by Linda Ross
I dropped the phone instinctively and pulled my purse up in front of me. Stewart slammed into it, pushing it back against me and nearly toppling me over. How could such a small dog be so strong? He was like the Ironman of dogs.
“Oh, dear,” Mrs. Larkin said. “Stewart, you let go of that purse.”
I dared a look over the top of the purse and saw Stewart’s teeth buried in it. He was snarling, but it was muffled by the mouthful of purse. The purse was leather, and thanks to Stewart it was now aerated.
“Oh, dear,” Mrs. Larkin said again. “He almost never does this. Although he did go for the mailman’s bag one day. The poor man did the rest of the block with Stewart hanging onto it.”
“Do you think you could remove him?” I suggested.
“Oh, yes, of course.” She knelt down beside me and grabbed Stewart around his middle. “Now, Stewart, you let go of the nice lady’s purse.” She pulled, and Stewart tightened his grip. My purse was now standing straight out from my hands in this weird tug of war. “Stewart, it’s almost time for Dr. Phil,” Mrs. Larkin said in a coaxing voice. There was the sound of leather ripping, and Stewart came away with a piece of my purse in his mouth and triumph in his bug eyes.
“I should be going now,” I said. Stewart glared at me over the prize in his mouth.
“Well, we certainly appreciate your doing the article,” Mrs. Larkin said, cradling the little monster. “Do you know when it will come out?”
“Probably next Monday.”
“I’ll be sure to get a copy.” She waved to me from the door as I made my hasty exit. Stewart snarled his good-byes. The same neighbor was watching me from the house next door, and his ponytail bobbed as he looked back at Mrs. Larkin and Stewart.
I got back to the office as fast as I could. Lorenzo was standing outside his office as I came in, and he took one look and said, “Why’s there a hole in your purse?”
“The dog that picks winning Lotto numbers objected to having his picture taken.”
Lorenzo shook his head and went back inside his office.
I was typing up the story on my computer when Thelma came over. “So what happened last night?” she asked without prelude.
“Why? What makes you think something happened?” I kept typing, determined to write the story and not give her any satisfaction.
“Well, for one thing, when you came in this morning you looked like you’d just rolled out of bed. And I don’t mean that as a compliment.”
“None taken.”
“You were pretty high last night,” she said, and I tried not to take the bait.
“And I’ve got a headache today.”
“You’re not going to tell me anything, are you?”
I sighed. “There’s nothing to tell.”
“So Jimmy went home?”
“No, but nothing happened.”
“You mean he spent the night?”
“Yes, but I’m pretty sure nothing happened.”
“What do you mean you’re pretty sure?”
“I remember some kissing and a little cuddling, then I think I fell asleep. I woke up this morning in my bed, still in my robe.”
“I can’t believe it. You have Jimmy spending the night at your house, and nothing happens. You have to be either the most boring woman in the world or a saint.”
“Yeah, tell me about it. There was one strange thing though.”
“What’s that?”
“When I got dressed I saw a little smiley face on my big toe. No idea what it means, although I vaguely remember something about John Candy.”
“You’re hopeless,” Thelma said. “Let’s get some lunch and go over the names Mr. Pierce gave us.”
“Okay. Soon as I finish this story.”
* * * * *
I drove, and Thelma and I went to the Mark Twain Dinette again. Thelma got one of their vegan burgers. I still had a weed hangover, and I went the dessert route.
“All right, who’s first?” I asked.
She turned the list around so I could see it. “Jordan Kirsch. Let’s see where he lives.” She flipped open her phone and did a search. “It’s an apartment on 30th Street. He’s probably at work now though.”
“Let’s go look anyway,” I said. “Maybe we can find out where he works.”
The apartment building was a line of single-story units, each with a small concrete patio in the back. We found Jordan’s number, but no one answered the door.
“Let’s check around back,” I said. “Maybe we can see something.” Basically I meant maybe we could see inside from there.
We traipsed to the end of the buildings and walked around the corner. Jordan’s was fourth from the end, and I was surprised to see nice landscaping around the patio. Evergreens screened it from view, and someone had hung a bird feeder on a pole by one evergreen. A cardinal flew away as we approached. There was a small opening with stepping stones between two of the evergreens, and I pushed through, Thelma behind me. I stopped short when I saw a small round woman hunched over a patio table, smoking a cigarette. She was bundled up in a coat and scarf and seemed to be lost in thought.
“Who are you?” she demanded when she saw me. “The rent’s paid and Jordan’s not here.”
“We were kind of hoping we could talk to him about Kara Koch,” I said, edging further onto the patio. The woman frowned as Thelma followed.
“He don’t know anything,” she said, taking another drag on the cigarette.
“We’re from The Spyglass. I’m Aretha Moon and this is Thelma Murphy.”
“The Spyglass you say? That newspaper?”
I nodded.
“I always like to read the crime stories in there. That was a good one about those murders a few months ago. You aren’t the one who wrote that, are you?”
“Yes, that would be me.”
“You’re lucky to be alive, honey.”
“I know it. We’re looking into Kara’s murder now.”
The woman sighed. “Well, you might as well come inside then.” She stubbed out her cigarette on the concrete, then led the way through a patio door into a tiny dining room with a card table and folding chairs. I took a quick look around and noted the shabby furnishings. Early starving student décor.
She slipped off her coat and sat down at the table, and Thelma and I settled ourselves, me opposite and Thelma to her left. She was wearing a purple track suit, the kind you see all the time at Bingo games. “I’m Pauline Kirsch,” she said, “Jordan’s grandmother, but I guess you know that. It’s been just him and me since his father died and his mother started running around. Though I think she was doing that before too.”
“How did Jordan meet Kara?” I asked.
Pauline gave a grim smile. “Jordan’s gone back to school at Hannibal-LaGrange, studying art. Kara was a model for the class one day, and then she offered to model privately for Jordan. For free.”
Thelma and I exchanged a look.
“Let me show you something,” Pauline said. She left the room for a minute and returned with a handful of large papers. She spread them on the card table, and I realized they were charcoal drawings. All were of a nude woman with short spiky hair.
“That’s Kara,” Pauline said. “I remember the first time I walked in when she was here. I’d been out to the senior center and here she was sprawled naked on the floor while Jordan drew her. She just laughed at me when I asked what she was doing here. She was the kind who did what she wanted and didn’t care about anyone else.”
I cleared my throat. “Do you think they were sleeping together?”
“Of course. But more than that.” Her lips twisted wryly. “You know I said she posed for free? Well, there was a price after all.”
My mouth was dry when I asked, “What was that?”
“I made sure I was out when she came over from then on, which was just what she wanted when I think back on it. Jordan was starting to get tired a lot, and he was pale. Said he didn’t have any energy. Then one night I did get
home while she was still there and. . .” Pauline’s voice broke and she looked down. “I’ll never forget it. It was dark in here, but I could see Jordan sitting in that chair over there.” She pointed to an armchair in front of the TV. “I asked him why he was sitting in the dark, and he didn’t say anything at first. Then I heard this noise. A plinking sound like a dripping faucet.. I put on a light and there was blood on Jordan’s arm just above his hand. There was a cut there and the blood was dripping into a pan sitting on the floor.” She shuddered and covered her face with her hand. “And then I saw Kara sitting at the table watching. She was like in a trance watching the blood drip. I think I screamed, and then I shouted at her to get out and never come back.”
“That must have been horrible,” I said in a hushed voice.
“It was. Jordan told me that she’d been doing this every time they were together. She would let him draw her and then she would expect to be paid. In blood.”
“Did she ever come back?” I asked.
“I don’t think so. I told Jordan I would call the police if she did.”
“So you don’t think he’s seen her since then?” Thelma asked.
“I hope not.”
“We’d like to talk to Jordan to get some more information about her if you wouldn’t mind,” I said.
“He’s at work right now. He’s a bartender at that place on Main. The Riverside Inn.”
“Okay, we’ll go see if we can talk to him. Thank you for your time.”
“I know it’s a terrible thing to say,” she said as we were going out the door, “but I’m glad that awful girl is dead. I don’t want to think about what else she would have done to Jordan.”
I gave an involuntary shudder on Mrs. Kirsch’s behalf. I didn’t like thinking about it either. But I was going to have to if Thelma and I were going to get our story.
It was going to be a while before the mental image of Jordan bleeding into a pan left my brain.
There was a long silence in the car on the way to the bar, and Thelma finally broke it. “I don’t know,” she said. “Jimmy may be right. This might be something we should stay out of.”
“But she’s dead now, Thelma. She can’t hurt anyone else.”
“But whoever killed her might be just as much of a psycho.”
I had to admit that Thelma had a point. Whoever had killed Kara had abused her body in the most brutal way possible. Someone really hated her.
The bar wasn’t busy since it was a little early for the evening crowd. There was one couple sitting at a table nursing what looked like margaritas. Probably local. We don’t get a lot of tourists in Hannibal in November. I figured the red-headed guy wiping down the bar was Jordan. He looked like a decent sort, the kind of grandson Mrs. Kirsch would have. His freckles stood out on pale skin, which made me wonder if he was still donating blood to someone. I pushed that thought out of my head.
Thelma and I sat at the bar, and Jordan smiled at us and asked what we were having. I got a whiskey sour, and Thelma had a white wine. Even when it came to booze, she was classier. But I suppose wine should be the chosen drink of an ex-nun.
“We wondered if you had a little time to talk to us,” I said. “We’re working on a story for The Spyglass.”
“What kind of story?” He backed up a step.
“The murder of Kara Koch. We understand you and she were together for a while.”
Jordan snorted. “Together is hardly the right word. She was a scheming bitch, and I’m well rid of her. My grandmother could tell you that.”
“We already talked to her,” Thelma said. “What she described was pretty disturbing.”
Jordan shook his head and twisted the cleaning rag in his hand. “She seemed so cool at first,” he said. “She modeled for an art class I was taking. She was funny and really wild. She had lots of piercings. I thought she was sophisticated.”
I could tell this kid hadn’t been around the block if he thought piercings were sophisticated. Poking a hole in yourself was never my idea of high fashion or even good sense. One time there was a clerk at the gas station with a stud in his tongue, and it was like he was speaking some weird foreign language. I couldn’t figure out anything he said. Talk about speaking in tongues.
“It started out nice enough,” Jordan said, going back to rubbing the bar with the cloth. “She’d ask me for a ride home and I’d drop her off. Then she started inviting me in for a beer, but there was another woman there sometimes.” My ears perked up at that. “So we started coming to my house since my grandmother went out a lot to church and stuff.”
“When did the cutting start?” I asked.
Jordan sighed. “About the third time she came over, I guess. I had asked if I could draw her, and she said yes, but there was a catch. I had to let her make a little cut on me with her knife. She said it was a ritual she had, that she liked to mark her boyfriends as her property. The way she said it made it sound harmless. Like getting a little tattoo or something.” He shrugged.
“But it got worse, didn’t it?” I asked.
“Yeah.” His eyes dropped. “I didn’t know how to stop it. She was so insistent. A little cut became a bigger cut and then she wanted to watch me bleed. It scared the shit out of me.”
“I bet,” I said.
“My grandmother walked in on us one night and saw me sitting there bleeding, and she about had a cow. When she gets mad, watch out. She screamed at Kara and made her leave. She told her never to see me again.”
“How did Kara react?” Thelma asked.
“She just laughed. Said there were plenty of other guys around and then flipped the bird. I thought Gram was going to hit her with her purse.”
“And you never saw her again?”
Jordan shook his head. “She modeled a few times in the art class, but I was in a different class by then.”
I drained my whiskey sour and fished out the Maraschino cherry. “Did you ever hear about any other guys Kara was seeing?”
Jordan shook his head. “I never ran into her again, and I didn’t want to.”
“What about the woman at her house?”
“I think her name was Holly or something like that.”
“Maybe Hominy?” I asked.
“Yeah, that sounds right. I don’t think she was there all the time. Kara liked her privacy.”
Jordan got us each another drink and then moved down the bar to take care of a man who’d come in alone. Thelma and I looked over our list and put a check mark by Jordan’s name. “I don’t know,” I said in a low voice. “He seems kind of sweet. And harmless.”
“Sometimes they’re the worst,” Thelma said, and I supposed she would know, having been a school teacher.
“I’d like to talk to that woman who had some kind of dispute with Kara just before she was killed. The one married to a lawyer.”
“Stephanie Riley,” Thelma said.
“Yeah, that’s the one. Mr. Pierce said they lived just up the road from him. Let’s run by there.”
“Don’t you want to weigh in at your diet group before we head up to Quincy tonight?”
“What do you think?” I asked, finishing the second whiskey sour and sucking on the cherry.
Thelma rolled her eyes and followed me to the car.
When we turned off Highway 79 and passed Kara’s rental house we saw a police car in the drive. I slowed, and we craned our necks, but we couldn’t see anyone.
A lot of county roads are gravel, but this one was paved. I figured it didn’t hurt to be a lawyer. Lots of perks, like getting your road paved. I drove slowly anyway. The corn fields were cut low, the broken stalks looking like stubble. There was a steep ravine on either side of the road, and the road was narrow enough that I paid attention to where I was driving. From the corner of my eye I saw bits of trash rolling along the fence. People always threw trash out of their cars in the country. White plastic bags caught on corn stalks and waved in the wind like flags. Something pink lay against one of the fence posts. I ro
unded a curve and heard Thelma whistle softly. And there was the Riley estate. That’s the only word to describe it.
There was a wrought iron fence around the whole property, which I’m guessing was about five acres that included a pond. There was a gate at the driveway. It was closed but not locked. Thelma got out and opened it, and I drove through.
“How much do lawyers make?” Thelma asked when she got back in the car. “I may have to go to law school.”
“Clearly more than reporters.”
The house was two stories, stucco and stone. There were big windows everywhere, and a sun room jutted off the side. “What do you think?” I asked. “Three or four thousand square feet?”
“Probably a finished basement making it five or six,” Thelma said. “I had a Barbie house when I was little, and I thought that was a mansion.”
“You had a Barbie house? You who became a nun?”
“The things we love when we’re kids aren’t always the things we love when we get older,” she said. “What about you? Did you have a dream house?”
I tried to remember. “I was all about Wonder Woman. I was into her invisible airplane. I wanted one in the worst way. I mean, it was the best of both worlds. You know how a genie or a leprechaun or whatever gives you one wish? What are you going to ask for, to be invisible or to be able to fly? But ask for Wonder Woman’s invisible airplane and you’ve got both.”
“You know you’re weird, right?”
“I may have heard that before.”
The circle drive enclosed a raised flower bed filled with dried day lily stalks.
The front door was a massive steel affair painted pink. There were frosted glass inserts on either side. I rang the bell and heard it echoing somewhere inside. No one came to the door, and we couldn’t hear any movement inside.
I stepped over to the window on one side, trying to avoid the landscaping, which was a mix of small evergreens and some ivy. I cupped my hands around my eyes and pressed my face to the glass. There was a leather couch in front of the window and a built-in bookcase to the side. It looked like a library room, and it was deserted.
