Games Divas Play (A Diva Mystery Novel) by Angela Burt-Murray Read Free Book Online

changed.
    One girl in particular had begun to show up in the background of the photos of Marcus on the road. Her name was Kalinda Walters, and she was one of the new Phoenix Lasers dancers. And while the team organization had very strict rules about players and dancers interacting (mostly driven by jealous wives trying to protect their territory and frustrated coaches trying to keep their players focused on the court), this twenty-something firecracker seemed to play by her own rules.
    Marcus assured me nothing was going on with the nubile dark-haired beauty with the green eyes and DD breasts, but I felt like something was n’t right.
    One of the reports contained gruesome details about the dancer’s murder and the state her body was in when she was discovered: her cinnamon-brown skin had been carved up with jagged knife wounds, indicating that she had been tortured before a single gunshot to the head had ended her life, her long black hair was matted with dried blood, huge black flies swarmed the body, and maggots had started to harvest their eggs in the op en wounds.
    The Phoenix media jumped all over the murder of the sexy young dancer. Although there wasn’t any hard evidence, they really worked themselves into a frenzy when they found out that detectives had questioned several of the Laser players, including Marcus, after finding their numbers in her cell p hone logs.
    Marcus denied any involvement with the girl, but the whispers persisted and swirled for months, both in the papers and online about a possible affair with Kalinda. Marcus assured me that nothing had happened bet ween them.
    The case went unsolved for several months with the police at a dead end. That’s when the trade talks began. Marcus’s free-agency contract was up, and everyone knew New York wanted him badly, but the team owner, Davis Jennings, was an ultraconservative business tycoon who abhorred scandal. Kareem and Marcus’s publicist, Desiree Deevers, worked overtime squashing anything linking the dead dancer to their multimillion-dollar client. Nothing could be allowed to kill this deal. Marcus had always talked about playing for New York and wanted to get this deal done quickly. There was no more talk of the cheerleader. But in checking Marcus’s history on his laptop, I saw that several times over the past few days he had logged onto GoldenGoddess, the personal website of a popular Los Angeles groupie Jacqueline had told me to watc h out for.
    We both couldn’t wait to get to New York.
    But for very differen t reasons.
    No more ch eerleader.
    And no mor e threats.

    The press conference finally ended. After answering questions for more than an hour, Marcus was exhausted but kept his smile bright as we left the stifling room of reporters. He confidently answered all of ESPN’s questions about how he planned to lead the team to a championship, artfully spoke to Sports Illustrated about how excited he was to work with Coach Townsend and the current team roster, and he deftly avoided any questions from Deadspin about the “drama” he was leaving behind in Arizona. I saw Desiree in the corner jotting down the names of reporters bold enough to try to bring their questions around to that dead whore, and I knew she would have them banned from any future interviews with Marcus and the franchise.
    Marcus and I were escorted out by a security team through the bowels of Madison Square Garden to the loading dock where we slipped into the back of the waiting limousine.
    “Congratulations, my darling,” I said as I relaxed my jaw, which ached from having a fake smile plastered on my face for the past hour, and sank into the soft buttery black leather seats. I turned to Marcus to kiss him on his cheek as the car pulled out from the underground garage and began to make its way through the heavy city traffic. “You’ve always wanted to play in New York, and now it’s official.”
    “Thank you, baby,” Marcus said, taking my hand and absentmindedly