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Amazon
Category:
Mystery/Suspense
Publisher: Bridge Publishing
ISBN-10: 1490558489
Type: Fiction
Pages: 344
Copyright: 2013
ISBN-13: 9781490558486
Price: $2.99 (eBook)
He prays for prey.
His prayers have just been answered.
From the bestselling author of Widow’s Row and CoverBoys & Curses, comes Evil Cries.
Author endorsed by the late Master of Suspense, Sidney Sheldon.
He prays for prey. His prayers have just been answered.
Lauren Visconti loses everyone she loves. They don’t walk out the door. They die. The Lauren Visconti Curse.
Her in-your-face magazine, CoverBoy, might have crossed a few lines. Now it appeared the curse had morphed. Now anyone Lauren had any emotion toward, good or bad, was doomed to be slaughtered.
Success came with the magazine’s dichotomy—photos of almost naked men, juxtaposed—serious investigative reporting between them. Her articles ran true stories. Most readers had heard of sex-slave trafficking. Most didn’t know it occurred in their own backyards. Some readers knew about podiatry mutilations—the hacking off of elongated second toes and even the total amputation of little toes, all in order to fit into the expensive designer shoes. Very few had heard about re-virgination.
CoverBoy’s articles named names.
The Obeah Voodoo scared Lauren. But could it help save her? More likely any help would come from the handsome psychologist.
This is what Lauren had to believe.
Excerpt
Chapter One
3 Women & a Funeral
THEY SAY WOMEN DON’T KILL themselves with a
single bullet to the head.
They’re dead wrong.
The entire funeral screamed of blasphemy. Payton
Doukas’s father, of fierce Greek Orthodox persuasion,
insisted that viewing the body was a necessary ritual in the
institution of a proper burial. As self-proclaimed host of
the event, he was none too thrilled that his daughter had
decided to blow her brains out. In compromise, Payton’s
casket commandeered a corner of the chapel veiled behind
cranberry colored sheers. I kept trying to peer through the
fabric while knowing I would avoid any sight of what
might be left of my best friend.
Divorced, Payton’s mother left a much different
thumbprint on her daughter’s final service. She did this
theme thing. The altar in front of me brimmed with potted
plants, buckets of cut daisies, and an odd assortment of
gardening tools, sunbonnets, gloves, and clunky looking
black rubber shoes. I guess it could have been nice if
Payton had lived to love the garden, but she couldn’t
sustain the life of a Christmas cactus. I knew better. If
Payton had a theme it was the little foil package of not-soclunky
black rubbers, also known as condoms, she kept
tucked inside her fake crocodile purse.
Lala Corriere
2
I hadn’t spent much time in the desert. It must have
been Payton’s final laugh to go and kill herself in Tucson
in June. At 109 degrees, the historic church didn’t have
air-conditioning. A few floor-stand fans blasted out hot air.
The tired looking surroundings offered a splintered cross,
suspended above the altar and impressive in size. It
seemed to be the only adornment other than the
temporary garish gardening exhibit and those wretched
cranberry sheers.
Carly Posh sat next to me. A gifted Los Angeles
interior designer, she preferred to dress as if she’d just
returned from some combat boot camp. Always organized
and in control of both body and mind, Carly was the fine
stitching that kept our tapestry of friendships woven
together.
To the left of Carly, Sterling Falls constantly adjusted
the miniskirt that seemed to be sticking to the wooden
pew. Late to arrive, she’d wedged her slim body toward
Carly from the opposite side of the church. I didn’t see her
face, but there was no mistaking who she was. Sterling’s
trademark wardrobe was skimpy and bright, but not as
shiny as her long lacquered fingernails adorned with even
brighter gemstones. Her fingers looked like popsicles with
giant chunks of lime and cherry ice swirls clinging to the
sticks. When her dad became the legendary jeweler to the
stars, Sterling was quick to partner up with him. Their
sign on Rodeo Drive simply read, ‘Falls & Falls’. Falls of
cascading diamonds, rubies, and emeralds, that is. Fair to
say that Sterling was the shellacked gold threads
embedded in the fabric of our friendship.
Payton’s father rose to the altar and conveyed his final
goodbyes to his Petroula—Payton’s given name and one
she loathed. The heavy Greek accent made his words
difficult to understand. Instead his grieving eyes, red and
COVER BOYS AND CURSES
3
swollen against an ashen face, communicated his story of
deep loss.
I had been witness to this type of grief far too many
times. I admit my mind was drifting from the service
when Sterling shoved the latest issue of my magazine
across Carly and into my lap.
The sound of her voice carried loud enough the family
members in the pew ahead of us turned and shook their
heads in disapproval. “What’s up with this, Lauren? Are
you asking for death threats? These types of stories are
going to get you killed.”
I shrugged my shoulders in an attempt to shun the
conversation. Between the glossy images of male models,
my articles solicited an abundant readership of both sexes.
CoverBoy would become known, if not respected, for
presenting in-your-face current world events based in fact
not commonly known or believed, or even conceived. The
stories pushed the edge and this time, maybe, I had gone
too far. A death threat is pretty far.
Who knows why I loved Sterling. She fell into the
obnoxious and self-centered and rich and drop dead
gorgeous category. She was just pissed to be the last one to
know I was moving my magazine to Los Angeles. And that
meant I was moving, too.
We were four. We had become friends when we were
only eleven years old. Now we were three, and I wanted to
be alone. I wanted to be one. I wanted to sit in the back of
the church away from everyone and out of earshot from
the minister’s words and all the other people that had to
stand up and drone on about something irrelevant
regarding my friend behind the cranberry sheers. I’d feel
safer in the back. Safer? Safer if you’re a bowling pin,
maybe.
Who needed protection? Not me. But anyone and
everyone who had ever loved me had died. My loved ones
Lala Corriere
4
were not safe. This much I knew. And apparently I was
not safe either, but I hadn’t mentioned this to my friends.
I hadn’t mentioned it to my own self.
COVER BOYS AND CURSES
5
Chapter Two
An Empty Pew
THE DARK AND HANDSOME man had a spy planted
at the services. Just to make certain all the details were
neat and tidy. A mere kid, but good at blending into any
crowd of mourners. Dressed in black. Good boy.
FOLLOWING THE SERVICE we moved across the
church grounds to a noon gathering of Greek food. The
three tables offered grape leaves, moussaka,
unidentifiable fish replete with metallic eyeballs, and flaky
baklava dripping with golden syrupy butter.
Sterling, lanky and lithe ever since I met her in fifth
grade, devoured her second chunk of baklava. Between
gulps she asked me, “So, what gives? Why the tell-all story
on one of the most famous ballplayers in the country?”
Why not, I thought, even though I felt the knot in my
throat pulsing while knowing someone out there was
ready to kill me over it. “I stand by my work,” I said. I had
the facts. Steroids. Steroid sales. Steroid cancers. One
could call it an old story, but I took a spin on it with the
big money bribery.
Carly looked on and attempted to hide the concern
that seized her eyes. She tried to blink away the tension.
Oblivious to Carly, Sterling changed the subject.
“What do you say we ditch this place? Go back to the
Lala Corriere
6
resort and splash around in the pool. Hang time. Payton
would have wanted that.”
Sterling was right. But it didn’t feel right.
“You guys go ahead. I’m going to stick around here for
a bit. Maybe take a walk,” I said.
Sterling tossed her long blond hair to the side, “Yeah,
right. 109 degrees and Lauren wants to take a walk.”
I grabbed a bottle of cold water from a nearby barrel.
“I’ll catch up with you soon.”
I walked, all right. Right back into the already emptied
church. Where had all the mourners gone? And Payton’s
casket? The flowers, the tacky garden crap, even the
cranberry sheers were gone. I took my preferred seat at
the back of the church.
And I made the mistake of turning my phone back on
and checking messages. Three of them were from the
identified person in my article accepting bribes. One was
from the identified briber. All were irate. Screaming they
were going to get me. Shit.
I’m twenty-nine and I’ve lost too much, too soon. My
mother died of a heart attack when I was away at
university. My father and my fiancé perished together in
the family jet that was bringing them to me the day before
my wedding.
And now, Payton. She’s one of my best friends. Why
didn’t I see this coming? Suicide? Could it be I had no idea
that Payton was suicidal?
Distance separates no one in today’s world of instant
communication. Sure, Payton and I talked. Phone, emails,
texts, even webcam chats, but over the years I admit the
contact became less frequent. We sold out to careers and
endless promising futures.
Yeah, right. Futures. Mine was just as secure as any
futures market. Nothing but speculations and hedging
bets. Who would start up a glossy magazine when they
COVER BOYS AND CURSES
7
were folding like origami and sinking like forgotten
treasure chests in reckless seas? My future and my past
seemed to die and I couldn’t let go of the bullet. Perhaps
that’s why I still held on to my own box of the dead—the
first thing I had packed to make the move from Chicago to
Los Angeles.
Tucked inside the box, I’d wedged the envelope in
between a copy of The Prophet and a box of tattered and
fading family photographs. The gold ribbon on my own
wedding invitation stuck out, curling around the top of the
box like golden angel hair growing out of a hastily covered
grave. The very good and the very bad. My own personal
dichotomy of life.
I grew aware of the stale air in the church and took a
deep breath. Almost historic and in need of restoration, I
thought. Aging wood bled of life from the rays of sunlight
streaming in from the clerestory windows, I watched dust
particles sway and settle in the unseen movement of space.
Remorse and regret overwhelmed any grief. An old
familiar guilt consumed me. Payton Doukas died because
I loved her too much. The Lauren Visconti Curse. But
there was a different feeling this time. A certain angst that
went beyond the shock of an unexpected death.
They found Payton at her home and slumped over her
computer soon after she hadn’t shown up for work. Her
method of choice, the .357 Magnum, had fallen to the tile
floor. The pooled blood had been tracked through every
room of Payton’s house by the tiny paw prints of her cat,
Teddy.
I wasn’t the last person to see Payton alive, but I was
the last one she had emailed. She was my best friend, and
yet her typed words made no sense to me.
Saguaro National Forest. CAC. 3 Skeletons. Import
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