Drago #5 (#2b) , livre ebook

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133 pages

English

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Description

Guns. Women. Coal. Gold.

Nick and Sal have their hands full.

When gold was discovered in trees, Nick and Sal found themselves in the midst of a thousand year old question of who first settled the Northwest.

It ended badly with bystanders suffering the result of greed and mayhem (#2a).

A year later, Nick and Sal begin their hunt for the face behind the Tree Man crimes and get tangled in a new web of deceit.

This time they have help from the "Caught Looking" PI Agency. Tatiana, Frankie Blue and Cookie strap on weapons and work the Bandon angle.

Sujets

Detective

Mystery

Fiction

Informations

Publié par	eBookIt.com
Date de parution	21 février 2013
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781456610937
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	1 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0250€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

Dead people found in trees hard to believe? Here’s something to ponder:

Just a few reviews and comments…
Review of Drago #4 in Northwest Book Lovers newsletter:
"…If you’re needing some wickedly fun books for that beach or camping trip, toss this one in, but be prepared to pull an all nighter as you flip through the pages. It’s not rocket science folks; it’s just a damn good read." -- Richard Morris
This is a great series. Judi Wutzke, Owner, …and Books, Too! , Clarkston, Washington
I love the Drago series, each story is exciting and full of surprises. This is a great book to purchase for yourself or as a gift; it's hard to put down and leaves you looking forward to future books featuring Nick Drago and his mystery solving friends. – Tracy A., California

Just wanted to let you know that I enjoyed your books, I even figured out the user name and password. However Drago and his buddy sure do eat a lot. Looking forward to book 3. – Diane M., Michigan

Great read!... Started reading and quickly got to the point I couldn’t put it down… -- ST , Oregon

Darn you, Drago. You made me late for work! – MJ, Oregon
…a 3-D jigsaw puzzle of clues… (Western World newspaper)
Great read capturing my attention from page 1. – CGM, Oregon

(My wife) liked your book… – R.L. , U.K.

Great books, next?? – FG, Oregon

Love your books!!!! – D. B. Oregon

I always like your story lines and my sister, her neighbor and her boss over at Hauser Store are also great fans of yours!!! My Sis doesn't do computers so I always have to keep her updated on what you are up to next!!! lol – E. P. Coos Bay

DRAGO #5
(#2b)

For a free autographed Drago Bookmark, email your address and name to Arts@cnwmr.com
To have your copy of Drago autographed, mail it to:
PO Box 744, Bandon, Oregon 97411
Include your mailing address. We’ll pay return postage.

Copyright 2012 by Art Spinella

All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Art Spinella. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Most businesses and locations, however, are real. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is entirely coincidental. For a closer look at Bandon, Oregon, go to www.Bandon.com .

ISBN: 978-0-615-71114-0
Cover design: D. T. Spillane
Audio book version in 2013 by Pasta Studios
Printed in the United States of America

Published in eBook format by eBookIt.com
http://www.eBookIt.com

ISBN-13: 978-1-4566-1093-7

PHOTOS:
COVER COAL MINE – Bandon Historical Society
AVA: FRONT, BACK COVERS, INSIDE – Lance Nix
INTERIOR ‘CAUGHT LOOKING’ – Lance Nix

PREFACE

Of all the Drago mysteries, this was by far the hardest to write. While I’m a big fan of archeology, anthropology and Area 51, weaving them into a story that doesn’t bore the drawers off of a reader is a challenge.
Add that this is a continuation of the second Drago mystery and it became necessary to complete a tale readers of #2a found intriguing (fanciful, perhaps) in a way that is true to the fiction and to the facts.
Here’s what I can tell you: The migration patterns of ancient peoples found in this book are true. Well, at least some mainstream archeologists from at least three countries believe it to be so. Others are quickly coming on board.
Second, the coal mines in Coos County are actual places and were responsible for keeping the lights on in San Francisco for much of the latter half of the 19 th Century and into the 20 th Century. A list appears at the end of this book.
Third, anything presented as fact in Drago #5(#2b) can be searched on the Internet and I heartily recommend readers do so. There’s some mighty interesting stuff out there that wouldn’t fit in this novel. If Nick and Sal could find it, so can you.
---- Art Spinella

DEDICATION
To the men who lost their lives in Coos County coal-mine explosions including:
Martin Bomar
Cyrus Ferreri
Liberto Gonzales
Thomas Kingsley
John “Scotty” Lowe
Albert Menegat
Other names have been lost to history.

THANKS TO
Cookie for being a delight
Tiffany’s Pharmacy for letting us have some fun
Joseph Bain for recommending an important scene
David Kimes for allowing us to abuse his ’66 T’Bird
Kitty Lou English for loving old stuff
Bonnie at Lil’ Orbits for help with Lil’ Orbits
Shauleen for being Xena
Jeri, final edit and perfect FBI type
Ava, our favorite model
Country – Harley rider and friend
Jesse M. – Harley rider and friend
Bubba – Harley rider, friend and gun critic
Lillie – My sweet 30 pound rodent
Lori and the folks at Edgewaters
Tony and Mary Ann – Friends worth a fortune
Jacob – For advice about being a kid

PROLOGUE

“Did it come?”
Sal had thrashed through the woods from his place to mine, stood in front of me at the deck picnic table, hopping from foot to foot. Hopping might be a bad word to use. Sal is 299 pounds and 5-foot-eleven and a half inches tall. Big guys can’t hop.
“Inside.”
He continued bouncing. “So why are you sitting here?”
“Thinking about it.”
“Take it out of the box yet?”
I can tell when Sal is excited.
“Nope.”
“When?”
“Soon.”
“Come on, Nick. We gotta unpack it. We’ve been waiting for days.”
“Another couple of minutes won’t hurt. We have to make sure we don’t ruin the day by doing anything rash.”
“How can we do anything rash?”
“What if we don’t like the result because we didn’t do something correctly?”
“Nuts to that. Let’s go, Nicky.”

We didn’t have a chance. Cookie came out the slider, hands on her hips. “Is that box in the kitchen from who I think it is?”
“Hi, cutie. The name’s on the box.”
“You bought a donut machine?”
Sal sputtered, “Not just any donut machine. A Lil’ Orbits donut machine.”
“We’ll save a bundle,” I added.
“Define a bundle.” Cookie my lovely wife of many years is pretty patient about my excursions into odd places, but a donut machine might be pushing it.
“Last month, Sal and I spent $141.62 on donuts. I got the figures all penciled out to show you if you’d like.”
“No, I believe you.”
“So, these mini-donuts cost about a half-buck for six.”
“Nick, they’re tiny. I looked at the box.”
“Yes, but let’s say six little orbits equal a single regular sized donut. We eat twelve each per day. Well, maybe more. But that’s still only two bucks a day or 60 bucks a month. We’ve saved more than $80.”
“Money you guys will spend on pizzas.”
Sal grinned. “We could buy a pizza oven.”
Cookie spun on her heels, made the sign of the cross (something I’d never seen her do before) and returned to the kitchen.
I looked at Sal, “Cinnamon?”
“Powdered sugar.”
“We’ll do batches of both, how’s that?”
“Maybe a chocolate frosting.”
“Let’s not overdo it. We want to spread out the joy.”

CHAPTER ONE

Jolly Davis was known around Coquille as a rambunctious kid. Not ADD rambunctious, just, well, active. A schosh more scrappy than most rural 12 year olds, a tad over 5-foot-five with a mess of red hair befitting his Irish ancestry and with feet the size of Oklahoma. “Lots of growin’ left in that boy,” his dad would say.
Jolly sat on the Coquille River bank, thumbing through the pages of a history book about the Indians in these parts and the industries that sprung up because of the area’s abundant natural resources. Fish, game, timber, coal, gold, to name just a few.
His dad fished and hunted and could brandish a chain saw with the best. Mikey Slaughter’s dad still had a small gold mine up on Seven Devils Road. Didn’t produce much, but Jolly thought owning a gold mine would be the coolest of the cool.
But no one talked much about coal. What’s to talk about? Dirty black stuff that didn’t burn as good as wood. Needed to go underground to get it. At least Douglas fir was on top of the earth where anyone with a chainsaw and a log splitter could get hold of it.
Maybe it was coal’s nearly invisible history in Coos County that attracted Jolly to it. Maybe it was the history book’s story of Patrick Flannigan, an Irish immigrant who made a fortune mining and transporting it. Maybe it was the notion of dropping 3,000 feet below the surface – 1,400 feet below sea level -- to get at it. Didn’t matter, really. Jolly just liked the idea of coal. Kinda like the way hoarders like the idea of salt and pepper shakers.
With a nub of a No. 2 pencil, Jolly wrote a one then 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0.
He looked at the scribble. “Them’s a lot of zeros,” he said to himself.
He re-read the passage in the history book. “A 1902 government assessment of the amount of mineable coal in Coos County was put at 1 billion tons.”
Jolly looked at the passage then at his penciled number. In a whisper, “Holy catfish. A billion tons of coal. Them’s a lot of coal.”
The air was cooling and the Coquille River began rippling as the north wind scurried across its surface and tree tops began the low hum that comes with a stiffening breeze and the sun began its slow dip into the west behind the hills to Jolly’s back between him and the Oregon coast.
“Time to go, Jolly,” he said aloud. “Pops will tan me good if I linger.”
Standing, stretching his legs and stuffing the history book under his arm, the 12-year-old began trekking along the bank, taking a second or two to step on a twig just to hear it snap or another second or two to kick a stone out of his way or another second or two to lift a small rock and toss it into the river.
Twirling through his head he wondered, “How many steps is a billion?” He began counting as he walked, but stopped at 100. Jolly was a kid and numbers couldn’t hold his attention as fastly as kicking stones or throwing rocks or snapping twigs under his worn black tennis shoes.
Passing the open hay fields that spread to the east between North Bank Road and the Coquille River, Jolly pulled in a big breath of air. “Cow,” he said aloud. And sure enough, around the ne