The first in a series of mystery novels set in Portland, Oregon featuring ex-Coastie turned private investigator Matt MacKinnon. In this book Matt is hired by a partner in a small electronics firm to obtain proof of a wife's infidelity with a business partner and supposed friend. The assignment takes a very negative twist when a VIP in a competing firm is murdered.

Rose City Demise

By M. Scott Kelley

AuthorHouse

Copyright © 2010 M. Scott Kelley
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4520-3979-4

Chapter One

Sometimes I find myself wondering if becoming a private investigator in Portland, Oregon was the wisest career choice I could have made. The business is full of sleazy people and not the most lucrative of endeavors, because when you get right down to it, Portland is a pretty small place. On the plus side, the hours are flexible, and success or failure can be traced to nothing but my own wit and work ethic. The fact that I occasionally helped a decent person out of a jam was a real draw though. Perhaps I take the do-a-good-turn-once-a-day mantra learned in Boy Scouts a bit too seriously. So here I was doing what I thought I did best: trying to fit together the pieces of my current mystery of life. That mystery wasn't worth too much, at least to the stiff who had hired me to catch his wife in the act of making nice-nice with his business partner, but it had been a slow week and the creditors were baying.

Initially the case looked like the usual no brainer: wife caught in between two business partners with ensuing mayhem for all parties-but it began to look more interesting as I nosed around. The client, Roger Parsons, actually had the gall to wear a silk cravat and smoking jacket and play the best of Barry Manilow during our initial interview. Roger was a majority owner in a small but lucrative electronics innovation and design firm. He had started the outfit with his friend of many years right out of college. Roger was the salesman, his partner the inventive brains-an American dream story, hard work and good ideas put together made them far wealthier than their original fantasies, which was pretty wealthy. The money led to the inevitable, at least what the skeptical side of me deemed inevitable. Booze and women, not necessarily in that order.

The woman was a real looker. In the original powwow Roger had shown me professional portraits, and I had since seen her in the flesh (literally) while collecting tidbits to build a picture of the truth about what was happening. Her name was Marguerite Mondello-Parsons; black hair, Hispanic-looking, with full, red lips and a body that would have made Tarzan drop Jane. She was the type of woman that often seems to attract trouble. They met at a convention; she was working for one of the bigger electronics firms-love at first sight.

The partner, Richard Mullin, had not bothered to attend. He never did, because he was uncomfortable in public and his brain was more programmed to talk to electrons than people. A first-class thinker and inventor, he was the real reason the company had done as well as it had. But without the backslapping, schmoozing Roger, he would have been just another drone with Sony.

The two had grown up together; they had attended the same schools through high school and had somehow managed to become friends despite their differences. When it came time to go on to college, they had chosen the same solid, but not flashy, institution. Richard-he hated to be called Dick, Richie, or Rich-had always been there to help Roger through the hard classes. Roger had helped Richard in other subjects, mostly Women 101. A real smooth talker, Roger had never had much trouble with the ladies.

I had learned much of this during that first chat with Roger, between his getting up to fill his tumbler with raw Jack Daniels and fiddle with the stereo (too bad he hadn't had a fiddle, it would have sounded better than the Barry Manilow). His charge had been for me to get "proof" that Richard and Marguerite were having a thing. After some very rudimentary detecting, I knew that Richard and the dame were rubbing the bacon, but something about the scene and that "do-a-good-turn" bit of my personality had made me want to sit back and take in some more of the flavor before I blew the whistle on the miscreants.

Chapter Two

Before I explain, I should probably tell you that this tendency to explore a situation more deeply than I needed to had plagued me my entire life. I am no Sherlock Holmes, but I do have a pretty good sense of people and how they operate. I could usually tell when the proverbial wool was being pulled and did not like to see the puller get away with it. This was first a problem for me in school. I was a history teacher's worst nightmare: a kid who read more than the required thirty-year-old textbook and did not blindly accept as gospel the textbook version of life and the way things happened. After somehow managing to get through high school with grades not acceptable to major institutions of higher learning, I joined up in the service of Uncle Sam.

The military, even the somewhat more relaxed Coast Guard, did not tolerate individualistic thinkers in boot camp. I quickly learned, at the cost of seemingly gallons of spittle from screaming drill instructors and sweat from all of the extra running I had to do, that producing a freethinking Seaman Recruit Matthew MacKinnon was not what boot camp was all about. I was able to squelch, for the most part, my tendency to question why things were the way they were during my four years protecting and serving on the high seas and in Coast Guard aviation.

Finding that the private sector had little use for my parachute-packing skills I was free to pursue the avocation of my choice. I chose to return to the City of Roses, Portland, Oregon-the place where I had spent the bulk of my childhood-and become a purveyor of information. I had never considered that most of the information I would purvey as a private investigator would be quite tedious and mundane-too many James Bond movies as a child. I had a fair share of cheating-spousal cases, both husband and wife, as I was an equal opportunity snoop; but did not care for them. Unfortunately glamorous, high-paying clients with truly interesting work did not abound, and I frequently found my bias against mundane marital cases being shoved aside for the income they provided.

This was the situation I was in when contacted by Roger. He explained his desire for information; I rechecked the balance in my business account-which was the only account I had, and which still read less than the sum of the pile of bills I had; and I agreed to meet with him at his home near the Portland Golf Club.

We had our talk, and I accepted a personal check for retainer and some expenses before barely keeping myself from running out the door to make sure I made the bank in time to avoid bouncing some poorly timed checks. I managed that, and once again felt that I was my own master. I actually went out and bought myself a new CD, Jethro Tull's Minstrel in the Gallery, and sang along as I headed toward the brain's home in West Linn.

When I pulled past the address given to me by Roger, I saw that the place was by no means what I would call a dump; I could not believe my luck. Just as I turned down the next block, I caught sight of a black BMW M3 turning and pulling into Richard's driveway. I could not believe the timing; one of the final bits of background I had gotten was that Marguerite operated such a conveyance. I found myself thinking that I would have to return some of the expense money I had been forwarded-not a pleasing prospect.

I drove around the neighborhood for a bit, just to get acquainted with the layout, and parked just down the block. It was still light, but well after dinnertime, which I realized I had missed. The thought of settling the case so quickly, while certainly a sop to my ego, did not quite keep me from starting up my 2007 Toyota...