The Martini Club Mystery: The Trouble with Truffles

By Alan Eysen

"Comic and suspenseful, The Trouble with Truffles is the third novel in Alan Eysen's Martini Club Mystery series. This time the lure is 100 acres of perfect white truffles. Irresistible." -Beverly Lawn, Author, Poet and English Professor at Emerita Adelphi Unive

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bublish, Inc.
• Release date: Oct 1, 2020
• ISBN: 9781647041977

Alan Eysen

As an award-winning investigative journalist, editor and political columnist, Alan Eysen wrote for many years about real-world financial and political corruption. At Newsday, he served as a prominent member of the investigative team that won the 1970 Pulitzer Prize for exposing misconduct involving Long Island public officials. After more than thirty years in journalism, he became a political consultant and experienced the other side of the story. Today, Eysen resides in the lowcountry of South Carolina, where he continues to write and be inspired by the colorful characters and harrowing situations he experienced firsthand as a reporter. He can often be found crafting his strong fictional characters with the help of an equally strong dry gin martini.

Book preview

Copyright © Alan Eysen 2020

All rights reserved.

This is a work of fiction. While incidental references are made to public figures, actual places, products or events, the names, characters, incidents, and locations within are from the author’s imagination.

ISBN: 978-1-64704-196-0 (paperback)

ISBN: 978-1-64704-197-7 (eBook)

Seven Es, LLC

Mount Pleasant, SC

Distributed by Bublish, Inc.

Cover Artwork by Berge Design

Contents

Chapter 1 Knock, Knock

Chapter 2 Who’s There?

Chapter 3 Truffles

Chapter 4 Something Seedy

Chapter 5 The Tree Girl

Chapter 6 A Time to Plant

Chapter 7 A Time to Learn

Chapter 8 Something’s Up

Chapter 9 A Wonderful Meal

Chapter 10 Truffles, Truffles Everywhere

Chapter 11 Scrambled Eggs

Chapter 12 Maggie

Chapter 13 A Time to Sow

Chapter 14 Knock, Knock

Chapter 15 A Time to Call

Chapter 16 Cats and Cousins

Chapter 17 The Claw

Chapter 18 Botany, Oh, Botany

Chapter 19 Having a Blast

Chapter 20 Top Secret Stuff

Chapter 21 Revelations

Epilogue

Postscript

Post Postscript

CHAPTER 1

Knock, Knock

Benjamin Footloose was accustomed to strangers clacking away at the giant knockers at the thick front door, blocking access to Sheldon Sadim’s mansion.

Footloose was the epitome of the gentleman’s gentleman. He was observant but not indiscrete. He was soft-spoken, yet spoke with authority to those who had to be put in their place. He anticipated Sadim’s needs before his master could articulate them. He carried out his orders with the swiftness of one long practiced in the art of accommodating the rich.

He also could quietly protect his employer from the unwanted attentions of those seeking an audience with the man.

His persuasiveness in removing those intruders was augmented by his large, muscular build and large hands. The thin scar that ran down his face from his left ear to his chin carried an intimidation of its own. There was a menace to it—born by the slash of a Taliban warrior’s knife intent on cutting Footloose’s throat. But he was quicker, nearly cutting off his attacker’s head with his own blade, the famed Fairbairn-Sykes Fighting Knife. He had served for most of his twenty-year military career in the Army’s secretive Delta Force and won two Bronze Stars, a V for valor and a Purple Heart.

Catering to and protecting Sheldon Sadim was a far simpler existence and paid much more. It was made easier by the fact that Sadim—Major Sadim—had been his commanding officer. He found him tough, demanding, and almost always right. He also showed a special loyalty to those who served under him—a quality Sadim rarely displayed. Loyalty, like ethics, he believed, was situational. It should be shown when there was no peripheral cost. His lone exception was to those who served under him in the Delta Force. For them, his loyalty had no situational boundaries.

On those rare occasions, when the knocker—usually a salesman—refused to be intimidated or understand the word "No," Footloose would open his perfectly-cut dinner jacket to reveal the .45 caliber pistol holstered under his left armpit. That always did the trick. No violence necessary.

But what confronted him now at the front door startled even this veteran of so many violent encounters. He did not encourage this visitor to leave. Rather, he said, Wait!

The walk to the main ballroom, where Sadim was hosting his guests, never lost its appeal to Footloose. Sheldon Sadim’s mansion—Sadim never used that word, preferring to call it his home—surpassed that of his neighbor, retired Nevada brothel owner Mike Rose. Unlike Rose’s mansion, Sadim’s had the authenticity of the truly rich. No gaudy paintings or flashy statuary—simply works universally regarded as masterpieces.

Footloose especially admired those lining the hallway leading to the ballroom, including two Degas, a Monet, and a Mary Cassatt. Sadim was modest about all these works, except those of Cassatt. I talk of her more than the others because she was a woman, and women have been denigrated in the arts for too many years, he said.

But his egalitarian view of the female gender was challenged when his butler approached and whispered, Sir, there is a woman at the door, and she insists on speaking to you now.

Weren’t you able to shoo her away? Didn’t you flash your weapon? Sadim hissed. Didn’t you tell her a Martini Club meeting is under way, and . . . well . . . women would make the members uncomfortable?

I did, sir. But she refused to move, even slipping her very peculiar dog passed me. She said she arrived precisely because the Martini Club was meeting here. She said she had something to offer the membership. And, well . . . if you saw her, you might better understand why I decided to leave that decision up to you, sir.

And she has a dog? the surprised Sadim asked more of himself than of his butler. Is it in the house?

No, sir. It ran back beside her when she snapped her fingers. I have never seen a dog quite like this one, not even among our combat dogs. It appears to be a mix of standard Schnauzer and giant Poodle and, and . . . something I cannot determine. It is covered in a thick coat of curly black hair.

"No need for further discussion. Firmly—and I stress firmly—tell her to go away," Sadim ordered.

Too late for that, a mellifluous voice said from just behind the butler.

Both Footloose and Sadim turned, looking astounded, as did the Martini Club members, who lifted their heads away from their silvery drinks to peer at this astonishing woman.

How did you do that? How did you get in here? I was certain I locked the door, Footloose gasped.

Perhaps you did—and perhaps you didn’t, the woman answered, a smile radiating her face.

Sadim was astounded for another reason. You are gorgeous, he blurted out. The billionaire, now divorced, had been married three times, all to beautiful women, but none looked like this one. She was tall and blonde. Her skin was a glowing smooth bronze, her lips a sensuous red. Thirty-six-twenty-two-thirty-six, ran through Sadim’s mind as he slowly looked her up and down. Though she clearly was of European stock, there was something Asian about her, something different.

I have reconsidered. You may come in for a moment, the billionaire said. What is so important that you would disrupt the bonding that men can achieve only when women are not around? I should further advise you that this meeting has a special celebratory tone to it. The members have learned that they have made a one-million-dollar return on their investment in the old Caleb Lampkin farm.

The woman smiled her amazing smile and walked to the dormant fireplace at one end of the room, slowly, sensually turning her back to its blackened embers. Gerald Smyth, a retired CIA operative, had