The Big Shakeup

By Nancy Boyarsky

Everyone is innocent until proven guilty, or so they say.

P.I. Nicole Graves arrives early at work, just as Los Angeles is hit with "the Big One," a long-predicted, devastating earthquake. When the building stops shaking, Nicole finds Jerry, her boss, in his office dying of a gunshot wound. It appears to be suicide.

Nicole is shocked to learn that the police have decided Jerry' s death was murder and even more shocked that she' s their only suspect when there' s no shortage of people with motives. And there' s the question of why the detectives are pursuing this one case when all city workers, including the police, are in an all-out search and rescue operation for survivors. All she can do is evade capture long enough to prove her innocence and catch the real culprit.

Nancy Boyarsky's writing has been praised as "well crafted, tautly written" by James Lilliefors, author of the Amy Hunter novels The Psalmist and The Tempest, and "thoroughly entertaining and unforgettable" by Dave Edlund, USA TODAY bestselling author of the Peter Savage Novels.

"Like John le Carre, Boyarsky portrays a world of espionage that' s more grit than glamour and where it can be a struggle to distinguish the good guys from the bad. A real page-turner with a satisfying resolution." Mally Becker, author of The Turncoat' s Widow, (Praise for The Moscow Affair, Nicole Graves Book 6)

Each book in the Nicole Graves Mysteries is written as a stand-alone. Readers do not need to read every book in the series to follow along.

Order of Books in the Nicole Graves Mysteries:
1. The Swap
2. The Bequest
3. Liar, Liar
4. The Ransom
5. The Entitled
6. The Moscow Affair
7. The Big Shakeup

• Language: English
• Publisher: Light Messages Publishing
• Release date: Sep 26, 2023
• ISBN: 9781611535327

Nancy Boyarsky

Nancy Boyarsky is the bestselling author of the award-winning Nicole Graves Mysteries. Reviews compared The Swap to the mysteries of Mary Higgins Clark and praised Nancy for contributing to the "women-driven mystery field with panache" (Foreword Reviews) as well as for their "hold-onto-the-bar roller coaster" plots (RT Book Reviews). Kirkus had special praise for The Bequest, concluding, "Boyarsky's weightless complications expertly combine menace with bling, making the heroine's adventures both nightmarish and dreamy." In Liar Liar, Foreword Reviews falls once more for the "tough and likable protagonist Nicole Graves" and Midwest Book Review praises the "exquisite tension" throughout the story. Before turning to mysteries, Nancy coauthored Backroom Politics, a New York Times notable book, with her husband, Bill Boyarsky. She has written several textbooks on the justice system as well as articles for publications including the Los Angeles Times, Forbes, and McCall's. She also contributed to political anthologies, including In the Running, about women's political campaigns. In addition to her writing career, she was communications director for political affairs for ARCO. Her debut novel The Swap-book one of the Nicole Graves Mysteries-won the prestigious Eric Hoffer award for Best Micro Press Book of the Year. In response to the controversial and incendiary themes explored in Liar Liar, Nancy Boyarsky was invited to present at the American Library Association Annual Conference in 2018 on "Women-Driven Mysteries in a Post #MeToo World." In her latest novel, "Boyarsky's imagination serves up a court case that plays with expectations during an era where we push to believe women, resulting in some real bad baddies whom it feels good to root against." (Foreword Reviews). Liar, Liar is the third Nicole Graves novel, following The Swap ,The Bequest and The Ransom, each of which can be read as a stand alone. Readers are invited to connect with Nancy through her website at nancyboyarsky.com.

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Dedication

For the people I love most:

Bill, Jennie, John, Anabelle, and Lila.

And in loving memory of Robin

Chapter One

Nicole arrived at Colbert and Smith Investigations as

dawn was breaking. She hoped that if she got to the office early, she’d have a few hours to catch up with her work before the firm’s investigators, many of them new, arrived and demanded her attention.

As she waited for the elevator, she heard a sound and turned to look. Someone was slipping into the stairwell leading to the garage. All she saw was an arm and a leg as the door closed, not even enough to tell if the stranger was male or female. He, or she, was wearing dark clothes and seemed in an enormous hurry. Odd, she thought. Who would be sneaking out of the building at this hour? It could, she supposed, be one of the homeless whose tents and broken-down vans lined the nearby streets. On the other hand, several of the building’s suites had suffered after-hours break-ins. Could this be the perp? Only when she pulled out her phone to call the building’s management office did she remember the time. No one would be there this early.

Still perturbed, she got in the elevator and punched the button for the top floor. Once inside the firm’s suite, she passed through reception and the empty bullpen where the investigators worked. Entering the hallway leading to her office, she saw that her boss’s office lights were on. She wasn’t surprised. Jerry had been sleeping there for several weeks. She took it as a sign that his marriage was failing under the weight of his gambling, drinking, and general decline in behavior.

They’d been friends—good friends—for most of the time she’d worked here. In those days, he would have told her if there was trouble between him and Melanie. But their friendship had cooled in recent months. Now things were less than cordial, and their chats and confidences had ended. Instead of going down the hall and announcing her arrival, she went into her own office and quietly closed the door.

She settled at the desk and thought about her job, how deeply unsatisfying it had become since Jerry had promoted her to vice president. He’d raised her salary, but that didn’t make up for the tediousness of her duties as a glorified office manager. She was good at managing people, but she’d had the same job years before and had burned out. That was why she became a P.I. in the first place. Investigating cases had been interesting and sometimes exciting. But shuffling paperwork, handing cases over to underlings, and dealing with their problems was another story.

With the bad blood between her and her boss, she’d wanted to resign. But her life had been too chaotic. She was engaged to Ronald Reinhardt, a former MI6 agent. They’d had to reschedule their wedding date several times. Now she was busy setting it up again. Looking for a new job at the same time would be a nightmare.

The week before, she’d been unable to resist a juicy missing-persons case. Instead of handing it over to one of her reports, she’d kept it for herself. It had been worth the extra effort, but it had taken up most of the week. Now her monthly report was due, with just a few days to make up the time she’d lost.

All at once she heard a faint tapping noise. Looking around her desk, she saw that her globe paperweight was vibrating against the base of her desk lamp. Through the doorway to the hall, the dangling light fixture was swaying. Panicked by the thought of an earthquake, she stood up. Hoping to reassure herself, she turned to look out the window. But the scene outside was anything but reassuring. The telephone poles and skinny-trunked palm trees across the street were shaking, and a low rumble had started up.

The scary part of an earthquake is that there’s no way to predict how big it will get. As a native Californian, she’d been through enough of them to know what might happen next. Most quakes wound down shortly and ranked five or six points on the Richter Scale—enough to knock things off shelves, break some chimneys, and cause some injuries. On the other hand, it could keep growing until it destroyed everything it touched. It had been over a century since the last truly destructive earthquake had flattened San Francisco. But geologists had been warning that The Big One was on its way.

The shaking kept growing more intense. Books flew off the shelves. Nicole dove under the desk. Seconds later, one of her cabinets fell over, crashing into the spot where she’d been sitting. The doors of the other cabinets flew open, dumping their contents on the floor. Ceiling tiles rained down.

Nicole had a flashback to the only major earthquake she’d ever experienced—the Northridge quake of 1994. She’d been a young child at the time, and the experience remained one of her most vivid memories. It had been substantial, a 6.7, and she recalled her sense of terror and helplessness as her room seemed to tilt and sway, and her mother screaming and bursting through the wobbling doorframe to grab her and hold her close.

Back in the present, the shaking was still gathering force. She crawled further into the desk’s knee space, tried to brace herself and grip its legs. Holding on was next to impossible when the desk jumped with every jolt. Even more frightening was the noise. It had started as a rumble but now sounded like the roar of an oncoming train.

Every instinct told her to run, get out of the building. But with so much movement, she knew she’d never be able to stand up, much less run down eight flights of stairs. As the shaking continued to build, all thought disappeared. Later she was surprised to learn the whole thing had lasted a mere three-and-a-half minutes. But, if she knew anything at the time, it was that the shaking would go on until the building collapsed and buried her.

Almost as quickly as it had begun, the quake’s violent movement eased into a trembling, rocking motion, like a ship in a choppy sea. After a series of weak shudders, it stopped. She found herself on her hands and knees, panting for breath. Once all was still, she climbed out from under the desk.

Her office was a disaster. Shards of window glass were all over the floor along with the ceiling tiles and everything that had been on her desk, inside her cabinets, and on top of them. Wires hung down through gaps in the ceiling. The lights she’d turned on a few minutes before were now off. Her desk chair and the two in front of her desk were on their backs. Nothing was where it was supposed to be.

She thought of Reinhardt, her fiancée. He was in London on an assignment for his employer, the British Consulate in Los Angeles. With today’s instant communications, he was sure to learn of the quake within minutes, if not seconds. She had to let him know she was all right. She looked around for her phone. It was on the floor, its cord caught under one end of the desk. She couldn’t loosen it, and the desk was too heavy to lift, so she squatted down and picked up the receiver. There was no dial tone—of course, since the lights were off, the power had failed. No doubt the quake had also knocked down cellular towers and telephone switching stations.

Her purse had bounced off her desk and was barely visible under a layer of fallen debris. She picked it up, got out her cell phone, and tried the call again. She heard a busy signal before she finished putting in his number. She thought of Stephanie, her sister. Was she okay? She remembered a news story—one of many since a six-point earthquake in Northern California had given people the jitters—explaining what to do in case of a major quake. She was supposed to send a text message instead of trying to call. She sent messages to Reinhardt and her sister. In theory, the system would keep trying to deliver them until they got through—whenever that might be.

Dropping her cell in her pocket, Nicole stepped over to the window. Most of the glass was gone, and a chilly breeze swept in. Only now did she notice the racket outside, a cacophony of sirens, building alarms, and helicopters. She was stunned to see all the destruction on her block alone. The twelve-story building across the street had pancaked and was now only five or six stories; it was hard to tell. Lower levels were delineated only by lines where floors and ceilings met. If any of the building’s employees had come to work as early as she, most would be dead. A trio of long-legged palm trees planted across the street had keeled over and sprawled across the boulevard. Looking down, Nicole could see their mop tops resting against her building.

All at once she thought of Jerry. He hadn’t stirred from his office. She couldn’t imagine why he hadn’t come out to check on his firm’s office suite, which was a great source of pride to him. Had he been injured? Something worse?

She’d been angry with him over a recent row that had been witnessed by just about everyone in the office. It had started when Nicole pointed out that Jerry’s management failures had been the cause of the firm’s ever-increasing cash-flow problems. Once again, they’d had to delay handing out paychecks to the thirty-odd employees, this time for at least two weeks.

The fight between Nicole and Jerry had escalated and become physical. In front of the office staff, Jerry—visibly under the influence—accused Nicole of sabotaging the agency, even stealing from it. When words failed, he tried to punch her. He was so drunk that he missed and staggered against her, almost knocking her over. So unpopular had Jerry become that Nicole’s coworkers were rooting for her. She retaliated to his aggression with a solid punch to his nose. The blow had drawn blood, but at that point, Jerry was flat on the floor, beyond caring.

Nicole walked away, resolved to quit that very moment. She hoped she wouldn’t have too much trouble finding work. She was well known among the city’s corporate investigation firms. She also had notoriety from her involvement in several high-profile cases that had gone viral in the media. In one incident, she’d briefly been a person of interest in the death of an office mate who’d left her a fortune at what had turned out to be a very inconvenient moment.

Stories about her had appeared in the press. As a very private person, she’d been upset by this. She hated seeing her name and photo in the paper and on various news outlets. But those headlines, along with her professional reputation, had resulted in some rather good job offers at the time. Now she felt like kicking herself for not accepting one.

She’d written her resignation letter and was clearing out her desk when Jerry, a bit wobbly on his feet, came in to apologize. Trying to convince her to stay, he offered her a substantial raise the firm could ill afford—more proof that he was still drunk.

When she refused, he looked as if he were about to cry. Please, Nicole. I’m so sorry. I don’t know what got into me. No one else can do what you can. Won’t you stay long enough to find a replacement and train them? I’m begging you. He got down on one knee and looked at her beseechingly.

Nicole was annoyed by his theatrics. For God’s sake, get up, she said. I’ll stay long enough to find a replacement and write a manual explaining my job. But that’s it.

Jerry awkwardly got back to his feet, gave her a pat on the shoulder, and shuffled out of her office. Nicole immediately placed hiring notices on local bulletin boards, as well as on LinkedIn. In a few days, she began interviewing applicants.

But now—worried about his safety—her anger was, for the most part, gone. She walked cautiously down the hall, thinking that all that shaking might have destabilized the building. But the floor felt solid enough. She arrived at Jerry’s door and surveyed the ruin of his office, which was in worse shape than hers. His desk was on its side. Papers, file folders, office supplies, ceiling tiles, and shards of broken windows were strewn everywhere. Jerry himself seemed to be missing.

Nicole looked around. She went to his bathroom and knocked. The door, unlocked, swung open. He wasn’t there. Only then did she think to look behind the desk.

He was lying on the floor. When she called his name, he didn’t respond. As she walked toward him, she saw the pool of blood around his head. Bending down for a closer look, she noticed a black object half hidden beneath him. She bent down to pull it out and was stunned to see it was a gun. Did that mean the earthquake hadn’t killed him? That he’d been shot?

She hadn’t heard a gun go off, which meant it must have happened before the quake and before she arrived. As she tossed the gun aside, she realized she’d seen it before. It was when he’d asked her to look through his desk to see if he’d left his phone there. He hadn’t, but she happened on the gun in the top left-hand drawer of his desk. She’d checked, and it was loaded. At the time, she’d wondered who or what he was afraid of. Now she realized he must have shot himself.

With great effort, she turned him onto his back. The sight of his injuries made her feel sick. His head was a bloody mess. One of his ears was missing along with a chunk of jaw.

She bent down to put her head to his chest, listening for a heartbeat. She could barely make one out, along with a bubbling, wheezing sound she supposed was an effort to breathe. She wondered if pressure on the wound might stop the bleeding. Then she remembered what she’d learned in an office first-aid class. Never apply pressure to a head wound that might have penetrated the skull. With all that blood, how could she tell? She had to find a doctor or paramedic before Jerry bled out.

A door slammed. She heard footsteps and the low voices of a man and woman as they made their way through the bullpen. They seemed to be arguing. Their words were indecipherable until the woman yelled, I’m not going back in there. Let go of me!

It’s for your own peace of mind, the man said. Just take a quick look. What you heard was probably a car backfiring.

Now that they were closer, Nicole recognized their voices. Diana Chang was her most recent hire, a recent college grad who’d accepted a job as a secretary in hope of eventually qualifying as a private investigator. The man, Nate Goodwin, one of the firm’s long-time investigators. He was a relentless womanizer, always hitting on the youngest of the new hires. He was forty to Diana’s twenty-three. Still, no one had ever complained about his behavior.

It’s Nicole! she called out. I’m in Jerry’s office!

Diana, a pretty, fine-boned creature, appeared in the doorway. Is everything alright? she said.

Nicole silently gestured toward Jerry’s still form.

When Diana caught sight of him, she screamed, Oh God! Oh, no! Bursting into tears, she disappeared back into the hallway. Meanwhile Nate walked in, stood over the body, and studied it.

Seconds later, they heard the sound of Diana vomiting. Nicole remembered how upbeat the young woman usually was. She seemed to like Jerry even when everyone else had turned on him. She’d laughed at his lame jokes and seemed fascinated by everything he said. Nicole could understand why she’d be upset by the sight of his body.

Nate ignored Diana’s outburst and kept staring at Jerry. Is he dead? Was it the quake? Like, something fell on him?

I think he’s still breathing, Nicole said. He was shot with his own gun. I think he tried to kill himself. I need to get him medical attention. Can you stay with him while I run downstairs and flag down an emergency van?

Nate looked up in surprise. "Stay with him? Um—I don’t think—I mean, what if he died while I was here alone with him? I’m sorry, but—."

Alright. What about Diana? Where is she?

No idea, but she’d be useless here. One look at Jerry, and she barfed.

Nicole and Nate left the office together. Diana was nowhere to be found. Taking an elevator was out of the question. Even without the threat of an aftershock, elevators couldn’t operate without electricity.

As they cautiously started down the stairs, Nicole said, Why did you and Diana come to the office so early?

We were at an after-hours club last night, he said. I guess we had too much to drink. Diana said she wasn’t feeling well, and she left first. Said she wasn’t up to driving so she was coming here for the rest of the night. I don’t even remember going back to my place, but that’s where I woke up. I came in to check on her. When I got here, she was freaking out about something.

They’d reached the second-floor landing. Nicole was about to ask Nate what Diana had told him. Had she seen something or heard the shot that killed Jerry?

Just then, the shaking started up again. It felt as if the walls were closing in. Only then did Nicole notice deep cracks in the walls and ceiling. Just as suddenly as it began, the shaking stopped. She turned and there was Nate, half a flight behind. He was sitting on a step, shielding his head with his arms.

She started down again. When she reached the street, squad cars, fire engines, and paramedic vans were speeding by, sirens screaming.

Nicole began to wave at passing vehicles just as Nate bolted from the building. To her surprise, he kept running and, without a word, disappeared around the corner.

Okay, she thought. He hadn’t been