My Boss is a Serial Killer (19 page)

When Gus let me back down on the ground, a
few magnificently grueling moments later, I could barely stand. I
grabbed his arm for support and he toppled; we both fell to the
floor and Gus clonked his head on my wall. He held his head,
laughing and howling in pain at the same time. I climbed over his
bulk, inspecting him for blood while trying heartily to control my
own giggles.

“
Oh, you devil woman,” he
accused.

“
Listen, I have a perfectly good bed,
and no one said you had to perform acrobatics in the hall. Can we
do it again?”

“
No strength…condom made of
Kryptonite…can’t reach…utility belt…”

“
You seem to have a concussion. You’re
speaking in a delirium.”

“
Need beer…”

“
You need to either zip up your
trousers or take them off altogether. You’re making quite a
spectacle of yourself.”

“
Yes’m.”

“
Find a chair or something. I’ll be
back in a second.” I left him lying in the hall and went to my
fridge for the much-needed refreshment. Walking around in my heels
like a hooker. A hooker with a heart of gold? Maybe that would be
the next game we could play. I heard him moaning and making his way
to the bathroom.

When I returned to Gus with beer, he had
refastened his clothes and lost the trench coat—it was really too
hot outside for that anyway—and done as instructed by finding a
chair in my living room upon which to recuperate. He looked me over
carefully, as now I was the stark naked, spike-heeled woman handing
him a beer, and he asked, “Is this heaven?”

“
You’re a corndog.” I went to my room.
Rather, I should say, I sashayed to my room like a trollop, lost
the shoes and found a robe, and went back to Gus.

“
Oh, well, that’s nice, too,” he
acquiesced, looking a little disappointed at my wardrobe change. I
picked up the clothes that had been scattered in the front hall and
wondered if I could wear them to work again with a straight face.
“What kind of food do you like, Carol My-Last-Name-Is-Frank? Cause
I’d like to take you out sometime. You know, as much fun as it is
to show up at your house and have you win the naked-contest, I
thought…” His facial expression changed suddenly. “Hey, I was going
to tell you something.”

“
Oh, yeah.” I did recall that he’d
mentioned a discovery, when he’d first called. I snuggled up on my
couch and smiled receptively. “What did you find today?”

“
Something very interesting. And since
you’re the one who pointed me in this direction, I thought you
should know.”

I begged to know.

“
Tuesday night you asked me if I had
investigated many suicides, and whether it seemed like a lot of
middle-aged women did themselves in. So when I had a little free
time today, I did a records search of the Kansas City coroner’s
database for the past five years.”

My post-coital glow suddenly didn’t seem as
warm and glowy.

“
In addition to Adrienne Maxwell, I
found five other suicides in the past five years for women in that
age group. These were definite suicide rulings, of course, and
didn’t include auto accidents or self-inflicted injuries that most
likely were not meant to be fatal. Here’s what’s interesting. Of
the five, two killed themselves in an almost identical fashion to
Adrienne’s method. Both widows. Alone in the house, overdose with a
combination of sleeping pills and painkillers, and no suicide
note.”

I couldn’t pinpoint precisely why I felt
alarmed. But I asked, as if quite interested, “Were those suicides
investigated?”

“
Apparently not in any depth. They
weren’t considered suspicious.”

“
Do they seem suspicious to
you?”

“
In light of Adrienne’s case, I’m
inclined to look at them a little harder.” Gus drank a good portion
of the beer I’d brought him, and then said, “I’ve been so god-awful
busy this week. I wish I had more computer time. Or a better
computer. Anyway, after I ship Doug back to his mom, I’m going to
expand the search to the past ten, maybe fifteen years and see if I
turn up more of these.”

“
Why, what do you think you have there,
Gus? A serial killer?” As soon as I’d asked the question, I wished
I’d kept the term to myself.

“
I know, I know,” said Gus, not
noticing my discomfort. “Every detective secretly hopes he’ll
encounter a serial murderer because it’s a great way to get famous
off a book deal. It’s also a great way to have a nervous
breakdown.”

“
But that’s kind of silly, isn’t it?
How could suicides be the result of a serial killer?”

The question was a stupid one, and I knew it
as soon as I’d said it. Gus had the graciousness to answer me
anyway. “I guess it wouldn’t be the first time that someone
committed murder and made it look like suicide. If that’s what
actually happened, the killer was good, because the coroner and the
crime scene investigators never picked up on it.”

“
So you’d really be shaking things up,
if you cracked the case of the Suicide Killer.”

Gus smirked at me patiently.

“
I wasn’t making fun of
you.”

“
Naw, I didn’t think you were. Anyway I
just thought you might be interested in what I’ve found, since you
were the one who brought it up first.”

“
Did I?”

“
You made me think about it, sure.
Since we don’t have much information on Adrienne except for the
worst witness’s description ever, I figured it wouldn’t hurt to
check past files, see if anything similar has ever happened. And
you said that not many retired women kill themselves.”

“
No I didn’t. I asked you if they
did.”

“
Was that it? Well, they don’t. The
coroner’s database shows suicides, in Kansas City, anyway, are
mostly committed by young adults, the terminally ill, or depressed
elderly men.”

“
Yeah, that makes sense.” Of course it
made sense. I could hand him a copy of the Surgeon General’s report
that confirmed how much sense it made.

“
Carol, honey, don’t look so
mortified.” Gus tried to get me to smile, goofing a big grin on his
face that I was meant to mimic. “I don’t really think there’s a
madman on the loose, talking widows into overdosing on their
headache medication. There’s some other explanation for
it.”

“
Sure. Like what?”

“
I don’t know yet. But if it’s
something that can help me with this Adrienne Maxwell case, it’ll
be great. The whole thing’s gone pretty cold, and I’ve been helping
on this shooting case this week. Departmentally, I think the
Maxwell case is getting pushed to the backburner because it isn’t
nearly as topical. You know, gunplay is more newsworthy than an
ordinary old suicide.”

He finished his beer and declined a second,
since he would have to drive himself home later. Then he continued,
“But the Maxwell case is mine. If I could turn up a result on it,
it would look good. I just wanted to let you know that you might
have helped me. Especially if it turns out to be something juicy,
like a suicide cult.”

“
A suicide cult!” I exclaimed, startled
because I had thought of this before myself.

“
That’s a joke. I’m joking.” Gus
examined my expression and grew worried. “I’m sorry. You don’t
think it’s funny. Am I being an ass?”

I wasn’t accustomed to men who made
inferences or had logical trains of thought. Had to remember this
was a detective. I liked him an awful lot, and I wasn’t upset that
he’d gone digging into something I hadn’t even realized I was
suggesting.

What bothered me was that, if he did a more
thorough search of the coroner’s database, he’d find at least a
couple of the ladies on my own list, and when he did, he’d try to
find out what they had in common. Aside from their age, sex, and
manner of death, that is. How long would it take him to discover
that they’d all had their estate documents prepared by my boss? And
what did that mean, exactly?

Serial killer, I had joked.

I could tell him right then. Gus, the strange
thing is that Bill Nestor represented these women.

I almost said it. And then I didn’t. Why not?
I was just uneasy, not even frightened or truly suspicious of Bill
at that point. As much as I liked Gus Haglund, I had been with Bill
Nestor longer so I was obligated to talk to him before I spoke to
the police.

“
It’s fine. It’s very interesting,” I
assured Gus. “Really. Let me know what happens. You know how much I
like detective stories.”

Gus had his son Doug for the weekend, and I
wasn’t nearly established enough in his life to warrant an
introduction. He could hardly bring the boy to me and say, “Doug,
this is Carol. I’ve known her for ten days, and we’ve been having
lots of sex.” That’s not a cool thing to do to a kid, particularly
when he only gets to see his dad every other weekend. That was
father-son time, not meet-the-squeeze time. Anyway as much as I
enjoyed my temporary all-access pass to Gus Haglund’s body, I was
accustomed to being alone and not unhappy about it.

After Gus departed my house on Friday
evening, I finished
Nowhere Man
and then on Saturday morning
I gave up on Season Three of
MI-5
after only four episodes.
That was quite a disappointment, but I hadn’t liked it nearly as
much since Season One anyway. Besides that, I guess half the cast
got movie deals and left the program. Most shows can’t survive
major cast changes, yet in this case, my disappointment was more
about the tone of the program turning gloomy and dull. Ah, well,
they can’t all be masterpieces. For Saturday night and Sunday, I
had
Wire in the Blood
Season 2, and that would be enough to
round out my weekend. Sunday is an excellent day to watch British
mystery series. Something about the atmospheres of a lazy Sunday
afternoon and a murder mystery complement each other perfectly.

Always, in the back of my mind, were the two
conversations I’d had with the two most important men in my life.
My talk with Bill, in which he’d promised to review my suicide
data, with a look on his face that had been forlorn and dreadful.
My talk with Gus, in which he’d promised to find out all about
Kansas City’s suicidal widows, with a look on his face that had
been clever and eager.

What did it mean? Hell, I kept telling
myself, it didn’t have to mean anything.

I almost called Bill’s cell phone to talk to
him about this. I didn’t, though, because I’d been so vehement with
him about keeping our off-business hours separate that it didn’t
seem right. If I called, it would mean I was really worried about
something. If I didn’t call, it surely would mean everything was
fine.

I took time on Saturday afternoon to continue
my chair-painting project. The first chair was orange with
apple-green piping, the next would be apple-green with orange
piping. Oh sure, it sounds gaudy, and it probably was, but I
thought the colors looked like a fruit salad, and I wanted them in
my house instead of the same old stained wood crap that I’d been
looking at for years. It wasn’t as if I was painting over quality
oak. These chairs were cheap factory knockoffs, and I was doing
them a favor.

I felt very industrious and craftsy. I set up
a big square of newspaper on my back porch, laid out my brushes,
cans of paint, and the hammer and screwdriver I used to open the
paint cans. Then I hauled my chair and supplies outside in the
sunlight and ran a little scrap of sandpaper quickly over all the
chair’s surfaces. God, I hate sanding things. First I can hardly
bear to touch sandpaper; it gives me the shuddering willies from my
fingers clear into my brain. Second, it’s just stupid. My father
would doubtless have plenty to say about my shortcuts on this
project, as men in general seem to believe that painting a chair is
a project that should take about five years. I’m supposed to strip
it, then wash it, then sand it, then sand it with some different
grade of sandpaper, then use steel wool, and then perform some
other wood-techno chores—like stain, maybe varnish and possibly
peel—and then for sure I must sand it some more until I’ve reduced
the mass of the chair by 30 percent, and then I can prep the wood
or by golly just sand it some more. Fifty-eight months later, I’d
be ready to put on the first coat of paint. Men love sanding
things. But there weren’t any men here. I guess I was just going to
have to paint the frigging chair all by myself and pray that
everything turned out all right.

Against all the carpentry gods’ mandates, the
paint was willing to stick to an unprepped chair, and in less than
an hour, my dull kitchen chair was a happy apple green. It looked
yummy. The weather was clear and mild, so I thought that I would go
to the grocery store, and by the time I returned the chair would be
dry enough to paint the orange doodads. My kitchen chairs were
going to be cool. In the spirit of painting whatever color I
wanted, I thought about other things I could paint as I went to
shop. My bed stand. My cabinets. My shutters.

I didn’t live in the most affluent
neighborhood. Be fair, Carol. My neighborhood had almost no
affluence at all, except for the retired guy down the road who had
an RV. I also think my across-the-street neighbors had a
trampoline. Is that affluence? To add some perspective, I’ll say
that the RV was probably worth more than any house on the
block.