A warm welcome to author Don Travis joining us today to talk about his new release “The Voxlightner Scandal”.
Dani, thank you for permitting me to guest post on Love Bytes. This isn’t the first time you’ve been kind enough to assist me in this manner.
The occasion is the publication of my sixth novel in the BJ Vinson mystery series called The Voxlightner Scandal. Dreamspinner Press has scheduled a release date of November 19. And now Dani is going to permit me to tell you a little about the book and the series. Actually, it’s an accidental series. As I explained last time, when I wrote The Zozobra Inccident, I thought I was finished with Burleigh J. Vinson (can you blame him for using his initials?), the gay former Marine, ex-cop, turned confidential investigator and his young companion Paul Barton. Well, he hounded me to get out of the box again, which resulted in four more published novels… and now comes the sixth.
The novel’s blurb probably gives you a pretty good preview of the book:
No good deed goes unpunished, as investigator B. J. Vinson is about to discover.
Writer John Pierce Belhaven was murdered before he could reveal the name of another killer—one connected to the biggest scandal to rock Albuquerque in years. Two of the city’s most prominent citizens—Barron Voxlightner and Dr. Walther Stabler—vanished in 2004, along with fifty million dollars looted from Voxlightner Precious Metals Recovery Corp. It only makes sense that poking into that disappearance cost Belhaven his life.
But BJ isn’t so sure.
He’s agreed to help novice detective Roy Guerra reopen the old case—which the wealthy and influential Voxlightner family doesn’t want dredged up. But Belhaven was part of their family, and that connection could’ve led to his murder. Or did the sixty-year-old author die because of a sordid sexual affair?
Let’s dig into the storyline a little deeper with this excerpt from Chapter 2. BJ has returned to his downtown office after a lunch with his former APD partner, Lt. Gene Enriquez, who is now head of Homicide. During the meal, they recalled as many details of the old Voxlightner scandal as they could remember. It had been a gold reclamation scheme involving some of Albuquerque’s leading lights which drained almost $50,000,000 out of New Mexico’s economy. Although the two likeliest conspirators had vanished without a trace, none of the money had been recovered. BJ and Paul accompany APD Det. Roy Guerra for their first visit the Belhaven crime scene. The action picks up as they read Belhaven’s will.
After everyone shook hands, Harris swept up the documents he’d been studying and prepared to vacate the office.
“Just a minute,” his sister said. “They’d like to look at the will. And I see no harm in that.”
Harris looked momentarily undecided. “Yeah, sure.”
Melanie handed over the will. “We’ll be in the den when you’re finished.”
“Hmm, no lawyer mediating the settlement of Pierce’s estate,” Paul noted when they were gone.
“There’s probably one named as trustee. But this looks like an amicable disposition of assets.”
“Not what I heard,” he said. “I figured Pierce cut Harrison out of the will.”
“Let’s see for ourselves.”
John Pierce Belhaven had not cut off his son despite the rift between them. His will was simple. He bequeathed the princely sum of $250,000 each to Sarah Thackerson and Spencer Spears. After a few other minor bequests, the remainder of the estate was split equally between his son and daughter, Harrison Belhaven and Melanie Harper.
“Remind me. Who are Thackerson and Spears?” I asked.
“His girlfriend,” Paul said.
“And his boyfriend,” Roy added.
“Whoa. A bimbo and a bimbob? How old was this guy when he died?”
“Sixty,” the detective answered.
“And he had a girlfriend and a boyfriend? I’d like to have met the guy.”
Paul grinned. “You wouldn’t have learned a thing. I knew about the girlfriend but didn’t know Spence did anything but trim the bushes and mow the lawn. Actually Pierce was sorta wimpy.”
“Still waters run deep,” Roy observed.
“You sure about the boyfriend part?” Paul asked.
Roy shrugged. “The kid admitted it to me. And Belhaven’s last will and testament backs him up.”
“I’d say so. He bequeathed his two love objects a sum certain and split the remainder between his progeny. So Thackerson and Spears get theirs, and the other two get whatever’s left… if anything.”
Roy rubbed an eye. “Like I said, I haven’t seen the financials yet, but my guess is his heirs’ll do all right. Belhaven was supposed to be loaded up with Voxlightner family money. And his wife had more of it than he did. The two kids are already blessed with trusts from her death.”
Roy delivered the will to the Belhaven offspring while Paul and I continued to nose around in the office. When the detective returned from the den, Paul pitched in to help with the search. He took on the filing cabinet while Roy worked on the desk. I poked around in Belhaven’s appointment book. I often found such books a productive place to start. After we finished we all took chairs facing one another.
“No computer. I assume it’s already down at forensics,” I said.
“Yeah, for what it’s worth. Somebody smashed the hard drive.”
“Paul, was Belhaven a cyber man or a pen-and-ink guy?”
“From what I saw at SWW meetings, he did both. I heard him making notes to himself on his iPhone and saw him writing things on a pad.”
“The phone?” I turned to Roy.
“Also down at the lab.”
“Do you see his notebook anywhere?” I asked Paul.
“Nope. And I was keeping an eye out for it.”
“So the killer removed everything relating to the book Belhaven was working on.”
“And I understand it was a whopper of a file. Pierce was big on research.” Paul looked thoughtful for a moment. “But I think Sarah did most of it for him.”
“His girlfriend?” I asked.
He nodded. “She was also his typist and researcher.”
I looked at Roy. “You’ve interviewed her?”
“Sure. Needed to find out where she was and everything, but….”
“But you didn’t ask her about any research on the new book.”
“Guess not.”
“We’ll have to plug that hole. Roy, see if she’ll meet us here tomorrow morning.”
“Here?”
“So familiar things will be handy while she’s remembering. Now let’s go see the crime scene.”
Like many cops and ex-cops, I have a near-mystical belief in walking the scene of the actual crime, usually more than once. We trooped to the garage. The origin point of the fire was near the water heater. A scorched lawn mower occupied the center of the violent scene. There wasn’t much physical damage to the rest of the garage, probably because an alert neighbor returning home spotted the glow of the fire. An AFD unit from merely blocks away doused the flames in short order. The garage rafters were lightly charred but remained essentially intact. Had the conflagration pierced the fire-resistant tile over the garage, the flames would have spread quickly through the ceilings and consumed the house. But quick action prevented that.
What the crime scene screamed at me was murder. Someone rendered Pierce Belhaven dead from a blow to the head and cleaned out his research on the new book before dousing him with gasoline, throwing matches on him, and escaping through the side door.
The following are buy links for The Voxlightner Scandal
My publisher insists I furnish bio information for these things. My life is so uninteresting, I’m using the same bio for everythng: I’m an Okie born and raised who rambled around Germany while in the US Army and Denver and Albuquerque while in the business world. A tubercular child, I grew up in the library of my small hometown rather than on the sports fields. So what else should I do but write? I was a paint artist for a while—oils and still life mostly—but that didn’t scratch my creative itch like writing did. I put away the brushes and took up the pen… well, the computer. Finding myself widowed in 2009, I flirted with moving back to Texas where most of my family has resettled, but the pull of New Mexico proved too strong. Here is where I choose to be and here… I will remain.
I welcome contact by my readers, and the following are some personal links:
Website: dontravis.com
Email: dontravis21@gmail.com
Facebook: facebook.com/donald.travis982
Let me close with another expression of gratitude to Dani and Love Bytes for hosting this guest post. Thanks.