One of the technicians removed a heavy block of cement. Even before the announcement was made, I saw the bones. The body of John Carmichael had been covered with a blanket and pushed into the crypt.
One of the forensics specialists turned to us. “We’re going to take photographs in situ and then remove as much of the skeletal structure as we can in one piece. It’s going to take us awhile.”
I looked at the others, nodded, then turned and walked away, letting Bernie sniff the ground.
I wondered what John Carmichael might have accomplished if he’d lived. So many lives had been changed or lost by the murder of one man thirty years ago.
It made me think about my own father, how my family had been forever changed by his murder. I made a silent vow to never give up trying to find his killer.
I heard a car turn into the cemetery and looked over at the same time Natalie did.
“Looks like one of Donovan’s cars,” Natalie said, coming over to me. “Black Mercedes, tinted windows. Hope it’s not some hired killer.”
My adrenaline spiked as the car approached. It stopped on the driveway, a few yards away. My hand tensed on the gun in my purse as the door swung open.
I relaxed when a chauffeur emerged. The man bowed, removed his cap, and opened the rear door of the vehicle.
“Mr. Jack Bautista requests that you join him for lunch in Malibu,” the chauffeur said to me.
We all watched as the handsome detective got out of the car. He had one arm in a sling.
I said, “You do know how to make an entrance, Detective.”
“I’ve been waiting for this day for a long time.” Jack motioned to the open door. “By the way, love the new do.”
I tossed Natalie Bernie’s leash. “Take care of my dog for a couple hours. I’m going to the beach.”
I waved at my friends as we drove out of the cemetery. I then turned to Jack and looked into his smoky brown eyes.
At that moment I made a decision. In this place that was full of death, it was time to move on with my life. It was time to live again.
THE END
***
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More by this author:
The Hollywood Alphabet Thriller Series, with Detective Kate Sexton
Also in the Hollywood Alphabet Series:
Hollywood Assassin
Hollywood Blood
Hollywood Crazy
Hollywood Dirty
Hollywood Enemy
Hollywood Forbidden
Hollywood Games
Hollywood Homicide
Hollywood Intrigue
Hollywood Jury
Hollywood Killer
Hollywood Lust
Hollywood Murder
Hollywood Notorious
Hollywood Outlaw
Hollywood Prisoner
Hollywood Quest
Hollywood Rage
Next an excerpt from
Hollywood Blood
by MZ Kelly
Chapter 1
I was late and dashed into the spirit room, taking my place across from a psychic, a celebrity, and a dog. Thirty seconds later, I knew that the dog was the smartest one in the room.
“I call upon the spirit guide to come forth and give us a sign,” my mother, also known as Miss Daisy, said, sounding like Bob Marley’s sister. “Lolly Biloxi, we call upon you to help us.”
The psychic reading, my mother’s form of a prenuptial counseling session for a celebrity named Karma, should have been called a pre-nut. Every woman in the room wore green. No, it wasn’t St. Patrick’s Day. Karma calls green her “power color”, and insists that everyone in her presence wear a shade of the color.
I cursed the lime green dress I’d bought for the occasion. It was too big for me, bunched up at my hips, and made me feel like something that catches flies with its tongue.
Mom sat at the head of the table, using the fake Jamaican accent she conjures up during her readings. The scent of incense hung in the air. The lights were dim, and creepy mood music played in the background. It all seemed fitting, with Halloween just a few days away.
The reading was designed to determine if the celebrity singer’s fiancé, a rapper named Love Dawg, was cheating on her.
Yes, Love Dawg.
Karma had apparently never been told that men are dominated by an organ the sole purpose of which is to activate their penises. It’s called a brain. Maybe I should give up being a cop and go into the business of predicting the future.
As the reading began, the dog in the room, my canine police partner, Bernie, displayed the unusual good sense to trot off to a corner and lie down. Bernie, a mixed breed of fur, attitude, and sexual wanderlust, has his own testosterone induced challenges, but was recovering from a gunshot wound and apparently didn’t want any part of ghost-busting his two-legged counterpart.
Karma’s elderly manager, Harriett Nordquist, made a snortle, something between a snort and a chortle, before she leaned over to my best friend, Natalie Bump, and said, “I think Lolly should stay in Biloxi and Miss Daisy is crazy.”
“Best to keep an open mind,” Natalie whispered in her proper English accent. “As the story goes, the last time someone made fun of Miss Daisy, she ended up being cursed and struck dumber than a pair of Winklepickers.” Harriett’s blue eyes widened as Natalie continued. “The old girl was last seen tryin’ to clean bird shit out of a cuckoo clock.”
“STFU,” Karma’s friend, Vee, a plump young woman with lots of makeup, big lips, and even bigger hair, said in a hushed tone from across the table.
Mo, Natalie’s partner in a private detective business they call Sistah Snoop, sat a couple chairs over from me and must have seen my confusion.
“Shut the fuck up, Kate,” Mo said in her deep, yawning voice.
Mo is black, bad, and big, pushing two hundred pounds. Still, I started to take offense at what she’d said.
“STFU—Shut The Fuck Up,” Mo explained, stretching her green spandex at the seams until it threated to unleash two of the largest breasts in the Milky Way.
“Oh, got it,” I said.
After another STFU from Vee, Mom adjusted her red and green headscarf and pleaded with Lolly to give us a sign. The lights dimmed, and I heard a whimper that I should have paid more attention to.
Instead, I watched as Miss Daisy’s head began to loll and roll. She lost the Jamaican accent, and, in the persona of her spirit guide, said, “I am Lolly. What do
you seek?”
I zoned out at that point, didn’t hear Bernie’s increasingly urgent whimper, and tuned out the spirit guide, who was saying that the Love Dawg was off his leash.
Maybe it was all the talk about dogs and love, but my ex, an assistant DA, crossed my mind. A year ago, he’d been caught on videotape cheating with his secretary in an interview room. The divorce had left me in credit hell and with the humiliation of knowing that the video, Dougie Does Phyllis, had made the rounds of nearly every division in the department.
After some evil thoughts that ended in an imaginary courtroom, where I was found innocent by reason of justifiable castration, I found my mind wandering back to last night. It was my thirty-first birthday, there was a cake, and I’d done a little celebrating.
Detective Jack Bautista and I had recently solved a high-profile murder case in Hollywood. The case had taken on some complications involving Jack being a fugitive for a while, before I almost lost my job while helping him clear his name.
We were both back on the force and, thanks to some intervention by the newly appointed police chief, I had just been reassigned to RHD, LAPD’s Robbery Homicide Division, along with my partner, Charlie Winkler. Bernie had also been rewarded for his actions on the case, receiving a Medal of Valor after taking a bullet while bringing down the bad guy.
All that seemed a long time ago when I thought about last night’s birthday celebration. One thing had led to another, and…
***
“Happy birthday,” Jack said, dimming the lights and lighting another candle.
I felt something wet…it wasn’t wax. The candles didn’t make it on the cake, because the cake never made it as a cake, or to the oven, for that matter. It was all clothes and flour, eggs and sugar, pots and pans, breath and hands. I felt the dripping of batter and then a better feeling…much better.
“Maybe we need some ice cream,” Jack suggested after a while. “I think I could use some more sugar.”
“It’s bad for your health,” I said.
“No one lives forever.”
“Better watch our cholesterol.”
“I’ll watch yours, if you watch mine.”
Things got a little more heated then. Maybe it was the air temperature, or the fact that the candles were burning rapidly, or that the ice cream was something called Cookies and Dreams.
All I knew after that was that you don’t need an oven to bake a cake.
***
Bernie’s whine, an early warning signal that almost always signifies imminent disaster, ended my reverie and brought me back to Mom’s spirit room. I heard Lolly telling Karma something about Love Dawg’s happy sword.
And then the room exploded.
Chapter Two
“Stay down!” I yelled, the echo of the gunshot blasting through the room still ringing in my ears.
The lights in my mother’s psychic parlor were out, the room only illuminated by the light spilling in from an adjacent room. There was a momentary silence as we tried to understand what had happened. Everyone was on the floor; a writhing mass of arms, legs, fur, and Versace.
And then the screaming and yelling began.
“Get my driver! Now!” Karma shrieked.
“The floor is wet, sticky,” Vee said, sliding around in the blood spray like a novice skater on a frozen pond. “I can’t get my footing.”
Mo was under the table, legs and arms in a spandex tourniquet, yelling something about motherfuckers.
Natalie let loose with a string of British obscenities, ending with a reference to the queen’s genitalia. She pulled her husband Clyde’s antique pistol out of her purse and waved it in the air.
I finally found my own purse, yanked out my cell phone, and called it in.
“This is Detective Kate Sexton with LAPD. We have shots fired. I need tactical units, code three at my location. And send an ambulance.” I gave them Mom’s address and ended the call.
I wasn’t sure about needing the ambulance until I found the light switch. When the spirit room lit up, I realized that I should have just called for the coroner, and maybe a psychiatrist, considering the personalities in the room.
Harriett Nordquist had done a face plant onto the multi-colored spirit table. Blood was pouring out of a hole in her head.
“’Fraid the dew is off the lily,” Natalie said, examining the dead body slumped over on the table. Nothing much bothers my British friend. “Maybe she shoulda settled for cleaning cuckoo clocks.”
“Get down, Nat!” I yelled. “And put the gun away.” I turned to my mother, who was also slumped forward across the table, her headscarf covering her face.
“Mom, are you hurt?” I said, trying to stay low as I checked on her. I pulled the scarf up and saw that Miss Daisy had fainted. She was coming to, moaning something about evil spirits and the dead. She appeared to be okay, at least as okay as my mother gets.
I took a moment to compose myself. The room was in a state of chaos, but no one, other than Karma’s agent, appeared harmed. Vee, who I’d learned before the reading was someone Karma called her FFF, First Friend Forever, was now making a fanning motion in front of Karma’s face, and slipping around in the blood while screaming for someone to get water.
“STFU!” I yelled at the FFF, thinking about other things the initials could stand for. I then turned to the other women in the room. “Everyone, stay right where you are. Do not get off the floor until I get back.”
The shot that had killed Nordquist had come through the window. The glass was shattered, covering the floor and mixing with the blood. I gathered up Bernie, tethered him, and crouched low, heading out onto the patio with my gun drawn.
The night was damp and moonless. The only lights in the neighborhood were coming from Mom’s cottage and the amber streetlights that lined the road. In the distance, the city of Hollywood drifted in and out of a fog bank, a shimmering mirage of dreams or nightmares, depending upon your perspective.
I did the calculations, looking from where the bullet had entered the house then back to the neighborhood, and decided that the shooter must have been on the street where it turned and headed up the block.
At first, I thought the shooting might have been a drive-by. But as I headed out onto the sidewalk, I began to wonder if the killer was stalking Karma and had hit her agent by mistake. This was Hollywood, and the singer was one of the most famous performers in the world. I cringed at the thought of the press getting ahold of the story. Mom’s neighborhood and the city would become a media and paparazzi feeding frenzy.
I turned, yanking on Bernie’s leash, as I headed up the sidewalk. My big dog growled and I looked up in time to see something or someone in the shadows hiding behind one of the cars parked at the curb up the street.
“Police!” I yelled. “Walk toward me now, or I release the dog.” I fingered my gun. “Hands in the air.”
Silence.
I took a step forward and heard the shuffling sound of someone moving. A car door opened. I reached down to release Bernie, but something in the road caught my eye.
I glanced up just in time to see the car’s headlights come on and it jerk away from the curb. An engine roared to life as the car accelerated in our direction. I dove and rolled away from the speeding car, pulling Bernie with me as it rumbled past us.
I raised my Glock, drawing a bead on the speeding car. I was about to fire when I decided it was too late. There were some apartment buildings beyond the roadway. One errant shot and I’d be up to my ears in hot water with LAPD brass again. There was no way I’d risk another go-around with the boys in the Tower, as my partner, Charlie Winkler, referred to the LAPD administrators.
I was headed back to my mother’s house, hearing the sirens coming up the street, when I stopped. I pushed my brown hair out of my eyes and searched the road where I’d stood a moment earlier. Then I saw it.
At first I thought it was some kind of large playing card. But when I lifted it up
by the edge, I saw the image. It was one of those fortune-telling cards that I’d seen psychics use. In fact, I thought I’d seen a similar card in my mother’s house and wondered if it belonged to her.
I turned the card over. There was an image of a skeleton riding a horse, carrying some kind of flag. Then I saw the handwritten words at the bottom of the card.
The silence is broken.
About the Author
MZ Kelly spent over thirty years in the field of law enforcement. His experience includes dealing with violent felony offenders, making sentencing recommendations to the courts, supervising a detention program for juvenile offenders, running a jail, and developing innovative programs to keep our streets safe. His law enforcement experience was in Southern California, not too far from the famous Sunset Strip, and includes run-ins with some of America’s craziest criminals, not to mention a few wannabe actors, and even an Oscar award winner!
Copyright © 2014 by MZ Kelly
Published by Kingston Roads Press, L.L.C.
This is a work of fiction. All characters, names, places, businesses, events, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
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