Dear Ex-Whisperer,
I fell in love with my soulmate six months ago. He’s a passionate, brilliant, gorgeous, hugely successful biochemist who’s working on a top-secret project for the Spanish government to eradicate world hunger. He’s also 15 years younger than me. I had trouble with the age difference but my dream man adores me despite the wrinkles and rolls that are part of my 50+ package. He’s already proposed and we’re going to marry on Ibiza! So far our romance has been conducted entirely online. Every time I’ve booked a flight so he can sweep me off my feet IRL, he’s had to cancel (he’s very busy saving the world). A friend ran him through her catfishing app and found his profile with different names on four dating sites. I was upset but we worked it out—It was just some buddies playing a trick on him and he was really hurt that I didn’t trust him. Last night he asked me to loan him $25,000 to purchase lifesaving supplies for starving refugees (he’ll pay me back within a couple of days). The only thing he’s stolen is my heart but my girlfriend says he’s a Tinder Swindler and wants you to weigh in.
Sincerely,
Head Over Heels.
It’s a typical working lunch, me and my laptop propped by the window in my aunts’ Italian eatery, Happily Napoli. I dole out relationship advice while my zias dole out Mushroom bucatini with lemon and parsley—Heaven on a platter. The carbs help calm the crazy that is my job—okay, my life. I type my response. . .
Dear Head Over Heels,
Kick off those stilettos and slip on some sensible loafers. Your girlfriend is right—this guy sounds as genuine as the Nigerian prince who wanted to transfer seven million dollars into my bank account yesterday. You fell in love with a fake—don’t beat yourself up, it happens to smart women all the time, these professional con-men are that good. Your feelings aren’t phony but the object of your affection is. There are only two ways for this delusion to end—you broken-hearted, or you broken-hearted and broke. Choose door number one and Run!
Affectionately yours,
The Ex-Whisperer.
I always know when he’s nearby. I feel his eyes on me. I look up from my computer and see my ex-husband Dick staring at me from across the street.
He texts me. I need to store something in your boathouse for a couple of days.
I text back, Something or someone?
Him, Don’t ask questions you don’t want to know the answers to.
My reply, What if I say no?
Dick is calm but foreboding—a tactic in the narcissists’ toolbox. Gina, we’ve talked about this. You’re in as much danger as I am.
My head explodes. Only because you put me there. An ex is supposed to exit the day the divorce papers are signed.
His reminder, We’ve got four kids and twenty-five years of history together, Gina. His threat, There’s only one way I’m outta your life.
Sleeping with the fishes? It’s possible there’s a hint of hopefulness in my message.
Dick’s next text tries the guilt trip route. He forgets I’m immune to that now. I’ll be wearing cement shoes by tomorrow if you don’t have my back here.
Can’t help myself. If the shoe fits. . .
Dick turns nasty. I’ll drop the package off at your cottage after dark. Be better if you’re not home.
All caps so he knows I’m yelling on the inside. I HATE YOU.
Dick sends back a broken heart emoji.
I throw my phone in my bag and slam my laptop shut. I’ll take a Tinder Swindler over a stalker of an ex any day.
The aunts cluck and tsk as they peer out their storefront window watching Dick disappear down an alley. Food is always the cure in their world. Zia Rosa sets a steamy cappuccino and a creamy cannoli in front of me. I attempt death by sugar and choke down the whole cannoli in three bites. The aunts turn to stare at me waiting for an explanation. What’s the explanation for crazy? I don’t know what to say. Conveniently, the eight ounces of mascarpone caught in my throat renders me unable to speak so I shrug. The aunts react with a couple of Italian curse words, maybe directed at Dick, maybe at my ungainly table manners.
When life’s problems can’t be solved with pasta, the aunts turn to their second line of defence. Like a couple of gun-slinging cowboys, they fast draw their trusty tarot decks out of their apron pockets and pull a card. The old gals ogle the prophetic image, gasping loudly and dramatically, the way only black-garbed nonnas addicted to Italian soap operas can. I thought I was already at peak stress but the aunts manage to crank me up a few more notches. They cross themselves exaggeratedly, kiss the crucifixes dangling around their necks before they break the bad news.
The death card.
One of us needs to get our affairs in order. Here’s hoping it’s Dick.
How To Kill A Kingpin, An Ex-Whisperer Files Mystery #2
Genre: Humorous
Release: October 2022
Purchase Link
“It’s times like these when a gal’s got her ex-husband hiding inches away from her new boyfriend and a murdered man in rigor on the floor beside her that being good at lying would sure come in handy.” ~ How To Kill A Kingpin
Gina Malone, aka the Ex-Whisperer, an expert on Exes and bestselling relationship advice author, meddles in people’s affairs for a living. A modern-day Miss Lonelyhearts, Gina’s smart, she’s sassy, she’s got a potty mouth, and she’s determined to live her life on her own terms. She’s also divorced, an empty nester, and just turned 50.
It’s a not-so-happy Halloween weekend in Gina’s little lakeside town. Everyone is coming home for Sunset Beach High’s 150th-anniversary celebrations, plunging the Ex-Whisperer and her gal pals up to their necks in exes. For Gina, running into old crushes and former mean girls from high school is like anthrax-infected corpses of dead reindeer who’ve been encased in ice for millennia suddenly waking up in the melting permafrost. Prehistoric romantic history and high school cliques you weren’t welcomed in are almost always better kept in the deep freeze. Extra pounds and grey hair make recognizing aged classmates tough—throw in Halloween masks and it’s even tougher to tell the Jasons from the Freddys or the Reginas from the Heathers. And if there happens to be an actual killer in the costumed crowd, everybody better watch their backs. Some people go to reunions to relive their past, others, to exact revenge for it. One former student has a deadly chip on their shoulder and they blame cool-kid Gina for their years as a loner. So many great reasons to skip your high school reunion, not the least of which, to avoid being murdered. Don’t you just hate it when that happens?
Meet the author
Gabrielle St. George is a Canadian screenwriter and story editor with credits on over 100 produced television shows, both in the USA and Canada. Her feature film scripts have been optioned in Hollywood. Ms. St. George writes humorous mysteries and domestic noir about subjects on which she is an expert—mostly failed relationships, hence her debut soft-boiled series, The Ex-Whisperer Files, which launched with How To Murder A Marriage. Book #2 in the series, How To Kill A Kingpin, released October 25th, 2022. How To Murder a Marriage was a Killer Nashville Silver Falchion Finalist for Best Comedy novel of 2021 and won the Patzi Award for Best Novel of 2021 in the USA from the NPR Radio show, Joy On Paper. A Los Angeles film production company is currently negotiating to option the rights for a television show based on the Ex-Whisperer Files book series.
All comments are welcomed.