A Suitable Epitaph E-Book

Roxana Nastase

• Herausgeber: Roxana Nastase
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017

Beschreibung

Klavdiya dreamed of money and love. Her dreams died with her under a merciless rain. 
Leah, a Canadian detective with empathetic skills, and her team engage in a tedious race to find the culprit. 
Leah is able to read people's minds and sense their feelings and she makes good use of her skills. However, when she encounters Axel, her abilities are blocked and she doesn't know if she found her killer or merely a witness to the murder. 
If you like a detective story with compelling characters, then this is the book for you.

Leseprobe

A SUITABLE EPITAPH

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Roxana Nastase

May 2017

Toronto, Canada

© 2017 by ROXANA NASTASE

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the author, with the exception of a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review to be printed in a newspaper, magazine or journal.

All characters in this book are fictive, and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, places or events is coincidental.

The book doesn’t portray the Canadian police system.

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Toronto, Canada

Dedication:

To Marian, for his appalling patience

Acknowledgement:

I want to thank

Dr. James P Henley Jr

For all his help in improving the quality of this book.

It couldn’t have been done without him!

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PROLOGUE – AXEL’S VISION

CHAPTER 1 – A SUITABLE EPITAPH

CHAPTER 2 – WOMAN VS POLICEWOMAN

CHAPTER 3 – DIRTY DISHES IN THE AFTERMATH OF A PARTY

CHAPTER 4 – SKELETONS IN THE CLOSET

CHAPTER 5 – COFFEE, COOKIES AND AN AUTOPSY REPORT

CHAPTER 6 – AXEL IS CAUGHT IN THE LINE OF FIRE

CHAPTER 7 – A TEMPORARY ALLIANCE

CHAPTER 8 – BEWARE OF A WOMAN SCORNED AND A MAN’S BRUISED EGO

EPILOGUE

EXCERPT FROM THE NOVEL

BOOKS BY ROXANA NASTASE

A Suitable Epitaph

Klavdiya was born on the shore of a small lake in Russia forty years ago...

The woman got married in spring when the cherry trees were in blossom. She was eighteen at the time. She got divorced in autumn when the harsh rains washed the soil and the fallen leaves. She was only twenty-three and she had a young boy attached to her skirts.

...

Klavdiya died on the shore of another lake and on another continent... She’d come into the world restless and with a thirst to exceed the limitations of the world she’d been born to and she died without finding her peace.

PROLOGUE – AXEL’S VISION

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THE WOMAN HAD BEEN flirting with him for over fifteen minutes before he invited her to accompany him in the garden for some fresh air. Glancing out the patio doors into the darkness, she smiled. That was exactly what she’d been aiming for and she consented freely to follow him outside.

After all, he was a very well built man. Maybe quite too well, she had thought when she noticed him for the first time. Her mouth watered while her eyes perused the expanse of his broad shoulders and strong hands.

She needed a man. It had been some time since a man’s strong hands aroused her. Probably, too long, if she considered the flutter in her belly.

The physical desire had been compelling enough, but the signs hinting to his wealth had been more important and decisive for her. The man was wealthy enough for her tastes. His suit wasn’t a cheap imitation, but a true Armani. She had always had an eye for such things.

They strolled leisurely along the gravel path, as she clung to his sturdy arm. He murmured some inconsequential things in her ear, and she didn’t bother to listen to him.

The power she could feel under her fingers was as exciting as the heavy smell of the roses lining one side of the trail. She smelled romance in the air and smiled.

A few more steps and the roses made way to berry bushes. The smells changed, and the heat of the summer night enveloped them in a humid cocoon.

The shingle path disappeared and she stumbled when her foot stepped on the cracked soil. Both chuckled although embarrassment powdered her cheeks with a slight blush. He silently provided more support to her and a giddy feeling bubbled in her veins.

When he hastened his steps, she giggled softly and commented playfully on his haste. He was watching the trees, distracted, and didn’t give any sign that he had heard her.

That determined her to bring a halt to their fast advancement through the garden. It might have been romantic, yet it didn’t seem very wise. She was alone with a man she had just met and she didn’t know anything about him.

It was her first time there and she hadn’t been aware that the garden grounds were so extensive and secluded. Besides, while she had all intentions to flirt with him, she didn’t have any intentions to succumb to his charms that night.

It was never a good idea to give in too soon. She wanted much more than a tumble in the hay, and that meant that she had to play hard to get for a while. Men liked to hunt. They enjoyed the scent of their prey and the efforts that came with their chase. 

The huge man glanced at her. His eyes showed understanding, and he allowed her to move at a slower pace. She was wearing stilettoes and her feet thanked him. When she put on her high heels that evening before the party, she hadn’t thought of wearing them on that hard ground.

Once they were about forty meters away from the house and in the shadow of the trees lining that side of the garden, the man grabbed her arm and pulled her to a deserted corner. He put enough strength behind his action, and the brutal move startled her.

A shiver played on the back of her neck and sent tentacles along her spine and the back of her legs. A spine-chilling feeling replaced her light-hearted mood from before, but she didn’t accept to be pulled without doing anything.

She tried to reason with him at first. She preferred to assume that maybe he was very anxious to be alone with her and that was why his attitude changed.

Her well-chosen words fell on deaf ears though, and she stopped pretending. She began to oppose him, putting all her strength behind her opposition, but it felt as if she had been trying to stop a river flow.

Indifferent to her pleas, he dragged her for a few more meters. She continued pleading with him because she didn’t see any other solution, but her attempts failed.

She replenished her efforts to fight him and tried to dig her heels in the ground, but the soil was too dry and she couldn’t get any traction. She just stirred a cloud of dust in the air, which rushed to find a home in her pores.

Her legs turned to jelly, and she barely kept herself upright. Something was definitely wrong with what was going on there. Both her self-confidence and sense of safety had slowly skulked away during the forced walk through the trees.

Tinges of electrical shocks ran through her arms. She panicked and tears burnt her cheeks. She felt ashamed of her weakness and tried to hold them back, but the cold fingers of fear kept squeezing her heart in an iron fist, and her breath became ragged.

Probably sick of her puny attempts to detangle herself from him, he finally stopped and moved to stand before her. Through the stream of her stubborn tears, she surveyed the man’s stony face with dread.

The man wasn’t even blinking and that disconcerted her more. He was just staring at her with dead eyes, which quashed her hopes.

She tried to say something again, but now, she didn’t find the strength to push the sounds past her lips. Her throat refused to work and her mouth was drier than the soil she felt under the thin soles of her fancy shoes.

She glanced back to the house with renewed, albeit premature expectation, but the trees hid it from sight. Her lips quaked when she realized that no one could see or hear her.

A corner of the man’s mouth lifted in a satisfied smirk, and that sneer was a splash of cold water over her face. Even though her anxiety was climbing and reaching new heights, she understood that what he felt for her was nothing else but contempt.

That came like a shock. Not the first that evening to be sure, but this one packed the power of a live wire, and her mind scattered looking for an explanation.

She had always had the confidence that men admired and even worshipped her. She had basked under their burning glances often enough and she knew that she didn’t delude herself.

She stared back at him with tired eyes. She tried to decipher what lay there, behind his mask, but her intuition had taken cover somewhere and didn’t offer any help.

The sturdy man studied her for a few moments, and then, he reached out and fisted his hand into her silk blouse. His touch brought her back to the reality, which had twisted a pretend romance into a horror movie.

Fear bubbled near the surface now, and as her brain scrambled the signals, she was about to burst into a hysterical laughter.

In that frozen moment, that soft blouse, which caressed the curve of her breasts, became the most important thing in her world. She was very proud of that top as it was one of the symbols she attached to the life she had built for herself. She had turned that expensive piece of silk into a tangible proof that she had exceeded both her and other people’s expectations, but, more important, that she had escaped her birth circumstances, which had confined her to the working class.

The sight of that dark and threatening hand on her precious top brought a glimmer of dread in her mind, but also made her see red before her eyes.

The beefy hand jerked hard and the flimsy blouse fell apart rendered to rags. Her dismay and the pressure of her fury at the sight of her prized chemise ruined ruthlessly, pushed a warlike cry past her quivering lips.

She abandoned any rational thought and jumped the man. Her shoes found soft spots in his shins and made him grunt. Her nails targeted the handsome and ruthless face, she had admired just minutes before, and left blood in their wake.

He fought her back. The slap of his backhand unbalanced her. She stumbled back and cried out again and not only because of the pain.

This cry echoed the terror that had swiftly creeped into her bones and fried all her neuronal cells. The man was strong, and she didn’t have the ability to defend herself against that brutal show of force.

Her cry died soon, though. Another man grabbed her throat from behind and his fingers gripped her as a vise and smothered the sound.

She questioned and berated herself. In the heat of the fight, she had failed to hear the other man’s steps. Still, she promised herself to go down swinging.

She tried to claw into his skin, but he didn’t show that he registered any kind of pain. Running on instinct only, she directed her stilettoes to his shins, but she couldn’t say for sure if she succeeded.

His fingers burrowed harder into her delicate skin and left bruises behind, which marred the flawless whiteness of her epidermis. Her air pipe constricted and the woman slid slowly into unconsciousness.

Before she blacked out, she had just enough time to feel other fingers knotted in her hair. She slipped beyond terror and anxiety. Her impotence overwhelmed the solitary corner of her mind that was still functioning.

The last thought that passed her mind was that she couldn’t buy or fight her way out of that situation. She knew that she had lost the game with life and that was her night.

The slight flicker of life in her body just made it interesting for the men around. The third man, who’d grabbed her hair, threw her on the hard ground in the shadow of a bush pregnant with red drops. Her skirt climbed up her thighs and the whiteness of the exposed skin of her legs lit the darkness.

The three of them were still looming over her. They stared at her fallen body for a few seconds.

One of the attackers smirked with satisfaction, his eyes going from her body to the red berries. The ugliness in his sneer proved that he knew well that the beauty of the red fruit went hand in hand with their poison, and he found it befitting the situation.

The woman was about to get what she deserved. Poison deserved poison.

***

AXEL WOKE UP WITH A jerk, and his half-lidded eyes perused the bedroom. The light of the moon reflected in the glass panels of the south wall and filled the room with shadows in the corners.

His heart pounded in his chest. For one brief, but agonizing moment, he had feared that he was stuck there with those men, who were still staring at the woman’s body, which was lying prostrated in the shadow of that bush.

Now, wide awake, he breathed deeply and closed his eyes in relief. He was still in his house.

Axel’s relief was short lived, though. He had scarcely closed his eyes that he had another vision of the woman’s broken body.

She was still lying down on that hard and dry ground, which he had seen in his dream. Now, a monotonous rain whipped her mercilessly and washed the pattern in blood, which had been painted on her body, feeding the blood to the dehydrated soil.

The vision was so in-depth that Axel was able to see the rain drops which were clinging to the woman’s eyelashes. The light in her eyes had dimmed at first and then vanished. The lines on her forehead had deepened and marked her passing years on her face.

A few hours earlier, that face had been flawless. Now it was marred with an X, high on her left cheekbone and her features showed weariness, pain and despair.

Axel flexed his fingers and wiped his damp palms off on his thighs. Axel’s visions weren’t always so detailed, but there were exceptions, though, such as the one that he had had that night.

When the image finally blurred, Axel exhaled in a whoosh and then breathed in deeply again. He wiped his forehead and noticed that his fingers weren’t as steady as he knew them.

Axel shook his head and got off his bed. He tried to stand, but he had to lean on the night table for a few seconds before trying his wobbly legs again.

In the usual course of events, the man wouldn’t have needed help to find his bearings. Axel knew his lair as well as the back of his hand and could find his way through his rooms even if he hadn’t pulled the curtains aside to have the condo bathed in the light of the moon. Still, that night, he needed the support of the walls to reach the bathroom.

There, he leaned on the lavabo and stared at his reflection in the mirror. Staring didn’t help, though. He turned on the tap and filled his fists with cold water, which he liberally splashed over his face.

When the trepidation had slowly left his body, Axel drank a mouthful. His mouth had been dry, and his tongue had almost been stuck to the roof of his mouth.

That wasn’t enough. He brushed his teeth and only then, he left the bathroom. He started towards his terrace, but hesitated. He was restive and needed something more than to just listen to the owls in the night and the sounds of the lake.

With a shrug, he turned around and left his bedroom. He needed a glass of his best whiskey to wash away the metallic taste of death, which still lingered in his mouth. His toothpaste hadn’t succeeded in chasing it away. Besides, he also needed to make a decision.

Axel didn’t know the people in his dream, but he knew the house. He had seen that garden before. He had strolled around those grounds many times in the past and knew exactly where to find that pregnant bush, which was guarding the woman’s lifeless body now.

Now, he had to decide what to say to the police and how. He didn’t want to reveal how he knew about the crime, but they would ask and he needed to plot a strategy.

CHAPTER 1 – A SUITABLE EPITAPH

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KLAVDIYA WAS BORN ON the shore o [...]