Martin Ross

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Dec, 2021

Stories (104)

104 Stories

4130 karma pts

?

“The House of Blues: A Tale of the Arts Department” by Martin Ross

Submitted to Contest #265

June 17, 2015Thea noted it straight away, even as Earl continued to greedily explore the depths of his second bowl of she-crab soup.Earl Mason was a down-home Central Illinois downstater whose marine appetite generally had ended at Long John Silver’s. But roughly 45 years after falling hard for the University Arts Department’s Chicago firebrand, the college bean-counter plummeted headlong into Lowcountry cuisine. The Charleston trolley guide had insisted on what had persisted as a working neighborhood soul kitchen even after Southern Living ...

Read story

“Curtis and the Caliente Conundrum” by Martin Ross

Submitted to Contest #262

July 21 took the grand prize for hottest day in the recorded history of Earth, whooping July 2023. July 2025 was a frontrunner for the title next summer, so doings in the Gaza and Trump’s attempted comeback tour and Simone Biles pretty much took the steam out of the story.And while Curtis was normally a net-balance sort of guy, the local July 29 numbers were what really counted. Beyond an afternoon upswing in fender benders at the intersections where the Walgreen’s displayed the high two-digit temp, the usual domestic and street shit extreme...

Read story

“The Backhanded Blessing: A Professor Deshpande Mystery” by Martin Ross

Submitted to Contest #261

Thank you for your blessings. May the milk of human kindness never curdle. “Neither an especially profound expression of gratitude, nor a particularly lavish gift,” Saanvi observed, turning the silver vessel in her fingers. “A puja kalash, but probably not a pricey one.”“Looks like silver-plated stainless steel,“ Wei Zhao told Professor Deshpande. The University’s youngest tenured professor remained standing, her chairman presumed out of wholly unnecessary deference. “The engraving’s why I brought it to you.”“I’m relieved,” Professor Deshpan...

Read story

“The Rockwell Piece: A Tale of the Arts Department” by Martin Ross

Submitted to Contest #260

1961Rockwell straightened on his stool with a slight squeak of the loose bolt, swiping a Crisco-tempered crumb from his white cotton shirt and grinning like the pie had been catfish and Wonder Bread from the Galilean shores. He consulted the Nehi clock above the flattop.“Ah, well,” Rockwell sighed, with euphoric alacrity.The gangly owner was at his elbow in a lickety second, spidery palms spread on the scarred formica before the diner, sweat and alarm condensing on his homely mug. “Something wrong with the pie, Sir? Danged Linda has a heavy ...

Read story

“The Resolution” by Martin Ross

Submitted to Contest #258

Who killed Ronnie Fells?Melissa’s finger paused on the “Walk” button most of the University’s bovine herd ignored. Couple times a semester, some oblivious moron, some entitled pedestrian constitutionalist with an immortality complex or a misunderstanding of the superpowers conferred with a doctorate got dislocated or ruptured at this corner near the student union. They made the button extra big and enameled the huge raised arrow so even a medieval lit major could spot it, and still, the world sporadically lost another great MBA, hotel manage...

Read story

“The Summer's Tale: A Professor Deshpande Mystery” by Martin Ross

Submitted to Contest #257

“I’m Posthumus,” Ethan explained.“My disconsolate sympathies,” Saanvi murmured. “You certainly look healthy.”“Posthumus,” Assistant Professor Cooper clarified with a crooked country boy grin. “Posthumus Leonatus. Husband to Imogen, ward of vassal King Cymbeline’s court.”“I suppose this means the University cannot proceed with selling off your larger pieces? And we could so have used a new multimedia wing.”“I know – I put in the original proposal, remember?”Chairman Deshpande raised an imperious brow. “Yet you are unwilling to make...

Read story

“Curtis and The Critical Cog” by Martin Ross

Submitted to Contest #255

He turns the creature almost imperceptibly, with the slightest tremor. His fingers steady as he brings the knife to its throat. He now is intently focused, and fails to register as the first, second, third droplets splatter into the folds of his trousers.Gradually, it becomes. It ain’t about speed, Pop pounded home time after time. Careful strokes, the pare, the push, the pull; let the grain, the knots, the imperfections guide you.Mr. Bronheim?It’s one of THEM, the one who brought him the dry chicken, the yellow gravy, the peas, the pills. T...

Read story

“Hat Trick: A Professor Deshpande Mystery” by Martin Ross

Submitted to Contest #254

NOTE: JUNETEENTH WAS A LANDMARK EVENT IN U.S. HISTORY AND HOPE. THIS IS FOR FRIENDS AND NEIGHBORS AND FAMILY WHO EMBRACE THAT HOPE.“I am asked -- in fact, asked often enough frankly to annoy the living shit out of me -- if the arts, and in particular the textile arts, were the best and highest use of my powers as a woman, as a black woman, as an educator and a civil rights advocate and activist. Most of the time, it comes up at family suppers and reunions.”Appreciative laughter rustles through the still Central Illinois Wednesday afternoon a...

Read story

“The Buzz: A Professor Deshpande Mystery” by Martin Ross

Submitted to Contest #253

Wei’s soul awakens/The body quickly follows/Temptations beckon.“What happened to postcoital pizza?” Professor Zhao demanded drowsily. Associate Professor Kalish chuckled.“I was afraid it might get cold during your postcoital coma, so I stepped out to pick up a few things for our tenure celebration.”“It smells wonderful, as always, though you didn’t need to go to the trouble,” Wei chided, rooting under the couch blanket for her loungewear. “We’ve known this was coming for months.” She tugged on her University sweatshirt and padded into the ki...

Read story

“The Moment” by Martin Ross

Submitted to Contest #252

“This is your moment,” Professor Urquardt stated.A few heads popped up. A few “attentive” faces tilted as something resembling life infused their features. A few doubled down on their pads in full-on voice-to-text mode.“Your moment.” The Pulitzer and Oscar nominations the University had added unsolicited to the spring catalogue meant little to her bloodless crew of largely Gen Ed Gen-4.0s — most, anyway. But something in Professor Urquardt’s flat, inflection-free, smiling restatement cut through the 9 a.m. fog in a way none of the photograph...

Read story

“Malik in Wonderland: A Professor Deshpande Mystery” by Martin Ross

Submitted to Contest #251

Malik had never favored dinner with “the boss.” Most of his past bosses had, at heart, been cops. His SAC at the FBI Art Theft Program had lived up to his acronym with a simmering case of Islamophobia. This despite Malik Aboud bringing a CV that included the University of St. Andrew’s, New Scotland Yard’s Art and Antiques Unit, and INTERPOL’s Stolen Works of Art Database.But after a day in ballrooms and breakouts with panelists convinced they were solving world hunger instead of exhuming dead artists, dinner with Chairman Deshpande provided ...

Read story

“Soul Feed: A Professor Deshpande Mystery” by Martin Ross

Submitted to Contest #250

“Rw’n bwyta eich camweddau, ac yn eich rhyddhau o’r drwg hwn.”For one brief moment, Thomas Skillruud entertained the possibility he was experiencing a stroke. Ischemic, he assumed, owing to sporadic family history. Aside from the general dyspepsia of an evening ill-spent at the A-OK Corral, he felt nothing that he could imagine to be a brain bleed, assuming one might at least feel something snap or pop before the cerebellum burst like a Mylar party balloon. Of course, Thomas’ doctorates were in the fine arts, and Caravaggio’s Judith Beheadin...

Read story

“Curtis and The Cryptic Coyote” by Martin Ross

Submitted to Contest #249

“How long this been going on?” Curtis asked calmly, staring at the young woman going batshit Coyote Ugly on the bar. Billy Preston sparked through his brain: Songs without melodies, dances without steps.Neither reference would help here: Nearly everybody at The Mill tonight was in Pampers or swimming around a scrotal sac when the Tyra Banks movie was burning up the box office, and Drake seemed as soulful as this crew ever got. And The Dancing Queen had no melody or harmony to move her around.“Jesus, maybe a half hour,” Officer Brainard half-...

Read story

“The Fate In Our Stars: A Professor Deshpande Mystery” by Martin Ross

Submitted to Contest #245

“You are no fan,” Saanvi observed.The man would have attracted little notice nearly anywhere in Millington but the Theodore Bradbury Gallery. He turned slowly with only his torso, lowered his gaze nearly two feet.“This is some woke shit.” He turned back to the print, shaved head glinting in the studio light. The towering, sunbaked man was in jeans and a black pocket tee turned a dusty near-indigo by constant self-laundering.“And how so? How is this painting ‘woke’?”He now turned completely, and the Arts Department chief regarded the ink peek...

Read story

“The Horseman” by Martin Ross

Submitted to Contest #243

The man on the horse was an odd one – I could tell that even as he angled his quarter horse into my beams like it was his turn in the center ring. An Easterner, which maybe 10 years earlier might’ve seemed even odder. Little dressier than the average rancher; handled his animal like he knew how but had learned it someplace else.“Saw you from the rise,” the man said. Easterner, all right – kind of horse-faced fella with a government haircut and a big nose that reminded me of the Jew families that’d passed through the dust and winds and Pop’s ...

Read story

Author bio

I was a reporter and federal policy writer for 33 years, but have been a mystery lover since I discovered Ellery Queen in the Cruft Elementary library more than 50 years ago. I love the classic, fairplay mystery, and as a community volunteer, I hope to meld old-school storytelling with contemporary issues and concerns and, ideally, humor. I’ve collected seven Kindle collections of my Reedsy stories — five with amateur detective Mike Dodge; one mixed collection of Dodge stories and suspense/horror fiction; and a collection of detective and paranormal tales about the professors of the Arts Department. I do this primarily for enjoyment, and regretfully emphasize I don’t have the money to pay for art services, so soliciting me here squanders your time and prospects