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| About the Book |
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| Read an extract |
Death of a Billionaire tells the story of Alan
Benning, a timid numbers man who is accused of murdering the world's most
famous tech billionaire. Alan must comb through a long list of potential
suspects with motive aplenty to find the true culprit and save himself. Below
is an extract from Chapter Nine, when Alan and his unlikely partner in solving
the crime go to confront their first suspect. The suspect is Aristotle
Cunningham, another tech billionaire and chief rival to the man who was
murdered. Enjoy!
Extract:
Sharla jabbed Alan in the back and muttered to him from the
corner of her mouth, “Go greet him.”
Alan whispered back, “I’ve never talked to a murderer
before.”
“We don’t know anything yet for sure. We only strongly
suspect that he’s a murderer.”
“Gee, how comforting.”
Cunningham, out of earshot, watched the two of them with an
unwavering smile. Sharla poked Alan in the back again, which finally got him
going. He clomped into Cunningham’s entryway with heavy feet and shook the rich
man’s hand. He must have looked pained at doing so because Cunningham’s
expression twisted into a faux frown.
“Come now,” said Cunningham. “Why so glum? Would it cheer
you up if I promised to pay your legal fees? After all, you’ve done me a great
favor.”
“I . . . No. I didn’t . . . I never . . . What I mean is . .
.” Alan stumbled until Sharla came up behind him and spat it out.
“Alan didn’t actually kill Mr. Fisk.”
“Sure you didn’t.” Cunningham gave a playful wink before
pivoting to Sharla. “Hi. I’m Aristotle Cunningham.”
“Of course. Everyone knows who you are. I’m Sharla Johnson.”
“Oh! Fisk’s assistant, right? Not here to steal any trade
secrets, are you?”
“No, definitely not.”
“Well, that makes sense. Since Fisk is dead.” Cunningham let
out a bark of a laugh and clapped his thigh. “Hey, anybody want some homemade
kombucha? My butler infuses it with fresh honey from my apiary, and it’s made
in the same barrel used for the first batch of Guinness beer back in the 1700s.
I won it at an auction in the Maldives.”
“No, thank you,” Alan said. “We actually have a few
questions for you if we could take up a bit of your time.”
“Sure thing, but I’ll have to ask you to follow me to the
shark room. You caught me in the middle of feeding time.”
“Sorry, did you say shark room?” Sharla
asked.
“That’s right.”
Sharla and Alan glanced at one another.
“Like, shark sharks?” Alan asked this time. “Like the big
angry fish?”
“Oh, sharks aren’t angry. They are fish, though, so good on
you. Many people think they’re mammals, but they’re not. They’re special fish
of the superorder Selachimorpha with bodily structures that are cartilaginous
rather than ossified. They’re majestic.”
“And . . . you have some in your home?” Sharla sought
clarity one more time.
“Of course,” Cunningham replied without the slightest
acknowledgement that it might be strange. “In the shark room. Where do you keep
your sharks?”
“I don’t . . . Uh, never mind.”
Cunningham marched off with long strides. Alan and Sharla
trailed behind, marveling at the sizable pieces of artwork that hung on the
smooth, pristine walls of the long hallway down which Cunningham led them:
Picasso, Degas, Rothko. Cunningham pointed out specific doors to his guests as
they walked past.
“That door leads to the indoor pickleball court. That one is
a bathroom. That’s a specialized seed vault I had built to incubate the next
generation of my moonflowers. Did you see my moonflowers? I’m sure you did.
Brandon is required to point them out to everybody. That door is a bathroom.
This one here is a room with trampoline floors; that’s just for fun.
Surprisingly good workout, too. That door used to be a guest room, but now it’s
overflow storage for pool toys and floaties. Here is another bathroom.”
“You sure have a lot of bathrooms,” Sharla said.
Cunningham stopped in his tracks and turned to face them. He
spoke with a sudden and urgent seriousness.
“Every third door in this house is a bathroom. A man can
never have too many bathrooms.”
“Oh. Isn’t that nice,” Sharla said. Seemingly satisfied, he
turned and led the way again.
“We’re almost there!” he sang back to them.
He stopped in front of a set of broad wooden doors and flung
them open. Inside loomed the largest aquarium tank that Alan or Sharla had ever
seen. It housed between ten and twelve great white sharks that swam in large,
lazy circles.
“Hell’s bells,” Alan whispered to himself.
Cunningham approached a wide, clear tube that ran down the
front of the tank and pressed a button next to it. As soon as he did, a
bookcase built into the wall to their right, apparently a secret door, swung
open and a young man wearing the same crisp vest as the valet rushed in pushing
a wheelbarrow full of what appeared to be chopped up sheep carcasses. He left
the bloody wheelbarrow next to the tank tube and scurried out again, the wall
re-sealing itself as if by magic.
Cunningham put on a pair of long rubber gloves, grabbed a
large hunk of meat, and shoved it into the clear tube, which sucked it upward
and dropped it into the water with a splash. The sharks swarmed as Cunningham
looked on with approval.
“The big one’s my favorite. I named him Shark Ruffalo.”
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