by Mike Markel
A couple of businesswomen my age came in and ordered some cappuccinos to go. They were talking loudly. A young guy working at his laptop looked up, annoyed.
“Your dad doing better?”
Alicia took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “He’s still in the hospital. I go over there every day. We’ve had some good talks. But it’s hard. He’s still crying all the time about what he did—you know, when I accused Lake of rape. I try to assure him that I understand he was under a lot of pressure at the time, and how I don’t blame him.”
“That’s a good attitude you’ve got.”
She took a long moment. “I want him to get better,” she said. “His apology was heartfelt, and I want him to get better.”
She hadn’t quite worked out the language, but I think she did realize that he had let her down badly. I decided to change the subject. “When you told Max that Lake had come to see you, how did he respond?”
“He said it was terrible what had happened to Lake, and that he would do anything he could to help him.”
“And you thought he was going to help you convince the coach to get Lake into some kind of program?”
She shook her head, like she was a fool for not knowing Max’s real intentions. “I had no reason to think Max would want to hurt Lake.”
“Max never told you how he felt about you?”
“Never. He never said anything like that.” She paused. “But you know how sometimes you can tell from how a guy looks at you? For just a second, I thought I saw it in his eyes. I remember thinking that if he had feelings for me maybe he would try to help Lake.” She shook her head. “I really screwed up.”
“That’s ridiculous,” I said. “I’m sure you’ve had guys coming on to you since you were fourteen. There’s no way you could tell which ones were crazy.”
“Nice of you to say that.”
“So Coach Baxter and the A.D. were telling the truth that they had nothing to do with killing Lake or the two others,” I said.
“Yeah, that’s true. And Carl Davis, too. But the only thing I really care about is that my dad had nothing to do with it. I knew that about him. I knew that all along. He couldn’t have hurt anyone.”
“That’s really good,” I said to her.
She was looking down at her cup of coffee. “I wanted to ask you something.” She raised her gaze.
“Sure.”
“Couple of nights ago I had a talk with my husband.”
“Yeah?”
“I’d never told him anything about my relationship with Lake. I laid it all out—the pregnancy, the adoption, everything.” The tears came now.
“What happened?”
“He moved out yesterday.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.” I took a second. “It could be the shock of learning all that stuff at once. When he has a chance to let it sink in and think about it …”
“Are you married, Karen?”
“Used to be.”
“What do you think I should do?”
I half-smiled. “I’m the last person you want to come to for marriage advice. I screwed up my marriage—and every other relationship I’ve ever had with a man.”
“What should I do?”
“Tell me what you’ve been doing this week.”
“Nothing. I’ve spent a lot of time at the hospital. I showed some houses. Took my daughter to a birthday party.”
I raised my eyebrows. “That’s what I would do.”
She looked disappointed, like she was hoping for a plan. “My husband knows that I love him. But I told him I used to love Lake. If he can’t deal with that … well, he’ll have to decide what he wants to do. If he wants to come back, then I’ll have to decide if I want him back.” She took a deep breath and brushed a strand of hair back behind her ear. “One way or another,” she said, trying to smile, “I guess I’ll have to let it work itself out.”
Which was smarter than anything I could have told her. “It will work itself out. It’ll take some time. But you’re gonna be okay, Alicia.”
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About the Author
Mike Markel is the author of the Detectives Seagate and Miner Mystery series:
Big Sick Heart (Book 1)
Deviations (Book 2)
The Broken Saint (Book 3)
Three-Ways (Book 4)
Fractures (Book 5)
The Reveal (Book 6)
He lives in Boise, Idaho, with his wife.
Thank you for taking time to read Players: A Detectives Seagate and Miner Mystery. If you enjoyed it, please consider telling your friends or posting a short review. Word of mouth is an author’s best friend.
MikeMarkel.com
The Detectives Seagate and Miner Mystery Series
To sample or buy any of these titles, visit Mike Markel’s page on Amazon.
Visit MikeMarkel.com.
BIG SICK HEART (Book 1)
Bad decisions have finally caught up with police detective Karen Seagate. Her drinking has destroyed her marriage and hurt her job performance, and the chief is looking for any excuse to fire her. Still, she and her new partner, a young Mormon guy who seems to have arrived from another century or another planet, intend to track down whoever killed Arlen Hagerty, the corrupt leader of Soul Savers. Clawing his way to the top, Hagerty created plenty of enemies, including his wife, his mistress, his debate partner, the organization’s founder, and the politician he was blackmailing. When Seagate causes a car crash that sends a young girl to Intensive Care, the chief thinks he finally has his opportunity. But even the chief can’t believe what Seagate does when she finally catches the killer.
DEVIATIONS (Book 2)
Former police detective Karen Seagate is drinking herself to oblivion and having dangerous sex with losers from the bar when the new police chief tracks her down. The brutal rape and murder of a state senator by a lone-wolf extremist gives Seagate a chance to return to the department, but the new chief has set down some rules, and Seagate is not good with rules. At this point, she is just trying to stay alive. With nothing left to lose and nobody left to trust—not even her partner, Ryan—Seagate goes off the grid to find the killer. She doesn’t care that she will be fired again. She has much bigger problems, now that she has been captured inside the neo-Nazi compound.
THE BROKEN SAINT (Book 3)
Seagate and Miner investigate the murder of Maricel Salizar, a young Filipino exchange student at Central Montana State. The most obvious suspect is her boyfriend, who happens to have gang connections. And then there’s Amber, a fellow student who’s obviously incensed at Maricel for a sexual indiscretion involving Amber’s boyfriend. But the evidence keeps leading Seagate and Miner back to the professor, an LDS bishop who hosted her in his dysfunctional home. Seagate takes it in stride that the professor can’t seem to tell the truth about his relationship with the victim, but her devout partner, Ryan Miner, believes that a high-ranking fellow Mormon who violates a sacred trust deserves special punishment.
THREE-WAYS (Book 4)
When grad student Austin Sulenka is found strangled, nude on his bed, the first question for Seagate and Miner is whether it was an auto-asphyxiation episode gone bad. Evidence strewn around his small apartment suggests that he spent his last night with at least different women. Each of them and their other partners had motives to kill the philandering graduate student. As Seagate and her partner try to unravel the complicated couplings, she finds herself in a three-way relationship that threatens to destroy her own fragile sobriety.
FRACTURES (Book 5)
The fracking boom in eastern Montana has minted a handful of new millionaires and one billionaire: Lee Rossman, the president of Rossman Mining and the leading philanthropist in the small city of Rawlings. Rossman is the last person Detectives Seagate and Miner expected to discover dead in the alley next to a strip club. Later, when Lee’s son is found out at the rigs, with significant internal injuries, numerous broken bones, and a belly full of fracking liquid, the detectives k
now the two crimes are related but can’t figure out how. Seagate and Miner must try to solve a mystery awash in enormous fortunes, thwarted ambitions, and grudges both old and new.
THE REVEAL (Book 6)
Many citizens in the small college town of Rawlings, Montana, are unsurprised to learn that Virginia Rinaldi, the world-famous sociologist, was murdered. A few are secretly pleased. Her political enemies knew her as an ideologue who used insults, threats, and blackmail to promote her unpopular social views. When Detectives Seagate and Miner begin their investigation, they discover that a local prostitute had recently moved into the professor’s house, angering Rinaldi’s college-age son. And when the community learns that the prostitute made a lesbian porn video with one of Rinaldi’s students, tensions on campus erupt, leading to more bloodshed. Drawn into a horrifying world of sexual violence and exploitation, Seagate devises a plan to flush out the killer. The plan appears to be on track—until Seagate unwittingly jeopardizes the life of her partner, Ryan Miner.
PLAYERS (Book 7)
The death of Lake Williams, a former football player at Central Montana State, in his squalid tent in a homeless camp looks to Seagate and Miner like a routine heroin overdose. Soon, however, they discover that someone hired a courier to deliver the uncut heroin, knowing that Lake would shoot up and die instantly. When a second body turns up, and then a third, the evidence points to the head coach and the other leaders of the football program, who appear to be covering up a secret that would destroy the program. When a man comes forward, claiming to have committed numerous felonies on behalf of the program over many years, the detectives don’t know whether he is the killer or merely a decoy in an elaborate misdirection play. In a heart-pounding final confrontation, Seagate and Miner confront the killer—and realize they have walked right into the trap.
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