The Sea Glass Murders

Timothy Cole

Description

A headless corpse tossed in a dumpster unites a small-town cop and a formidable retired lady spy to track a killer in a wealthy New England neighborhood.

A decapitated body burned to a crisp might be found in any dumpster in any city in America, but not in the aristocratic Gold Coast community of Westport, Connecticut. Local cop Tony DeFranco dutifully collects evidence, knowing that the State Police will take over the case. But when the state investigator tries to cover up the murder, DeFranco starts a rogue investigation.

DeFranco forms an alliance with retired CIA case officer Dasha Petrov, whose elderly, ladylike appearance masks a lifetime’s experience with violence and deception. As the body count mounts, DeFranco relies on Dasha’s insights and skills acquired over decades of global troubleshooting to stop a killer operating at the pinnacle of American power.

A glimpse at the sordid underside of position and wealth, The Sea Glass Murders is an action mystery with an immersive, fast-paced plot and unforgettable characters.

Sujets

• Policier & Thriller
• Thriller
• Policier
• Thrillers
• Años 1980
• General officer
• Detective
• 1980s
• Espionage
• Mystery
• General
• Crime
• Fiction

Informations

• Publié par: Linden Publishing
• Date de parution: 06 octobre 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781610353755
• Langue: English

Extrait

T HE S EA G LASS M URDERS
A Gold Coast Mystery
Timothy Cole

Pace Press Fresno, California
The Sea Glass Murders
Copyright 2020 by Timothy Cole. All rights reserved.
Published by Pace Press
An imprint of Linden Publishing 2006 South Mary Street, Fresno, California 93721 [phone] / [phone] PacePress.com
book design by Andrea Reider cover design by Tanja Prokop, www.bookcoverworld.com
Pace Press and colophon are trademarks of Linden Publishing, Inc.
ISBN 978-0-941936-03-3
135798642
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper.
This is a work of fiction. The names, places, characters, and incidents in this book are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual people, places, or events is coincidental.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data on file.
For Sarah Smedley, the love of my life
Everything must be taken into account. If the fact will not fit the theory-let the theory go.
-Agatha Christie, The Mysterious Affair at Styles
Contents
Prologue
1 Discovery
2 Body of Secrets
3 Devil in the Details
4 Protector Against Evil
5 Strange Alliance
6 Betrayal
7 Sea Glass
8 Dasha
9 Anatomy of Trust
10 Instinct
11 Organs of Deceit
12 Tracy
13 Human Contact
14 Plan of Action
15 Body of Evidence
16 Stalker
17 Hide the Corpse
18 Competition
19 Firepower
20 The Chief
21 Numbers Game
22 Telltale Video
23 Tale of the Tape
24 Close Encounter
25 Hunkering Down
26 Seeds of a Cover-up
27 Danger This Close
28 Curtis Steps Up
29 Good Hunting
30 The Power of a Name
31 Safe Harbor
32 Fired for Cause
33 Moriarty
34 Conspiracy
35 Rajastan
36 Tag
37 Time and Space
38 Probe
39 Scene of the Crime
40 Broad Shoulders
41 Forensics
42 Notifications
43 Forever a Spy
44 Hail to the Chief
45 Tour de Force
46 Threat Level
47 Trail of Blood
48 Whirlybird
49 Morning Glory
50 Mining the Truth
51 More to the Story
52 Combing the Morgue
53 Hearsay
54 Closer
55 Danger Time
56 Hard to Get Good Help
57 Threats and Opportunity
58 A Gust of Wind
59 Fusillade
60 Into the Breach
61 Counterattack
62 Field Expedient
63 Unmasked
64 Loot
65 Draw Down
66 Familiar Territory
67 Surprise
68 Dilemma
69 Tables Turning
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Prologue
Dasha Petrov looked back on it later, after the dust had settled after they d removed the dead body from her living room.
This whole sordid business started with a scream in the night, she thought, a scream I never heard.
She had been sound asleep. She d felt out of sorts and had taken a pill. Her sister Galina heard it. But because of Galina s stroke, the poor dear couldn t describe what she d heard, and anyway, Dasha was snoring away, oblivious.
She had tried keeping Galina company in front of the fire-feeling the need to stay close. But Dasha had had a funny stomach, and those early shakes that would lead to fever. Wrapped up in an old quilt to ease the chills, it seemed to Dasha they were always huddled in front of a fire-first in that long-ago hovel in the Russian countryside, ice and snow blasting through the shutters, these days in their garden cottage along Connecticut s Gold Coast. When they were younger, there were campfires with schoolmates in the woods outside Prague, fires on the rocky shores of the Adriatic, fires in steel barrels with those wonderful American GIs far from home. There were the stubborn fires of the Berlin ruins, the catastrophic fires of the Pilsen bombardment, the comforting fires in the manor house at the end of the drive by the water. Her husband Constantine was alive and Seabreeze, their home, was in proper trim. Children put to bed, Dasha and Constantine would curl up in front of a cozy fire, sip a brandy, and tour the horizon.
Now it was just Dasha and Galina, situated agreeably in the guest quarters. Dasha s eldest son Boris had taken over the manor house. He and his family needed the space. She and Galina had gladly removed themselves, slipping gently into their twilight. Galina had spent more than fifty years tending to the sick; Dasha was retired from the intelligence services of her adopted country-practiced at the theft of secrets. She looked back on her career with satisfaction. As with many migr s, she loved America with unstinting devotion, having known intimately the dark heart of Nazi Germany, and a Soviet Russia bent on domination.
They had plenty of books and the Russian language newspaper. They were perfecting their borscht, indulging in a nightly vodka, and watching the news on television. Dasha s Soviet enemies would not soon forget the year 1989. There were nightly reports of the Red Army being driven back from its ill-conceived invasion of Afghanistan, graveyard of empires. And Gorbachev s campaign of glasnost was opening fresh lines of communication with the west. It was exciting. Sometimes Dasha would tell Galina stories about the old days and Galina would light up with the glow of remembrance. These days, the only way Galina could get in a word was by using her Russian Scrabble pieces, hastily arranged to ask a question-or issue a rejoinder. Galina would move the little squares to find just the right phrase, and Dasha would offer an encouraging response, plumbing the depths of her dwindling patience, knowing they d have an eternity to speak once they reached the other side-as the scriptures promised.
But that night Dasha just wasn t herself. Maybe it was the cabbage rolls- galuptsie -their mother s recipe, from the time there was never enough to eat.
Spakuene noche, Galinka , she d said, employing the diminutive. Not feeling well. Going off to take a pill.
Galina patted her younger sister on the hand and continued to gaze into the embers. The guesthouse had a great room with the fireplace and long table for dining. There was a smaller table for their Scrabble set in the corner window overlooking the garden. There was a galley kitchen accessed through a door at one end, and a greenhouse jutting off at an angle, where Constantine had propagated the spring plantings. Their bedrooms were in a little wing in the back. It was cozy, but suffered the same state of dilapidation as the rest of the once-thriving Seabreeze.
Dasha fast asleep, Galina stoking the fire with her one good hand, they would look back on this night and mark it down as the time when everything changed.
It was a scream, insisted Galina with her Scrabble pieces.
She d heard it coming from across the hedge, a female in distress-then male voices, agitated and urgent.
An emergency.
To Galina the nurse it seemed like her whole life had been one long emergency. First, the Paris hospital where she d trained, then pressed into service with Patton s Third Army. After the German surrender she d been hurled into the unspeakable calamity of Buchenwald and the typhus outbreak-then the emergency department of New York s Bellevue Hospital and the city s nightly avalanche of mayhem. She knew the sound of humanity stretched to the limit.
She tried to wake Dasha, but Dasha just snored away in drug-induced slumber.
Galina didn t dare go outside. Too windy and dark.
She went to the ancient rotary phone and dialed 911.
What is the nature of your emergency? asked the operator. Galina could only mumble, and the operator had the good sense to trace the call and alert the police. The night dispatcher radioed a patrol car and received an acknowledgment.
Galina waited in the great room watching the embers lose their glow. She didn t want to bother Boris. The police would arrive soon.
But the police never came that night. Galina never knew why.
Dasha s fever broke late the next day-after tea with lemon, honey, and a jigger of vodka. Galina tried to tell her about the scream, but Dasha just didn t understand.
I know, Galina, dear. Sometimes I want to scream too, said Dasha. Soon, Galina would forget the scream in the night. She was usually pin sharp, but she was growing a little forgetful, especially when it came to recent events.
Later, after the pieces fell into place, it dawned on Dasha that the mess had started with a scream she d never heard, and the unexpected arrival a few days later of the detective named DeFranco-with that beautiful red-haired girl.
That s when things really started to unravel, thought Dasha.
It was rare, in her retirement, to take in strangers. But she d been both attracted and repelled when she saw them out on the beach. Curiosity overcame any initial reticence. She trusted her situational awareness, which had been tested under far more trying circumstances. She had a talent for calculating the distance and direction of any threat-in her gut, her peripheral vision, her nerve endings. When she saw the pair coming down the beach, she was naturally put on guard. She had legions of trusted friends-and a lifetime of enemies.
But she d take the risk.
She remembered thinking just like you, Dasha, to take the risk.
1
Discovery
Four days had gone by since Dasha Petrov s sister heard the commotion across the hedge. A squall had just passed over the collection of modest storefronts at Canal and Main, one of the outer enclaves of Westport, Connecticut-home to McMansions, fancy retail outlets, and gifted children. Rainwater flooded the greasy potholes in the parking lot behind the hardware store, and twilight was transitioning to a moonless night. Sergeant Anthony DeFranco exited the department s unmarked Ford Crown Victoria and approached the scene, red and white lights from a police cruiser pulsing against the trees. First responder Wendell McKurdy had taken the initiative of stringing crime scene tape around the green metal dumpster, where the hardware store stock boy had reported seeing a body.
Earlier that day the boy had inadvertently thrown away an envelope filled with receivables from the store s household accounts. The trash had been taken out to the dumpster, and the store