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  Praise for BODY ON THE BACKLOT

  “I think there is a strong new voice in crime fiction and it comes from Eva Montealegre. I really liked Body on the Backlot. Montealegre knows the secret, the best crime novels are not only about how a cop works on a case, but how a case works on a cop. Detective Joan Lambert is a refreshing new character and I’d like to see more.”

  —Michael Connelly, author of the Harry Bosch Series

  “Detective Lambert bears little resemblance to Sue Grafton’s Kinsey Milhone or Robert B. Parker’s Sunny Randall. She’s rougher around the edges, lives in the gritty world of Michael Connelly’s Harry Bosch, and suffers even greater angst than Connelly’s more famous LAPD detective. But give the lady time; Montealegre may equal Bosch’s popularity…”

  —Ken Fermoyle, The Topanga Messenger

  “Montealegre has crafted a gripping spellbinder that draws the reader into the tale from the outset, holds reader interest, and keeps the pages turning….Settings are nicely detailed to bring the reader right into the scene. Characters are fully developed. Joan is believable, the scoundrels are suitably ill-famed, the tale itself is well written by a novelist having a fine grasp of language, situation, and stratagem.”

  —Molly Martin, Reviewer’s Bookwatch

  “…Eva [Montealegre]’s Body on the Backlot, casts a bright light on LA’s dark side, where blind ambition rules and beauty is no more than skin deep. An absolute page-turner.”

  —Kris Neri, author of the Agatha, Anthony,

  and Macavity Award-Nominated Tracy

  “Wow! Eva [Montealegre] has certainly hit one out of the ballpark…

  Highly recommended.”—Janie Franz, MyShelf.com

  THIS IS A GENUINE VIREO BOOK

  A Vireo Book | Rare Bird Books

  453 South Spring Street, Suite 302

  Los Angeles, CA 90013

  rarebirdbooks.com

  Copyright © 2018 by Eva Montealegre

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever, including but not limited to print, audio, and electronic. For more information, address:

  A Vireo Book | Rare Bird Books Subsidiary Rights Department,

  453 South Spring Street, Suite 302,

  Los Angeles, CA 90013.

  Set in Dante

  EPUB ISBN: 9781947856684

  Publisher’s Cataloging-in-Publication data

  Names: Montealegre, Eva, author.

  Title: Body on the backlot / Eva Montealegre.

  Description: First Trade Paperback Original Edition | A Vireo Book | New York, NY; Los Angeles, CA: Rare Bird Books, 2018.

  Identifiers: ISBN 9781945572883

  Subjects: LCSH Women detectives—California—Los Angeles—Fiction. | Murder—Investigation—California—Los Angeles—Fiction. | Los Angeles (Calif.). Police Department—Fiction. | Police—California—Los Angeles—Fiction. | Suspense fiction. | Mystery fiction. | BISAC FICTION / Mystery & Detective / Police Procedural | FICTION / Mystery & Detective / Women Sleuths

  Classification: LCC PS3613.O547 B64 2018 | DDC 813.6—dc23

  This book is dedicated to my husband, David,

  the one who believes in me and champions my every endeavor.

  In our love, I become joy.

  “All we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.”

  —Edgar Allen Poe

  “The most potent energy in the cosmos is dark matter.

  We can’t see it and we can’t measure it.

  We only know that it exists and that it powers the universe.”

  —Anthony Laurence, astronomer

  CONTENTS

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  CHAPTER ONE

  I DRANK STRAIGHT FROM the bottle that night, just like my father. Plymouth gin, a trusted favorite. Driven from my bed by bad dreams and the insomnia that followed, I’d ended up outside my small home, sitting with my back against the old oak tree. Fact is, it’s the only actual oak in the Oakwood area of Venice, California, and the reason I rented the place. Its distant relatives shaded the property I grew up on in the Ozark Mountains. A dream of that grand manor still clung to me like the scream that had set me upright in bed, bug-eyed and gasping for breath. When I was a kid, my grandmother told me that if you got killed in your dream, it means your old self’s dying to make room for a new life. I wonder how she knew that. My mom had told me that Gramma was an elder, but it was the sort of thing you said in a whisper, like it was a secret you should keep. There were times that I would see Gramma dancing very exact steps—four steps, I remember—back and forth, and she’d sort of sing under her breath, as if she were whispering a chant. It was always gentle. A gentle secret. I was halfway through the bottle when it dawned on me that I should have asked my grandmother more questions about that.

  My ears perked to attention as a muscle car prowled down the alley behind my house. The clamor of its muffler bounced off cinder-block walls and rattled chain-link fences. Headlights swept through the branches of the old oak above me. By that time, my butt was tucked into the roots of the tree, and my back was well pressed into the bark of the trunk. As the car approached, light poured through the fence, striping my face. Neighboring pit bulls barked in angry protest to the muffler’s assault. Seventies funk music blasted from the car windows, vibrating a rhythm through the alley and permeating even the bones of my chest.

  Carl had played that exact music tirelessly throughout the different phases of our romance. He worshipped those custom-built car engines from the same era. Could be he was paying me a “surprise” visit. I saw myself hitting him over the head with the bottle and thought what a terrible waste of good gin that’d be. As if catching me in the act, or maybe hearing my thoughts, the car picked up speed with a screech and roared down the alley. Yep, I decided, that was Carl.

  Exhaust fumes, tinged with crumbled asphalt and alley dust, rose with toxic abandon and wafted through the night air. After the rumble of the car’s muffler had faded into the night, what goes for a 3:00 a.m. silence settled. The moon shone from directly above me, shards of illumination pouring through the branches of the tree. The quiet was broken when glass shattered in the street followed by a drunken shout of curses. I listened, attentive to the unfolding drama, but all was calm again.

  I watched a huge rat lazily make its way across the roof of my house toward the tree. One of the branches arched over toward the roof and the big rodent, apparently familiar with this route, lifted itself up onto the branch and continued coming toward the center of the tree. It seemed the oak gave sanctuary not only to the likes of me but also to the biggest rat God ever created. In a ray of moonshine, the truth of the creature came to me. The rat turned out not to be a rat
at all. It was an opossum. I hadn’t seen one of those for a while. The white opossum stopped halfway across the branch, still as stone, nose sniffing. Red eyes peered down at me. I took another swig of my gin to let him know I wasn’t going anywhere.

  “My father ate one of your kind,” I informed him.

  And it was true. Back in the Ozarks, our neighbors had offered opossum stew and Daddy thought it would prove we were “just folks,” so he ate it. But this little guy trespassing in my yard was safe.

  “Not to worry,” I assured the opossum.

  He didn’t move. Opossums can stay extremely still for the longest time. That’s how they convince you that they’re dead. I could relate to that. It’s not like I generally down a bottle of gin every night. But I do keep one handy. Just in case one of those long nights of the soul thangs jumps outta da swamp and bites my ass. Not that there are many swamps in the LA area. I sloshed down a little more Plymouth gin and held the bottle up to the moonlight. Two-thirds gone.

  “Last one,” I told myself.

  A numbing peace came over me, like a raven turning smoothly in descent. I saw myself running after my mother through a green field of corn. I was trying to catch hold of her coal-black hair. She turned around laughing, then stooped down to catch me in her arms. Her hair, a silken mane, floated around and enfolded me like wings.

  “Oh, Mama. I wish…I could have saved you.” Darkness embraced me.

  It seemed that I had just laid my head back when the auto-grind coffeemaker sounded from inside my house.

  Morning’s first light. A marine layer seeped in from the ocean and covered everything with a blanket of blue mist. A formidable stabbing pain in my head made standing up an iffy proposition. I held the tree trunk to steady myself, kicked the empty bottle of gin, then slipped back on my ass. Luckily, it was numb from its night in the roots. I noticed that I’d cleverly left the door to my house open all night. For all I knew, the opossum, plus any variety of characters, was inside there right now. I imagined a party of opossums using their little hands to open the big package from my aunt. In my mind, they unwrapped each item and devoured everything within the tall and commanding box and that was a good thing, because then I would never have to address the contents. I badly needed a shower, coffee, and a painkiller, in no particular order, so I forced myself to my feet. I stood there a moment, in the morning mist, a newly risen ghost. The pungent aroma of brewing chicory coffee drew me to the open door of my little home.

  I managed to bang into a wall, a little self-punishment, no doubt, as I made my way to the bathroom. After a desperate search, I found a bottle of Motrin. There were only three left so I took all three and made a mental note to pick up some more, splashed water on my face, brushed my teeth, and peered at the pallor of my skin in the bathroom light.

  After a scalding bath, I finished off with a cold shower. I was inching toward full humanity as I stumbled into the bedroom I had abandoned the night before for the oak tree. I slipped into clothes I’d already laid out for the day ahead: a men’s blue shirt, black pants, black socks, and polished black shoes. I wrapped my small holster around my waist, reached for my Smith & Wesson .38, dropped it in, and snapped the strap.

  As I walked through the kitchen, I eyed the hugeness of the delivered box leaning against the wall in the living room. I tried to guess what might be in it. A hangover has the strange power of taking one out of one’s emotional trauma and landing one smack in the middle of being simply pissed off and irritable. What items would Auntee Trish deign to be delivered to me at this late date? And why now? Maybe to assuage her guilt. Perhaps she had finally decided that there were some personal items of my mother’s that she could live without. Would have been nice if she had written me just once in the last eighteen years. Or as proper for a lady of her stature, minimally, she might have, first, sent me a note on some fancy stationery saying, Hey, Joan, I’m going to send you a big carton of…whatever the hell it was.

  My eyes burned against the morning glare coming into the kitchen window, so I grabbed dark sunglasses and put them on even though I was inside my house. Carl liked to say I was going incognito whenever I wore those glasses. My mind often filtered my life through what Carl used to say or think and I resented that. It’s hard to kick a bad habit when it’s the only one you’ve ever had. My mother used to wear big sunglasses to the doctor’s office after a particularly bad beating from my father. In an effort to change the tracks in my mind, I thought of the photos I’d seen in old LIFE magazines at that same doctor’s office when I was a kid. I pulled up before my eyes tabloid snapshots of Maria Callas in dark sunglasses when she was happy and in love on a big yacht in the Mediterranean. How could she know that she would lose her love, her voice, become a pariah, and kill herself? I sipped the hot chicory coffee. I’d bought this particular brand for myself while in New Orleans. It was my habit to always drink coffee from an old-fashioned white diner mug. Used to have two mugs, bought them from my favorite breakfast place, but Carl broke one in a jealous fit. Whoops, there I was back on Carl again. Damn. Okay. So, what if I met a nice guy and wanted to share a cup of coffee with him? I’d only have one good diner cup. I was thinking I’d replace it when the phone chirped an insistent “good morning.” I looked back out the kitchen window in hopes of spotting the opossum asleep somewhere in the tree before I picked up the phone.

  “This is Joan,” I answered in what felt more like a confession.

  “How’s it hangin’, Detective?”

  “Hey, Satch.”

  Satch is my captain, downtown in Homicide, Special Section. He’s a big Irishman with a lot of soul. Everybody calls him Satch because he has a raspy voice and he’s also, absolutely, a New Orleans jazz and blues man. A guitar chord of longing sounded somewhere in my heart. I so wanted to be back in New Orleans still on vacation.

  “We’ve got you busy this morning right there in your neck of the woods. Down at the beach a piece. The canal area. It’s a young woman from St. Louis, apparently a young transplant. Dead in her home. There’s a couple guys at the crime scene from Pacific Division.”

  “Anybody I know?”

  “Can’t say, but we’re taking it from them in any case. When St. Louis Police Department notified the parents, turned out they own the St. Louis Muni opera house and they’re tight with those beer people, the Anheuser-Busch family. So, that’s front-page news, figure the case is ours now. Everything ASAP. You know the drill. Gus will meet you there.”

  “Okay, boss. What’s the address?”

  My stomach wrenched when I noticed the box cutter, still on the coffee table where I had left it last night. The tall package looked down at me accusingly, unopened. I wasn’t ready, though. Not quite yet.

  I locked up my house and, address in hand, split for the crime scene. My car was a late-model dark blue Crown Victoria, well recognizable as a cop car to just about everyone but especially criminals. I adjusted the rearview mirror and, for vanity’s sake, ran my hands through my short black curls, grateful that I didn’t have to fix my hair. I put the keys in the car ignition; underneath the seventy-six-trombone headache there sounded the morning chorus of barking pit bulls. I turned the corner onto Abbot Kinney Boulevard where a long line of drunks supported a brick wall while they waited for the door to open at The Brig, the only bar in this area with early hours.

  The sun lit up the morning mist, and as I got closer to the ocean, the real estate improved. I’d forgotten to put on lip gloss and my lips were so dry they hurt. My destination was the canals. The canals run into the beach and they are also part of Venice, but much different, because when you hit the canals, the area abruptly transforms into an exclusive community of stars, studio execs, and others employed in the entertainment industry. As I got closer, the homes got bigger and the windows had leaded and stained glass in them instead of the black security bars of my neighborhood. When I dropped over a small hill I was greeted by the canals, full of ducks and sunshine-reflecting bridges.

  I
pulled past a rowboat on the last canal into a long driveway of a small palace and followed a row of pepper trees toward the beach. I took in a deep breath. A clump of palm and banana trees concealed what turned out to be a bungalow built on rocks and stilts out over the surf line. The front door faced the water where the sun shone through the fog and glimmered golden on ocean blue.

  I parked. Praying for ChapStick, I groped around in my glove compartment, found some, and swiped it across my lips with a measure of relief. Getting out, I adjusted my gun in its holster and closed the car door of my “unmarked” with extra care not to slam it. I was feeling delicate. I pressed my lips together, making sure the ChapStick had covered the whole lip area, and took a moment to take in the scene while I put on my game face.

  “Hey, Joan!”

  Even with my sunglasses, the glare made it hard to make out anything more than a large, indistinct form. The voice was vaguely familiar, vaguely annoying. I figured it was Trevor Krantz. Trevor, yeah, he was working Pacific Homicide. That made sense. Had to be him. We were rivals years ago at the police academy. We had this competition thing going, always looking to knock each other out of the top spot and now, here we were. He lumbered toward me.

  I refused to answer, as it would only add more pain to my aching head. The waves pounding against the rocks and pilings of the house were relentless. I caught peripheral movement that turned out to be a big black dog. It was sad-faced and furtive and immediately slinked behind a rock. Dogs aren’t the best creatures to have around a crime scene. They like to carry things off and bury them. I fast-stepped my way toward Trevor, hoping to shorten the drama of my approach. He was all teeth, grinning at me like I was an old war buddy or something. I smiled back even though it hurt my face.

  “How long you been back?” he asked.

  “Today’s my first day.”

  “You look good.”

  “Thanks, I feel like shit. It’s nice to see you, though.”

  “I knew they couldn’t keep you away,” he added. “Well, if you knew that, you knew more than I did.” That old sheepish look spread across his face.