“Did you scrub the club’s videos?” I ask Di as I make my way through the forested area. I have a mile jog to where I stashed the car I ‘borrowed’ but I’m dressed like a runner in tight black clothing.
Might as well get a workout in while hiding blood stains.
“Roger, you’re a ghost,” Di confirms and I nod to myself as I make it to the road and keep up my slow jog like I don’t have a care in the world.
“When you’re in the car, there is something I wanted to tell you about.”
“Not over comms,” I reply and she scoffs. Using our nicknames is as much as I allow. You investigate enough crime, you learn how to hide it well.
The pickup truck is still where I left it in the driveway of a property with no buildings, and I find the keys in the visor where I left them. The old man who owns it doesn’t leave his house except on Sundays, and Di insists he won’t notice. Stripping, I change into jeans and a T-shirt before hopping in. Starting it up, I take my earbud out and call Di on the burner phone I left in the truck along with a bigger bag for my dirty clothes. It will all be burned.
“What’s up?”
“I didn’t want to tell you until this last guy was handled, but I got an email yesterday,” Di tells me in her sing-song way.
“I’ve been awake for thirty-six hours without food and I really need to pee,” I remind her in lieu of telling her to get on with it.
“You’re no fun,” she teases and then I hear her clicking on the keys stop, the creak of her computer chair tells me she's leaning back before giving me her news. “The studio called. They want you to do a TV show.”
“I did Anderson’s show last week,” I frown and turn onto the freeway as the sky gets lighter as the sunrise gives way to daylight. In the distance, I see a thin line of smoke, barely visible in the morning light. “Is there a new story I need to look into?”
“No, Papi. They want you to have your own show,” she tells me with a laugh. “You would be the host.”
Her words take a minute to process. I’m not a household name, but I am well known in the news media. My social media was alsopopular, since I did up to date commentary on recent events. But my own show?
“What’s the offer?” I ask, needing to know if it would be worth staying in one place full time. I’m used to a nomadic lifestyle and picking my own stories. A TV would mean at least four days a week in one location to film, for months of the year.
“You get to pick the stories, filming Monday through Thursday in Burbank,” Di confirms. I like the idea of picking the stories. Possibly getting interviews with witnesses who might otherwise shy away from talking to me. “Plus, we wouldn’t have to share an apartment anymore. Hell, you could buy us both houses.”
“That much?” I ask in disbelief. I grew up lower middle class and knew the struggle to get by my whole life. But I am almost forty-three years old. It might be time to slow down. “Enough for a nice place with a guest house so you’re close by?”
“Maybe,” Di hedges. I know she isn’t a fan of my hovering.
One thing is still nagging at me. “But we don’t have to stop with our side…business, right?”
“Of course not,” Di agrees, and I hear her nails clacking again. “I’ll find this Tom guy and we’ll take him down. Along with anyone else who deserves it.”
She is the only one who knows about my predilection to murder, and I’m not sure I can stop now.
Chapter one
Ethan
Myfeetarekillingme. Guests keep sending hors d'oeuvres back to the kitchen, and the head chef at this swanky event is giving me dirty looks like his menu choices are somehow my fault.
Who serves bland ceviche on a tiny tortilla to rich white people? His version was not good. So, I added spice. The culinary institute was always complaining about me not following recipes, but I grew up on food in New York and Cuba. Food deserved more seasoning than salt.
They also kicked me out less than two years into my program that was supposed to be a four year degree at their New York campus. I’m sure they were tired of my culinary rebellion, but I might have also slept with the Professor of Baking and Pastry’s son. And the institute President’s husband. At the same time. In their fancy pavilion.
When I tried to go home, my dad was not pleased. The Culinary Institute of America was an expensive fuckup, and the president of it was friends with my father, so he got the sordid details and lost that connection.
Now I’m working part time sous chef gigs in the San Francisco Bay area to get by.
My family is filthy rich, or more accurately, my father is. I’d been dropped off at his door when I was three, and we have no other family that I know of. The fact I am his only living relative, and should be his heir, didn’t keep my dad from cutting me off completely.
Beyond getting booted from culinary school, I’ve been kicked out of not one, but two Ivy League universities. He only cared about my education to boast to friends. He wanted me to make connections, and I don’t even know what he does for business, except that it involves shipping and makes him more money than he can spend. Somehow, he still wastes most of his time golfing and drinking.
In fact, this charity event reminds me of the ones my dad goes to. Everyone is in suits and dresses that cost more than a car, dripping in jewelry I can only imagine was mined with slave labor.