by Anne McAneny
I pulled. My mother had covered the triangle’s rough, sawn edges with precision-cut duct tape to keep it from shredding and to make for easier access. I reached into the resulting hole and felt a small stack of notebooks. My mother, reputed to be a technically meticulous sculptor, had measured well, but I finagled the books out at a precise angle, one by one, six in all.
With my new treasures laid out on the bed, I gazed at them with uncertainty. Nothing could please me more than a dose of reality to counter the maternal images I’d crafted, but Jack was right; I’d conceived a princess, a heroine—hazy, mystical beings unsullied by human flaws. Here before me lay the tools to sculpt a real person, untouched by those who loved her unconditionally or romantically, and away from those who knew her as coworker, friend, daughter, niece, or cousin. This would be Bridget Perkins, unfiltered, no pretense.
What if I didn’t like what I found?
I stroked my finger along the top journal’s soft leather, a deep, inviting red. I hoped Jack wouldn’t return yet, as I wanted this moment alone. With stack in hand, I sauntered to the bay window seat and settled in. Illuminated by moonlight, I opened the first journal but immediately put it down. Why not know the person my mother had become? Why not embrace the final, happy days filled with hope and the promise of life?
I picked up the newest journal. It had airy gaps between some pages because my mother had taped in concert tickets, paper programs from local events, a ribbon for a caramel apple pie—all solid memories of vaporous events. Even the Scotch tape had turned brown with little stick left. Flipping to a random page, I found my mother five months pregnant: Feeling huge! For some reason, Grady calling less frequently. I think Sam K. plans events on purpose so Grady can’t ever steal a quiet moment in which to call. He sent roses, though! We are desperately in love and the babies only make our feelings grow stronger.
On another page: Grady wrote! It’s so rare to get a letter. He says by the time he writes, Sam has him on the move again and never seems to find a post office . . . I question if Sam fails to find them on purpose. I know Grady has a generous heart, but where does he unearth these ne’er-do-wells? Maybe flawed souls are more indebted and grateful to him—not a bad trait in an employee, I suppose, but it sure makes for strange bedfellows. Oh well, far from flawless myself! I shall treasure the letter I did receive.
I knew there was something off with that Sam Kowalczyk, and I’d never even met him.
My mother had tucked Grady’s letter into the page. With its writer on the way over, I would feel disloyal reading it. Still, I opened it for a flash, catching sight of the salutation: My beloved, bold Bridget . . .
Ah, an alliterative scribe. Neat handwriting, too. I closed it and read Mom’s next entry. Looked like she was back to her klepto ways.
Swiped a real treasure today—a key unlocking all the so-called treasures at the Bellevue near DC—but I must gain power over this bedevilment. A senator’s wife cannot be a petty thief. Besides, I’m going to be a mom. Moms don’t steal, at least not the best ones, as I intend to be. My kids will become everything they ever dream of, with Grady and me as their invisible, unwavering foundation. Not a traditional, stable foundation, but one that rises to the occasion. They may not acknowledge the support or always want it, but they will know it’s there when they reflect on their achievements, when they see our eyes shining with pride, and we will lift them up—always—as high as they want to go.
I pressed my lips together, stifled tears, and moved on to more entries about her future, her plans for an art studio, and the additional children she and Grady would have—a whole houseful. She ranged from sweet, sentimental, and funny to crass and skeptical. I experienced a hard pang of regret when I read one entry from a week before she was shot:
Names for the twins . . . can’t decide between Jonathan Barton and Jennifer Elizabeth—as a tribute to my parents—or names that speak to me for their strength and beauty: William Blake and Vivienne Louise. Grady says he doesn’t care if I call them Twin A and Twin B, as long as they’re healthy and happy. Perhaps I’ll see what they respond to when I say the names aloud for the first time. One of them just kicked!
I hoped it was me who kicked. I really liked Vivienne Louise and could have gotten used to it. I didn’t mind Janie, but it had occurred to me from time to time that it was morbid of Grandpa to name us after unidentified corpses.
And then came the final entry regarding her night at the Aberdeen Hotel. Just twelve words: Grand night alone with Grady. He holds the key to my heart. Taped to the page was a key on a substantial brass key chain with a beautiful A engraved on it. I smiled and shook my head as I realized my mom had swiped the rather valuable key to their Aberdeen room, back when hotels trusted their guests.
And then my face fell and my soul disintegrated. Oh, no. It couldn’t be. My mind must be playing tricks.
But it kept flashing in my head. When I’d zoned out on the couch, staring mindlessly at the haiku, the words themselves had become meaningless, but a single letter on the napkin had worked its way into my brain and it was all I could see. And suddenly I saw how the whole tragedy must have played out. I understood the alternate route the haiku had traveled. I saw the servant slaves doing their menial tasks, from clearing dishes to adjusting valves, all while remaining alert and curious—too curious for their own good. That haiku had changed hands one too many times.
I glanced at my mother’s desk where the napkin lay, the confirmation of my suspicions mere inches away. All I had to do was get up and check.
I didn’t want to. I flipped back in my mother’s journal to check something I’d just read. Damn, it was almost certain now. After a reluctant journey to my mother’s desk, all doubt evaporated.
And stupid, stupid me. I’d gone and sealed my own fate, just like my mother.
Thoughts swarmed around me, spelling themselves out, kicking at my brain, each insisting on its own veracity. With the key in my mother’s journal, I had unlocked a door in the floor and fallen down the rabbit hole, unable to grasp on to anything solid. I became the central, ultimate letter in one of Leroy Fitzsimmons’s spiraling word puzzles as the new reality of my life spun crookedly downward, everything from the past week twisting back in on itself, reversing and flipping before looping back up to push me further toward a truth I could barely acknowledge. But when I landed, cold and irrevocably, my world was not one of insanity, filled with giant rabbits and mad tea parties, but one that finally, ultimately made sense.
Frantic now, but quickly at home in my new reality, I grabbed my phone. It was late, but I didn’t care. I woke Sheriff Tucker and requested a favor. He complied immediately and texted me back an answer within two minutes. In the meantime, I followed another hunch. It was the only thing that would make sense, the only window of opportunity.
A quick search for Lenora Dabney on my phone resulted in pages of matches. I pared it down and quickly found three social media sites on which the world’s friendliest prison guard was highly active. So that’s what she did to fill time in her lonely booth at Everly Prison when she wasn’t befriending the inmates. Given the sexual nature of most of her Twitter and Facebook entries, I now appreciated why she was so familiar with Grady’s Ladies; she was probably one of them. Within her last thirty tweets, I found her Achilles’ heel—everyone on social media had one. She’d posted her phone number in code to a guy tweeting as Erudite Earl. By doing it in code, the telemarketing scanners wouldn’t pick it up, but she could take her Twitter relationship to a whole new level with chatty Earl.
I called her number. She picked up, answering in a sexy kitten voice. Betting a mental quarter on Nicholls, I employed a tone he would use when in need of information he had no right to request. It worked, threats and all, and within a minute, I had my answer.
A clattering noise rang out downstairs. Jack? No, he would have shouted out to find me.
Another noise. A door open
ing? Not a big one, though. And then some clicks. Had I even locked the front door after Jack left? Where the hell was my good Samaritan brother, anyway? You ring the bell, you dump the concussed lug, and you make yourself scarce. Annelise had probably yanked Jack in and sunk her claws deep, helping him step over her semiconscious husband and treating him to leftover birthday cake—there was sure to be plenty.
I called 911 and whispered an explanation as best I could, but if my hunch was right, things were about to unfold very quickly, and 911 response time in tiny Caulfield had gone from slow to glacial since budget cuts two years ago. I crept down the hall to Jack’s old room to confirm another hunch. Before I even got there, I felt cold air seeping out from beneath his door. I opened it to see broken glass on the floor. It hadn’t been a delinquent that Mr. Abel and Jed had spotted on our property. It had been Leroy Fitzsimmons, who’d selected the most discreet roof entrance into the house.
I took a calming breath. If I wasn’t careful, this situation could grow very bleak, very fast—and I really wanted out of this rabbit hole.
It seemed impossible, but it was happening. Leroy Fitzsimmons was downstairs and Grady was either here or on his way over. I was about to be in the exact same position as my mother thirty years ago.
CHAPTER 54
I stole back down the hall toward an antique table where Grandpa used to keep a .22. Small but mighty, he would say, just like his Janie. I slid the drawer open. Empty. Damn.
I crept to the top of the stairs. Okay, I just had to—
“Janie?” It was Grady’s voice. “Janie, it’s me! Where are you?”
Before I knew it, he’d dashed halfway up the stairs. In his hands, a nine-millimeter pocket pistol. He saw me notice.
“It’s your brother’s,” he said, flicking his brows and grinning like a mischievous boy with a forbidden toy. “Never even used. I took it from his apartment.”
“A bullet is a bullet,” I whispered.
“Figured if you found that haiku, Leroy Fitzsimmons can’t be far behind.”
I opened my mouth to speak, but a thunk downstairs put an abrupt end to our conversation.
Grady gestured for me to be quiet, then waved me along to follow. We inched downstairs as he held his gun at the ready. I had no weapon—only a haiku burning a hole in my pocket.
At the base of the stairs, Grady propelled himself around the corner into the dining room, scanning it with alert eyes, his weapon at the ready. Deeming the room empty, he turned back and waved me on. We crept through the foyer. Without warning, he kicked open the French doors to the sitting room. Again, he scanned and cleared it like a pro.
It seemed a lot darker down here now; someone had turned off most of the lights.
As Grady gestured again, I held up a finger to tell him to wait a moment. I entered the sitting room, opened the door of an old corner curio cabinet, and pulled out Grandpa Barton’s favorite: an antique Colt .45. Always loaded. Grandpa used to say it felt like a second skin in his large hands. To me, it felt awkward and heavy, but very welcome.
Grady looked surprised and doubtful when he saw the large hunk of metal in my hands, but I held it professionally enough, pointed downward, my finger off the trigger. That seemed to quiet his concerns.
He entered the living room, checking it first, his back to the kitchen—a huge mistake, especially given the last time he’d turned his back on it.
From out of nowhere stepped the short, stout form of Leroy Fitzsimmons. He slammed Grady mercilessly on the head with the butt end of a snub-nosed .38 Special, unleashing decades of frustration. The big guy crashed down in the same place he had thirty years earlier.
It was surreal to see Leroy, the man I’d wheeled across a parking lot less than a week ago, standing upright and able-bodied in a threatening posture. He turned to me, his gun hanging loosely at his side, a smirk on his round face. “This looks eerily familiar,” he said.
I smiled, waves of relief, regret, and disbelief bludgeoning me simultaneously from all sides. Talk about overload. My soul simultaneously emptied and brimmed with such a cadre of emotions, I couldn’t possibly enumerate them. “Thank God you didn’t bring a syringe to a gunfight this time, Leroy.”
He smiled, but it was small, quick, and not entirely sure. “So you know, then?”
I nodded, the lump in my throat almost choking out my voice. “Grady McLemore was the Haiku Killer.” I pulled the haiku from my pocket and held it up to show him. “The Aberdeen A is still visible on the napkin.”
“Ah, yes, the subtly raised, Japanese-inspired, calligraphic A pressed onto the napkin.” His vocal cadence was rapid-fire, unnatural, yet lively, and I realized this was my first glimpse of the real Leroy Fitzsimmons, or at least the Leroy Fitzsimmons he’d become. No more Uncle Hump persona. There was a fleck of irrationality in his eyes, a mark of otherworldliness, and yet, I trusted him. “The Aberdeen put that A on everything in the old days, even the toilet tissue.”
“And their key chains,” I said. “Found one upstairs that my mother had stolen.”
“Yes, your mother tended to do that.” Leroy’s small eyes grew bigger and he bit down on his lower lip, becoming a child asking for a forbidden treat. “May I hold the napkin?”
I flicked on a lamp and handed it to him. He stroked it like it was a long-lost pet. “I didn’t think the A would survive,” he said. “I’m quite glad it did, but had it not, the handwriting would have been enough.”
“Yes,” I said, “Grady has a distinctive loop on his d’s. I saw it just now in a letter to my mother, in the word Bridget, and the word pandering in the haiku.”
Leroy walked across the living room and headed toward the marble table, his limp barely noticeable. Mickey Busker had been right. The man fleeing the house that night did have a hitch in his step; he just hadn’t been the Haiku Killer.
Leroy touched the table as I had done earlier, then whirled around, retracing my mother’s steps to the center of the room. “Of course, it makes sense now. I didn’t think she had time to put it behind a picture frame and reassemble everything, but apparently she did. It was quite a moment watching you find it, Janie. Quite a moment, indeed.”
“You must have gotten here just before Jack and me.”
“Oh, yes. You’re more sentimental than you let on. I knew you’d come here to unearth your treasure. I watched you arrive and observed the unfortunate altercation with Mr. Abel. I do apologize for my eavesdropping, but I had to wait for my prey to arrive.”
I picked up Grady’s gun and placed it on the foyer table, out of his reach in case he regained consciousness. Jack could use it as back-up when he returned. All the while, I took no chances, keeping my own gun fixed on Grady like a laser. “Did my mother ever know the truth?”
“Oh, yes. Sometime between the diner and her concealment of the napkin, she must have surmised that despite the napkin being in my possession, I was not its author. She must have noticed the A and realized that it had been composed at the Aberdeen. Then she zeroed in on the handwriting. You see, the Haiku Killer’s notes were all printed in a belabored style, while McLemore the politician wrote almost exclusively in cursive.” Leroy thrust his arm into the air and pointed upward like a victor. “However! This note—a first draft for a future kill, no doubt—shows a disjointed combination of cursive and print.”
Leroy’s eyes suddenly focused distantly, as if watching a scene in his head unfold on a movie screen. His voice grew quiet yet retained its disconcerting animation. “Grady’s eyes had likely jerked open in the dark of night—your mother next to him in that slumber known only to children and those with child—and he grew desperate to retain whatever thoughts had startled him awake. He’d have grabbed the first thing he saw—the napkin, of course—and scrawled on it awkwardly.”
He gazed at the napkin now with a delighted grin. “Several of the printed letters match the Haiku Killer’s not
es, while the cursive words match the oddly feminine handwriting used by”—he nodded toward Grady, his distaste evident—“him. Which your mother must have noticed.”
The revelation rubbed coarsely against my soul. In my mother’s final moments, she understood she’d been played for a fool, a princess no more. “It all fell into place upstairs,” I said. “You found the napkin while crawling around Grady’s office floor, didn’t you?”
“Quite so, Janie. Very astute.”
“Then my mother’s final words must have been, Find radiator, not Find Grady hater.”
“Certainly possible, if she was trying to say, Find radiator repairman. That’s all she knew me as, really. That persnickety radiator had acted up yet again and I was determined to silence it. Grady returned to the office late that afternoon, having stayed with your mother at the Aberdeen the night before. I was fiddling with some settings on the floor when he set his duffel down as he always did, ignoring me, as he always did. The bag gaped open and I . . . Well, I was no better than your mother, I suppose . . . I swiped that napkin. I was so curious. A precise note—on a napkin—in a handwriting that seemed somewhat similar to the Haiku Killer’s.”
“Bit of a handwriting enthusiast, aren’t you?”
Leroy smiled, but it was awkward, ashamed. “You found my basement notebooks. Yes, words have always been my refuge. Not verbal, mind you, but I enjoy playing with them in my head and in my notebooks. They were a distraction, you see, from . . .”—his sparse brows shot high on his head—“from my highly agitated mental state. Much of my life, people hurled words as weapons, when they weren’t hurling grenades. They used words to assign nasty labels, but I knew they could be beautiful things—if respected.”