Untitled Urban Fantasy PI Novel
an excerpt

Olivia woke to her cell phone ringing. It was a call transferred from the office phone.
“Morrison Investigations,” she said, hoping she didn’t sound too sleepy.
“This is Juan Lucerno. I wanted to check in and see what you found out yesterday.”
“Mr. Lucerno, ah, good morning. We had one of our operatives sitting in front of your house until 12:38 this morning. Your wife did not go anywhere and the only people who came to the house, other than yourself, were a maid service and the grocery delivery service.”
“What about phone calls?”
“We have not been able to establish any phone taps yet.” And probably won’t either. Besides being illegal, the hardware was prohibitively expensive.
“Do you have reason to suspect the grocery delivery man, or the maid?”
“No, I’ve checked them both out, they’re not the one.”
“I have a question for you, sir. We were considering men only, but is there any reason we shouldn’t consider a woman as your wife’s lover?”
Lucerno sighed. “I suppose not. At this point I’m not sure what she’d do.”
“Then we won’t discount a woman…” Olivia trailed off. It was quite early to be reminding a man his wife was screwing around on him.
“I have some other ideas I’d like to talk to you about. Meet me for breakfast at Rosie’s Diner in half an hour.”
“Let’s say 45 minutes – I’m not in the office right now.”
“OK, 6:45 then.”

Forty five minutes would give Olivia ten minutes to get ready and get out the door. She hopped out of bed and ran a brush through her blonde hair while looking in her closet for something to wear.
“Something business-like, but that says I can take down the bad guy,” she thought. She settled on black pants and a green cashmere sweater, heels and a trench coat. Make up would have to wait for whatever red lights she had to stop at.

Pulling into Rosie’s Diner at 6:42, she gave herself one last look in the visor mirror and then walked in. Lucerno was there, sitting in the back booth. He stood and Olivia walked directly toward him.
She held out her hand, “Mr. Lucerno.”
“Miss Morrison, a pleasure to see you this morning. I ordered you coffee, but didn’t know what you’d like for breakfast, so I waited.”
“Hey Olivia, it’s kind of early for you, isn’t it?” asked the waitress.
“’Morning Rosie. Business calls. I’ll have the usual.”
“And for you?”
“Farmer’s Breakfast, eggs over easy and keep the coffee coming.”
“You got it. Ready in about 10 minutes.”
Lucerno turned to Olivia. “I wanted to reiterate how critical it is that you find proof of my wife’s indiscretions before the end of the week.”
“End of the week? You didn’t mention this yesterday.”
“I didn’t want to really talk in front of Shaughnessy. It’s hard enough to admit what she’s doing, much less in front of him. Men judge each other very harshly and a man who can’t keep his wife is a failure, no matter what his other successes are.”
“What happens at the end of the week?”
“We have a prenuptial agreement, but it’s only in force for ten years. Our anniversary is on Saturday. If I have proof, I can divorce her and leave her out in the cold, where she belongs. If I have proof on Monday, it’s too late and she’ll get half of everything.”
He stopped talking as Rosie brought their breakfasts and filled their mugs.
“I built PharmaChem from the ground up, and I’ll be damned if she’ll take half of it.”
“Do you have any children?”
“No, never wanted them. Too much trouble, even if I left her to raise them they still are a pain.”
“You’re not the president of PharmaChem?”
“I was, but stepped back to let a professional take over. VP of new products is really where I belong, I’m a researcher more than anything else.”
“Have you thought of anything else we could use to track this person down?”
Lucerno picked up a file from the seat next to him. “Last night, after she went to bed, I copied her address book and printed out her email contacts.”
There must have been 100 pages in the folder. “Great, this will give my office more to work on while we also maintain the physical surveillance on your wife.”