Young, Rich and Undead at 27

By Kitt Harrison

Terror walks among us...
When self-absorbed talent agent, Scotty Palmer learns of the overdose death of her former client, legendary rock singer, Chance Knox, she’s terribly distraught. Not just because of his untimely death at the age of 27—but because she realizes she may be implicated in this tragedy, which would ruin her career in the music industry.

This soon turns out to be the least of her worries when a “Chance” encounter turns her world upside-down, overnight.
What she soon learns is there is an even bigger threat that stalks her, and much more is at risk than just her career. Scotty is about to discover a horrifying secret that may wind up costing her more than just her reputation.
It may cost her...her life.

In desperation, Scotty reaches out to a group of wizards for help. They introduce her to the handsome zombie hunter, Valmar Coogan and sparks fly. But Valmar has a secret that may be an even bigger problem for Scotty.

Has turning to this coven now sealed her fate?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Kitt Harrison
• Release date: Apr 27, 2014
• ISBN: 9781310375545

Kitt Harrison

Kitt Harrison started her writing career as a technical writer, medical writer, editor, and also worked as web and graphic designer. She has worked in the entertainment industry for over twelves years, including Universal Studios in Los Angeles, Her favorite hobbies are reading, writing and speaking French.Kitt is a native of New Jersey and a graduate of UC Irvine in California. She currently spends her free time writing, drawing and oil painting. She usual finds herself spending time in either California or France (oh, la la!)Her debut novel, "Young, Rich and Undead at 27," will be released on Sunday, March 30, 2014. She is currently working on her second novel which is due out the end of 2014.

Book preview

YOUNG, RICH AND UNDEAD AT 27

Young, Rich and Undead at 27

by Kitt Harrison

Smashwords Edition

Copyright © 2014 Loredana Buford / Kitt Harrison

Cover Design by Kitt Harrison

ver. 1.3

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (graphic, electronic, or mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review to be printed by a newspaper, magazine, or journal.

All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to any person or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

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 return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Dedication

Dedicated to The Pook.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: Chance is Gone

Chapter 2: The Uneasy Rider

Chapter 3: A Dose of Death:

Chapter 4: Funeral for a Friend

Chapter 5: A Chance Encounter

Chapter 6: Death in the Woods

Chapter 7: An Appetite for Destruction

Chapter 8: Rigor Mortis Meltdown

Chapter 9: The Search for Carmel Bravo

Chapter 10: 13 Mourner’s Lane

Chapter 11: The Apprentice

Chapter 12: A Chance Attack

Chapter 13: The Allies

Chapter 14: Scotty’s Confession

Chapter 15: A Deadly Kind of Love

Chapter 16: A Fiend of The Worse Kind

Chapter 17: A Chance Escape

Chapter 18: The Break-In

Chapter 19: Ravenously Hungry

Chapter 20: The Desperate Accomplice

Chapter 21: The Gentleman Vampire

Chapter 22: Valmar’s Dark Secret

Chapter 23: The Hunter’s Bounty

Chapter 24: Beauty and the Beach

Chapter 25: A Chance in Hell

Chapter 26: A Snowball’s Chance

Chapter 27: The Grim Collection

Epilogue

About the Author

Connect with Kitt Harrison

CHAPTER ONE

Chance is Gone

IT WAS CLOSE TO 10:00 P.M. WHEN THE PHONE rang. Only a handful of people had my private number, and everyone that did knew better than to call me past nine on a weeknight. I sat there for the longest time, listening to that phone ring.

I was in the t-shirt and jeans I’d just slipped on, my long hair piled recklessly on my head, held precariously in place by a hair clip. I’m not sure why everybody thought I had such a glamorous job, representing talent in the entertainment industry. Maybe its because they imagined I spent most my time rubbing elbows with the music industry’s elite, and sipping Perrier with celebrities. And the truth was... well, okay, sometimes I did. But in reality, my job was often hard, stressful, and thankless work. It wasn’t easy being one of the top female talent agents in Hollywood. And I hadn’t felt so glamorous that evening. Instead, I was steeped in a growing depression, and feeling the salty sting of every single day of my forty-five years.

I remember the timing of this call so clearly because it came the same week of that ugly breakup with my fiancé, Richard, not to mention the week of the utter implosion of the business deal with Holster Entertainment.

I had plenty on my mind as I tentatively sipped on my third martini and glared at that stupid ringing phone, thinking about how no one had ever broken my rule before. I broke my own damn rule by answering it. I knew instinctively there was a problem waiting for me on the other end of that line, because as I saw it, bad news came in threes.

Especially disasters.

Hello? I said, curtly. I didn’t bother to hide my irritation.

At first I was met by complete silence. Then the sound of a man clearing his voice, as if gathering his words after a major shock.

In a moment, it would be my turn to be shocked.

Scotty? Lenny here. Sorry, Did I wake you?

It was one of my three assistants, Lenny Walker, the new hire, which made the phone call even more disturbing. Out of the select few I’d given this number to, he was probably the least likely to ring me up at this hour because he knew better. That is, unless of course... he had bad news.

I’m up, I said. This better be good. Wishful thinking on my part, no doubt.

It is, he said. Well—actually it’s not good. It’s bad.

See? I knew it.

How bad? I tried to prepare myself, whatever that means. The two earlier debacles that week had been of the punch-in-the-gut variety.

Very bad. You know the singer, Chance Knox?

Cripes, I really hated the way Lenny would drag out a conversation for dramatic effect. The sign of a person with few joys in life. Of course I knew Chance Knox. I’d represented him until he fired me, found a new manager, then he signed with the evil bastards at Colby Records. They lured him away from me, quite happy to supply him with all the women, alcohol and drugs he wanted. But I warned him it was a bad idea, and later he admitted I was right. Now, he was miserable and under a bullet-proof contract that he suspected even a superlawyer couldn’t break. He boomeranged back to a ferocious drinking habit he’d almost licked and now that gorgeous singing voice of his was near shot to shit. On top of that, he was arrested twice in one month for possession of narcotics.

Twice. In one month.

His reaction to this was to claim he’d been set-up. He swore that someone was out to get him. But that was so like him. He was always imagining he had secret enemies lurking in every shadow.

To follow that up, he’d stopped by my condo a few weeks ago with his three cronies or his Tribe—this is what he called his useless entourage. I had a better word for them. The Parasites. To be more accurate, money-sucking, fame-addicted parasites. Not surprising, he didn’t care for my opinion, with or without the added adjectives.

So, he stops by my place dressed in stylishly torn jeans and a faded black Led Zeppelin t-shirt that very nearly matched the circles under his eyes. As he walked, he appeared to slide around inside the clothes that bagged on him, about two sizes too big. He must’ve lost at least fifteen or twenty pounds since the last time I’d seen him. Hell, maybe more.

He plopped himself on my handmade camel-skin sofa and sent the boys off to the bar in my den encouraging them to help themselves, as he usually did when he came over with the Tribe. I simmered underneath, but I didn’t say anything. He was still a big star, although not as bankable as he had been eleven years ago when I first discovered him singing for beers in a Hollywood bar using a fake ID.

I also wasn’t up for bickering with him. He’d made it clear many times that he resented the fact that as his manager, I earned forty-five percent of everything he made and I suppose treating his boys to my booze was his way of getting some of it back.

No, I wasn’t his manager any more. But I did straddle the fence between therapist and foster mother. Regardless, I had a feeling he sent them off so he could talk to me in private, and that worried me more than those opportunistic clowns rooting around in my liquor cabinet.

He came by in person because he hated talking about anything important over the phone. He was convinced he was being tapped by the CIA, or the FBI or the ASPCA, or whoever it was this week. And certainly all three had nothing better to do than spy on him.

After he sat down, he let out a long, laborious sigh and then he smiled, tense and uncomfortable. I knew then, this wasn’t a social visit as much as it was a Chance-has-fucked-up-again-in-a-major-way visit. Sort of like that time he knocked up that groupie in Louisiana. I was on the phone nonstop for days, doing everything I could think of to keep it out of the media, off the internet, and as far from YouTube as possible. Between myself and Nadine Galore, one of Chance’s attorneys, we finally negotiated with the girl to reconsider her pregnancy. $250,000 later, she did. Chance bitched about the payoff for weeks, but he knew good and well he got off easy.

Afterwards, the greedy little shit tried to sell her story to the Enquirer. She tried, but she had no evidence it happened, since the doctor we referred her to—known in the quiet corners of the entertainment industry as Dr. Fix-It—was even shadier than she was, and couldn’t be found for comments. It was only one of many times I rescued Chance’s sorry ass from the media sharks that eat people’s careers for breakfast. And a celebrities’ career? Hell, that was a fine delicacy to be savored.

So, anyhow, how does he repay me? Three months later, when his contract with me comes up for renewal, he splits and signs with another manager.

Yeah, you heard me right.

Now, in this latest visit to my place, he sits in that same exact spot, on that same exact sofa and pleads with me to help him get out of this new contract, not nearly as arrogant as he’d been when he told me to fuck-off just before he signed it. I agreed to read it over, even though I was still half-hearted and resentful. I guess you could say I was still angry at him for all the headaches he caused me over the years, including the more recent ones that stung like a bitch. I’d helped him turn his career around once already. But that was over a decade ago, right around the time I’d first signed him. He’d been a hungry street kid desperate for a break, so I had a lot more control over him and his habits. Especially the ones involving alcohol.

But he was older now—actually, a lot older by industry standards—and to coin a few colorful phrases, he’d been around the block, through the wringer, and under a few truck tires. I knew for some time that his singing voice was failing him. After all, the human body can only handle so much abuse. And for a drugged up singer, it was often the vocal cords that blew out first.

Despite all that, I caved in, and I told him to send me a copy of the contract, and I’d read it over. But, I had to take the time to think about his situation clearly. From a business standpoint. Even if I could find a lawyer with the brain muscle enough to contest his contract, his past discography would always be worth more than he was himself, and I suspected he was thinking of selling them to the shifty barracudas at Colby Records. That would leave me with just Chance Knox, the problematic, burned-out, alcoholic singer, who was nearly washed-up at the age of twenty-seven. And to be quite honest, I wasn’t sure he was worth all the effort. Because the stark and unapologetic truth was, he was quickly approaching a tipping point in his career like so many rock music icons before him. The point reached when following the same game plan of free-fall self-destruction.

He was probably worth more dead than alive.

#

I sighed loudly into the phone, thinking, sure I knew who Chance the dumbass was. Just get to the point and tell me what the hell he’s done this time. I was about to say exactly that when Lenny cut me off.

He’s dead.

Lenny’s words ping-ponged around my brain but didn’t register completely and I imagine my return question reflected that.

Are you serious?

Dead serious, Lenny replied, then added, Uh—no pun intended.

I felt my stomach rope itself into a knot.

Gut-punch number three.

Knowing what I knew about Chance, this shouldn’t have come as such a big surprise. But the news threw me anyway. Here, I’m thinking the phone call was going to be about some debacle along the lines of another business deal gone belly-up, or maybe that my cheating asshole of an ex-fiancé planned to sue me for palimony, which still loomed as a sinister possibility. But not the death of someone so young. Not the death of someone I knew so well.

Despite what I already knew about him, I found myself thinking, how? When death came at his age, twenty-seven, and in his profession, there was usually only a handful of culprits—the type of culprits that came in handfuls. The kind of culprits that were either prescribed, bought on the street in a bad neighborhood, or procured by one’s shadier friends in a good one.

I was numb—shocked—overwhelmed—pick one. The final time I talked to him was over the phone a few days ago when he called to wish me happy birthday. I should’ve known something was up right then because it wasn’t my birthday. I was going to correct him, but I sighed and thanked him instead. And because if I could summon up a Harry Houdini of an idea and find a way to get him out of that contract, maybe I’d try to represent him again. Perhaps I had a soft heart. Or a soft head. I wasn’t sure which. But dumbass or not, he was the biggest money-making celebrity I’d ever managed.

And now he was gone.

I felt all sorts of mixed emotions retch up in me like vomit after a bad drinking night. To say I was speechless doesn’t even remotely touch on what was going on inside of me.

Lenny’s voice droned on in the background of my thoughts.

Scotty? You there?

I took a long, silent breath and tried to recover. Then I exhaled out in my best semblance of composure, When did it happen?

Earlier today, I think.

How did he die? I had a feeling it was a stupid question when I asked it.

Then came this long, ominous pause before he said, I’m not exactly sure.

His voice sounded quavering and unsteady. My nerves felt the same way. And his answer puzzled the shit out of me. You’re not sure? Well—what did the police say?

Another long pause.

I haven’t called them yet. I just found him.

My stomach hit the ground. Holy shit. You’re at his place?

Yeah.

I bolted forward, my mind crazy with disbelief. What the hell are you doing there?

He called the office earlier while you were in that meeting at Holster. He said he had some papers he wanted me to bring to you.

The contract, I thought. But for cripes sakes. Maybe he was still alive. Did you at least call the ambulance?

No. I thought I should call you first.

How do you know he’s dead?

Uh, trust me. He’s dead.

My brain was flooded with questions. I didn’t even know where to begin. Why are you calling me? Why didn’t you call the—

There’s these little prescription bottles all over the nightstand.

No surprises there. I figured as much. So?

I happened to notice... a couple of the bottles had your name on them.

My heart bolted in my chest. Suddenly this disaster took on the grand, nightmarish proportions of a felony with my name typed all over it. I’d totally forgotten I’d given Chance some of my tranquilizers. When he stopped by weeks ago to apologize—or so I’d thought—he also asked to borrow some downers. He told me he couldn’t sleep. I suspect his regular doctor refused to prescribe any, probably because of his two recent narcotics raps. Like an idiot, I fell for that charm of his and I gave him what I could spare: three half-filled bottles of Val-Doze, of various expiration dates. Enough to take out a small rhinoceros, not to mention enough to put me in the slammer for who knows how long since I was pretty sure sharing prescription drugs could lead to sharing a jail cell. But I knew the media blowback from this would be far worse. For me, it would be ruinous.

Luckily—or perhaps unluckily—for him, Chance wouldn’t be around for the media field day that would arise out of this little publicity fiasco. But I would. Once the police got their hands on those little bottles, their next stop would be my penthouse condo to ask a bunch of questions for which I had no good answers.

And that wasn’t even the worse part. When this news hits the airwaves--Rock singer, Chance Knox, dead of an overdose due to prescription drugs... that had been given to him illegally by his former manager, Scotty Palmer—the fallout for me, my career, my future would be monumentally disastrous. His crazy, hardcore fans would come after me in droves. I’d lose everything I own on lawyers and bodyguards. Talk about one devastating gut-punch after the other. I felt like Richard Simmons tossed in the ring with a young Muhammed Ali—I was about to get slaughtered.

Oh, hell, no.

I bolted to my feet and slipped on the black Versace pumps I’d kicked off only two hours earlier, just before downing that first martini.

Don’t call anyone, I told him. I’ll be there in thirty minutes.

CHAPTER TWO

The Uneasy Rider

THE FRIDAY EVENING AIRPORT TRAFFIC CHOKED THE SOUTHBOUND 405 FREEWAY to a dead standstill. Chance’s house—technically, my house. He’d been renting it from me for the past seven years or so—was relatively close by. It was less than fifteen miles away from my condo, but driving fifteen miles in Friday evening Los Angeles airport rush hour traffic was like driving a hundred and fifty anywhere else. Add to that, a fender-bender in the center lane, and I could rest assured I wouldn’t be going anywhere, anytime soon. And to compound matters, I had to pee. But it would take forever to get on and off the freeway in the maddening gridlock. Considering the immediate circumstances, it was far too easy to distract myself with other thoughts. And sitting on that stopped-up freeway gave me way too much time to do it.

What if Lenny was wrong? What if Chance wasn’t dead? What if he was just zonked-out? Lenny had been wrong before. He’s one of those annoying people who thinks he knows everything, always correcting me, as though he has to prove he’s worth more than the lousy salary I pay him. What did he say again? Chance looked dead. How could Mr. Know-it-all tell? He’s not a damn coroner. Or a damn doctor. Or a damn school nurse, for that matter. Of course, the problem with that theory was, in general, Lenny tended to be more right about things than wrong, a fact I found endlessly annoying. But, regardless, there wasn’t much of anything I could do about it at the moment, since I was being held hostage by a freeway, and in my rush to get to Chance’s house, I’d unwittingly left my Blackberry on the coffee table.

If my sweaty hands had clamped on the steering wheel any tighter they would need to have been surgically removed. I was a complete nervous wreck, driving stop-start, herky-jerky and conking out my BMW over and over again, like it was the first time I ever drove a stick shift. I couldn’t get those damn, creepy images out of my brain. Images of the media insanity his death would cause.

Images of a dead Chance Knox, lying lifeless on the bed, dead eyes staring up at me.

Unlike the freeway I was pretty much parked on, my mind was going a mile a minute. And I really, really had to pee. I tried to keep my mind off it, but it seemed my alternate thoughts preoccupied me with panic. Damn it, I should’ve asked Lenny more questions. Should’ve had him take Chance’s pulse. What if Chance was still alive but dies while I’m on my way there? Would that implicate me in a murder? No, that’s crazy. They’d probably blame Lenny first for not making the call. Good. Serves him right for being such a goddamn know-it-all. All these second thoughts glared back at me like the hot red tail lights in front of my car, and the whole thing lit up my nerves like a Christmas tree on fire. I just wanted to get those damn prescription bottles, then call the police to come get Chance.

And damn it all, I still had to pee.

Seemed like a lifetime went by before I arrived at the Mulholland exit. Traffic picked up on the boulevard, the closer I came to the death house.

The death house.

Those were the actual words that rose up in my mind, like something straight out of an old pulp detective magazine. My heart raced. I was trying to keep my mind on my driving so I didn’t kill anybody. Kill anybody else. Like I might have killed Chance. Damn it! What was I thinking? I knew he was an addict, but I gave him those damn pills anyway.

My knees went all rubbery on me which made driving a stick-shift take on the hair-raising complexity of a high-wire circus act. I conked out the car at nearly every intersection, I was so freaking nervous. I could’ve used one of those damn tranquilizers he took from me right then. Make that two. Or three. Or maybe the whole, goddammed bottle.

I knew I had to just stay calm. But I couldn’t get tomorrow’s headlines out of my mind: Singer, Chance Knox, found dead of overdose. I had to keep myself thinking clearly. I was just going to run in there, grab those pill bottles, we could call the police, they could come and do their police-thing, and life goes on.

Just leave me the hell out of it.

I figured they were bound to ask me a few questions and of course I planned to cooperate with them—to a degree anyway. How did I know him, they’d ask. I’d reply, I used to be his manager. Does he have any next of kin? His mother, I’d say. I have her number if you like. Seemed easy enough, right?

But the more I thought about it, the more the whole situation seriously troubled me. Doubtlessly they’d ask what I was doing at his house that night of all nights. And that would be a really good question. How do I explain being at Chance’s house? There wouldn’t be any call records on this night showing a phone call from him to me. Or from me to him, either. So, what exactly prompted me to visit him on the night of his death? How do I explain that to the police? Cops are always so suspicious. And being at the scene of someone’s death with no real reason to be there was about as suspicious as it gets.

What if they searched me and found the empty pill bottles? What the hell was I doing carrying all those empty pill bottles, they’d ask. Under the circumstances, they’d probably take them as evidence. After the autopsy, it would only be a matter of time before the puzzle came together. Then not only would I be responsible for his death, I’d be in trouble for tampering with evidence. I’d seen enough episodes of Law and Order to know that much. So, I not only had to get those pill bottles, I had to get rid of them before the police got there.

Or...

Or we just don’t call the police at all, I thought. How about that? I was aware of about five people who had the keys to that house. Chance, his girlfriend, his maid, his mother and myself, since he was renting the house from me. I figured, why not let the maid call the police when she finds him in the morning? Although, if Chance still stuck to his old routine, the maid probably wasn’t scheduled to work on the weekends, his so-called private time. Then I thought maybe his girlfriend, Bebe Hardwood—yes it’s a stage name and yes, she was a stripper—can make the call. Sure, she might be a little upset to find him in his current... condition, but likely the greater tragedy for her would be to lose her main meal ticket.

Then I remembered he’d mentioned that they’d broke up. They may have gotten back together, but then again, maybe not. So, then what? Then his body would lay in that bedroom until Monday when the maid showed up. I don’t know much about the physiology of dead bodies but I do know they tend to stink after awhile. This executive secretary I knew, accidentally locked a squirrel in her car and went on vacation to Hawaii for two weeks. She came back and found the car full of flies, stinking of the funk from hell, and under the driver’s seat, the remains of that dead squirrel. But try as she might, she couldn’t get that horrific stink out of the car. She couldn’t sell it. Hell, she couldn’t even give it away. And it was a brand new Mercedes.

Then I thought about Chance’s body in that house. Two days in a hot California bedroom, or wherever room he lay. Cripes! I’d never be able to rent that house again. Or sell it. I’d probably have to burn it down and rebuild. Somehow, some way we had to get him out of there. Somebody had to find him and fast. And not only that, I had to make sure neither Lenny nor myself left any evidence behind at the scene of the crime.

The scene of the crime.

I shook my head. I was starting to feel like a criminal. Shit! This was all Chance’s fault, I thought. I spent years bailing him out of one crisis or another. And now, on his final hurrah, he gives me one last kick in the ass. Something to really remember him by. It was then, as I sat there sweating bullets with the air conditioning on full-blast, that I started to think maybe this was no accident. Maybe he’d committed suicide and left those bottles to implicate me.

He could be so selfish like that. The prick.

He knew I’d be hemorrhaging money to pay attorneys. His way of punishing me for all those years of ripping him off. No one forced him to sign the damn contract. And it’s not like he didn’t make an obscene fortune out of the deal himself. And if it was