Sex on Murder Island

1

Midtown Manhattan is a terrible place to hit rock bottom. Surrounded by hundreds of bowl restaurants . . . you know you actually can’t get food served on a plate here? They legally have to give it to you in a cardboard bowl that costs fifteen dollars. When they ask if you want bread with it, you can say yes, but know it’s a trap.

And yet there I was: broke, alone, and in Midtown during an August heat wave. To top it all off, I was in the middle of moving. I’d gotten up early to beat the sun, but the temperature was already ninety degrees outside. Humidity like soup. Of course the window AC unit was the first thing I’d been able to sell on Craigs­list. I was so angry at myself for only charging fifty dollars. That thing was worth its weight in gold. I should’ve held out for the highest bidder, but with a checking account balance of seventeen bucks, I found it hard to be economically strategic.

If you asked me three months ago if I would be in this situation, I would’ve laughed. Three months ago I was doing great. I—­well, my sexy alter ego Private Detective Luella van Horn—­had recently solved a big case, one that paid me two months’ rent, and I was even starting to date again. Well, I was swiping, but that takes bravery! How were so many men in New York City able to catch and pose with giant fish? Where were they getting these fish, the Hudson River? Seemed like red flags.

I’d been a social worker before I’d gone into the seedy world of private investigating. I’d been married, a homeowner even. But I threw it all away for an exciting life of tracking down bad guys and insisting they give back the dogs they stole from little old ladies. That’s most PI work, it turns out.

But the PI jobs just sort of stopped coming in. I figured maybe the criminal world had slowed down. But I read the papers, and I knew that wasn’t true. Crime was higher than ever. So why wasn’t I getting called? Blame it on a couple of bad reviews, or no word of mouth, or lack of TikTok. Hell, maybe someone at the bowl restaurants ratted me out for saying yes to bread. Whatever it was, I was running out of money fast.

My lease wasn’t up until November, but it was August, and I couldn’t afford this or next month’s rent. I made a deal with my landlord—­I’d give up my deposit if he let me out of my lease early. I was missing that deposit money right about now, but knowing my landlord, he would’ve kept it regardless.

So I sat there, sweat-­soaked, packing up my belongings into limp cardboard boxes. I’d just sealed the box labeled Kitchen 2 when the panic came back. My plan was to put my stuff in storage for a while and sleep on some friends’ couches until I could make enough money to get another place. But the sticky part was, well, I didn’t really have any friends. There was my neighbor Sophie, but she lived in a studio. There was no room for me, even if she wanted me there, which she made clear she did not. The only other people I knew were back on Staten Island, and I wasn’t on the best terms with any of them. I had reconnected with my old friend Lauren on Luella’s last case, but a cold call asking for indefinite lodging for me and my two cats? I didn’t foresee that going well.

I truly had nowhere to go.

But I would figure this out. It was Thursday, and I had a week and a half until I had to be out out. The first step was to get everything packed and into storage. I stood up and rubbed the knotty muscles around my jaw. My body was covered in sweat and dust. It was time to box up the office.

Office was a generous term. It’s a metal desk with two locking drawers and a corkboard I used for mapping clues from time to time. Plus a big, shaggy scrapbook where I kept all my press clippings. I flipped through the book absentmindedly, maybe to lightly torture myself. There were a lot of lost dogs and cheating spouses, sure, but there were also bigger cases. I’d done good work for a couple of high-­profile businesses, plus there were the Sex Island and Taylor Bell cases.

Look at all these jobs you used to have. What happened to you?

I paused on a page with a single business card in the plastic casing. In bold capital letters was the name ENDEAVORS.

That case had been a strange one from the start. I’d kept seeing those business cards everywhere I went. All they said was Endeavors, with a phone number underneath, and they were up everywhere. Posted in my laundromat and my coffeeshop, taped to the lampposts I regularly walked by. I thought it odd: these cards never said what the business did, but they were ubiquitous. When I looked into the company online, nothing came up.

Then one day I came home and found an Endeavors business card had been slipped under my door. I was starting to think someone from the company wanted to get in touch. Sometimes I’m bright like that.

I’d called the number, and to my surprise, a young woman picked up, though she refused to give her name.

“It seems like someone from Endeavors is trying to reach me. What do you guys want?”

“Hold one moment,” the woman said. A minute later I was on the phone with a man with a high, raspy voice. Joe Pesci–­esque.

The man had told me his name was F, “as in F off.” Real friendly type. F said he had a problem with his business partner, wanted to know if he was cheating him out of his fair share of the money. Eventually I tracked the partner down and confirmed what F had suspected. The business partner was having a grand old time, embezzling money from the company to such a degree I tipped off the NYPD. But something seemed odd about the whole thing—­it was almost too easy. I couldn’t help feeling like a pawn.

Looking at the card now brought it all back. Endeavors had to be some sort of front, though I never figured out what for. I never actually met F. In the end, I was told to pick up my check from an empty office on the fourteenth floor (which was technically the thirteenth floor) of an art deco building in Times Square. When I got off the elevator, I remember there were three hallways and I got lost on my way to the office. I tried calling the Endeavors number, but it’d already been disconnected.

When I finally found the office, the door was propped open but the lights were off. The word Endeavors and maybe a drawing of an animal were engraved in the marbled glass. My check was right where F said it’d be—­lying on the front desk. The whole situation gave me the heebie-jeebies. I grabbed my money and got the hell out of there. At least the check cleared.

But it always plagued me—­why did F target me specifically, and in such a bizarre way? The crooked businessman I’d reported had to serve time. In the paper, F wasn’t listed as a business partner. And what’s really bizarre: The check was signed by the crooked business partner, Dave McCarthy. Why would the man pay me to send himself to jail?

My hands were sticking to the laminated pages of the scrapbook. It was too hot to go down memory lane. I needed to cool down, so I grabbed a bag of frozen peas from the freezer and rubbed it all over my body. This was a trick I’d learned on summer stakeouts, sitting in a hot car, slathering myself with a thawing bag of frozen vegetables. It’s actually a life hack, and if you think it’s weird, then congratulations on working in a climate-­controlled environment. You’ve made it.

Dripping everywhere, I checked my phone. One missed call from my ex-­husband, Leslie. I was married to him before I started moonlighting as Private Investigator Luella van Horn, back when I was Marie Jones, a social worker on Staten Island. If you’re doing the math, yes his name is Leslie Jones, like the woman who was on Saturday Night Live. He lived to tell people his full name then watch them get excited, like they were meeting her, not some random engineer from New York’s trash heap. This was the person I willingly married. At one point, I think we were even in love.

I’d called Leslie in a moment of desperation a couple of nights ago, thinking if anyone would take my sorry ass in, it’d be him. But he didn’t pick up, and I didn’t blame him. It’d been a few days, so I figured we both planned to forget that I’d called.

Seeing his name on my phone screen, I felt shame stinging my throat. I wiped the bag of peas around my neck and took a deep breath. Unfortunately, I was still in that moment of desperation—­indeed, it was an ongoing moment. Maybe he was feeling generous. Maybe things would work out. I called him back.

It rang four times, and I was about to hang up when Leslie answered.

“Hello, Marie! So nice to hear from you! I was just in the city. Can you believe that?”

“Wow, we were both in New York City, where there are eight million people on any given day. What a crazy coincidence,” I said. I reminded myself to cool it on the sarcasm. I needed him more than he needed me.

“Did you mean to call me a few nights ago?” he asked.

“Yeah . . . I—Um, Leslie, I’m in a bad spot.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, I need somewhere to stay for a couple weeks . . . or more,” I mumbled.