Suzanne Beecher

Dear Reader,

It was a grand feast: turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes and gravy, cinnamon sweet potatoes, Skunk Beans, shrimp salad, fresh cranberries, coleslaw, deviled eggs, green beans with tomato, steamed carrots, pumpkin and cherry pies with whipped cream. And once again this year my grandson rolled pie crust and made the pumpkin pies. They were amazing!

One day it's Thanksgiving festivities, the next morning "Jingle Bells" is streaming into my living room, and after Santa makes his deliveries, we'll be toasting another New Year. It all happens so quickly, so I decided before things get moving too fast, I'm taking
a time out.

Holidays create memories, but are they really the memories I cherish? The ones that have stayed with me throughout the years? When I sit back and think about the most memorable gifts I've ever received, I think of my grandparents. The gifts Grandma and Grandpa Hale gave me weren't underneath the tree. It was the time they spent with me throughout the year, doing seemingly nothing special, yet those gifts are the memories I carry with me through my life, and they've helped me become the person I am today. The way Grandma and Grandpa made me feel, inspires me to find ways to make other people feel those "gifts" too.

Thanks for reading with me. It's so good to read with friends.

Suzanne Beecher
Suzanne@firstlookbookclub.com

P. S. This week we're giving away 10 copies of the book The Italian Secret: A Novel by Tara Moss. Click here to enter for your chance to win. 

PROLOGUE

Leichhardt, Sydney, Australia, 1907

The young woman woke with a start, torn violently from troubled dreams by a banging that split the night. Her heart was pounding in her chest like a creature scrambling to escape, rushing blood and her panicked heartbeat loud in her ears.

Ba-bang . . . Bang bang . . .

The hammering wasn't only the sound of her heart, she realized as she came back into her body, remembering where she was. She was in her bed, had been sleeping, and her younger brother was beating on her bedroom door, screaming her name at the top of his lungs.

She sat up and rubbed her eyes, willing her heart to slow to a steady pace. Above her, the painting of the Madonna was watching, serene and all-forgiving, glowing faintly in the pale moonlight coming through her window. It was late, long after her little brother's bedtime, and he was wailing about something. What was the time?

Not far off midnight, said the clock. Why in heaven's name was he up? She scarcely understood one word in three, such was his rage, but what she heard was enough to start her heart hammering again.

I'm in trouble. Real trouble.

Mamma and Papà had been arguing downstairs into the night, and now her father was going to send her away to the old country, her little brother said through the door between angry sobs. It was all because she had lain with some stupid Protestant and was fool enough to get pregnant, and now she was going to be sent away.

This ugly narrative, devoid of the love that should have been at its center, was repeated with varying levels of intensity, half a dozen different ways, until her brother ran out of puff and she heard him collapse against the door, bawling uncontrollably.

Poor boy, she thought, her heart aching. How could he understand?

She pulled back the chair from where she had slid it under the knob, looking for respite from her father's anger, and as she opened the door her brother fell into the room, sprawling at her feet, his chest heaving. She knelt next to him and tried to comfort him, but no sooner had he wiped his eyes than he was on his feet again, yelling into her face. "Puttana! Puttana! Puttana!" he said, repeating the slur that he'd heard their father say, and with that he punched her squarely in the mouth, splitting her bottom lip and sending her staggering backward. Blood flowed freely, staining her nightgown.

She held her face with a trembling hand, shocked.

His jaw fell open as he stared at her, defiant yet scared at what he'd wrought, his face streaked with tears. He brought up a hand and wiped it over his cheeks, then angrily wiped it on his pajamas. He was just a boy and already filled with such violence. Such shame.

"Papà said you made your bed, and now you must lie in it. So lie in it," the little boy spat, pushing his sister into the bed so that she hit her head on the hard wooden frame, before he turned and ran.

"Puttana! Puttana! Puttana!" he shouted again as he ran into the dark hallway of the family home.

She could only hold her face and watch.

In time she heard footsteps on the stairs. It would be her father, perhaps. She pulled herself up and closed the door to her bedroom, putting the chair back in place to give her shelter until daybreak.

In the morning her brother refused to come out of his bedroom, even as she was taken from the house. She called at his door and he did not answer.

"Addio, fratello mio. Te amo, mi mancherai. Mi dispiace," she said softly as her mother and father led her away.

Goodbye, my brother. I love you, I'll miss you. I'm sorry.

One

Sydney, 1948

Private investigator Billie Walker did not much care for smoking as a daily habit, fashionable though it had become. It made her feel dependent, or perhaps like she was becoming her father. But there were "smoking days," as she liked to call them.

This was one of them.

She took a drag on her Lucky Strike and exhaled with cool irritation. She did so dislike it when the husbands showed up like this. She leaned on the edge of the reception desk, wearing her nipwaisted navy skirt suit and tilt hat with the same ease a soldier might wear a uniform that had seen him through many battles. Her dark wavy hair was immaculate against her pale skin, her lips expertly defined by her favored Tussy's Fighting Red lipstick. Her observant blue-green eyes were clear.

Providing sharp contrast, the man who had barged in and was standing over her with as much menace as he could summon had a five-o'clock shadow at eleven in the morning. His eyes were red rimmed, his light brown hair needed a comb, and his breath spoke of a late visit to a local drinking hole or an overused hip flask, or likely both. This was a man who had not slept. And although he wore a costly wool- blend suit, it was stained with both grime and liquor. His once- white shirt was crumpled with sweat and hung slightly untucked, and he broadcast his anger with the abandon of a snarling hound.

In short, Billie Walker was unimpressed.

Behind her stillness and restraint, behind her cigarette, she was a coiled snake.

"Yes, I imagine you are displeased, Mr. Elliott," she offered languidly, exhaling a thick cloud so it billowed out between them. He had, after all, quite brought his predicament upon himself.

Mr. Elliott coughed.

Just behind him the front door of Billie's agency was emblazoned with the name B. Walker Private Inquiries across a frosted-glass pane. Today, however, her business was clearly not quite private enough. Regrettably, the well-muscled assistant on whose desk she presently leaned was absent. Yet there she stayed, facing off with the husband of one of her clients, casually placing her body between the irritating man who huffed before her and the door to her private office.

He was not getting in there. The door would remain closed.

Had she been religiously inclined, she might have prayed it stayed that way.

Though spouses rarely wandered in here, any time a client's cheating husband discovered he was being tailed by a female PI, Billie Walker and her agency were not hard to find. She was, after all, Sydney's most famous—or infamous—private investigator. Her new agent was also a woman, and an Aboriginal woman at that. They stood out. All up, it was a small miracle this kind of thing—angry husbands standing off in her office—did not happen with greater frequency. But what kind of miracle would it take to get him out of there? Billie had a long-awaited appointment with Detective Inspector Hank Cooper in three-quarters of an hour, and she had no intention of arriving out of breath.

"I . . . I won't stand for this," the man blustered. "Following me around and causing trouble. You don't seem to realize who I am!"

Mr. Andrew J. Elliott had arrived with the typical bravado of an entitled husband, fueled by Dutch courage, and now, having not received the response he clearly felt he deserved, he was devolving into an angry caricature, face reddening, fists clenched, as though he might soon pop his cap. Billie had seen this before. He might take a swing at her, but so long as she kept her eyes on him, she knew in his current state he would almost certainly miss.

She was faster. She could take him if she had to.

As Mr. Elliott continued his rant, Billie spared a glance at Shyla Davis, her junior agent. She was new to the work, still a touch uneasy about it, and was watching their exchange silently from the corner of the office reception, her eyes large and striking against her dark skin. Billie had seen her shine in a crisis, swinging an axe that had seemed as large as she was, but hoped it wouldn't come to such a dramatic climax today.

Samuel Baker, of the aforementioned muscles, had ducked out to collect Billie's newspapers and he would be back any moment-sooner rather than later would be preferable. Most men took one look at Sam and simply slunk off. There were men who did that when looking at Billie too—something in her blue-green eyes, she was told—but apparently not everyone was so wise. It wasn't that Billie and Shyla couldn't handle this interloper; it was just that Billie didn't want to waste energy with a pointless scuffle, and she did not, above all, wish to tear her favorite new suit.

"Mr. Elliott," Billie finally interrupted, having run out of patience. "You have made your feelings known, and your views have been duly registered. Why don't you go home and get some rest. You will doubtless hear from your wife's lawyers in due course."

"Really, you can't possibly believe the word of this . . . of this . . ." He looked to Shyla Davis accusingly.

Billie scowled. "As a matter of fact I do believe the word of my esteemed colleague in all matters, including yours," she interjected before he could go on. "Though I hardly need to, considering the photographs."

"Photographs?" At this he blanched.

Billie smiled a smile as pretty as a 'Vogue' cover but with steel behind the ivories. "Oh yes, photographs." She let that hang in the air for a moment. As an insurance man, he would know perfectly well the impact of photographic evidence. "I do hope it was worth it for you. It looked like you got to know each other quite well."

Mr. Elliott gaped, taking some moments to recover. Then he narrowed his eyes and stood back, squaring his suit jacket. The prospect of photographs seemed to have sobered him somewhat. "I don't know what you mean. And what business is it of yours what I do with my time, and with whom?"

"It is my business in the literal sense. Your wife is seeking a divorce. She is well within her rights, as you have so clearly demonstrated."

His fists flexed and clenched. His wife's bid for freedom had become news to him only quite recently, Billie guessed. It may have been what saw him go for an ill-timed bender and make this unwise visit when he should have been at his own office, no doubt being insufferable to his secretary.

"Some woman you are, sneaking around the streets, trying to break up marriages," he spat. "What unpleasant work for a lady. If that's what you are."

Billie leaned away to avoid what she could of his breath. She knew precisely the kind of woman she was. Whether she was his idea of a "lady" was irrelevant.

(continued on Tuesday)

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