DIVA (47 page)
And most of all, I thank you my readers for choosing
Diva
. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I did writing it. Many of you wrote to me after reading,
Absolution
. I hope you’ll do so again. Please visit my website
www.susanfleet.com
and drop me an email. I’d love to hear from you.
COPYRIGHT PAGE
DIVA, a Frank Renzi Mystery
Copyright © 2011 by Susan Fleet All rights reserved.
Second Edition published by Music and Mayhem Press in 2012
Print edition ISBN: 978-0-9847235-2-2
Diva
is a work of fiction. All names, characters, businesses, incidents and events are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
This book contains an excerpt of Susan Fleet's next Frank Renzi novel,
Natalie's Revenge
, copyright
2012 by Susan Fleet
No part of this book may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded or distributed in any printed or electronic form without the express written permission of the author. The uploading and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the author's permission is illegal and punishable by law. Please do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. For permissions contact the author at her website: http://www.susanfleet.com/
This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. It may not be re-sold or given to others. If you would like to share this book with others, please purchase an additional copy for each person. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, you should return it and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of the author.
Author photo by Pete Wolbrette
And now read on for an excerpt of the next Frank Renzi novel,
Natalie’s Revenge
© 2012 Susan Fleet
EXCERPT of
Natalie's Revenge
PROLOGUE
October 1988 New Orleans
One night Mom didn’t come home.
Every morning she'd come in my room, wake me with a kiss and say in a cheery voice, “Rise and shine, Natalie. Your breakfast is ready.”
Not today. Today I woke with a start. Right away I got a creepy feeling. Except for the rain splattering my bedroom window, our apartment was silent and still. I looked at my clock radio. The big red numbers said 8:35.
I was late for school. Even if I stayed up late watching TV, Mom always got me up in time for school.
Last night before Mom left she said, “Do your homework and go to bed and I’ll see you tomorrow.”
I buried my face in the pillow and tried to pretend it was a dream.
But down deep I knew it wasn’t. I don't know why. Last night Mom left for work at nine o'clock same as always, wearing a pretty emerald-green dress and her lemony perfume. Mom was beautiful, long chestnut-brown hair and big green eyes that she made look even prettier with glittery eye-shadow.
Every night before she left, she always said the same thing:
Don’t answer the phone
.
Don’t open the door to anyone
.
Don’t leave the apartment
.
One night I snuck out to the corner store to buy a snack and the clerk told Mom the next day. Mom got mad and said if I ever did that again, I wouldn’t get my allowance.
I clenched my teeth, but it didn't make the sick feeling inside me go away.
I threw off the sheet, got out of bed and opened my bedroom door. The lumpy futon in the living room where Mom slept was still upright, no sheet, no pillow. That scared me even more than the silence. After I left for school Mom usually went back to bed. She needed to sleep because she got home really late. Mom worked as a hostess at a fancy restaurant.
Or so she said. I’d never been there. I was only ten, but I watched TV, and I didn't think hostesses wore fancy dresses and glittery eye shadow and smelled the way I imagined the women on my favorite TV shows did when they went out on dates with important men.
A delivery truck rumbled past our door, thumping over the potholes in our street. Our first floor apartment was noisy, but Mom said hearing traffic noise beat lugging laundry and groceries up two or three flights of stairs. Mom can sleep through anything, but I'm a light sleeper. Sometimes the sounds outside my bedroom window woke me up at night.
Opposite Mom's futon was the breakfast bar where we ate our meals.
Normally, my milk and Cheerios and fruit would be there.
But nothing was normal now.
I felt sick, like I might throw up, and my hands felt weird, hot and cold at the same time and damp with sweat. Mom always said to call her cell phone if there was an emergency. And if this wasn’t an emergency, what was?
Padding barefoot over the worn linoleum, I went around the breakfast bar into the alcove kitchen. The telephone was on the wall beside a boxy old refrigerator with the chipped enamel. Mom had printed her cell phone number on a pink Post-It and stuck it to the fridge. Beside it was another pink Post-It with numbers for police and fire and medical emergencies.
I couldn't decide what to do. Maybe Mom was just late.
Maybe the taxi that was bringing her home had a flat tire.
I looked at the calendar beside the fridge. Right after Christmas last year Mom bought a wall calendar with twelve paintings by Vermeer. Mom loved art. Every month we got to look at a different painting while we ate our meals. The October painting was The Girl With the Pearl Earring.
The girl was pretty and she had beautiful eyes. But she looked sad.
Looking at her made me feel worse. My stomach cramped.
Where was Mom?
I noticed she'd penciled something on the calendar for tomorrow.
Natalie. Dentist. 4 PM.
Then the doorbell rang. My heart stopped, at least it felt like it did.
Don’t open the door to anyone
.
A few weeks ago the doorbell rang right after I got in bed. That never happened and it scared me. When I went to the door and looked out the peephole, some guy with a scraggly gray beard was outside our door. His lips were moving, like he was talking to himself. After a couple of minutes, he went away. I figured he was probably a drunk from the French Quarter two blocks away. I went back to bed, but it took me a long time to fall asleep.
I never told Mom about it. I didn't want to worry her. Mom was already worried about me staying here by myself. She didn't say so, but I could tell.
The doorbell rang again. My legs felt like Jell-O, all quivery and shaky.
I crept to the door and looked through the peephole the way Mom taught me. A woman in a dark-blue police uniform was standing outside in the rain. Police meant trouble. That’s what Mom always said.
But I was already in trouble.
Late for school. And Mom wasn’t here.
And a policewoman was ringing our doorbell.
I looked through the peephole again.
The expression on the woman's face scared me. Frown lines grooved her forehead the way Mom’s did when she was worried about something, like when she didn’t have enough money to pay the bills.
My hands were shaking, but I worked all the locks and opened the door.
“Natalie?” The policewoman didn’t smile when she said my name.
I nodded. I was too scared to think, too scared to breathe.
“I’m Detective Fontenot from the New Orleans Police Department. Your mother’s been hurt.”
My throat closed up. Mom was hurt. Badly hurt, or she'd have called me.
I wanted to ask if Mom was okay, but I was too scared.
The policewoman rolled her lips together. Her eyes looked sad.
Sadder than the girl on the calendar.
"I'm sorry to have to tell you this, Natalie, but someone attacked your mother last night.”
She looked away, like she didn't want to say anything more.
Then she said in a low voice, "Natalie, your mother is dead."
_____
CHAPTER 1
July 24, 2008 New Orleans
The stench, a pungent mix of urine, feces and rank body odor, was brutal. Twenty-plus years as a detective, he’d seen his share of stinky corpses, but not many in ritzy hotel rooms. This one was naked, lying face up on a four-poster double bed. A large yellow urine stain soiled the sheet. Beneath his head was a blood-soaked pillow. Centered in his forehead was a gunshot entry-wound.
Whoever popped the guy had shut off the A/C, maybe after the shot, maybe before. Maybe the guy was into hot sex.
Sometime after midnight someone had called the Hotel Bienvenue desk to report a problem in Room 635. A big problem, big enough for the hotel security guard to call NOPD and have them roust Homicide Detective Frank Renzi out of bed at one A.M.
He studied the corpse. No defense wounds, no visible bruises. No doubt about the cause of death. One shot to the head, over and out.
Adrenaline boosted his energy level, upping his heart rate and sharpening his senses. No matter how many murder cases he worked, each one was a fresh puzzle. Who was the victim? Who killed him? And why?
The person who'd called in the problem hadn’t hung around. Now it was 1:35 A.M. An NOPD officer was posted outside the door of the room to fend off unauthorized visitors. The crime scene techs and a coroner’s investigator were on their way, and so was Kenyon Miller, his partner.
The cherry-wood desk beside the window was squeaky clean, no dust, no notes. Heavy drapes covered the window, not that anyone could see into a room on the sixth floor. The victim’s clothes lay in a heap on the floor beside the bed, a pair of white jockey shorts on top.
His partner ambled into the room. “Yo, Frank, smells like we got a stinker,” Miller said, his voice a deep rumble like a slow-moving freight train. He eyed the corpse. “Mm, mm, mm. This’ll cause a shitstorm.”
“Why? You know him?”
“Yeah, and I’m not talking about his Yankee Doodle.”
Every black guy he’d ever worked with had an arsenal of terms for male genitalia, but Yankee Doodle? That was a new one. “Who is he?”
Built like an NFL linebacker, Miller mopped sweat off his shaven pate with a handkerchief. “Arnold Peterson. Be all kinds of pressure on this one. He's marketing director for The Babylon."
The Babylon, a recent addition to the French Quarter, was a big gambling casino similar to Harrah's.
“You positive it’s Peterson?”
“No doubt in my mind. He's a high profile guy. I’ve seen him at Saint’s games hanging with his bigwig buddies in a VIP Suite.”
It had taken Frank a while to understand that pro football reigned in New Orleans. Everyone here was a Saints fan. Where he came from the Celtics ruled. Or the Red Sox.
He gestured at the corpse. “Looks like a hit. One shot to the head.”
“Wouldn’t surprise me. What I hear, Peterson’s a real prick, screwed a few people to get the job.”
“Feels like the A/C’s been off for a while, might complicate the TOD.”
Miller shrugged. “The COD is obvious enough."
“I’m going down to the desk and find out who rented the room. Nail down the time of the problem call, too. I want to know who called it in."
“Sure. Head on down to the
delightfully
cool lobby while I sweat it out with the smelly corpse." Miller shot him an aggrieved look, jiving him. "Why not have a beverage in the nice air-conditioned lounge and ask the bartender if Peterson was there tonight?”
“Hey, partner. Neither of us will be getting much sleep for a while. I’ll do the notification. After the coroner's investigator releases the body, canvas the guests on this floor to see if they heard anything. Then you can head on home to Tanya and catch a few winks.”
Miller had a wife and two teenagers at home, but no one was waiting for Frank Renzi. Thanks to the real estate slump after Katrina, he’d bought a small condo a year ago. Thanks to his workaholic tendencies, he wasn’t there much. He spent most of his free time at Kelly's house. She was a cop, too.
On the way to the elevator, he spotted a security camera at the end of the hall. Maybe they’d catch a break with that. They might need one. New Orleans was the murder capitol of the country, but most of the vics were drug dealers and gangbangers. If this guy was a VIP, the media vultures would go crazy. Summers here were brutal, hot and humid, no telling when a hurricane might churn into the Gulf and spawn a massive evacuation with horrendous traffic jams. Just what he needed to go with a murder in a ritzy French Quarter hotel.
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