Free Scottsdale Heat: a romantic light-hearted murder mystery (Laura Black Mysteries Book 1) by B A Trimmer Page A

great sense of humor or his firm body. I think it was more Reno knows where he wants to go. He has a real direction in his life. He also knows the difference between right and wrong and it seems to draw me to him. Plus, he can touch the tip of his nose with his tongue. Just thinking about it always makes me tighten up a bit.
    “Well, Laura Black,” he said. “You look great. I hear you’re still working for Lenny. I suppose he’s doing well, even though he’s probably still a jerk.”
    “Sure,” I said. “Lenny’s doing great. He has more money than he could ever spend. And yes, he’s still a jerk.”
    “I ran into Gina a few months after you dumped me,” Reno said. “She said you were dating a golf pro?”
    “Yeah, him. Well, his name was Dusty and it didn’t last more than a few weeks. Since then, I really haven’t had time to get involved with anyone else.”
    OK, so that was a big fat fib. After I found out about Dusty boinking the aerobics instructor, I totally swore off men for a couple of months. Jeez, I thought, an aerobics instructor. How 80’s can you get? She probably wore pink leg warmers while he was doing her. Since then, I haven’t found anybody I wanted to be with, at least anybody who wanted to be with me too.
    Dominic, the waiter, came by with a basket of bread. The menu hadn’t changed from the last time we were here and we each ordered our favorite lunch. His was still the grilled chicken breast and a side of steamed vegetables. I had the sausage sandwich, an extra side of marinara, fries, and garlic bread.
    “You wanted to talk cop business?” Reno asked.
    “I’m looking into a guy named Alexander Sternwood,” I said. “He’s from a wealthy Paradise Valley family, although he hasn’t inherited his share yet. All of the sudden he’s come into a lot of money. It’s possible he gets his money by selling things that don’t belong to him. Do you know anything about a fence at a store called Meyer’s Jewelers on 32nd Street over in Phoenix?”
    Reno thought about it for a moment. “The guy who runs the jewelry store is Jimmy Meyer. He’s been around for years. He used to be muscle for a crime family out of New York. If our information is right, he still maintains a loose connection with organized crime through the DiCenzo family. Twenty years ago, he was one of Arizona’s biggest fences for high-end merchandise: paintings, sculptures, jewelry, and those sorts of things. Now he’s semi-retired and is only involved in small stuff, at least as far as we know.”
    He leaned closer to me. “The part that interests me is how you know about the art gallery at the Tropical Paradise. We just found out about it last month. Since the Tropical Paradise is controlled by the DiCenzo family, we think there is a connection between the family and the fencing operation there.”
    The DiCenzos are Scottsdale’s largest crime family. Of course, since we’re talking about Scottsdale, the DiCenzos are pretty much Scottsdale’s only crime family. They have a controlling interest in about a quarter of the Scottsdale resorts including the upscale Scottsdale Blue Palms and the Scottsdale Tropical Paradise.
    If you believe what they print in the paper, they also handle illegal aliens coming into the U.S., private gambling, high-end prostitution, and illegal arms traffic -- both in Phoenix and those smuggled over the border into Mexico and Central America. Rumor also had it they were in the process of trying to broaden their influence into narcotics. Maybe it was because of the economic cycle we were in.
    The head of the family is Anthony “Tough Tony” DiCenzo. According to an article I had read, he had relocated to Scottsdale from New York about twenty-five years earlier. Some say the move was voluntary, some say otherwise. In either case, after he had taken over, things had always remained relatively quiet in Scottsdale, at least quiet as far as turf wars were concerned. Stories in the paper