We are delighted to welcome author Lily Gardner to Omnimystery News today.
Lily's second Lennox Cooper mystery is Betting Blind (Diversion Books; March 2016 trade paperback, audiobook and ebook formats) and we are pleased to introduce you to it with an excerpt, the third chapter.
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LENNOX ROLLED AROUND ALL THE POSSIBILITIES that would've landed Fulin Chen in jail, and came up with nothing. If he had a temper, she'd never seen it. He wasn't a heavy drinker; he wasn't the kind of guy who engaged in nefarious activities.
She drove down Sandy, dodging the blinking lights of cyclists who drifted into her lane. It had quit raining for the moment. The cloud cover shone pink from the city lights. It was ten at night when Lennox crossed the Burnside Bridge, the lights from the Morrison and Hawthorne Bridges reflected in the black water of the Willamette River. Once she crossed the bridge, she was downtown.
A Friday night in Portland in March when it was not pissing down rain was as rare as rare. Everyone in the city was out and about. People crowded the sidewalks, queuing in front of the food carts that bordered Second Avenue. Lennox had to dodge cyclists and jay-walkers before she found a place to park. The jail looked as busy as the nightclubs, a flow of family members climbing the steps past security into the gray granite lobby of the Multnomah County Jail.
Doris was manning the desk when it was Lennox stepped up to post bail.
"Isn't this your card night?" Doris asked. Her crew cut as gray as the decor.
Lennox nodded and shrugged. What are you going to do when the kid's in jail? She handed Doris the bail and tucked the receipt in her pocket. Lennox heard a pneumatic hiss, a door opened, and out shuffled Fulin Chen. One of his eyes was sealed shut, and his lip was swollen.
"Oh jeez, Fulin, what happened to you?" she said.
He shook his head then realized shaking was not a good move. A bruise darkened his cheekbone.
She stood next to him while he completed the check-out, then walked out with him into the cold March night.
"Thanks," he mumbled. And grunted in pain as he climbed into the Bronco's cab.
"What happened to you?" she said.
"I'm in bad trouble," his voice slurred from his swollen lip.
"No doubt. What's your boss going to say when she finds out you've been arrested?"
She glanced over at him. He had his hands braced on his knees. His head was down. "They're calling it assault, but it's a whole lot worse."
Lennox knew by his tone: Chen was telling it true. It scared her, like what he was about to say would change everything. They'd crossed the Steel Bridge back to the east side. Without asking him, she parked the truck by the river. He moved stiffly as they walked the wide steps down to the Esplanade, a series of boardwalks and floating docks, benches and sculpture that ribboned along the river bank and under the freeway overpass. They stopped and sat on a bench facing the water. The benches were still damp from the afternoon rain. The moon appeared behind a ragged cloud and added its light to the city's neon reflecting off the river.
"Tell me," she said.
He had a client, Matilda Bauer. Late twenties, liked to sleep with married men, steal their credit cards, charge them to the moon and sign using their wives' names. It worked like a charm until it didn't. Bauer did a three-year stay at the Copper River Women's Penitentiary, and eventually landed as one of Fulin's parolees.
"What's that got to do with you getting beat on and arrested?"
"She no-showed for our ten o'clock this morning," Fulin said. "I called her house, called her work. Nothing. After work I paid a visit to her house." But Matilda wasn't home. Her mom told him she was spending the weekend with a girlfriend. Before Fulin could get back in his car this punk came out of nowhere swinging a baseball bat. Fulin tried to keep from getting nailed by the bat, using his kung-fu moves on the guy. Then the cops came.
"Why would the punk come after you?" she said.
"I guess he was the boyfriend."
"What are you saying? You slept with her?" She stood up and walked further down the dock. This disgusting situation had cost her a night's poker winnings. She turned back to him. "You owe me $500: three for bail and two for what it cost me to leave the card table. I want it by the end of the weekend, and I'm not kidding, Chen."
"I didn't touch her!" Fulin's voice cracked. A couple walking past glanced first at Fulin, then at her.
"I would've never laid a hand on her."
"Then why?" Lennox said.
"Sit down," Fulin said. "I can't talk to you when you're pacing."
Lennox reluctantly seated herself next to him. Watched the reflection of the green lights from the Hawthorne Bridge reflected in the water. She had a lot of nerve getting on her high horse over Fulin bonking a client. She'd slept with a fellow police officer for three years, and he was married.
Fulin's battered face was deep in shadow. He touched his lip carefully. It had started bleeding again. Lennox handed him a tissue. "I signed up on one of those online dating sites," he said.
"Why?" she said. "You could have anyone you want."
He turned toward her, regarded her with his good eye. "You could have anyone you want."
"It's different," she said.
"No," he said. "It's exactly the same."
She so did not want to go down this road. "My love life is not the point," she said. "Tell me what online dating has got to do with your client?"
"You remember me talking about Lynn?"
Of course. Endlessly. He bugged everyone to death with her image on his phone.
"It was all a fake, " Fulin said. "She wore a wig and different make-up. I don't know, maybe she photoshopped herself. You'd never guess it was the same woman."
"You're saying Lynn is Matilda? Fulin, how could you not know that?"
"I never actually met her. In the flesh." He rubbed his temple, then groaned.
This was big trouble. At the very least his supervisor would think he was a gormless dumbfuck. At most, he could end up like Lennox, excommunicated and having to reinvent himself.
"Why would she do that?" Lennox said. "The last person you want to mess with is your parole officer."
"She wanted me to cover for her, say that she attended her appointments with me, that she worked steady and kept her nose clean. I never told her I would do it."
"You got to go to your supervisor, Fulin," she said. "You've got to tell her what Matilda's trying to pull. And you've got to write her up."
A yacht passed through the colored reflections on the river. A few minutes later its wake lapped up against the floating dock.
Fulin, the man with the martial arts posture, slumped over like his bones had melted.
"I have been covering for her for the last month," he said. "Tonight I went over to her house to tell her I was done with this. If it cost me my job, I was done."
"And you got yourself arrested. You can see what's happening here," she said. "The longer you wait, the messier this thing gets."
"You're right, I just need to find her," he said. "Can you help me? I'll hire you."
The way he was acting, Lennox got that itchy feeling. The Bauer woman had more on Fulin than a handful of mushy emails.
"You need a retainer?" he said. "I know it's the weekend, do you get more money on the weekend?" His voice pitched higher. "We've got to find her right away. Before Monday, can you do that?"
"Sure," she said. "Now tell me what she's got on you."
Fulin clasped his hands together and shoved them between his legs, then noticed what he was doing and folded his arms across his chest. "We had cyber sex. She screen captured it. Or something, I don't know. She has pictures."
Man, this was bad. Very bad.
She'd find the Bauer chick one way or another. Still, once Lennox found her, it was Matilda's word against Fulin's as to whether they had sex. And unless Fulin had a horseshoe up his ass, his career in law enforcement would be over before the end of the year.
"Can you drive me to Matilda's?" he said.
"Jesus, Fulin. Are you kidding me?"
"No way I'm leaving my Beamer in that neighborhood," he said.
Fulin's car was parked in front of a little house north of Killingsworth. The car looked a whole lot better than Fulin. He heaved a sigh of relief. She told him take it easy getting home. She'd call as soon as she had any news.
On the drive home, her cell phone rang. It was Frank Cardo, the cute guy from the poker game. Frank said the game went late, but they could still meet somewhere, he knew a nice little club with good jazz.
"Not tonight," she said. "This thing with my friend, it got complicated." It was complicated, and she was exhausted.
"Sure," he said. "I get it. What about dinner tomorrow?"
Maybe the bad luck she'd had at the table tonight was love knocking on the door. What else could she do but humbly accept the laws of chance? She told him yes, she'd like that very much.
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Photo provided courtesy of
Lily Gardner
Lily Gardner grew up in Minneapolis longing to be blonde and live in California surfing and writing poetry. Over the years her tastes changed: California became Oregon and poetry became mysteries. She learned to embrace her brunette self. Lily loves all things noir, fermentation, Motown, opera, movies and short-legged dogs.
For more information about the author, please visit her website at LilyGardner.net and her author page on Goodreads, or find her on Facebook and Twitter.
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Betting Blind by Lily Gardner
A Lennox Cooper Mystery
Publisher: Diversion Books
For Lennox Cooper, helping out a friend means gambling with her life …
In the rainy city of Portland, Matilda Bauer has been blackmailing her parole officer, Fulin Chen. Just when Fulin's ready to come clean, Matilda disappears. Bad news for Fulin, because once Matilda is arrested for breaking parole she'll show the photos she has on him and end his career. Fulin turns to his longtime friend and poker buddy, Lennox Cooper, P.I., to help him find the beautiful blonde con-woman.
A former cop, Lennox knows how it feels to live and breathe the police life — and to be thrown out of it. She'll do anything to help her friend avoid a similar fate. But three days later Lennox finds Matilda dead, in what looks like a sex game gone terribly wrong. Fulin Chen is the lead suspect. Lennox's search for Matilda, however, causes her to begin turning over rocks, finding that her past lies under many of them — not to mention deadly threats. Matilda Bauer had no shortage of enemies, though, and Lennox will have to sift through the many blackmail victims and jilted lovers to find the real killer.
— Betting Blind by Lily Gardner. Click here to take a Look Inside the book.
