Beautiful Maids All in a Row

by Jennifer Harlow

  After what felt like ten minutes, the applause died down and both front and backstage were as quiet as a church during Mardi Gras.

  Then she began to speak.

  “Thank you, thank you for that wonderful greeting,” Shelly said in her Texas twang. “I hope y’all are as excited as I am to meet today’s guest. She is something special, without a doubt. Most of us have never encountered the darker side of life. Murder, violence, evil are just things we watch on television. And thank the good Lord for that, no?”

  There was a collective chuckle through the audience.

  “But our guest today has come face to face with pure evil more than once. In fact, she sought these things out, often to her own detriment. As an agent in the FBI’s elite Behavioral Analysis Unit, Dr. Ballard managed to find Sheriff Stephen Merriweather, also known as the Rosetta Ripper, who later escaped and attacked her and her husband, unfortunately killing him. Yet even after this personal tragedy, Dr. Ballard returned to the FBI to help them track the man known as the Woodsman, who was responsible for the deaths of five women along the Eastern seaboard, who was later identified as bestselling author Dr. Jeremy Shepherd, a former guest of this very show. Once again, Dr. Ballard put her very life on the line to bring Dr. Shepherd to justice. So please help me welcome an incredibly brave woman to the show, Dr. Iris Ballard.”

  My cue. I took a deep breath and stepped out from behind the curtain onto the stage. The audience applause was as loud as it was for Shelly. It was humbling. I waved to my adoring fans as I walked toward the standing host. She was smaller in person. Shorter than me by a few inches, with her frosted blonde hair falling into a pageboy cut framing her pointed face. When I reached the famous cream-colored couch I’d seen almost every week for twenty-six years, I was almost giddy. I didn’t know if it was the wild cheering, the lights, or the fact that Shelly Fucking Monroe was hugging me like an old friend, I giggled like a little girl.

  Somehow when she let me go I stopped my near hysteria. She took her seat in the matching armchair and I on the couch, smoothing my blue and white plaid skirt out. My agent, Miranda the cruel, insisted I wore a skirt on every interview. Something to do with playing up my femininity and toning down my image as a killer with two notches on my belt. I ceded to her expertise. She had just gotten a publisher to agree to pay me more than a million dollars for my autobiography. For that kind of money I’d have done interviews as Ronald McDonald if she told me to.

  “Thank you for being on the show,” Shelly said, as she always did.

  The customary response was: “Thank you for having me.”

  “So, let me just start by asking how you’re doing,” she said as if we were old friends. “It’s only been three weeks since Jeremy Shepherd held you captive in your own home and you were forced to…defend yourself. I can’t imagine something that horrific, let alone having to live through it.”

  “Well, I almost didn’t,” I pointed out. This got a laugh. Who didn’t love gallows humor? “But, I’m okay. I’m fine. It was hell to live through, without question, but I’ve gotten so much support not only from my friends and family but from everyone. I can’t thank everyone whose sent emails or messages with their support.”

  Keeping busy almost 24/7 with interviews, meetings, and flying across America helped too. For three weeks there hadn’t been a day I’d had more than a moment to myself.

  “As I mentioned before,” Shelly continued, “I met Jeremy Shepherd. He sat on that very couch, and let me tell you, just from my impression of him during our interviews, from our dinners together…I would have let him babysit my grandbabies,” she said, voice going up an octave. “He seemed so…nice. Together. It’s still hard for me to think of him as a rapist and serial murderer.”

  “He had everyone fooled,” I assured her. “Most serial killers appear nice, charming even. That’s how they get close to their victims. Shepherd was especially skilled at this. A handsome, rich, famous sociopath? It was almost too easy for him to blend in. But like all serial killers, he had several masks he wore. The pleasant, intelligent psychiatrist was one, the philanthropist another, but his real face he hid from everyone but those six women.”

  “And you.”

  “Yes, and me.”

  Shelly sat back in her seat, and I knew it was coming. The hard balls. I was ready. “In other interviews, you were quite candid about your own personal demons: depression, alcoholism, pills, which all stemmed from a prior attack in which your husband was murdered in your own home. I have to ask because some of Dr. Shepherd’s supporters often bring it up: Do you still struggle with those?”

  “You never stop struggling with them, Shelly,” I admitted, “but strangely, what happened with Shepherd forced me to finally take control of them. I haven’t touched a pill harder than aspirin or had a single alcoholic beverage since I was released from the hospital. Shepherd attacking me was a wake-up call. You never know how much you want to live until you’re about to die, I guess.”

  “So something positive came from all your experiences?”

  “Actually a lot of good came from it, and not just for me. The families of the victims called me right after the news broke, and thanked me for bringing their daughters justice. They gained some sense of closure. Everything I went through was worth just that.”

  “And I’m sure the money pouring in isn’t a terrible thing either. I heard before coming out you just signed a seven figure deal for a book and an Oscar-winning actress wants to produce a movie about you.”

  My cheeks turned red from the blushing. “I’m not going to lie, those aspects do not suck.” The audience chuckled again.

  Shelly turned to the camera with the red light on. “When we come back, Dr. Ballard will take us through her harrowing encounter with the Woodsman, Jeremy Shepherd. Stay tuned.”

  Cue applause.

  —

  Sitting by the window overlooking Central Park in my complimentary Egyptian-cotton robe, dipping my filet mignon into the best Béarnaise sauce on the east coast, I was happy. Yes, me, Iris Ballard, the eternal pessimist was happy. Didn’t think it was possible myself. Two months earlier I was finding new ways to slowly kill myself, popping pills like Mentos and drinking half a bottle of vodka a day, and there I was, sitting in a five-star hotel having just signed a million-dollar book deal, eating a fifty-dollar steak and loving every second of it. It was like I was a different person. No more crazy Iris Ballard. She died in my basement, killed by a madman with a grudge, which was funny because that was actually how she was born two years earlier. Crazy Iris emerged the moment her husband was shot in the head in front of her. The old Iris Ballard died right along with her husband and somebody new took over her life. But that woman died as well, so who sat in that hotel room with a smile on her face? A national hero who movie stars gush over at lunches, who Shelly Freaking Monroe hugged. A vast improvement, no?

  The press descended on Grafton, North Carolina, my adopted town before I’d even checked out of the hospital. Every major network, newspaper, and blogger swarmed my house, the college I worked at, even my students’ dorms. I could understand why. I was the infamous, disgraced former FBI profiler who’d caught the Woodsman. Add to that the serial killer was a famous self-help guru? Nobody believed he was, even the FBI, until he broke into my home and tried to kill me. It was kind of hard for people not to believe he had homicidal tendencies after that. So I killed him. Dead. Callous, I know, but he deserved it. Not just for raping, torturing, and strangling five innocent women but he also knocked me out, chained me up in my basement, and proceeded to torture me as well. I had to get over a dozen stitches.

  He would have killed me too if not for my best friend and ex-partner Luke. Special Agent Luke Hudson, who once again rode in and saved my sorry ass, getting shot in the process, something I hadn’t heard the end of. When we talked on the phone, which was about every other day, and I said something catty, he just countered with, “Well, you wouldn’t even have options if I hadn’t come wh
en I did. I got shot for you, so I’m right. The end.”

  Okay, he didn’t really say that, but I knew he was thinking it.

  I dipped the last of my steak into the sauce and swallowed it down. Melted just like butter on a hot griddle. I had to say the best part of being a media sensation in demand by every network, publisher, Hollywood producer, and newspaper had to be the expendable income. Along with the movie and book deal, BNN had offered me a position as an on-call expert when crime stories cropped up. If I could work out of their Charlotte, NC, affiliate I had every intention of taking the job. I had no intention of returning to teaching at Grafton College. I had no illusions about my teaching skills. I’d never liked it and with the money raking in, and if I was smart about investing, I could live for years off of what I had. My house would be paid off, with a new roof to boot, and I could probably even take a cruise. Growing up dirt poor, I’d learned you couldn’t always get what you needed, let alone what you wanted. I was lucky to get a new pair of shoes once a year. I was looking forward to not worrying about money every other week. And all I had to do was almost die a horrible, painful death to get there.

  As I pushed the room service cart into the hallway, my new iPhone rang. I groaned and shut the door. Only four people had the new number and Miranda was the only one to use it. I was sure she was calling to tell me all the things I did wrong today. I told too many jokes, I shouldn’t have shaken the publisher’s hand so hard, on and on and on she would go. When I actually accepted the call, I was already tense and ready to fight.

  “Hello, Miranda,” I said.

  “Sorry to disappoint you,” a familiar male voice said, “but it’s not Miranda.”

  A wide smile crossed my face at the sound of his voice, as I’m told it always did. To quote Marilyn Monroe, “I got goosepimply all over” whenever I heard his voice. It wasn’t a sexual thing—or at least that’s what I told myself—it was more about excitement. It’d been almost three days since our last call, and I had so much to tell him.

  “Oh, it’s you,” I said, feigning annoyance. There was just something about Luke’s voice that brought out the teenager in me. “What do you want? I am very busy and too important now for those who knew me when.”

  His warm chuckle on the other end made my smile grow wider, if possible. “Oh, so sorry to bother you, your highness, but I just wanted to see how Shelly Monroe and the meeting with the publisher went.”

  I fell back into my chair and threw my legs over the armrest. “Shelly went great. She did mention she was upset you declined her request for an interview. I told her the FBI is a harsh mistress who doesn’t like it when active agents splash themselves across the television.”

  “And I assume I came up in the interview. Again,” he said with a tinge of annoyance.

  I’d never known him to be annoyed by anyone but me. I did give him a plethora of reasons so I never blamed him. “Of course, but I only said good things.”

  “Well, I’m sure I’ll hear about it many, many times in the next few days. Every time you go on one of those shows, I get a play-by-play of everything you say about me. I’m getting sick of my own face on TV. People stop me on the street and start interrogating me about you, about things that are nobody’s business.”

  “Come on, you must enjoy being the top cop in America a little? You’re the most famous, heroic FBI agent since Eliot Ness. You told me the last time we spoke Reggie was making noises about promoting you.”

  “Well, the fact that reporters are camped out in front of the building and flooding the phones with questions about me can’t be helping my chances. I’m trapped at a desk for the foreseeable future and the guys are getting resentful. You know what someone emailed to everyone? A picture of you and me in wedding clothes, except I’m the one in the dress.”

  “Cute,” I said. “Did the dress show off your legs?”

  “Not funny.”

  “Yes, it is,” I insisted. “It’s a joke, you’re supposed to laugh. If you don’t then they’ll know they’re getting to you and it’ll never stop. Didn’t you learn any of this in high school?”

  “I went to a military academy,” he said, “if someone did something like this, they had to run five miles and face a tribunal. It didn’t happen often.”

  “Poor baby. You want me to come down and shoot them for you?”

  Finally, he chuckled. “Tempting, very tempting.”

  “Seriously, though, things should die down now. Shelly was the last interview I’ve agreed to. I have to lock myself in my house and write a book now. Some new scandal will grip the nation and we’ll be yesterday’s news.”

  “I hope so.” He paused for a second. “I am proud of you, though. I want you to know that.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. You’re not hiding away like last time. You’ve turned hell into something positive. You’ve come a long way in such a short time. I see you on TV and I’m amazed. You look so beaut—” He stopped himself—“Healthy, you look healthy.”

  Okay, yes, my heart skipped a beat when he almost said I was beautiful. Coming from a man who my friend Carol swore was designed by a committee of gay men and straight women, it was something. I was by no means ugly, with long light brown hair with flecks of blonde in the right places, green eyes, enough cleavage to look good in a halter top, and no longer underweight, I got my fair share of compliments. But Luke Hudson fell into a whole other weight class. I’d actually seen waitresses fight to be the one to serve him. Muscular body in perfect proportion, perfectly coiffed red hair, Aquamarine eyes, killer smile when he used it. And if possible he looked even better naked. The man was just…yummy. I often had to stop myself from thinking about him in those terms. Friends, just friends. I couldn’t handle anything else at that point. I’d just gotten him back. A flash of him lying on the floor of my basement after being shot three times crossed my mind. I said a silent prayer for the inventor of the Kevlar vest, hoping God had graced him with trillions of dollars and supermodels falling all over him.

  “Thank you,” I said, not knowing what else to say. “I’ve, uh, been trying yoga.”

  “It, um, shows.” He cleared his throat. He did that when he was uncomfortable. “Sorry. So, uh, you’re leaving the circus, huh? Going back to Grafton?”

  “Yeah. I think I’m going to rent a car,” I found myself saying. It’d been nothing but a thought until then. “If I never see the inside of an airport again it’ll be too soon.”

  “So, you’ll be driving through DC then?” he asked hopefully.

  “I…yes. Yes, I will be.” My subconscious was a tricky bitch.

  “Then we should, uh, have dinner or something.” He cleared his throat again. “Or, you know, we can…the symphony’s doing Handel at the Kennedy Center. I can get us tickets or…whatever.”

  I drew my knees up to my chest, forming a ball. “I-I’d like that.”

  “Good. Great. Excellent.” He cleared his throat yet again. “I, uh, can’t wait.”

  “Me neither. It’ll be, um, good seeing you again. If it weren’t for the publicity stills I’m pretty sure I’d forget what you looked like.” Yeah, that’d ever happen.

  “I, uh, I…okay then. Just let me know when you’ll be in town.”

  “Okay. I’ll, um, let you know. I have a meeting with BNN tomorrow morning, so I’ll probably be there by four?”

  “Okay. I’ll uh, get the tickets. Clear my schedule. I, uh, I can’t wait.”

  “Me neither.”

  “Okay then.”

  “Okay.” The uncomfortable silence filled the air on both our ends. “I’m gonna go now.”

  “Yeah. Right. I’ll uh…see you tomorrow. Bye.” He hung up.

  It would be good to see Luke again. The last time we were in the same room was two weeks earlier when he was awarded the FBI Medal of Valor. We went out for a drink afterward—Ginger Ale for me—with some of his buddies, and I got phased out of the conversation quickly. I snuck out without even saying goodbye
, which I heard no end of the next day. At least tomorrow it’d be just us. Alone. After that realization, the panic hit.

  Oh, fuck, I thought. I’d just agreed to dinner and a show. It’d been awhile—okay, two years, three months, and five days—but if memory served, dinner and a show was a date. Did I just agree to a date with Luke Hudson?

  “Oh, God,” I muttered as I picked up my phone and called Carol. She was my best friend and my advisor on all things romantic. Or at least she was the only person I trusted not to gossip about me or sell stories. Even my students had cashed in on the celebrity gravy train. I didn’t fault them too much since I did as well. All but Carol. A true friend who always helped me get my head on straight. Damned if I didn’t need her again.

  She picked up on the third ring. “Hello?” Carol asked in her milk and honey Southern accent. I was instantly homesick. It’d been over three weeks since I’d been home. I’d been living on planes and in hotels since I signed with Miranda and she began my press tour. I missed my home, friends, and especially my German Shepherd Gus more and more as the days went on. I would have started traveling earlier but wanted to stay and make sure Gus was okay after his surgery. Within days he was running around on his three legs like nothing happened. I couldn’t wait to hug him rotten.

  “Hey, Carol, it’s Iris.”

  She squealed like a little girl on the other end. “Oh, I’d hoped it was you,” she shrieked in excitement. “How’d it go? Is Shelly short in real life? I read somewhere she’s barely five feet. Is it true? Did you get me an autograph?”

  “It went fine. She is short. And yes, I got you an autograph.”

  She squealed again, that time so loud I had to pull the phone away from my ear. “I can’t believe you got to meet Shelly Monroe. I am so jealous.”

  “Well, next time I go, I’ll get you backstage so you can meet her.”

  “Well, I am going to hold you to that.”

  I smiled to myself. “How’s Gus?”

  Yeah, I missed the big lug. I got him after the first attack for protection, but spent most of the time protecting him from the various creatures who inhabited the woods behind my house. When Shepherd broke into my house, Gus stepped up, biting that maniac’s leg, getting shot in the process and losing his left hind leg. But my Gus wouldn’t let a little thing like losing a leg stop him. He ran around, galloping like a small pony, or that’s what the videos Carol sent me showed. She did tell me he milked his wounds for everything they were worth. When she’d skimp on the dog food he’d begin whining and licking his stump until she acquiesced. So I now owned a 120-pound, three legged dog with no shame. It wasn’t exactly what the breeder advertised on the brochure.