Skewed

by Anne McAneny

  As if Mr. Abel ever did the tending.

  Annelise lifted her head and looked a few Prozac short of a dose. “I think it’s best if you got on your way, Janie. It was so nice of you to stop in like this.”

  “Sure, Annelise, no problem.” But I turned back to Mr. Abel, his defensiveness spurring me to dig deeper than I’d intended; besides, I had nothing to lose. “Mr. Abel, I apologize for upsetting you. You must understand, if I didn’t ask the questions, I’d never forgive myself.”

  He closed his eyes and let out a sigh that lasted longer than most yawns. “I understand, Miss Perkins, and I feel for what you’re going through with Barton. Despite our tensions over the years, he’s always been a good man, a better neighbor than I deserved.”

  “That means a lot. Thank you.” The mood had shifted, so I went for it. “Speaking of neighbors, my ambitious friend Stephanie”—the one I was making up on the spot—“plans to be a farm vet. You used to pick up from some of the big farms, didn’t you?”

  “Yes. In fact, some of those farms go from sow to slaughter. Do the raising, killing, and processing all in the same place. Did pickups like that all the time.”

  “They have vets on staff, then?”

  “Got to. Those animals spend half their lives drugged up. It’s the reason I became a vegetarian. Wasn’t about to put that stuff in my body.”

  But would he put it in someone else’s?

  “Just delightful to see you, Janie, really,” Annelise said, her voice now shrill. “You’ll have to stop around again.” I said good-bye to Mr. Abel and let Annelise lead me through the living room. “Do give my best to Jack,” she muttered out of earshot of her father. “I sure let that one slip through my fingers, didn’t I? Can’t believe he’s still single.”

  I wondered if Annelise knew she was living in some kind of Twilight Zone. As I exited, I glanced back at Mr. Abel, who was sitting stiff as a board on the kitchen stool, staring at nothing. Two steps from the door, I accidentally kicked a toy delivery truck into an old radiator. I let the ping reverberate through me in sync with my distaste for him; he’d unnerved me my entire life and now I knew he’d haunted my mother’s final hours. But at least I’d uncovered something interesting. Mr. Abel knew about the illicit affair, had access to animal tranquilizers, and made regular stops at the Aberdeen.

  I didn’t like coincidences. Annelise should have kept her big mouth shut. But most wise, she wasn’t. And you can’t cure that, Big Ham.

  CHAPTER 31

  I arrived at The Shell Place before Wexler, allowing enough time to quell my nerves by ordering a Shell-acked Martini, a strange combination of pear vodka, bitters, simple syrup, and essence of ginger, topped by a shelled shrimp on the rim of the glass. It struck me as disgusting at first, but the bald waiter had raved and I’d been anxious enough to listen. Even the shrimp went down easy.

  It isn’t a date, I repeated to myself as I ordered a second drink. It’s a work meeting to discuss Betty Fitzsimmons and all the sickos in Caulfield. Besides, Wexler was standoffish, meticulous, and far too sartorial for a girl who wore tight jeans and loose shirts as a second skin. We’d mesh about as well as UGGs and a cocktail gown.

  A year ago, asked to label myself as an extrovert or introvert at a county team-building exercise, I’d sidestepped the question and jokingly opted for non-detail-oriented perfectionist with ADD tendencies. I’d been more than a little appalled when everyone in the room agreed. The paid psychologist conducting the session had asked to see me afterward under the pretense of discussing my job’s discordance with my personality description, but I could tell he only wanted to get me in bed. I declined. If there was one type I didn’t like, it was tall, dark, and psychologist. Either way, I was pretty sure Wexler was a detail-oriented perfectionist with OCD tendencies, and between us, that was one too many acronyms for a normal relationship.

  Wexler materialized in front of me. “Hey, Wexler,” I said, realizing the strength of my first drink when my lips were a half syllable behind my words. “Have a seat.”

  “Why do you call me Wexler?”

  I glanced around, seriously wondering if I’d mistaken some guy with unwavering eyes, a strong neck, and a slightly hunched, muscle-laden back for Wexler. No, it was definitely him.

  “That’s your name,” I said. “It says so on your Fight Club card.”

  “You just broke the first rule of Fight Club.”

  “Eh, so did Brad Pitt eventually.”

  “Touché. But what I meant was, why don’t you call me Alex?”

  “Same reason I call Nicholls Nicholls.”

  “Oh,” he said, his mouth scrunching in disappointment. “I hoped our relationship might be . . . a step above that.”

  And what did that mean? If he’d said more professional or more romantic or more filled with wild, rampant sex, then I’d know where we stood. But no, he’d laid a big pile of ambiguity on my lap with his step above that crap. I opened my mouth to demonstrate an example of direct communication when the waiter interrupted. Good thing, too, because my comment might have included something about the rampant sex.

  “Another Shell-acked Martini for the lady,” the waiter said, his pate as shiny as the silver tray holding the drink. Suddenly, I felt embarrassed and remembered that I’d eaten only that early lunch with Lucinda and one drunken shrimp all day.

  “Actually,” I said to the waiter, “I ordered that for my guest.”

  The waiter knew I’d made a face-saving decision on the fly and, in the interest of hefty tips, went with it. “You said as much earlier, ma’am, and I’ve quite forgotten your water.” He placed the drink in front of Wexler. “For the gentleman.”

  We ordered a couple plates of appetizers and got down to business. I filled him in on everything I’d learned from Lucinda, Mickey, and Mr. Abel, and then gave him the floor.

  “I finished my homework, too,” Wexler said, “but I’m not sure you’re going to give me an A when you hear the results. First, your friend Hump Banfield checks out. He is Jenna Abel’s uncle and he did serve in the military. No brushes with the law. Worked as an occupational therapist until a car accident ten years ago. That’s what put him in the chair.”

  “Weird. My spidey sense was all a-tingle, especially when he showed up at my door. And the dire theme of his photos freaked me out. So hopeless and bleak.”

  “Guys in wars, they see things differently. Violence scars them, even if it’s not always physical. You ask me, it creates entirely new ways of processing information, like your brain needs an escape hatch.”

  “And nothing is appreciated the way it was before?”

  “Exactly. Dark filters drape your senses, and everything you see, hear, or touch gets sifted through that shadowy, sometimes jittery gloom.”

  “Wow, Wexler,” I said. “Do you know how much I want to dissect the skeletons in your closet right now?”

  “My dad was in the military. But we’re not here to talk about me. I’ve got bad news about Betty Fitzsimmons, the woman who mailed you the photos.”

  “Shoot.”

  “As I mentioned earlier, Betty was a bit of a spinster, who lived with her brother, Leroy, on a dusty, nonworking farm.”

  “Uh-oh. You’re speaking in past tense.”

  “She was found dead this afternoon by the sheriff. Really shook him up. Said she’d been lying there for days, a cat clawing at her hair and face, trying to get food from her. They’re not entirely sure this cat didn’t eat a chunk or two of her body.”

  For a single tipsy moment, I didn’t want to focus on what it meant that the lonely old woman who’d mailed the photos was dead within days of doing so. Instead, I spoke on autopilot. “Postmortem predation, it’s called. Fancy way of saying, When you’re dead, you’re food. Cats will sometimes go for it after only a day or two.”

  Wexler didn’t miss a beat. “Better than siafu�
��those ridiculous army ants. They just wait until you’re weak to enter your lungs and suffocate you. And then they eat you.”

  I yanked myself from my detached state and turned hyperfocused eyes on Wexler. “What did she die from?”

  He shrugged but his face contained traces of sorrow that I appreciated. “Waiting for the coroner’s report. No sign of trauma. Could be anything, but they can’t rule out foul play yet.”

  “And where was brother Leroy while Betty was feeding the cat?”

  “Left Ridge a few days ago for an out-of-town job. He’s gone a lot, apparently.”

  “How convenient. Betty mails the photos and immediately meets her maker, and her brother has skipped town. You have a photo of either of them?”

  He pushed across a few pictures of Betty, who I didn’t recognize. She could have been any stout woman with a neat bun of gray hair.

  “And her brother?”

  “Sheriff said Leroy did all the picture-taking in town and rarely got in front of the lens.”

  I felt a kinship. “What about a driver’s license photo?”

  “That’s all I got. It’s seven years old.” He pushed a fuzzy image of Leroy toward me. Even blown up, it showed nothing more than a middle-aged guy with small eyes, a plump face, longish, graying hair—what was left of it anyway—and a bushy beard and moustache.

  “Great,” I said. “This narrows it down to the entire population of Appalachia and the members of ZZ Top.”

  “Nice reference,” Wexler said, “and that’s coming from a sharp-dressed man.”

  Despite the circumstances, I smiled. Then my face soured as I realized that the mailed photos now carried more weight, including that of a dead body. “I don’t mean to jump to conclusions, but do you think Betty found her brother’s pictures and mailed them? Then her brother found out and killed her?”

  Wexler took a sip of his drink. “You not only jumped—you vaulted over the high bar with that one.”

  “How so?”

  “Betty could have found those pictures at a yard sale or while rifling through someone’s garbage. They could have been left there by a renter or a drifter they let in. Heck, Betty could have found them under a pile of cat litter somewhere and been trying to return them to you as a courtesy. From what I gather, she wasn’t all there.”

  “You’re right.”

  Wexler leaned toward me. He smelled good, fresh. “But I do think it’s worth taking a drive to Betty’s and looking around. No offense to the sheriff, but the worst they’ve dealt with in Ridge this year was a guy keeping six Rottweilers at his house. Know what the problem was?”

  “No.”

  “That’s one over the legal limit.” Wexler took a swig of his martini. “I’m off tomorrow. I could drive you. Might help to have a detective along. And I don’t want this Leroy fellow showing up if you’re snooping through the attic and come across a creepy mannequin that looks like you.”

  “Thanks for that image! And why would a Janie mannequin be creepy, by the way?”

  “They’re all creepy, even the pretty ones.” He locked on to my eyes with the last part of his comment and only tore his gaze away when a text came in.

  “Yeah,” he said after reading the text, “you’re gonna want me to go with you.”

  “Why?”

  “We were wrong about the attic. They just found a box of Haiku Twin memorabilia in Betty’s basement.”

  CHAPTER 32

  Bridget Perkins, 30 Years, 30 Minutes Ago

  Bridget Perkins listened to the lanky teenager suck down the last bubbly bits of his shake. He had the woeful disposition of someone who’d been ditched by a longtime crush. At least his broken spirit made sure that he failed to notice the prominent political candidate sitting in the far booth, quietly working on a speech for the Women’s Auxiliary. Those dang women had the vote now, as Grady often joked, and he knew how much influence they wielded.

  The skinny kid threaded his way out of the booth and left with a half-hearted wave. Bridget watched as his car took him home to a pity party for one. She turned away just before his headlights illuminated a dark car in the back corner of the lot. Had she been looking, she would have seen no driver behind the steering wheel—because the driver wasn’t stupid. He’d ducked down in plenty of time.

  The much-ballyhooed fix-it man that Grady had called Rusty watched the teen depart. Kid looked like he’d been put through a stretching machine, then starved for six months. But Rusty didn’t care about him. No, his subject tonight was—he let his internal voice enter game-show announcer mode—the incomparable, insatiable Grady McLemore! Better than everyone in his constituency and ever hungry for affirmation of that very fact! Let’s hear it for future Senator Grady McLemore!

  The perfect man to take down, he thought, returning to his sedate inner voice and rising from his crouched position.

  As Bridget walked to the register, Rusty wondered whose idea it was to leave a pretty thing like that to close up a place like this. Just imagine what could happen to her. And why hadn’t thickheaded Grady McLemore taken the hint yet and hauled his ass out of there so the waitress could get home and put her feet up? Was he waiting for a special dessert? Rusty pushed the thought from his mind, but it persisted like a stubborn headache. A special relationship between the two of them would explain the showy arrival of the pseudocelebrity at a place with few constituents present. It would explain the weird conversation they’d carried on while flanking his head.

  Rusty wanted the lurid thoughts in his mind to be wrong, but when Grady sneaked up behind the waitress, spun her around with a twirl, and planted a kiss on her lips, he knew matters had just grown more complicated. Damn.

  He watched Grady back her up against the counter. In a flash, she was seated atop the surface where people would eat their lunches tomorrow, her legs wrapped around the lustful politician. Grady pressed hard into her bulging midsection with a steely disregard for the life inside. Was it his kid in there, or was he taking advantage of some poor working girl in a pathetic situation? What a lowlife. But that would hardly be news to anyone.

  Rusty thought back to the conversation he’d overheard in Grady’s office. He’d been long forgotten down there on the floor—just the way he liked it—so he lingered longer than necessary while adjusting the radiator’s lockshield valve. Grady had been on the phone suggesting a getaway before you’re too big to get away. Rusty had taken it to mean that the person on the other end of the phone was about to become famous, and thus too well-known for a simple getaway, but watching McLemore paw at the pregnant waitress made him reassess his conclusion. That same day, McLemore’s right-hand snake, Sam Kowalczyk, had called the Aberdeen Hotel and made reservations under an alias—Mr. and Mrs. Eugene Purvy. No doubt the reservations were for Grady and his paramour. Only someone with McLemore’s unbridled ego would have the audacity to check in under a name like that without a wink or a blush—especially given the condition of Mrs. Purvy.

  Rusty had trouble repressing his repugnance. Certainly wasn’t how he’d been raised. But then, things didn’t always work out the way parents intended. In Rusty’s case, he took a slanted pleasure in disappointing his father—he of the straight and narrow, of the Bible Belt, of the belt and fist.

  He returned to his unintended voyeurism. What fools! Even the densest of passion-blind morons should know that the interior lights of the diner shined a glaring spotlight on their illicit behavior, even in this remote edge of town. But these political types had no qualms sending those under their command into mortal danger to be treated worse than dogs; why should they care about the consequences of a scandal for an underpaid, overworked waitress? Still, what about the career implications for the mighty Grady McLemore? Quite the risk, indeed.

  Rusty smiled to himself as he realized that both quite the risk indeed and Grady McLemore contained five syllables. Like poetic bookends framing a c
entral tragedy yet to be written.

  Ah, well, he’d be doing that waitress a favor.

  A car approached, riveting Rusty’s attention. Its headlights swerved into the parking lot and made a beeline for the diner’s front door. It was Sam Kowalczyk, Grady’s driver, staring straight ahead like the submissive sycophant he was, feigning blindness to the amorousness playing out inside.

  Grady appeared hesitant to leave but the waitress shooed him out, jingling the diner keys and gesturing around with a smile. Go on. There’s no one here. I just have to lock up. Grady’s head tilted, still deciding, then he blew her a kiss and slithered out to the car. The interior light of the Mercedes bathed the hook-nosed, mouth-breathing Sam in unflattering light.

  Rusty always thought Sam looked like a starved wolf, lips pulled back and parted, ready to clamp his teeth onto the first weak rabbit that ventured by. Sure, a sinus problem accounted for Sam’s rabid appearance, but it didn’t excuse the aura of sleaze he emitted, as if the only actions worth taking in life were those involving covert exchanges of crumpled cash in neglected alleys. Grady, by hiring such a scoundrel, became the moral equivalent.

  Amazing, though, how careless such people became when they failed to think of the low-level help as humans with brains. Rusty didn’t need an alley to complete his transactions.

  The Mercedes took off, its occupants so self-involved that they didn’t give a glance or thought to the extra car in the lot.

  Time to move, but surely he’d lose nothing if he just watched the waitress one more moment. She was so pretty and he didn’t often get to stare unabashedly at beautiful things. He would hate to see her hurt, but what could he do? Things were out of his control, really. He glanced skyward and lamented the situations in which he always became entangled. It was as if someone else controlled his tattered strings and he was the stupid, powerless dummy at the end, with ridiculous button eyes permanently open, forced to watch the horrors that fell before him. And they always did. Right before his stupid button eyes.