Limbo
Authors: Amy Andrews
Limbo
Amy Andrews
Limbo
Amy Andrews
Six Feet Under
meets Stephanie Plum in Amy Andrews’ fresh, funny, sexy urban-family noir about a country singer who almost made it, a private investigator who's seen too much and a mother who will cross all barriers to save her child.
When ex hillbilly-punk rocker turned cadaver make-up artist Joy Valentine is visited by the ghost of a high-profile murder victim begging for Joy’s help to find her kidnapped baby girl, Joy knows from experience the cops are going to think she’s crazy. So she takes it to the one guy she knows who won’t.
The last thing disgraced ex-cop turned private investigator Dash Dent expected is a woman from his past turning up to complicate his present with a nutty, woo-woo story. The problem is he knows Joy is telling the truth and he can’t ignore the compelling plight of baby Isabella whose disappearance six months prior transfixed the nation.
Discounted and discredited by the police, Dash and Joy work together to uncover the mystery and find Isabella, with a whacky supporting cast including Eve, a brothel madam; Stan, an excommunicated priest; Katie, Dash’s ten-year-old daughter; and two horny goldfish. It’s a race against time and against all odds – but the real battle for Dash and Joy might just be keeping their hands off each other.
Amy is an award-winning,
USA Today
bestselling Aussie author who has written forty-plus contemporary romances in both the traditional and digital markets. To date she's sold over a million books and been translated into thirteen different languages including a manga version.
She loves her kids, her husband, her dogs, cowboys, men in tool belts, cowboys in tool belts and happily ever afters. Please, DO NOT mess with the HEA! She also loves good books, fab food, great wine and frequent travel — preferably all four together.
She lives on acreage on the outskirts of Brisbane with a gorgeous mountain view but secretly wishes it was the hillsides of Tuscany.
I’d like to thank the entire Escape team for all their efforts in getting this book out and into the hands of the reading public. So much goes on behind the scenes that we never see and it is very much appreciated.
I’d particularly like to thank Kate Cuthbert, who didn’t blink when I told her about my crazy idea for an urban-family/paranormal/detective novel whose heroine was a country-music cadaver-make-up-artist chicky who saw ghosts. I’ve never written
anything
like this before and after 40+ books changing things up can be scary, but Kate just said, sure, why not? And the belief behind those words gave me the courage to try.
Big thanks to the other Kate — Kate James — my lovely editor who helped me polish this baby til it shone. Apologies in advance for any nightmares I may have caused during your fact-checking of goldfish sex.
Special thanks also goes to Senior Sergeant Simon Lamerton, and to Sherryn Klump who proofread the story for police procedure and the crime-related elements. Any discrepancies or mistakes are mine as I walked the fine artistic line between what wasn’t and what was even just a tiny bit possible.
Extra special thanks to Leesa Cunningham, lactation guru and longtime friend who readily answered my bizarre questions about hormone levels in breast-feeding women whilst she was at a restaurant in the middle of a family dinner and then emailed me a bunch of supporting documents the minute she arrived home. Leesa has helped me with several books, anwering my many questions no matter how bizarre.
Thanks to my sister, the brilliant Ros Baxter, and my brilliant friend Ann Cleary, who read the book after it was finished and loved it and were so encouraging about my uncharacteristic trip into noir.
Two last mentions. To Leah, who bought me the Church Signs Calendar 2009, which was invaluable to the story: only a best friend could know what I needed without having to ask and it was a godsend (pun intended). And thanks to Anne Grice for the never-ending hilarity of that tattoo. What an inspiration!
To Jack and Claire for making me laugh and smile for almost two decades. Love you guys to the moon and back.
Bestselling Titles by Escape Publishing…
There was nothing like the cold, heavy steel of a gun, the soft moan of an appreciative woman or the sharp burn of a good single malt to make a man grateful to be alive. Tonight, with his gun gone and his sex life a wasteland, Dash had to settle for whiskey.
He downed it in one swallow and placed the tumbler on the pockmarked bar. ‘Hit me again, Charlie.’
Charlie, a grizzly bear of a man of no determinate age, poured again. Dash threw it back, sucking in a harsh breath as fire slid down his oesophagus. The glass thunked heavily against the wood and Charlie poured one more time.
Dash stood. ‘Keep ‘em coming. I’ll be at my usual table.’
Charlie grunted. ‘Cheaper to drink at home.’
‘Yep.’ That was true. But a poky flat above his even pokier office situated next door to a brothel — albeit the legal kind — was depressing as hell. And tonight he was celebrating. Scumbag Dad located in two days, and a nice cash bonus in his wallet.
He made his way to a small round table. The inside of the Purple Parrot — a name that did not live up to the inherent promise of the colourful neon sign that hung outside the establishment — was practically pitch black but his feet had trodden this path almost every night for six months.
There was nothing bright or tropical about his local. The interior was from the don’t-give-a-shit school of design, which clearly had no budget for lighting. But dark was good as far as Dash was concerned. It hid the beer stains on the scruffy carpet, the scratched and dented furniture and the fact that the walls hadn’t been painted since the seventies.
Dash sat. He liked this table. His back was to the wall and he could see (as much as anyone could in this place) everyone who entered and left. He could see where they sat. He could see who was using the bank of ten poker machines — who was winning, who was losing and who should be calling it a night. He could see who went to the toilet and when they came back and who ducked out the back entrance to the alley behind.
Not that anyone in their right mind would want to do that.
Years of undercover work had honed his powers of observation and, like a gambler counting cards, it was second nature.
Dash was always going to want to know where everyone was.
Feeling warm all the way through, he sipped at his drink now, peering through the dark at tonight’s customers, memorising their faces from the paltry light exuding from the flash and flare of the chiming pokies. It didn’t take him long to assess the few patrons as the usual suspects licking their wounds and drowning their sorrows.
Living out their lives of quiet desperation.
It was a seedy bar in the less salubrious end of Brisbane’s infamous Basin district. Nothing much changed here and that was just the way Dash liked it.
He looked down into his drink, swirling it. Or at least he thought he was, who could tell? As Dash drained the rest of his drink, he smelled the aroma of hops and stale cigarette smoke lingering in the air. Considering smoking had been outlawed in pubs for a good decade that was no mean feat.
He’d kill for a cigarette. For the feel of it between his lips. For the smoky seduction of it. For the sweet relaxation. But he’d promised Katie six months ago that he was quitting for good and she was holding him to it. They’d been given some talk on it at school and her campaign had begun in earnest until he’d cracked. Seven years old and she already knew how to bend him to her will.
Not that she’d trusted his assurances. Addicts make great liars, she’d told him with a little crinkle in her brow, so like the one he saw in the mirror every morning.
As if he didn’t know
that
already.
So she inspected his apartment for contraband on her weekend visits. Sniffed his clothes. Looked in his rubbish bin.
A little P.I. in the making.
Bloody kids
.
Except she was the one thing he felt he hadn’t screwed up in his life, though he guessed, what with the divorce and all, the jury was still out on that one. Luckily he and Liz had an amicable enough relationship. She worked weekend nights at the hospital and Katie stayed with him. Of course, his living next to a brothel hadn’t exactly lit his ex’s fire but Liz
did
trust him implicitly with Katie’s security.
Even if she’d given up on everything else.
A bunch of twenty-somethings entered the bar, their loud chatter and raucous laughter out of place in an atmosphere usually reserved for morose contemplation. Dash sat up straighter.
‘Relax, handsome.’ Dash looked sideways at the woman who was swapping his empty glass for another double. His eyes were level with her low-cut, leopard-print tank top and her freckled cleavage. Dash knew it was appreciated plenty by the regulars but it didn’t do much for him.
He’d always been an ass man.
‘It’s open-mic night,’ she said. ‘Words gotten out. We get quite a crowd now.’
Jules, also of indeterminate age, smiled at him and her face split into dozens of deep ravines. Her faded red hair was shot with grey and she had the raspy voice of a pack-a-day smoker.
‘Great.’ He’d deliberately avoided Jules’ latest attempt to draw new clientele and had forgotten it was the third Wednesday of the month. He drained his glass in one swallow. ‘Time to go.’
The last thing he felt like was listening to a bunch of wannabes who’d never been told by their mamas that they couldn’t sing.
Jules placed a restraining hand on his shoulder. ‘You should stay,’ she urged. ‘At least for a little while. Some of them are really good.’ She shrugged. ‘What’s it going to hurt?’
Dash watched the flurry at the front as an equally unimpressed Charlie wrangled with some sound gear. ‘I’m going to need another drink.’
She grinned as she took his empty. ‘Coming right up.’
***
An hour later, Dash was over amateur night. Jules had been right. They weren’t
all
bad. But having just suffered through a truly awful rendition of ‘Big Yellow Taxi’ he was done. He could almost hear the sound of Joni Mitchell hacking her ears off.
‘I’m going,’ he said, plonking his fifth and final glass down on the bar.
Charlie held up the whiskey bottle. ‘One more for the road?’
Dash looked at the bottle then his watch then back at the bottle.
What the hell
. ‘Sure.’ He sat at the bar and watched Charlie pour.
Behind him he heard Jules announce the next wannabe.
‘On her way to Nashville tomorrow, please welcome Joy to the stage, singing “Mustang Sally”.’
Dash rolled his eyes at Charlie as the backing music trumpeted out the raunchy opening. It took balls and pipes to do that song any justice and he doubted
Joy-going-to-Nashville
had either or else she’d be there already.
He almost choked on his drink as her throaty vibrato blasted around the bar. He spun around in his stool half expecting to see a large black woman at the mic. No way did he expect to see a waif-like white woman belting out the notes as if she was Wilson Pickett incarnate.
‘She’s good,’ Charlie grunted.
She was. The crowd, which had grown to around thirty over the last hour, agreed, whooping and hollering as the sax and waif-girl’s aged-bourbon voice filled every corner with sex and raunch.