A CHANCE AT THE MOON - FIRST CHAPTER - LINDA LEE GREENE'S NEW NOVEL

TITLE: A CHANCE AT THE MOON

AUTHOR: LINDA LEE GREENE

GENRE: ROMANTIC THRILLER

PURCHASE LINK: 

https://www.amazon.com/CHANCE-AT-MOON-Betrayal-Murder-ebook/dp/B07Z44YN9X/

One

C

olumbus, Ohio, October 7, 2002—The broad tree-lined avenues leading to the courthouse in the heart of downtown Columbus were crammed bumper-to-bumper with cars of spectators blowing their horns and thrusting middle fingers at one another through open windows. Traffic cops were busy maintaining order. The trial of the person charged the year before with the fatal shooting of one of the city’s most prominent citizens, businesswoman and philanthropist Inez Montoyo, was the enticement for the swarm. Ms. Montoyo’s daughter, acclaimed Broadway and Hollywood actress Olivia Montoyo Simms, was to give her testimony on this the opening day of the proceedings, and was the prime quarry the C’bus citizens had in their sites. It was the job of Nicholas Plato and his twin brother Tobias to shield her from the throng. As the watch on his wrist marked off minutes perilously close to the slated time of the commencement of the trial, Nicholas was growing concerned about whether or not the driver of their limousine would get them to the courthouse on time.

The judge thwacked her gavel on the little pad on her desktop and opened the trial officially. “Crack, crack, crack,” like gunshots the sound brought the room to attention, and Olivia jerked in the chair beside Nicholas. Just like Judge Judy on TV, Nicholas thought to himself, and then he gathered Olivia’s pale cold hands in his large palm and felt her settle into his reassuring touch. He had been worried about the skills of the limousine driver needlessly, as it turned out. The man had pulled some maneuvers that could have won him a spot as a stunt driver with a Hollywood movie studio, and had delivered them to the designated entrance of the building with time to spare. At that point, Nicholas and Tobias had worked for Olivia as her personal bodyguards for more than a year, duties that required their presence 24 hours a day, under her roof, and at her beck and call. The brothers occupied a separate wing of her home in a posh suburb of Las Vegas, a sprawling ranch she had purchased a few weeks after the death of her mother on July 13, 2001. Later that same year, she had sold her flat in Manhattan and her home in Los Angeles. She appeared content to set roots in Las Vegas, leaving behind her acting career, it seemed, as well.

Having to be practically nose-to-nose with the assassin for the first time since the murder, and reliving its retched details in the courtroom testimonies, of course proved worse for Olivia than the awful anticipation of it had been. It was an age-old story of an aggrieved employee taking revenge on his employer. A guilty verdict was brought in late that afternoon. Olivia elected to return to Las Vegas that same evening rather than staying in town and visiting with relatives and friends, some of whom had positioned themselves among the courtroom spectators and had exchanged glances and nods with her throughout the long day. A shaken Olivia and her solicitous bodyguards boarded the private jet one of her wealthy cronies had provided for their roundtrip flight, and departed Columbus as nightfall swallowed the horizon. Upon takeoff, she lowered the shade on the jet’s window that gave view below of the tight cluster of buildings and streets alight with the late hour, and wished never to be called back to her hometown again. She put the thought of Columbus and the trial out of her mind, and wondered if “Nicky” and “Toby,” as she called her bodyguards, would be up for a late-night jaunt to one of the casinos upon their arrival in Las Vegas. She pulled the vial of pain pills from her handbag, shook two of them into her palm, and popped them into her mouth—no chaser required. His tired grunt preceding his movements, Tobias pushed out of the seat next to hers, found a bottle of water in the jet’s galley kitchen, and delivered it to Olivia, its top twisted open. “Thanks,” she said, and then took a delicate sip. Cupping her hands over her aching belly, she laid her head back and closed her eyes.   

All through the following months, the tragedy cloyed with little letup in Olivia’s psyche. As July 13, 2003, the second anniversary of her mother’s death, drew near, Olivia’s body had long been displaying undeniable indicators of her soul’s reckoning with her, most notably in chronic abdominal distress and changes to the left side of her lovely face, in a drawn corner of her mouth, a sleepy eye, a narrowed nostril, features faintly askew as if she had recovered imperfectly from a slight stroke. Oddly, rather than detracting from her beauty, the imbalance in her face rendered her beguiling in a way different than before, fascinating in the way a freeway pile-up transfixes onlookers, both of them having death, or at least, mayhem in common. There was more to it than that, however. Loss was plain to see in her face, as was guilt from time to time—yes, guilt, because a determined vein of speculation threaded through the population as to whether or not she had had a hand in shaping her mother’s death, with or without intention. The investigation of the case had revealed that Olivia and her mother had been estranged from each other for several years, only to have reached a truce in the months prior to the murder. A sidebar to the situation was the fact that the murderer had been Olivia’s lover when she was only sixteen, a relationship to which her mother had put a stop. While Olivia had managed to put it behind her and move on with her life, the boyfriend had not done so, it seemed clear. That he had stayed on as an employee of Madam Montoyo’s after the fact unleashed rampant conjecture regarding the meaning behind it. Subsequent to the murder, the issue pricked Olivia like a thorn in her conscience now and then, but usually languished there, unexamined, and therefore, unresolved, as indeed it remained an unanswered tidbit among followers of the case.

In the face of all that had transpired, the essential life lessons the tragedy had to teach Olivia seemed to have failed to penetrate her conscious mind, at least in the aspect of amending her behavior, apparent in a stubborn ignorance or defiance unmistakable in the backward thrust of her shoulders, the high tilt of her chin, and her nightly pursuit of Las Vegas distractions. There was no hint that her best self would win in the end, due in no small way to her reliable attraction to risk-taking. Her youth and her penchant for recklessness had paid off big time in the past, markedly in her determined, meteoric rise in the film industry while still a teenager, but with the murder and its consequences, life had placed heavy odds against her.

The stakes notwithstanding, it had to be played out. It had already begun—something had been building in the atmosphere, something of moment, some extraordinary event about to be set in motion—some deciding factor. Like air pressure rising, clouds banking, seas roiling in advance of a menacing storm, it churned around Olivia. Nicholas understood that it had long been decided that he and Tobias would play supporting roles to her central one in the coming affair. In wary expectation, Nicholas waited in the wings for the remaining actors to appear.

Lights!      Camera!       Action!