90 Days to Score: Part One of Three: 90 Days to Score, #1

By Deborah Coonts

In Texas, football isn't all fun and fanatics...it can be fatal.

 

From the bestselling author of the Lucky O'Toole Vegas Adventure Series, a new story of mischief, mayhem, and romance.

 

In 90 Days to Score, suspicion falls on a Jersey girl adrift in the Southern "sensibilities" of Texas, when her ex turns up dead in the parking lot of the Butts Up Club. Yet her biggest crime just might be assuming her ex's place at the helm of the local NFL franchise. Little did she know, football can be fatal. A fun romantic mystery.

 

This novella is Part One and includes all of July's daily installments.
Part Two follows on August 1st.
Part Three, the conclusion, arrives September 1st.

 

Don't miss out on the fun and frivolity!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Chestnut Street Press
• Release date: Jul 1, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393824268

Deborah Coonts

Deborah Coonts swears she was switched at birth. Coming from a family of homebodies, Deborah is the odd woman out, happiest with a passport, a high-limit credit card, her computer, and changing scenery outside her window. Goaded by an insatiable curiosity, she flies airplanes, rides motorcycles, travels the world, and pretends to be more of a badass than she probably is. Deborah is the author of the Lucky O’Toole Vegas Adventure series, a romantic mystery romp through Sin City. Wanna Get Lucky?, the first in the series, was a New York Times Notable Crime Novel and a double RITA™ Award Finalist. She has also penned the Kate Sawyer Medical Thriller series, the Brinda Rose Humorous Mystery series, as well as a couple of standalones. Although often on an adventure, you can always track her down at www.deborahcoonts.com.

Book preview

Chapter One

TWO YEARS ago, I’d married for love.

Little had I known I was marrying into a threesome.

Now my wannabe ex was dead, and everybody thought I’d done it.

Oh, they didn’t come right out and say it. Please, this is Dallas, more Southern than Atlanta, where one would never consider saying such a thing out loud.

Apparently social decorum didn’t extend to the newspaper. There I was, front and center in the Party Central section where gossip regularly did a hit-and-run on the truth. Today was no exception. I wadded the offending section and tossed it toward the can. It glanced off the rim.

As with everything in life lately, my aim was slightly off.

And now I was a Making of a Murderer story waiting to be told.

Hell, even the NFL thought I’d done it.

The letter arrived by courier this morning, the NFL logo prominent in the upper left-hand corner, my name typed out in bold, accusatory letters: Mrs. Austin Terry. They got that wrong. That Mrs. thing always irked me, as if upon marriage a woman disappeared, relegated to appendage status. I was born Brinda Rose, and that’s who I’d always be—husband or no.

And husbands couldn’t be counted on. Mine was cooling in a drawer at the medical examiner’s office—not that he didn’t deserve it.

But I’ll get to that.

Apparently anger and loathing are considered unbecoming in a freshly minted widow.

Still reeling from the sea-change of the last twenty-four hours, I’d yet to open the letter. In fact, I’d yet to do anything. Paralyzed by my public fall from grace, I’d parked myself at the kitchen table and hadn’t moved.

Besides, I knew what the NFL wanted. They wanted me out…bad. They’d have to stand in line.

As a lawyer, I’d told my husband a million times that he needed a will. But, at thirty and blinded by his own self-importance, what husband listens to his wife?

So, with my husband’s death, the huge Lone Oak Valley mansion, the fancy cars, the investments, the cash, and, worst of all, the majority interest in the North Texas Roughriders, the most storied NFL franchise and the darling of the football-crazed Dallas denizens—and an irritant to our crosstown rivals, the Cowboys—were all mine. Well, at least until they hauled me away in shackles, doomed to wear orange for the rest of my life.

As an investment advisor to the rich and famous, I knew what to do with the wealth. As a gal from New Jersey, I had no idea what to do with a football team.

This being Texas, where football was the dominant religion, the locals might look the other way when it came to most felonies. But mess with their team? Well, you better start running and not look back.

I’d love to run—in reality this place was proof of the fact versus fiction thing. That TV show set here back in the ’80s that everyone thought was so over the top? Well, it didn’t even scratch the surface. Problem was, until this little matter of a dead husband was cleared up, I’d been forbidden to go anywhere. So running was out.

Only one thing to do at this point…drink.

My former husband always kept several bottles of Dom Perignon properly chilled. Several bottles just might be enough.

Halfway through the first bottle, I felt the alcohol breeze snapping the flag of my courage. I stared down at the envelope resting against the vase of roses on the coffee table in front of the couch.

The game room was my favorite room—casual, warm, with a large fireplace that lit with the push of a button and ringed with windows that captured the backyard in all its manicured lushness. I’d wanted to add sparkling lights in the trees. My husband had suggested I kill the Jersey Girl part of me that thought tacky was a good idea. Such a great guy. The irony was he had been one in the beginning.

New Jersey and Manhattan were synonymous in Texas, lumped together in the term Northerners, which was always said with a sneer. Raised in one, educated in the other, I was doomed before I’d arrived.

There was a lot about the South I hadn’t known. The biggest thing? When I married, I had disappeared.

For someone invisible, I sure was getting a lot of attention.

I took another slug of Champagne and stared at the letter. What was I going to do with a football team?

In a fit of courage, I grabbed the envelope, tore off one end, then shook out the single sheet inside. The careful wording showed the crafting of a lawyer. Nothing to sue them with, but everything to piss me off.

The gist of it: as a twenty-eight-year-old female, I didn’t have the chops to hold my own in the cut-throat world of professional football.

Who were they kidding? I might not know football—unlike the other female owners, I hadn’t lived and breathed football for decades at the elbow of my husband. But I had picked up some tips being the right-hand-man for Nolan Ponder, owner of the San Antonio, now Las Vegas Marauders.

And, as a Jersey girl to the core, I knew how to get down and dirty.

They’d given me ninety days to prove I could run the team, or I’d have to sell. Big of them. Could they do that? I hadn’t a clue. One thing I did know: they’d gone fishing for tuna and hooked a Great White.

I tossed the letter in the fire then poured myself another flute of the good stuff. I raised my glass in a toast. Game on, boys.

Chapter Two

THE SOUND of lawnmowers sawed through my head. A pillow pressed to my ear barely muted their roar…and the pain. I flicked an eyelid open. Bad idea. Light lanced through the windows, then exploded behind my eyeballs.

The lawn company usually showed up late morning. Yes, every morning—it was that kind of lawn. And that kind of neighborhood.

I’d fallen asleep in the game room. How many bottles had I gone through? Enough to slice my head wide open. I pressed the heels of my hands hard to my temples holding the pain as I eased to a seated position. That was as far as I got.

The aroma of fresh coffee filtered in as I slumped in misery on the couch. At least the timer on the pot was functional—more than I dared hope for myself today. With one eye slitted open, I managed to stagger into the kitchen, slosh some coffee into a mug, then slip into a chair at the kitchen table.

The backdoor slammed open. I winced and gritted my teeth, then angled a look at the clock. Almost noon. Right on time.

Fran Mortenson, the only person in all of Dallas still talking to me outside of an interrogation room, breezed in on a cloud of staggeringly expensive perfume with her nose buried in the morning paper. Honey, you made the front page again. This town hasn’t had this much fun since Oswald shot Kennedy, then Ruby shot Oswald and a conspiracy was born.

I sneezed, then reflexively grabbed my head in a hand-vise. Expensive or not, perfume always made me sneeze. I did it again, wincing against the pain. Damn, Fran. You need a lesson in subtle.

Subtle never got anyone anywhere.

We could debate that…when my brain cells regenerate. I leaned away from her booming voice. Nursing one hell of a hangover, I clutched my mug of steaming coffee like a lifeline. Have you come here to shoot me or just make me feel like shooting myself, which I already do, by the way?

She arched a perfectly penciled eyebrow at me over the top of the paper and gave me a long look. It’d be a mercy killing. After folding the paper, she tossed it in the middle of the table then took a seat across from me. What the hell happened to you?

Self-loathing and readily available alcohol. Deadly combination.

For a highfalutin investment advisor, you sure don’t know much about a lot of things. She popped up, helped herself to some coffee, then plopped back down across from me.

Truer words were never spoken. I breathed in the steam from the coffee. Fran’s dressed-for-a-party suit and heels, with stockings no less, made me look like I’d been left out overnight. You’ve been hunting early today. Whose funeral was it?

Fran plucked at a bit of lint on her sleeve and seemed incapable of summoning even a hint of remorse. In fact, she looked like a cat eyeing a rat twice its size. Sarah Jane Bentsen.

Sarah Jane! You didn’t even know her. I hadn’t known her either, but I managed a shitload of her money. She’s half your age.

"Was. She was half my age. Her husband, bless his heart, was much older