendorsement, of this publication.

So here I was, middle aged and sporty, warming up running at a nine-minuteper-mile pace. I took a left on the street I always take a left on, went down a hill to check if I still had quads, and, yes, I could feel they were attached, and then I took a right onto a road that marks the beginning of my warmed-up, comfortableroutine route, a nice and flat loop. I was enjoying some nipple sucking from the water bottle, Freudian or not, and hearing my feet slap not too hard against the pavement.

Around mile six, I entered my favorite part of the course, which is a neighborhood with some very expensive homes and also a soft, blacktop kind of flat surface, with hardly any traffic. I think of this section as my private track. I was running in the middle of the street, relaxed by the comfort of two-acre lawns surrounding what either hard or clever work can buy. One of the homes has an especially large Confederate Jasmine planting area around its mailbox. I love the perfume of this plant, and that’s coming from someone who is allergic to everything when I am not running and wants perfume to be added to a list of banned substances, right up there with pesticides. I am also paranoid of people with the slightest hint of a cold, but more about that some other time. I’ve been known to spray down hotel rooms with Lysol.

My inhalation of beauty was interrupted by ocular fixation on one part of the driveway of the house. I saw what appeared to be the Sunday paper.

Under most circumstances, a Sunday paper lying in a driveway at 10 A.M. on a Sunday morning should not be cause for alarm. But I knew from running past this house for years that a Sunday paper was never outside on that day, at that hour. Also, to be more accurate, the paper was not /ying in the driveway. It was standing up, like a lighthouse wrapped in plastic, if you are one for conspicuous similes. Something was definitely going on, or as some literate type might say, something was rotten in Denmark.

As much as I did not want to interrupt my workout, I hit pause on my Garmin so as not to ruin for later the graphic display in my training center on the computer. Sure, I would have a long, blue vertical line on the graph where I had stopped, but the rest would look OK. A person has to make a living, and if that means ruining a perfect-looking graphic-workout display, so be it. But only on occasion.

Trying to maintain a positive outlook despite my run being interrupted, I walked up the driveway to the house. Luckily, the house was not surrounded by an iron fence with spikes, or I would have had to add cross-training to a running day, which really ruins things.

The house was a two-story old beauty with a chimney out of an English mystery novel, and the windows were the white cross-pane kind, the front door brown. All

was quiet, or so I first thought. There was the trilling of a bird, not irate the way a bird gets when a human gets close to its nest, but it was a trilling nevertheless.

I decided to shuffle to the back of the house, where the sound of the bird grew louder, the way a dog barks in the movies or on television when its owner is incapacitated or Timmy has fallen into the well. But instead of Lassie’s blond master, splayed before me, in all her morning glory was a woman who appeared to be very old, yet with a young, bloody cut in the middle of her white forehead.

I got closer but did not want to bend over too much or bend my knees to avoid pulling anything in my back or putting undue stress on my knees that would endanger my ability to run into middle age and beyond. Even so, without reading glasses, I could see the lady was dead. I am, after all, a running detective.

I don’t carry a cell phone like Dean Karnazes (or at least I have read that he does), nor do I look like him (but that’s another story), so calling 911 immediately was out of the question. Also, in a neighborhood such as this one, the homes were far apart, and unless someone in them was a runner, it was unlikely a door would be opened for me. It is not that I look particularly dangerous; in fact, I have a very benign and friendly appearance, like Jimmy Stewart before his role calls for him to get pissed off, but these days doors just aren’t opened, particularly in the “friendly” South. That is not to say that if I was wearing a Confederate uniform I might not have had better luck. But that concerns another case.

Ilooked around the patio, which was surprisingly small for such a large house. Some potted plants stood guard along with a table with four chairs that had seen a lot of weather, one of them having been pulled to the edge of the patio to face

Michael Hughes

a huge backyard that was mostly lawn and old trees. Clearly, the old lady lived alone and probably sat watching squirrels, if she liked watching squirrels, in this chair, or maybe she drank iced tea and read the paper here. Or she might have done neither sitting in this chair. | am a running detective, not a mind reader.

I kept circling the patio looking for any clues. No footprints of clay or other mud, and no footprints or anything out of the ordinary on the grass in front of the patio either. Besides, that footprint stuff has gone the way of Agatha Christie or Arthur Conan Doyle and is mostly useful if you are trying to determine your foot type, or so they say, planting your wet, naked foot on a piece of brown paper, what grocery bags used to be made of, to ultimately buy the right kind of running shoe. Ever try finding one of those bags these days?

I was disappointed by the interior of the house. While the property was worth a pretty penny, the home needed some serious remodeling to get it out of the ’70s, unless the lady was waiting (but that point was moot now) for the ’70s “style” to be chic again.

had to use a phone with that ’70s-yellow color. Fortunately, it was a push-button model, but the original cord was very twisted, like some people I have known.

While I was making the call, I looked at nothing in particular the way people do when making a call, and I also came to focus on a detail, the way people do when making a call. There was a copy of Runner’s World on the coffee table in the old lady’s living room.

It was time to digest and think about this scene and get my run in, so I left the house, knowing the police would interview me if they needed to, but they could also wait for my workout to be completed. One must have one’s priorities straight. Besides, the lady was patently dead, so putting off my run and health regimen any longer would not hurt her, but it would sure hurt me.

The rest of my Sunday run—13.1 miles total and exactly scheduled—was enjoyable but not as enjoyable as it would have been if I had not found a dead body. I like to dissociate completely when I run or focus on proper form—you know, turnover, posture, that sort of thing—but the dead lady, who I just knew was going to be a new case, kept me from focusing on pure running or deciding in what pattern I would mow my lawn. But someone dead intruding on your workout is the price you have to pay when you are a running detective. And I certainly don’t want to cross the River Styx to go back to what I did for a living before middle age brought its grip of mortality to my life.

One thing I was completely thrilled about was my discovery of a Runner’s World magazine in the old lady’s house. You see, the majority of my cases, while involving running, mostly involve my running, but not enough of the subject of running.

Ihave yet to solve the case of a dead runner, for example. They just don’t die often enough. Or be able to go on and on for pages about a certain aspect of running, though I really should be able to do this, the way some mystery authors write pages of descriptions about food and cooking, or what kind of beer they like and how cold it should be. No, I am usually the runner inhabiting a world of nonrunning people who need my help to solve the case. And often the very same people needing my help couldn’t care less about running or display antagonism, badly masked, toward this great sport. Does it bother me sometimes that I have to solve cases involving people who do not appreciate running and runners? Hell, yes!

Thad just arrived home from my run and was holding onto a column on the front porch, letting my feet hang over the porch for a nice calf-stretch, while letting one of my two Mini Dachshunds, Paula (Radcliffe), run laps in the cul-de-sac. Paula is a Dachshund rescue dog but has some breed in her that gives her longer legs and a leaner body than the typical Mini Dachshund. If she were a human, and of course I engage in anthropomorphizing, she would be a runner somewhere on scholarship or would be a postgrad and earning appearance fees. Maybe she would even have a cool British accent. Yes, I have a crush on Paula Radcliffe, despite never having met her. We are both runners, after all.

Right as I was enjoying a kind of pain (good one) toward the bottom part of my stretch, I could hear the phone ringing inside. The sound of the phone, or rather the connected thought that I will be bothered by someone, always makes me grouchy. I like phones only when I absolutely need to use them.

The phone could wait a while longer while I made myself comfortable after the workout, letting sweat run its course while I was bundled up in a cotton sweat jacket with hood and long pants. Despite having read much about running and knowing some would say too much about it, I am still amazed about the body getting cold after a good workout, even when it’s warm outside.

I went into the kitchen where the phone sits like a toad and made myself a protein shake and munched on a nice, not overly ripe banana. Then I looked at the flashing caller light and played back the voice mail. As expected, it was the voice of Captain Walker Run of the local police department, and he needed help. It is not a commonly known fact, but local police departments do call in freelancers when they need help and/or don’t want to do all the work themselves.

With a banana and protein shake in one hand—I don’t use a cell phone so I have to use that one hand for something besides driving—I drove my blue Highlander Sport edition to the house where the old dead lady or dead old lady was, along with Captain Walker Run and a few of his officers. They always say they need help, even when I see them standing around, but I don’t mind because a running detective has to pay the bills, especially if he wants to exchange his running shoes every 250 miles to prevent foot problems that translate into leg problems, joint problems, upper-body problems—you get the picture.

I parked at the curb in front of the house and didn’t have any difficulty making my way to the old lady’s finish line, this being one of those neighborhoods where neighbors can’t easily see each other and mill about. It is the *hood of the well-off, the hard school of living and not caring about others. Of course, when I move into such a neighborhood, my perspective will change.

The back porch was a beehive of activity, and I immediately spotted the coroner, Miley Repeats, who was taking notes on her clipboard. I always call her Coach Death on account of her holding a clipboard and looking like someone who is very concemed with getting the work(out) exact.

“V.O., glad you could make it,” Captain Run said. He is a very lean man, looks anemic, doesn’t exercise, lives off sour Gummi Worms.

“Wouldn’t miss it for all the money you pay me,” I said.

He didn’t take the bait, just put a sour Gummi Worm into his mouth and said, “You’re going to have to really earn your money on this one, V.O.”

I nodded, trying to look serious without feeling serious yet. “What have you got?”

“That’s the problem. Area is clean as a whistle.”

“Why is a whistle clean?” I said.

“No fingerprints, nothing,” Captain Run said.

“So you need me to do my thing,” I said.

Captain Run nodded. “V.O. in action.”

I smiled. “You and your people didn’t find anything?”

“Nope, not a thing. And the coroner is sure it’s not a heart attack, or at least the lady died by the hand of someone else.” The captain had another sour worm hanging from his mouth as he spoke. A chain eater of Gummi Worms.

“Captain,” I said. “Come this way.”

We walked inside to the sitting area. “Do you not see the copy of Runner’s World on the coffee table?”

“T see it.” He stepped closer and looked at the magazine. “What is this, some kind of porn?”

“Cover model’s good looking, isn’t she?” I said.

“Needs some doughnuts to fatten her up if you ask me,” the captain said.

“T wish I had her abs,” I said.

“So the old lady had unusual tastes in reading, if that’s what you call it,” the captain said.

“Yes.”

“And what do you make of that?” the captain said.

“T don’t know—yet,” I said. “I need to think about it.”

“Well, you give me a call as soon as you figure something out,” the captain said.

“Tl send you an e-mail.”

“You know how much I hate to use e-mail,” the captain said.

“And you know how much I hate phones.”

“So we’re both screwed.” The captain was about to put another worm in his mouth.

“Isn’t that how life usually works?” I didn’t expect the captain to return my prompt with any profound philosophizing, so I left the scene, glad to know I had an assignment. I also had that copy of Runner’s World in my collection.

When I got back to the house, I thought it would be nice to take a nap, my endorphins having settled down enough, I hoped, for the nap timing to be good. PR (Paula Radcliffe) thought it was, and so did Banister, one n, my second Mini Dachshund, who is very small and wide. I have a set of different-height furniture cubes at the bottom of the bed so Banister can get a little exercise, but mostly so I won’t have to lift him up and down.

It was three o’clock in the afternoon when we woke from our nap, and I continued my Sunday routine, which consists of reheating some Starbucks in the microwave—although this reheating is a more recent business, my having been called the coffee purist and all. I drank some of it, chased it down with water, and saddled up the dogs to take them for a walk.

Beautiful outside, including one of my hot middle-aged neighbors who is married to a really fat guy. I try to not visualize them in coitus. Sweet Sugar has

the most alluring and captivating eyes and always stops me to talk. I let myself be stopped. We always engage in banalities if someone were to listen in.

“Out for a walk today?” Her eyes and mouth alluring. Creeping Southern drawl waiting.

“Nice weather. It just makes me feel so alive.” (Translation: I would like to

“Have you seen what (name withheld) has in their yard?” (Translation: I would like to. . .)

Shaking of my head. (Translation: Yes, I would like to .. .)

Itold her about my nice run, minus the death, and as always she likes to listen to me go on and on about my meandering and undulating journey, or at least she is polite enough (or has hidden motives) to listen to me. I mean, who would care that I slow down before a certain section to pick up speed or that I lift my legs more during certain times of the run?

My neighbor and I parted ways, and I walked down the street, trying to curtail PR on the retractable leash and pull Banister up to speed.

Ihave a routine route for walking the dogs just as [have running routes. When I first got my GPS watch, I included our walks, measuring the mileage, even trying to discern our course on the computer, which made for the equivalent of trying to look between several threads too close for ocular comfort. I gave this mapping and timing up quickly, especially as the beeping of the watch is not conducive to Mini Dachshund walking. Maybe a Lab would be a better match, but Labs shed.

While I was enjoying the squirrels in the neighborhood as usual and seeing my dogs’ hair stand up with their accompanying growl display aimed at two Yorkshire Terriers up one street, my mind was preoccupied with the puzzle of the death of the old lady. Why did she have a copy of Runner’s World on her coffee table? As far as I knew, she did not have any younger family that came to visit that might be runners. And when I had waved at her on occasions of running by her house when she still had breath in her lungs and blood pumping through her veins, she did not strike me as one of those runners in her 80s.

I began talking to PR and Banister, who, if you want to get technical about it, might be my sounding boards. I don’t have a stupid sidekick or an admiring soundboard girlfriend; I have two smart Mini Dachshunds.

When we had finished our walk and conversation, a clearer picture of events related to the murder had emerged. Not clear, but clearer.

I grabbed my iPad off the kitchen counter, sat down at the table, and began to type an e-mail to Captain Run. It was addressed to him but also to me, my own thinking.

Dear Walker Run: You and I both wish the Runner’s World magazine had a name and a mailing address printed on it, but wishful thinking is not going to solve the case. Furthermore, the magazine is not a red herring but a real clue. I

believe the person who put it there did so deliberately, and we need to put ourselves…

Before I could continue tapping the built-in keyboard with my pointing finger, the phone rang, interrupting my concentration. I could hear the voice of Captain Run.

“V.O., I think you better hear this. Pick up.” A slight pause.

I cursed and got up to grab the phone.

“T am just writing you an e-mail,” I said.

“Got something here,” Captain Run said, delaying.

Finally he gave me a clue. “You didn’t check underneath the magazine, did you?”

“T know better than to disturb evidence,” I said, annoyed.

“There is a paper band laminated in tape, with mile markers on it and times.”

“That should help us,” I said.

“There are some words scribbled on it, too.”

“Even better!” I could feel myself getting excited, the chase being on, the game afoot.

“The words say ‘arms, face, dig within,

the captain said. Suddenly my entire body felt an adrenaline rush in it, the bad kind, heat and cold shooting through at the same time, the way it had in my old job sometimes.