A Time For Us (Michael Kaplan Mysteries)

by David W. Cowles

  Morgan’s mother had a successful heart bypass operation and was discharged from the hospital with a clean bill of health, though her doctor did put her on a low-cholesterol diet and a strict regimen of exercise.

  After ridding Crest Resorts of all the corporate directors, thanks to derogatory dossiers found in Rick Lacey’s locked filing cabinet in the Security Department, Marshall Brendan worked around the clock trying to do as much as possible himself. Crest Resorts prospered under his tight control, but Marshall could not keep up with the pace and suffered a massive heart attack. He was confined to bed for at least a year, with strict controls on his diet. By happenstance, Mrs. Penny and Marshall Brendan had the same cardiologist.

  The bondholders took over operation of Crest Resorts and directed Hibdon, Hyde, Steinberg and Company to install a new set of corporate directors. After instituting golden umbrellas for themselves, the directors sold Crest Resorts to Sharpton Corporation, a nationwide chain of hotels.

  Michael Kaplan entered a state of extreme depression, caused both by his divorce from Myra and by Kimberly’s death, for which he felt he was solely responsible. Over and over in his mind, Michael kept castigating himself that, if only he had not been so impulsive, if only he had heeded Mark Caruso’s warning and not entered Lois Lewis’s apartment, Kimberly would still be alive. His guilt was magnified because he knew Kimberly had sacrificed her own life to save his.

  Michael took a leave of absence from the Las Vegas Times. He leased a desolate log cabin in the mountains of Southern Utah and, as an unshaven recluse, spent his days fishing for rainbow trout, his nights studying the Talmud. Michael did not know the cabin was the same one where Rick Lacey brainwashed Lois Lewis and bit off her nipples.

  Rick Lacey had stored the blackmail videos taken by the hidden camera in the Kaplan bedroom in a locked filing cabinet in his office, the same one in which he kept the derogatory dossiers. The DVDs were turned over to the Surveillance Department for evaluation. When Morgan Penny realized what they were, she immediately destroyed them.

  Myra Brotsky (nee Kaplan) and Morgan Penny quit their jobs at Blue Hawaii. Morgan was never questioned about the $785,000 she had won. The women invested the money prudently, primarily in common stock of Sharpton Corporation, which paid a substantial annual dividend, and lived comfortably from the income.

  After Mrs. Penny recovered from her operation, Myra and Morgan were joined in marriage (though not legally) by Rabbi Hellmann. They took an extended honeymoon trip to Cancun. To Myra’s surprise, they were assigned to the same villa at the Caribbean Sands resort where she’d vacationed with Michael and Kimberly. As before, only one of the two bedrooms was utilized.

  The name Morgan, in Welsh, literally means sea dweller, and, true to her name, Morgan loved the water. Especially when she and Myra were frolicking in the pool or the blue crystalline waters of the Caribbean.

  The name Myra, in Greek, means fate or destiny. Morgan told Myra she knew, from the first moment they met, they were destined to be together.

  Myra took Morgan in her arms. From the balcony of their villa they watched a full moon rising over the sea. A gentle warm breeze whispered over their nude bodies. Their lips brushed, gently at first, then with increasing fervor as they became ablaze with flames of passion. “I love you, Morgan, for all eternity.” Myra murmured. “From now until the Twelfth of Never, it will always be A TIME FOR US.”

  A note from the author

  Dear Reader

  Thank you for buying A TIME FOR US. I hope you enjoy reading this book as much as I enjoyed writing it for you.

  My books are available exclusively in Kindle format from Amazon.com. For complete information about my other Kindle titles (fiction and nonfiction) and to read free sample chapters, please click here.

  To read my blog The Cowles Report, please click here.

  To read my brief biography, please click here.

  To write me, please click here. I’d love to hear from you!

  Sincerely

  THE MICHAEL KAPLAN MYSTERIES

  The Michael Kaplan Mysteries are a new generation of novels. They’re thrillers with the tempo of fast-paced R-rated movies, filled with gorgeous wanton women, sleazy, amoral villains, rapid-fire action, multiple killings, sexual encounters, and graphic violence.

  Michael Kaplan is in his early thirties. He’s tall, dark, and handsome; intelligent, educated, and urbane. A woman-charmer, not a womanizer. Masculine, not macho. But Michael has major character flaws that make him fallible, culpable, and a thoroughly different type of mystery hero.

  He’s completely clueless (and therefore helpless) when dealing with the seductive wiles of the beautiful, lustful, sexually predatory women he encounters, until it’s too late for him to avoid entanglement. His naiveté and compete lack of judgment when dealing with the opposite sex keep him in constant trouble.

  Although Kaplan is a law school graduate who passed the California bar exam on the first try, he’s never practiced in the profession. His legal training entitles him to quote the law. His lack of experience causes him to sometimes misquote it, and he frequently proves the adage that “A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.”

  Kaplan isn’t particularly ambitious—in fact, he’s rather lazy. He works beneath his education and abilities as a restaurant critic for the Las Vegas Times. The newspaper’s managing editor continually prods and goads Michael into taking on additional responsibilities—which he reluctantly accepts, with an attitude falling somewhere between stubbornness, obstinacy, and recalcitrance—and with good reason. Michael has an uncanny ability to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. When bodies are found, convincing evidence usually points toward him.

  In the Michael Kaplan Mysteries, David W. Cowles, a longtime resident of Las Vegas, Nevada, captures the essence and flavor of the exciting “Entertainment Capital of the World” and its surroundings—the glitz, glamour, and grit as seen through the eyes of tourists and gamblers; an accurate insight into the fascinating day-to-day operation of Las Vegas casinos; and the ordinary hometown known to locals.

  Readers familiar with Las Vegas will recognize the famous hotels, casinos, and restaurants upon which fictional counterparts are modeled.

  From the prologues through the teasing, I-want-more epilogues, the Michael Kaplan Mysteries abound with strange but interesting three-dimensional characters; demented, despotic, obsessed villains; exciting, romantic locales; constant plot twists and turns; clues, false clues, red herrings, surprises, and gotchas; and an abundance of subtle humor, wordplay, and suggestive repartee.

  Seldom are things as they seem in the intriguing, fast-moving Kaplan mysteries. The good guys sometimes turn out to be the bad guys—and vice versa.

  Except for one deliberate exception (Cowles never reveals who committed the original crime in Blue Goodness) by the end of the books all the myriad clues fall neatly into place. There aren’t any dusty trails leading to a dead end.

  Many of the realistic plots, sub-plots, and devices—such as the slot route operator scandal and the newspaper joint operating agreement in Buridan’s Ass and the attempted murder of a veterinarian in Blue Goodness—were inspired by actual events that transpired in Las Vegas … examples of art imitating life.

  But then … numerous times, shortly after wholly fictional passages in the novels were written, strikingly similar incidents actually occurred in Las Vegas and were reported by the local media. To the author and those who read early drafts of the manuscripts, it was beginning to seem that putting an idea on paper destined it to happen.

  Cowles wrote in The Tastevin of dead bodies found in the desert. A few weeks later, newspapers reported a like occurrence.

  In Buridan’s Ass, he wrote about mysterious green lights in the skies north of Las Vegas. The words were barely typed into Cowles’ computer when several casinos installed lasers on top of their buildings and residents many miles away complained about being kept awake at night by laser beams reflecting off clouds and mount
ains.

  In Blue Goodness, dead bodies are dumped down the shaft of an abandoned mine near the small town of Jean. A couple of months after the story was on paper, a real murder victim was found at the bottom of an abandoned dry well—also near Jean.

  Many other incidents in the novels were closely paralleled by later actual events—a boating accident on Lake Mead where the bodies were never recovered, gold ingots stashed in an abandoned mine, a bigamist exposed, and so on.

  Is Cowles psychic? He maintains he is not. Still—

  In Buridan’s Ass, a gaming industry insider—a technician who has knowledge of and access to slot machines—reprograms the machines’ computer PROMs so that, by playing coins in a secret, varied sequence, he can trigger big jackpots and thereby cheat casinos at his convenience.

  Michael Gaughan, owner of many Las Vegas hotel-casino resorts, read Cowles’ manuscript for Buridan’s Ass.

  “You’ve written a great story—lots of fun and suspense and excitement,” Gaughan said. “It’s quite a page-turner. But of course, that slot machine scam could never be pulled off. The method you thought up for gaffing the machines wouldn’t work in real life.”

  Fact: Ronald D. Harris, a Nevada Gaming Control Board employee, was arrested and found guilty of modifying slot machine PROMs in order to score big jackpots illegally in the exact manner described fictionally in Buridan’s Ass—an exquisite example of life imitating art!

  Tastevin

  Book One of the Michael Kaplan Mysteries

  A bottle of bad wine starts Michael Kaplan and his girlfriend Myra Brotsky off on a wild jaunt followed by suspected killers and the police. The action builds to a cataclysmic climax filled with lust and a shocking revelation.

  Buridan’s Ass

  Book Two of the Michael Kaplan Mysteries

  When Michael Kaplan—who writes an advice column for the Las Vegas Times—receives a letter from a woman whose husband has disappeared, he decides to investigate. Soon Michael finds himself the chief suspect in a horrific murder. Buridan’s Ass is filled with maniacal killers and a complex scheme to cheat Las Vegas casinos.

  Blue Goodness

  Book Three of the Michael Kaplan Mysteries

  Michael Kaplan’s marriage to Myra fails to deter the advances of two predatory women—his assistant at the Las Vegas Times, Kimberly Cohen, and real estate agent Soozie Snyder. When Soozie relates a wild tale about dead bodies dumped down an abandoned mine shaft, Michael decides to investigate. That’s when his troubles begin—with Myra, who catches him with Kimberly in a compromising situation, and with the police, when evidence implicates Michael in an attempted murder.

  A Time For Us

  Book Four of the Michael Kaplan Mysteries

  A psychotic serial killer is running rampant, murdering and hideously disfiguring employees of Blue Hawaii, a Las Vegas hotel and casino. When Michael investigates the crimes for the Las Vegas Times, he discovers his wife, Myra, may be the killer’s next victim. Be sure you have ample free time when you start reading A Time For Us, for you won’t want to put the book down until the tumultuous ending.

  OTHER FICTION

  NONFICTION

  COOKBOOKS

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  Twenty-Four

  Twenty-Five

  Twenty-Six

  Twenty-Seven

  Twenty-Eight

  Twenty-Nine

  Thirty

  Thirty-One

  Thirty-Two

  Thirty-Three

  Thirty-Four

  Thirty-Five

  Thirty-Six

  Thirty-Seven

  Thirty-Eight

  Thirty-Nine

  Forty

  Epilogue

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  Twenty-Four

  Twenty-Five

  Twenty-Six

  Twenty-Seven

  Twenty-Eight

  Twenty-Nine

  Thirty

  Thirty-One

  Thirty-Two

  Thirty-Three

  Thirty-Four

  Thirty-Five

  Thirty-Six

  Thirty-Seven

  Thirty-Eight

  Thirty-Nine

  Forty

  Epilogue