The Lazy Eye Murder

What started as an invitation to preschool friends for the launch of his new fancy spa on a lake south of Louisville, Kentucky, ends with the murder of Professor Orson Myers. After an all-night feast, Myers, a colorful character – a celebrity plastic surgeon, restaurateur, and TV personality – is found hanging inside the hammam, the door locked from the inside, with a suicide note on his computer. At first, Captain Ramzi is pressured from high places to close the case as suicide, but incriminating evidence points to one of the guests, Dr. Josh Turner, an ophthalmologist and glaucoma specialist. Turner, a childhood friend of the victim, was never promoted and held a grudge for years.

As the noose tightens around her husband’s neck, Lily Turner, a well-renowned scientist, begins an investigation of her own. Searching for the truth, the tenacious Lily endangers her own life and encounters another body. Eventually, she unveils a dreadful old secret that has turned a close friend into a cold-blooded murderer.

Stories about suicide turning into murder, letters in bourbon bottles and old military secrets resurfacing have been told before. But The Lazy Eye Murder combines them all, within the wrappers of gourmet food and a steaming Turkish bath.

In recalling that he attended a similar pre-school – though in a different town, but with very similar characters (you would recognize him later as the accordionist in the group) – Martin Sherwood believes that no one is more suited than him to tell this amazing tale.

During the war in Iraq, an American soldier hanged himself in a Mosul prison, leaving a letter, stating: “I never betrayed.” Years later, the letter is delivered to his daughter. That same week, Professor ORSON MYERS, Louisville’s celebrity plastic surgeon, radio host and restaurateur, opens his new spa and invites his old friends to celebrate: BETSY and CARL EHRLICH are also his CPAs; the TURNERS, ophthalmologist JOSH and LILY, a cherry tomato expert; the CROFTS – MELISSA, hedge fund CEO, and GORDON (‘DONNY’), leading candidate for the recently vacant seat at the Kentucky Senate. A bitter fight between Josh and Orson develops. Old hatreds resurface and Orson’s body is found hanging at dawn in his own Turkish bath. Captain SYD RAMZI and his peppy sergeant LOIS are called to close the case quickly as suicide. But all evidence points irrevocably to murder. The ophthalmologist’s 90D-lens is found inside the sink and everyone recalls the bitter fight between Orson and Josh, ending with “I’m going to hang you.

Josh’s desperate plea from prison to check Orson’s activity at his gourmet restaurant Chez Bertram prompts Lily to embark on her own investigation. She visits CHEF JULIEN where she discovers that Orson had been visited by a strange woman, SUZI REYES. Lily tracks down Suzi’s roof apartment, only to discover Suzi’s lifeless body on the sofa, with Josh’s business card next to it. Suzi was the dead soldier Reyes’s only daughter. Shocked, Lily escapes from the apartment, now willing to accept Josh’s guilt. He was always short tempered. But a single fact doesn’t let her rest. Why was Orson’s pit bull sedated with the same drug found in Orson’s blood? A second visit to the restaurant ends with another shocking revelation. Orson had hidden Reyes’s letter inside a Jim Beam bottle. Lily leaves Chez Bertram shortly before the police arrive. Intending to read the letter, she is driven off the road and ends up semi-conscious in ER. The four pages are missing. All she remembers are four names. Lily keeps mumbling them, delirious and in pain. One of the names, AMIT HOLKAR, sticks in her memory and triggers her escape from the hospital. Lily heads to Canarsie, where she learns about the secret reconnaissance mission of a Sentry plane, shot down above northwestern Iraq. Another soldier, not Reyes, was taken captive by Iraqis and revealed the plane’s top-secret flight route in return for his release. No further investigations were made. The traitor sustained an eye injury. He never showed for his f/u examination.

Lily Turner tracks down the 40-year-old ER file in the military hospital in Riyadh. Under the pretext of a community medical survey, conducted by her daughter, a 2^nd year medical student, Lily obtains the final incriminating evidence during a dramatic slit-lamp examination in an eye clinic dark room, that shows a corneal scar, and points to Donny, the wannabe Kentucky senator, and one of their preschool friends. [Hence the name – THE LAZY EYE MURDER]