P.J. Morse - Clancy Parker 02 - Exile on Slain Street
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Authors: P.J. Morse
Tags: #Mystery: P.I. - Rock Guitarist - Humor - California
| P.J. Morse - Clancy Parker 02 - Exile on Slain Street | |
| Clancy Parker [2] | |
| P.J. Morse | |
| P.J. Morse (2013) | |
| Tags: | Mystery: P.I. - Rock Guitarist - Humor - California |
Clancy thought she’d been hired to protect the show’s star, grunge-rock guitar god Patrick Price, from a stalker, but she quickly realizes she’s dealing with a clever murderer whose arsenal includes booby-trapped stripper poles and sabotaged stretch Hummers.
As members of the cast and production team are killed one by one, Clancy finds herself with few allies. She’s at the mercy of a nosy camera crew and, even worse, reality show contestants who will do anything for fame.
However, Clancy is the right woman for this challenge. She plays guitar for a band, and she fancies herself a rock ‘n’ roll detective, like Kinky Friedman, only a whole lot prettier.
With her music background, Patrick Price can’t resist her, but the attentions of a horny rock star threaten to distract her from her original purpose, which is to save her client’s life.
Table of Contents
Chapter One: Establishing Shot
Chapter Six: Supporting Actresses
Chapter Nine: Attack of the Stripper Pole
Chapter Eleven: Mike Watt, Meet Dating Show
Chapter Twelve: Commercial Break
Chapter Fourteen: Stretch Hummer on the Loose
Chapter Fifteen: Toasted Centerfolds
Chapter Seventeen: Spitting and Quitting
Chapter Eighteen: Obligations to Fulfill
Chapter Nineteen: Bull by the Horns
Chapter Twenty-One: The Ox and the Ditch
Chapter Twenty-Two: The Stiletto Army
Chapter Twenty-Three: Car Wash
Chapter Twenty-Four: Ex-Boyfriend for Hire
Chapter Twenty-Five: The Interrogation
Chapter Twenty-Six: Forest Royalty
Chapter Twenty-Seven: Slap Happy
Chapter Twenty-Eight: Parents’ Day
Chapter Twenty-Nine: Fun and Games
Chapter Thirty: No More Wishes
Chapter Thirty-One: Lead Singers Live Forever
Chapter Thirty-Two: The Last Elimination
Chapter Thirty-Three: Got You Good
Chapter Thirty-Four: Rewriting the Script
Chapter Thirty-Five: Alternate Ending
Exile on Slain Street: A Clancy Parker Mystery
Copyright © 2013 by P.J. Morse. All rights reserved.
First Kindle Edition: 2013
Proofreading: Red Adept
Cover and Formatting:
Streetlight Graphics
No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to locales, events, business establishments, or actual persons—living or dead—is entirely coincidental.
Chapter One:
Establishing Shot
T
opaz was bitching about getting her weave wet when I first noticed Kevin’s body floating in the pool.
“I paid good money for this, and I ain’t bustin’ it,” she said, pointing to the roots of her honey-streaked, flowing, fabricated locks. “It is not worth winning a challenge.”
I’d had it with all these women and their hour-long beauty routines that kept me waiting to use the bathroom. “Shut up! I don’t care about your weave!” I yelled.
“Repeat that,” Topaz dared me.
I was tempted to do so, but I refrained. I could show Topaz what having a weave torn out felt like another time. Instead, I pointed out what Topaz and everyone else missed. “There is a body in the pool!”
Even though it seemed we had a drowning on our hands, my fellow reality-show contestants looked from one to the other. Like Topaz, they didn’t want to get wet, not even if it were a matter of life or death. If the body in the pool had belonged to Patrick Price, the rock star we were all supposedly fighting for, every one of those women would have been making like Pamela Anderson in
Baywatch
.
I ran for the pool while the other women stood to the side in their miniskirts and hot pants cut up to their choo-chas.
“They didn’t say the challenge started yet! It starts at ten, and it’s only nine forty-five! Not all the crew is here!” Lorelai shouted. “This might be part of the challenge! It might be a dummy!”
Lorelai was wrong. I knew the challenge that day had nothing to do with the pool. Earlier that morning, Kevin, who was the executive producer of
Atomic Love 2
, had tipped me off that the cast members would be forced to drink shots of Pepto-Bismol mixed with orange juice and hot cocoa blended with tomato soup. By drinking these noxious beverages, the contestants would prove their everlasting love to the aging rocker who was the star of the show.
Whoever had the strongest stomach and didn’t throw up earned a big date and an escape from a hothouse full of jealous, drunk women. All of the contestants were craving a brief moment of freedom, possibly even more than the chance to spend time with a relatively famous musician.
That morning, Kevin said it was okay for me to take one sip of a mystery beverage and eliminate myself from the challenge as soon as I felt the need to gag. I’d already been on a date with the rock star, and he liked me. Besides, since the producers and I had a special arrangement, I knew I wasn’t going to be eliminated for a while.
When Kevin vowed that I would be safe from vomiting on national television, he was wearing a perfectly tailored white shirt with narrow, vertical purple stripes. The reality-show trade had been good to him. He was a minor god, pulling strings and adjusting situations to bring out the worst in people, as that was the best for the camera.
But somehow he’d fallen off his pedestal and landed face-down in the pool, with his waterlogged skin showing pink through the white part of his shirt. The morning was already hot, so his body must have been steeping like a tea bag.
I pulled off my mic pack, threw it into the grass, and dove into the pool. As soon as I entered the water, my cowboy boots dragged me down to the bottom of the pool instead of toward the body. My bustier and jeans didn’t help. I surfaced for a moment, flailing and gasping for air, the body getting closer and the chattering from the contestants getting louder.
“Oh, God! This is a challenge! I just know it!” Lorelai yelled. “I’m getting in! I would drown for you, Patrick!” I heard some splashing behind me.
I was terrified at the prospect of a horde of strippers, Playmates and wannabes following Lorelai and impeding my progress, so I tried to swim faster. I went under one more time and surfaced near the body. I hooked my arm under Kevin’s armpit and tried to push both of us toward dry land.
Kevin and I finally reached the edge. When I grabbed the concrete, I opened my eyes again, and the chlorine stung. Then again, they needed a lot of chlorine in that pool given where some of my fellow contestants had been. I fumbled toward the body and tried to keep Kevin’s head above water. I had hoped he might stir eventually, but he didn’t.
Topaz surprised me, putting in some physical effort for what I figured was the first time in her life. She grabbed the back of Kevin’s shirt to pull him out. To avoid a tumble into the water, she wedged one of her black stiletto heels against the lip of the pool for leverage. Suddenly, she slipped and fell on her butt, hard, but she got up again and kept pulling. “C’mon, big boy. Let’s go,” she grumbled at Kevin.
Some of the other girls fluttered around. As Topaz pulled Kevin, I pushed him until we got his butt over the edge.
I screamed his name over and over, if only for the benefit of the women flocking by the pool, so they could realize this wasn’t just television. The members of the camera crew finally set down their gear and rushed to the side of the pool.
“It’s real! It’s real!” I yelled while scrambling out of the water. I kept feeling this greasy stuff under my fingers, probably the same stuff that caused Topaz to slip, but I clung to the tiles and hoisted myself out.
“Holy shit! Kevin! Dammit! Wake up!” Topaz hovered over him and gave his chubby cheek several stinging slaps. “This better not be a joke!” Her fingers bounced off like his face was a trampoline.
Bumping against me, Lorelai shoved Topaz aside and frantically pushed up and down on Kevin’s chest. Topaz pushed her back, but Lorelai slapped Topaz away. Before a catfight broke out, I screamed, “Lorelai! Stop! You’re going to break his sternum!”
Lorelai grew quiet and just flopped back on her behind, right at my feet, her shiny red hot pants soaking in the pool water that had splashed up. She started sobbing. Out of all the women there, her emotions about Kevin seemed the most genuine. I knew from her audition tape that Kevin was the man behind her big Hollywood break.
Patrick, the rock star, finally emerged from the pool cabana, sans shirt. He must have been sleeping. After the first night, with a few notable exceptions, he avoided being torn into pieces by the contestants by going to sleep early and claiming to need regular naps. No wonder the production crew had been force-feeding him Major Rager, a bright orange, near-combustible energy drink that was sponsoring the show.
“What the hell?” he asked, lifting up his aviator sunglasses and rubbing his eyes. All of the contestants loved his sexy-sleepy look. “We’re not doing the pool today. It’s drink day.” Once he noticed Kevin, he flinched. “What happened?” he asked to no one in particular.
“I think he’s dead,” I told him.
Patrick walked back into the cabana and returned with a stack of white towels and a few cans of Major Rager. “We’ll wait for the ambulance,” he said, stroking my wet hair. He then wrapped me in a towel and handed me one of the energy drinks. I had a gulp, and the caffeine hit me right away.
While Patrick moved among the contestants, trying to comfort them, I stood quietly. Kevin had hired me to protect Patrick from a stalker who may have been on the set of
Atomic Love 2.
I assumed that Kevin, my boss and the man behind the reality-show curtain, was safe. I was wrong.
Chapter Two:
Pre-Production
T
hree weeks before, Kevin Bybee was very much alive and giving me the assignment that would put me on
Atomic Love 2
in the first place. Originally, Kevin hired me to do background checks on all the finalists for the dating show in which various women competed for the love of Patrick Price, former guitarist for grunge band the Nuclear Kings and current reality-television mainstay.
He said he chose me because I was the only detective he could find who understood the rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle. When I wasn’t working as a detective, I was the lead guitarist for the Marquee Idols. We weren’t huge, but we had just signed to a Canadian indie label, Comet Records.
When Kevin first handed me the files and applications, he told me, “You’ll get what’s really important. Don’t worry about the drunks or the disorderlies. We are mostly worried about violence, or anyone who might hurt Patrick.”
After I spent a week with the files, he called a meeting with me so we could talk about the results. The show was to be shot at a mansion up in Marin County because Patrick Price was, according to Kevin, “all about authenticity” and LA just wasn’t authentic. As if reality television were authentic. I assumed Patrick just realized, like so many people, that San Francisco offered better food and drugs.
I met Kevin at a satellite office his production company had opened up in North Beach, a small suite that had a view of City Lights Bookstore. We had just sat down at the office’s mahogany table when Kevin said, “Well, Clancy, this one’s pretty simple. Just tell us which one you think is the stalker, and I’ll get rid of her.”
“According to my,” I gulped, “research, all of them seem to have stalker problems.”
“All of them?” Kevin asked. He leaned back in one of those expensive mesh-backed chairs that were so big during the dot-com boom. Since he was a heavy guy with a round belly, the chair squeaked in protest. To brace himself, he put his feet up on the conference table. His black Prada shoes had just been shined.