A Prezly/Paladino Investigation Series

A story of unbridled ambition, dynastic power, and criminal deception. Private investigators Elvyra Prezly and Charles Paladino are hired to root out a doppelganger sent to destroy their client's reputation.   In early January 2079, Lars Dotermann moved from Redwood, Minnesota to Las Cruces, NM to take over the practice of a retiring dentist. His eleven-year-old daughter, Kirsten, refuses to move; she is still grieving for her mother, Diandra, who died in her sleep ten months ago. Lars grieves, too, but he sees a future for them in Las Cruces and asks his mother to convince Kirsten to join him.              A week later, Lars is reunited with his family, but Kirsten, still angry, ignores him.              He plans a tour of the Mesilla Valley near Las Cruces. The day before, he went to get his twice-monthly haircut, but the receptionist tells him he's already been there. The same thing happens again at the monthly meeting of the local dental society. The impersonator strikes twice more at a café in Mesilla where Lars and his family ate. Bewildered, he tells the café owner about the impersonator and she suggests he contact Prezly-Paladino Investigations.              When PIs Elvyra Prezly and Chuck Paladino meet with Lars, they find surveillance devices in his office and jacket pocket, and disable them. They gather information through interviews and public information sources, which leads them to a possible suspect.              They confront Lars after finding out he has held back important information about his late spouse's background. He admits that Diandra's ultra-wealthy family is suing him and, in two weeks, he's due in a Minneapolis courtroom to refute the family's accusations.              Only weeks away from celebrating their second anniversary in Cody, Wyoming, Elvyra and Chuck go undercover to expose the impersonator and pressure him into revealing why he was sent to ruin Lars Dotermann. 

PIs ELVYRA PREZLY AND CHUCK PALADINO TAKE ON A PRO BONO CASE INVOLVING THE ASSAULT OF A YOUNG IMMIGRANT MOTHER, WHO HAS COME TO LAS CRUCES FROM MEXICO ON A VISA TO WORK AS A CAKE DECORATOR IN A COMMERCIAL BAKERY.   When Coronada "Dama" Yuen-Padilla fails to pick up her four-year son at the preschool Elvyra and Chuck are considering for their twins, Beverly Eliasun, the administrator, pleads with them to find out what happened to her.   A downstairs neighbor tells them Dama is in the hospital, after being assaulted by a local pimp who had harassed and stalked her and her son, Caleb.  A police artist develops a sketch of Dama's assailant and Miguel Dominguez is arrested at his home in El Paso, charged with numerous offenses, including the prostitution of an eleven-year-old girl. His attorney, Sheba Cannelas, argues for bail, but fails. She requests the case be consolidated and moved to Las Cruces. The judge agrees.   The guards ready Dominguez for transport but two men attack them and help Dominguez escape. They stop at Dama's apartment so he can exact his revenge before fleeing to Mexico. They force her neighbor, Patrice Juñoz, to get Dama to open the door. Chuck and Elvyra receive an ominous, silent link from Dama's handheld, rush to the apartment and subdue the three assailants before the police arrive.   After their bail hearings, Sheba Cannelas disappears. Several tips help Chuck and Elvyra track her to Bacalar on the Yucatan Peninsula. Las Cruces Police Detective Mattias Donal sends officers to arrest her for allegedly stealing Dominguez's hoard of gold and silver.   The Assistant DA offers plea deals to the defendants and they accept them. A temporary defense attorney represents them in court, but Dominguez balks, makes threats and rants to the judge. Will newly-appointed Judge Reezer accept their pleas or impose harsher sentences? Elvyra and Chuck work diligently to make sure Dama and Patrice receive the justice they deserve.

PIs ELVYRA PREZLY AND CHUCK PALADINO HAVE BEEN HIRED TO HELP RECOVER THE SARPECH OF THE MAHARAJA OF PATALIA, A $3 MILLION PIECE OF JEWELRY MISSING FROM THE SAFE OF A LAS CRUCES COUPLE.   The sarpech, bought decades ago through an estate sale, is presumed stolen. The insurer, Silverton Insurance Company of New York, sends their investigator Uma Deet, an expert on Indian jewelry, to meet with Chuck and Elvyra.   They interview Padma Chauhan, the spouse of Samara Jadeja, an interior designer now confined to a memory care facility due to advanced Alzheimer's disease. Padma suggests Chanelle Forester, Samara's personal assistant, might be implicated in the theft, as she had access to the safe. Chanelle disappeared before the police arrived and hasn't been seen since. Elvyra and Chuck conduct an extensive background check and discover Chanelle Forester is an alias. The woman is a grifter and prostitute wanted by the police in New York for theft, attempted murder, and second degree murder, for crimes committed against two ex-boyfriends and a client who paid her for sex.   They find evidence of her systematic looting of Samara's business account, theft of her jewelry and, through DNA analysis, determine she has an accomplice.   Their investigation is complicated by the poisoning of Samara at the memory care facility and the theft of her wedding ring. Will the surveillance cameras reveal who did it and why?    After Samara is hospitalized, Chuck and Elvyra re-analyze the situation, find gaps in Padma's story and return to ask more questions; but this time her answers are evasive. What is she hiding? Has she diverted their attention to conceal her role in the theft?   A stunning confession brings them closer to recovering the sarpech, but the crash of an FBI jet challenges their views about culpability and the meaning of justice.  

PIs Chuck Paladino and Elvyra Prezly are invited to a performance given by jazz singer Oola Lada at the Rio Grande Theater in Las Cruces. After the show, Chuck accompanies his best friend Devonne Kimbrell backstage to have Oola autograph his FBI notebook. Chuck gives Ms. Lada his business card.              Oola and the quartet's keyboardist, Anton Marquis, spend several days together but when she prepares to leave for The Meadowlark in Denver without him, he takes her to a rundown shack in La Union, outside of El Paso, ties her to a chair and photographs her. She convinces him to drive her to the airport then summons the police. She links to Elvyra and Chuck and asks them to find the photos he took of her. When police detective Matt Donal arrives, she describes Anton as having a "Jekyll and Hyde" personality.   Anton shows up at the Denver hotel where Oola is staying but eludes the police. Chuck and Elvyra fly to Denver to protect her. They assist an FBI agent in arresting him during Oola's performance. He claims they arrested the wrong person. Is he Anton Marquis, the musician, or, as his driver's license says, "Sonny Chambliss"—a stalker, wanted in Memphis for fleeing a sentence of community service and counseling? Chuck and Elvyra dig deep into both backgrounds.   Oola identifies Anton in a lineup and leaves for a performance in Las Vegas. A new agent heavily promotes her and adds venues in Los Angeles and San Francisco. Oola's audience grows. A few months later, she signs a recording contract and is now on the cusp of stardom. But on the way to a return engagement at Bimbo's 365 Club in San Francisco, Oola is hit in the crosswalk by an autonomous-driving car which ran a red light. She has brain damage and broken bones. Will she ever sing again?   What becomes of Anton Marquis? What roles do Elvyra and Chuck play in Oola's recovery? And why does Elvyra suddenly want to retire after seventeen years as a PI?     Resilience, resolve, and the power of love, propel this case to a surprising conclusion.

Crime and international intrigue, old friendships and new love, spur the action in The Case of Rocklin Rais.   Private investigators Elvyra Prezly and Chuck Paladino, now semi-retired, are lecturing part-time at Dona Ana Community College in Las Cruces. At the end of the year, they will decide whether to continue or end their practice.   On May 1, 2084, Chuck receives a disturbing link from El Paso police detective, Tai Vanh. Rocklin Rais, a retired Marine Corps Captain, was found in a vacant house for sale in El Paso, unconscious and shot in the back.              Rais, in serious condition at El Paso General, was in Chuck's Marine Corps Intelligence unit in the Philippines and Kuwait. "Rocco," now Head of Security at a small casino/hotel in Reno, remembers little about his abduction and asks about his girlfriend, Marta Della Rosa.   Chuck asks Devonne Kimbrell, his best friend and Head of Investigations for the FBI office in El Paso, to meet him at the hospital to help jog Rocco's memory, but they are unsuccessful. Chuck suggests hypnosis and, though skeptical, Rocco agrees to the procedure, which results in sufficient information to pursue his assailants. After exhausting US resources, Detective Vahn's AI humanoid assistant, Olga, contacts Interpol and learns Marta and her crew are wanted in Eastern Europe for diamond thefts. Rocco's comm service tracks his stolen handheld and locates it at a hotel in Reno. Did Marta use Rocco as a front to plan a heist there? Chuck alerts Devonne. The FBI in Reno arrests Marta and her accomplices in the act of robbing several diamond merchants. But within hours, a Federal judge drops all charges against her and orders her deported to Belarus. Who is protecting her, and why?   Marta agrees to have no further contact with Rocco but within a month she links to him. He cuts her off but she links again then shows up at his condo and threatens to kill him. Chuck contacts Rocco and realizes Marta is there. He and Elvyra enlist Las Cruces Police Detective Matt Donal to help rescue him. When they breach the door, they find Marta holding a gun to Rocco's head. Can they neutralize her without harming him? And what role does Millie, their AI robotic Welsh Corgi play in his rescue?   A fast-paced story, with twists and turns, brings The Case of Rocklin Rais to a surprising conclusion.

June 2077. El Paso PI Elvyra Prezly has been hired to find a statuette, stolen from her client, Hermione Jalisco. "The Golden Monkey" is the only tangible link that Hermione has to her son, Javier, found drowned in a lake within El Paso's Ascarate Park two years ago.Elvyra and her fiancé/colleague, Charles "Chuck" Paladino arrive at Hermione's home, located in a senior community of manufactured homes, to interview her. The door is slightly open. She and Chuck step inside and are both hit with a taser. Hermione is nowhere to be found.   Two days later, Chuck and Elvyra are back searching for Hermione. Surveillance vids and cab company records lead them to the address where a cab dropped her off—there they find Hermione tied up and abandoned in an empty house. After her rescue, the case becomes more complicated, with a suspected drug smuggling ring tied to her assailants. Detective Tai Vanh and his partner, Olga, the first AI humanoid detective in the department, are assigned to the case. Later, the FBI forms a task force with the El Paso police to investigate the smuggling ring. Elvyra and Chuck continue to search for the statuette, now thought to contain cut diamonds.   When Chuck and Elvyra return from their short honeymoon, they discover that Geraldo Panama, the 22-year-old IT tech and son of the park manager, has not been forthcoming on a number of questions they asked. He and Javier, friends in high school, had a bitter falling out over Alisa Alvarez, a young woman they both dated. Alisa believes Geraldo murdered Javier after they returned from Oaxaca Mexico, where Geraldo helped Javier buy goods for his new business in El Paso.   Was Geraldo involved in Javier's drowning? Did he steal the figurine from Hermione's home? Hermione volunteers at Sara's Place, a group home for teenage girls, and often invites the girls to visit her, including 14-year-old Belinda Sanchez, who claims that Geraldo showed her the statuette and promised it to her in exchange for sex.   As Elvyra and Chuck put pressure on Geraldo, his behavior becomes more erratic and hostile. With Detective Vanh's cooperation, they devise a plan to trap Geraldo. Will the information they uncover lead to the location of the Golden Monkey? Or will the clever and dangerous computer geek outwit them?

Eden Capiella, a young painter of abstract art, is being stalked by a homeless man; he tells her that her younger brother Lennie, a heroin addict, is dead then two weeks later accosts her again to tell her he is alive and if she pays him, he will tell her where Lennie is.   She contacts Elvyra Prezly and Charles "Chuck" Paladino, the private investigators she met at the Organ Mountains Dripping Springs Trail. The Prezly-Paladinos had been behind her on the trail with their five-month old fraternal twins. Chuck alerted the rangers that she had fallen over the safety barrier at the trail's end. Eden claims the stalker threw her over it. They are able to identify the stalker from a sketch Eden made: Patrick Rukowski, a mentally ill homeless man, with a long arrest record of assault and petty theft.   Eden asks Chuck and Elvyra to search for Lennie. Juggling family responsibilities with their profession obligations, they scour Las Cruces' drug rehab facilities, homeless camps, a free clinic and a hospital, but encounter hurdles because of the privacy laws. Chuck goes undercover at the hospital and finds Lennie near death in the acute care unit; Elvyra contacts Eden and her parents so they can visit him before it's too late.   Their investigation of Rukowski continues; they quickly determine he was not the perpetrator but a foil for someone else's ambitions—Elgin Feldsparr, a formerly blackballed photographer/reporter, obsessed with getting scoops by stealing his colleagues' assignments, or creating situations he can use to his advantage. In his devious manipulation of Rukowski, Eden and Lennie become prey to further his schemes.   Elvyra and Chuck piece together his actions and ask Eden file a complaint with the police. An arrest warrant is issued but Feldsparr gets wind of it and takes Eden hostage in her studio, but his stand-off with the police fails. Months later, at trial, he tries to escape during a lull in the proceedings and grabs Eden as she waits in the hallway to testify against him. Elvyra confronts him, using a clever technique to divert his attention. Will Feldsparr fall for it and release Eden? Or will he harm Eden and possibly Elvyra when the police make their move to take him down?