Synopsis | Reviews | Excerpt
Harriet "Dirty Harriet” Horowitz had it all. Money. Plastic Surgery. Servants. Then
her husband raised his fist one time too many, and she shot and killed him. Now,
she lives in the South Florida swamps, rides a Harley, and owns a private eye
agency. Her best friend—the only friend who makes sense anymore—is an alligator
named Lana.
Then the Contessa von Phul, a woman from Harriet’s society
days, hires Harriet to investigate the death of a Mayan immigrant worker. With her
assistant Lupe—an eccentric civil servant—and a .44 Magnum, Dirty Harriet hits
the mean streets of Boca Raton to dig for clues. What won’t she do to uncover
the truth? Her search for answers forces her to return to her old world of Boca
Babes and McMansions. When she discovers scandal after scandal, will she be
able to escape Boca with her life—yet again?
Dirty
Harriet,
Miriam Auerbach’s debut mystery novel, won a Romantic Times Reviewers’ Choice Award. Miriam can only assume that
this is because the heroine kills her husband on page one. In a parallel universe, Miriam is known as
Miriam Potocky, professor of social work at Florida International University in
Miami. She lives in South Florida with
her husband and their multicultural canines, a Welsh Corgi and a Brussels
Griffon. Visit Miriam at www.miriamauerbach.com.
"I like this series. A diverse cast of characters complete this great story." -- Ann Klausing of Net Galley
"Harriet takes us on a fun ride with her Harley to solve the murder mystery that no one seemed to care about." -- Jennifer Murphy, Jen Murphy’s Musings
"Hilarious. Fun. Empowering." -- Tara Chevrestt, Book Babe
"A terrific investigative tale . . . using
dark humor and starring a fabulous [character] who deserves future tales."—Harriet Klausner, an Amazon.com top
reviewer
Prologue
I CONFESS. I said it. When my
husband raised his fists at me that last time, I said, "Go ahead, make
my day!”
He obliged. So did I,
putting a .44 Magnum bullet through his heart and putting him out of my misery.
Permanently.
Hey, it was a clear case of self-defense, as
attested to by the five hundred witnesses at the scene, a wedding reception at
the Boca Raton Beach Club (BaR-B-Cue for short). Okay, so I ruined the bride’s
big day. Give me a break, will you? The SOB had it coming, trust me.
Well, the press had a field day, dubbing me
"Dirty Harriet” in honor of Clint Eastwood’s notorious Dirty Harry character.
That suits me fine—there are a lot of similarities between old Harry and me. We
both speak softly and carry a big gun.
My real name is Harriet Horowitz. I’m a
recovering Boca Babe. No, those aren’t the opening lines of a Boca Babes
Anonymous meeting. There is no such beast, and even if there were, groups
aren’t my bag.
So what’s to recover from, you ask? Let’s start
with personal appearance. The Boca Babe needs: a weekly manicure, biweekly
pedicure, monthly highlighting and razor-edge trimming, lip and brow waxing,
bikini waxing, a truckload of cosmetics to keep Estée Lauder and Lancôme in
business, twice-weekly trips to the mall with the personal shopper, daily
sessions with the personal trainer. Had enough? We haven’t even started on
household maintenance.
The Boca Babe must be in possession of a
McMansion—the six-bedroom, five-bath faux Mediterranean palazzo situated in one
of the euphemistically named "gated communities” (translation: walled
fortresses). And does this household take care of itself? Of course not. You
need a gardener, a housekeeper, a pool service person—minimum. Those are your
regulars. Then there’s the other help you call in for special occasions, such
as hosting your son’s bar mitzvah or your parents’ golden anniversary. This
requires a party planner, a caterer, a wardrobe consultant. Well, you get the
picture.
Now, let’s face it, most women cannot acquire
all of this themselves. But there’s one surefire way to achieve this fairy
tale, and that’s to marry a rich American prince.
My prince was named Bruce. I’d met him when I
was attending one of those prissy women’s colleges up in New England. My mom
had sent me there, not to get any useful education, mind you, just to become
the right kind of woman to snare the right kind of man. And Bruce was it. He
was a law student at Yale. He was hot, smart, charming, connected, and soon to
be rich. A budding Boca Babe’s dream. Sure, there were the usual warning signs
of incipient abuse—the moodiness, the possessiveness, the volatility. But just
like most women, l didn’t put two and two together, or maybe I repressed
whatever doubts I may have had, because I just had to have him. After all, you
can’t be a Boca Babe if you’re manless.
I brought Bruce home to Mom in Boca. She
thoroughly approved, so we got married and started living the high life. Bruce
became an associate, then a partner, in Boca’s leading law firm, representing
pharmaceutical companies, health insurance companies, and the tobacco industry
against people who claimed they’d suffered injury or loss of a loved one due to
the corporations’ negligence or malfeasance. Was it lucrative? Hell, yes.
Moral? I didn’t want to go there. I was too busy spending the money. Every time
a little voice of conscience started nagging at me, I’d suppress it by
going on a shopping spree with my friends.
While I was shopping, Bruce was working and
hanging with Boca’s power brokers, fueling his energy and ego with cocaine. And
as his blow use increased, so did his blowups and put-downs. In his eyes I’d
gone from being a brainy babe to a babbling bimbo. Pretty soon the shoving,
slapping, hitting, and kicking started. But while he was addicted to the coke,
I was addicted to the money and the image it brought. So for ten years I put up
with his verbal and physical abuse to "keep up appearances.”
My road to liberation started when my personal
trainer suggested I take up the Israeli martial art Krav Maga to get my ass
into shape. In the process of toning my backside, something else happened. I
began to grow a backbone. As my self-defense skills increased, I started to ask
myself: Did I really need to be a punching bag in order to keep the McMansion,
the Mercedes, the manicures, the whole shebang? For that matter, did I really
need the McMansion, the Mercedes, the manicures, and the whole shebang in the
first place?
Yeah, I know what you’re thinking: why didn’t I
just divorce the schmuck—did I have to whack him? Easier said than done. You
know the story. I left a couple times, he came and dragged me back, threatening
to kill not only me but my mom if I ever left again. And then there was the
response of the cops and the courts.
One time Bruce was arrested after he threw me to
the ground outside a five-star restaurant. But he was buddies with the police
chief, who personally went to the jail at three a.m. to release him and drop
the charges. Another time he beat me so badly I had to go to the hospital. We
almost made it to court on that charge, but then the hospital records
documenting my injuries mysteriously disappeared, and the case was dismissed
for lack of evidence.
By then Bruce had incurred some serious debts
with his drug habit. Some really shady characters started hounding him. Bruce
bought himself a gun. He just didn’t figure that someday I’d use it on him.
Neither did I. Until that night.
That was four years ago, when I was thirty-five.
After the shooting, I spent a few nights in the county jail overlooking Donald
Trump’s golf course in West Palm. Finally, the D.A. decided it was justifiable
homicide and let me go. So, I unloaded my Boca Babe lifestyle—the house, the
car, the clothes, everything—and decided to start over as far from there as I
could. Well, inasmuch as l hate winter and love Florida, I didn’t venture allthat far. Just to the edge of the Everglades.
Now, home is a two-room wood cabin up on stilts
in the Glades just west of Boca. Basically, I’ve moved from swank to swamp. You
know that magazine you see in checkout lines at the
grocery store, Real Simple? That’s just for starters. I’m talking the
real thing. No electricity lines (just my generator), no land phone (just my
cell), and no neighbors (just Lana, the six-foot gator that lurks around
my front porch). No roads, either—just my airboat.
Now, if all that seems like a drastic
change, it is. Here’s why: with any kind of recovery, you’ve got to go cold
turkey. You’ve got to change playgrounds and playmates. There’s no doing it
half-assed, or you get sucked right back in to where you started. So I had to
reinvent my life. And just moving to a different city wouldn’t cut it. I wanted
to meet the challenge of total independence.
The only obstacle was money. I had no
kids—neither of us had ever wanted them—so that’s one worry I didn’t have. But
as a Boca Babe, I’d spent my husband’s income as fast as it came in. And he
did, too. Even the house was mortgaged to the hilt. So I was left with nothing
but my jewelry, which I sold to buy my one treat to myself, my Hog—a 2003, 100th anniversary, 883cc Harley Hugger. That Evolution engine represents
my own personal evolution. For some people there’s therapy, for me there’s my
Hog.
Anyway, I needed to support myself, so I went
back to school and learned some skills for real life, as opposed to the twisted
fairy tale I’d been living. Then I answered an ad in the paper for someone with
computer skills, which turned out to be for a private eye agency, doing skip
traces and background checks. When my boss learned that I also possessed a
whole slew of Boca Babe skills, he sent me out on cases as a decoy, enticing
cheating husbands into making a pass, then getting the whole thing on tape. It
was pretty sleazy, but it gave me a start in the business. A year or so later I
was able to get my own license and open my own agency, ScamBusters. And I set
out to expose the steamy underbelly of Boca.
I’ve been in business a little over a year now,
and let me tell you, it’s booming. Boca has scams aplenty. This is South Florida,
after all. You didn’t think all that crisp new money floating around here was
earned by honest hard work, did you? Insurance scams, investment scams,
immigration scams—you name it, we’ve got it.
But the last thing I expected that February day
when the Contessa von Phul walked into my office was a murder case. I guess
even I hadn’t known just how ugly things could get in beautiful Boca Raton.
Chapter 1
THE CONTESSA walked into my office on a Tuesday
clad in Chanel from head to toe—the pink suit with white trim, the pearls, the
black-toed shoes, the white quilted bag with the chain strap—with her
Chihuahua, Coco, ensconced on her left arm. The scent of Chanel No. 19 wafted
in with her. Eau de parfum, eau de dog and eau de dollars hit me at once. My sinuses
rebelled immediately, and I went into a sneezing fit.
Glancing around imperiously at my barren office
as she flipped back her mahogany pageboy hair, the contessa pronounced,
"Harriet, what you need in here is some foliage. You know, the leaves absorb the
toxins, oxygenate the air, clear those allergies right up.”
I just love it when people tell me what I need,
don’t you? She could take that little rodent-disguised-as-a-canine and—
"Yes, Your Excellency,” I said. I learned long
ago that you don’t mess with the contessa. She was aristocracy, after all. The
Boca version, that is. Her true origins were unknown. Whether she had acquired
her title through birth, marriage, or purchase, no one knew. There was no count
in her present, and she didn’t speak of her past. Many believed that she had to
be the real thing, since who would actually pay for a name like von Phul?
Personally, I wasn’t so sure. I happened to know she was a crafty one—she could
well have bought the name, figuring people would think exactly that—there was
no way anyone would buy it. Faking everyone out with a double negative, so to
speak.
I knew the contessa from my former Boca Babe
life. We had served on several charity committees together. She was the
senior version of the Boca Babe—the Botox Babe. Seventy going on fifty. Yep, we
have some of the world’s best surgeons right here in Boca.
She hadn’t finished with her critique of my
lifestyle yet. Her eyes did a full-body scan as she checked me out. A Babe
compulsion—they just can’t help themselves. She took in my buff butt and
biceps, big boobs, big dark hair, and big dark eyes. She did miss my big-ass
Smith & Wesson .44 Magnum gun, which I had license to carry concealed and
kept stashed in my boot.
"It wouldn’t hurt you to spiff up your wardrobe
a little,” she declared, peering at me down her hawkish nose.
I had on my usual post-Babe uniform—all black,
all stretch tank top and boot-cut leggings. She clearly wasn’t impressed.
"I’ve simplified, Contessa,” I replied.
"Besides, S and L are a girl’s best friends.”
She looked confused. Her brow would have
wrinkled, but the Botox wouldn’t let it.
"Savings and Loans?” she asked.
"No—Spandex and Lycra.”
She rolled her green eyes and looked around for
a place to sit.
She brushed some imaginary dog hairs off of one
of the two Naugahyde chairs in front of my desk and gingerly placed Coco on it.
Coco did a body shake and deposited some non-imaginary hairs. The contessa
settled her tall frame into the other seat.
"Harriet, I have a case for you,” she said, cutting
to the chase. "An unsolved murder.”
"But Contessa,” I said, "I don’t do murder. I do
scams. My motto is ‘They scam ’em, I slam ’em.”’
"But Harriet,” she said, "this is a case that
cries out for justice. And you are just the person for it.”
"Why is that?” I asked, astounded.
"You will care about this case like no one else.
You won’t let go until you’ve solved it, because a part of the victim is a part
of you.”
"Oh, yeah? Which part is that?”
"That’s for you to discover.”
She was trying to get to me, I could tell. And
she was succeeding, damn her.
"Go ahead,” I said grudgingly.
"As you well know, I am benefactress of the
Central American Rescue Mission.”
How could I not know? For that matter, how could
anyone in Boca not know? The contessa’s name and face were plastered all over
the place promoting her pet charity. She was in the papers, in Boca Raton magazine,
on flyers in the Publix grocery, everywhere. The Central American Rescue
Mission provided assistance to refugees who had fled to Florida from the
war-torn countries of the south. The contessa’s interest was thought to derive
from her own childhood experiences in wartime Europe, though of course no one
really knew.
"Maybe you remember from the papers, Harriet,
that one of my girls was killed about a year ago,” she continued. All the
Rescue Mission’s clients were her "girls” and "boys.”
"Yes, I do vaguely remember something. A body
was found in the tomato fields west of here?”
"Not a body,” she admonished. "A person.
Gladys Gutierrez. Yes, they found the poor soul strangled last February. Just
think of the irony, Harriet. This sweet girl had escaped the killing fields of
Guatemala only to wind up dead in the tomato fields of South Florida. And she
was just on the verge of starting a new life. She was learning English, she’d
just gotten a new job, her future was bright. Tell me, where is the justice in
that?”
"What about the police?” I asked.
"Well, of course they tried. But you know how it
is. More pressing matters came up, and Gladys has been shelved.”
I knew what she was talking about. Boca had been
rocked by a few upper-crust scandals lately. The former president of the local
public university had been accused of accepting a brand-new, red Corvette
bought with university foundation money that had been laundered through his
wife’s interior decorator, while the local private college was accused of
illegally procuring cadavers for its funeral services program without the
families’ consent. So I could see how a pesky little problem like the murder of
a Guatemalan refugee had taken a back seat.
"I didn’t want to interfere with the official
investigation,” the contessa continued, "but it’s been a year now, and I had my
own internal deadline. I decided I’d give the police that long, and if they
didn’t make an arrest by now, I’d take matters into my own hands. Now I’m
putting it in yours.”
There were plenty of other P.I.s in town she
could have picked. But she was getting to me. I could see the writing on the
wall—if I didn’t solve this case, no one ever would. Not that I have an ego or
anything.
There was another thing, too. I figured I kind
of owed the contessa. When I’d been in the slammer after offing my husband,
most of my Boca Babe friends had dumped me like toxic waste, but not the
contessa. She had been one of the few to visit me and had even made public
statements in my defense. In fact, I sometimes wondered if she’d had anything
to do with the charges being dropped.
"Okay, I’ll consider the
case,” I muttered.[B1]
"Of course you will,” she said. She whipped a
sheaf of papers out of her Chanel bag. "Here is a copy of the police summary of
the case. I will see you at the Rescue Mission tomorrow morning at nine.” She
picked up Coco and headed for the door.
The gall! She had obviously decided before even
coming in that I would take the case. I glared out the iron bars covering the
plate-glass window as she pulled out in her Rolls.
I took a deep breath. The contessa had put her
faith in me, big-time. No one had ever done that before. Trust me to attract
someone’s adulterous husband? Sure. Catch a con artist? Sure. But solve a
murder? Not. The contessa was putting me to the test, and I had to meet the
challenge. I couldn’t let her down.
IT WAS GETTING late in the day, so I decided to
pack it in and head home. I would read the case file tonight. I shut down my
computer, turned out the lights, and stepped outside. I locked the door, then
the wrought-iron gate that serves as my security.
My office is located on the seedy side of Boca.
Yeah, there is one. Of course you know that everything glitzy in life is just a
facade. Boca’s backside, or at least one of them, is along its southwestern
edge, on Highway 441, technically outside the city limits. This is strip mall
city, with rutted parking lots and dusty barren roadways in place of the
manicured hedges and fairways to the east. ScamBusters is in one of these
strips, wedged between Tony’s Tattoos and Carl’s Checks ‘R’ Us check-cashing
store.
Actually, the location is a business advantage.
Think about it. My typical clients from east Boca wouldn’t be caught dead
walking into ScamBusters, since that would be tantamount to a public
announcement that they’d been conned. So by driving a couple miles out of town,
they don’t have to worry about being seen and having their country club know
their business the next day. Here, all they have to worry about is getting
their Mercedes or their Beemers carjacked.
I put on my leather jacket, chaps, gloves, and
helmet and settled onto the seat of my Hog. I turned the ignition key and
pushed the starter button, and the engine roared to life. I pushed my way back
out of the parking space, then opened up the throttle and took off. As I headed
west on Glades Road and left the traffic behind, everything faded out of my consciousness except the familiar four-stroke rhythm of the V-twin
engine. You know that sound—the one you get only from a Harley. But maybe you
don’t know the feel. Let me put it this way: it’s a five-hundred-pound vibrator
between your legs. And people wonder why a woman would ride a bike.
My airboat was docked at the road’s end. At that
point, civilization stopped and the wilderness took over. It was the place
where solid ground gave way to uncertainty. The swamp—neither earth nor
water—that murky no-man’s-land that was my home.
I pulled down the loading ramp and rolled the
Hog onto the boat. It’s one of those big mothers originally used for toting
tourists that’s been specially adapted to carry my bike. I sat in the boat’s
driver’s seat. I pushed my foam earplugs into my ears, then donned my
soundproofing earmuffs over those. This sucker is loud. I started the engine,
and the huge rear-mounted fan began its frenzied spin. I shifted into gear, and
the boat took off, the sawgrass seemingly parting before me as I moved ahead.
Two miles due northwest, I reached my cabin. I
pulled the boat up to the porch, disembarked, and tied the craft to the
hitching post. My own Wild West. I walked into the combination living
room/dining room/kitchen and pulled my boots off. At the kitchen cabinet, I took
out my lead crystal glass—one of the few remnants of my past life, so I guess
I’m not fully recovered yet—and poured myself a shot of Hennessy. I went out to
the porch to sit in my rocking chair and watch the sun set. I spotted Lana, the
gator, lurking a few yards off to my left.
"Hi, honey, I’m home,” I called. "How was your
day?”
She didn’t respond.
I pulled out the case summary the contessa had
given me to "think over.”
There wasn’t a whole lot there. The body of a
female thought to be in her early twenties had been found in a tomato field
outside of Boca on February 19. Exactly one year ago. The victim had been
killed by strangulation. Bruise marks around her throat indicated something had
been wrapped around it and tightened. She had been dead about four days when
her body was discovered.
The crime scene investigation turned up no
murder weapon at the scene. Because of heavy rain in the intervening days
between the death and the discovery of the body, the crime scene did not
provide any further reliable forensic evidence. It was not known whether the
death had occurred at the scene or whether the victim had been killed elsewhere
and then dumped in the tomato field.
The summary included several crime scene photos.
The victim’s body lay facedown in the mud, twisted and crumpled. Her clothes
were a simple brown skirt and tan sweater, both soaked through and
mud-streaked. But it was her shoes that really got to me. They, too, were
mud-covered, but bright white patches of canvas shone through. They looked brand-new.
The idea that this woman had just bought a shining new pair of sneakers,
probably in hopes of a brighter future, only to wear them once or twice before
being brutally murdered, sent a stab of pain right through my gut.
There were also some autopsy photos. In these,
the victim lay on a cold steel slab. Her pale face seemed remarkably untouched
and peaceful in contrast with the trauma marks around her neck. Again, I felt a
wave of sickness at the clearly vicious attack on such a young, innocent-looking
woman.
I resumed reading. The tomato fields were home
to many Guatemalan immigrants who worked on the local farms. The police had
taken one of the autopsy photos of the victim around to the homes where the
immigrants lived. The victim was identified as Gladys Gutierrez by a friend,
Eulalia Lopez. Working with a Spanish interpreter, the police questioned
Eulalia, but she was unable to provide any solid leads on the murder.
The police interviewed the farm workers’ crew
boss, Jake Lamont, who stated that Gladys had worked in the fields and lived in
the company housing until about two weeks previously. Then she had disappeared,
and he didn’t know where she had gone. The police talked with a few of the
other residents, but they said they didn’t know much about Gladys.
According to the summary, after the story of
Gladys’s murder appeared in the local paper with a request that anyone with
information contact the police, the contessa had called them. She informed them
that Gladys had been a client at the Central American Rescue Mission and that
the mission had placed Gladys in a live-in housekeeping job, which is why she
had left the tomato fields. The contessa provided the police with what little
she knew about Gladys, but she had no information that could help solve the
case.
The police then interviewed Gladys’s new
employer, Tricia Weinstein. She stated that Gladys had disappeared from the
home on February 15. Tricia had not reported Gladys as a missing person because
she assumed that Gladys had simply bailed out on the job.
The summary stopped at that point. Evidently,
there were no further developments.
Just as I finished reading the file, the last
reddish-gold arc of the sun disappeared on the horizon.
Lana slithered off a rock into the water.
"So what do you think?” I asked her. "Should I
take the case?”
She popped her head above water level and looked
at me. Did I detect a gleam in her eye? Nah. Anyway, I knew that she knew it
was already a foregone conclusion. The contessa, that wily fox, had known
exactly how to pique my interest, how to reach into the depths of my soul.
Whereas most people had an inner child there, I had something else: an inner
vigilante. And it was ready to be set free.
[B1]Hank
can you format this to not be so space out?
