Mating Season (Frank Coffin Mysteries) - Hardcover

Loomis, Jon

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0312367708 ISBN 13: 9780312367701

Verlag: Minotaur Books, 2009

Inhaltsangabe

Jon Loomis’s sharp and witty debut, High Season, starring Detective Frank Coffin, a onetime Baltimore homicide detective who came back to his hometown after one too many grisly crime scenes started to take their toll, was one of The Washington Post’s best mysteries of the year and an editor’s choice title for The New York Times Book Review. Coffin had hoped that the move to Provincetown, Massachusetts, would put an end to his panic attacks, but so far, the quirky Cape Cod tourist town has been every bit as brutal as the big city. Now in Loomis’s winning follow-up, Coffin has to get a grip in order to investigate the murder of one of the town’s most “popular” women.

Beautiful and the heir to a tremendous fortune, Kenji Sole had an active love life---a very active love life. When she’s found stabbed to death on the floor of her bedroom dressed only in a negligee, it’s clear someone very close to her is probably responsible. Since she didn’t care about her many lovers’ marital status, Frank and his partner Officer Lola Winters have their work cut out for them interviewing all of her lovers---not to mention their jealous wives---to find out who killed the much-sought-after Ms. Sole.

With Mating Season, another wry and wickedly suspenseful mystery, Loomis continues to be one of crime fiction’s most promising stars.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

JON LOOMIS, recipient of a number of fellowships and awards, is the author of two collections of poetry in addition to the first Frank Coffin mystery, High Season. His laurels include the FIELD poetry prize, grants from the Ohio Arts Council and the Virginia Commission for the Arts, and an MFA from the University of Virginia. A college professor, he lives with his wife and son in Wisconsin.

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Chapter One

Detective Frank Coffin stood in the sun-streaked living room that had, until sometime the day before, belonged toKenji Sole. It was a very nice living room indeed: spacious and airy, furnished in an eclectic mix of antiques and Eames-era modern, with several excellent abstract paintings hung on the white walls. Coffin recognized a door-sized Rothko in violet and umber, and what might have been an early de Kooning in black and white. Tall windows ran along the living room’s south side overlooking Province-town Harbor, which sparked in the bright morning sunlight. A massive stone fireplace dominated the opposite wall. The floor, made of wide oak planks, was mostly covered by an enormous Persian rug, patterned in watery blues and greens, which would have been quite beautiful if Kenji Sole’s dead body had not been lying on it in the middle of a large and complicated bloodstain.

"Looks like a stabbing," said the policeman standing next to Coffin. His big belly strained against his uniform shirt. He was Coffin’s cousin Tony Santos.

Coffin looked at him, then back at the eight-inch chef’s knife protruding from Kenji Sole’s chest. "You think?" he said.

Sergeant Lola Winters tapped Tony on the shoulder. "Maybe you’d better go outside and keep a lid on traffic," she said.

"I don’t see any traffic," Tony said, looking out the north window at the steep, narrow road leading up to Mayflower Heights from Route 6A.

"Then it’ll be easy," Coffin said.

"Okay." Tony sighed. "Fine. I get it. I could use a smoke anyway."

Coffin held up a finger. "Crime scene. No cigarette butts."

"Right, no worries," Tony said, trotting down the open staircase.

Coffin rubbed his temples. He felt dizzy; a high-pitched whine sang faintly in his left ear. Kenji Sole had been a beautiful young woman. Asian or part Asian, she had almond-shaped eyes, an oval face, a strong nose that hinted at some European genetics. She had long, shag-cut hair dyed honey blond. It was hard to say how old she was: early thirties, maybe. Slender and small-breasted, she’d kept her pubic hair trimmed to a neat, dark strip. She was nude except for a sheer baby-doll nightgown and an ankle bracelet made of tiny shells, which glowed pale in the sunlight against her skin. Coffin looked away, feeling queasy, then looked again. She had been stabbed at least five times and was covered in drying blood.

"Frank?" Lola said. "You want to go outside? Get some air?"

"Yeah," Coffin said. "Just for a minute. Sorry."

Coffin sat on the back steps. He felt better; the buzzing sound in his head had subsided, and his peripheral vision seemed almost normal. Lola fanned him slowly with her uniform hat.

"I’m okay now," Coffin said. "You can stop with the fanning."

"You still don’t look so good, Frank."

A car passed below them on 6A, heading toward Provincetown. A pair of grackles waddled across the narrow lawn.

"I’m fine," Coffin said. "Let’s check out the rest of the house. Then we’ll go talk to the cleaning ladies."

The house was a big seventies modern, two stories, newly remodeled. There was a detached three-car garage with an upstairs carriage house.

The kitchen was well designed and almost pathologically neat. Sparkling crystal wine goblets hung, globes down, from an overhead rack; the six-burner Wolf range was spotless, as though it had never been used. There were gleaming black granite countertops and cherry cabinets so perfectly finished they seemed to glow from within. A sliding glass door opened onto a broad deck that faced southeast, toward Truro. The built-in stainless steel refrigerator was big enough to hang a body in. The thought gave Coffin a quick shiver. He resisted the urge to open the refrigerator door. There was an antique ship’s clock on the wall. Coffin glanced at his watch: The clock was nine minutes fast.

"Check it out, Frank."

Coffin turned. Lola was squinting at Kenji Sole’s collection of kitchen knives, stored in a slotted oak block.

"Shun," Lola said. "Japanese. The fancy set." She pointed to an empty slot in the block. "Our killer found his weapon here, instead of bringing his own."

"Indicating what?" Coffin said.

Lola cocked an eyebrow. "What is this, a quiz?"

"Sorry," Coffin said, smoothing his mustache. "Just thinking out loud."

"You could plan to kill someone and still improvise the weapon," Lola said. "You go to their house intending to strangle them and then decide you like the look of the chain saw out in the garage, or the fireplace poker."

The kitchen’s southeast wall was made almost entirely of glass. Coffin stood for a moment looking at the small waves slopping into the curve of lion-colored beach, out past the treetops and the North Truro tourist motels. "I wonder what’s upstairs," Coffin said.

"Holy crap," Lola said, standing next to Coffin in the master bedroom. "It’s like a bomb went off. I wonder what they were looking for." Clothes and jewelry lay scattered everywhere. Most of the books had been pulled from the floor-to-ceiling shelves. The closet had been turned inside out, the mattress slashed, the dresser drawers dumped on the floor. Two small paintings had been torn from the wall and flung across the room. One lay facedown; the other was a black-and-white abstract that might have been a portrait of a nude woman. One print still hung on the wall: a dune-and-sunset picture with an idealized lighthouse in the middle distance. It seemed oddly out of place among all the abstract-expressionist and color-field pieces—some of which, Coffin thought, were probably worth a lot of money.

He opened the door to the bathroom. The walls and floor were green marble. The shower and the Jacuzzi were enormous and outfitted with gold fixtures. "Jesus," Coffin said, his voice echoing softly off the marble walls. "You could throw a party in here. It’s bigger than my living room."

There were three smaller bedrooms and two additional baths. All were as neat as the kitchen, thoroughly dusted, tucked, and straightened—tasteful and impersonal.

The study had been tossed as thoroughly as the master bedroom. The drawers of the carved antique desk had been yanked out and dumped onto the floor. Pens, pencils, legal pads, CDs, paper clips, and Post-it Notes were everywhere. The Aeron chair lay on its side. There was a printer on a wooden stand, and a computer keyboard had been flung into the corner.

"Keyboard, printer," Coffin said, pointing.

"No computer," Lola said.

"I hope this isn’t going to be about technology," Coffin said. "I hate technology."

"I’m guessing it’s about...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Minotaur Books
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2009
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0312367708
• ISBN 13: 9780312367701
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Auflage: 1
• Anzahl der Seiten: 304
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar