by Gina LaManna
LACEY LUZZI: SPARKLED
Copyright: Gina LaManna
ISBN: XXXX
Published: January11th, 2015
Kindle Edition
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Synopsis:
Lacey, Clay and Meg are back—this time headed to...a wedding?
Assignment Numero Dos for Lacey comes straight from the Godfather himself. When one of the Luzzi Family’s low-ranking associates is found dead, Carlos believes it may be the doing of the rival Russian mob, and he orders Lacey to find the killer. But every detail about the assignment is a little too neat, a little too tidy, and a little too good to be true. Could this really be an open and shut case, complete with a confession from the murderer?
When Lacey's pumpkin-colored, body-building cousin Joey starts making trouble at his ex-fiance's wedding—the case starts unraveling from the inside out.
Lacey's not sure what is worse: going face to face with a vicious murderer, ditching Auntie Nora's attempts to fill in the 'plus one' on her invite, or finding herself locked in the same hotel as the hot, unavailable, but increasingly drool-worthy Anthony.
Though most family gatherings are challenging, Lacey is afraid that this glittery Family wedding might just kill her.
Lacey Luzzi: Sparkled, is a full-length, laugh-out-loud, humorous cozy mystery with a strong female protagonist in the spirit of Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum, albeit one working for the wrong side of the law…
Acknowledgements:
To my Bolshaya Loshka—my sugar plume. You dazzle me.
я тебя люблю!
To Gillian, you are always a rockstar!
To Kelly—This em dash is for you. Your help and thoughts mean so much to me.
To Megan, Lyndsay, Kylie and Sherry, fantastic editors.
To Sprinkles On Top Studios, my awesome cover designer.
Photo Courtesy of Deposit Photos / lubavnel
To Stacie, Kelly, Sue and Calluna—you’re my absolute favorite beaches...still.
To my mom—there are thirteen chapters, just for you.
To my sisters—you’ve been there for everything! Including smacking the Lumina on the dashboard until it started, trying not to stop at red lights for fear it’d clunk out, and rescuing it from a snowy parking lot.
To Katie and Emily—thanks for giving me the title. Life would be a whole lot less sparkly without you two.
To Nicole and Shelly and Rissa and Nikki and Julie and Molly, you make writing about girlfriends easy!
And last but not least, to all my family and friends, thanks for making me laugh.
Chapter 1
“NO!” My head fell into my hands with a heavy flop. “No-no-no-no-nooooo! This is… no. Just—no.”
Lacey: 0. Life: 1.
I slumped against the front seat of my car. This wasn’t happening.
I closed my eyes and briefly wished for the world to end.
Then again, maybe this torture would include a free chicken dinner.
I peeked through my eyelids at the passenger seat of my Chevy Lumina. The toxic-pink invitation spewed glitter all over the upholstery. I thumbed through the letter in disgust, wrinkling my nose at the words ‘Plus one’ scrawled across the front.
With slightly higher spirits, I considered a much happier question:
Please mark one:
__Chicken
__ Pasta
I exhaled. All right, maybe things wouldn’t be so bad. I could always use a nice meal. Maybe if I checked yes to a plus one I could simply bring myself and eat two meals.
“The Love Shack?” I asked the empty car. “Honestly?”
Vivian had to pick a venue for her wedding that featured a glittery pink sign.
Oh—of course—it was in Vegas. Maybe I could get out of going by saying I didn’t have enough money. It wasn’t exactly a lie…
I lifted the card for a closer look. A second batch of pink dust fluttered about, making it extremely difficult to read the writing below the chapel’s address.
After a second, it dawned on me that I wasn’t staring at writing, I was looking at scribbles. Vivian had added a note under ‘The Love Shack.’
‘Wedding moved to Lutsen.’
Lutsen, Minnesota.
I groaned, knowing that I wouldn’t get out of a plus one easily—not if the wedding was in my home state. My Family—of the mafia variety—would see to it that I was fixed up with a nice Italian boy.
Good luck, Grandma, I thought.
I’d been looking for a guy that would stick around the morning after, someone who’d maybe even enjoy a nice breakfast burrito and a Nescafe with me, for going on twenty-eight years now. Needless to say I hadn’t had much luck in dating, as evidenced by the fact that the only jewelry on my finger was the occasional ring pop. I doubted my grandma would have any luck finding a handsome, successful man who’d agree to go to a wedding with me—a week from today.
Don’t get me wrong. I wasn’t an altogether terrible catch. I brushed my teeth an average of 1.4 times a day, usually wore mascara when I had a date, and kept to my one donut per diem rate (when I wasn’t PMSing). I rarely wore jeans—but when I did, they usually fit over my hips—and as a general rule, my face didn’t break mirrors.
My hair was brown-ish on a bad day, gold-ish on a good day—and though it hung limp in humid weather, once in a blue moon I managed to wrestle it all straight or all curly at the same time. It was a rarity, but not impossible. My eyes were in between brown and green, so I generally went with hazel. Thanks to my heritage, my skin color could pass for tanned. Combined with my completely average height of, say, 5’7’’ if I slouched, 5’9.9’’ if I wore platform sandals, I passed for ‘decent-looking.’
However, the cons list for dating me was also longer than I’d like to admit.
One con might be that my grandfather was the Don of the St. Paul Italian Mafia. Another might be the fact that I worked for him—and sometimes got into deep doo doo on his assignments. Even this wedding was a con: the invitations were knockoffs and last minute, mostly because my cousin Vivian had broken off an engagement to her on-and-off again (scuzzy, low-life associate) fiancé and suddenly discovered an interest for old, boring bankers.
In fact, she’d probably used the old invitations. Vivian and Joey would’ve ended up getting married at a place called
The Love Shack.
However, Vivian and her new fiancé would be getting married at a place called the Lutsen Resort. They’d probably even have expensive napkins and fancy chair covers. Barf.
I mostly thought weddings were fun. Free food, lots of booze, and a dance floor. Except for this wedding.
Not only was it with my family, but it was with my Family, the one with a capital F.
And, thanks to my cousin’s happiness, I was forced to find a date.
“Plus one?” I muttered under my breath. “Damn.”
I let my hand fall to my lap, holding the rumpled piece of cardstock.
Plus ones, like all mathematics, had never been my strong suit. Which is probably why I’d never felt the urge to finish college—particularly when I had a role model as awesome as my mother, the best stripper in all of the Twin Cities. When she passed away three years ago, I tried to follow in her glittery, high-heeled footsteps. I didn’t have nearly as much grace.
I got a concussion during my first dance and inhaled enough sequins that my intestines probably shimmered during my X-Rays. When stripping didn’t work out, I needed another career opportunity. Since my talents weren’t obvious, I was forced to do some investigating to find the family my mother had kept hidden from me my entire life.
I hadn’t anticipated that my family would be the largest organized crime Family in all of the Midwest, or that my grandfather would run the operation from his hidden castle in suburban St. Paul. And I especially didn’t imagine I’d take a job with him.
I’m not exactly Mafia material. For starters, I don’t like the sight of blood. I get woozy just thinking about losing a tooth or a severe paper-cut. Secondly, I have absolutely zero fighting talents. It took a plunger, a 911 call, and a bottle of wine to handle my latest confrontation, and that was with a spider.
My Italian is subpar, peppered mostly with swear words and the occasional food names, thanks to the Sopranos. I dislike bitter espresso, and I prefer my coffee to be sweet and white as hell, just like me. I’m polite, I use please and thank you. My mobster rating is a big, fat goose egg.
However, two years ago, my growling stomach had been speaking much, much louder than my rapidly deteriorating conscience. With no legitimate career opportunities in sight, I’d agreed to join the Family business.
Which is how I ended up having a staring contest with a sparkly pink invitation currently shedding glitter all over my newest sweat pants.
“Damn it.” I sucked in a bunch of air and blew a hearty breath in the direction of my sparkled crotch. About fifty percent of the sprinkles vanished from my pants and found a new home all over the interior of my Chevy Lumina, a car so impossible to steer that I needed to do a three-point turn in order to merge onto the freeway.
I considered running over to the nearby gas station, which was owned by some relation of mine, to vacuum both my lap and the car, but decided against it for multiple reasons. The first was that I was late to work; the second—and most important—was that car services required effort and money, two things I was lacking this morning.
Most people wouldn’t be allowed to wear sweatpants to work unless they were a gym teacher or a yoga instructor, and as I was neither the recipient of a college diploma nor particularly bendable, I didn’t fall into either of those categories.
I was headed towards the Luzzi Family Laundromat. While in some cases one might be considered admirable and even borderline heroic for offering to help with their grandparents’ small business, in my case it was downright illegal.
The laundromat was a front for the St. Paul Mob, and my grandfather, Carlos Luzzi, was the Godfather of the Twin Cities branch. He’d moved up from the larger Chicago Mafia a while ago, for reasons unknown (but easy to suspect), and had set up shop here. Now I helped him track down any stolen ‘good stuff’ and find out why certain bodies were no longer alive.
I steered the Lumina carefully into the parking lot that the laundromat shared with 7-11, cranking the steering wheel hard enough to give my palms blisters. I was twenty minutes late for my shift at the front desk, which was a unique position of ‘coin changer’ for the legitimate patrons and ‘lookout’ for the Family members who may be using the back room for reasons I purposely ignored.
Running later by the second, I silenced my ringing phone and popped into the 7-11 to get a steaming cup of sugar and a dash of coffee. After filling the cup mostly with little marshmallows and fake frothed milk, I threw in a few packets of sweetener. In order to save calories where I could, I decided to use only two measly squirts of the non-fat creamer.
“Hello, Maria,” I greeted the sullen cashier. “How’s it going?”
“Do we have to do this?” She nodded at the donut rack. “Get them now, please. I’m only ringing you up once.”
I maybe blushed, but I grabbed three of the mini donuts. It was such a steal at only a dollar. I tossed some change on the counter and Maria handed me back a few pennies, tacking on an eye roll for good measure.
“Bye!” I rushed out the door and dropped the pennies into a homeless man’s cup.
Maria ignored me as usual.
I arrived at the door of the laundromat and realized my dilemma—I had both hands full, one with donuts and one with a gigantic coffee, and the door was a pull only. I squirmed and bent in half, feeling exceptionally incapable of living. Finally, after a long struggle with the handle, I’d hooked my pinky under the door and managed to pull it open an inch.
A rush of air nearly knocked the coffee from my hands as two Tasmanian devils flew from the laundromat, pushing the door open and slamming me straight in the noggin with the glass window.
Lacey: 0. Door: 1.
Blood spurted from my nose, but I couldn’t bring myself to set either of the treasures in my hands down. I’d need my energy now more than ever—the wooziness from blood loss would set in momentarily, I was sure. Fried dough and sugar was a great cure.
I lifted my forearm to my nose to try and stop the bleeding, but succeeded only in covering myself in blood. On the positive side, I managed to wedge my foot in the door and squeeze inside.
The laundromat was full, as it always is mid-morning on a Saturday. All of the patrons froze the second I walked through the door: Moms in yoga pants watched in horror, shielding their whites from my gushing nostrils, men surveyed me with morbid curiosity, and one toddler burst into a wailing cry so loud it caused the room to leap into action after a temporary standstill.
Clay, my friend and cousin, lumbered up from his perch on the stool behind the marble change counter and ushered me to the side. He was a rather large, over-sized child, with a face that could be handsome behind the pale sheen of a computer genius. He flipped his shaggy dark hair, and said, “Don’t bleed on the floor.”
“Tell da evil twids to watch where dey’re sprinting.” I nodded, clamping my nostrils shut with my fingers, at the two girls watching from outside the window with wide eyes and angelic expressions. I swear the devil was trapped inside their innocent little bodies.
They were my Uncle Nicky’s kids; one of them had blond ringlets framing her chubby cheeks and the other had a sheet of black hair falling halfway down her back. They were both five years old, but they were not actually twins. In fact, they came from completely different moms. Besides women, Nicky’s vices included gambling, drinking and fantasy football. Sometimes in that order.
Clay grunted. He fished a towel from behind the desk and handed it to me.
“Alwight. I tan tade ober dow,” I said, gesturing for him to move from the seat. As the Family hacker and computer fiend, Clay could move money in and out of the most secure banks in the world with his eyes closed. He could set up a booby trap in his sleep.
In fact, he’d been ‘fired’ from the business awhile back. The next day, a huge sum of Family funds magically disappeared (at the hands of an extremely competent, anonymous hacker). When Carlos started signing Clay’s paychecks once more, the money reappeared. Now Clay luxuriously worked on
e shift a week at the laundromat and pocketed a higher paycheck than anyone else.
I was often envious of Clay’s trek down easy street, but I also benefited from his cyber-expertise.
As roommates in a sketchy area of St. Paul, our rent split was rarely fifty-fifty. Clay had a bigger income, and I was good enough at math to convince him that I was broke and he was not, so I often squeaked by paying forty while he paid sixty. In return, I let him deck out our living room in blinking monitors and buzzing devices and barely ever complained when he left the toilet seat up or dishes in the sink.
Clay shook his head, already engrossed in a series of images on his screen. Like all of my relatives, Clay had a healthy gambling habit, which was often where most of his paycheck went. The only reason he stayed afloat was that he could often ‘coax’ the computers into letting him win with a few tweaks to the behind-the-scenes program.
He barely glanced up as he clicked furiously. “They wanna see you in the back.”
“The back room?” I’d never been invited past the coin changing station before.
“Yep.” Clay bit his lip and muttered an inappropriate word. He clicked his mouse as if trying to kill it.
“Alwight den, I’ll just go on back.” I took a few steps and looked backwards, double-checking that he wasn’t pulling my leg.
Clay wasn’t looking in my direction, though. He was distracted by a gangly redhead lurking outside the building. The kid looked to be about fifteen, his hair so bright it was painful to stare at. Kind of like the sun. The freckles on his face were so distinct and plentiful that it was impossible to tell whether he was pale with dark freckles, or dark-skinned with light freckles. He had monstrous square glasses, which blocked half of his face with their unbreakable-looking rims and lenses as thick as my pinky finger.
He noticed Clay and I staring and began to wave with vigorous pumps of his skinny little arms. Clay turned back to me, his movement as slow as a pig roasting over a fire, and his mouth open just as wide. I did a little shrug. Marissa and Clarissa, the evil twins, were also staring at the boy. They looked as if they considered him to be a particularly unusual and potentially deadly creature. The girls backed away as the redhead turned and spoke animatedly to them.
