The following is an excerpt
from my current work-in-progress.
MURDER AT THE GALLIANO CLUB is the next book in the Galliano Club series, coming October 2022!
He
drove to the Galliano Club and parked the Packard in its usual spot behind the building. Through the streaky windshield and the furious rhythm of the wipers, a light glowed in Ruth’s second floor window. She’d barely spoken to him since their last English lesson. Perhaps they were no longer friends. Either way, Luca was hardly going to ask to cry on her shoulder at this time of night. He went in the back door to the office, tossed the keys to the Packard on Vito’s desk and dumped his hat and
coat.
The blinds were drawn but enough moonlight trickled through the slats for him to work the safe combination. Luca filled a glass with enough Old Bushmills to slake even Vito’s thirst and took a giant gulp.
The whiskey burned his gullet and exploded like a bomb. Luca slouched into the chair behind the desk, ready to have a blue dog day of his own. He ripped off his bow tie. The second glassful went down faster. He poured a third.
His thoughts descended into
an abyss of self-pity. Until Orsini galloped into the olive grove with his soldiers, Luca did not know that his father was a military officer or a deserter. Were secrets the Lombardo family legacy? How many were woven into the very fabric of Luca’s life?
Killing Orsini and allowing the man’s death to be recorded
as a suicide. Hiding Jimmy’s body. Lying to the police. Keeping the ledger. Rumrunning with Toby Gleason.
He’d piled one secret on top of another and tried to fool someone as smart as Tess Kennedy.
Luca gagged on the next swallow of Old Bushmills. Coughed and winced at the sting in his side.
A scratch answered him, coming from the darkness outside the office. Luca lurched to his feet and blundered into the hall, the floor wavering with every
step.
The back doorknob rattled. The scratching resumed. Someone was trying to pick the lock.
Whiskey-fueled anger surged through
his veins and Luca was instantly spoiling for a fight. He backed down the hall toward the saloon, opened the hidden entrance to the cellar, slid down the stairs, and staggered past the barrels of Rotolo’s beer to the alley door.
The sleet was still coming down. The gravel lot was slick and shiny. Across the
alley, the maple trees had lost their last leaves, turning bare branches into gnarled fingers that clawed at a streaky crescent moon.
On the back porch twenty feet away, a man hunkered over the door lock.
Get the prequel now!
