The Mistress to Romantic Suspense™

An Excerpt From CoverBoy

 

Coming Spring 2011

Lala Corriere

 

Chapter One

 

The Dream

 

My wedding dress is understated elegance. Low cut in the back, with braided silk pulled tight across my waist, the gown cascades to the floor in layers of scalloped edging. The chiffon sways and billows with every step I take.

I can’t make out who is walking me down the aisle. My father’s dead. It can’t be him. Who is it?

The music is too loud. The first notes don’t end as the others sound. Fierce sounds of chanting begin to clash with an incendiary noise. It was the sound of warriors igniting blood.

The man that leads my arm stops in the middle of the aisle. He’s staring at my gown with pity drawn across his eyes. The exquisite fabric is fraying, metastasizing into paper. My wedding dress is made of paper!

Gusts of wind roar down the center of the church. The paper scallops of my gown ripple and begin to tear, shredding into sheets. The tang of smoke fills my lungs. The funneled wind fuels the flames. My escort drops my arm and screams as he falls away from me, engulfed in a bonfire of human flesh. The screams of my loved ones lining the pews overpower any other sound. All are on fire.

I glance down at the remains of my dress. I am all but naked. Why am I not burning? Why am I not melting in pain with the others? Dear God, take me! While everyone else falls into pugilistic attitude—clumps, I’m not even singed. I am left, alone.

Chapter Two

 

                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 Scott’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 shun the 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, 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 cactus. I knew better. If Payton had a theme, it was the little package of not-so-clunky black rubbers she kept tucked inside her crocodile purse.

                I haven’t spent much time in the desert. It must have been Payton’s final laugh to go and kill herself in Tucson in July. It was 109 degrees and the old church didn’t have air-conditioning; a few floor-stand fans blasted out hot air. The surroundings were tired looking. The splintered cross, suspended above the altar and impressive in size, seemed to be the only adornment other than the temporary garish gardening exhibit and those wretched cranberry sheers.

                Meghan Posh was sitting next to me. A gifted L.A. interior designer, she always preferred to dress as if she’d just returned from some combat boot camp. Always organized and in control of both body and mind, Payton is the glue that keeps our tapestry of friendships woven together.

                To the left of Meg, Sterling Falls was constantly adjusting the miniskirt that seemed to be sticking to the wooden pew. Late to arrive, she’d wedged her way next toward Payton 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 lemon 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 to convey his final goodbyes. The heavy Greek accent made his words difficult to understand. His grieving eyes, red and swollen against an ashen face, conveyed 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 Meg and into my lap.

                Her whisper was 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?”

                I shrugged my shoulders in an attempt to shun the conversation. With glossy images of male models, my articles enjoyed an abundant readership of both sexes. CoverBoy was 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 was obnoxious and self-centered. Sterling was just pissed she was the last one to know about it.

                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 had wanted to sit in the back of the church. Away from everyone and even out of earshot. 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. They 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.

Chapter Three

 

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 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 remembering someone out there was ready to kill me over it. “I stand by my work,” I said.

                Meg looked on and attempted to hide the concern seizing control of her eyes. She tried to blink away the tension.

                Oblivious to Meg, Sterling changed the subject. “What do you say we ditch this place? Go back to the resort and splash around in the pool. Hang time. Payton would have wanted that.”

                She 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 blonde hair to the side. “Yeah, right. 109 degrees and Lauren wants to take a walk.”

                I grabbed a bottle of cold water from a standing 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.

                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 my best friend. How could I not have seen this coming? Suicide? Could it be I really didn’t know Payton was suicidal?

Distance separates no one in today’s world of communication. Sure, Payton and I talked. Phone, emails, texts, even webcam chats, but over the years I admit the contact became less frequent. Careers and endless futures somehow bought us out.

                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 were folding like origami and sinking like all treasure chests in reckless seas?           My future and my past seemed to die and I couldn’t let go of the bullet. That’s why I still held on to the box of the dead.

Tucked inside, 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 clearstory 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 Scott 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 any 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 Glock, 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...