The
Escape Diaries: Life and Love on the Lam [reissue]
By
Juliet Rosetti
Published
by Loveswept
On
Sale December 9, 2013
ISBN:
978-0-345-53431-6
Introducing
the hilarious new heroine, Mazie Maguire, in Juliet Rosetti’s
irresistible debut novel that follows the outrageous adventure of a
woman on the run.
Wrongly
convicted of killing her philandering husband, Mazie Maguire is three
years into her life sentence when fate intervenes—in the form of a
tornado. Just like that, she’s on the other side of the fence,
running through swamps and cornfields, big box stores and suburban
subdivisions. Hoping to find out who really murdered her husband,
Mazie must stay a few steps ahead of both the law and her
mother-in-law, who would like nothing better than to personally
administer Mazie the death penalty via lethal snickerdoodle. With the
Feds in hot pursuit and the national media hyping her story, Mazie
stumbles upon a vast political conspiracy and a man who might just be
worth a conjugal visit—if she survives.
The
Escape Diaries : A Guide to Breaking Out of Prison
Escape
tip #1: Be
prepared.
Actually
I wasn’t prepared at all. I just wanted to go to bed. I was tired
and cranky, sweat was puddling between my boobs, and my armpits
smelled like sprouting onions. Deodorant cost one ninety-five at the
prison canteen, well beyond the means of someone who earned ten cents
an hour. Given a choice between M&Ms or Mennen, I’d pick the
sweet and live with the stink. Repulsive, yes—but chocolate is what
gets you through the day, and no one else smells any better.
If
I’d stuck to chocolate, things might have turned out differently.
But I had a leftover cough drop from a bout with bronchitis, and when
my cellmate, Tina Sanchez, developed a tickly throat, I gave her the
cough drop. Just being a pal, right?
Wrong.
You’re supposed to return unused medications to the medical
director. The staff tracks pharmaceuticals the way the CIA tracks
yellow cake in the Middle East. A cellblock officer caught the
menthol scent on Tina’s breath and wrote her up for taking a
nonprescription drug. Since I was the one who’d dished out the
illicit substance, I was written up, too. Along with a bunch of other
drug offenders—aspirin pushers, Alka- Seltzer peddlers, and Midol
dealers—Tina and I were sentenced to garden detail.
Not
exactly the Bataan death march in a suburban peas and petunias plot,
but Taycheedah’s gardens are a whole different chunk of real
estate. Looking out over them is like gazing at the Great Plains; you
wouldn’t be surprised to see buffalo and buzzards roaming around
out there.
The
first days of September had been sunny and hot, and in the perverse
way of growing things, every tomato on six acres had ripened on the
same day. Ten thousand of the squishy red things, demanding to be
handpicked before thunderstorms swept through and turned them into
salsa. We picked. And picked. And picked some more. All morning, all
afternoon, and into early evening. When it got to be five o’clock I
thought we’d be dismissed for dinner. But no-o. You
do the crime, you do the time: that
was the warden’s motto. The kitchen staff sent out sandwiches and
bottles of water and we ate sitting cross- legged in the dirt. Then
we hauled ourselves to our feet and went back to work.
My
spine was an archipelago of ache, my skin felt scalded, and my teeth
were filmed with bugs. The rank, catnippy odor of tomatoes clung to
my clothes. I straightened and stretched at the end of my gazillionth
row, rubbing my back and anxiously scanning the sky to the west,
which had turned the pus-yellow of a fading bruise. The air was thick
enough to stir with a spoon. Crickets chirped storm warnings.
Lightning flickered in a raft of distant clouds.
Lightning
terrified me. I glanced uneasily at the officer on duty, hoping she’d
let the tomatoes go to mush and order us back inside. She didn’t.
She just yawned, leaning against a tree, staring glassily into space.
Obviously, distant lightning wasn’t high on her list of concerns.
“Did
you know that lightning can strike as far as ten miles away?” I
said to Tina, who was picking on the opposite side of my row.
“So
what?” Tina scoffed. “Your chances of getting hit by lightning
are less than winning the Powerball.”
“You’ve
got it backward.” The heat was making me cranky. It was Tina’s
fault I was on this gulag detail in the first place. “The odds
against winning the Powerball are greater than your chances of being
struck by lightning.”
“I
ain’t never won the lottery and I ain’t never got hit by
lightning neither, so that proves my point.”
Tina’s
logic made my brain hurt. I opened my mouth to explain her faulty
reasoning, which would probably have resulted in Tina’s giving me a
mashed tomato facial, but at that moment a siren began to wail. I
nearly jumped out of my sweat-streaked skin. Dropping my tomatoes, I
clapped my hands over my ears.
“Is
that the escape siren?” I asked.
“No,
you goober. That’s the tornado siren.”
Tornado?
My stomach
did a roller-coaster dip. Tornadoes scared me even worse
than
lightning. What were you supposed to do? In grade school we’d had
to practice tornado drills, crouching under our desks with our arms
over our heads and our butts in the air. By the time the drill ended,
our classroom smelled like a cauliflower factory.
The
guard snapped out of her heat-induced stupor, blew a whistle, and
bellowed, “All right, everybody, form up in a line. We’re
returning to the main unit. Inside, you will proceed to your
designated—”
A
galloping wind drowned out her voice, bowled over the tomato plants,
and hurled leaves through the air like green rain. The storm blitzed
in faster than anyone could have expected. Thunder shook the ground
and a zag of lightning split the sky. The mercury vapor lamps that
lit the grounds exploded, plunging us into murky gloom.
Disoriented,
I grabbed onto Tina and we bumbled around, tripping over vines,
squishing tomato guts underfoot, trying to catch our breaths against
the scouring gale. The air sizzled with electricity and my hair stood
on end. The wind worked itself into a tantrum and slammed us along,
Tina’s long braid whipping against my face until she was whirled
one way and I was hurled another. I smacked up against the wall of
the greenhouse and stepped in a load of peat moss from an overturned
wheelbarrow.
Lightning
flashed again, turning the world muddy purple. The purple goop spat
hail.
Split pea hail at first, that sounded like the first faint pops of
microwave popcorn, then fist-sized hail that smashed the greenhouse
panes and sent shards of glass geysering into the air. A 747 revved
for takeoff inside my skull. My ears popped, my hair tried to yank
itself out by the follicles, and what felt like a dozen Dustbusters
sucked at my clothes. Tree branches and gutter spouts hurtled through
the air, outlined by strobes of lightning. Something enormous
somersaulted toward me, growing bigger and bigger, blotting out the
sky. I stared in disbelief. It was a house! An enormous house was
about to smack down and squash me like the Wicked Witch of the East.
When the rescue workers came around searching for bodies, they’d
discover my feet sticking out from beneath the foundation.
“She
really needed a pedicure,” they would say.
I
was five years old when I watched The
Wizard of Oz for
the first time. My parents were out and my older brothers, who were
supposed to be babysitting me, had abandoned me. Alone in the house,
I poured myself a glass of Kool-Aid, dribbled my way to the TV, and
popped a tape into the VCR. I couldn’t read yet, but the video
cover showed a girl in a blue dress, a scarecrow, a lion, and a shiny
metal man. I plopped down on the sofa, my legs so short they stuck
straight out over the edge of the cushions, and watched, entranced,
as a girl named Dorothy balanced along a fence, singing a song about
a rainbow.
Then
Almira Gulch appeared. Eyes like Raisinettes, chin like an ax blade,
mouth like a rat trap. By the time she was pedaling her bike through
the twister, cackling insanely and transforming into the Wicked Witch
of the East, I was petrified, sobbing, and soaked.
My
mother came home, switched off the movie, changed my underpants, and
put me to bed. I wasn’t allowed to watch The
Wizard of Oz again
until I was nine years old, presumably old enough to separate fantasy
from reality, but even then I had to squeeze my eyes shut when the
winged monkeys flew out of the witch’s castle.
Buy
Links:
Crazy
for You: Life and Love on the Lam
By
Juliet Rosetti
Published
by Loveswept
On
Sale December 9, 2013
ISBN:
978-0-345-53432-3
Find
Crazy for You on Goodreads
In
the tradition of Janet Evanovich and Susan Elizabeth Phillips, Juliet
Rosetti ups the ante in her laugh-out-loud funny Escape Diaries
series, as Mazie Maguire must use any means necessary to keep her
main squeeze out of the slammer.
Once
you escape from prison and ride off into the sunset with the gorgeous
guy who helped you nail a killer, you live happily ever after, right?
Well, not exactly—not if you’re Mazie Maguire, and the flow chart
of your life looks like a pinball machine. Mazie has broken up with
her guy, Ben Labeck, she can’t pay her rent, her car is infested
with mice, and she’s working at a coffee shop where the dress code
is teddies, thongs, and toe-cleavage heels. Now Ben is the chief
suspect in a murder investigation, and Mazie’s tapping into her
fugitive wiles to keep him out of jail. Strictly as friends, she
vows. No kissing, no touching, no romance. But how is Mazie supposed
to keep her thoughts platonic when her “buddy” is giving her
erotic back rubs, and a make-believe-we’re-newlyweds charade puts
her in the mood for a wedding night?
Excerpt:
When
I’d escaped from prison, my mother-in-law had first tried to kill
me with a do-it-yourself home electrocution kit, then had attempted
to brain me with a laminated horse hock. Facing charges of attempted
homicide, she’d paid a psychiatrist to have herself declared non
compos mentis and get herself
committed to a velvet-lined loony bin. Since she was immune from
legal proceedings as long as she was locked in the Ralph Lauren
Institute for the Rich and Deranged, I
couldn’t sue her to get my money back. But she couldn’t stay
there forever. Someday she’d be getting out. And I’d be ready
with my pit bull lawyer.
Until
then I was clipping coupons, mining my pockets for stray pennies, and
taking home doggie bags. Glancing at the Happy Soup wall clock, I
discovered that I was running late. Too bad about my leftover booyah,
but a doggie bag just never works on soup. I tossed my iPad into my
purse and barged out the door, failing to notice that someone else
was entering while I was exiting.
“Oops—sorry,”
I said.
I
looked up.
Shit!
Of
all the booyah joints in all the world, why did he have to walk into
this one?
It
was Labeck. He was holding open the door for the TV dodo behind him,
but he came to a jolting halt when he saw me. We stared at each
other. Well, not exactly stared, on my part. Drank in, inhaled,
devoured. He was wearing the aftershave I liked, the one that smelled
like cinnamon and wood smoke.
“Hi,”
he said, looking as surprised as me.
“Hi,”
I replied, as a hellish red tide swept from my hairline to my
clavicles.
“How’s
Muffin?”
“Muffin?
Muffin’s good.”
“That’s
good.”
“How
are you?” I could feel my brain
cells committing suicide, one by one.
“Me?
I’m good, too.”
Who
knows how long this witty repartee might have continued, but the
Talent got tired of standing out in the cold and popped up beneath
Labeck’s outstretched arm, which had frozen on the door. Looking as
though he wished he could vanish beneath an invisibility cloak,
Labeck said, “Mazie, this is Aspen Lindgren. Aspen, Mazie Ma—”
“Oh,
this little gal needs no introduction.” Aspen smiled a dazzling
high-definition-TV-just-out-of-the-box smile and stuck out her hand.
We shook. “Maziemania, right? What a fantastic survival story! It’s
terrific that you were cleared of those charges that you killed your
husband.”
“Thanks.”
For remembering to mention it.
To
anyone watching, we were just two women making polite chitchat, but
we knew better. We were taking each other’s measure. I was the
ex-girlfriend and she was aiming for the new-girlfriend slot. Aspen
was radiating,
showing off for Labeck.
No
one was going to outdo me at
radiating, dammit! I wasn’t a former Miss Quail Hollow for nothing!
I squared my shoulders, lifted my chin, sucked in my gut, thrust out
my boobs, and turned up the wattage on my own smile. Labeck looked
stunned, as though he’d been hit with exploding estrogen bombs.
“I’ll
be sure to watch for your reports from now on,” I said to Aspen,
still in the same overdosed-on-cotton-candy tones, resisting the urge
to shorten her name to Ass.
“So
where do you work, Mazie?” she
asked.
“Cromwell
Research Services.”
Aspen’s
eyes lit up. “The website, right? They run tons of ads on our
station. The owner of your companyRhoda?
Rhonda?—anyway, she invited me and some people from our station to
this party she’s throwing tomorrow night. I’m making Benny take
me, even though he’s a great big ol’ grouchy bear about parties.”
“Yes,
I bet he is.” I bit down on a laugh, noting that a nerve in
Labeck’s jaw was twitching. How fascinating. I was almost enjoying
this.
“I
suppose we’ll see you there,” Aspen chirped.
“Probably.”
My jaw muscles were getting sore from smiling.
“Super!
Well, if you’ll excuse us, we’ve got to grab a bite and then
we’re off to the next crisis. Just rush-rush-rush, all day long,
you know how it is with us media folks.”
“Uh-huh.
Nice meeting you.” I fled outdoors into the cold, clear air. Tiny
black specks boogied across my vision and I suddenly staggered,
overcome by dizziness. I was about to fall into the gutter and get
run over by a garbage truck.
Aspen
would cover the story, of course. “And so ends the tragic story of
Mazie Maguire, the woman who murdered her husband in cold blood but
later beat the rap.”
I
didn’t “beat the rap.” I flushed out the guy who did the actual
crime. Thanks mainly to Ben Labeck, who’d hidden me in his
apartment. He’d also arranged the setup that nailed the scumbag,
despite the fact that he could have been charged with aiding and
abetting a criminal. When I’d been released from prison, Labeck had
asked me to move in with him. We’d spent five blissful days
together, most of them in his bed.
And
then, with dizzying suddenness, before I quite comprehended what was
happening, we’d broken up, Labeck spinning off to the wilds of
Montana and me to the urban wilderness of Brady Street. Six weeks had
passed since then. I hadn’t even known Labeck was back in town.
The
dizziness passed. I pulled myself together and walked to my car.
Milwaukee wasn’t that large; sooner or later Labeck and I were
bound to run into each other. Now we’d both survived the encounter.
We were getting on with our lives, me with my canine companion,
Muffin, and Labeck with his junior Diane Sawyer.
I’m
over him, I told myself. I didn’t need Ben Labeck in my
life.
One
of these days I might even start to believe that.
Buy
Links:
About
Juliet Rosetti
Juliet
Rosetti grew up on a Wisconsin farm. She has taught school in
Milwaukee and in Sydney, Australia, where her duties included
coaching cricket and basketball. Her work has appeared in The
Milwaukee Journal, Chicago Tribune, and in many other publications.
She is a past winner of Wisconsin Magazine’s Wordsmith Award for
nonfiction. Currently she lives in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, with her
husband and son, teaches in the local public school system, and is
writing the next book in the Mazie Maguire series.
Connect
with Juliet Rosetti
Connect
with Loveswept
a Rafflecopter giveaway
No comments:
Post a Comment
Thank you for your comment. It is very important to me. Know that while I might not reply directly to your comment every time, I certainly read it and appreciate it.