Scottsdale Sizzle: a romantic light-hearted murder mystery (Laura Black Mysteries Book 3) Read online

  SCOTTSDALE

  SIZZLE

  ~~~~

  B A Trimmer

  SCOTTSDALE SIZZLE

  Copyright © 2015 by B A Trimmer

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted an any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without prior written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, incidents, and dialogues are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or persons living or dead is entirely coincidental. The author acknowledges the trademark status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.

  Editors: ‘Andi’ Anderson, Linda Annalora, and Stacey VandeKoppel

  Cover Design: Tammy Malunas

  ASIN: B00RCJ0QD8

  020115

  E-mail the author with corrections or comments at [email protected]

  Also by B A Trimmer

  Scottsdale Heat

  Scottsdale Squeeze

  Special thanks to Mike Lee for

  his support, encouragement, and advice.

  SCOTTSDALE

  SIZZLE

  One

  Summers in Scottsdale are hot. Ask any tourist. Summer temperatures have reached as high as a hundred and twenty-two degrees and that was before global warming. Scottsdale’s the place where the weak wilt and the strong question their judgment. It’s where hot water comes out of both taps. It’s where people use oven mitts to open their mailboxes. Scottsdale’s where people go shopping at the most expensive mall in town because it has covered parking. It’s where crushed green rocks are acceptable landscaping for your front lawn. In short, summers in Scottsdale are hot.

  At the moment, I was hot to the point I was about to pass out. I was trapped in a stuffy closet in the upstairs master bedroom of George Anson. George was a wealthy businessman and a prominent name in central Arizona. He had seven or eight auto dealerships in Scottsdale and throughout the Valley of the Sun. I’d seen dozens of his TV commercials over the years. They were usually funny and always ended the same way: he’d look straight into the camera and say I’m Honest George Anson and you can bet my tattoo on it. Then he’d turn to show a big tattoo of an anchor he had on his arm.

  I’d been in the process of installing spy cameras in the bedrooms of his north Scottsdale home when he unexpectedly showed up with a woman. I barely had time to hide in the closet before they walked into the bedroom. George’s wife had assured me he was going to be at his auto dealership in Sun City for a daylong meeting but it looked like she’d been misinformed.

  George Anson’s wife, Debbie, was a client of Lenny, my boss. She’d recently hired Lenny to gather evidence her husband was cheating. I’d met Debbie at the law office a few days earlier and she seemed like a nice person. She didn’t know who the other woman was but Debbie suspected the affair had been going on for some time. She even thought they sometimes cheated in the family home. Although there was no pre-nup, Lenny was sure George, being the community big shot he was, would be glad to give a generous alimony rather than have his sordid affairs become public knowledge.

  Debbie had given me a key and I had gotten into the house a little after noon. By twelve-thirty, I had installed a tiny battery-powered video camera in each of the two guest bedrooms. I had just walked into the master bedroom when I heard the sound of the front door opening, followed by male and female voices coming up the stairs. I didn’t have time to think. I opened the nearest set of folding doors, sprang into the space, and quickly shut the doors. From the dresses and racks of shoes surrounding me, I could tell I was in Debbie’s closet.

  The slits in the door were too narrow to be able to see properly into the room. All I could catch was fuzzy shapes and the movement of bodies. As I heard the clothes come off, I tried to learn what I could about the woman. She had the strong and confident voice of a woman in her late thirties or early forties. From what little I could make out through the door, she seemed to have a relatively thin body and she appeared to be a brunette.

  I wanted to crack open the door so I could get a better look at her, but I didn’t want to risk being seen. Being discovered could be dangerous and worse, they would most likely find a new love nest. George was a big man and he wasn’t stupid. He would know why I was there and I didn’t want to get into a fight. I could use my stun gun on him but that was never a sure bet. If I missed, he would only get more pissed. There was also the possibility I would have to explain myself to the police in front of George. I knew from experience things like that tended to both mess up an assignment and upset my boss.

  George and the woman had made it to the bed and from the noises I heard, they were fully enjoying each other’s company. After about ten minutes of listening to slurping kissing noises and watching fuzzy shapes through the slit in the door, it became apparent George was the kind of guy to lay on the bed and let his lover do all the work.

  Typical man.

  Apparently, the woman had some pent up desires she needed to release. After about three minutes of squeaking sounds from the bed, the woman cried out and her voice shook for fifteen or twenty seconds. I then heard her breath coming out in quivering gasps. After about two minutes, she repeated the entire process. Then she repeated it again, then again. She was a passionate machine and there didn’t seem to be any signs of her slowing down.

  OK, I’ll admit for the first half hour of listening to the woman moan it did get me kind of excited. My mind kept switching back and forth from my boyfriend, Jackson Reno, an undercover cop for the city of Scottsdale, then to Max, a dangerous and exciting man who is second-in-command in the largest crime family in Scottsdale.

  I knew from personal experience Reno could make me moan like that. I wasn’t sure if Max would make me moan like that or if my moans with him would be louder and a lot more frantic. I suspected they would be. Plus, I didn’t think Max was the kind of man to lay there and make me do all the work.

  Stop thinking about Max! You have a boyfriend.

  Unfortunately, since no one was supposed to be in the house during the day, the air-conditioning had been programed to turn itself off automatically during the afternoon heat. This is common in Scottsdale where summer electricity bills can easily run several hundred dollars a month. If no one is supposed to be home, the air conditioning will run only enough to keep the plants and the animals alive. It must have been ninety degrees in the bedroom, where they at least had a big ceiling fan over the bed. It felt closer to a hundred in the closet.

  I stood in the cramped and stuffy closet and listened to them for over an hour. My eyes stung from the sweat that had dripped into them and my legs were cramping from trying to keep still.

  Hot and tired as I was, I had to hand it to the woman. She had stamina that was amazing. I couldn’t make out if she had on a wedding ring on her finger or not but I assumed she wasn’t getting enough attention at home. A woman like that had some obvious needs.

  My legs were starting to give out and I leaned back against a rack of dresses. I desperately wanted to sit down somewhere out of the heat. My hair was
limp and my tee shirt was clinging to me. I kept rubbing my eyes to get the sweat out but that only seemed to make them sting more. Assignment or not, I knew I wasn’t going to last much longer before I passed out.

  Finally, the woman had worked herself into a state of exhaustion. She fell off of George and collapsed next to him on the bed. Instead of getting up right away, they lay on the bed, talking in low voices.

  Come on, enough already.

  Black spots were dancing in front of my eyes and I knew it wouldn’t be long before I blacked out. I cursed my bad luck I hadn’t had time to install a spy camera in the master bedroom before they had used it for the afternoon. If I’d been able to get a video of their tryst, I could have quickly wrapped up the assignment. Instead, I was back at square one.

  Almost an hour and a half after they started, I heard George and the woman get up. They went into the master bathroom and I heard the shower start. I eased open the door and there was an immediate feeling of relief as a rush of cool air flooded into the closet. I stepped out into the bedroom and stretched the kinks out.

  Standing under the spinning blades of the ceiling fan was wonderful but listening to them taking a shower made me realize how badly I had to go to the bathroom. Now my core temperature had started to drop, the more I thought about it the worse I had to go. I silently regretted the big Diet Pepsi I drank right before I had come into the house.

  I knew I should have quietly left the bedroom while they were in the shower but I needed to see if I could get a better look at George Anson’s mistress. She was twenty feet from me and this might be my only chance to discover who she was. I went back into the closet but this time I left the door open the slightest crack.

  The woman was only in the bathroom for about five minutes when she came out, got dressed, and began making the bed. With George still in the bathroom and the woman distracted, I took a chance and slowly opened the closet door, just enough to take a peek.

  Now that I had a good chance to see the woman, I saw she was medium height and had a nice figure. She had great taste in clothes and I saw she had spent top dollar on her shoes. When she pulled back her long auburn hair to put it into a ponytail, I noticed she had a Cindy Crawford beauty mark next to her mouth.

  Seeing her face, she looked vaguely familiar. This isn’t unusual for me, since I tend to meet a lot of people during the course of my day. It’s rare for me to go into a restaurant or bar in Scottsdale and not recognize somebody. Not wanting to press my luck, I carefully closed the closet door and waited for them to leave.

  It took another twenty minutes of fixing makeup, pulling on clothes, and cleaning the bedroom, but they eventually left. As soon as I heard the front door close, I bolted from the closet and ran into the bathroom. I then went down to the kitchen and drank three glasses of city tap water

  Sometimes I hate my job.

  Since I suspected George and his mistress would do most of their adultering in the same bedroom, I went up and installed three of my tiny spy cameras throughout the master bedroom. I hid them well and chose angles giving the most dramatic effects. I went back downstairs and took off.

  I still felt dehydrated from standing in the hot closet for over two hours. I stopped by the first convenience store I saw to go in and get a Diet Pepsi. I had gotten to the door going into the store when two boys in their late teens came walking out. They stopped and both looked me up and down. I knew my thin tee shirt was plastered against my body and I must have looked like someone from a wet tee shirt contest.

  “Hey babe, looking good,” the older of the two said. His friend stared at my tee shirt and snickered. It was like an old episode of Bevis and Butthead.

  I had been so frustrated all afternoon I instantly got pissed. “What are you little twerps looking at? Get the hell away before I pound the snot out of both of you.”

  “Whoa babe,” the older one said. “No need for violence, I was only admiring your awesome body.”

  Sometimes I really hate my job.

  ~~~~

  My name is Laura Black. I’m an investigator for the Scottsdale law firm of Halftown, Oeding, Shapiro, & Hopkins. Over the years, one of the founding partners of the firm had retired to Florida and two of them had died. The remaining partner, Leonard Shapiro, my boss, has remade the firm into one of the most successful law offices in Scottsdale. He mainly keeps to high-profile criminal, civil, and family law cases. Unlike most lawyers, he loves it when his cases are talked about in the papers. I've often noticed whenever one of his cases gets featured in the news, Lenny will raise his rates another notch. I keep waiting for him to change the name of the firm, but I don’t think he ever will. Even with all the money he makes, I can’t see him spending a dime to change the stationery.

  ~~~~

  I woke up early the next day then lay in bed for half an hour while I decided what to do for the day. I only had one assignment at work and that would involve nothing more than reviewing the videos from the cameras I had placed in George Anson’s house the day before. Since there probably wouldn’t be anything to see for a day or two, I knew I was basically going to have the day off.

  My bad side reasoned I could lie in bed all morning and maybe binge watch a half a dozen episodes of Say Yes to the Dress on Netflix. My good side reminded me I had bills to pay and I should probably go into the office and see if I could wheedle a new assignment out of Lenny.

  My good side eventually won out, but mostly because my bad side likes to eat and for that, I need a paycheck. I got out of bed, stumbled into the kitchen, put on a pot of coffee, then made my way into the shower. I wasn’t in a rush and I stood there for almost twenty minutes, letting the hot water pour over me.

  One of the things I love about Arizona in the summer is I can stay in the shower for as long as I like and never have to worry about the hot water running out. Even the water coming out of the cold-water tap is almost ninety degrees.

  After the shower, I put on my pink and blue silk robe, went into the kitchen, and poured a coffee into my Doctor Who mug, the one I use for drinking coffee around the house. I was surprised Marlowe, my gray and white tabby, wasn’t in the kitchen demanding to be fed. But since it was after eight o’clock, I knew he was most likely over at Grandma Peckham’s to mooch a late breakfast from her.

  I went into the bedroom, hunted through my closet, and came up with a loose pair of white shorts and a navy blue cotton short-sleeve blouse. Having a cotton outfit that doesn’t cling too much is an important consideration when living in the desert during the hot summer months.

  I then pulled on a pair of beige strappy sandals with a low heel. I’m about average height and I love wearing heels. Unfortunately, in my line of work whenever I try to wear heels, I usually end up chasing after someone. The last time I ran in heels, I twisted my ankle, broke off the heel, and walked with a limp for a couple of weeks. So now, I stick to low heels or even flats. I don’t look any taller but it gives me peace of mind.

  As I got dressed, a sudden feeling of happiness came over me. It was as if I knew I was going to have a good day. That feeling doesn’t happen very often and I hoped it was a premonition of good things to come.

  ~~~~

  I locked the apartment, went out to the parking lot, and unlocked my car, a cappuccino colored Accord. I had bought it new and succeeded in paying it off, but it was starting to show its age. This was mainly due to a few modifications that weren’t in the original factory specifications. These included a crumpled front fender, a mirror held on with duct tape, and a bullet hole, all on the driver’s side. These were courtesy of a couple of angry Russian mobsters I had a run-in with a while ago.

  The passenger side was only a little better. There was a large gash in the front fender from where a skinny little guy from a Mexican drug cartel had thrown a hatchet at me. Fortunately, his aim was off and the hatchet had only embedded itself into the side of my car. I sometimes think about getting a new car, but it still runs great and who has the money for a new one?
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  As I drove to the office, I couldn’t help but smile. I was still in a great mood and I was starting to think it had something to do with the heat finally starting to kick in. Unlike the winter tourists who disappear at the first signs of summer, I actually love the heat. I also love the way Scottsdale empties out when it starts to get hot. Now that the snowbirds had all gone north for the summer, I felt like I could finally breathe again. It felt great knowing for the next three or four months I wouldn’t have to deal with overflowing restaurants, overloaded streets, and overstuffed shopping malls.

  Work had been slow the last several weeks as the city wound down for the summer. As the weather gets warmer and people leave town, there’s also a decline in the number of new clients Lenny will take on. As a result, in the summer I’m almost always broke.

  Lenny pays me a base salary, which is barely enough for rent and the necessities. There’s also an additional bonus, based on the number and the complexity of the assignments I’m working on. When things get slow, I like to go into the office, just to be there in case something new comes in. Sometimes I can even convince Lenny to give me some work doing background checks or dust off an old assignment that’s been sitting idle in his file cabinet.

  The law office is located in the middle of the Old Town Arts and Antiques District, which is basically the southwestern part of downtown Scottsdale. It’s one of Scottsdale’s most fashionable shopping areas and has a lot of foot traffic, even in the summer. There are dozens of specialty art galleries, restaurants, nightclubs, and bars, all within a five-minute walk of each other.

  The office is sandwiched in between two of the nicer art galleries. One is an upscale gallery specializing in Southwestern art and artists. The other is a gallery that usually has two or three nationally known contemporary artists in residence. Needless to say, Lenny’s law office always looks totally out of place.