Black Orchid: Fred Cornwall thought he met the girl of his dreams. She was smart, beautiful, elegant and mysterious. Little did he know that dream would become a nightmare.

Black Orchid: Mystery/Crime

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BLURB: Black Orchid

FBI Agent Chandler Diaz was assigned to investigate a string of well executed and brutal homicides in places as far flung as Singapore, Honduras and New York City. Even an investigator as talented as Diaz is having problems solving these crimes. Meanwhile, in Los Angeles, young lawyer, Fred Cornwall, notoriously unsuccessful with the opposite sex, thought he met the girl of his dreams in a kitschy Chinatown bar. She is smart, beautiful and has a lot of secrets. She wines and dines him and dazzles him with her beauty and wealth. But when he starts to learn some of her secrets, and a secret about himself, the dream starts to unravel.

EXCERPT: Black Orchid

Helen Beckworth called down to the doorman to have a taxi waiting for her when she came down from her forty-seventh-floor co-op. She rarely left the five-thousand-one-hundred-square-foot home which took up an entire floor of her high-rise building and had a special keyed elevator.

The building had a doorman and front desk receptionist on duty twenty-four hours, seven days a week. Her maid did most of her shopping for her. She was the heiress to a fortune built originally on New England textile mills and cannily converted into Manhattan real estate during the depression. Her lawyers told her several years ago it was worth over six hundred million dollars with a steady and growing income from rents. Now sixty-four, she lived alone, her fortune-hunting bounder of a husband having fortunately died years ago. She abhorred her two children whose only interest in their mother seemed to relate to her money. She had since cut off their allowances and now not seen Abbie or James in over two years.

The occasion for her rare venture into the outer world was to have lunch with old friend, Millicent Gardner. Millie had been her college roommate at Wellesley, lived in New York for more than twenty years, now lived in Palm Beach with her husband.  Helen relished the chance to see her. She took the secure elevator down to where William, the doorman, had a cab waiting. She told the driver to take her to the Russian Tea Room on Fifty-Seventh.

When she got there, Millie was already there and had a table. They hugged and sat down to study the menu. They ordered a pot of Darjeeling, a caviar sampler to share, Chicken Kiev for Millie and grilled salmon for Helen. When the tea came, they each took a cup from the pot and Millie started talking about her grandchildren in Connecticut.

Helen noticed the tea seemed somewhat bitter and looked around for a waitress to send the pot back. As she scanned the dining room, she felt her muscles begin to tighten and her heart felt strange, speeding up and slowing down randomly. In a panic she looked over at Millie to see her drooling and gasping for air.

Helen felt her heart stop beating, tremble then speed up at an insane rate. Millie looked like her eyes were about to pop out of her head. By now waiters and other customers were all around them. Helen felt her heart seize up in a sharp contraction and fell out of her chair.

Someone called 911. By now both women were on the floor, seemingly having seizures. By the time the paramedics arrived both women were inert on the floor, their eyes and mouths frozen open.

Police officers arrived and confiscated the pot of tea and remains of the caviar sampler. The restaurant was closed. A homicide detective interviewed all of the customers and staff before they were released, taking names, addresses, phone numbers. A single old woman having a public heart attack might not have been suspicious but two older women having identical symptoms after sharing a pot of tea and plate of food was very suspicious.

After the bodies were taken away, an NYPD detective was sent to notify next of kin, both of whom lived in the city.

Abigail Beckworth answered the door when Detective Becky Haden knocked on the door of her one-room flat in Brooklyn Heights. Abbie Beckworth was an attractive twenty-four-year-old with large green eyes and a bottle-blonde perm. Haden thought she and her apartment looked cheap for a daughter of a filthy rich widow.

“I am very sorry to tell you that your mother passed away today under unusual circumstances.”

Abbie’s eyes widened a bit.

“What do you mean unusual circumstances?”

“She and a friend were lunching at the Russian Tea Room and both had seemingly identical heart attacks.”

The daughter seemed surprisingly calm at the news, glancing at Detective Haden expressionlessly.

“Do you mind if I ask you a few questions?”

“Of course not.”

“Pardon me if I say you seem rather calm at the news. Were you and your mother not on good terms?”

“I hadn’t spoken to my mother for over two years. She completely cut me and my brother off, no allowance, no gifts, not even a birthday card. She couldn’t stand us. So no, I would have to say we were not on good terms.”

“Do you know if you stand to inherit any part of your mother’s fortune?”

“That’s a good question. I have no idea what sort of will she had. If I had to bet, I would say that James and I don’t get a penny, but I really don’t know.”

“Where were you between twelve-fifteen and one-thirty this afternoon?”

“That’s easy. I was at an AA meeting in the basement meeting room of Saint Patrick’s parish hall. There must have been at least fifteen other people there, I’m sure they would all vouch for me. The meeting went from twelve noon to two-thirty P.M. I was there for the whole thing, as usual.”

“I tried to call your brother earlier. Do you have any idea where I can reach him?”

“Yeah, he’s in Montreal. He works for a metal importer. He goes there a lot. I’ll give you his hotel name and number.”

Millie Gardner’s husband and daughter received calls. Both seemed deeply upset by the news.

James Beckworth was finally contacted at his Montreal hotel and had the same calm, chilly reaction as his sister. He too claimed to know nothing about his mother’s estate.

So,thought Becky Haden several days later as she reviewed the case file,Millie Gardner and her husband were retirees living on a modest income with a married daughter who seemed on very good terms with her mother. Helen Beckworth, on the other hand, was worth hundreds of millions of dollars and had two children who seemed to hate her guts. Her two children, the prime suspects if this was indeed murder, had ironclad alibies that only got better upon investigation. Yet two women died simultaneously with identical symptoms, it had to be murder and somehow the Beckworth children were the only people who might gain from the death of their mother, if only out of revenge for her cutting them off from a vast fortune.

This notion was reinforced when it was discovered Helen Beckworth had left no will or trust. This seemed very strange for such an affluent individual. Her lawyer indicated he had drawn up a will which left her entire fortune to a variety of charities and specifically disinherited her two children. However, as far as he knew, it had never been signed. Under New York law, if an individual died without a will or trust, “intestate” as the lawyers called it, the estate went to the next of kin. In this case split evenly between James and Abigail Beckworth.

As Haden pondered the possibilities, the toxicology report from the autopsy became available. None of the poisons the scan routinely tested for had shown up in the bodies of either woman.

KEYWORDS

Professional killer, murder for hire, FBI, Los Angeles

LINKS

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08G9VH91H

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Apple:  https://books.apple.com/us/book/black-orchid/id1528862139?mt=11&app=itunes

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Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/books/details/Robert_V_Wadden_Jr_Black_Orchid?id=WVn4DwAAQBAJ

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