Every so often I like to publish a book excerpt here for you. This one is from a chapter I’ve dubbed “Grounds for Murder.” It’s one of my favorite scenes in Secrets & Lies, the first book in the Riley Russell Mystery Series. And, yes, the Forever Marilyn sculpture is a real thing. I got to see it while visiting the magnificent Grounds for Sculpture in my New Jersey hometown recently. Grounds for Sculpture was the inspiration for Wonderland Sculpture Garden in the book.

Marilyn Monroe Sculpture

“Forever Marilyn” at Grounds for Sculpture

Marilyn was oblivious to the dead man lying beneath her billowing white dress. Jimmy St. Clair stared, sightless, up the skirt of the twenty-six-foot tall sculpture of the Hollywood icon.

Transfixed by the gruesome scene, I gasped when two figures stepped out from the shadows on my left.

“Riley?”

“Kate! What are you doing here?”

“We took a walk and ended up down here.” She wore Vince’s jacket, which she pulled tighter around her body as she spoke. Vince put an arm around her. “Thank God I had my cell phone on me.” Kate shivered, and Vince pulled her closer to his side.
I was suddenly conscious of the sirens wailing in the distance, growing louder as they approached.

The mist had intensified, laying down a cold glaze on my exposed skin.

A cruiser crunched gravel as it braked to a halt along a service road twenty yards from where we stood. Two uniforms—one a forty-ish ex-military type, the other looking to be fresh out of the academy—got out. The first carefully approached the body and, finding no signs of life, signaled to his younger partner, who brought over a roll of crime scene tape and secured the area. Several additional police vehicles pulled up behind the first. A blur of dark blue uniforms surrounded Marilyn. One of them trained a big flashlight on Jimmy’s lifeless face. The others quickly organized themselves into teams, searching the surrounding grass in ever-widening arcs, crazy silver flashes of light crisscrossing in front of them.

The young officer pulled out a cell phone and began snapping photos of the body from various angles.

“Which one of you called it in?” the older cop asked as he approached us.

“I did,” Kate said. “Kate Callahan.”

The officer got Vince’s and my name, then turned back to Kate. “What are you doing down here at this time of night?”

Motioning toward the path leading back to The Looking Glass, Kate said, “We were all at a reunion. Vince and I left the restaurant to get some air, and when we came around the bend, we saw him lying there.” Her voice dropped to just above a whisper. “In all that blood.” Vince’s hand squeezed Kate’s arm, and she leaned into him.

“Did any of you touch anything?”

“No,” Vince answered for all of us. “This is as close as we’ve gotten.”

“Okay. I’m going to ask all of you to wait here for just a minute.”

I opened my mouth to speak, but the cop had already started back to where Jimmy’s body lay. He joined his partner behind Marilyn’s left calf, out of the persistent drizzle that might already be washing away clues to Jimmy the Saint’s demise.

Every so often the younger cop cast a furtive glance down at the dark puddle under Jimmy’s head. Thin pink rivulets swirled away toward the edge of the granite block standing in for the famous subway grate in the now grotesque tableau.

“Any idea yet how long he’s been dead?”

My head snapped up at the sound of his voice. Marc, still in his navy blazer but looking taller somehow, and older, had joined the uniforms under the shelter of Marilyn’s skirt.