Book Blurb:
As Dave Sloan is leaving for the Denver Las
Vegas
Dave is stunned and devastated. He thought she was in Phoenix Phoenix Chicago
When Joe can’t join her, Tricia’s a mess. He calls a close friend, Al Posey, who lives
in Vegas, and asks him to take her to dinner.
Al and Tricia hit it off and wind up in bed. On Saturday morning, he walks out of her
hotel room at nine. Three hours later,
her lifeless body is found by a maid.
A DEAD END IN VEGAS is a searing exploration of
how Tricia Sloan’s tragic, mysterious death shatters, and later transforms, the
lives of her family and friends.
For More Information
- A Dead End in Vegas is
available at Amazon.
Excerpt #1
Slipping and sliding along Colorado 91 in the near
white-out, Randy
looked in the rearview mirror and spotted a Colorado
Highway Patrol car. Sarah, who remembered every detail of the trip, told me
later that he panicked.
“Damn!” he cursed, pounding the steering wheel and
pointing behind
them. Sarah turned and saw the police cruiser; her eyes
widened and dazed. With her hand over her mouth, she made a sound part gasp, part
groan.
“My dad must’ve called them,” Randy shrieked. “They’re
gonna take me in for armed robbery!”
“No they won’t,” Sarah cried, gripping his arm. “We’ll be
in Leadville soon. They’ll never find us there. In a day or two, we’ll leave
for California. My Grandpa’s out there--he’ll help us!”
Randy glanced over at her and nodded. He was now driving
as fast as he could, but in the rushing torrent of snow, visibility was
failing, and, at 10,000 feet, the old Subaru was suddenly wheezing as if for
breath. When Randy muttered something about engine trouble, Sarah buried her
head in her hands and started crying. He reached over and patted her leg.
As they approached the farm community of Gage, 10 miles
outside of Leadville, the highway cops were still on their tail. A wave of
hopelessness and betrayal swept over Randy as he thought of his own father
calling the police to turn him in. But in fact, the cops’ presence had nothing
to do with Dave. It had to do with Randy’s reckless driving. He was swerving
wildly in and out of icy, snow-packed lanes, endangering his own life as well
as Sarah’s and everyone else’s on the road.
Excerpt #2
In a state of exhaustion and panic, they stopped briefly
at a liquor store in tiny Bardsville. There Sarah loaded up on snacks and Randy
bought vodka with a fake ID. In the parking lot, blanketed with over a foot of
heavy, sodden snow, the two teens huddled in the freezing Subaru, scarfing down
Cheetos and Pop-Tarts. As she gulped milk from a quart-size carton, Sarah felt
queasy. A panic attack was coming on. When she told Randy, he stroked her hand,
took another swig of vodka from a half-pint wrapped in a brown paper bag, and
popped a couple more freshly stolen Dexedrine. Sarah stared at him, alarmed and
terrified, but also adoringly.
There was one more stop to make, but it had to be fast.
While Randy filled
the tank at a Conoco station, Sarah trudged through the
thick, frigid snow in her beige suede loafers to a distant, battered door
marked “Ladies.” Jerking it open, she gingerly stepped inside the filthy,
broken-down restroom. As she perched on the grimy toilet seat, blasts of frigid
air and snow sliced through a round hole in the door where the lock had been
ripped out. It took a while, but she finally stopped shaking long enough to pee
on a solid block of ice.
Back on the road, with the snow coming down harder and
heavier, they maneuvered west toward Copper Mountain, the bustling ski resort
nestled in the Arapahoe National Forest.
Leadville, the old silver-mining town high in the central Rockies that
they were running to, was still a tortuous 23 miles distant, a 45-minute ride
in good weather, but much longer in this storm. At 10,000 feet it was a sullen,
slate-colored Victorian mining town with a rowdy past that was fondly known as
“the ice-box of Colorado.” A good place to hunker down in. No one would ask
questions.
They almost made it.
Excerpt #3
Dave interrupted Pam.
“Excuse me,” he said
sharply. “Your husband claimed the
suggestive e-mails were written by a hacker?
Who on earth could that be?”
“How should I know?” she snapped. “Maybe some
disgruntled student who didn’t like the grade
they got on a term paper, or a tech major trying to make a name for
himself. This is a college campus. There are always precocious students who are
bored with regular class-work and amuse themselves by hacking into professors’
e-mail accounts to make trouble. They
have some laughs over a few beers and move on to the next victim. It’s everyday life on a college campus.”
Dave sighed.
“So you’re telling me that
my wife was an Internet
stalker, and the e-mails and photos came from
some student hacker?”
“Yes, that’s right,” she
confirmed with a nod. “My husband was
the victim, not the perpetrator.”
“Excuse me, Mrs. Daggett,
but I can’t sit here and listen to this garbage one more minute. Your husband is a liar!” Dave charged, rising from his chair and
grabbing his briefcase. He opened it
with a flourish and dumped the contents on her desk.
Excerpt #4
The shameful circumstances
of Tricia’s death left Dave unhinged and in shock. He thought he knew this woman, his own wife,
but he really didn’t. She was going
through a rough time, worse than any of us could have imagined. She felt lost in her marriage. She was devastated by Dave’s affair, but
didn’t want to leave him. He was the
only real security she’d ever known. But
she couldn’t see spending the rest of her life with him either. Her identity, and maybe even her sanity, were
at stake. The Internet affair with Joe
was a means of escape, a way to find some relief from the pain and confusion.
Tricia had also just turned
50 and, for the first time in her life, felt insecure about her looks. I thought of the photos I had taken of her at
a picnic in the mountains last summer.
She kept begging me to take more because she couldn’t stand to see the
fine lines, tiny jowls, and strands of grey.
She had been a stunning girl, a teenage beauty queen, and now she was a
prisoner, in a sense, of her own midlife.
She was groping for some way to make sense of it, trying to protect
herself from the uncertainty of her future and a lack of confidence in her
past. That’s a pretty delicate,
treacherous place to be: uncertain about
your future, and full of doubts about your past. What kind of present do you have when you’re
wedged between those two?
Excerpt #5
Seven o’clock came and
went. No phone call, and the snow
continued to fall. Dave was becoming
more and more desperate. Our old friend
and neighbor was losing it now, marching in small circles around the kitchen,
occasionally halting to pound the butchers’ block with a tightly clenched
fist. Outside, darkness had descended as
the wind howled and the storm tightened its grip. Lehigh Street was empty and forlorn, a frozen
tableau where nothing moved and an occasional flickering porch light was the
only sign of life.
Shortly before 10, I glanced
out the picture window, now nearly shrouded with ice, and made out what
appeared to be a pair of headlights inching ever so cautiously through the
drifts. I looked again and couldn’t
believe my eyes. A boxy, high-riding
vehicle, like a Jeep, had just turned and was heading down Dave’s driveway
toward us. Before we knew it, we heard
car doors slam and then the heavy thumping of boots on the porch steps. Two sets of them. And then the harsh, grating sound of the
doorbell. Two long, sharp buzzes, like a
dentist’s drill. The shrill buzzing cut
through the house and brought us all to attention. In this weather, at this hour, who could it
be?
About the Author:
Irene Woodbury’s second novel, A DEAD END
IN VEGAS, is a dark, probing look at marriage, infidelity, revenge, and
grief. Immersing herself in drama and
dysfunction for months on end was a challenge for this upbeat author, whose
first book, the humor novel A SLOT MACHINE ATE MY MIDLIFE CRISIS, was published
by SynergEbooks in 2011. At first
glance, the two novels seem quite different, but both deal with midlife
confusion and chaos, and the complexities and unpredictable nature of the human
heart. And both, of course, are
partially set in Las Vegas U.S. Canada Europe . Irene, who graduated from the University of Houston Denver
For More Information
Thank you for hosting!
Media Contact:
Dorothy Thompson
Pump Up Your Book
Email: thewriterslife@gmail.com
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