By Elaine Viets
Let me tell you about my new Florida mystery, Beach Blonde Betrayal. Yes, I came up with that tongue-twister of a title, and I’m already tripping over it
The second book in my Florida Beach series explores some favorite themes: love, trust, and betrayal. Especially betrayal, by friends and lovers. Because this mystery is set in Florida, it’s chockfull of colorful characters.
It also has Florida Men, Florida Women and plenty of Florida weirdness. In fact, that’s how the mystery starts. Here’s a sneak preview of the first chapter:
Chapter 1 (excerpt)
Dean and I were debating our favorite subject: Florida weirdness. There was another murder, and it was gruesome, even for the Sunshine State.
I should know. I’m Norah McCarthy, a genuine Florida native, and I own the Florodora apartments. My apartment building is on the ocean in Peerless Point, halfway between Fort Lauderdale and Miami. Thanks to the perfect weather, the beach was swarming with tourists, so we retreated inland. Today, Dean and I were crunching on the pea gravel path along a canal in Peerless Park.
Dean lives in the apartment next to mine. He’s not only my tenant. He’s my lover, boyfriend, whatever the word is now. Dean is a sunbaked golden brown, with broad shoulders and naturally streaked blond hair. Definitely a stud muffin.
I also admire his fine mind. But not this time. Now he was flat-out wrong.
“It’s disgusting,” Dean said. “She should have been taken away and shot.”
“She’s not to blame,” I said. “What she did was natural.”
“Eating her own children?” Dean said. “You think that’s natural? On Mother’s Day?”
“Alligators don’t celebrate Mother’s Day.”
The headline that shocked Dean was “Florida Gator Eats Offspring on Mother’s Day.” Some innocent tourists, expecting to see Disney moments on their Everglades tour, photographed the gruesome scene. They were stunned that the alligator would eat her kids in front of their kids.
“It’s a metaphor for the whole state,” he said.
“I won’t argue with that,” I said.
“Nothing in Florida is normal,” he said.
With that, Dean was shoved out of the way by a muscular woman pushing a baby stroller that held a tiny Chihuahua. I never got used to people hauling dogs around in strollers.
“See?” he said. “Exhibit A just charged by.”
I felt I should defend my native state. “Did you get a close look at that poor dog? It was so old it had a white muzzle. Plus it had a bandage on its paw. The woman was being kind.”
“Not to me,” Dean said, rubbing his elbow where the dog woman had clipped him.
I playfully kissed his muscular arm, and he laughed.
It was a warm January afternoon, and I wore my favorite yellow sundress and had my long, dark hair up in a ponytail. Dean had on shorts and a stylish Hawaiian shirt embroidered on the pocket with a toucan sitting in a cocktail glass.
I much preferred the ocean to the canal. Florida canals ranged from floating trash dumps to sylvan scenes. This one was somewhere in between. Foam cups and chip bags floated along the weedy edge, which was lined with green scum.
Across the canal, I spotted a glamorous older woman in a red picture hat walking a black cat on a red leash. She had perfectly cut white hair and a stylish red pantsuit. She made age seem like an achievement.
I pointed at her. “See, Dean. Not everything in South Florida is crazy. Look at that woman walking her cat.”
The black cat with green eyes trotted along the canal path, then suddenly stopped, ears alert.
“Vanessa!” woman said. “Come along. Don’t dilly-dally.”
“There,” I said. “When’s the last time you heard someone say ‘dilly-dally’?”
With that, an alligator, evil and prehistoric, slid out of the scummy green water on the canal’s edge, and lumbered toward the woman and her cat. The gator’s gaping jaws revealed cruel yellow teeth.
“Vanessa,” the woman shrieked, and yanked on the cat’s leash. The dark furball refused to move. It dug in, arched its back and hissed at the armored beast. The gator could swallow Vanessa in one bite.
“That alligator is going to attack,” I said.
“We can’t do anything,” Dean said. “The canal is too wide for us to cross.”
We watched helplessly, unable to stop the carnage.
Then out of nowhere, a man wearing the Day-Glo vest of a park employee and carrying a pointed metal-tipped trash stick ran straight for the gator and speared it in the eye. The gator bellowed and thrashed as the man stuck the gator in the other eye, and then jabbed the beast in its nostrils.
I winced. I had no sympathy for the gator, but the eye-jabbing made me queasy. Did the man blind the creature? I couldn’t tell. The gator backed off but stayed defiantly on the bank, holding its ground and thrashing its tail.
“Why isn’t the gator going back into the canal, where it would be safe, Dean?”
He shrugged. “Like I said, nothing in this state is normal.”
“Look!” I said. “A TV crew is taping the battle. And that’s Carol Berman.”
The petite brown-haired reporter was a south Florida star, and seemingly fearless. She approached the chaotic scene wearing open-toed sandals that I thought were way too close to the gator’s whipping tail and snapping jaws.
Now I heard the howl of police sirens, while the speared gator hissed and thrashed and the white-haired woman struggled to hang onto her squirming cat. Vanessa, determined to go after her attacker, lashed her tail and sent the woman’s hat sailing in to the canal.
Two police officers ran up, guns drawn, and shooed Carol and the woman away from the gator while the rescuer stood guard with his metal-tipped stick.
“Why doesn’t the cop shoot the gator, Dean?” I asked.
“Can’t,” Dean said. “The cop has to call SNAP.”
“The federal food assistance program?”
“Nope, SNAP, the Statewide Nuisance Alligator Program.”
Fifteen minutes later, a gator trapper, dressed in camo, pulled up in a pickup. He jumped out and easily subdued the hissing alligator, quickly wrapping its jaws in silver duct tape. The park employee helped the trapper carry the struggling reptile to the trapper’s pickup.
Meanwhile, Carol, the perky TV reporter, was interviewing bystanders. We could hear her talking to Vanessa’s owner. I knew who she was as soon as I heard her name: Abigail Peachtree, one of the richest women in Florida.
“Vanessa is my child,” Abigail said. “I can’t thank this man enough for saving my baby.”
“Just doing my job, ma’am,” the cat rescuer said. His voice had a soft southern accent. He looked down at his boots and did everything but say, “Aw, shucks.”
Carol stuck a mic in the man’s face and asked, “What’s your name?”
“Gil Shecker,” he said. Gil was about five feet ten and wiry, with a dark shirt, worn jeans and boots that were down at the heels. His rough skin was burned deep red. Gil had hair like a handful of straw. Everything about him said “country.”
“Can you tell us what happened?” Carol asked.
“I was picking up trash over there under those trees.” Gil waved an arm toward a cluster of palm trees. “And I heard the commotion. I saw that gator going for that lovely lady’s cat.”
I swear, Abigail simpered like a southern belle.
“I didn’t have a real weapon, but I had my stick, and it was nice and sharp. So I just rushed on over there and did what I had to do. It wasn’t no big deal.”
Abigail interrupted. “But it was. You saved us, and I’m so grateful.”
***
Did Gil really save Abigail? Or was the daring rescue a set-up? Why was the TV camera conveniently on the spot?
Abigail the heiress rewards Gil handsomely for saving her cat. That reward that leads to betrayal, a broken romance and murder.
Beach Blonde Betrayal will be published July 7 as a hardcover, audio book and ebook. Pre-order your copy of this sun-soaked mystery from your favorite indie bookstore, including Left Bank Books in my hometown of St. Louis https://tinyurl.com/44tt2pr9. Other outlets include Amazon https://tinyurl.com/yc7h5vfy, and Thrift Books https://tinyurl.com/99hctxvs
Enjoy!
