Murder on Sex Island: A Luella van Horn Mystery

Prologue

Like my forefathers Gene Simmons and Christina Aguilera, my life began on Staten Island, the borough of New York most known for its landfills. The first twenty-five years of my life were going somewhat according to plan. I was an underpaid social worker, I got married to a guy I knew from high school, and to top it all off, I was dead inside. What can I say? It’s the Staten Island way.

When most grown people get bored, they cheat on their spouses. They start buying lottery tickets. They develop a drug habit. Not me, though. When I need to fill a gaping void in an otherwise predictable, monotonous life, I like to think outside the box. So I made up an alter ego who solves crimes in a wig.

When I slap on the blond hair, the fake white teeth, and the red lipstick, I become Private Detective Luella van Horn. Suddenly I’m a woman who knows what she wants and gets it. The powerful see me as an ally and the weak see me as a threat. It’s amazing. I think it’s because of the teeth.

I began Luella’s private detective agency a little over four years ago. I know you’re supposed to get a license for this sorta thing, but I figured I’d work up to that. Besides, the cases were small to start, some cheating spouses, but mostly lost dogs. I ruffled feathers here and there, but only enough to get a certain amount of notoriety around Staten Island.

That was all before the Taylor Bell case.

Around that time the whole double-life shtick was starting to wear me down. My husband was becoming suspicious, and things were getting tense between us. Where was I going all the time with that duffel bag? Why wasn’t I ever home for dinner? But I didn’t care.

After a long day of pointless, ineffective social work, I’d grab my duffel and change in the car. Luella would take it from there. I was getting better at private investigating with every case. My confidence was skyrocketing, but I was exhausted. I was simply not prepared for the monster that was Taylor Bell.

Until the Bell case, the local press couldn’t get enough of Luella van Horn. She was a mysterious blond vigilante who solved all these little cases the police department didn’t have the bandwidth for. I found eight long-lost dogs. That’s a lot of long-lost dogs! But then Taylor Bell killed his wife, and I let him get away. More on that later. Thinking about it fills me with so much shame I get dizzy.

Soon after that, my marriage crumbled and I decided to quit social work altogether. Don’t worry, I wasn’t the type of social worker who made sure families stayed together. I didn’t abandon children to fend for themselves. I was the type who helped adults transition from jail to freedom; reentry specialist was my official title. Only a few adults were disappointed by my leaving, but to be honest, they would’ve been disappointed even if I’d stayed. With the system as it was, I didn’t do much for anyone. Recidivism was high among my clients, and I couldn’t help but take it personally most days.

So I moved to Manhattan with what was left of my savings, turned twenty-nine, and adopted a cat. And then another cat to keep the first cat company. Using this logic, I understood how quickly someone could end up with forty cats in a studio apartment. To keep the other thirty-nine company. Duh.

So now I exist as two women. One is who I’ve been most of my life: Marie Jones. A mousy single woman with no prospects and no job and no life. The other is Luella van Horn. A glamorous private detective who botched her last case so badly she might be a lost cause, too. To be honest, it’s kind of a rock-and-a-hard-place situation.

1

Tuesday

New York City hadn’t seen Luella van Horn for a while. I told callers she was on an extended vacation. Those long-lost dogs would have to stay lost. This all translated to me sitting in my apartment talking to my cats (Meatloaf and Meatball, if you’re curious) and watching Sex Island like it was a religion.

If you’re unfamiliar, Sex Island is an incredible reality television show. They take the country’s sexiest twenty-two-year-olds and fly them to a small island near Bermuda, while we the viewers watch them have sex and emotionally destroy each other. The show is somehow both addictive and completely unwatchable. There is something oddly comforting about sequestering our nation’s sexually active youth to a land mass in the middle of the Atlantic ocean.

They film in the mornings and edit together gold in time for the show to air for a full hour five nights a week. Those editors should be given some kind of Nobel. And I don’t know why or how the FCC allows the show to broadcast intercourse, but I’m grateful! Maybe because the contestants are always under the covers? Who knows?

The ratings are obviously very high. I did my part.

This season of Sex Island was quite compelling already. Every night there was sex, screaming, fighting, and more sex. I mean, what more could one ask for? Smell-o-vision?

Each season starts out with fifteen men and fifteen women, all straight, all nineteen to twenty-three years old. This is the type of show where twenty-five is considered geriatric. As the season progresses, contestants are eliminated for anything really, from not having sex good enough to having an odd-smelling anus. Sure it’s dystopian, but have you watched the news recently? It’s about on par with the news.

But this most recent episode of Sex Island was strange. My favorite cast member, David G, was suddenly absent. No other cast members had addressed it, which was even more off-putting. Contestants would frequently leave the show, but their exit would be decided upon by the group. Plus, it would be all anyone could talk about the next day in confessionals. The last contestant to tearfully leave the show of her own accord was a professional cheerleader from Dallas, Texas, named Rachel. The show’s official statement: Rachel suffers from Crohn’s disease. We wish her well.

I wasn’t the only one to notice David G was gone. The message boards were abuzz—kidnapping was a popular theory, but one Reddit user was adamant she’d seen him in her local grocery store in Tampa, Florida. Another commenter claimed he was sending her signals through her air fryer. The show had a very devoted following, and David G was a unanimous favorite. His absence, even for one episode, was noted.

Before his disappearance, David G was sleeping with a contestant named Tasha, a tall personal trainer with long black hair who hated wearing clothes. In the most recent episode, Tasha was acting strange, too. Take this little nugget from her confessional that had the Sex Island fans reeling:

Off-Camera Interviewer: Are you okay?

Tasha: Bitch, shut up!

I had a feeling something weird had happened, and usually I’m not wrong about this stuff. David G was a rare type of contestant in that he was hot, but he also seemed like he had a soul. He was called David G because there was another David on Sex Island called David N, and let me tell you, David N could not hold a candle to David G. It might have been his cleft chin or the fact that he was a nurse before becoming a reality TV star. Whatever it was, David G was a straight-up catch, and the show wasn’t the same without him, even for one episode.

The night I got the call, I’d just poured myself a second bowl of Sugar Crunchies, also known as generic Frosted Flakes. They’re three dollars cheaper than the name brand and they come in a plastic bag. If you’re not willing to cough up the extra three dollars, somehow you don’t deserve a cereal box? Where’s the justice?

Technically it was my fifth bowl of the day, but my second after-dinner bowl. I had taken a very large bite just as my phone started ringing. I chewed and looked at my phone screen, milk spilling down my chin. No caller ID. I knew what that usually meant: a case. I looked to Meatloaf, the more spiritual of my two cats. His green eyes said, Answer it. I hesitantly picked up on the third ring.

Hello, I said with a mouthful of cereal.

Is this Luella van Horn? a man’s voice asked.

I managed to chew and swallow, already brainstorming the excuse I’d give. This is her secretary. I can take a message, I said, coughing up a rogue Sugar Crunchy. It landed gracefully on my couch cushion. I picked it up and ate it again. Meatloaf stared at me in horror.

"Uh, this is strictly confidential, but my name is John Murphy, and I work as a producer on the reality show Sex Island. We’d like Ms. Van Horn to look into the disappearance of one of our cast members. His name is David G."

I sat up straight and a chill ran through me. Taking a deep breath, I tried to steady the quiver in my voice. Say that again?

David G was last seen Friday, and we’re under immense pressure to find him. Can Luella come track him down? She saved my cousin’s dog once and comes highly recommended.

Which dog? I asked.

Miss Fluffy; she was a Pekingese. There was growing urgency in his voice. I remembered Miss Fluffy. She pissed in my Honda Civic. Who would’ve thought little Miss Fluffy had a family connection to Sex Island?

A second voice spoke up then. It sounded more confident than John, less shaken.

Hi there, I’m Stephanie Hillson, another executive producer on the show. Listen, we’ve scoured the island and talked to all the cast and crew. Nobody knows anything.

We’ve done everything we could other than contact his family and call the police, John said. We just don’t want to alarm anyone unnecessarily, you know? His family will be hysterical.

And of course, the viewers… I said sarcastically.

Yes, the viewers are our number-one priority, Stephanie agreed. They’re already starting to theorize online, and that’s not good for them or us.

I hoped she was joking, but it didn’t seem that she was. I’d say, off the top of my head, the two main things you’re supposed to do at a workplace when an employee disappears are contact their family and call the police. But this was Hollywood, baby, and I figured they did things differently there.

With the ratings so high, John and Stephanie didn’t think police interference was necessary at this point, but they wanted the problem solved.

We’re certain it’s simply a matter of David G hiding somewhere, Stephanie insisted.

Right, John said. Sometimes these actor types really do take off for a few days. They only tell the production assistant, who forgets to tell us, then they come right back. Everyone’s okay! For all we know, David G is suntanning on a boat somewhere right now. John chuckled nervously at his own joke. I noticed Stephanie didn’t join him.

David G was a front-runner on Sex Island, and his star was on the rise. If he was hiding, there had to be a good reason for it. John and Stephanie hoped Luella could do some hush-hush private investigating, find David G alive and well, and be on her merry way. You might be wondering how someone could actually disappear in the age of social media. It seemed the geniuses running Sex Island had a moratorium on posting, liking, and even sharing during filming, and that applied to all cast and crew. In fact, all contact with the outside world had been actively discouraged. David G’s (and everyone else’s) social media had been untouched for months.

The producers offered a first-class ticket both ways if Luella could get to the island by tonight, as time was of the essence. I said I would relay the message and get back to them after I’d spoken with Luella. I hung up the phone and took the next three minutes to chew off all my fingernails. Meatball hid under the bed while Meatloaf hissed at me from the top of a bookshelf.

My confidence was at a zero. Even if I hadn’t botched the Taylor Bell case, finding David G was a higher-profile case than I’d ever handled. On the other hand, my life basically revolved around watching a reality show that was now a potential crime scene, and maybe not doing something would feel worse than doing something poorly. I tried telling myself maybe this could be the turning point I’d been hoping for. But was I doomed to repeat my mistakes, putting more and more people in danger? I looked at my hands and realized four of my cuticles were bleeding. I thought of Taylor Bell out there, ready and willing to kill again. But here I was, presented with a chance to become a better PI and possibly save a life, restore justice, even.

I called them back. John picked up after the first ring.

Did you talk to Luella?

She’ll do it, I said.

Great! Just book her on the next first-class ticket out—we’ll reimburse all expenses.

I thanked him, then promptly got an airplane ticket that left New York in two hours and cost approximately $14 million. Next, I called my seventy-five-year-old neighbor, Sophie.

Sophie, hi, how are you?

Cut the small talk. Sophie cleared her throat and spit up a loogie, which thanks to advanced technology I could hear very clearly. What do you want? she screeched.

If you can believe it, she was always this unpleasant.

Could you take care of my cats for a bit?

She coughed twice directly into the receiver. How long this time?

Not sure. Maybe two weeks, maybe a little more.

She treated me to another throat-clear and then a very wet-sounding snort. All right. Have a bottle of Baileys waiting for me in the fridge.

Always, I said.

If anyone in the city had an inkling of my double identity, it was Sophie Wet Snort DePlaza. But she never said a word about it and neither did I. Is that considered a friendship?

With the cats taken care of, I took a shower, which was something I hadn’t done in some time. Seeing as I was visiting a tropical island, I tried to remove as much of my body hair as possible, but in my haste, there was no telling which tufts I missed.

Next I put on my Luella face—red lipstick, a blond wig, smoky eyes, and a set of fake white teeth. I’ve had a chipped front tooth since I was a teenager. My boyfriend—who later became my husband and then my ex-husband—was trying out the gentlemanly move of opening a car door for me. I was not expecting it, and we spent the next six hours in the ER. Wearing the perfect Luella teeth changes my whole face. Putting a nice blond wig over the frizzy brown curls doesn’t hurt, either. It’s not that my goal is to be pretty, but I have found pretty gets me places plain me wouldn’t dream of.

I looked at my reflection, and for a moment I forgot I wasn’t her. Then my eyes wandered down to the rusty edges of the mirror, the growing pile of dirty laundry near the foot of the bed, and the double-wide litter box I hadn’t cleaned in a week. Glamour!

I quickly packed a suitcase, tossing in a few backup wigs and some sunscreen. I looked at the time and temporarily panicked when I realized I’d miss that night’s Sex Island episode. I’d been devoted to this show for weeks, developing what some might call a dependency. But now Luella was actually going to Sex Island! I hugged the cats as much as they would tolerate and headed to JFK, my head spinning, nausea churning my stomach.

I’ll skip the gruesome details, but I’ll sum it up by saying the two words you never want to hear when it comes to air travel: tiny plane. Three long hours later, I landed on the island frazzled and ecstatic to be back on land.

Wednesday

It was almost 1 a.m. when I arrived. Even inside the airport, the air was warm and muggy. Everything smelled like saltwater. I started to doubt whether my wigs would hold up in this weather. A short man and a tall woman greeted me at arrivals.

They introduced themselves as the producers I spoke with over the phone. The short one was John Murphy, a nervous man in his early thirties with a receding hairline and blue eyes I didn’t quite trust. He tried to smile.

Welcome to the island! How was your flight? he asked.

A little rough, I said.

Sounds good! Well, welcome to the island! He gave me three consecutive pats on the shoulder. One of us was on the verge of a nervous breakdown, but I couldn’t tell if it was him or me.

The tall one, Stephanie Hillson, was a striking brunette in her early forties. She gave me a scrutinizing look. I noticed she wore a large diamond wedding ring on her left hand. Her nails were perfectly manicured with light pink polish—a color I associated exclusively with suburban moms and cotton candy. I looked down to see she was wearing the same stupid four-inch heels as me. At 1 a.m. In an airport. Why do we do this to ourselves? I was about to say, but she was already on her phone. We made our way to the arrivals parking lot.

John got into the driver’s seat of a twelve-seat passenger van and Stephanie sat shotgun, which I sort of took personally. I sat in the row directly behind them, even though I had my choice of nine other seats in the vehicle. I hoped it conveyed I was committed to the cause. School bus politics from twenty years ago were still fresh in my mind.

We made small talk on the ride over to the Sex Island compound. Over the years, I’ve gotten better at talking with the Luella teeth in, but I still have trouble with certain letters. All in all, I try not to speak as Luella more than is necessary. People assume Luella is standoffish or sensitive or even flirty—their interpretations run the whole gamut. But if there’s one thing I’ve learned masquerading as a minimally speaking hot woman, it’s the less you talk, the more they do.

How was your flight? John asked for maybe the eighth time. His mind must’ve been elsewhere.

A little rough, I repeated.

We really appreciate you coming out here, Stephanie chimed in. If you don’t mind, here’s a nondisclosure agreement we’d like you to sign right away.

Sure thing, I said.

Stephanie passed back a clipboard, and I carefully initialed LVH as the van bumped along the road. We eventually pulled into a parking lot in front of a sprawling one-story building.

They led me inside. The hallways had wall-to-wall beige carpeting, and the building smelled like it’d just been cleaned with that pink stuff they use in elementary schools after some kid pukes in the cafeteria. We walked past an older woman vacuuming as they led me into a room with five metal folding chairs and no table.

Stephanie offered me a chair, then sat down across from me. She looked nervous. Luella, you don’t need anything, do you? Water or coffee?

No, thanks, I said.

I’ll tell you what we already know, she said. We spoke to your secretary—did she happen to fill you in?

Only a little, I said.

As of tonight, one of the show’s contestants, David G, has been missing for two episodes. Of course, we’re still optimistic, she said.

I nodded. The briefest of silences followed. John remained standing in the doorway.

My cousin speaks highly of your work on Staten Island, John said. My mind raced. I wondered if that cousin told him about Taylor Bell, as well.

He continued. And we thought you might be able to find him. The island is fairly small, and the cast and crew all live within a couple designated buildings, so it should be a simple task. We just want you to work fast. Ideally, you find David G, he’s alive, and his family and friends back home are none the wiser. Do you watch the show?

I nodded. I’ve seen it.

Then you’ll know David G was very well liked among the cast and crew, Stephanie said.

Any unknown visitors? I asked.

Never, Stephanie answered quickly. "Which is why your presence here may raise some red flags. So we’re proposing that you…John, how do I