Whiskey Sour Noir

By Mickey J. Corrigan

Tami Lee Conkers knows her own mind, and she knows she has gotten herself into trouble by falling for the handsome, well-educated Cat Avery. She knows better, as the man is a registered sex offender who has served his time and now tends bar, but she believes his claim of innocence. Having lost everything–career, family, home and reputation–Cat thinks he has figured out who set him up for the crime he didn't commit. He is determined to seek revenge. All around him, life is going from bad to worse until Tami Lee comes a callin'. Without Tami's help, Cat's life is over. As the world spins out of control around them, can Tami justify leaving her life behind for one man?

• Language: English
• Publisher: The Wild Rose Press
• Release date: Mar 5, 2014
• ISBN: 9781628301700

Mickey J. Corrigan

Originally from Boston, Mickey J. Corrigan hides out in the lush ruins of South Florida to write pulp fiction, literary crime, and psychological thrillers. Her stories have been called “delightful pulp,” “oh so compulsive,” “dark and gritty,” and “bizarre but believable.” Songs of the Maniacs was published by Salt in 2014.

Book preview

Inc.

Whiskey Sour Noir

by

Mickey J. Corrigan

The Hard Stuff, Book One

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales, is entirely coincidental.

Whiskey Sour Noir

COPYRIGHT © 2014 by Mickey J. Corrigan

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the author or The Wild Rose Press, Inc. except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

Contact Information: [e-mail]

Cover Art by Angela Anderson

The Wild Rose Press, Inc.

PO Box 708

Adams Basin, NY 14410-0708

Visit us at www.thewildrosepress.com

Publishing History

First Mainstream Fiction Edition, 2014

Digital ISBN 978-1-62830-170-0

The Hard Stuff, Book One

Published in the United States of America

Praise for Mickey J. Corrigan

I've only read three of her books and she is HILARIOUS! I know I will be highly entertained by her shenanigans.

~Smardy Pants Book Blog

~*~

One of the best things about being a reviewer for Romance Junkies is the vast number of new-to-me authors that I get to read. There is nothing more thrilling to me than finding a writer whose work I can instantly fall in love with. Mickey J. Corrigan is one of those authors for me.

~Romance Junkies

~*~

I'll read anything by Ms. Corrigan. All her short pieces I have read were vastly different, but no less entertaining.

~Hearts on Fire Reviews

Dedication

Find what you love and let it kill you.

~Charles Bukowski

Chapter One

I’d never tasted a whiskey sour before I met up with Cat Avery. If I was having me some whiskey, I wanted it neat. In a shot glass. With a beer chaser. That’s the kind of girl I am. You may call me trailer trash or low class or whatever. I don’t care. I know what I like and that’s what I care for. I have my own tastes, my own reasons for that such. But sometimes I choose wrong. It happens. Shit happens all over this world.

I liked Cat Avery right off. Even though I knew he was a sexual offender, SO for short. You get arrested or convicted of any kind of sex offense, even playing with yourself too near to an open window or sharing raw dog photos on your smart phone, well, your name goes up on the register. Your meanest face mugs out of the daily line-up on our local public TV station, your home address zips out by email to every resident within five miles of what used to be your private life. The good people of Dusky Beach, Florida, take their predator protection rights seriously. You do the time for a S.O., everybody in town knows more than you do about it.

But in west Dusky Beach, where I lived these last two years, and where I worked and played and had a cold one nearly every night with my fake diamond-studded, concave, white as an iceberg belly up to the bar, nobody much cared. So nobody held the damn so-so label, as we called it, against Cat Avery. Mainly because everybody has a past if they’re hanging around west Dusky Beach. I know I did. Still do.

The first time I met Cat Avery, he’d just started at the Kettle of Fish. The sudden halt of the Gulf Stream flow was all over the news and everybody sat glued to the yakker box, watching the talking heads discuss the oncoming doom. When I walked in I was tired and cranky. Not in the mood for world disaster. Not in the mood for love, either. I’d dropped by the Kettle for relaxation, not excitement. I’d had enough of that at work.

The Kettle is two doors down from the Drop In Center where I counsel survivors of intimate partner abuse. People around here call it the DIC. A lot of my clients—we call them clients, not victims, so as to be empowering—are drug addicts and drinkers. Being near to the Kettle isn’t such a good thing for the addicted, but real estate is expensive in a beach town like Dusky Beach. Bars on the buggy west side of town are moneymakers because the rent here is low. And because, after all, not everybody who likes a drink can afford to indulge in the snobby pubs over on the beach.

So when I went into the Kettle after work that day,