Excerpt from Sugar Skull by Denise Hamilton, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Great, I thought. I'm going to end up dead in some filthy squat so that star political reporter Tony Hausman can reveal the shocking story that big money influences politics.

I hung up and considered my options, mentally tracing a path through the paper's labyrinthine corridors that stopped at...the copy messenger desk. Yes, that was it. Luke Vinograd could help me. He was a snarky and overgrown copy messenger who had spent years chipping away at a library degree. By now he should have been running the place, but something had stalled him, and so at an age when most people were hitting their career stride, Luke Vinograd was still delivering faxes from the wire room and ferrying over morning editions to impatient editors who had no time or desire to chat about the sixteenth-century Italian poet whose lyric couplets he'd just discovered or the fabulous French farce he'd seen the previous night.

That was a shame, because in a place that lived and died on words, millions of them each day, Luke was renowned for his bon mots, a Noel Coward type but more wickedly bawdy. Even early in the morning, he sounded as though he should have a martini glass in one hand and a cigarette holder in the other.

"I do hope you're calling to invite me to brunch," Luke said, recognizing my voice.

"Thank God you're there."

"I know this fabulous place where they throw in salsa lessons with the eggs Benedict."

"In the morning?" I groaned. "Those moves are hard enough at night."

"Dawn's early blight, eh? The trick is to extend your night through brunch."

"Then when do you sleep?"

"Sleep's for sissies. A real man can hold his yawns."

"I see. Well, see if you can stay awake for this one. I need a huge favor."

I filled him in on my concerns about Vincent Chevalier, then asked him to go online, look up Jackson Browne, and tell me the name of the sound engineer on his last albums. Sure enough, several clicks later, I had my confirmation. It was Chevalier. Check No. 3.

"No pretender, him."

"Glad to hear it. Hey, Luke, just a couple more favors."

"Your requests always come in multiples, don't they, Eve?"

"Like my orgasms, dahling." Despite myself, I blushed. Luke always brought out the Miller's Wife in me. "Now don't smart-mouth me, it's too early," I continued. "Could you please check property records on this Vincent Chevalier?"

"Ooh," Luke said, delighted by such sauciness as he tapped away, "and who has Miss Eve been mixing it up with lately?"

We had gone out for drinks several months back at the Redwood up the street, the old reporter's bar, moaning into our beers over the peccadilloes of our respective boyfriends. Ever since, the banter between us would have made an ink-stained printer blush.

"It's all completely theoretical at this point, Luke," I told him.

"My condolences," he murmured, hands whirring on the keyboard as he recounted the latest gossip about a reporter who had sneaked off to her editor's van for an afternoon quickie. They had been caught by Times security guards who came to investigate when the vehicle started rocking as they got rolling.

A few more clicks onto the L.A. County Register of Voters database and Luke was reciting the same address on my printout. Check No. 4. So Vincent Chevalier checked out. He still might be a murderer, of course, but he wasn't a liar. He was fifty-four, owned a home, had a real job, and appeared to be who he said he was. I felt better.

"Next," Luke Vinograd intoned.

"Oh yeah, one last thing. Speaking of Jackson Browne, and this is very important, I need you to hum the first bar of 'The Pretender.'"

There was silence on the other end of the line, then sputtering.

"Such abuse. 'My Funny Valentine' would be more up my alley."

Copyright © 2003 by Denise Hamilton