Blog Tour: (First Chapter + Giveaway) Falling Immortality: Casey Holden, Private Investigator By Robert Downs

I would like to welcome Robert Downs to The Avid Reader today. Thanks for stopping by Robert Downs. Please be sure and check out Robert Downs's novel Falling Immortality: Casey Holden, Private Investigator. I have the first chapter of Falling Immortality: Casey Holden, Private Investigator for you to read. Don't forget to enter the giveaway before you leave.

Book Title: Falling Immortality

Author: Robert Downs

Series Title: Casey Holden, Private Investigator

Published: August 2011

Publisher: Rainbow Books, Inc.

Genre: FICTION / Mystery & Detective / Hard- Boiled

Pages: 225

PURCHASE

Falling Immortality

Amazon

SYNOPSIS

Falling Immortality

Debut, hard-boiled mystery fiction for men. Stephen King’s son describes a fitting genre as MANfiction (the opposite of Chick lit). Casey Holden, former cop, current PI in Virginia Beach, VA, screens his clients the way he screens his women, based on whichever drop-dead gorgeous woman happens to waltz through his door first and manages to hold his attention. So when Felicity Farren, widow-at-large, struts into his office asking him to solve the two-year-old murder of her husband Artis, she intrigues him. When Casey starts digging, he learns the murder isn’t what it seems to be and he doesn’t have a big enough shovel to unearth the truth. And to top it all off, his former rival at the police department, Greg Gilman, is determined to disrupt his investigation. Casey's challenge is to learn what really happened to Artis, and why Gilman can’t seem to remove his head from his butt. And he’ll need all of his wits to complete the task.

FIRST CHAPTER

Falling Immortality

“My husband died,” she said.

She wiped her eyes, but she didn’t shed a tear.

I was accustomed to serious — I’m a former cop — and I couldn’t give it up. “I’m sorry for your loss,” I told her. It seemed like the appropriate thing to say. There’s something to be said for effort.

“I’d like to hire you.”

I needed more to go on. “What’s your husband’s name?”

She paused as if she might be trying to remember. “Artis, Artis Farren. I’m Felicity, his wife. I hear you’re the best, Mr. Holden.”

“Thank you,” I said. “I have an inquisitive mind.”

“It goes with the territory, doesn’t it?” Felicity whipped out a cigarette, and before she even asked if it was okay with me — it wasn’t — she lit it up.

“Indeed it does go with the territory.” I wanted to tell her she could put her cigarette out on her butt. I thought better of it, opened a desk drawer where I kept an ashtray for idiots who hadn’t kicked the weed and placed the ashtray before her on my desk. I’d learned how to handle compromise in my relationships with women — I kept my mouth shut and looked cute. I could even do both at the same time. But that’s beside the point.

Felicity had blown into my office in a blue skirt two inches too short. Her blonde hair and makeup appeared to be sculpted. With hardly a glance from her crystal blue eyes, she sat down in one of my two guest chairs, while I remained behind my mahogany desk ready for action. I’d even leaned back in my desk chair to send a message of confidence and competence.

“I can’t pay you very much,” she now said.

Money wasn’t an issue for me. I had my parents’ trust fund to keep me afloat — the one thing they hadn’t done when their fancy yacht went down in a storm off the Mexican coast. The PI business didn’t pay all that well, and neither did the cop business, but I loved the work. I cleared my throat and told her, “If I solve it, we’ll talk about my fee. I have reasonable rates.”

“Like Motel 6?”

“Exactly, only I’m better looking.” I flashed her one of my killer smiles — it didn’t work — so I quickly looked peeved instead.

“Indeed you are — better looking.”

I waited for her to continue. The only thing she did was continue to spew sooty fumes in my face. Finally I gave in and asked, “Why me?”

Felicity took a long drag on her cigarette. “The cops haven’t been much help. It’s been two years now, but they’ve done nothing to solve it.”

“I’m sure they have,” I said. Even though I’m an ex-cop, I still believe cops have good methods; I’m just not sure I could deal with them on a regular basis. So I don’t. Now I just harass them from time to time — it’s more fun that way. Everyone needs their perks, and that’s one of mine. Lots of perks come with being a PI. I set my own hours, I charge an hourly rate, I take vacations on a bimonthly basis, and I consider a lot of beautiful women. I even receive a few tempting offers, but so far I’ve been a good boy. That could change any time now. After all, trouble could come my way almost any day. That’s how life had been with my parents.

First, it had been a near miss in their private jet when the gear wouldn’t lower, but in that case the pilot had saved the day with an ace high, full stall belly landing. Then it had been a car off a narrow road in the Swiss Alps, which carried them into a fifty foot deep ravine. Just one thing after another — they’d walked away laughing . . . I tried not to think about those fantastic people who’d been my parents . . . It was hard to do . . . But back to Felicity and her cigarette.

I had a cup of cold coffee on my side of the desk and, despite the ashtray, a pile of messy ashes. I didn’t like the thought of my mahogany desk (the one piece of really nice furniture I had in my office) turning to charcoal. Nevertheless, I decided to move ahead. “Why don’t you tell me what happened?”

“I don’t know much to tell you . . . ”

The shaking of her head gave her away: she knew more than what she was telling me which, so far, hadn’t been much. “Why don’t you let me decide that? Tell me what you do know.” I know how to listen or at least make it appear I listen.

“I’m not really sure where to begin.”

“The beginning’s always a good place,” I said.

“Are you a smart-ass for a living?” Her crystal blue eyes snapped shut, then opened, as if this was about to be the end of a beautiful friendship.

“No, it’s just a side business,” I said. “I gotta keep up the good humor. You know?” Well, I hoped she did.

She opened her mouth, and then she closed it again.

I liked it when I wrapped a woman’s tongue around her head three times. It was the perfect payback for all the guys out there who have been given the shaft by a smart woman.

Women are smarter than men, especially when it comes to relationships, and ever since I learned this, I’d tried to level the playing field. I’m just one man, and I’ve been known to fall flat on my face a time or two, but I keep trying to even the score. One day maybe I will.

Finally she ended the suspense and said, “It was a random shooting. My husband was at the bar, his regular nightspot. A man just walked in, pulled out a gun like it was an extension of his arm, shot my husband, turned around and left. That was it.”

“So you don’t know the man’s name?”

Felicity shook her head. “He wasn’t a regular. In fact, no one had seen him there before, and no one has seen him since.”

I leaned forward, eager to hear more. “So you don’t know anything about the man?”

“He was a ghost, detective.”

“I’m not a detective, ma’am. I’m a PI.”

“Sorry.”

“It’s okay,” I lied. “It happens all the time.” Lies were okay on occasion, especially to women who were all shook up. And Felicity still appeared to be pretty shaken; the chain smoking was a dead giveaway. She was on her third cigarette — and I wasn’t counting.

I thought about the shooting and was about to utter a few words of encouragement, despite the fact that looks could be deceiving, and normally simple crimes were never simple, when Felicity Farren stood up and darted out the door, cigarettes and all.

I watched her go, and I had watched her come — I couldn’t decide which was more entertaining. If she didn’t smoke like a chimney, lie through her teeth and have me beaten in the age department by at least fifteen years, I might have been more interested in her horizontal activities.

Heaving a sigh of resignation, I pushed myself from my desk chair and cleaned up the mess on my desk. With a sheet of paper I scooted the remaining ashes from my desk into the wastepaper basket and poured myself a fresh cup of coffee.

Back at my desk and sipping my coffee, I gave the unlucky Artis Farren some thought. It sounded like a case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. That had happened to me on several occasions, but I’d never been caught with my pants down. I didn’t sleep with married women.

Two years was a long time to pick up on a case, but I’d known cases to play dead longer only to come roaring back to life. Normally when cases remain unsolved it is for one of two reasons: the murderer was really good, or it wasn’t supposed to be solved. Since the murderer whacked poor Artis in an open bar with plenty of witnesses, I figured this was one I wasn’t supposed to solve.

Though I didn’t have a client in gone-with-the-wind Felicity, suddenly it made no-never-mind. I wanted to jump right in. Tell me no, and I’ll tell you yes!

I picked up my cell phone — I had three new messages; I erased them all. I wanted a clean slate ahead. Then I punched in the number of my best friend, Ian Jackard.

“Not you . . . again,” Ian answered in his usual pessimistic fashion. Ever the eternal optimist, I said, “How did you know it was me?” “Caller ID,” he said. “You might want to try it sometime, Casey. Plus, you’re too predictable. What case are you working on now?”

“How do you know I’m working on a case?”

“Because you don’t call me when you’re on vacation.”

It was true; I didn’t. When I took time off I kept work as far away as possible. I’m good at keeping my problems at bay, and they’re still there when I come back. I liked to deal with problems, and I liked it even better when I could solve them. Some problems were easier than others, but not all problems were created equal. I had called Ian to find out just how tough my new problem was. None of my problems ever turned out to be small. “I need a favor,” I said.

“You always need a favor.”

“You’re not going to turn into a woman on me, are you?” I said.

“I can hang up the phone.”

“You can, but then you’re going to miss out on the goods,” I said. It was a bluff, but I had nothing to lose.

Ian took the bait. “Nothing you ever have for me is good. It requires work.”

“Work is good for you. It helps soothe the soul.” I, on the other hand, avoided work as much as possible.

“I’m in therapy because of you.”

“No, you’re in therapy because of your ex-wife.” Ian’s ex-wife was ruthless — she beat her hubby three times that I’m aware of. The relationship lasted a whopping ten months, and now ten years later he is still in therapy. Go figure.

“You don’t look anything like my ex-wife,” he said.

“I know. I look better.”

Ian laughed.

It was the first time I’d heard him laugh in days, but I’d been on vacation, so I might have missed one or two of them.

“So what can I do for you?” he said. He didn’t beat around the bush.

“Do you know anything about Artis Farren?”

“I don’t know,” Ian said. “Can I get back to you?”

“Sure. You know the number?”

“Your number hasn’t changed in four years.”

That’s true. It hadn’t. I like to keep things simple.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Robert aspired to be a writer before he realized how difficult the writing process was. Fortunately, he’d already fallen in love with the craft, otherwise Casey might never have seen print. Originally from West Virginia, Robert has lived in Virginia, Massachusetts, and now resides in New Mexico.

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GIVEAWAY

The giveaway will be for one ebook (either Kindle, ePub, or PDF), US and International

and one signed trade paperback copy US only.

There will be two lucky winners.

The giveaway will end on Nov. 15.

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