Lunch at the Club

By Kate Kane

Lunch at the Club is a work of fiction.  Characters, Incidents, Names, and Places are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.  Any resemblance to any events, locales, or persons living or dead is completely coincidental.

Copyright 2014 Kane Communications

eBook Edition

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Editing by Kaid Kane

Cover image courtesy of Keey Kane

Cover by Joleene Naylor

Dedication

As always, thanks to the Kane Kids: Keey for her ideas and one liners and Kade for telling me when I’ve finished telling the story and both of them for being a sounding board as I talk about my other family.

Author’s Note

I love hearing from my readers you can contact me by clicking this link.

Just a note about the use of Italian dialog between characters.  When the Bellini and Luciano families talk to each other, they almost always speak Italian.  When they speak Italian in front of non-Italian speaking characters, the dialog appears in Italian.  I do this to help my readers feel the frustration and exclusion that the characters in the book feel during exchanges they don’t understand.  As an avid reader myself, I hate it when an author uses words, phrases, or complete sentences in a language that’s foreign to me and leaves me wondering and often searching the internet to figure out what the character is saying.  So, for my readers, I provide a hyperlink from the Italian dialog to the translation for it.  The translation has a hyperlink that returns the reader back to the spot in the book where you were before.  I hope you find this helpful.

Other Books by Kate Kane

The Lane Parker Series

Favor for a Friend

Family Secrets

Coming Soon:

The Murder Mayhem and Merlot Mysteries

Pat Elliott, Kay Kellogg and other members of Lane’s book club, need I say more?

Contents

Author’s Note

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Italian Translations

Kate Kane answers your questions

About the Author

Preview Lane’s next adventure

Chapter 1

Overland Park Police Department

While watching crime shows or reading mystery novels when a character came across a body, she had always been the one who said to the character, “Call the police. Put your hands in your pockets. Don’t touch anything.”  And as the character bent to touch the victim and perhaps the murder weapon, Lane would sometimes literally shout, “YOU IDIOT!  DON’T. TOUCH. THAT. CALL 911!!” And yet, there Lane Parker sat, in the Overland Park police station, trying to figure out what could possibly have possessed her to ignore her own wise advice.  Ignore it, hell, it never even crossed her mind.

Thank God, she’d at least had the presence of mind to tell the detectives that she wouldn’t answer any questions without her lawyer.  She took pride that she was able to ignore their promise that she wasn’t under arrest, which soon turned into taunts about innocent people not needing lawyers.  While it was true they hadn’t done the Miranda warning yet; she wasn’t taking any chances.  She was sure that her daughter Jess had phoned…well I guess you’d call him her boyfriend, Ben Bellini.  Ben was a criminal defense attorney and until he arrived, she was determined to keep her mouth shut.  She wasn’t going to take the coffee, tea, or soda they kept offering. She just sat in the interview room; knowing full well they were standing on the other side of the mirrored glass watching her.  She sat hoping that the years of training at Marion High School were finally paying off; as she heard Sr. Mary Margaret’s voice, calmly but sternly, saying, “Polite, well-bred young ladies sit erect, head held high, hands folded in their laps, legs crossed at the ankle at all times no matter the circumstances.” She was doing what she liked to call her calming breathing exercise: inhale slowly for a count of four, hold for a count of two, and exhale for a count of six.  It had worked through the years during union negotiations, corporate buy-outs, and teenage temper tantrums. There was no reason it wouldn’t work now.  She avoided looking at her watch, letting the time pass, while mentally reciting the bible verses she learned from her Nana as they spent time together baking.  “You have to knead the dough before you roll the pie crust out.”  Nana had said. When the crust didn’t turn out like her grandmother’s, Nana had told Lane her secret.  While she kneaded the dough, Nana recited Bible verses in her head.  Whether pie crust, bread, cake, cookies, or any other thing she baked; Nana recited Bible verses as she mixed, stirred, or kneaded.  And Lane had memorized them all. If a recipe said to stir for five minutes she knew which verse to use. This was the method she used now to calculate the time as she waited, alone, in the interview room.  She’d been waiting exactly 42 minutes, when Detective Hunter opened the door and her lawyer entered the room.

Benito Giovanni Bellini, second generation Italian American and the best criminal defense attorney in the Kansas City Metropolitan area, stood exuding calm confidence.  He resembled George Clooney; except he was taller, younger, had a more chiseled body, and was much, much better looking.  He flashed his perfect Bellini million watt smile.

“I’d like to talk to my client alone,” Ben said with his back turned to the detective.

And as the door was closed behind the exiting detective, Lane released a sigh of relief. “Please tell me that Hunter there is still one of your basketball buddies.”

Ben played a friendly game of basketball every Wednesday, in a league comprised mostly of guys from police forces and fire departments around the metropolitan area.

“Yes, Hunter still plays in the league.  On the team that we trounced last week.”  Ben looked at the blood on her hands and clothes and shook his head. “So Red, what brings us here today,” Ben said, using the nickname he’d given her shortly after they’d met.  “Don’t tell me you stumbled across a body.”

Lane, who had strawberry blonde hair, thus the nickname; was an executive at Telco Unlimited, a wireless telecommunications company.  And sadly this wasn’t the first time she’d been in a police interview room, talking about a dead body she’d stumbled over.

Lane heaved a sigh. “I’d love to not tell you that... but I can’t.  You want the long or the short version here?”

When had she turned into that woman she’d read so much about?  The one who couldn’t even go to the bathroom without stumbling into the scene of a murder. Lane was a voracious reader; and she couldn’t help thinking she’d turned into a character from one of the fictional mystery series that she read.