A.P. Greenwood - Writer, Author & Story Teller

After a Friday evening of enjoying cocktails, socializing, and live country western music at Houston’s largest honky-tonk, a customer returns home and is brutally murdered. There are no witnesses, and no fingerprints. There are no clues at all. Over a ten-week period, a total of nine patrons of the Tumbleweed Junction are murdered with the same modus operandi. The local police and FBI are baffled. Wes Williams, the owner of the Tumbleweed Junction, hires private investigators Rhett Sanders and his wife, Toni, to find out who is behind the killings. Who has motive, who feels the hate, and who has no regard for human life and would use multiple murders to shut down the honky-tonk permanently? Very quickly, Rhett and Toni identify a number of suspects to investigate, knowing that any one of them could be a heartless killer.

Houston. Friday night.

The dance lessons had seemed like a brilliant idea.

Six months ago, Jimmy Kyle had made the most important decision in his young life. He’d lived in Odessa, Texas, all of his life, a west Texas oil town with a population of 115,000 and a reputation for hard-working, blue collar workers. It was twenty-three miles from Midland, a west Texas oil town with a population of 140,000 and a reputation for white collar corporate types. Odessa is where Jimmy Kyle graduated with honors from Odessa Permian High School, and then with honors from Odessa College. He’d been a starting defensive back for the Odessa Permian Panthers, which in a town where high school football is revered, made Jimmy a respected member of the local community forever, especially because the Panthers had won their district championship in both his junior and senior years.

Upon graduation, he had employment offers thrown his way from several local businesses. During summers, when in both high school and college, he’d worked in the oil patch, doing every job imaginable on land rigs throughout the Permian Basin, and was considered a good worker. But Jimmy respectfully had declined all of the job offers. At twenty-two years of age he felt he needed a change.

It wasn’t that he felt Odessa had nothing to offer him. In fact, he loved his home town. And even though he had distinguished himself both academically and in sports, he still felt he was a nobody in Odessa. He hadn’t come from a rich or prominent family. Quite the opposite. His mother was a maid at a local hotel, and his father had been away in a federal prison since Jimmy had turned twelve years old. He was shy. And while he would occasionally engage in brief hallway conversations with girls, both in high school and college, Jimmy had always been too self-conscious of his family background to ask any of the local girls for a date. Jimmy never considered himself attractive, but he was quite handsome and always kept himself in a physically very fit condition.

The important decision Jimmy Kyle made was to leave Odessa. Not forever. But long enough to acquire some wealth, find a woman to marry and start a family. Then he’d return to the city he loved as a respectable businessman.

His plan was to get a job in the wholesale distribution trade. In ten years, he’d return to Odessa and open his own company, with a large warehouse and a small fleet of trucks. The company would make deliveries of oil equipment and supplies all over west Texas and parts of New Mexico and Oklahoma. Maybe he’d name the company Kyle Trucking. He would buy a two-story home in Westside, or Esmond Estates. It would have at least four bedrooms and four full bathrooms. A big yard. A two-car garage. And when people drove past, they’d know that whoever lived there was a success. Jimmy would have a pretty wife and cute children. It was an ambitious plan, but one that was doable with Jimmy Kyle’s capabilities...