A Test Case for Ebooks

How I Arrived at a Universal Style for Ebooks Everywhere

Joey Jojo Junior Shabadoo

Nobody Home, Publishers, 2017

This is a work of fiction. Characters, places, and events are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to real people, companies, institutions, organizations, or incidents is entirely coincidental.

The interior design and the cover design of this book are intended for and limited to the publisher’s first print edition of the book and related marketing display purposes. All other use of those designs without the publisher’s permission is prohibited.

Copyright © 2017 byJoseph Shabadoo
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America

ISBN 987-1-5633334-810-2

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Distributed by SCB Distributors (800) 729-6423

Print design and e-book production by Eric Larson, Studio E Books
www.studio-e-books.com

Cover photo: William Fawcett/fotoVoyager/iStockphoto

library of congress cataloging-in-publication data
Names: Shabadoo, Joseph, author.
Title:A Test Case for Ebooks :
Description: City, publisher.
Identifiers: LCCN  | ISBN [first print edition]  (paperback : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH:

To all lovers of everything everywhere—
this means you!

Contents

Foreword

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

About the Author

Foreword

This is a story I made up in my spare time. I didn’t have any help, and I didn’t want any. I don’t want any now.

I could go on with this story all day. I would, if I were getting paid by the word. But I’m not, so I’ll leave you to read the rest of the story yourself.

I leased a small office in a building on Franklin Street in downtown Oakland, near Chinatown. The term of my lease was up at the end of January and the building owner was taking that opportunity to offer a new lease at a higher price. The increased sum made me wince. Paying more for my office would make considerable inroads into my profit margin, which was narrow to begin with. To add to my financial worries, the nearby lot where I paid a monthly fee to park my car had also slapped me with an increase.

I had been contemplating my alternatives, which included finding a place that cost less. One of my colleagues, a private investigator named Rita Lydecker, had recently given up her office in downtown San Rafael, over in Marin County. Now she operated out of a spare bedroom in her house.

Chapter 1

Madison Brady had the same intense blue eyes as her father, piercing me now with her gaze as she leaned forward and put her hands on my desk. It was ten a.m.

I was surprised to learn that Calvin Brady had a daughter in her twenties, and even more surprised when she showed up in my office on Tuesday morning. Cal was an acquaintance, a former colleague, back in the day when I worked for Errol.

Cal had told his daughter something different.

“He said you were a friend.” Madison tugged at the collar of her shirt, a black-and-red checked flannel worn over a pair of tight black jeans. “That’s why I’m here. I don’t know who else to turn to. The cops don’t seem to be interested in the truth. Dad was murdered. I just know it. I want you to find out who killed him.”

I was still processing the news that Cal had died. Truth be told, I didn’t know much about his personal life. We had worked together for less than a year. As coworkers, we’d kept our private lives separate from our work lives.

Saying Cal Brady and I were friends was a stretch.

I didn’t correct Madison’s assumption. Instead I leaned back in my office chair. “I didn’t know Cal was dead. I saw him last week, at Errol Seville’s memorial service in Carmel. Tell me what happened. And why the police aren’t interested.”

She frowned and fingered one of the gold hoops she wore in her earlobes. “Dad’s body was found in the Estuary on Sunday morning. People are saying Dad was drinking on the job and he must have fallen into the water and drowned. That’s total nonsense. But I’m afraid the police might believe it.” She stopped and took a deep breath, then let it out with a frustrated sigh. “It can’t be true. Dad wasn’t drinking anymore. He was sober. He hadn’t had a drink in over three years. Believe me when I say that.”

I didn’t say anything. I considered what she was telling me now, and what Cal had told me the week before. I spoke with him after the memorial service, when those of us who had attended gathered at the Sunset Center in Carmel, raising glasses and sharing anecdotes about Errol. I was drinking Chardonnay. Cal sipped from a bottle of sparkling water. He made a point of telling me he was sober now. That was a good thing. Because Cal’s alcoholism was the reason he had been fired from the Seville Agency.

*

“Where was your father working?” I asked.

“Dad was a security guard. He worked for a company here in Oakland, called Manville Security. He’d been with them three years or more. Since last spring he had been working at a construction site for a development that’s being built on the waterfront. His schedule varied between days and nights. Saturday he was on the night shift, eleven at night till seven in the morning.”

“Which development? Brooklyn Basin?”

Madison shook her head. “Brooklyn’s the big one. Dad was working on a smaller site nearby. It’s called the Cardoza project.”

I nodded. Both projects were in the process of transforming stretches of the Oakland waterfront south of Jack London Square.

A security guard. Cal hadn’t mentioned any details about his employment when I’d seen him at Errol’s funeral. All he said was that he was living and working in Oakland. We hadn’t actually talked that much. The focus of what conversation we did have was Errol, our late boss.

Alcoholics do go off the wagon from time to time, I thought. Maybe Madison Brady was closing her eyes to reality.

But…Cal had been quite sincere and even proud when he told me he was sober. I believed him then. I believed him now.

Chapter 2

I should have called him back.

After Madison Brady left my office, I turned to the coffeemaker on the credenza near my desk and poured myself a mug of strong dark coffee. Then I sat back in my chair, both hands circling the mug as I stared at nothing in particular.

I should have called him back. But I hadn’t.

When we’d talked the day of the memorial service, Cal said, “I’ll call you. There’s something I’d like to discuss with you. Maybe we can get together for coffee.”

“Sure.” I gave him my card and told him to call me any time.

A few days after the service in Carmel, Cal Brady left a voice mail message on my office phone. He didn’t say why he had phoned, just that he’d like to talk.

I didn’t return the call. Now I wished I had.

To be fair to myself, I was quite busy the week after the service, juggling several investigations. The day that Cal left the message, I was at the Alameda County Courthouse, giving testimony in a superior court civil case. Returning Cal’s phone call had slipped through the cracks. The slip of paper on which I’d written his number got buried on my desk.

I hadn’t given Cal’s message another thought. Until now.

Why had Cal phoned me? Was it just to propose a coffee date? But he’d said there was something he wanted to discuss with me. What? Was that something work-related? Had this information gotten him killed?

Sipping coffee, I took time out from my guilt trip and replayed that last conversation with Cal, in Carmel, where we’d all raised our glasses to Errol’s memory.

About the Author

Joey Shabadoo is the author of the Howard Howard Mystery Series, which includes This Book, winner of the St. Martin’s Press/Private Eye Writers of America contest for Best Fictitious Novel, and Pizza Pie, which was nominated for a Golden Pepperoni award for Best Twelve-inch Mystery. The most recent series entry is May on the Side. Two of Shabadoo's short stories were nominated for a Beard Award and received a MacArthur Fellowship.

Also by This Author

The Big Bologna Series

First Bologna

Second Bologna

The Pizza Pie Series

First Pizza Pie

Second Pizza Pie