Ever had a post deathbed confession? Danni Hernandez has, twice. They're not as fun as one might imagine, especially when her mother reveals her childhood preacher is her father. Danni is a private investigator, dealing mostly with financial fraud. So, what are the chances she is hired to investigate the very church where her dear old dad ministers?
She is left with two choices: let sleeping dogs lie or go nail her father to his proverbial cross.
In this detective mystery, Danni is no one's prodigal daughter. She is a foul mouthed, ill tempered, weapon toting, head case with man eating tendencies. Along with her vampire teeth wearing pug, Count Pugula, she sets off to find the truth, for her client and herself.
Much to her dismay, she is too late, her father âThe Preacherâ is dead. But not all is lost for Danni when she meets Teddy, an unassuming but willing accomplice. Together they unravel a decades-long conspiracy, on which the very foundation of the church is built.
Lies, deceit and half-truths dating back to her fourteen-year-old mother, Danni must find the leak in the church funds before the thief gets away with more than just money.
Ever had a post deathbed confession? Danni Hernandez has, twice. They're not as fun as one might imagine, especially when her mother reveals her childhood preacher is her father. Danni is a private investigator, dealing mostly with financial fraud. So, what are the chances she is hired to investigate the very church where her dear old dad ministers?
She is left with two choices: let sleeping dogs lie or go nail her father to his proverbial cross.
In this detective mystery, Danni is no one's prodigal daughter. She is a foul mouthed, ill tempered, weapon toting, head case with man eating tendencies. Along with her vampire teeth wearing pug, Count Pugula, she sets off to find the truth, for her client and herself.
Much to her dismay, she is too late, her father âThe Preacherâ is dead. But not all is lost for Danni when she meets Teddy, an unassuming but willing accomplice. Together they unravel a decades-long conspiracy, on which the very foundation of the church is built.
Lies, deceit and half-truths dating back to her fourteen-year-old mother, Danni must find the leak in the church funds before the thief gets away with more than just money.
I really hadnât meant to cause such a scene at that poor manâs funeral. I mean, what kind of man faints in the middle of church? Who the fuck was I kidding? I abso-fucking-lutley loved it.
My mom was right to name me Jessica lo Dannos Hernandez; said I was mischievous even in the womb. By the time she figured out she was pregnant, she was shacked up with a Northern Italian man she met while hiking in the Swiss Alps. She thought the name was appropriate: lo Dannos loosely translates to mischief in Italian. Or at least that was the cock and bull story she fed me until I found her passport. It didnât have one travel stamp and still looked brand new even though it had expired when I was five. Whether the Italian guy ever existed or was, just another one of my momâs witty pathological lies that remains to be seen. I think she just thought the name flowed. She had called me Danni until she died a month ago.
She had known she was dying for three months before she actually told me. The following week, I buried her. That was her style, with no consideration for anyone else. In typical Magdalena Elena Hernandez de la Cruz fashion, her deathbed confession came in the form of a Lavender scented gift basket delivered to me the week after she died. Buried at the bottom, next to the lavender bath salts, was a letter postmarked twenty years ago.
Breathless, with shaking hands, I took the butterfly knife out of the hidden pocket in my jacket and swiftly sliced open the envelope, taking a chunk of a blurry photograph that was hidden inside two folded sheets of paper.
Ignoring the photo for the moment, I focused on the letter with the handwriting I recognized. It was my momâs curlicue chicken scratched. She liked to pass it off as cursive. It was addressed to some guy I didnât recognize. Basically, the letter stated she had a kid and that it was his. At the time she sent it, I was eleven years old.
On cheap yellow stationery with little flowers on it, the respondent had written back: SHEâS NOT MINE in bold, blocky letters. Thatâs it.
I would have taken the man at his word because I knew my momâs uncanny ability to get just about everything important in my life wrong. Iâm not mom blaming, but the woman actually tried to take the wrong baby out of the hospital because she was convinced the nurses had switched me at birth. Thankfully they lo-jack babies, so, crisis averted. Then there was the time she strapped me into the car seat of the wrong car. To be fair, the car was unlocked, but at the time, she drove a white civic and strapped me into a navy suburban. After that, I wasnât surprised that even the soccer moms didnât invite us back for the next season.
Itâs not that she was an alcoholic, an addict, or even made bad choices in men unless you considered being addicted to yourself a habit. She was young, just a child herself. We practically grew up together. Plus, if it wasnât for her brand of absentee parenting, I wouldnât have been allowed to hone my current skill set. She wasnât all bad. Once, when I had been suspended for running a high-stakes poker game with the janitor, basketball coach, groundskeeper, and Assistant Principal. My mom stormed into the principalâs office and accused the administration not of being degenerate gamblers but of not knowing how to lose to a girl. Then she stormed out of the principalâs office.
Picking up the torn portion of the picture, I could certainly see a resemblance to the man whose head I had accidentally cut off. The respondent, my âwould-beâ father, wrote his response on none other than Our Lady of the Little Flower letterhead. I wasnât going to pursue it. At least, that is what I kept telling myself. That is until I taped the picture back together. Although, I got my coloring, eye shape, and body type from my mom. My height, eye color, and flaming red hair were definitely from the man wearing the clerical collar with his arm draped around my momâs shoulders. A fucking Clerical collar.
That is when I realized finding my father was going to be as entertaining as when my mom hired Madam Se Livrer for my seventh birthday party. When Ms. Se Livrer cracked her whip to turn off the candles on my birthday cake. Everyone took off. I donât think I have ever seen a stampede like that unless it was for a Black Friday sale at Walmart.
When I parked my rental car in front of the church two weeks later, this place was like Stars Hollow on crack. There was an old-timey ice cream parlor with pink and white striped curtains, a barber shop with the little blue and red spinning thing, and a community board featuring next Sundayâs farmerâs market and craft fair. The quaintness of the town made my skin itch. I need cars blaring salsa and a little spice in my day-to-day. This place was as bland as cafeteria green beans. No wonder my mother ran away.
My grandparents lived on the outskirts of town in what was once called the rich part of town. Iâm not sure what it would be considered now. It didnât matter anyway. The moment they found out my mother was pregnant, they up and sold the house before the first sonogram was done. Scandal for the Hernandez de la Cruz familia, not a chance.
As for the church, Our Lady of the Little Flower was a modest-looking building, nothing like the catholic churches I had seen before. There were no gargoyles or stained glass adorning these walls. But there was something to be said about the stateliness of the church. The building itself demanded respect.Â
I had the idea of wandering the grounds until whatever service let out to talk to the man with whom I shared DNA. At least, thatâs what I had told myself. Then I saw a man standing on the sidewalk looking as lost and uncomfortable as I felt. So, I took Count Pugula out of his carrier and went to find out what I could about the man outside the church. It all went to shit when he started staring at my tits from half a block away. This should be fun!
I love when a story opens with dialogue. It puts readers right into the action. When we first meet Danni, the protagonist, she is leaving a clientâs house. We donât know exactly what line of work she is in, but we get the sense itâs of a sexual nature by the description she provides of her attire, âthe leather corset, matching thong, and Patent Leather thigh-high stilettos,â and the fact that she does what she does at night and attempts to stay covered up with a trench coat. That said, the humor of her complaining about the heat and the reaction of the neighbor to her crude comment immediately releases the tension and sets the reader at ease.Â
The narrator and protagonist of the story, Danni, exhibits a confident, blaze, sarcastic demeanor that invites the reader in to learn more about her goals and her lifestyle. We quickly learn that she is on her way to meet the father she never knew. Before we can get there, Danni runs into Teddy, or Theodore Rodgers âRuxâas Danni soon christens him.
Now we donât know everything about Danni from the beginning. We learn her presence at Edenâs Gate is multifaceted. We know sheâs there to do a job, but we donât know the reach her work will bring us to. We do know that she is blunt, impatient, intelligent, and shrewd. Her methods might be unconventional, but we can admire her âget-to-the-pointâ attitude.Â
Teddy, on the other hand, evokes our compassion, and we immediately root for his happy ending, even if weâre not sure what that is from the beginning. Teddy is ostracized and down-trodden by not only his immediate family but the entire population of Edenâs Gate. He is publicly maligned for his mental disorder and told heâs just looking for attention or pity for not having the same success as his stepbrother. His story compels us to wish for his happiness as well as Danni getting to the bottom of her investigation.Â
There do seem to be some blips here and there. For one, Teddy describes her hair as auburn when they first meet, but in the next chapter, which switches the POV to Danni, she says she has âflaming red hair.â Another inconsistency I noticed is when Teddy brings her coffee at his coffee shop, she describes it as âsweet nectarâ when she told the waitress before she wanted it âblack and neat.â It doesnât quite make sense to describe black coffee as sweet.Â
Beside these small imperfections, I found this to be a very enjoyable read that kept my attention throughout the story. If youâre interested in mysteries and donât mind the occasional lewd comment, I definitely recommend this one!