He was giving me attitude six ways from Sunday, and I had a sudden moment of top-of-the-roller-coaster panic when I wondered if maybe I should have been a little less impetuous because he felt enormous. Maybe there were guidelines to body sizes and men the size of grizzly bears could kill the average woman. But then he eased and pushed, face intense over me as one of his strong hands slid under my back and cushioned me, and I didn’t die after all. He felt heavenly.
“That’s very, very good,” I assured him, because he wanted to know that all was well.
Then, maybe because all I was really interested in was watching him and I forgot about myself, I was suddenly having some really, amazingly exciting sex. My stupid ex-husband and I, ill-matched in life though we might have been, had exquisite chemistry in bed when we weren’t angry at each other, so I knew my way around the intercourse racetrack—and this was quality stuff. I believe my opinion was colored by the company; I liked this one an awful lot. Plus it had been a while since I’d had the pleasure. I was writhing like a snake in half a minute in response to this huge controlled rhythmic pounding. I was unable to concentrate on his face. I wanted to see if I’d get the Haglund family’s killer grin out of him, but I couldn’t focus, damn it; my fault for asking him to get the first surge out of the way fast. I’d had no idea he’d comply so beautifully, or that I’d be the benefactor.
And it did happen fast for me, amazingly fast, so fast I wasn’t sure I hadn’t been tricked somehow. Once I regained coherent thought, I found Gus Haglund looking down at me, not with a killer grin but with something a bit more sly, and I blushed. He continued to rock on me, slowing to the pace that suited him even though a break of sweat shone over his face.
“Almost had me there,” he said with a flash of triumph in his eyes, “but not yet.”
I was thudding inside and out,. I was throbbing, and every stroke of his flesh threatened to drive me mad. I came to the edge of begging him to stop, but each time my body recommended that I just wait a second, just a second more, just let it ride a second more. I felt like three hot points of red light. Gus kissed my breasts and my throat, and put his hands in my hair. He turned my head the way he wanted it and put his thumb on my lips, and I thought, there is no way, there is no way, that I’ll be lucky enough for him to do it to me again.
He did it to me again. Like boiling water. You can pull it away from the heat for a moment and the boiling will calm, but give it a moment on the fire and here come the bubbles again. I didn’t know my body could do that, much less whether it could take that sort of fabulous assault. I gasped a name out—how embarrassing. I called him “Augustus” like a prim little maiden, voice full of Victorian shock.
Amazing. That was the thing that sent him over the edge. Augustus Haglund tensed, surged inside me and said something unintelligible against my forehead. It sounded like “detail-oriented.”
“Grizzly bear,” I replied, without much more sense.
He lay his head down on my shoulder, panting. I’d never felt anything more big or warm.
“Bedroom eyes,” he accused me. “Minute I saw you,” he said, a further fragment of pleased accusation.
“Killer grin,” I replied, fully able to fling back infatuated compliments. “Police badge.”
“Copy machine.” Gus rose up a bit, tugged a piece of my hair that had become stuck to his cheek, and then peered under my bed. In his first complete sentence he asked, “Is that popcorn?”
I offered, “Why don’t I make some fresh?”
*****
“I want to ask you something about Adrienne Maxwell.”
I looked upside-down at Gus through the faint golden light of my bedside lamp. Propped up on a stack of throw pillows, he resembled a well-presented object d’art with a popcorn bowl beside him. “Still Life with Snacks.” I’d microwaved kettle popcorn in the nude—a first, for me—and also brought back two beers. This was turning out to be one of my best nights ever. Now I lay flat on my back, one knee crooked up insolently to swing back and forth in time with my ceiling fan. I had the sheen of this man all over me and intended to luxuriate in it for a while. My head lay just close enough to him that my hair tickled his leg.
Gus said, “Well, okay.”
“I know you can’t discuss the case. I’m not grilling you. But I’ve only known a few people who actually died. A few relatives, grandparents, a coworker who had a heart attack, a friend who died of cancer. That was awful. But I’ve never known anyone who killed herself. Not that I knew Adrienne really well, but it’s still strange to think I sat in a room with a woman who did that. Well, who maybe did that, I guess, since otherwise there wouldn’t be a detective on it, would there?”
Upside-down Gus was listening to me, but I’d said a variety of things, none of which seemed to have a good specific response. I asked, “Do you investigate a lot of suicides?”
“A few, over the years. There are more homicides. I’ve investigated other things too, not just deaths. Burglaries, assaults, missing persons.”
“What’s the strangest thing you’ve ever seen stolen?”
“A collection of casts from broken arms and legs.”
“Someone collects used casts?”
“They were autographed by celebrities. You know, someone famous breaks an arm, and all his famous friends sign the cast. The cast comes off, and someone else buys it. There were almost thirty of them in the collection.”
“Jeez, so you’ve seen the dark side of mankind. Stealing autographed casts. Are you hardened and bitter from looking every day at the underside of life?” I was only half-teasing. I was curious to know if this object of my infatuation was secretly harboring his own death wish.
“Aw, that’s a stereotype. That’s television’s fault.”
“Stereotypes usually have a little merit hiding in them somewhere. They’re useful psychological tools.”
“The only cops I know who are hardened and bitter either started out that way, or they have gotten that way because they don’t have anything else in their lives. I’m lucky to have a good supervisor; she doesn’t let us get too overworked or obsessed. She makes people go home at night.”
“Having a good boss makes all the difference.”
“Damn straight. Also I have my son, who is just the best thing that ever happened to me, and I have my family and a couple hobbies that keep me out of trouble. Recently I met a woman who’s been keeping my mind on happy thoughts.”
I rolled over so he could see my face, all the better to beam at him. Now I was mostly lying on his thigh, not at all a bad place to be. But I said, “You’re disappointing me, Gus Haglund. I’ve been watching detective shows for years, and I expect to see whiskey and dark depression and Russian roulette.”
“I ride a motorcycle. My mother thinks that’s the same as Russian roulette.”
“Oh my God, he talks to his mother, too.”
“I wouldn’t dare not to.”
“Is it me?” I asked. “The woman who’s keeping your mind on happy thoughts?”
He looked at me as if he thought I was crazy. “Sometimes I’m not sure when you’re being funny or serious. Yes, it’s you, in case you were being serious.”
This lovely patch of pillow talk was distracting me from my other concerns. Before it managed to distract me further, I said, “Anyway about Adrienne Maxwell. I was wondering, do a lot of older widows kill themselves?”
“I’ve never seen one do it before, myself. I have heard of it, but the suicides I’ve actually seen have all been men, and a lot of them pretty young or really old. Statistically, I don’t know.”
“Have you been in Kansas City for a long time?”
“I moved here after my divorce, in 2003.”
“So if this were a kind of ordinary thing, around here, would you have heard about it?”
Gus gave me a puzzled look, one of his big, hard hands coming to rest on the side of my face. “I’m not sure I would have heard much. Ordinary suicides, ones that aren’t con
sidered suspect, I’m not involved with those. They’re investigated just because it’s routine, but if the coroner and the assigned officers don’t find anything out of the ordinary, the case wouldn’t get to my level. Adrienne Maxwell’s death was suspicious, so it was kicked up to me and Sergeant Paige.”
“So, if for whatever reason, a lot of women in Kansas City liked to off themselves, you might not have heard about it?”
“That would depend on…Are you worried about something?”
“I’m only curious.”
“You look worried.”
“I have a weird face,” I said. “It looks worried when it’s curious, and it looks confused when it’s thinking.”
“How does it look when you’re really worried?”
“I don’t know; I don’t worry about much.”
“You’re not worried about your mom or something? She would be around that age, wouldn’t she?”
Aw, that was sweet. And rather an intuitive leap, particularly for a guy. In my experience, men don’t tend to make those sorts of transitions. But I had to remember that this was a detective, and perhaps he was more likely to listen to what was said and infer something from it. At last I succumbed to temptation and crawled up the bed to straddle his lap. Gus was not displeased by this change of position. There was a long patch of skin from his earlobe to his chest that I hadn’t nibbled yet, so I got right on that project with enthusiasm. It was a great way to make us both forget any troubling thoughts in the backs of our minds.
Chapter Nine
I wouldn’t have called legal secretarydom a paradise. The job tended to be dull, not wildly rewarding. Working for Bill certainly made it easier. But honestly, would I rather have been touring Europe? Probably. Would I rather have spent my days cocooned in my home watching TV on DVD? Definitely. But it’s okay. I wasn’t an heiress or a mistress, and I had to work. Not being terribly ambitious, I didn’t want to work very hard or be largely responsible for things. I was a lazy Generation X layabout.
At MBS&K, the only real problem I had to conquer was keeping myself entertained. Boredom was the enemy. Crossword puzzles could help with this, or craftily hidden magazines, or surfin’ the net. The second week after Adrienne Maxwell died, the first week after I’d fallen head over heels in lust with Gus Haglund, I had found a hobby that was more preoccupying than I’d first imagined.
By the end of Wednesday, I had a list that looked like this:
Client Name / Date of Estate Work / Date of Death
Adrienne Maxwell / 2004 / March 11, 2006
Wanda Breakers / 2000 / January 18, 2003
Bryony Gilbert / 1999 / August 4, 2001
Rose Ann Trask / 1998 / December 11, 1999
Bonita Voigt / 1996 / August 29, 1998
Alice Hooper / 1995 / February 3, 1996
Coming up with this list had not been particularly difficult; I had done most of the work the first time I looked up Bill Nestor’s condolence correspondence. The reason I had turned up only Bonita Voigt’s name that first time was that, once I’d discovered a suicide, I stopped looking. I didn’t think it could be so common an occurrence to warrant a further search. Bill sent condolence letters to a lot of people, and a lot of them were natural or accidental deaths, but there were also these suicides. I took the list to the scary storage room and spent an hour down there with a cart. Every time I found a file with a particular kind of Bill Nestor summary memo, I put in on my cart, and then I brought them all upstairs and hid them in the bottom drawer of my file cabinet.
The only one that I had known personally was Adrienne Maxwell; the one just before her, Wanda Breakers, had died a few months before I came to work for Bill. But all of these women were widows who had come to Bill Nestor to have their estate work done after their husbands died. All of them were financially secure but not shockingly wealthy. They all lived locally; they all lived alone; and approximately two years after completing their estate documents, each one of them committed suicide. Despite being written by Bill-the-Notetaking-King, the file notes were fairly vague on just how they’d done themselves in.
I didn’t know what I was looking at. I knew it was strange. I knew that it pushed the envelope of believable coincidence. But what did it mean?
Back in my college days, I minored in philosophy, one of the many reasons why I’m not suited for much other than secretarial work. Though philosophy may wear a cloak of whimsical uselessness, it does help you learn to think in new ways. And it hammers home the process of logic. I could not start proposing wild theories based on the information I had gathered. The facts as I saw them could mean all sorts of things, starting with the possibility that widowed women kill themselves a lot more often that I’d thought.
If some kind of conspiracy was going on, though—and conspiracies aren’t wild theories, are they?—some plot that compelled women to commit suicide within three years following their husband’s death, wouldn’t the police have noticed it? Surely they would have noticed it. I didn’t want to act like I’d found something fascinating when everyone on Earth already knew about it. If I went to Gus and told him what I’d found, he might think I was trying to impress him, the boring little secretary who likes imagining that she’s part of a Mystery mini-series. I thought I’d ask Bill first. Maybe he knew something that I didn’t.
*****
On Thursday morning, after our regular powwow, I asked Bill, “Do you have a few minutes you can spare for something not completely work-related?”
Not a common request, coming from good old ask-no-questions Carol. Bill looked surprised, but almost happily he said, “Of course, of course. I hope there’s not a problem.”
“Not a problem, a puzzle.” I tried to think how to begin. “This business with Adrienne Maxwell got me thinking, and then someone mentioned another suicide here a few years ago, and I was looking through some older files. I mean, of course, I made sure all the current work was done first.”
“Of course you did. I know that.”
That’s right, I was dealing with Bill Nestor, best boss ever. I granted him a smile of gratitude.
“Who said that someone else had committed suicide?”
It’s not the number one rule for secretaries, but it’s in the top ten: unless you’re about to pay a big compliment, don’t mention names. It’s not even a good idea when your boss is as nice as Bill. I said, “One of the girls, I can’t even remember which one. But I ran across some really strange information.”
“What information?”
“Does it seem weird to you that so many widows kill themselves?”
Bill was straightening his shirt cuffs when I looked back at him. “So many?”
“Well, I’ve counted six in the last ten years. Of course that includes Adrienne Maxwell, and according to Detective Haglund, they’re still considering that a suspicious death.”
“Because of the witness.”
“And the drugs.”
“Six, huh?”
“Do you want to see my list? I made a little list of their names and dates of death.”
“Yes, show me.”
I’d brought the list with me, of course, and handed it to him. Bill looked at it for a long time, longer than it takes to simply read it, and I was glad that he wasn’t dismissing me out of hand. He must be thinking it over.
“Why did you write this, here?” he asked curiously after a minute, indicating the column where I’d included the approximate date that their estate work had been done.
“I was wondering if there was some pattern, if their suicide was a predictable amount of time after they’d finished their estate documents.”
“You think that’s related somehow?” He looked at me with earnest attention.
“Maybe,” I said. “I’ve heard that sometimes, when someone plans to commit suicide, she’ll start putting her affairs in order. What’s a better way to do that than make out a will?”
Bill reexamined the list. “The times between are rather varied, and som
e of them are more than two years.”
“It was just a theory. Am I being crazy?”
“That’s not what I meant. This is certainly a very interesting pattern.” He put the paper down in front of him, its bottom edge parallel to the edge of his desk. He took a moment to straighten it until the line looked good to him.
“They’re all despondent,” I added.
“Hmm?”
“All of the widows are despondent; it says so in your notes. Every one of them.”
“Oh, really? Maybe I need to get a thesaurus. I guess that’s the word I use for when someone seems particularly depressed.”
“I guess it makes sense, if they’re all recently widowed.”
“Of course I remember all of these women, but it hadn’t occurred to me how many of them were suicides. Then again…”
“It is odd. But is it…relevant? I mean, insurance companies are the ones that keep track of mortality rates and all that. They’ve probably noticed a pattern like this a long time ago. It kind of makes sense. An older widow might be more likely to kill herself. Could be why it’s hard to get life insurance policies then, I don’t know.”
“Yes, that could be true.”
“Of course, except for Adrienne Maxwell and one of the others, I think it was Wanda Breakers, these women didn’t have life insurance policies. They didn’t need them. It said so in your notes.”
Bill’s eyes flicked up to mine.
I didn’t catch anything in his eyes but cautious interest. So I went on, “But it’s really sad, too. They’re not old women. None of them are much more than sixty-five. That’s just retirement age. And they all had enough money to enjoy retirement if they wanted to.”
“Maybe they didn’t see how to enjoy life with their husbands gone.”
“In some cases, enjoying life without a husband is no stretch of the imagination.” I said, rather more pointedly than I meant to. “I started finding life very enjoyable once mine was out of the picture.”
My Boss is a Serial Killer Page 11
