Murder Can Be A Mistake (Nod Blake Mysteries Book 3)

Book summary

In Murder Can Be A Mistake, cynical private eye Nod Blake is thrust into another murder mystery, facing haunted stunt shows, blackmail, and a relentless killer. Set in 1979 Chicago, this darkly humorous tale follows Blake as he navigates vandals, psychic pleas from victims, and a detective eager to pin the murders on him.

Excerpt from Murder Can Be A Mistake (Nod Blake Mysteries Book 3)

Chapter One

If memory serves… each of my last two adventures began with a breakneck chase. That is with me, your humble narrator, racing after an idiotic miscreant who (my keen snooping informed me) diddled outside of the law and needed to be called to account. The first took place down a busy Chicago street then up a stinking alley, the second through a crowded hospital unit then down an unfortunately placed stairwell. Both chases ended when I, slightly the worse for wear, tackled the runner and ended up on top. Oh, the idyllic life of the private detective.

The faithful readers among you know that’s what I do; I’m a gumshoe running scofflaws to ground. My name is Blake but what’s in a name? Who or what I am outside of my profession is up for debate. What’s not debatable is the fact that once I stick my nose in criminals suffer. I’ve even solved a murder or two. In those earlier adventures nabbing the perpetrators felt well worth the bruises I took home. But without pride, and to keep the record straight, I confess that’s all I took home. In neither case did I get paid. In the latter my client got himself murdered. In the former my client turned out to be the killer. Such, also, is the idyllic life of the private dick.

Spring and summer of 1979 had been crap and prospects for the remainder of the year were bleak. Fall fell, winter would soon be breathing icily down my neck, and the bill collectors I’d neatly avoided for months were scratching at my office doors and windows like zombies in a horror film. My luck had never been all it might be and that year I’d been plenty busy without doing any business. Why all this blather? To offer two warnings; one, nothing in life ever changes, so get used to it, and two, the past is always prologue, so get ready for it.

The tale I’m about to tell, sisters and brothers, set the week after Halloween of that same fateful year, could also begin with a chase. There was one, you bet your sweet– Well, there was a chase. I’d taken a case for peanuts. I’d detected a guilty scumbag and hunted him down. As I was about to spring he did a rabbit. I took chase, caught him, and pocketed my regrets as we rolled in the dirt. Finally, he cried, “Uncle!” Exciting stuff. But I’d be cheating to begin that way. The earlier chases had been instrumental to their cases. They mattered to those stories. Such is not the situation here. This chase – outside of the filthy condition in which it left me – had nothing to do with our adventure. So I’ll skip it.

This story begins an hour after my flying tackle. After sworn officers carted the perp off to that gray place where, owing to his incivilities, a judge signed the guest book for him. Presumably. I don't know for certain. I was a cop but no more. Now the villains and I part company once they're in cuffs.

No longer a cop. Just a broke and broken down private detective whose worn suit (with a new tear in the shoulder) was covered in fresh dirt, whose tired gumshoes were marred with fresh scuffs, who had a reddened left eye, a swollen right jaw, and an aching desire to call it a day. Little did I realize, tired as I was, I still had one more mistake to make that night. I stopped by my office on the way home.

Drenched in sweat, aching like hell, I parked my Jag beside a wreck of an old Mustang and limped into my small office – where I was met by an equally small criminal. Don’t fear for me, readers. No jeopardy attached. It was only Willie Banks.

Anytime I enter my office I’m likely to meet one of two objects, Lisa Solomon, my secretary, my rock and foundation, my schedule, my guts, my brains; or Willie Banks, my own ponderous personal millstone. This time it was Willie. Against my better judgment I asked him what was happening.

“Nothing here,” Willie replied through his nose (he said everything through his nose). Then he added, “Oh, yeah, Blake, Lisa left you a message on your answering machine.”

Of course, nothing in my world is that simple. When I checked there were no messages. Willie, it seemed, had done me a favor and taken them down. So where were they? His blank stare preceded a hap-hazard one-armed search of the desk top and his pockets.

Oh hell. I’d better fill you in on Willie. Then, as he’ll have nothing further to do with this story, we can all forget the little rat. He was a low-grade criminal, a simpleton, and the son of an old lady I liked. She was a mortal enemy of my mother. I like any enemy of my mother. Willie had recently moved into the room above my office. We won’t go into that. If you’ve been with me from the start, sisters and brothers, you know Willie took a bullet in his left shoulder saving me that spring. (An act for which I will never forgive him; no one with sense wants to be in debt to Willie Banks.) His injured wing had almost heeled when, that summer, also in my company, he took a bullet in his right shoulder. For the record, the summer bullet was not my fault. He was not saving me when he caught it, he was merely in the way. But I’ll always feel guilty about the first injury. (And, damn it, I felt guilty about the second too.) So the little puke was under my roof, and under foot, and I had yet to find the cold heart to kick him to the curb. Meanwhile, he was helping. That evening he’d helped by erasing my messages. Now if he could only find his notes. He did, finally.

Lisa’s message was short and far from sweet. 'Nod…' That’s my ridiculous first name. Only Lisa used it. But back to the note: 'Nod,' it read. 'I need you.' Then, via Willie’s frightening chicken scratch, she directed me to what would no doubt prove to be an 'ooh-la-la' residence on Chicago’s monied north side with an urgent, 'Please don’t fail me.'

Fueled by Lisa's plea, and my anxiety, I made the Jag do its thing through The Loop and up Lake Shore Drive. A long half-hour later, I entered the beehive condo wherein, I thought, my secretary awaited rescue. No elevator but plenty of stairs offered another hint the night would never end. I gritted my teeth and started up. The ritzy lobby decor repeated itself on the second, third, and fourth floor landings causing me to doubt the residents and I would ever swap stories about hiding from bill collectors. I reached my destination, apartment 4A and, panting, put a dirty finger-tip to work on the bell. What happened as the door came open was almost too ridiculous for words.

Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes sang I’m So Anxious somewhere inside while, immediately before me, a rattlesnake rose up to block the doorway.

Chapter Two

Okay, that wasn't entirely true.

Johnny and the Jukes were playing but the door wasn’t actually guarded by a rattler. Rather, the door greeter was a petite woman in a snake costume; skin tight leotard (gray with diamond-shaped scales of blue and gold) wearing a matching cowl with black marbles for eyes. Real or no, she was a sight. A second shock followed as she hissed revealing a forked tongue dancing between impressive fangs. Her eccentric performance ended with a chilling rattle. Balls!

The snake woman swayed as if to mesmerize me, then raised an arm (invisible at first owing to her exotic coloring) and shook a plastic rattle in my face. “Happy Halloween, lover.”

The spell was broken. I swallowed my surprise, recovered my composure, and tried to introduce myself. But the snake wasn’t listening. She’d abandoned me as quickly as she’d found me and had, instead, returned to refereeing a dispute behind her.

A Zorro knock-off in a black mask and cape waved a threatening sword at a seven-foot-tall banana. “Wriggle your limp stem her way again, ya' yellow bastard,” Zorro said, “and I’ll turn ya' into a fruit salad sans nuts.”

“Pull another weapon on me, you demented prick,” the banana replied, “and I’ll invite the authorities to drag your Mexican ass away!”

This scene too would have been alarming had it not been so entertaining. It grew loonier still when an American Indian princess with round red cheeks, beneath feathered headband and mask, chunky from buckskins to moccasins, lumbered past shouting, “New Mexican! New Mexican!” No, my mistake. It wasn't the homely maiden doing the shouting but a papoose strapped to her back. Yes, an infant in a woven basket, yelling, “He’s not a Mexican, he’s a New Mexican!”

Best guess? All were drunk, including the baby.

Zorro and the banana glared at the squaw while shouting in concert for the papoose to shut up. The maiden passed. Zorro and the banana returned to arguing but this was cut short. Undulating, shaking her rattle again, the snake woman silenced the combatants with a stern, “Be good.” The banana, eager to please, about-faced his Chiquita sticker and headed for the bar. Zorro grinned in victory. The snake as quickly erased his grin by shooing him away.

Swaying now to Rod Stewart’s Da Ya Think I’m Sexy? the snake returned her attention to me. “Look at you!” She stroked my lapel and, as if the night hadn’t battered me enough, mistook my overworked work suit for a costume. “Look everybody, a homeless man.”

The room didn’t appear to care so I took the intended flattery without flinching.

“You’re a beautiful mess,” the snake lady went on, “but you’re breaking the rules. It’s a masquerade. Everybody needs a mask.” She supplied a black burglar’s mask from a box on a table then barred my way, all five-foot, one hundred pounds of her, until I tied it on.

“I’m looking for Lisa Solomon,” I told her.

She undulated a shrug. “How is your Lisa costumed?”

“I couldn’t tell you.”

“Then you’ll have to dumpster dive, lover. Ferret her out. But no peeking. The unmasking comes at the witching hour.”

With Rod the Mod’s sexiness undecided, Van Halen took over to bluntly inform the gathered, You’re No Good. The altered beat seemed not to matter to the snake girl. Her sway unchanged, she rattled me past her into a room blurred by sound, movement, and color; a sea of revelers in fancy dress. I could think of nothing I wanted to do less than dive in. But Lisa’s message remained. I couldn’t fail her.

The room was big enough, the crowd expansive enough, finding Lisa looked hopeless. Just the way I liked my challenges. Exhausted, aching, and filthy, I moved among the masked throng; a vampire, a zombie, a devil (too dumpy, surely, to be The Devil), a male Indian (this one from India, in turban and Nehru jacket), and a scarecrow shedding his straw like dandruff. With all the stuffing I'd lost that evening, he had my complete sympathy. There was an old gal in cowboy boots, a floor-length tanned skirt, and leather gauntlets, with a kerchief round her neck, that shouted wild west save for a ten-gallon hat decorated with a jewel-encrusted gold crown as a hat band. Calling Dr. Freud! This Queen of the West was bending the ear of a young red-faced chef who appeared not to be listening.