It's been a long time since she solved her first "hopeless case" and Jane da Silva is running out of money. Her Uncle Harold's bizarre will provides her with a handsome income if she successfully runs his Foundation for Righting Wrongs and pleases its crusty old board of directors.

Through Calvin Mason, the young attorney who befriends her, she finds a new ¿hopeless case. A real hopeless case. Kevin Shea is a teenage drug addict convicted of holding up a pharmacy and killing the druggist's wife. Kevin is such a low-life even his mother is convinced he's guilty and glad he's behind bars.

Now it appears there was a witness to the murders, a young woman whose prescription was being filled at the time of the murder. The witness might be able to prove that Kevin is innocent of the murder. Jane learns that four women with the same name all live in remote areas of Vancouver Island, one of them the missing witness. There's someone else who wants to find the missing witness too, someone who isn't afraid to turn to murder when Jane gets too close for comfort. Jane's breath-taking and dangerous romp through the northern wilderness leads her to the Tip Top Club, a stripper bar, where she faces down the clever killer¿and wraps up a satisfactory hopeless case, proving that everyone deserves justice.

Chapter 1

Jane da Silva had been making a concerted effort to cheer herself up with a low budget shopping fling at a place she thought of affectionately as the teen tart store. And while Jane knew she shouldn't really be spending any money on clothes right now, and conversely, that if she was, she certainly deserved to do it somewhere better than this place, she had managed to assemble a collection of cotton knit items in bright colors that sort of worked because they didn't pretend to be expensive. She also thought she could carry them off reasonably well through sheer force of personality. And the things she'd chosen were basic enough so that it didn't really matter that, at thirty-seven, she was about twenty years older than the store's target market.

It was too bad, however, that she had to run into Bucky Montcrieff, of all people, as she was coming out of the place laden down with big, crinkling white shopping bags of cheap chic.

Bucky Montcrieff, the ultimate consumer and devotee of perfect tailoring and natural fabrics, didn't even bother to look anything but horrified and embarrassed for her. But then Bucky, tall, handsome, mid-thirties and not without a certain oozy charm, wasn't a particularly nice person.

He peered past her and into the store, over the electronic gate meant to catch shoplifted merchandise with buzzers and alarms. At the counter, a teenage girl in black wrinkled rayon, with hennaed hair and a Morticia Addams complexion, slouched sullenly. Grunge rock, a Seattle specialty, droned away. Jane thought she could smell the oily, chemical scent of polyester wafting out of the place.

"Did you buy something in there?" he said tactlessly.

"Sometimes I think too much good taste can be a vulgar thing, don't you?" she said with a big smile. Unfortunately, Bucky was someone she had to be nice to.

Bucky worked in his uncle's law firm, Carlson, Throckmorton, Osgood, Stubbins, etc., which happened to be the law firm that had drawn up Uncle Harold's eccentric will.

"I'm really sorry the trustees didn't give you your uncle's money," he said. "I've been thinking about you."

It had been a couple of weeks since Jane had appealed to the board of trustees of Uncle Harold's quaintly named Foundation for Righting Wrongs. The way the will was set up, Jane had to find some hopeless case to solve as a kind of nonprofit detective before she could cash in on her inheritance. The trustees, a group of querulous old men, cronies of Uncle Harold, had bounced her first effort on a technicality.

"I thought I'd give it another try," she said, trying to sound brave and cheerful and insouciant. She was determined that Bucky, elegant, handsome, well-heeled, overperfumed and overconfident Bucky, wouldn't feel sorry for her.

"I know, but you really tried so hard, and you got beat up and everything," he said. "You must be pretty discouraged. I feel sorry for you." A look that closely resembled sympathy passed over his smooth brow.

"I'm fine, really," she lied, wondering if Bucky wanted her to start sniffling a little and collapse on his shoulder. She wouldn't give him the satisfaction. She deflected his halfhearted offer of coffee, and tried not to let the encounter unsettle her. When he'd first met her, and it looked like she was coming into a fortune, he'd been extremely attentive. Bucky was clearly one of those smug people who don't like to be around failure, she thought.

 

"A delight."

 

"Fast moving and laced with humor Amateur Night is a delight."

 

"A sprightly romp."

 

K. K. Beck is the author of fourteen books, including We Interrupt This Broadcast, Cold Smoked, Electric City, and Amateur Night. She lives in Seattle with her husband, crime writer Michael Dibdinn, and her three children.

 

Amateur Night by K. K. Beck
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