Murder at the Galvez [A Sydney Lockhart Mystery] By Kathleen Kaska
About Murder at the Galvez:
As if this wasn’t bad enough, just a few blocks from the hotel at her parents’ home, people are gathering, sparks are flying, another controversial event is in the planning, one that just might rival the Great Storm of 1900.
Sydney is helped and obstructed by her cousins, Ruth and Marcela, and Dixon, her beloved partner-in-solving-crime. But ultimately it’s up to Sydney, armed with wit and bravado (and Dixon’s .45), who must discover who killed the man in the trunk and why her father’s new friend is floating face-down in a fish tank with a bullet in his head. Her father’s odd behavior and the anonymous threatening notes delivered to her hotel room lead Sydney to suspect that her grandfather’s unsolved murder and the present murders might be connected.
A sassy Who-Done-It with an enthralling cast of characters.
Very
Own Pandora’s Box
By
Kathleen Kaska
I start my mornings by entering another world. A world where Gene Kelly taps his way through a rainstorm; England’s Elizabeth II ogles her new crown; Ike campaigns for President; the A-bomb is born, and Mr. Potato Head is on every child’s Christmas list. This is also a world where Sydney Jean Lockhart, who’s single, and a career woman, has blossomed at twenty-nine. You don’t know Sydney? Let me introduce her.
Sydney is a tall redheaded reporter from Austin, Texas with a sassy mouth. She
has a wealthy, four-foot-eleven, dumb blonde for a cousin (Ruth Echland), and a
sexy detective (Ralph Dixon) for a boyfriend. The three of them make up a
harum-scarum team.
Sydney moved in with me about ten years ago and, since that time, has taken over
much of my life. We’ve had many a heated discussions about what’s her time and
what’s mine. Boundaries mean nothing to her. For a while, my husband was the
only one who knew about Sydney. He couldn’t see her but was aware when she was
around because of the fog that seemed to engulf me. Sydney began as a figment
of my imagination. No, I am not schizophrenic. I’m a mystery writer, and Sydney
is my protagonist. Creating her was like opening a Pandora’s Box.
Since then, she’s solved four murders at the Arlington Hotel in Hot Springs,
Arkansas, and three more at the Luther Hotel in Palacios, Texas. Now she’s in
Galveston at the historic Galvez Hotel, trying to find out who murdered her
grandfather eighteen years earlier.
Despite her bossy ways and propensity for not listening to me, I like the gal.
We have a lot in common: a preference for gin martinis, a fetish for shoes, and
an eye for red flashy sports cars.
I love tossing obstacles in Sydney’s path one minute and saving her butt the
next. She doesn’t seem to mind the roller-coaster life I’ve created for her.
Her only problem is she wants to be the center of attention and hates being put
back in the box at the end of the day. So, in the middle of the night, I often
hear her pounding to be let out. Sometimes I open the box, and sometimes I
don’t. Either way, she’s always there in the morning, tapping her foot and
giving me the evil eye.
Here’s an excerpt from the new
edition of Murder at the Galvez
published by Anamara Press:
I woke to a sun well up and already into the business of warming the day, and to Ruth well into a late-morning dream. The phone rang and I snatched up the receiver and pulled the phone into the bathroom to keep from waking her. It was Marcella calling to report. Although she hadn’t been successful getting Dad to talk, she did manage to get him released on bail. I told her I’d be over later, and then I dressed quietly and left. I grabbed a cup of coffee and decided to pay the slippery Mr. Fallow another visit. To keep Mr. Fallow from noticing my car and scurrying out the back door, I parked a couple of blocks away.
The open sign was still there, but the place was
deserted. I took the opportunity to snoop around. The shop was crowded with
more than a dozen concrete tanks with hoses trailing out in all directions. I
peered into one and was surprised to see it empty of any fish life—just dank
water with a fine layer of algae growing up the side. I looked in the next one,
empty too, and so was a third. The fourth housed a few sad-looking minnows.
Maybe there had been a recent surge in demand for bait, but I doubted it. I
stepped to the back of the shop and opened an icebox. Inside were four
containers of night crawlers. Brewster Fallow was not getting rich selling
bait, that was for sure.
I checked out the counter and saw
that he’d returned after Marcella and I had left. A half-eaten bologna sandwich
sat on a chipped plate next to a cup of coffee. I felt the cup. It was warm. I
poked the sandwich. The bread was soft. Whatever had distracted Fallow from his
lunch had happened only a short time ago. The cash register drawer was
half-open. I counted four dollars and some change. Then I heard the back door
squeak open and then close.
“Mr. Fallow?” I called. “Brewster?” I walked to the rear of the shop and pushed open the screen door. An old Ford was parked in the driveway. “Anyone here?” I called. No answer, so I went back inside to wait. Maybe he had to run a quick errand, or maybe, as Marcella had said, I had spooked him again. I continued my inspection of the tanks, and when I peered into the last one, I knew for certain that waiting for Fallow to return was a waste of time. I hurried out the door and into my car, and I was out of the neighborhood in a flash. I was sure that Brewster Fallow didn’t accidentally stumble into his own fish tank and drown, judging by the bloody water and hole in his skull. I was also certain that whoever had left through the back door was the killer.
I drove to the Pleasure Pier and
parked on the seawall. The seagulls were out in number and squawking their
eerie sound, a sound I enjoyed more than any other. For me, it was a mixture of
innocent pleasure along with a bit of melancholy thrown in at the last second.
When I was little, I often thought the gulls were calling me to join them for a
flight over the beach, only to feel sad when I didn’t sprout wings and take
flight. That’s what I felt like doing now—catching the vortex of a
whooping-crane flock and migrating to Canada. Only it was two months too early
for the birds’ flight north. The cranes weren’t going anywhere, and,
unfortunately, neither was I.
The stench of dead bait from Fallow’s
bait shop still lingered in my nasal passages. I walked out onto the pier,
inhaled the salt air, and listened to the gulls and the sound of my heels
tapping on the wooden planks, hoping my racing heart would not explode from my
chest.
Except for a few fishermen, the place
was uncomfortably quiet. The fog had become heavy, wrapping me in a blanket of
light mist. I could no longer see the end of the pier, and all of a sudden, I
felt too vulnerable for my own good. Even the seagulls had stopped calling, or
maybe they’d left to find a better stretch of beach.
I pulled my jacket around me, leaned
against the rail, and tried to fit this new puzzle piece into the insane events
that now dominated my life. Whoever killed Fallow must have done so only
minutes before I arrived and had been in the back of the shop when I walked in.
I’m lucky he didn’t kill me too. When I fled the shop, I’d intended to drive
straight to the police station and find Fidalgo, but I couldn’t steer my car in
that direction. Being connected to one dead body was enough. However, if I
didn’t report the murder, Fallow could lie in that fish tank for days before
anyone found him. I was certain the man who’d killed Roland was probably the
same guy who’d plugged Fallow. Delaying the report would only make the
situation worse for everyone, especially Dad.
I lingered a bit longer, rehearsing
in my mind what I would tell Fidalgo. The wind picked up, creaking the old
pier. Someone coughed. In the distance, I heard footsteps. I turned, but
couldn’t see a damn thing through the fog. I was not the kind of person who had
premonitions—that was Ruth’s department—but at that moment, I felt as if
something was wrong, very wrong. I listened for the clang of bait buckets and
fishing gear to go with the footsteps, but whoever was strolling in the fog was
not there to cast a line. Then the footsteps stopped, and for a moment, all I
heard was the slow, gentle wash of the waves. They seemed to crest and hang for
a moment before falling as if they weren’t sure they wanted to be here, either.
Someone could easily walk up, toss me over the rail, and no one would ever know
until my body washed up on the beach. The footsteps sounded again. This time I
distinctly heard two different footfalls, one near and one in the distance.
I usually think of myself as a
relatively intelligent person, but at the moment, I felt void of all mental
prowess. I’d given the killer a perfect opportunity to do me in. He’d probably
followed me from Fallow’s shop.
I slipped off my shoes and crept back
toward the seawall. The footsteps in the distance picked up the pace. Then I
heard an unmistakable sound from the person closest to me. It was the click of
a gun’s safety release. I froze. The shot split inches from my head. Another
shot rang out, this one from a different gun. The guy nearest to me turned and
ran. A scuffle ensued, and for a moment, I considered jumping over the pier
rail, but I wasn’t sure if I was over water or sand.
Suddenly someone grabbed my arm.
“Don’t scream. Keeping walking and don’t
say a word.” We walked together in silence until we reached the seawall. The
headlights of the cars driving down Seawall Boulevard illuminated the street,
causing the mist to turn yellow like sparklers dancing throughout the air. He
opened the car door and pushed me in and then came around to the driver’s side.
Once both doors were locked, he grabbed me and pulled me over.
“What the hell are you doing here?”
My heart raced.
“Keeping you alive, what else?” Dixon
kept me from any further bitching by planting his lips on mine.
Pick up a copy of Murder at the Galvez from Amazon
Published by Anamcara Press
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