Synopsis
As Dave Sloan is leaving for the Denver airport to pick up his wife, Tricia, the phone rings. It’s the cops in Las Vegas. His wife is dead. Her nude body was found that morning in a hotel room at the Bellagio.
Dave is stunned and devastated. He thought she was in Phoenix at a week-long teachers’ conference. A lie, of course, concocted by Tricia, who flew to Phoenix, then drove to Vegas to meet her Internet lover, the handsome, charming, and very much married Joe Daggett of Chicago.
When Joe can’t join her, Tricia’s a mess. He calls a close friend, Al Posey, who lives in Vegas, and asks him to take her to dinner. Al and Tricia hit it off and wind up in bed. On Saturday morning, he walks out of her hotel room at nine. Three hours later, her lifeless body is found by a maid.
A DEAD END IN VEGAS is a searing exploration of how Tricia Sloan’s tragic, mysterious death shatters, and later transforms, the lives of her family and friends.
Excerpt
Seven o’clock came and went. No phone call, and the snow continued to fall. Dave was becoming more and more desperate. Our old friend and neighbor was losing it now, marching in small circles around the kitchen, occasionally halting to pound the butchers’ block with a tightly clenched fist. Outside, darkness had descended as the wind howled and the storm tightened its grip. Lehigh Street was empty and forlorn, a frozen tableau where nothing moved and an occasional flickering porch light was the only sign of life.
Shortly before 10, I glanced out the picture window, now nearly shrouded with ice, and made out what appeared to be a pair of headlights inching ever so cautiously through the drifts. I looked again and couldn’t believe my eyes. A boxy, high-riding vehicle, like a Jeep, had just turned and was heading down Dave’s driveway toward us. Before we knew it, we heard car doors slam and then the heavy thumping of boots on the porch steps. Two sets of them. And then the harsh, grating sound of the doorbell. Two long, sharp buzzes, like a dentist’s drill. The shrill buzzing cut through the house and brought us all to attention. In this weather, at this hour, who could it be?
About the Author
Irene Woodbury’s second novel, A DEAD END IN VEGAS, is a dark, probing look at marriage, infidelity, revenge, and grief. Immersing herself in drama and dysfunction for months on end was a challenge for this upbeat author, whose first book, the humor novel A SLOT MACHINE ATE MY MIDLIFE CRISIS, was published by SynergEbooks in 2011. At first glance, the two novels seem quite different, but both deal with midlife confusion and chaos, and the complexities and unpredictable nature of the human heart. And both, of course, are partially set in Las Vegas, a city Irene got to know well during her years as a travel writer. Between 2000 and 2005, her stories appeared in major newspapers in the U.S., Canada, and Europe. Irene, who graduated from the University of Houston in 1993, lives in Denver with her husband, Richard, a retired correspondent for Time Magazine who edited both of her novels. The couple miss traveling, but, after two novels, Irene insists there’s no greater journey than the one into your own heart and mind.
