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Murder Crossed Her Mind: A Pentecost and Parker Mystery (A Pentecost and Parker Mystery, 4) - Softcover

Buch 4 von 5: Pentecost and Parker Mysteries

Spotswood, Stephen

 
9780593469057: Murder Crossed Her Mind: A Pentecost and Parker Mystery (A Pentecost and Parker Mystery, 4)
Softcover
ISBN 10: 0593469054 ISBN 13: 9780593469057
Verlag: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2024

Inhaltsangabe

The New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice • The latest action-packed installment in the Nero Award–winning Pentecost & Parker Mystery series follows Lillian and Will tracking the suspicious disappearance of a woman who might have known too much. From the author of Fortune Favors the Dead and Murder Under Her Skin.

Vera Bodine, an elderly shut-in with an exceptional memory, has gone missing and famed detective Lillian Pentecost and her crackerjack assistant Willowjean “Will” Parker have been hired to track her down. But the New York City of 1947 can be a dangerous place, and there’s no shortage of people who might like to get ahold of what’s in Bodine’s head. 

Does her disappearance have to do with the high-profile law firm whose secrets she still keeps; the violent murder of a young woman, with which Bodine had lately become obsessed; or is it the work she did with the FBI hunting Nazi spies intent on wartime sabotage? Any and all are on the suspect list, including their client, Forest Whitsun, hotshot defense attorney and no friend to Pentecost and Parker. 

The clock is ticking to get Bodine back alive, but circumstances conspire to pull both investigators away from the case. Will is hot on the trail of a stickup team who are using her name—and maybe her gun—for their own ends. While Lillian again finds herself up against murder-obsessed millionaire Jessup Quincannon, who has discovered a secret from her past—something he plans to use to either rein the great detective in . . . or destroy her. 

To solve this mystery, and defeat their own personal demons, the pair will have to go nose-to-nose with murderous gangsters, make deals with conniving federal agents, confront Nazi spies, and bend their own ethical rules to the point of breaking. Before time runs out for everyone.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Stephen Spotswood

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

C H A P T E R 1

I thought I knew what pain was. I was wrong.
I’ve been punched, kicked, stabbed, strangled, bitten, and burned. I even got electrocuted that one time.
Nothing compared to this.
I was shaking, covered in cold sweat. There were screams in the distance. My torturer had his back to me, fiddling with something on his table of abominable devices. He turned toward me, a mouthful of yellow teeth peering out through that terrible rictus of a grin.
“Only a little ways to go now.”
“You said that three little ways ago,” I snapped.
“Every time you move, I have to stop,” he said around the stub of a cigar. “You’re lucky the line work is as smooth as it is.”
“You’re lucky I haven’t kneed you in the teeth.”
That was no joke, considering where he’d had his face planted for the last twenty minutes.
“I told you. The inner thigh is a sensitive area.” “I don’t need you to tell me that, Bernie.”
“All’s I’m saying is if you wanted less pain, you could have put it on your bicep or your behind,” Bernie said. “But you didn’t and now here we are. I’ve got customers waiting and all I gots left is the red of the rose. You think you can grit your teeth and play statue for ten minutes more?”
I was lining up a comeback, but I bit it off. The tattooist didn’t deserve my abuse. He was doing the job I was paying him for. Gifting me a permanent reminder of an old friend and a closed case.
“All right,” I said. “If I can sit through Maid in the Ozarks I can sit through this. Fire up your engines.”
Bernie propped his smoke on the table next to his inks, then flipped a switch. The needle in his hand began to buzz—a wingless hornet with a metal stinger. He leaned over me and the needle touched down high on the inside of my left thigh.
I tried breathing, I tried grinding my molars, I tried men- tally reciting poetry.
 
I felt a Funeral, in my Brain, And Mourners to and fro
Kept treading—treading—till it seemed
That . . . something something . . . Ah, shit.
 
No good. Even Dickinson won’t stick when you let a metal wasp tread where only lovers usually linger. The needle was piercing me at a rate of four dozen pricks a second, the red ink of the rose mixing with the red of my blood so I didn’t know which was trickling down my thigh.
Then I remembered what Ms. Pentecost said about her more painful multiple sclerosis flare-ups.
“Ignoring it is impossible. I can’t make it go away, so I won’t try. I give it exactly the attention it deserves, and not an ounce more.”
Since she was a woman of exceptional sense, as well as the most sought-after private detective in New York City, I figured she must know a thing or three. The least her faithful assis- tant, Willowjean “Will” Parker, could do was take a shot at emulating her.
I stopped trying to ignore the pain. I let it wash over me.
Just let it be. And while that didn’t make it much better, at least I stopped twitching.
I took my eyes off Bernie and his needle and looked through the propped-open door to the boardwalk, the sand, and the bluest ocean you could ask for. At least on that Tues- day afternoon in early September 1947. A breeze shouldered its way through, and for a brief moment the smell of ink and sweat and Bernie’s rancid cigar was pushed aside to make way for salty Atlantic crispness.
I needed to find a thermometer and take a note. This was the perfect temperature. At least for New York City.
Because I’ve never been one to sit and jaw about the weather, my mind quickly wandered elsewhere. I thought about Miss Holly Quick, with whom I wouldn’t have minded spending a Coney Island afternoon. The season had just ended, so the crowd had thinned out. Not so vacant that we could have canoodled together on the sand, but at least we wouldn’t have had to stand in line for the Cyclone.
But Holly wasn’t a roller-coaster girl, and besides, she’d left town for a monthlong vacation at a cabin in the Catskills.
I corrected myself. Not a vacation, a writing refuge.
She was struggling to find an ending for her book, which was scheduled to be published in the spring, and thought a month away from the city would do her good.
She’d ridden up with Marlo and Brent Chase on Saturday. The married couple were her friends, lovers, and editors, in that order. The cabin belonged to Marlo’s family, which is how a pulp-magazine writer could afford a month away.
I hadn’t been thrilled that Holly was out of pocket for all of September. Even less thrilled to learn she’d have to walk the better part of an hour to a general store to drop a nickel if she wanted to call me. Then there was the fact that Marlo and Brent were staying with her until Thursday. To settle her in.
“Not a bad euphemism,” I’d told her when she laid out the plan. “I settled in two or three times last night; I’m exhausted.”
Holly dropped her chin and gave me that look from over the top of her glasses—the one I was starting to know a little too well.
“Is this going to be a problem?” she asked. “Because I thought we’d been through this. Jealousy is not an attractive outfit on you.”
“I’m not jealous,” I said. “I’m envious. I just wish I was the one settling you in.”
“I asked you.” “I know.”
“You can still come.” But I couldn’t.
Even if I could tear myself away from the office, I had the feeling that the arrangement the four of us had figured out would start to show its cracks if we were all bunking in the same cabin.
Holly suggested I come up later in the month after Marlo and Brent had gone, but I’d nixed that, too. Again saying that there was too much to do at the office. Backed-up paperwork and filing and this and that—thinking back on how I had prat- tled on, she must have known I was stitching up an excuse.
Lying on my back, listening to the buzz of the needle and the roar of the ocean, I wondered why I’d said no. A few weeks away sounded great. A few weeks away with Holly even bet- ter. Why had I begged off ?
I took my mind by the chin and forced its gaze elsewhere. Pentecost Investigations was between cases at the moment. There was the Tillman affair and the Vaughan murder. But both of those were in various states of getting wrapped. I’d deposited our outstanding checks that morning, bringing the business bank account up to mid-five figures. That should
easily get us through the spring, even after taxes.
I also deposited my own paycheck, which would allow me to take a stroll through the fall fashions at Macy’s without worrying about pinching pennies.
But not all our active cases were on the books.
There was Olivia Waterhouse, who had more or less taken up permanent residence in our life. However, after surfacing dramatically last spring, the fraudulent anthropology professor, blackmailer, and almost certainly killer had disappeared beneath the waves, leaving nary a ripple.
Not that we weren’t searching the seas.
We were still trying to track down anyone who had been taken advantage of by Sunshine Services, Waterhouse’s mock- up temp secretary company, which had offered dictation but provided extortion. Understandably, those victims—those who were still breathing—were hesitant to speak up.
No luck in luring any of the women who’d worked there to come forward, either. Even...

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Verlag
Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Erscheinungsdatum
2024
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0593469054
ISBN 13 
9780593469057
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
384
Kontakt zum Hersteller
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Verantwortliche Person
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