In Rocky Point Road: When his ex-wife drowns in her back yard, Denis Rosa encounters guilt, drugs, violence and solace trying to repair his psyche and his family.

Rocky Point Road: Mystery

EXCERPT: Rocky Point Road

He looked at his sons and wondered what could have happened if he had hung out there instead of going away. Fishing trips to Catalina maybe, stuff like that, tickets to the Rose Bowl, although he was not a football fan, picnics with the grandkids.

The doorbell snapped him out of that. It was two plainclothes police officers, a stocky man of about fifty with salt-and-pepper, short-cropped hair and a well-tailored suit, and a fit-looking woman of about the same age with pants, a white blouse open at the neck, low, stacked-heel pumps and her dark hair up in a bun. No ring. They were Detective Ron Furman and Detective Sue Mason from the LA County Sheriff’s Department.

He showed them into the living room and offered to make them some coffee. They declined.

“Mr. Rosa,” Furman said, “we got the results of the autopsy, and you were right that there were indications that your wife had ingested GHB, as you apparently did yesterday. The bottle of vodka had GHB crystals dissolved in it. Alcohol is an excellent solvent for GHB.”

“So she died of a drug overdose?” Rich asked.

“No. She died from drowning, her lungs were full of chlorinated water from the hot tub, but she was certainly unconscious when she slid under the water, or was pushed under the water. There were no signs of a struggle.”

“She was murdered then.”

“That is a possibility,” Furman said. “We need to investigate more. She could have taken the drug on purpose. It is called Liquid Ecstasy in the clubs and lots of people abuse it recreationally. And you did find marijuana in the freezer, and some poppers, and there were a variety of uppers and downers in the medicine chest.”

“But you’d have to be suicidal to take a drug and then sit in a hot tub,” Denis said.

“Or just drunk,” Detective Mason said, looking directly at Denis without blinking.

“Was she drunk?” Paul asked.

“She had a lot of alcohol in her system, yes.”

“Then she was murdered,” Denis said, standing up. “I had some of that vodka and it threw me on the floor in a matter of minutes. I could not have drunk enough of it to get even tipsy before I passed out. Someone must have added it to the vodka after she had been drinking.”

“That’s a possibility,” Mason said. “Or she could have added it to the vodka herself.”

“And who put it back in the pantry?”

“She could have done that herself, and then taken the drink outside in the hot tub, although according to the report there was no glass found at the hot tub, so maybe she just chugged some vodka and then got in the water.”

She’s trying to find a logical sequence of events. He looked at her making notes. She’s pretty. But that doesn’t change the fact that Elissa was killed by someone else.

“We want to have a funeral,” Denis said. “And she wanted to be cremated.”

“The coroner will release her to you for the funeral and there is no reason you cannot carry out her wishes. The coroner has some specimens, x-rays and photos if we need them.”

“One other thing,” Furman said. “There was sperm in her, so we have DNA from a guy who was with her fairly recently.”

“That’s not a surprise,” said Denis. “She had an eye for guys, I guess you would say.”

“Does that bother you?” It was the woman asking.

“It used to. That was mostly why I moved to New York a decade ago. I stopped worrying about her sex life at some point.”

“And you were in New York when this happened?”

“Yes.”

“Well, we’re very sorry for your loss, as I am sure others have said,” she offered, looking like she meant it, not a trace of sarcasm or officialdom.

The detectives gave them all business cards and said they should call if they had information or questions. Then they left.

“They don’t know whether to call it suicide or homicide,” Paul said. “I wonder what the final police report will say. God knows who was fucking her that night.”

Denis walked out to the retaining wall that was attempting, unsuccessfully, to keep the clifftop from eroding. The adobe bricks were uneven and water from the spring rains had formed little channels under them. He stared at the beautiful vista that he had known since childhood, the blue hulk of Catalina Island taking up most of the straight-on view, and a clump of pine trees on the point that formed the southern end of Lunada Bay.

“It wasn’t suicide,” he said. “It just wasn’t. We may not have gotten on well enough to live together, but I knew her, knew her bad habits and her good impulses. She would not have killed herself. Someone did this to her, whether it was the guy she was with, or someone else. Someone murdered your mother. Someone murdered my wife, and if I had gone swimming after that drink instead of before, that same person might have murdered me without even being here.”

ALSO BY JOSEPH ALLEN

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REVIEW:

THE MONTEVERDI MANUSCRIPT

A Hugo Miller Mystery

BY JOSEPH ALLEN

Rating — 4

REVIEWED BY–G. Lloyd Helm

The Monteverdi Manuscript is a Who done it that kept my interest all the way through. It told me a lot about New York City which is a city of great interest to me, and about London, another city I love. Allen either knows those cities well or he did a lot of research on them.

I did have some trouble at first figuring out quite who was who, but within a few pages I figured out who Hugo Miller was and Fred and Ruth and Carl how they connected with one another. These characters are well described so that I could picture them.

The book is very much about Opera and professionally performed music, and tells the reader a great deal about it. I am not an Opera lover, though I have attended several Operas around the world. I was rather amused by the reference to La Fenice, the Opera House in Venice. A friend of mine, an Opera lover, took a job in Venice just so that he could go to performances in La Fenice only to have the Opera house burn to the ground before he got there.

I wish I could say that Allen had me fooled all the way to the end but that wouldn’t be true. There were some twists and turns I didn’t expect, but I had a feeling from near the first that I knew who done it. I won’t tell you though. You can read it for yourself.

All in all I enjoyed THE MONTEVERDI MANUSCRIPT. It is amusing and worth the time investment.

BLURB

The action revolves around the death of a famous musician, who hits the pavement outside Carnegie Hall from the window of his apartment seven stories up. He has recorded keyboard versions of a lost opera by Claudio Monteverdi, the man who “invented” opera. Set in New York, London and Venice, action includes a kidnapping, drug use, prostitution, LGBT characters, one character who comes back from the dead, and three classic New York detective characters led by Hugo Miller.

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