An excerpt from:
Baller: A Bunny Gomez Mystery
“Bunny G “Her name is Sophie. She’s like a French super mix, and she happens to live near Bob Hope’s old house.” Annie was excitedly laying out the details of the psychic’s profile as they drove in the late afternoon over Coldwater Canyon into Toluca Lake. Bunny raised a skeptical brow. “Sounds like a fancy dog breed.” Annie smacked her friend. “Be nice. We want her to give you a positive reading, not validate why everyone is out to get you.” Everyone is not out to get me, but sure.
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Madame Sophie then gathered her chosen cards up and closed her eyes. The candle light cast a spooky glow onto the woman’s face, and she appeared deep in meditation. Finally, she turned over each of Bunny’s ten cards, face up. The psychic sat studying the pictures in silence. Eventually she picked up the cards that remained and turned them all face up. “Someone doesn’t like you....” Annie snickered, and Bunny kicked her under the table. “…he fears you’ll discover his scheme. And he lies so much, it’s a challenge for him to keep track of everything.” The psychic continued in a broken French-English accent as the candle flickered. “But you are there for a reason. This is the book card,” she offered, pointing to a card with a picture of a bible. “As you peel back layers, the secrets you discover will put you in jeopardy.” “But I haven’t even asked my question,” Bunny protested. “I don’t want to unearth skeletons. I just want to make it through the draft—with a client or two—intact. That’s it.” Madame Sophie shook her head. “That’s not it. There are more parts to the puzzle, and you will run into dangerous pieces that don’t fit.” Bunny’s shoulders sank. The psychic paused thoughtfully and asked what Bunny hoped was a rhetorical question: “Besides, they can’t kill everyone, no?”
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Alarmed, Annie interjected, “What can she do to protect herself?” The psychic pulled all the cards together, shuffled them again and sat in a trance-like state with her eyes closed. After a few minutes with her hand atop the deck of elegant blue cards, she began drawing the cards one by one, placing them face up on the table in no particular order. When she finally spoke again, she sounded other-worldly. “In the end, you will see there is a strange thread that ties back to the beginning man for you. Pay attention.” “Beginning man?” Bunny repeated. The psychic gazed at her curiously, like a scientist in a lab examining a test tube. “The man that follows you around.” “He’s alive?!” Bunny blurted out. “Depends on what you call living,” Sophie responded dryly.
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The words sent a sharp chill down her spine, and Bunny hoped the psychic didn’t see the hair stand up on her arms. Basil is what both Annie and Bunny were thinking. Nosy, Annie prompted Sophie again, “Is this man a help or an enemy?” “It is possible to be both,” the psychic said pointedly. And like that, the fifteen minutes had evaporated. Bunny stared blankly, her mind in a fog, and mumbled, “Should I even bother to continue…in this profession?” Madame Sophie tapped her cards with certainty before answering. “It’s too late. The only way out now is to go further in." Oh my.
An excerpt from:
Bunny Gomez Super Plastic
Bunny Gomez?” the woman asked with an acidic tone. “Who’s asking?” Annie inquired, stepping between Ms. Birkin bag and her friend. The well-dressed woman glared as if the question were the most idiotic thing she’d heard all day. “Rose Hanover’s…friend,” was the terse answer. As the woman’s aggravated stare settled on Bunny, she declared: “Rose was pushed, she did not jump willingly.” Slowly Bunny connected the dots. “The lady from the roof top was…Rose Hanover?” “Correct,” the woman replied stiffly. Bunny could feel a few shoppers in the crowd begin to lean in curiously, having overheard the conversation. The icy woman noticed the audience too and pulled back slightly. In a somewhat less sour tone the woman suggested, “Why don’t you find out who jacked off who at the Standard last Saturday? See where that takes you, then we’ll talk.” Yikes! WTF!? Annie and Bunny shared a look as the woman glanced toward her waiting car. Not just any car—a very expensive coal colored Bentley complete with matching you’ll-never-know-who’s-riding-in-this-carriage dark windows. “Excuse me, but I don’t know why you think I’m involved….”
The woman ignored her disclaimer and continued, “Pageant people and plastic surgeons go hand in hand, and apparently ethics for both are optional. And that’s why I’m talking to you, Bunny Gomez.” Jeez, don’t mince words. Bunny attempted a conciliatory smile. “I’m not a pageant person, I just work for one.” “Precisely,” the woman wrapped up the conversation with a pointed smile and spun on her pointy heel, leaving the girls in a cloud of shopping dust. Annie puckered her lips. “Did she just, like, call you out?” Bunny squinted and nodded.
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“What a coincidence. Me, working for the organization where the person at the top jumped off a building …or was pushed.” The shop doors opened and the crowd began to whoosh forward. Suddenly she didn’t feel like shopping. Something seriously depraved had just crept into her world. Shuddering, Bunny cleared her throat, “I hope I survive this pageant experience.”
The Soon-To-Be-Late BUNNY GOMEZ
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Bunny inched down the hallway, hoping she might get close enough to make out actual words. The other voice was clearly male, but she couldn’t place it. The male voice was angry too, and it had a dangerous edge that made her freeze in her tracks. “I can’t control everything. I’m a publicist, not a mortician!” Bunny’s hair stood up on the back of her neck. “I’ve followed every single direction, and I’ve covered up tracks you could have only imagined.” Blythe Marten’s voice was tired and indignant at the same time.
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“Basil? Is that what you call doing a good job? We covered up your mess, and now you are headed down the same road. You hire a GIRL that has a history with him. Are you looking to send us all to jail? Is this some sort of kamikaze PR mission for you, Blythe? You need to take care of her.” The male voice was cruel and calm. Bunny held her breath—she was afraid to move for fear of being discovered lurking in the hallway. The silence seemed to go on for tortuous minutes and her fight-or-flight response told her to run.
“Really, and how do you expect I do that?” It sounded as if Blythe Marten punctuated the question by slamming a desk drawer and standing up. Shit. I need to hide right now! She quietly slipped back down the hall toward the reception area. The voices moved up and down, and she could no longer make out the words. As she finally made it into the small but elegant lobby area, she heard Blythe’s door open. “Not our problem. What is our problem is that you’ve gotten sloppy. Old and sloppy. And that makes you dangerous. Work it out.” Then she heard footsteps come toward her down the hall. She was never going to make it out the front door and down the entryway without being seen. With no other options available, Bunny ducked underneath the reception desk, curled into a ball and froze.
The footsteps grew louder, passed, and then she heard the front door open and slam shut. She had so desperately wanted to look to see who this threat was, but was too afraid to move. Her heart was beating so fast that she had to put her hand over her mouth to keep from hyperventilating.
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How long would it be safe to wait here before I’m discovered by Ms. M, versus making sure whoever the new menace is has left the building? Bunny checked her phone and decided on three minutes. After the allotted time, she silently unraveled herself, stood up and moved to the office door. Slowly, inch by inch, she began to push the front door open, hoping to avoid a squeak. That’s when the office phone rang. Bunny jumped out of her skin. After two rings, she heard Blythe Marten pick up, and then the muted pitch of her voice as it filtered down the hall. Time to go for it! Bunny yanked the door open and ran for dear life. Avoiding the elevator, she took the stairs, hurled down four flights and darted out a fire exit where various employees, mainly Jessica and Alyssa, hid to smoke clove cigarettes.
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Bunny scrambled down the sidewalk in a walk/run toward her car parked in a nearby garage. HER!? “We want HER taken care of!? Maybe it was time to quit, call the police and head home to San Francisco for a brief vacation. Yes, it was time. Time for all three.
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Quit. Police. Vacation.
