Live Bait (A Monkeewrench Novel, Band 2) - Softcover

Tracy, P. J.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0451214633 ISBN 13: 9780451214638

Verlag: Penguin Publishing Group, 2005

Inhaltsangabe

Minneapolis detectives Leo Magozzi and Gino Rolseth are bored - ever since they solved the Monkeewrench case, the Twin Cities have been in a murder-free dry spell, as people no longer seem interested in killing one another. But with two brutal homicides taking place in one awful night, the crime drought ends - not with a trickle, but with an eventual torrent. Who would kill Morey Gilbert, a man without an enemy, a man who might as well have been a saint? His tiny, cranky little wife, Lily, is no help, and may even be a suspect; his estranged son, Jack, an infamous ambulance-chasing lawyer, has his own enemies; and his son-in-law, former cop Marty Pullman, is so depressed over his wife's death a year ago that he's ready to kill himself, but not Morey. The number of victims - all elderly - grows, and the city is fearful once again." The detectives' investigation threatens to uncover a series of horrendous secrets, some buried within the heart of the police department itself, blurring the lines between heroes and villains. Grace MacBride's cold-case-solving software may find the missing link - but at a terrible price.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

P.J. Tracy is the pseudonym of mother-daughter writing duo P.J. and Traci Lambrecht, winners of the Anthony, Barry, Gumshoe, and Minnesota Book Awards. Their first four novels, Monkeewrench, Live Bait, Dead Run, and Snow Blind have become national and international bestsellers.

P.J. Lambrecht is a college dropout with one of the largest collections of sweatpants in the world. She was raised in an upper-middle class family of very nice people, and turned to writing to escape the hardships of such a life. She had her first short story published in The Saturday Evening Post when Traci was eight, still mercifully oblivious to her mother’s plans to eventually trick her into joining the family business. She has been a moderately successfully free-lance writer ever since, although she has absolutely no qualifications for such a profession, except a penchant for lying.

Traci Lambrecht spent most of her childhood riding and showing horses. She graduated with a Russian Studies major from St. Olaf College in Northfield Minnesota, where she also studied voice. Her aspirations of becoming a spy were dashed when the Cold War ended, so she instead attempted briefly and unsuccessfully to import Eastern European folk art. She began writing to finance her annoying habits of travel and singing in rock bands, and much to her mother’s relief, finally realized that the written word was her true calling. They have been writing together ever since.

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Live Bait

By P. J. Tracy

Signet Book

Copyright ©2005 P. J. Tracy
All right reserved.
ISBN: 0451214633

Chapter One

It was just after sunrise and still raining when Lily found her husband'sbody. He was lying faceup on the asphalt apron in front ofthe greenhouse, eyes and mouth open, collecting rainwater.

Even dead, he looked quite handsome in this position, gravitypulling back the loose, wrinkled skin of his face, smoothing awayeighty-four years of pain and smiles and worries.

Lily stood over him for a moment, wincing when the raindropsplopped noisily onto his eyes.

I hate eyedrops.

Morey, hold still. Stop blinking. Stop blinking, she says, while she pours chemicals into my eyes.

Hush. It's not chemicals. Natural tears, see? It says so right on the bottle.

You expect a blind man to read?

A little grain of sand in your eye and suddenly you're blind. Big tough guy. And they're not natural tears. What do they do? Go to funerals and holdlittle bottles under crying people? No, they mix chemicals together and callit natural tears. It's false advertising, is what it is. These are unnaturaltears. A little bottle of lies.

Shut up, old man.

This is the thing, Lily. Nothing should pretend to be what it's not.Everything should have a big label that says what it is so there's no confusion.Like the fertilizer we used on the bedding plants that year that killedall our ladybugs, what was it called?

Plant So Green.

Right. So it should have been called Plant So Green Ladybug So Dead.Forget the tiny print on the back you can't read. Real truth in labeling,that's what we need. This is a good rule. God should follow such a rule.

Morey!

What can I say? He made a big mistake there. Would it have been sucha problem for Him to make things look like what they are? I mean, He'sGod, right? This is something He could do. Think about it. You've got a guyat the door with this great smile and nice face and you let him in and hekills your whole family. This is God's mistake. Evil should look evil. Thenyou don't let it in.

You, of all people, should know it's not that simple.

It's exactly that simple.

Lily took a breath, then sat on her heels-a young posture for suchan old woman, but her knees were still good, still strong and flexible.She couldn't get Morey's eyes to close all the way, and with them openonly a slit, he looked sinister. It was the first thing that had frightenedLily in a very long time. She wouldn't look at them as she pushed backthe darkened silver hair the rain had plastered to his skull.

One of her fingers slipped into a hole on the side of his head and shefroze. "Oh, no," she whispered, then rose quickly, wiping her fingerson her overalls.

"I told you so, Morey," she scolded her husband one last time. "Itold you so."

Chapter Two

April in Minnesota was always unpredictable, but once every decadeor so, it got downright sadistic, fluctuating wildly between tantalizingpromises of spring and the last, angry death throes of a stubbornwinter that had no intention of going quietly.

It had been just such a year. Last week, a freak snowstorm had blusteredin on what had been the warmest April on record, scaring the hellout of the budding trees and launching statewide discussions of a massmigration to Florida.

But spring had eventually prevailed, and right now she was busyplaying kiss-and-make-up, and doing a damn fine job of it. The mercurywas pushing seventy-five, the snow-stunned flora had rallied witha shameless explosion of neon green, and best of all, the mother lodeof mosquito larvae was still percolating in the lakes and swamps.Giddy, sun-starved Minnesotans were out in force, cherishing the temporarydelusion that the state was actually habitable.

Detective Leo Magozzi was stretched out on a decrepit chaise on hisfront porch, Sunday paper in one hand, a mug of coffee in the other.He hadn't forgotten about last week's snowstorm and he was pragmaticenough to know that it wasn't too late for another, but there was nopoint in letting cynicism ruin a perfectly beautiful day. Besides, it wasa rare thing when he could practice the sloth he'd always aspired to-homicidedetectives' vacations were always contingent on murderers'vacations, and murderers seemed to be the hardest-working citizens inthe country. But for some inexplicable reason, Minneapolis was enjoyingthe longest murder-free spell in years. As his partner, Gino Rolseth,had put it so eloquently: Homicide was dead. For the past few monthsthey'd had nothing to do but work cold cases, and if they ever solved allof them, they'd be back on the beat, frisking transvestites and wishingthey'd been dentists instead of cops.

Magozzi sipped his coffee and watched as the neighborhood masochistsengaged in all manner of personal torture, huffing and puffingand sweating as they raced furiously against a climatic clock that wouldhave them locked indoors again in a few months' time. They jogged,they Rollerbladed, they ran with their dogs, and celebrated everydegree that rose on the thermometer by shedding another article ofclothing.

It was one of the things Magozzi loved most about Minnesotans.Fat, thin, muscled, or flabby, there were no self-conscious people inthis state when the weather got warm, and by the time you got a niceday like this one, most of them were half naked. Of course this was notalways a good thing, certainly not in the case of Jim, his extremely hirsutenext-door neighbor. You could never be really sure if Jim werewearing a shirt or not. He was out there now, possibly shirtless, possiblynot, hard at work preparing the flower beds that would put him inpole position for next month's Beautiful Gardens of the Twin CitiesTour. If Jim was trying to shame Magozzi into being a better homeowner,it wasn't going to work.

He looked out at his own sorry excuse for a yard-a couple of mudpuddles from last night's rain, some brave dandelions, and a few bluespruce in various stages of demise. Occasionally he had a fleeting memoryof what the place had looked like before the divorce. Flowers everywhere,Kentucky bluegrass standing at attention, and Heather out thereeach day with sharp instruments and a stern expression, frighteningplants into submission. She'd been good at frightening things into submission-ithad certainly worked on him, and he'd been armed.

He was on his second cup of coffee and almost to the sports sectionwhen a Volvo station wagon pulled into the driveway. Gino Rolsethhopped out, lugging an enormous cooler and a bag of Kingsford. Hisbelly tested the generous limits of a Tommy Bahama shirt, and beefylegs poked out from a terrible pair of plaid Bermuda shorts.

"Hey, Leo!" He lumbered up onto the porch and dropped thecooler. "I come bearing gifts of animal flesh and fermented grain."

Magozzi lifted a dark brow. "At eight o'clock in the morning? Tellme this means Angela finally kicked your sorry ass out, so I can call herand propose."

"You should be so lucky. This is charity. Angela's folks took her andthe kids to some craft thing at Maplewood Mall, so I had a free Sunday,thought I'd liven up your so-called life."

Magozzi got up and looked into the cooler. "What's a craft thing?"

"You know, those places with all the booths where people knithouses out of old grocery bags and stuff like that."

Magozzi rummaged in the cooler and pulled out a package of sickly-looking,plump, gray-white sausages. "What are these things that looklike your legs?"

"Those are uncooked brats, imported all the way from Milwaukee,you food pygmy. Where's your grill?"

Magozzi gestured toward...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Penguin Publishing Group
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2005
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0451214633
• ISBN 13: 9780451214638
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 400
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: preigu; mail@preigu.de; ; Lengericher Landstr. 19; Osnabrück; 49078; Deutschland