Jazzing up Miss LeMieux

When I began working on the book that eventually became The Surest Poison, I wanted my PI, Sid Chance, to have a female sidekick. I found it advisable to change some of Sid's characteristics as I got into the story, and the lady who became his part-time associate underwent a bit of a metamorphosis as well.

Jasmine LeMieux turned out to be an interesting character who has been well liked by readers. My characters develop the same way as my stories. I have a vague notion about them when I begin, but they come to life with all their virtues and foibles as I start writing about them.

When the story begins, you learn quickly that Jaz is wealthy. She inherited controlling interest and serves as board chairman for a nationwide chain of truck stops (think Love's, Pilot, or Flying J) headquartered in Nashville. She has a bit of a checkered background brought on by falling out of favor with the family after she quit school to join the Air Force.

I wanted her to be attractive (pretty face and shapely figure) but tough. She had been a star basketball player in college and served in the Security Police under a sergeant who had been a Golden Gloves champion. He became her trainer when she went into women's professional boxing after her discharge. Although reaching the pinnacle of that profession, she soon realized that unlike the male sport, women's boxing didn't pay enough to live on. (That was an interesting point I learned while researching the book.) That's when she got a job as a Metro Nashville policewoman.

Although she really enjoyed it, she gave up police work to help nurse her father back to health after a serious accident. Her aristocratic mother, the chief architect of her banishment, had died earlier. Jaques LeMieux, a French Canadian import, taught her the ropes of the business, and she went back to school to earn two degrees.

Jaz still works out to keep in shape and spends stime at the range occasionally to maintain her firearms proficiency. Oh, and that house up at the top of the blog? LeMieux built a French Colonial mansion in a posh Nashville suburb, where Jaz still lives. I modeled her home after this one I found by Googling "French Colonial mansion."

She still retains a couple, now in their seventies, who had worked for the family since she was a girl. They lived in a small guest house behind the mansion until she convinced them that they should move into the big house. You'll have to read the book to find out how that fits into the story.

As for Jaz, she fits the plot like a stylish glove. And she'll continue to emerge in Book 2.

Headed for the war zone in Korea, 1952

Today is Nostalgia Thursday. I’ve been looking through a packet of old Air Mail letters (remember air mail—the envelopes have alternating red and blue stripes around the edges?) that I sent home to my fiancee from Korea. The first one was written “about 300 nautical miles at sea” on Friday, May 9, 1952. We had shipped out of San Francisco the previous day, which would have been a Thursday 57 years ago.

The letter starts out:

“I’m writing from the forward sun deck of the USNS Gen. W. F. Hase, located according to my calculations as above. The sun is beaming down brightly from about 15 degrees to the left of directly overhead. Sitting here it feels very warm, mainly because I’m sheltered by a bulkhead that comes up about even with the top of my head. The wind is flapping the paper around in my typewriter. It’s pretty cold if you stand where you catch the full force of it. I’ve got my blue pants and jacket on, plus my topcoat. I’m writing from a half-reclining position in a deck chair.

“This is about the bluest water I ever hope to see. Hm, the PA system just clanged five bells, which means 1030. The ship is rocking gently, the water isn’t very rough, not so bad as it was last night anyway. I’m looking toward the aft (rear) of the ship, and there are a few little shaggy cumulus clouds around the horizon. I can’t see directly behind because of a stack of life rafts and part of the superstructure, but a little while ago there were two albatross (or albatrosses) flying around back there. We lost the sea gulls last night. They don’t fly out too far. The albatross, if you remember, is what not to shoot unless you want to end up like the Ancient Mariner. Personally, I got nothing to shoot one with anyway.”

I wasn’t issued a gun until I got to Korea. A bulky Army .45. I carried the thing for a year and never fired it. Stationed at 5th Air Force Headquarters in Seoul, I couldn’t find much to shoot at. The rats weren’t all that big. I’m copying the letter as written, without any editing. I wasn’t concerned with writing style at the time. I had been working for a newspaper the past four years, and we had a copy desk to take care of editing chores. My letter continued:

“To get back to the beginning, we departed from Camp Stoneman yesterday about 8 a.m. I didn’t know for sure whether we were going anywhere or not at first, for we got on the bus and it promptly broke down. So they loaded us onto another one and took us a couple of miles over to what anybody else but the Army would call a ferry—they call it a “harbor boat.” There were two “harbor boats,” the Yerba Buena and San Leandro. The Air Force officers went on the former, with the latter all Army. Boy, I thought my arms would break off before I got to set down my bags. I figured I’d die before carrying them onto the ship, but luckily they had stewards to do that for us. Anyhow, the harbor boat took us down the river to San Francisco Bay, past Alcatraz where I took a picture, on over to Fort Mason, which is the Army docks at Frisco. There we found the Hase, the Red Cross with coffee and cookies and an Army band to serenade us as we left. Some of the other guys who’ve been over before say this isn’t a very big ship, but it’s the biggest I’ve been on anyway. I don’t know how many are on it, though I’ve heard around 3000. They say it carried as many as 6000 during the war [World War II], but I imagine they were pretty crowded. The officers have cabins, mine with 9 guys in it, some have 12. They are triple-deck bunks, and I got a lower. I slept very well last night. The troops are in compartments down below decks, I haven’t seen what sort of place it is. Each cabin has a wash basin, and there is an adjoining toilet and shower for each two cabins.”

The letter, typed on paper about the size of a trade paperback, is 16 pages long. It is written in continuous form with break headings to show the date, time, and approximate location for each entry. The last one shows “Thursday, May 22, 1952, 6:30 p.m., Approx. 200 miles from Japan.” I wrote it using the small, thin, metal-cased portable typewriter I wagged around the Far East. Unfortunately, I got rid of it a few years later. It would have been a nice antique now. As is the camera I took along, a boxy twin-lens Ciro-flex, which I still have.

The rest of this first entry in the letter didn’t include much excitement. Stuff like one of my cabin mates breaking out a bottle of Four Roses, which he proclaimed was “seasick medicine.” Liquor was forbidden aboard ship, of course. As was a lot of other things that went on. At one point during the day, the ship turned and the emergency lifeboat crew lowered Number 2 Boat. A short time later they returned. We figured somebody saw something and thought it might be a man overboard, but they brought nothing back.

In the letter I mentioned what we had to eat for lunch (baked ham, sweet potatoes, corn, a beet and onion salad, tomato soup, coffee and cake) and dinner’s highlight (braised tenderloin tips and some great banana cream pie). The USNS Hase was a civilian ship, not Navy. The officers ate in the same dining room as the crew, and they prepared sumptuous meals. I don’t remember how much I gained during the 15-day trip, but without much activity except walking around the deck, I’m sure I put on several pounds.

That first letter was postmarked May 24, 1952. I put two six-cent air mail stamps on it when I mailed it on arriving in Japan. I wrote “Free Air Mail” where the stamp would have been on the other letters, which came from Korea. I’ll do some more reminiscing about the Korean War on day soon. Stay tuned.