Skewed Page 3

  I needed to find Sophie Andricola.

  CHAPTER 4

  “All’s I remember is she was hot,” Nicholls said from the front seat of his car. “Think she’s still single?”

  I raised a skeptical brow. “You and Sophie Andricola don’t even orbit the same sun.”

  “I’m more interested in our space junk colliding than our horoscopes matching up.”

  “Give it up, Nicholls,” I said.

  “Maybe Wexler here has a shot. He goes for those intellectual types.”

  Wexler was seated next to Nicholls while I rode like a prisoner in the back. They were giving me a lift to Sophie’s because she lived on a remote trail in a neighboring town where the GPS didn’t know the roads.

  Wexler settled his silver to-go cup in the drink holder. Steam rose from it and the scent of hazelnut fought it out with Nicholls’s discarded bag of garlic chips. “What are you drinking there, Wexler?” I said, craving a cup myself.

  “It’s a custom blend from that tea shop on Broad.”

  Nicholls guffawed. “The one where they charge like a hundred bucks for chopped leaf crap from a compost pile?”

  “That’s the one,” said Wexler. “Minus the crap.”

  With zero embarrassment, Wexler took a bite of his muffin and cleaned his hands with a moist-wipe. Seriously, how did this guy expect to make it in hardscrabble Kingsley, where he and his coworkers avoided nightly bullets like unwitting players in a game of Whack-a-Cop? They were out battling a skyrocketing murder rate and here he was traipsing around with designer tea and a healthy snack—and looking cool doing it.

  “What does this Sophie Andricola do?” Wexler asked between sips.

  “She’s some Canadian chick,” Nicholls said, running his tongue along his teeth, probably in place of brushing them. “She does loopy stuff with photos, computer forensics, and random clues. Like an idiot savant or something.”

  “Minus the idiot part,” I added. “Think of her as a crime consultant.”

  “Like Sherlock Holmes?”

  “Exactly,” I said. “Plus, she’s an amazing artist. A Mensa type.”

  “We had this murder case a few years back,” Nicholls explained. “In the distant background of one of Janie’s photos, there was this unexpected shot of yellow in a field behind the victim’s house.”

  “We tried what we could with digital enhancement,” I added, “but deciphering that tiny speck of color required the rare combination of computer geekery, keen observation, and an artist’s eye.”

  “Anyway,” Nicholls continued, “there was nothing there when we went back to search, but this Sophie chick somehow figures out it’s a shoe. A lemon-pucker slingback, she called it, like a hundred yards away. Ended up solving the case for us.”

  “How?” Wexler asked.

  “The wife had hired a sniper to kill her husband from a low spot in that field, but she’d failed to realize the sniper had the hots for her. She was a helluva looker.”

  “Says the objective detective.”

  “So the sniper breaks into the house before the shooting and takes one of the wife’s shoes to rest his elbow on ’cause the field was muddy.”

  “And according to his later testimony,” I said, “he sniffed it and stroked it while he waited. Had a serious foot fetish.”

  Wexler chuckled and I saw the left corner of his mouth tilt up. “Who thought to bring the yellow spot to Miss Andricola’s attention?”

  “I did,” I said. “I knew something was off. If there’d been a yellow flower in season or a colorful bird in the area, or even an old piece of crime tape floating around, I’d have noticed. But there wasn’t.”

  “And that’s your gift,” Wexler said.

  “What do you mean?” I said, caught off guard by the sudden focus on me.

  “Any detective worth his salt can learn to be observant. But you, Janie, you know when something’s off. That’s what makes you a strong photographer.”

  When he added my name to the sentence, I got an unexpected rush. It was a sensation I welcomed and wouldn’t mind feeling again.

  Nicholls chortled, as he always did when someone paid me a compliment. He turned to Wexler. “Uh, want me to pull over so you can climb in the backseat with Janie there? I promise not to look.”

  With no mortification, Wexler turned to his less refined partner. “Definitely not.”

  “Why not?” Nicholls said.

  “Because you always peek.”

  Wexler turned and winked at me, leaving me at a loss for a reaction, but not wanting him to look away.

  The car veered onto a dirt road and hit a huge bump, ending the conversation and sending the flurries in my stomach into a whirlwind.

  Wexler started a new topic. “Janie, why do you need to see this Sophie person?”

  Nicholls and I exchanged a glance in the rearview mirror. He shrugged and I agreed. We decided to let Wexler in, even though every telling of the story chipped away at my core. I took a deep breath. “You know I’m one of the Haiku Twins, right?”

  “I know the general story, although I’d love to hear it from the horse’s mouth.”

  “Let me tell it! Please?” Nicholls sprayed spit onto the windshield in his excitement.

  “Wexler,” I said, “do you mind hearing it from the horse’s best friend’s crumb-filled mouth?”

  “Not at all, but feel free to whinny or stomp if he gets something wrong.”

  “Go ahead, Nicholls,” I said, happy to share the burden.

  “All right, lemme set the scene. So Bridget Perkins was Janie’s superhot mom—even won some beauty contests as a teen. Born and raised in the humble hamlet of Caulfield, about twenty minutes away, where our darling Janie grew up. You probably haven’t been out there much, Wexler, but let’s just say fifteen miles in any direction from Kingsley and you’ll start droppin’ g’s, tippin’ cows, and shovelin’ grits down your throat—”

  “Drowned in cheese and butter, of course,” I added.

  Wexler turned a serious face to Nicholls. “Janie doesn’t drop her g’s.” It was as if the veracity of Nicholls’s entire story would be undermined if he got such a basic, early fact wrong.

  I came to Nicholls’s rescue. “My brother went all Henry Higgins on me in high school. You know, from My Fair Lady?”

  Wexler turned back to me. “Well, now you’ve got to do it.”

  I grinned and recited, “The rain in Spain falls—”

  “Hello! Thought I was tellin’ a story here.”

  Wexler and I exchanged an amused glance, like benevolent parents agreeing to humor their temperamental teen.

  Nicholls continued. “So, even today, you’ll see the occasional Confederate flag flying from a barn in Caulfield, along with Southern plantations and small farms. Lotta subdivisions goin’ in now, but used to be, every few houses, you’d see rusty pickups mounted on cement blocks—”

  “And that’d be the front yard,” I said with a proud smile.

  “Anyway, Janie’s mom, Bridget, went and got herself knocked up by slick, rich Grady McLemore in the middle of his campaign for senate. They were both single, so no big deal, but they knew enough to feed that morsel to the public after the election. At the same time—Christ, thirty years ago now—a serial killer was lurking, scaring the bejeezus out of the whole state and leaving freaky notes with his victims. The notes were always written in haiku. You know what that is?”

  “Five-seven-five,” Wexler said. “Fourth-grade English. But is it syllables or words?”

  “Syllables,” Nicholls said. “Five syllables in the first and third lines, seven in the middle. Like if I said, ‘Wexler is a wuss. He wears a wardrobe, that puss. No plain clothes for him.’ You get it?”

  “Got it.”

  “But haikus don’t have to rhyme,” I added, “and they’re usuall
y about nature, not impeccable wardrobes.”

  “Anyway,” Nicholls said, “Grady McLemore claims he went over to Bridget’s house that night to save her from—are you ready?—the Haiku Killer. Had this whole story about how Bridget found a real haiku and the killer was after her. I mean, it was perfect on McLemore’s part, right? Inserting this infamous serial killer into the mix when it was the hottest topic in the state. Put everybody on edge, right?”

  “I suppose,” Wexler said. “But why would Janie’s mom have thought she had a note from the real Haiku Killer? Seems like people would have been writing them left and right, like it would have been the in thing to do.”

  “It was,” I said. “If it happened today, it’d be trending on Twitter.”

  “That’s true,” Nicholls said. “Reporters used ’em as headlines and everything. The guy was like our own Son of Sam. And for reasons no one’ll ever know, Janie’s mom was convinced she had the real thing.” Nicholls twirled his finger near his temple to indicate crazy.

  I kicked the back of his seat. “Remember,” I said, “our only source on this is Grady McLemore, egotistical liar and murderer. My mom probably never mentioned the Haiku Killer.”

  Wexler rubbed his chin. “Who were the Haiku Killer’s other victims?”

  “A priest, a philosophy professor, and a doctor,” I said.

  “Religion, philosophy, and medicine,” Wexler said. “Renaissance killer.”

  “Wow,” I said. “Not many people come up with an angle I haven’t heard before, Wexler. Nice job.”

  “But if that were true,” Nicholls said, reaching over and grabbing a chunk of Wexler’s muffin, “why go after a waitress?”

  “To represent the commoners, the serfs, or the bourgeoisie,” Wexler explained. “But if Janie’s mom did find an actual haiku, she wasn’t an intended victim. She self-selected by finding it.”

  “Or there never was a haiku,” I reminded them loudly. “And Grady was just desperate to avoid the chair.”

  “Whatever,” Nicholls said. “Lemme finish. So that night, Grady rushes over to Bridget’s house to save his damsel in distress. Of course, he’s never been there, ’cause the relationship was hush-hush and all that, and he doesn’t know the layout of the place. He storms in with guns a-blazing and shazam! He gets a syringe full of the good stuff—”

  “Allegedly,” I added.

  “—and he gets one errant shot off before collapsing to the floor.”

  Wexler tapped his to-go cup, lost in thought. Unlike most people, he didn’t pepper Nicholls with questions. He didn’t gasp or shake his head or start spouting off theories. His silence threw me because, from the scores of times I’d told the story, I knew where the newbies jumped in: Well, who was the Haiku Killer? Did your mom know the guy? Did Grady McLemore describe him? Did they ever catch the guy? How’d she get the haiku? What did it say?

  I could barely contain myself when Wexler stayed mum, as if the steam from his beverage had spelled out all the answers. Where was his outrage over Grady McLemore’s cojones in trying to cover up the murder of his alleged lover by invoking the serial killer of the day? Where was his boiling hatred of a man so cowardly and selfish that he shot a pregnant woman in the head?

  I leaned forward, ready to spew the usual words that summed up Grady—vermin, narcissist, womanizer—all the ones that explained what an insane liar he was—but I found no taker in Wexler.

  “Got it” was all he said.

  “That’s it?” Nicholls said. “No questions? No ideas?”

  “Nope.”

  “Well, you’re either a freakin’ genius or you’ve got the emotional range of a mushroom.”

  Wexler turned and caught my eye again. “I’m no mushroom.”

  The indirect answer with the hint of humor sent a rivulet of sensation through my midsection. I didn’t like what it meant for my no-dating-cops rule.

  “It’s pretty straightforward,” Wexler said. “McLemore’s in jail, meaning no verification of a third person. He fabricated the story to cover up an affair gone wrong. Not sure how he thought he’d get away with it in the first place. Apparently, he didn’t.”

  “Or maybe,” Nicholls said, “McLemore found out one of his twins was gonna be a whiny pain in the ass.”

  I kicked Nicholls’s seat, much harder this time.

  “The prosecution’s theory,” I said, “was that my mom threatened to spill the beans about their relationship. And when Grady failed to convince her to keep their affair a secret, he shot her in a rage and tried to cover his involvement by injecting himself with tranquilizer and delivering that cockamamie story about the Haiku Killer. The rest, as they say, is history.”

  “That’s the version that won over the jury,” Nicholls explained to Wexler. “A lot of people still doubt the conviction, though, choosing to believe the real Haiku Killer was in Janie’s living room that night. McLemore’s got a huge fan base, especially with the ladies.”

  “Hybristophilia,” Wexler said, finishing his muffin. “A certain segment of women fall in love with guys who commit horrendous crimes. They think they can change them, or they enjoy finally being in control of a relationship. Ted Bundy got thousands of love letters and proposals—even had women showing up at his trial decked out to look like his victims.”

  “Pale and lifeless?” Nicholls said.

  “No,” Wexler said. “Long, brown hair, parted in the middle, attractive, young.”

  “Grady has Grady’s Ladies,” Nicholls said. “It got heavy press here in Virginia way back when. One of his fans was this TV actress who produced a movie loosely based on the case. Cast herself as Janie’s mom.”

  I shot Nicholls a look of disgust. “Please tell me you never watched that schlock, Nicholls.”

  He shrugged. “I mighta checked it out on Netflix after I met you.”

  “Why does that make me feel dirty?” I said.

  “’Cause I’m a pig,” he said, then glanced at Wexler. “McLemore’s still got this hybristo thing workin’ for him. When he got quoted in an article about Janie’s brother running for attorney general, the poll numbers went berserk, especially with the ladies.”

  “We’re like the Kennedys,” I said. “Scandal increases our popularity.”

  Wexler waited a thoughtful moment. “I still don’t know what this has to do with Sophie Andricola.”

  Nicholls turned onto Sophie’s road. I stared at the envelope on my lap. If Sophie could do even half of what I thought she was capable of, she might hold the power to silence the doubters once and for all. I just wasn’t sure which doubters.

  CHAPTER 5

  Bridget Perkins, 30 Years, 11 Hours Ago

  Bridget Perkins rubbed her naked stomach. At seven months pregnant with twins, she was small compared to women five months along. She’d been lucky so far—no stretch marks and minimal morning sickness. Her biggest complaint was ever-present exhaustion and people’s unmasked disapproval of her so-called fatherless pregnancy. Sex education in Caulfield, Virginia, wasn’t so backward and bashful that people believed in immaculate conceptions of diner waitresses, but that didn’t stop them from stating the plainly stupid: So there’s no father? . . . No father, eh? . . . Well, let’s hope it’s a girl, because a boy needs a father. As if a daughter didn’t.

  It hadn’t helped that Bridget had inadvertently saddled herself with a loose-girl reputation. When one gossipy lady in town heard that Bridget wouldn’t say who the father was, she’d started a rumor that Bridget didn’t know who the father was. The surprising part was how readily people had gobbled up the rumors, like they’d known all along that Bridget Perkins was a hussy, despite two-plus decades of proper manners, a lifetime of near-abstinence, and a stellar reputation as a private art teacher for six promising high-schoolers who came to the house to work with her. In Caulfield, no accumulation of good works could stand up to the bold pr
oclamation of a full uterus. She stroked that proclamation now and one of the babies kicked, making her smile.

  The water pipes in the bathroom squealed as the water heated up. Grady must have turned the spigot on full force. She reflected on the sensuous, warm night they’d spent together, awed that such an evening could become the routine of her life.

  Bridget McLemore . . . she liked the sound of it, even if the implications of being a senator’s wife intimidated the heck out of her at times. But Grady was going places, and he seemed determined to take her along for the ride. If that ride had gotten off to a bit of a bumpy start, well, they’d make the best of it and cross the finish line together.

  She rolled to her side on the silky sheets that cost more than she made in a month. The Aberdeen Hotel skimped on nothing. The old-fashioned clock ticked its way into her brain and her eyes went wide when she saw the time: 12:05 p.m. She and Grady hadn’t fallen asleep until after three, and it’d been years since she’d risen this late. With a sigh, she remembered she had to be at work in less than three hours.

  The sound of Grady’s razor on his morning scruff scraped lightly against her ear. In the shower door’s reflection, she spied his naked backside while he shaved. As the steam settled and her eyes adjusted, she made out the image of his rectangular face, echoed in the mirror’s image against the glass shower door. A reflection of a reflection, kind of like their relationship. Despite her confidence that it would all work out in the end, how would they ever transition their coupling into something acceptable under the glare of the political spotlight? Reporters were relentless—the public even more so.

  “Hey, Grady,” she said in her high, smooth voice, the one that had shined in the church choir until Pastor Gibson had suggested she take leave due to concerns over her balance on the risers. The floor, where Bridget had cast her eyes after the request, wasn’t considered an option, so she did the right thing and rejoined the congregation. Odd that the same concern hadn’t been shown for Melinda Blake when she’d been pregnant, but Melinda had come complete with a husband to catch her if she fell.