Epitaph for Emily — Tim Wohlforth

Jim Wolf attends a book reading, a biography of Kurt Vonnegut. As he searches for a safe place to stand he senses someone is watching him. She is young, looking like a teenager, but probably in her mid-twenties. Short, with straight straw-colored blond hair, granny glasses, freckles on her face. She has more the figure of a boy than a grown woman. She wears jeans and a loose-fitting man's white dress shirt. A cheap necklace of amber-colored beads with silver disks circles her neck and a tiny diamond stud pierces one nostril. Her name is Emily. Together they escape the crowded bookstore and head for Wolf's boat. "It's just for tonight," Emily says. "You want me. I want you. It's simple." Emily leaves in the middle of the night. In the morning, Wolf awakes as two Oakland P.D. detectives land on his deck. Far from his one night stand being simple, he learns that Emily is dead and he's charged with her murder. With his own life in jeopardy, he must find the killer. Wolf's quest leads him to the Cal campus, a bearded expert on Vonnegut who was sleeping with Emily, and a Retro-Sixties bash called the Commie Cafe where the past becomes murderously the present.