A Justified Bitch
H.G. Mckinnis
Sales Handle
Hoarding, insanity, murder, and redemption on the rough side of Vegas
Publicity and Promotions
• $13,850 marketing and publicity budget, coordinated by Smith Publicity in New York who has been been successfully promoting New York Times bestsellers since 1997 • Key outlets: Publisher's Weeky, Library Journal, Booklist, Foreword Magazine, NPR.org Books, Los Angeles Times, Las Vegas Sun • Will be available on NetGalley, February. 22, 2017 • National radio and TV interviews • Promotion on the author's website AJustifiedBitch.com • Promotion and giveaways on Living-Las-Vegas.com • Promotion and giveaways on RoadTripAmerica.com • Promotion and giveaways on Imbrifex.com • Publicity and promotion in conjunction with the author's speaking engagements • Intensive 6 months media publicity to crime, mystery, psychology and social media outlets.
Longer Description,
Helen Taylor is a hoarding cat lady who lives in a hardscrabble neighborhood in a depressed section of Las Vegas. She often holds extended conversations with her husband Bobby, who died in a freak hiking accident years ago. Helen is also a well-known entrepreneur around the flea markets of Las Vegas, where she sells junk and acquires more. Ron, a neighbor who lives in a rundown trailer a couple of blocks away, often helps her with “the business.”
Helen’s life suddenly turns even crazier when one of her many feline friends delivers a severed finger to her doorstep. The prostitute next door is found murdered, and the police take Helen into custody. The dead neighbor’s two dogs escape in the excitement. Few people know that one of the dogs is actually a wolf.
Summoned from Phoenix by the detective on the case, Helen’s sister Pat arrives in Las Vegas with two teen-age boys, her son Jordan and nephew Mark. Mark is Helen’s son, but Helen’s memory of him vanished when she suffered the trauma of losing her husband. Helen thinks Mark is her nephew, and Mark is growing up resigned to the reality of his mother’s insanity.
After bailing Helen out of jail, Pat is horrified by the mental deterioration she sees in the older sister she once idolized. Reluctantly, she decides to follow professional advice and commit Helen to a mental hospital. Guilt-ridden because she has been so out of touch, Pat begins the monumental task of cleaning up Helen’s garbage-dump of a house. Jordan helps, but insists on saving Helen’s “merchandise,” the piles of junk she takes to the flea market every week to sell.
Meanwhile, Helen responds to medication she receives in the mental hospital. She no longer sees and converses with the long-dead Bobby. Ill at ease with her new mental state and unhappy with incarceration, she manages to escape. Before Pat or the police can track her down, the director of the mental hospital is found dead. The detective, now investigating two murders, becomes convinced that Helen is the killer of both victims.
Things are also going from bad to worse for Pat. Mark misbehaves on the Strip and gets hauled into a hotel security office. Then she learns that Jordan has vanished. At least Ron, the neighbor who helps Helen with her flea market business, seems to be taking good care of Helen’s house.
When Helen finally returns home, she’s appalled that her house has been cleaned out. Then she notices that Ron has been living there. Upset, she decides to go to his place and chew him out for squatting.
Ron isn’t home, but Helen lets herself into his trailer and waits. She has just discovered grisly evidence that Ron is the murderer when he returns. Right behind him is the wolf, which has been roaming the neighborhood since its owner’s death. When Ron assaults Helen with a knife, the wolf attacks and kills him.
Both murders now solved, Pat prepares to return home to Phoenix. Still concerned about her sister’s well-being, she is reassured when Helen decides it’s time to give up Bobby. With medication, she is also able to remember that Mark is her son but agrees that Pat is the better mother. The whole family is on the road to recovery. The detective who worked the case even manages to protect the wolf that saved Helen’s life.
Chapter One
Friday, July 2
The Las Vegas heat shimmered off the patched asphalt, giving an opaque and eerie quality to the air. Sitting on her porch, Helen stared into the afternoon sky, rocking and humming quietly. The corner lot gave her an exceptional view of the neighborhood. Through the wire-enclosed backyards, she had an unobstructed view of the cluttered expanse all the way to the next corner. In the opposite direction, long-abandoned treasures lay baking in the sun: old cars, worn-out furniture, and less defined objects—maybe toys, maybe tools—all of them showing signs of exposure to the harsh desert environment. Across the street, beyond a car tagged with an orange tow-away sticker, she tried to decipher the hieroglyphics of the new graffiti spray-painted across the front of the Sanchez house. No message there.
A bike jump had been set up behind the car, and two teenagers wearing nothing but cargo shorts were practicing kamikaze acrobatics on their skateboards. One kid, a short Latino with tattoos on both arms, flew off the ramp and landed on the sidewalk, pumping his fist in the air and laughing in triumph. No message there.
Next door, Lupe and Fuzzball were howling, the sound rising and falling with unceasing monotony. Not a message she wanted to hear.
Bobby plopped down beside her, wearing the same shorts,T-shirt, and hiking boots he had been wearing ten years earlier when he stepped off a sixty-foot cliff in the Ruby Mountains. Helen glanced toward Bebe’s house, afraid she had seen something horrific, but not sure. It could have been another hallucination, or a late-morning dream. “What do you think?”
Squinting, Bobby craned his neck toward the back fence, a sagging chain-link. Don’t really know.
From the corner of the yard, Stripes crept toward them. Wary, the cat crouched in the brown grass, ears up, pupils wide, something in her mouth. Her green eyes focused on Helen, as if trying to communicate telepathically. Connection made, she crept forward, her coloring a perfect match for the dry grass, her prize poking out the side of her mouth like a mini cigar, then she zipped forward and deposited her gift at Helen’s feet.
Helen stared at the offering, a woman’s finger, the fingernail sporting a French manicure with a tiny fake diamond at the tip. The opposite end looked as if it had been snipped off with pruning shears, the white of the bone even with the flesh. “How about that? Bebe must have lost her press-on finger.”
Bobby gave a disgusted snort. She wears press-on nails, not press-on fingers. Looks like she cut it off.
Helen’s stomach knotted in sympathy. “Why would she do that?”
The baying from the next yard took on a mechanical quality,then quickly mutated into the familiar sound of emergency vehicles. When a squad of police cars screeched to a halt in front of Bebe’s house, Helen realized she hadn’t imagined things—the flashing lights proved that.
Uniforms slammed out of the cars, swarming around the house like well-armed ants. A large uniform, consisting of khaki pants and a matching shirt, banged his fist against the door. “Metro! Open up!” When no one answered, the man waved another uniform forward.
Helen wondered if it would be worthwhile to sell used uniforms in her booth. The police sure seemed to need a lot of them.
The new man hoisted a hand-held battering ram, and at some unseen signal smashed open the door. A gang of uniforms raced inside, their voices echoing back through the opening.
“Watch it!”
“Christ Almighty!”
“It’s a damn slaughterhouse.”
“Don’t step on anything!”
“Check the hall!”
“Holy shit, wait for Crime Scene! Wait for Crime Scene!”
“Back out, goddamnit!”