Stunner (An Ava Butler Mystery): Ava Butler Caribbean Mysteries, #2

By Pamela Fagan Hutchins

A nationwide tour. A popstar in the crosshairs. Touring with Ava and the band just got deadly.

"Just when I think I couldn't love another Pamela Fagan Hutchins novel more, along comes Ava."

After battling breast cancer, island pop singer and single mom Ava thought she could handle anything her concert tour threw her way. But when tragedy strikes her album launch party, she realizes she may have underestimated the price she'll have to pay for fame. And the cost skyrockets when someone attempts to murder her headlining act.

Still shaken by the alarming attack, Ava has little time to process the traumatic event before she's caught up in a scandal worthy of the tabloids. Someone in her staff is leaking secrets to the paparazzi, and the fallout is wreaking havoc on her love life. When a second pop singer is targeted, Ava doubles down on her search for clues. But with music careers and multi-million-dollar contracts on the line, she could pack a stadium with potential suspects.

Knowing her future hinges on staying in the spotlight, Ava must track down the murderous stalker before the final curtain drops.

Stunner is the second book in Ava Butler's trilogy, a sexy spin-off from the What Doesn't Kill You series of romantic mystery series.

Once Upon A Romance calls Hutchins an "up-and-coming powerhouse writer." If you like Sandra Brown or Janet Evanovich, you will love USA Today Best Seller Pamela Fagan Hutchins. A former attorney and native Texan, Pamela lived in the U.S. Virgin Islands for nearly ten years. She refuses to admit to taking notes for this series during that time.

What Amazon readers are saying about the Pamela's mysteries:

"Unputdownable."
"Fair warning: clear your calendar before you pick it up because you won't be able to put it down."
"Hutchins is a master of tension."
"Intriguing mystery . . . captivating romance."
"Everything shines: the plot, the characters and the writing. Readers are in for a real treat." 

"Immediately hooked." 

"Spellbinding."
"Fast-paced mystery." 
"Can't put it down."
"Entertaining, complex, and thought-provoking."
"Murder has never been so much fun!"
"You're guaranteed to love the ride!"

Buy Stunner to go on the road with a show-stopping murder mystery today!

• Language: English
• Publisher: SkipJack Publishing
• Release date: May 15, 2018
• ISBN: 9781939889669

Pamela Fagan Hutchins

Pamela Fagan Hutchins is a USA Today best seller. She writes award-winning romantic mysteries from deep in the heart of Nowheresville, Texas and way up in the frozen north of Snowheresville, Wyoming. She is passionate about long hikes with her hunky husband and pack of rescue dogs and riding her gigantic horses. If you'd like Pamela to speak to your book club, women's club, class, or writers group, by Skype or in person, shoot her an e-mail. She's very likely to say yes. You can connect with Pamela via her website (https://pamelafaganhutchins.com)or e-mail ([e-mail]).

Book preview

PROLOGUE

I push up, and the room tilts. I want to get out of here before my ex shows up and turns this into a circus. I hold on to the arm of the couch.

Whoa, I say. Or I think that’s what I say.

You all right? Morris asks, and now he’s looking at me like I’m a carnival midway display. More like he is. A bona fide music superstar sideshow.

The music promoters we’re supposed to be entertaining show up, but they’re talking to stuffy-looking people I don’t know.

Step right up, folks, for the world’s drunkest woman. Only a nickel to see her hurl stuffed mushrooms and bacon-wrapped shrimp all over the feet of a promoter who will never book her in a million years after this stunt!

I point to where I think the bathroom is, then hold up one finger. Back in five.

The ground feels like a moving sidewalk, and I decide I must have stumbled into the Intercontinental Airport in Houston. If I can just remember where the bathrooms are on this concourse. Maybe there will be a Starbucks on the way. I’m super sleepy, and I’ma need caffeine to stay awake to catch my plane. I hate these six a.m. flights back to St. Marcos through San Juan. I stop with my hand against the wall. Just for a moment, until the floor stops moving.

Johnny Depp stops to talk to me. Well, that makes sense. He is the pirate of the Caribbean, and he’s probably going home, too.

Your lass mooovey. I shake my finger. Not up to snuff.

He squints at me. Okay. Here, take my arm.

I do, and we start to walk. Johnny Depp is nicer than the press makes him out to be. Like me. Johnny and I are so much alike. His solid arm makes the walk over the squirrelly floor lots easier.

I ask him, Do you have your boarding passss?

Mm-hmm.

Do I have time for the baffroom? One of my legs buckles, and I nearly go down.

Johnny catches me, and he slides an arm all the way around my waist. He blasts me with a stench. I recoil, but his arm traps me close against his soft waist. Somehow I thought Johnny would be more toned and have better breath.

Hey, Ava, someone says.

My eyes and ears aren’t working very good, so I can’t tell who is hailing me up, but the gate agents always say my name when they scan my boarding pass these days. I lift my hand to wave, but it doesn’t make it up to the right height. I stare at it. Defective. Have to get it fixed before the next concert. Is there time? Man, this is gonna be a quick trip home. The thought muddles me, and I stop, but Johnny propels me forward. I stumble, confused. Why am I going home again?

. . . sick, Johnny is saying.

Someone answers him. It sounds like I’m underwater, which is crazy because I’m at an airport, not a marina.

. . . Zach Ringo, her friend.

I squint. Sure thing, it is. Zach, I mean. My ex. My man Collin makes him look like a girl, but he’s a pretty girl. Doesn’t fuck like a girl, though. That I remember, even though I’m not supposed to think about that with anyone but Collin. Right, okay, I’m not thinking about it. Just being honest, because honesty is important.

. . . have her right back, Mr. Ringo.

Ava? People are clustering around Zach, some with pens and paper. He’s a big-ass film star. I’m not nearly as big in music. Well, my bana is. His is tiny. But not in a bad way, mine or his. Ugh, my head is so fuzzy.

I flap my hand. Hi, Zach.

I’ll be getting a drink. Meet me at the bar?

I giggle, and my eyes feel fluttery. I just need to get buckled into my seat before they shut on me. And it’s so stuffy in here. I need some fresh air conditioner, and to take off these shoes. Ridonkulous, Collin calls them. Fuck-me pumps. Except they’re boots not pumps, and that’s not what I want—you know, sex—unless I can find Collin. I don’t understand why he’s not coming home with me. Why is Johnny here instead of him?

I reach for the zipper on my ankle boots and teeter toward the wall.

Johnny catches me. Not here, he says.

They hurrrt.

In the car.

Plaaaane . . . I say, but he must not hear me because he doesn’t answer.

The door opens, and a blast of cold air hits me. I stumble back. Johnny jerks me forward. I’m getting sick of how bossy he is. Just because he’s helpful doesn’t mean I’m helpless. Not completely. But I am cold. Very cold. I duck away from icy pellets to my face.

Coat.

Johnny wraps his arm around my shoulders.

Hey, my man.

I know that voice. It’s not Zach.

Johnny ignores it.

Ava, hold up. You leaving? It’s the familiar voice again.

I try to stop, but Johnny keeps me moving. I wriggle, and my feet quit working. The ground smacks me hard, right in my hands. It burns with cold and prickles that shoot all the way up to my elbows. Something stabs me in the bad breast, and all the air rushes out of my lungs.

Ava! The familiar voice is yelling now.

My ears work enough to hear him, but I can only groan in response. I cover my breast with my hand. My knees. Something is biting my knees. BAM! A sharp noise pummels my ears, and people are screaming. I curl up in a ball. So cold. So sleepy. So ouchy. More loud noises, more screams. I wish people would stop their nonsense. Cool your jets, people.

Oomph, Johnny says.

I hear a noise like a bag of potatoes falling off a counter.

Then I hear a pop-pop, and another bag of potatoes falls, this one closer to me.

Not one word, motherfucker, a new voice says, a voice that makes me feel warmer somehow, all the way from the inside out.

Then I have a sensation of flying, and I flip over in the air. I open my eyes. I see a narrow slice of Collin’s face. There he is. He’s coming home with me after all. Thank goodness. Mommy and Daddy will be glad to see him, too.

I lay my head on his shoulder, letting his heartbeat soothe me, soaking in his warm bulk as he gives his badge number to someone. One gunshot victim, one apparent victim of kidnapping with drugging suspected, the bad guy is in handcuffs on the ground. Rendering aid now. Send two ambulances and a paddy wagon with the cavalry.

I’m such a lucky girl that my man is capable, strong, and warm. And that he speaks in plain English so I can understand his cop talk. I hope we don’t miss our flight, but everything is A-OK now, and I surrender to sleep with my baby’s arm around me.

ONE

They say be careful what you wish for, but they don’t know beef from bull foot. I jump out of the helicopter, which I rode over from Virgin Gorda for the sole purpose of making an entrance. Collin, my man, hustles forward. I clutch my floppy hat with one hand and take Collin’s fingers with the other as I concentrate on how to look graceful in a forty-mile-per-hour wind that creates a pelletized sand spout. On one side of us is crystal blue Caribbean Sea. On the other coconut palms bend nearly double behind a tiki hut with twinkling red and green Christmas lights. My eyes continue down the beach across the roofline of an enormous house and land on a thatched-roof pavilion with what looks like heavily loaded buffet tables.

All of this for the wrap party for my first album. Bombshell—that’s the name of the album—is memorialized on a giant banner across the top of the tiki hut: AVA BUTLER’S EXPLOSIVE DEBUT ALBUM, BOMBSHELL, FROM VENUS RECORDS. DECEMBER 15, EVERYWHERE. There’s a picture from the album artwork incorporated into the banner. In it, I’m a road-weary skank with eye makeup streaked down my cheeks and a ripped green lace top, but I’d do me.

I escape the rotor wash across the little landing pad that looks like a golf green, without falling face-first, and join the waiting crowd. Hugs from Drake Henson, the owner of Venus Records and the helicopter, his staff, and my family and friends, whom Drake chartered early to Virgin Gorda and ferried to Dekker Cay, his private island. There needs to be an audience to cheer my arrival, he says.

A Venus underling presses a hollowed coconut into my palm. I sip from the straw. Orange juice, Coco Lopez, pineapple juice, rum, and nutmeg. Painkiller, my favorite.

I’m Greg, and I’ll be taking care of you, the very young man says. His accent is British, and his nose is slathered in zinc oxide. A long-sleeved sun shirt protects his upper body, his swimming trunks end at his knobby knees, and above his sweaty hairline a Santa cap perches askew. It’s barely past Thanksgiving, but it’s all about the People.com optics at this soiree.

Thank you, meh son, I say. No ice, please. Normally, I speak in a calypso accent and dialect naturally around other locals, and I Yank in a continental accent with nonlocals. But Venus is banking heavily on the fact that I’m from the US Virgin Island of St. Marcos. I’m under strict instructions from Venus to emphasize a C-word, my Caribbean roots—instead of my years in the States to attend NYU, where I studied theater and the classics and later pursued a musical theater career—and downplay another C-word, my Caucasian father. So calypso it is, even though in my head I’m always the girl my Bahamian mother and Canadian father raised me to be: primed for success spouting the Queen’s English, so to speak.

Over here, Ava, a photographer calls out.

I take a step in the direction she points. Collin starts to follow, but she waves him off.

Just Ava, she says.

Collin pulls out his new phone and snaps a picture of the photographer, then disappears into the crowd before I can protest. I’m also under strict instructions to downplay the C-word boyfriend in favor of my Goddess of the Morning After image, which Collin, who’s a native of Texas, refers to sweetly as rode hard and put up wet. I can’t argue with his description. I suck in my gut and hold up my best assets, straining out of the green string-bikini top with gold metallic threads that my stylist, Chen, picked out for me this morning. I fight an urge to cover my left breast with my hand, as if the camera can see what the eye cannot: an afterimage from the radiation treatments that ended only a few months ago and that have me in remission from breast cancer. Oh, and that’s the fourth C-word in my instructions. I’m supposed to keep the cancer treatment under wraps.

Flashes shock my eyes, and I’m glad for my oversized sunglasses. The onslaught is intense but over quickly, and I escape back to my awaiting entourage of island friends and family and New York music industry colleagues. Farther up the beach toward Drake’s mansion, his other guests congregate. Venus recording artists and studio musicians. Artists Drake is recruiting. Drake’s famous industry buddies. Journalists and reviewers. Financiers. Publicists, promotors, and executives.

Girl, you a rock star, for real. McKenna slurps her cranberry juice and lime noisily through a tiny cocktail straw, leaving only ice behind. The noise stops. Thanks be to Jah, I think, hoping my devoutly Catholic mommy can’t read my mind.

Please. I slide my sunglasses down just enough to give her the slant-eye. Then I down my drink. Another appears in my hand, sans ice, as if by magic, so fast I can’t say thank you to the deliverer, who I assume is Greg, but he’s nowhere to be seen.

A large strong hand squeezes my bana. I hope it’s Collin and not Kenny, my lecherous producer who doesn’t let long odds or Collin’s biceps keep him from copping a feel. But as I inhale, I know the hand belongs to Collin. His scent is unmistakable to me, and I imagine for the rest of my life I’ll smell sun, sex, and musk when I climax, whether Collin’s there or not.

I look around me at my family and friends mixing with the Who’s Who of the New York music scene. My tunes jam out of giant speakers on either end of the white sand beach, outdoor surround sound competing with the wind and water. It’s idyllic out here, notwithstanding the ten-foot security chain-link fences topped with a cyclone of barbed wire separating paradise from the rest of the island.

The breeze lifts my silk sarong, and I swat it down. The hand on my bana catches mine, and I lace my fingers through Collin’s. He’s in tropical board shorts circa 2000 that ride below his six-pack, and I swivel into him, savoring my Painkiller buzz, his warm skin, and giddy, heady success. I splay the dark chocolate fingers of my other hand on his toasted-coconut pec, and the result is delicious. The industry’s beautiful people with their pasty skin and toss-after-wearing designer swimwear are almost comical next to him, a police officer with an annual paycheck less than their monthly burns. I glance to my right and catch a perky ponytailed pop princess eyeing him. I let go of Collin’s chest long enough to slide a finger across my throat. She puts both hands up in front of her and takes a step back. Damn straight. I return my hand to its happy place. My hip bumps something enticingly hard, but I realize it’s only his fancy new phone.

The sound of a man clearing his throat pulls me back from the brink of violence. In his cultured voice, Drake says, How about a tour of the property, Ava?

I turn to the Brit with the scraggly grayish-blond hair. I’m not going to lie. I may be Drake’s protégé, but it’s gone further than that. He hit on me at first, which was the cause of Shari—the soon-to-be fourth ex-Mrs. Henson—leaving him, notwithstanding that I rejected his advances. Word is she is furious that she hadn’t been pregnant yet and wants to renew her attempts before they formalize a divorce. I guess she thinks she needs child support on top of what will be a sizeable alimony. Drake famously has no children despite the parade of women through his life. Makes one think there’s little chance Shari will succeed. But to me, Drake is just a friend, although I know he doesn’t do launch parties on Dekker Cay for just anyone. It’s caused some tension between Collin and me. Between the other Venus artists and employees and me. Obsessed is a word I hear tossed about, but he combats that by telling people I’m like a daughter to him. Which reminds me of the scene in Vacation where Clark Griswold’s niece Vicki brags that her daddy says she French-kisses best. Urp.

We love one. Give us a minute? I’m not one hundred percent sure he intends for me to bring Collin, but I don’t care, and I don’t let go of my boyfriend’s hand. I turn to my friends and family and say, You okay without us?

We irie, Rashidi assures me, using the island word for all good, and flashing his toothpaste-commercial smile. He’s my ex-lover and a woman magnet with his ebony skin, lean body, and long dreadlocks, who’s soon to move to Texas. I’ll miss him.

One Love, I reply.

As long as he takes his damn camera phone with him, Kenny growls.

Collin grins. I’m documenting my woman for posterity.

Everyone else urges Collin and me on with good humor. Moments like this would be awkward without my people understanding I’m doing my best to navigate my old world and my new one. I kiss my daughter Ginger’s sweaty cheek.

I just go for a water, McKenna says, pronouncing it WAH-tuh and adding under her breath, When what I really want a piña colada. Diabetes runs rampant in her family, and our mutual doctor and friend, Easy, is on her case about sugar and bad carbs.

I reach back soon, I say, waving. Then I follow Drake, pulling Collin along behind me. I bump smack into the solid chest of Erick Smythe, head of security for Venus Enterprises.

I believe Mr. Henson planned on just you. Erick quirks an eyebrow at his boss, his face expressionless and his eyes masked by reflective wraparound sunglasses. Erick played goalie for Manchester United back in the day, before, as he tells it, he blew out his knee, lost his millions in a dodgy investment scheme, and graduated from university with a first in criminology and a master’s in sports science.

Drake lifts his straw hat, pushing back curly forelocks. He readjusts the hat firmly on his head, and seems to notice Collin for the first time. He trains his eyes on him, then looks at Erick.

The three men are a contrast. Pasty Drake in his khaki skinny jean shorts and a woven hemp shirt unbuttoned down the front to the toned but meager chest of an endurance eventer, ebony Erick a foot taller with navy shorts, a gun bulge at his hip, and a collared white golf shirt featuring the Venus Enterprises logo on the breast pocket, and sunbaked, blond, buff, and nearly naked Collin (hey, he’s at a beach party, not working) splitting the height difference.

Well now, hmm . . . I was thinking just you, Ava darling.

No way am I going in that house with Drake without a chaperone now. No Collin, no Ava, I say, smiling.

Uh, um . . . Drake stutters like a chainsaw.

I jump into the gap before Collin gets his dander up. Collin won’t make no trouble, will you, baby?

No promises. His face is a rock.

I punch his arm. He just playing.

Quite. Well, Collin, you’ll enjoy seeing how the other half lives, then. Drake regains his composure and says, Let’s get on with it, shall we?

I take a moment to smirk at Erick. He leads Collin and me off, stoic. We all follow Drake. Collin pulls out his phone and starts snapping shots again. The grounds, me, the exterior of the house, me. I make a lewd gesture for his camera, and the tips of his lips curve up behind the rectangle in front of his face.

I hope you make yourself at home in my little Rat and Mouse. You’re welcome anytime, Drake says.

He likes to think he’s Cockney—akin to an American adopting street slang, I guess—and his terminology throws me occasionally, but this one I know: house.

He’s walking in huarache-type sandals that scoop up sand with every step. He appears oblivious. The man is a serial adventurer who has scaled the Seven Summits, including a well-publicized ascent of Mount Everest where he rescued a fellow trekker who had fallen into a crevasse and broken an ankle. Drake towed the man down the mountain on a climbing line. But you’d never imagine such physical prowess by watching him in his everyday life. Bumbling is the word that comes to mind.

It beautiful. Thank you. I bump Collin with my hip.

Collin whispers in my ear. Uh-uh. Yours is the only ass I’ll kiss around here.

In front of us Erick coughs.

Drake shortcuts across the back patio. Guests crowd under umbrellaed tables around an elevated swimming pool. Its endless horizon splashes water down a waterfall backed with the local black volcanic rock. Drake leads us to an exterior hallway partially obscured by bougainvillea bushes. The hallway takes us to a recessed glass door with a security panel. Erick scans the area behind us, I guess making sure no one is following, as Drake punches a code and turns his ear toward a camera mounted above the door. I realize Collin, beside me, with minimal movement, is videoing or photographing Drake.

He mouths Shh at me.

Ear scan? I whisper to Collin. I never hear of such a thing. Eyes, yes. Ear, no.

Probably means Drake has cataracts or something. Eye disease can affect retinal scans.

What happen to fingerprints?

I guess he’s afraid someone will cut his finger off to get in. Collin winks.

Same thing can happen to an ear.

He tweaks mine.

There’s a click and the door pops open a few inches. Drake pulls it open the rest of the way and we enter silently.

After we cluster in the wide hallway, Drake clears his throat again. The private residence is completely separate from the social and guest areas. The design is a remodel based on Erick’s suggestions. There are a lot of psychos out there, unfortunately.

Heels click, coming toward us from somewhere unseen. Drake’s secretary, Pammie Hollins, appears from a doorway, and Collin captures her in his lens. I glare at him and he grins. Long, stylish dreads swing, kissing the tops of her spaghetti-strapped shoulders. She has lush red lips and almond-shaped eyes with enough lashes for her, me, and a women’s basketball team.

Her voice lilts, unmistakably British Virgin Islands to my experienced ear. Sir, Mrs. Henson on the phone for you.

Which Mrs. Henson?

Number four, sir. Somehow she keeps a straight face.

I feel my own screw up in an effort not to laugh. Collin doesn’t try as hard as me.

I’ll have to call her back.

Shari not gonna like that. Pammie shakes her head.

While you’re here, can I get an iced green tea? It’s a drink he’s rarely without, sometimes with, sometimes without gin.

Special?

Of course.

She disappears back through the doorway without confirming his order or either of them offering the rest of us anything.

Drake’s eyes follow her. I’d be utterly lost without that woman. Been with me since I bought this place.

I can’t stop myself. The fourth Mrs. Henson?

God, no. Pammie.

Erick’s voice rumbles. The fourth Mrs. Henson is the reason for twenty-five percent of our security procedures. The first Mrs. Henson is the reason for the other seventy-five.

Come now, Erick. Surely my other enemies deserve some credit.

True. At any given time, someone is intent upon stealing the Venus fortune, inside the courts of law or out.

Drake beams at me. You’ll meet one of them later. Donovan Fagan, fancies himself as a model. His father and I are sideways in a property development deal, and we’re trying to placate him with some good photos of his son with you, our rising star.

Real estate. I ponder that for a moment, putting aside for now what Drake said about a model and photos. It’s easy to forget that Venus is a multinational business conglomerate, and not just a record company.

We proceed into the interior of the residence, first passing an open doorway to Pammie’s office, a square space with one small window looking out onto the woody backside of a tall stand of bougainvillea. She’s working the phone and her laptop, and I look away quickly.

The residence, we soon see, is like a contemporary Caribbean museum: sculptures, paintings, masks, baskets, sea artifacts, mounted trophy fish, pottery, derringers, a cutlass, a bayonet, and miniatures of ships. Henson could charge admission. I want to slow down to soak it all in, but Drake keeps moving. Besides, Collin’s capturing it all, although I can’t believe Erick hasn’t confiscated his phone yet.

Drake takes us past some kind of boardroom and through his sumptuous, enormous office, and I can’t help but notice a picture of him with Shari. Happier times?

Drake gestures at his mahogany desk. All the furniture in the compound was custom-built on-island. That was cheaper than having it shipped in, and more authentic. We let a lot of the locals stay on after I bought Dekker, and hired them to work for us here, and abroad at Venus, too. You’d think with all that, I’d get a little more love from them. Instead they call this place Dekker Colony and me Lord Henson, like they’re some kind of feudal serfs.

This doesn’t surprise me, as a native of the US Virgin Islands. Bahn yah (born-here) status is all-important. Outsiders are met with suspicion, if not outright hostility, and throwing business at us feels a lot like patronization and servitude at best. On St. Marcos, they call arrangements like Drake’s the new plantation.

Erick guffaws. You’re guilty of disruption of local commerce.

Local commerce? Collin asks. I haven’t seen much besides people working here.

Liming. Goat herding. Drug running. And Drake didn’t endear himself when he called the Feds after seeing the delivery boats coming and going at night.

Collin grunts.

I make a noncommittal noise—surely the Dekker locals aren’t as bad as Drake and Erick make them out to be—and trail my hand across an onyx and ivory chess board.

You break it, you buy it, Collin whispers.

Another cough from Erick.

I’m examining a yellowed map of the British Virgin Islands, complete with hand-drawn symbols and scribbled notes, when Drake stops at a bookshelf. He holds a finger to his lips. Shh. I’m going to show you something special.

Erick steps forward and crosses his arms. Sir?

Drake claps him on the shoulder. Erick, my good man, Ava is like family to me.

And him?

Collin’s abs tighten visibly as he