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- Herausgeber: Wildside Press
- Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
- Sprache: Englisch
When a journalist writing a series of articles that accuse local police of corruption is arrested for the murder of his girlfriend, his lawyer hires PI Eric Teague and his partner Jody Hidalgo-Silver to prove it’s more than a coincidence. They discover a maze of hidden identities, veiled accusations, and unanswered questions that lead to a municipal heart of darkness. Now all they have to do is prove it…and get back out alive.
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Seitenzahl: 81
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024
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Table of Contents
COPYRIGHT INFORMATION
NOSE FOR NEWS, by Steve Liskow
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
COPYRIGHT INFORMATION
Copyright © 2023 by Steve Liskow.
Original publication by Wildside Press, LLC.
wildsidepress.com | bcmystery.com
NOSE FOR NEWS,by Steve Liskow
“They read, right? You brag about that all the time.” Jody Hidalgo-Silver rests her stilettos on the corner of her desk, jeans hugging her slim legs. The stilettos make her five-ten.
Eric Teague—senior partner in Teague and Silver Private Investigators—tries to admire Jody’s legs without being too obvious. “They read all the Harry Potter books and tore the movies apart. And they’ve read the Hunger Games, too. I’m pretty sure.”
“Do they know the... ” Jody looks at the ceiling and snaps her fingers. “Wait a second, it’s coming. The Golden Compass is the first one.”
“You lost me.” Teague’s twin nephews’ twelfth birthday looms in two weeks, and he has no idea what to get them. Jody, the youngest of four sisters, has nine nieces and nephews ranging from four to seventeen, so she’s an expert.
“It was on TV, a mini-series. Damn, my mind is going to slush.”
“Well, at your age, you probably need more sleep.” Jody flips him off.
“I didn’t go out. Well, sparred at the dojo, but that’s not like, you know, a date or anything.” Jody holds an eighth-degree black belt in Karate and a fifth degree in Tai Chi.
“Now see, you burn all that energy, you come home and the adrenaline’s surging. You need to find a way to relax.”
“Now you’re suggesting I go out after all, maybe engage in some kind of mindless conjugal activity?” Jody’s eyes are black pearls that seem too large for her face.
“Well, not random, of course. I could recommend a guy... ”
“Probably your height and weight, same eyes?”
“Well, not to be modest, but... ”
“We were talking about books, weren’t we? His Dark Materials, that’s the name of the series. I don’t remember who wrote them, but it’s probably on Amazon.”
“What are they about?” Teague never turns on his TV except for sports.
“They’re this steampunk alternate universe, a girl and a boy, they’re about fourteen, and they get mixed up in this conspiracy. You know The Handmaid’s Tale?”
Jody wears her blue-black hair in a ponytail that brings out the clean planes of her face. Teague bets she can still get carded in any bar in Stonebury even though she’s 27 and a widow.
“What if they’ve already read them?”
The office door opens to reveal a tall woman wearing top-to-toe navy pinstripes. The strap of a briefcase big enough to need a license plate hangs over her shoulder, and a black man in a white windowpane shirt and khakis stands a half-step behind her.
“Good morning.” Jody stands. “Welcome to Teague and Silver.”
Ms. Pinstripes stands half a head taller than Jody. “Are you related to Abigail Teague, in homicide?”
“Her cousin.” Teague wears slacks and a windowpane shirt, too, business sloppy. “I’m younger and cuter.”
“It’s true,” Jody says. “We keep him here for eye candy. I tried to get him to change his name to Gold for the business cards, but he thinks we’d sound like pawnbrokers.”
The woman’s eyes flick back and forth between them.
“Do you just do stand-up, or can you investigate, too?”
Jody gestures to the chairs facing the desks. “Coffee? Tea? Water?”
“Coffee is fine.” Both visitors sink to the chairs Teague rescued from a tag sale.
“Well,” Teague says, “if you know my cousin, you’re probably either law enforcement or legal.”
“Legal. I’m Weronika Chudzik. This is “Kennedy M’tsumbe.”
Teague studies him more carefully. “We’ve seen your name.”
“Then you probably know why we’re here.” The man’s voice is a soft tenor with no trace of accent.
“We’re not psychic,” Teague watches Jody hand the visitors mugs. He puts the man in his late twenties, wiry frame and large hands. “We know that Mr. M’tiss... M’t... sorry, you’re out on bail.”
“Everyone calls me ‘Mitt.’ It’s easier.”
Chudzik steps into the conversation. She has dark blonde hair in a razor cut, and Teague decides he wouldn’t want to see her blue eyes across a poker table. She slides to the edge of the armchair, her fingers still wrapped around that huge briefcase.
“Obviously, I am defending Mitt and I’d like your help. The police have already convicted him and aren’t doing squat.”
“Who’da thunk it?” Jody puts her phone on the corner of the desk to record the conversation and Teague slides a legal pad in front of him.
“According to the media, you found your girlfriend’s body. Is that correct?”
Mitt locks his fingers over his knee, his complexion turning gray.
“I didn’t kill her, I swear.”
“Tell us what you saw.”
Chudzik takes over for her client. Her consonants betray an East-European ancestry, and Teague wonders if she cultivates the accent for court appearances.
Kennedy M’tsumbe and Regina Brinkley had been a couple for a full year, and Mitt was trying to persuade her to move in with him. The previous Saturday, he used his key to let himself into her apartment and found her in her bathtub. The water was room temperature and the Medical Examiner said she had been dead at least twelve hours.
“Did you see her Friday night?” Teague asks.
“She’s got a few buds, they get together every month, have a few drinks... ”
“So, she’d done this before.”
“Yeah. I’ve met them. They’re OK, but I was kind of an outsider, so...”
“When did she get home?”
“That’s the problem,” Chudzik says. “Her friends say they weren’t meeting with her that night. And none of her neighbors could say for sure that she went anywhere.”
“Did she have assigned parking in her lot?” Teague scribbles on his pad.
“Yes. Nobody remembers if her car left that night.”
Teague feels Jody’s eyes look toward his.
“She was going somewhere or meeting someone she didn’t want you to know about.” Teague barely gets the words out before Jody’s incredulous voice follows.
“So, she drowned in her own bathtub?”
Mitt shakes his head.
“The ME says she didn’t drown. There was no water in her lungs, but she’s got a contusion on the side of her head, near her right temple. And her hyoid bone was fractured.”
She was strangled. Teague doesn’t say it out loud, but they all know.
“Dead at least twelve hours before you found her,” Jody says. “Where were you Friday night?”
“Um, that’s the problem. I didn’t go anywhere either.”
“Not another bar? Not social media?”
Mitt sinks back in the chair. “I live online all day. I needed a break. I just stayed home and looked at Netflix.”
“Which means nobody can give you an alibi.”
Chudzik clears her throat.
“Mr.—Mitt—and Regina spent several nights a week at one or the other’s apartment, so his fingerprints and DNA were all over her bedroom. The police are leaning heavily on that.”
Teague underlines “alibi” on his pad. “That’s pretty weak.”
Chudzik rolls her eyes. “I guess you really are a detective, aren’t you?”
“It’s those Hardy Boy books,” Jody says. “He read Nancy Drew, too, but he’s embarrassed to admit it.”
“How big was Regina, Mitt?”
Mitt swallows. “Only about five feet. I could rest my chin on the top of her head.”
Jody finishes the thought. “So, someone wouldn’t have had to be a giant to strangle her. Or move her.”
“No.”
“Where did she work? Anyone there have a grudge with her?’
“She was a dental technician over on Livingston Avenue. She’s worked there for three years.”
Chudzik takes over again. “Two receptionists and two other techs, all women. They all liked her and were shocked at her death, and only one of them, one of the receptionists, knew her at all outside of work.”
“Old boyfriends?”
“She broke up with a guy a few months before we met,” Mitt says. “I don’t remember his name.”
Teague taps his pen on the legal pad. “Social media?”
“Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, everything. Well, I am, too. But Gina’s phone is gone.”
Teague underlines “phone?” on his pad.
“What do you mean ‘gone’? Like missing?”
“Yeah. Her charger was in the bedroom, but the phone wasn’t anywhere. Not in her apartment, her car, she didn’t leave it at work... ”
Jody opens a file on her desktop.
“Let me print out a contract.”
* * * *
Teague deposits Chudzik’s check with his phone before he and Jody examine the discovery files Chudzik emailed them from her laptop. The police report is slightly longer than a grocery list.
“There’s more redacted shit than anything else,” Jody comments.
“Yeah.” Teague skims the whole document again.
“You used to be a cop. How many pictures would you take at a normal crime scene?”
Jody purses her lips. “A murder? There should be a truckload of the body alone, especially close-ups of the bruise on her face and marks on her throat. We’ve got six pictures here, and they don’t show squat.”
Teague nods.
“They don’t even show the bedroom,” Jody continues. “They mention Mitt’s prints and DNA in there, but there’s not a single effing picture.”
Teague looks at the names of the detectives again.
“It’s an apartment complex, right? They should have interviewed neighbors and the super. Chudzik even mentioned people not seeing the woman go anywhere.”
“This stinks, baby doll.”
“Let’s take a field trip. You want me to drive?”
Jody pulls her blazer from the back of her chair.
“Might as well. My stretch limo’s getting new carpeting.”
“You always have trouble parallel parking the beast anyway.”
* * * *
