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ASIN: B00TWLGPR0
ASIN: B00TWLGPR0
Blackmail, capital crimes and political intrigue populate the northern Lake Michigan resort town of La Croix. The bucolic small town is the setting for a mystery involving two women who are determined to end the career of a powerful conservative politician who is running for the U.S. Senate. Melanie Blevins is a progressive reporter who has received a cryptic letter stating that 70-year-old former Governor Norm Waters was involved in a capitol crime when he was 25 years old and first running for political office. Melanie’s life partner is Lisa Valentine, campaign manager for Waters’ unscrupulous Democratic opponent. As Melanie investigates Waters, someone in his circle dies, an assistant is almost killed, and shocking revelations come to light on the eve of the election.
Sample Chapter
Richard Surley had the uncanny ability to appraise, and then profit, from almost any situation. He didn’t actively look for fortune at the expense of others; he just happened to be in the right place at the right time. When he was a teenager, he saw his high school principal coming out of a cheap motel room with a woman who was not his wife, and the principal arranged a scholarship for him to a prestigious college. While at college, he caught a professor being fellated in a public park by a man, and therefore won the assurance of passing grades in that man’s class.
On this early October day, good fortune seemed far away. The air was heavy, and he looked up at the sky to the dark clouds and shook his head. He hated getting soaked, especially in his good clothes. But as sometimes happens before a violent storm, the clouds were playing tricks, sometimes dark and threatening, sometimes light, with hazy patches of sunlight. Richard was on his way to his serving job at Jolly Roger’s, a seafood-restaurant that overlooked La Croix Bay. He dreaded going to work because he was not a particularly good server, and his managers did not like him. He was often late, and even the customers knew he’d rather be anywhere else than serving them. Now, his car decided to quit on him. It was an older model Honda, and it just stopped. Luckily he got it off the road. He called a tow truck from his cell phone and then waited in the sticky heat to be picked up. Richard could not be late again. Because the cars whizzing past made so much noise, he got back in his car with the windows rolled up, sweat building on his forehead. He called his manager. “Well, find a way to get your butt in here or don’t bother at all,” the manager said, tersely.
“Asshole,” Richard said, as he clicked his phone shut. He tapped his fingers on the hot dash- board. The tee shirt he had on underneath his dress shirt was already nearly soaked. He got out of the car and called his friend Leonard, a manager at a local retailer. “Hey Len, it’s Richard. Can you get me to work within fifteen minutes?” Richard’s phone beeped to let him know it needed to be charged.
“What, are you crazy? Even if I weren’t working tonight I couldn’t get you there in time,” Len said.
“But I’m right near you on Airport Road,” Richard whined.
“I’ve got to be to work myself at 5. Sorry, man, no can do. What about Matt?” Matt was Richard’s former college roommate. Richard had moved to La Croix, a turn-of-the-century resort town on the shores of Lake Michigan, because of Matt.
“I guess I--.” All of a sudden he couldn’t hear Len. “Hello? Can you hear me?” He looked at the phone and saw it was dead. “Shit,” he said, slamming his fist on the hot metal of the car.
The tow truck arrived and was backing up on the shoulder. The driver, a good-looking guy, dark and curly haired, got out and approached him. He was wearing a navy blue uniform with the name “Nick” on the front.
“Any idea what the problem is?” Nick asked.
“Nope, no idea at all. I was driving along and it just quit.”
Nick popped the hood. “It’s your timing belt. It’s broke. That’s bad. You mighta screwed up yer engine. Any specific garage you want it towed to?”
“Uh, yeah, I guess Hamburg’s on Keystone.”
“Yeah, that’s good, close by. Let me get your info. You got towing?
“Well, uh, I kinda let it lapse. Here’s a credit card, though.” Nick took it and eyed it, and Richard also gave him his license. The card wasn’t maxed out yet, but close to it, and this repair could put him over the edge.
“Just a minute,” Nick said, as he went to sit in his cab to write. The paperwork was taken care of, the car hoisted onto the truck, and Richard got into the truck for the ride to the garage. I hated that job anyway. I’ll find something else, he thought to himself, as he and Nick rode in silence. They arrived at the garage and Richard got the news that his bill would be $212. He still needed to get home and asked if any buses came by that way.
“I’ll take ya home, if it’s not too far out,” Nick said.
“Oh, thank you. I live just on the other side of town on Arrow Highway.”
“That’s not too bad. Hop in.”
Richard disliked small talk with strangers, but Nick seemed like a genial guy, and he was being generous by offering him a ride. Maybe I could learn something from someone like this, thought Richard. I can’t drive a tow truck, but maybe I could work on some people skills. “So, how long you been doin’ this?”
“Oh, ‘bout four years now,” Nick said, shrugging. “It ain’t bad. Today I had to pick up some folks in a Lexus. Charged ‘em extra, cuz they was from outta state. You’d think that folks would stop comin’ after Labor Day, but I guess they wuz on their way to Canada to see the colors. Me, I can’t wait till the snow flies, so the bastards‘ll leave us alone.”
“Yeah, I know what you mean, but then again, they do help the local economy,” Richard said.
“They sure help this local economy,” Nick said, tapping his steering wheel and laughing at his joke. Richard half-heartedly laughed along.
“Well, I’ve been a server at the Jolly Roger, and I make pretty good tips there,” he said, knowing full well that his tips were meager compared to the better waiters who acted as if they really enjoyed the job. He decided to change the subject. “So, what do you do when you’re not working?”
“I play softball in the summer, and my girlfriend and me go bowling. You? You got a girlfriend?”
Richard sighed. “Nope. I don’t have a girlfriend. I gave up dating for a while.”
“Hmm,” Nick said, stealing a glance at Richard, then looking back at the road. “I guess sometimes they’re more trouble than they’re worth.”
“Sometimes I think I want more of that kind of trouble.”
“What’s a dude like you doing alone anyway? Seems like you’d have all kinds of chicks.”
“Oh, I don’t know. Just trying to figure my life out; why drag someone else into my life when I don’t know what I want?”
“Sometimes it’s nice just to have someone to screw on a regular basis, you know?” Nick said. He reached over and punched Richard’s arm.
Richard looked the other way and rolled his eyes. He got depressed when people asked about his dating status. At 40, with no girlfriend, people assumed he was gay, and he disliked having to explain that he had gotten used to being alone.
They were passing one of the nicer neighborhoods of La Croix, “The Lorraine,” named for the river that wound through the area just before it emptied into La Croix Bay, part of Lake Michigan. Early twentieth-century clapboard-sided houses gracefully stood on tree lined streets, mixed with an occasional larger Victorian-style house, painted in multi colors, with wood shingles and a wrap-around porch. This residential area bordered the downtown business district. Nick’s phone rang. “I’m just runnin’ a guy to his house,” he said, agreeing with the caller, then, “Okay, okay. I’ll be right there.... Okay... me too, bye.” He put the phone in his pocket, and started to pull over the truck. “Sorry, bud, but that was my girlfriend and she wants me to come pick ‘er up right now. Wish I could take ya home but, you know how women are,” he said, guessing that Richard probably didn’t know how they were. He came to a stop and Richard hopped out, calling back to Nick.
“Thanks, see ya later.”
“Good luck,” Nick responded, and he sped off. Richard stood in front of the marina, two miles from his house. He walked past fishing boats and several larger yachts. His shoes were really digging into his Achilles’ tendon on both feet and he knew he had blisters starting. “I have to get out of these shoes before my feet start to bleed,” he said to himself. He decided to head toward home along the water, possibly to soak his feet before continuing.
The city had done a good job of protecting this waterfront from development. For years, when the town was young, what was now a marina and open park-land used to be a working waterfront, where schooners would pick up and unload goods, and logs would be hauled to Chicago, Detroit and Cleveland. There had also been a cannery and a few other small businesses, now all gone. The town council had decided that the marina would be the edge of the business district of the town. Beyond the volleyball courts was the more rustic part of the park, where there were huge white pine trees, bushes and flowerbeds. A short driveway through some trees ended in a small parking area, where people could stop and view Lake Michigan from a concrete deck. A bike path ran from the marina, parallel to the water, past the concrete lookout deck. The deck had a metal railing bordering it on three sides, and they could enjoy looking at the pretty bay. Today there was little activity on the water. A thunderstorm loomed, and no tourists were on the deck. The sky had grown gray again and there was a relentless breeze blowing from the west. There were piles of boulders around the base of the deck, some submerged in the water, others half submerged. Richard headed for the boulders, sat down on one that looked like a chair, took off his shoes, and soaked his aching feet in the cold water. His car was broken down, he wasn’t quite sure how he would pay his rent, and he was lonely. His good luck and opportunity of the past seemed far away.
As he sat on the rocks, he heard two raised voices. The voices got louder as they approached the lookout deck. Richard could not see the people who were talking from down below on the rocks, and they could not see him.
“4:00 and no sign of him. I hope to God he didn’t already come and leave,” Ruby said. Her eyes were red from crying and she clutched the letter in her hands. “He says to meet him on the deck. Are those railings secure?” she asked.
“Oh, for Chrissake, people are safe here every day,” George said, heading onto the deck. “How do you know this isn’t some elaborate hoax? I told you, Dyson’s people will play dirty, and this would be right down their alley.”
“They play dirty? They play dirty? You’ve been playing dirty with that gardener. You idiot. You idiotic sonofabitch! How could you?” she screamed, charging after him onto the deck.
“The kid means nothing to me, Ruby, you know that.”
“And I KNOW he’s not the only one. Oh George, for the love of Pete, I’ve known for years you’ve diddled young men, but did you have to be so blatant with this one?”
“Who said I was blatant?”
“Well someone knows all about it and wants a bundle of money. And who’s to say they still won’t go to the papers?”
Upon hearing the words ‘diddled young men,’ Richard took notice. He cautiously stayed low, and moved behind a larger boulder so he could watch. They were just feet away from him. Ruby was beginning to cry again.
“What I want to know is, how many young men have there been? This person seems to think there’s more than the gardener. Somebody knows a lot! How could you let this happen? I wanted so badly to be an ambassador. Now Norm’s going to lose the race and we’ll be laughing stocks. We’ll have to move to the house in Nevada for good. Oh, you idiot! You’re going to pay for this George, you just wait!”
“What? You want my money? Take it. Take whatever you want. I shoulda walked away years ago. I’m glad this is happening.” George reached into his pocket and pulled out his wallet and started emptying it, throwing wads of bills onto the deck. Some of them were blowing in the water.
While George emptied his wallet, Ruby struggled to take off her wedding ring; while doing this, she let the letter go, and the breeze carried it to the boulders below, where Richard listened, enthralled. He scrambled for the paper and grabbed it, not reading it, but continued to listen. At the right time he might tell them he retrieved it, but not during this row. He quickly folded it and put it in his pocket.
Sample Chapter
Richard Surley had the uncanny ability to appraise, and then profit, from almost any situation. He didn’t actively look for fortune at the expense of others; he just happened to be in the right place at the right time. When he was a teenager, he saw his high school principal coming out of a cheap motel room with a woman who was not his wife, and the principal arranged a scholarship for him to a prestigious college. While at college, he caught a professor being fellated in a public park by a man, and therefore won the assurance of passing grades in that man’s class.
On this early October day, good fortune seemed far away. The air was heavy, and he looked up at the sky to the dark clouds and shook his head. He hated getting soaked, especially in his good clothes. But as sometimes happens before a violent storm, the clouds were playing tricks, sometimes dark and threatening, sometimes light, with hazy patches of sunlight. Richard was on his way to his serving job at Jolly Roger’s, a seafood-restaurant that overlooked La Croix Bay. He dreaded going to work because he was not a particularly good server, and his managers did not like him. He was often late, and even the customers knew he’d rather be anywhere else than serving them. Now, his car decided to quit on him. It was an older model Honda, and it just stopped. Luckily he got it off the road. He called a tow truck from his cell phone and then waited in the sticky heat to be picked up. Richard could not be late again. Because the cars whizzing past made so much noise, he got back in his car with the windows rolled up, sweat building on his forehead. He called his manager. “Well, find a way to get your butt in here or don’t bother at all,” the manager said, tersely.
“Asshole,” Richard said, as he clicked his phone shut. He tapped his fingers on the hot dash- board. The tee shirt he had on underneath his dress shirt was already nearly soaked. He got out of the car and called his friend Leonard, a manager at a local retailer. “Hey Len, it’s Richard. Can you get me to work within fifteen minutes?” Richard’s phone beeped to let him know it needed to be charged.
“What, are you crazy? Even if I weren’t working tonight I couldn’t get you there in time,” Len said.
“But I’m right near you on Airport Road,” Richard whined.
“I’ve got to be to work myself at 5. Sorry, man, no can do. What about Matt?” Matt was Richard’s former college roommate. Richard had moved to La Croix, a turn-of-the-century resort town on the shores of Lake Michigan, because of Matt.
“I guess I--.” All of a sudden he couldn’t hear Len. “Hello? Can you hear me?” He looked at the phone and saw it was dead. “Shit,” he said, slamming his fist on the hot metal of the car.
The tow truck arrived and was backing up on the shoulder. The driver, a good-looking guy, dark and curly haired, got out and approached him. He was wearing a navy blue uniform with the name “Nick” on the front.
“Any idea what the problem is?” Nick asked.
“Nope, no idea at all. I was driving along and it just quit.”
Nick popped the hood. “It’s your timing belt. It’s broke. That’s bad. You mighta screwed up yer engine. Any specific garage you want it towed to?”
“Uh, yeah, I guess Hamburg’s on Keystone.”
“Yeah, that’s good, close by. Let me get your info. You got towing?
“Well, uh, I kinda let it lapse. Here’s a credit card, though.” Nick took it and eyed it, and Richard also gave him his license. The card wasn’t maxed out yet, but close to it, and this repair could put him over the edge.
“Just a minute,” Nick said, as he went to sit in his cab to write. The paperwork was taken care of, the car hoisted onto the truck, and Richard got into the truck for the ride to the garage. I hated that job anyway. I’ll find something else, he thought to himself, as he and Nick rode in silence. They arrived at the garage and Richard got the news that his bill would be $212. He still needed to get home and asked if any buses came by that way.
“I’ll take ya home, if it’s not too far out,” Nick said.
“Oh, thank you. I live just on the other side of town on Arrow Highway.”
“That’s not too bad. Hop in.”
Richard disliked small talk with strangers, but Nick seemed like a genial guy, and he was being generous by offering him a ride. Maybe I could learn something from someone like this, thought Richard. I can’t drive a tow truck, but maybe I could work on some people skills. “So, how long you been doin’ this?”
“Oh, ‘bout four years now,” Nick said, shrugging. “It ain’t bad. Today I had to pick up some folks in a Lexus. Charged ‘em extra, cuz they was from outta state. You’d think that folks would stop comin’ after Labor Day, but I guess they wuz on their way to Canada to see the colors. Me, I can’t wait till the snow flies, so the bastards‘ll leave us alone.”
“Yeah, I know what you mean, but then again, they do help the local economy,” Richard said.
“They sure help this local economy,” Nick said, tapping his steering wheel and laughing at his joke. Richard half-heartedly laughed along.
“Well, I’ve been a server at the Jolly Roger, and I make pretty good tips there,” he said, knowing full well that his tips were meager compared to the better waiters who acted as if they really enjoyed the job. He decided to change the subject. “So, what do you do when you’re not working?”
“I play softball in the summer, and my girlfriend and me go bowling. You? You got a girlfriend?”
Richard sighed. “Nope. I don’t have a girlfriend. I gave up dating for a while.”
“Hmm,” Nick said, stealing a glance at Richard, then looking back at the road. “I guess sometimes they’re more trouble than they’re worth.”
“Sometimes I think I want more of that kind of trouble.”
“What’s a dude like you doing alone anyway? Seems like you’d have all kinds of chicks.”
“Oh, I don’t know. Just trying to figure my life out; why drag someone else into my life when I don’t know what I want?”
“Sometimes it’s nice just to have someone to screw on a regular basis, you know?” Nick said. He reached over and punched Richard’s arm.
Richard looked the other way and rolled his eyes. He got depressed when people asked about his dating status. At 40, with no girlfriend, people assumed he was gay, and he disliked having to explain that he had gotten used to being alone.
They were passing one of the nicer neighborhoods of La Croix, “The Lorraine,” named for the river that wound through the area just before it emptied into La Croix Bay, part of Lake Michigan. Early twentieth-century clapboard-sided houses gracefully stood on tree lined streets, mixed with an occasional larger Victorian-style house, painted in multi colors, with wood shingles and a wrap-around porch. This residential area bordered the downtown business district. Nick’s phone rang. “I’m just runnin’ a guy to his house,” he said, agreeing with the caller, then, “Okay, okay. I’ll be right there.... Okay... me too, bye.” He put the phone in his pocket, and started to pull over the truck. “Sorry, bud, but that was my girlfriend and she wants me to come pick ‘er up right now. Wish I could take ya home but, you know how women are,” he said, guessing that Richard probably didn’t know how they were. He came to a stop and Richard hopped out, calling back to Nick.
“Thanks, see ya later.”
“Good luck,” Nick responded, and he sped off. Richard stood in front of the marina, two miles from his house. He walked past fishing boats and several larger yachts. His shoes were really digging into his Achilles’ tendon on both feet and he knew he had blisters starting. “I have to get out of these shoes before my feet start to bleed,” he said to himself. He decided to head toward home along the water, possibly to soak his feet before continuing.
The city had done a good job of protecting this waterfront from development. For years, when the town was young, what was now a marina and open park-land used to be a working waterfront, where schooners would pick up and unload goods, and logs would be hauled to Chicago, Detroit and Cleveland. There had also been a cannery and a few other small businesses, now all gone. The town council had decided that the marina would be the edge of the business district of the town. Beyond the volleyball courts was the more rustic part of the park, where there were huge white pine trees, bushes and flowerbeds. A short driveway through some trees ended in a small parking area, where people could stop and view Lake Michigan from a concrete deck. A bike path ran from the marina, parallel to the water, past the concrete lookout deck. The deck had a metal railing bordering it on three sides, and they could enjoy looking at the pretty bay. Today there was little activity on the water. A thunderstorm loomed, and no tourists were on the deck. The sky had grown gray again and there was a relentless breeze blowing from the west. There were piles of boulders around the base of the deck, some submerged in the water, others half submerged. Richard headed for the boulders, sat down on one that looked like a chair, took off his shoes, and soaked his aching feet in the cold water. His car was broken down, he wasn’t quite sure how he would pay his rent, and he was lonely. His good luck and opportunity of the past seemed far away.
As he sat on the rocks, he heard two raised voices. The voices got louder as they approached the lookout deck. Richard could not see the people who were talking from down below on the rocks, and they could not see him.
“4:00 and no sign of him. I hope to God he didn’t already come and leave,” Ruby said. Her eyes were red from crying and she clutched the letter in her hands. “He says to meet him on the deck. Are those railings secure?” she asked.
“Oh, for Chrissake, people are safe here every day,” George said, heading onto the deck. “How do you know this isn’t some elaborate hoax? I told you, Dyson’s people will play dirty, and this would be right down their alley.”
“They play dirty? They play dirty? You’ve been playing dirty with that gardener. You idiot. You idiotic sonofabitch! How could you?” she screamed, charging after him onto the deck.
“The kid means nothing to me, Ruby, you know that.”
“And I KNOW he’s not the only one. Oh George, for the love of Pete, I’ve known for years you’ve diddled young men, but did you have to be so blatant with this one?”
“Who said I was blatant?”
“Well someone knows all about it and wants a bundle of money. And who’s to say they still won’t go to the papers?”
Upon hearing the words ‘diddled young men,’ Richard took notice. He cautiously stayed low, and moved behind a larger boulder so he could watch. They were just feet away from him. Ruby was beginning to cry again.
“What I want to know is, how many young men have there been? This person seems to think there’s more than the gardener. Somebody knows a lot! How could you let this happen? I wanted so badly to be an ambassador. Now Norm’s going to lose the race and we’ll be laughing stocks. We’ll have to move to the house in Nevada for good. Oh, you idiot! You’re going to pay for this George, you just wait!”
“What? You want my money? Take it. Take whatever you want. I shoulda walked away years ago. I’m glad this is happening.” George reached into his pocket and pulled out his wallet and started emptying it, throwing wads of bills onto the deck. Some of them were blowing in the water.
While George emptied his wallet, Ruby struggled to take off her wedding ring; while doing this, she let the letter go, and the breeze carried it to the boulders below, where Richard listened, enthralled. He scrambled for the paper and grabbed it, not reading it, but continued to listen. At the right time he might tell them he retrieved it, but not during this row. He quickly folded it and put it in his pocket.